PROTECTION 143 



acre squares. The problem, therefore, that con- 

 fronts the lookout man upon the discovery of a 

 forest fire is to inform the Ranger or other Forest 

 officer where the fire is — that is, in what section it is 

 located, if it cannot be located with reference to 

 some well-known natural feature. 



In order to determine in what section or quarter 

 section a fire is located, each lookout point on the 

 Supervisor's and Rangers' fire maps has a trans- 

 parent circular protractor mounted on it. (A pro- 

 tractor is a device by which angles are marked off ; 

 it consists of a circle upon whose arc the degrees 

 from to 360 are indicated, degrees being equiv- 

 alent to North, 90° to East, 180° to South and 270° 

 to West.) The center of the protractor is the 

 lookout point. A piece of black thread is fastened 

 to the center of each lookout point, so that it can be 

 stretched across the arc of the circle and the de- 

 grees read off. The other end of the thread has 

 fastened to it a thumb tack or similar device, so that 

 when the thread is stretched to read a certain angle, 

 it can be fixed at that angle. The maps of the 

 lookout men are usually fastened or permanently 

 mounted upon a table which is oriented ( that is, the 

 top of the map is turned toward the north ) . The 



