_How Fires Are Located._ The lookout man, as well as the Forest Rangers and the Forest Supervisor, is provided with identical maps of the Forest. These maps show most of the important features useful in fire protection work, including also the private lands, all government holdings, and the public land survey. This public land survey has divided the land surface into legal subdivisions known as townships, sections, and quarter sections, and it is by these and with reference to these that all features, both natural and artificial, are located. A township is usually a square 6 miles on a side, containing 36 sections. Each section is divided into quarter sections containing 160 acres each, which are further divided (though not by law) into forty-acre squares. The problem, therefore, that confronts the lookout man upon the discovery of a forest fire is to inform the Ranger or other Forest officer where the fire is--that is, in what _section_ it is located, if it cannot be located with reference to some well-known natural feature. In order to determine in what section or quarter section a fire is located, each lookout point on the Supervisor's and Rangers' fire maps has a transparent circular protractor mounted on it. (A protractor is a device by which angles are marked off; it consists of a circle upon whose arc the degrees from 0 to 360 are indicated, 0 degrees being equivalent to North, 90° to East, 180° to South and 270° to West.) The center of the protractor is the lookout point. A piece of black thread is fastened to the center of each lookout point, so that it can be stretched across the arc of the circle and the degrees read off. The other end of the thread has fastened to it a thumb tack or similar device, so that when the thread is stretched to read a certain angle, it can be fixed at that angle. The maps of the lookout men are usually fastened or permanently mounted upon a table which is oriented (that is, the top of the map is turned toward the north). The lookout men have sighting devices, usually alidades, which are placed on the map, by means of which they sight at a fire; but the bearing of the fire is read from the angles marked on the edge of the map, which is in reality a large protractor.