Of the 503 fires reported by the United States Forest Service as having occurred in 1914 in the national forest purchase areas in the White Mountains of New England and the Southern Appalachians, 319, or sixty per cent, were caused by sparks from locomotives. More than half of these fires, or 272, occurred in Virginia alone, and of these 227 were from locomotive sparks. Three hundred and seventy-nine of the fires were confined to areas of less than ten acres each, and 296 were put out before a quarter of an acre had been burned. The total loss amounted to $2,192, and the cost of fire fighting to $1,300, an infinitesimal sum compared with the value of the timber and reproduction protected. As the areas swept by fire were mostly cut over, the greater part of the damage was suffered by young growth. Expert Stump Blower Has Narrow Escape. Jake Bodine, prominent tailor and stump blower of Kenton, Ohio, sat at his ease and smoked his pipe. When it went out, he lighted it again. When it went out a second time, he decided he had had enough, and laid the pipe aside. He had been blowing stumps with dynamite during the day, and had brought four large caps home in his pocket. Reaching into his pocket in which he had put the caps, and in which he carried his smoking tobacco as well, he found three caps instead of four. When he emptied the ashes from his pipe in search of the fourth cap, that fourth cap rattled out, badly scorched. “It’s a good thing my pipe went out when it did,” he says. “If that cap had gone off, like as not it would have ruined one of the best stump blowers in Kenton.” Killed Nineteen California Lions. Nineteen California lions fell before the guns of the bounty hunters in February. Four were killed in Humboldt County; three in Siskiyou; three in Lake; two in Mendocino; two in Ventura, and one each in San Benito, Del Norte, Monterey, Tehama, and Tuolumne. The State paid twenty dollars to each successful hunter, and in addition to this the pelts brought as much more. Some counties also give a special bounty for lions’ scalps. Officers Applaud New Box Wireless. Under the direction of the secretary of war a new wireless apparatus, the invention of Doctor Otto F. Reinhold, of 77 Nye Avenue, Newark, N. J., was tested at Bedloe’s Island by First Lieutenant J. G. Taylor, of the Signal Corps, and M. B. Dilley, master signal electrician. The government men declared afterward that the apparatus gave promise of revolutionizing the entire system of wireless telegraphy. The apparatus, inclosed in a box about fifteen inches long, six inches wide, and eight inches high, may be styled a secret radio plant, and is intended primarily for use in the army field. The astounding feature of it, according to Lieutenant Taylor, is that it was fully demonstrated that the little contrivance sends out its sound waves without antennæ.