BUSH FIRES.

Colonist, Volume XV, Issue 1500, 9 February 1872, Page 3

BUSH FIRES.

The Melbourne Daily Telegraph on this subject suggests a remedy or rather a preventive which merits consideration in New Zealand which is not the only place where carelessness is the fruitful source of these disastrous fires. Our contemporary writes:

Bush fires formerly did little harm except to tbo squatter, and no one cared about him, but now, with free selectors dotting the land, they endanger life and cause ruin. One occurred last week in the Tarnagulla district. A few years a»o ifc would have done nothing but leave the sheep without feed for a time, or blast a patch more of our rapidly decreasing forests, but now it swept over the site of a dozen farms, causing great loss, and going very near to licking up the homesteads before it. And the origin was the careless use of a match. In view of the altered circumstances of the case, a Bush Fires Act would be quite a useful piece of legislation, and may be commended to the notice of Ministers, the clauses of the existing Police Act being very meagre. Such an act has been placed in the statute-book in South Australia, and every year the public are formally reminded of its provisions. By this means there is little doubt the farmers have been saved from many a disaster, and as regards agricultural settlement we are now approximating to the condition of South Australia. By one clause of that measure a person burning hay or stubble is not only bound to give a day's notice to adjoining owners, as he is here; but also to have four assistants with him to beat out the flames. Another section is directed against indiscriminate fire-lighting in the open air by travellers. It stipulates that the quid pro quo shall be the obligation to clear a space all round 10ft in depth, as well as to extinguish the fire before leaving. Smoking without the permission of the owner, within 20ft. of a hay or corn rick, is also forbidden during the summer months, and the use of ignifable wadding is placed under similar restriction. There are other provisions which seem of an eminently practical character. Fires in the bush are occasioned, nine cases out of ten, by inadvertence, and it needs constant watchfulness and an occasional fine at the police court to convince people that their negligence and carelessness

is a crime,