Fighting Fires and Thieves 185 



of young sprouts and seedlings and trampling 

 down what they cannot devour, have not inaptly 

 been called "hoofed locusts." If to the injury 

 done by the feet and teeth of the sheep is added 

 the damage by fires set for their exclusive benefit, 

 we can hardly continue to speak of a " legitimate " 

 industry. 



Occasionally it happens that a fire is set mali- 

 ciously, with the express purpose of doing injury 

 to a body of timber. This, however, is rare in 

 America. The motive is usually lacking. In some 

 parts of the world the country people living in the 

 neighborhood of forests are inimical to the owners, 

 because a rational forest management interferes 

 with their imagined right to make use of other 

 people's property, and this hostility every now and 

 then leads to incendiarism. In India, popular su- 

 perstitions sometimes lead to the same crime, as 

 where a fine forest in the Himalayas was destroyed 

 by village people as an offering to the spirit of 

 smallpox that was ravaging the community. Mo- 

 tives of either kind are unknown in this country. 

 But it is suspected by lumbermen, once in a while, 

 that some person has fired a body of timber which 

 its owners intended to let grow for a while longer, 

 in order to compel the cutting of the half-killed 

 trees to save them from destruction by fungi and 

 insects. The motive of the miscreant in such cases 

 is supposed to be the hope of getting the contract 

 for logging the timber. How well founded such 

 stories are I do not know. As far as I am aware, 



