FIRE. 149 
work is so arduous that. in spite of labour costing only 5d. per day, 
the cost of the protection works out to very high figures—from 5s, 6d. 
to £5 per square mile, the latter figure in the valuable Teak forests of 
Burmah, where, however, labour is more costly. 
In America, as will be more fully seen later, with ‘‘ lookouts,’’ tele- 
phones, patrols, and good organization generally, the cost is only 1d. 
or 2d. per square mile. In the national forests of the United States 
of America during the year 1916 the cost worked out to about 1d. per 
square mle, and the loss averaged 4} acre per 1,000 acres; or, stated 
another way, the unsuccessfully protected area was 5 per cent. of the 
area protected, considered during the ‘‘ rotation’’ or whole lifetime 
of the forest. 
In South Africa, in the dense evergreen forest like the Kauri and 
iixed *’ forest of New Zealand, the cost of fire-protection is mostly 
merged in that of organization (see ‘‘ Australian Forestry,’’ pp. 20 to 44 
and 564-365. ‘* When once the forests are organized the cost of fire- 
protection is almost nominal’ (p. 366). The forest in the natural state 
is little liable to burn. When worked it is at the same time organized 
against fire. Sometimes the self-protection of the forest is helped by 
burning off serub and rank herbage on the margin once in two or 
three years. Altogether, the cost of fire-paths, of burning off dangerous 
herbage, and of special watchers for short periods of danger, averages 
out to Idd. per acre per year.* This is for valuable forest worked 
intensively. 
Iu France and southern Europe the position is similar, but with the 
acute danger there from the long dry summer and the Pine forests the 
organization must be of the best—viz., good outlook, abundant roads, 
and always telephones. 
‘s 
PritosopHy or Kauri -Fires. 
The philosophical way to regard fires in a Kauri forest is not as a 
necessity, but as a bad habit. Fire in a Kauri forest is like the drug 
habit in man, whether this takes the form of the Englishman’s popular 
drugs, aleohol, tobacco, and tea, or the unpopular ones, such as opium, 
cocaine, and sleep-drugs. The popular drugs make life pleasanter, do 
little harm if under control, but in excess hurt or kill. The habitual 
user calls his favourite drug a necessity. That is the position of fire in 
the Kauri forest. ‘The pioneers started firing the bush to make room for 
themselves, and to make the Kauri-logging easier. Then it became a 
habit, and is now looked on, popularly, as a necessity. Fire, under 
control, in a Kauri forest is an important aid to natural and artificial 
regeneration (p. 118). It is the immoderate use of fire that the forester 
has to combat. There will be difficulty at first in breaking through the 
fire habit. Fire in a Kauri forest is nothing more than a bad. habit— 
a disastrous habit in the wild Kauri bush, but easily brought under con- 
trol in the cultivated forest. That was my experience in this class of 
forest in South Africa. In some of the forest there (Katberg) they got 
into the habit of burning the bush. Where that habit did not exist there 
has been little trouble with fire. 
As mentioned above—forest-fire protection and how to do it—is fully 
discussed in my ‘‘ Australian Forestry’ (Perth, 1916). This must be 
referred to for the routine of the subject. 
When I think of the Estarelle Forest, an inflammable pine forest in 
the dry Mediterranean climate, with the violent hot winds of the mistral 




« Letter, Chief Conservator of Forests, 8.Af., 1919 
