148 FIRE. 
over one’s head as one walks—one can just see over it from horseback ; 
the bamboo is 30 ft. to 40 ft. high. This vegetation grows rank and tall 
during the heat and moisture of the rainy season. In the fierce diy heat 
of an Indian summer (when the furniture in a cool house kept closed drops 
to pieces because the glue has had its holding-power dried out) the jungle 
is an 8-ft.-high tinder-box; and when a spark sets it ablaze the flame 
rolls on, like a burning wooden house, till it is stopped by a fire-path. 
The wall of flame may advance at a fair walking-pace, and fleeing before 
it are the snakes and ground game of the forest. Few of the former 
escape, and the old-time Anglo-Indian used to regard the yearly jungle- 
fires as a beneficent law of nature, and quite beyond man’s power to 
arrest, Compared to this the fire-protection of the evergreen forest in 
New Zealand or South Africa is literally nothing more than children’s 
amusement—a midsummer night’s picnic! 
The intrinsic ‘danger from fire in Kauri forest is very little. Said 
Mr. J. Maxwell, the Ranger who has known Kauri forest all his life and 
the Waipoua Forest for twelve years, “‘ The bush would burn to a certain 
extent; but the ‘gum-diggers’ had carte blanche for twenty-five years 
in the Waipoua Forest doing their level best to burn some of it and they 
burnt very little. When these men were camped in the bush they lit 
fires at the bottom of some of the trees, but only a few of the trees were 
burnt, The fire never ran through the forest.’’—(Forestry Commission.) 
Frre-PROTECTION OF A TREE LIKH KAURI. 
A very interesting tree in South Africa, and one with many analogies 
to Kauri, is the Cape Cedar (Call/tris arborea). It exudes a translucent 
resin, has a wide branched crown, lives to a great age, and has a soft, 
easily worked, durable timber. Though in all these respects very like 
Kauri, it surpasses Kauri, and indeed has no rival (except Camphor), in 
its wonderfully scented wood. Like so many of the New Zealand trees, it 
has two quite different foliages, an early foliage and an adult foliage. 
The Cape Cedar tree does not grow in the South African dense ever- 
green forest, which is sylviculturally the same as the ‘* mixed ”’ forest 
of New Zealand, and which does not easily burn, but in open dry forest 
like that of most parts of Australia, and seemingly like that which once 
grew in Canterbury and which fire has now rendered extinct, On the 
Cedar mountains where alone this tree grows there is a fair winter rain- 
fall—enough to produce considerable ground herbage and a long, in- 
tensely dry, quite rainless summer—so that here are exactly the elements 
of difficult fire-protectigu. In the valleys, with irrigation, grow the 
finest oranges in the world—and I speak with some knowledge of the 
world’s oranges. j 
The story of the successful protection from fire of this forest is told 
in ‘‘ Australian Forestry ’’ (Perth, 1916; p. 35). When I think of the 
fire-protection of these Cape Cedar forests now successfully accomplished 
and of the New Zealand Kauri forests, it is like comparing Lake Taupo 
with the ocean ! 
Cost or Frre-prorecrion. 
In India the area put yearly under fire-protection is about 32,000,000 
acres, of which the percentage of failure is from 4 to 6 per cent. Much 
of this area is forest which, from time beyond memory, has been yearly 
burnt over, fire deteriorating it but not destroying it: indeed, an occa- 
sional fire may be good for natural regeneration. he fire-protection 
