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attributed to this source, but the writer saw a brightly burning fire at 
arecently abandoned camp of Warm Springs Indians on Salmon Prairie. 
The day was rainy, however, and it is possible that under other condi- 
tions they would have extinguished the fire before leaving the camp. 
It would be a wise precaution for the Indian agents to see that when 
they issue permits to the Indians to go off the reserve it should be dis- 
tinetly with the understanding that they are to set no forest fires, and 
that they are to be held strictly responsible if they transgress this 
regulation. 
Road improvement.—On August 4, while traveling on the west slope 
of the Rogue River-Fort Klamath road, the writer and party passed, 
between White Horse Creek and the Crater Lake fork $f the road, a 
distance of about 3 miles, six fires that had evidently been set to burn 
stumps or fallen dead trees out of the road. One of these fires was 
burning close to standing timber, had already destroyed several logs 
upon the ground, and was roaring through the top of a small black 
hemlock. It might very easily have been carried into a large area of 
standing timber, and had a strong wind sprung up no one could have 
prevented this result. Not far above this place a man was seen with a 
two-horse wagon and tools, who was engaged in improving the same 
stretch of road. He had been prying small logs out of the road with 
a crowbar, cutting off obstructing tree roots with an ax, and shoveling 
soil into the holes in the road. It was unquestionably this man, doubt- 
less the road supervisor of the district or someone employed by him, 
who had set the fires. In reply to a question the man, stopping work 
on the log he was engaged upon, said: ““Oh, I am going to pick this 
one to pieces and burn it out after a while.” Whether any of these 
fires afterwards developed into large forest fires there is no means of 
knowing, but a fire set for the same purpose along the road near the 
northwestern corner of Klamath Lake had become unmanageable and 
burned over a considerable area. When the party passed the place 
the fire had been extinguished, and only the destruction caused by it 
was seen. Regarding this possible source of forest fires, especially 
with a knowledge of the very disastrous forest fires due to the early 
road builders, it should be said that officers in charge of such work, if 
they must employ this means of clearing the road, should watch the fires 
closely, and should invariably see that they are finally extinguished. 
Lightning.—It has often been claimed that many forest fires are due 
to lightning. Little credence was at first given to this. Many men 
were found who had heard of fires that originated in this way, but only 
rarely a man who had ever seen one. One day as Mr. Applegate and the 
writer were upon a peak at the junction of the Calapooia Mountains 
with the Cascades, looking for forest fires, we saw not more than half a 
a mile away in the forest a small fire, considerably larger, however, 
than a camp fire should have been. The region was one remote from 
the ordinary routes of travel or any place of public resort. We were 
therefore curious to know how the fire had been started, supposing it 
a 
