Nobody knows, who has not fought fire, what a fiend the foresters have to deal with. I have looked up many forest fire statistics and I find always noted among the "sources of fires," this item: _Forest Fires Set By Children_. There may not be much that boys and girls can _do_ to put in practice the big things we hear talked about under the name of conservation, but one thing you can certainly refrain from doing, and that is, setting a forest fire. A person who makes a fire in the woods is responsible to the community for that fire and its consequences. To boil a coffee pail, to broil bacon, to bake biscuits, to fry fish, to give comfort to the hunter, trapper, camper, or picnicker, many are the legitimate uses of a fire in the woods. No real sportsman forgets his fire. His last act before leaving a camp is to see that no vestige of it remains. He makes sure every spark is dead, then throws on another pail of water, and goes on with a light heart and a clear conscience. If you have ever left a fire in the woods, anywhere, your conscience ought to give you a good jab when you read of forest fires, though distant, a jab that will prevent your repeating the offence. KILLING WEEDS Weeding is the boy's job, isn't it? If only one could get some kind of inspiration into weeding, so as to rob the work of its drudgery! If we must serve our time at weeding, let us at least weed intelligently. What is a weed anyhow? In Germany, I am told, the peasants call weeds "_Unkraut_". Since "_Kraut_" is cabbage, "_Unkraut_" must be weeds. A weed is really a plant growing where we don't want it. The worst weed in a hill of four corn stalks is the fourth stalk of corn that crowds the others. The worst weeds in a row of beets are the little beet plants that crowd each other. What a plague they are! Some of the plants we usually include among our "coarse native weeds" are grown in gardens in Europe. Mullein, for example, over there is called "the American velvet plant" and a well-grown specimen is really handsome. If weeds are plants out of place there is much to be done by boys and girls in the way of ridding gardens, lawns, school grounds, and village streets of their overgrowth of weeds. If you clear out one thing put in something better or nature may put in some plant that will not please you. Save seeds from your own garden and drop them along the roadside. The school grounds are the particular province of the school boys and girls. Join together to make the grounds more beautiful and there is no end to the improvements that will follow.