CHIEF FIRE WARDEN. 5 



the town board would not make a complaint and I had to 

 go and make the complaint myself, but was not present 

 at the hearing. Daw plead guilty to carelessly causing 

 the fire, was fined only $15, together with $3.05 costs, 

 and yet the community did not sympathize with the 

 prosecution. It is not an encouragement to men of 

 capital to establish valuable farming plants if their prop- 

 erty is liable to be endangered by any careless fellow who 

 may choose to set a fire in dangerous weather without the 

 means for its control. It seems to me it should be made 

 the duty of county attorneys themselves to make the 

 necessary complaints in such cases, when requested by 

 the Chief Fire Warden. Of course they should not be 

 required to make complaints except in cases where there 

 are probable grounds for conviction, 



LOGGING RAILROADS. 



A bad example of forest fires came under my personal 

 observation on the afternoon of the 15th of September 

 last, while going on the logging railway train of the Red 

 Lake Transportation Company from Red Lake to Nebish, 

 a distance of fifteen miles. This logging railway extends 

 nearly all of the way through forest of mostly Norway 

 pine. I naturally gave particular attention to any effects 

 of forest fires along the line of the road, and while I ex- 

 pected that there might have been a few fires I was sur- 

 prised to see that there had been so many. There were 

 then as many as six small fires actually burning along the 

 right hand side of the right of way without anyone in 

 sight to take care of them. There were traces of more 

 than a dozen forest fires having extended into the woods 

 on each side of the road, some of them having apparently 

 killed the timber as far as could be seen. Indeed, the 

 forest generally along the road had been ravaged by fire, 

 and as the road will probably at some not remote future 

 time be used as a part of an extended passenger route 



