regular employment of a large staff of 
men, whose special duty it is to watch 
for and extinguish forest fires, the losses 
from fire inside the national forest re- 
seryes—covering an area of 160,000,000 
acres—have been reduced to a remark- 
ably small figure. Thus in 1906 it was 
officially reported that less than one- 
eighth of the national forests had been 
burned over, and that three one-hun- 
dredths of 1 per cent—about one three- 
thousandth part—had been destroyed. 
The total loss was less than £20,000; yet 
it is calculated that the United States 
have been losing on an average about 
£10,000,000 a year in marketable timber 
for a long time past through fire alone. 
And the remarkable results recorded in- 
side the national forest area have been 
secured without any extraordinary out- 
lay. Each one of the forest rangers 
engaged on fire duty has an area of over 
200 square miles in his charge; and it 
is worth noting that in Prussia an area 
of 200 square miles is protected by no 
less than 120 foresters. Yet in spite of 
the enormous difficulties that have to 
be faced in combating fires, the forest 
rangers make a splendid success of their 
arduous task. One forest fire in Oregon, 
described by Mr F. J. Dyer in a recent 
issue of the “World’s Work” (American 
20 
edition), covered an area 40 miles in 
circumference, and when it was first lo- 
cated its front was 15 miles long, Th, 
scene of operations, we are told, was 1g 
miles from water and 50 miles from q 
base of supplies, and it took 200 men 
nine days of ceaseless effort to put it out 
But though the total cost was only £1200 
in labour, it meant a saving of millions 
of dollars in timber. The expenditure, iy 
fact, bears no appreciable relation to the 
value of the work done. Returns fur 
nished by the American Department of 
Agriculture show that the southern for. 
ests can be patrolled effectively against 
fire for two cents an acre per year; the 
northern forests for not more than four 
cents, aud those of the Rocky Mountains 
and of the Pacific Coast for 13 cents an 
acre per year. Considering the value of 
the property thus protected, and the 
large proportion of it that would other- 
wise be annually destroyed by fire, the 
expense of fire-fighting is absolutely tri- 
vial. And it is not unreasonable to infer 
that the work done so cheaply under such 
difficult conditions and over so vast an 
area in America could be performed quite 
as effectively and as cheaply in New 
Zealand if a systematic attempt were 
made to apply the same methods 
here. 
