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than most of the other Southern States. The fires are 

 small and slow. They do not attract much attention as 

 tkey creep along among the pine, but they get in their 

 deadly work no less surely, though more slowly, than the 

 forest conflagrations which wipe out many square miles 

 in one stretch. The traveler in Florida, almost anywhere 

 outside the boundaries of the swamps, is soon accustomed 

 to the sight of long lines of fire which keep close to the 

 ground. The blaze may not be more than a foot high, 

 but when it has passed, it leaves every tree seedling dead. 

 The mat of saw palmettoes, which nearly always casts a 

 low shade to protect the ground, are scorched brown 

 wherever the fire touches them. They may sprout again 

 the next year, and tree seedlings may come up again, but 

 the fire will follow, and every visitation leaves the ground 

 more barren. No forests will stand fire indefinitely, and 

 Florida's in every part of the State are showing the re- 

 sults of burnings. 



The control of forest fires in Florida should be easier 

 than in most States, because the country is flat, the woods 

 often open and thin, and watercourses numerous. But 

 efforts to control are infrequent. Persons well acquaint- 

 ed with customs in the State say that ten fires are pur- 

 posely set, for every one extinguished. The Florida razor- 

 back hog is indirectly one of the forest's worst enemies. 

 It is a gaunt, ungainly animal, adapted for foraging and 

 built for speed, and it roams the woods in a never-tiring 

 search for something to eat. In the late winter the own- 

 ers of the hogs go out with a box of matches and burn 

 the range. That clears away old stalks, and tender shoots 

 spring up with a plentiful supply of swine pasture for a 

 few weeks. The men who set the fire care little for the 



