PUBLICATIONS AND REPORTS

BRANCH OF FORESTRY ISSUES FIRE PROTECTION HANDBOOK

The regional office received late last month the first field copies of the Service's Fire Protection Handbook which was completed recently by Associate Forester J. S. Barrows. It is a comprehensive and well prepared 344-page manual intended for the use of foresters, park rangers, CCC and ERA foremen and other personnel responsible for giving training in the principles, methods, techniques and safety factors involved in forest fire protection.

The Handbook is divided into five major parts, each arranged in several subdivisions. Its subject matter covers a review of the CCC and Service regulations concerning fire protection training, a discussion of training methods, job analyses of various protection positions, and contains complete lesson plans for teaching the use and inspection of forest fire fighting equipment. A final section is devoted to planning and conducting fire schools and to a bibliography of forest fire protection literature. Copies have been sent to National Parks and Monuments, foresters, inspectors, project managers of Recreational Demonstration Areas, CCC project superintendents, CCC liaison officers, Corps Area commanders, state foresters and certain United States Forest Service personnel.

The Service long has felt the need for a training aid of this type, especially for use in training enrollees. It is hoped that the Handbook will go far toward fulfilling this need In order that it may be made to serve its intended purpose as fully and as effectively as possible, the Branch of Forestry is anxious to improve it on the basis of any weaknesses discovered as a result of its use in the field. For that reason, the Branch will welcome all constructive criticisms and suggestions concerning the form, technical content and practical applicability of the Handbook, and urges all who use it to send them in. ---Fred H. Arnold.

MUNICH CRISIS RE-ECHOED IN POLISH PARKS

Many minor consequences of the recent dismemberment of Czechoslovakia have escaped attention abroad because they were overshadowed by the more spectacular political developments arising from the celebrated crisis of Munich. One of those lesser results was an extension of the boundaries of two of Poland's national parks lying at the international frontier.

Kwartalny Biuletyn Informacyjny (Quarterly Information Bulletin), Vol. VIII, No. 4, 1938, published by the Ministry of Cults and Public Instruction, explains that Poland, by gaining the Jaworzyna region, enlarged its Park Narodowy Tatrzanski (Tatras National Park) by inclusion of "the most romantic part of the Tatras, . . . magnificent alpine valleys, afforested in their lower parts and crowned with perpendicular granitic rocks of the highest Tatras summits, attaining 2,663 metres." Jaworzyna, long a hunting preserve, contains wilderness areas which had been closed to visitors. The forestry branch of the Ministry of Agriculture now will administer the lands. Similarly, Park Narodowy w Pieninach (Pieniny National Park) was enlarged by addition of mountainous Czechoslovak territory lying on the right bank of Dunajec River. Two private tracts were purchased for the park during the year.

The Biuletyn also announced completion of an inventory survey of Bialowieza National Park, where 400 trees were registered as nature monuments.

SERVICE SAFETY BULLETIN URGES RENEWED CAUTION

The record of serious accidents among CCC and ERA workers during 1938 is reviewed, and there is an appeal for exercise of the utmost care during 1939 in all operations involving potential danger to life and limb, in the 16-page illustrated Safety Bulletin issued recently by the Service.

A foreword by Conrad L. Wirth, Supervisor of Recreation and Land Planning, admonished:

"Remember our goal of less than one lost-time accident per 10,000 man days worked and the elimination of fatal accidents. This goal is not fantastic nor impossible. Are you doing your part to instill safety consciousness into the men under your supervision?"

FOREST SERVICE JOURNAL REVIEWS CCC ACCOMPLISHMENTS

A special "CCC Activities Issue" of the United States Forest Service's Service Bulletin, Vol. XXII, No. 7, issued last month, contains 14 multilithed pages of praise for the useful work carried forward by the Corps since its establishment six years ago. The cover of the booklet reveals by graphic symbols that among the activities one and one-quarter billion trees were planted, four million man days were expended in fire fighting, and 73,000 illiterates were taught to read and write, while the enrollees were engaged in 165 other types of work. Special articles range from "CCC and Forestry," by Robert Fechner, Director of the Corps, to "The Charges We Watch," by Project Superintendent James R. Wilkins, of Va. F-1, George Washington National Forest, first camp established by the CCC in the momentous April days of 1933.

ROAD MAP SHOWS GETTYSBURG BATTLEFIELDS

A new Shell Oil Company automobile map of Pennsylvania features a four-color 8"x7" plan of Gettysburg National Military Park, the town and environs. Outstanding historical sites, the route of official guided tours, observation towers, leading state military memorials and other features of the park are marked for motorists. Large stippled arrows show the fields traversed by Heth's and Pickett's men in their dramatic advance during the Longstreet assault on the Union lines. Principal roads into Gettysburg are delineated.

RECREATIONAL DEMONSTRATION AREA LEAFLETS BEING ISSUED

A four-page multilithed information folder describing the facilities available at Hard Labor Creek Recreational Demonstration Area, Georgia, has been distributed to the field as the first leaflet in a series which is expected to include all similar areas of Region One. The new pamphlet contains a map showing the general progress of development, photographs of camper activities, and information concerning rentals and use of organized camps.

Folders for Catoctin and Oak Mountain Recreational Demonstration Areas, in Maryland and Alabama, have been prepared and await reproduction. The editorial and mechanical work is being done in the Richmond office.

TENNESSEE AREAS PICTURED IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Buffalo Springs Fish and Game Preserve and Reelfoot Lake State Park are among the federal and state recreational areas represented by photographs, some of them in color, which illustrate "Highlights of the Volunteer State", by Leonard Cornell Roy in The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. LXXV, No. 5, pp. 553-594.

A full-page color plate is devoted to reproduction of the familiar Tennessee River Moccasin Bend view which has come to be a sort of scenic trade mark symbolizing the Chickamauga-Chattanooga park. Another plate shows Fall Creek in its magnificent 256-foot plunge into the rock-walled canyon which makes Fall Creek Falls Recreational Demonstration Area out standing for its scenic values. Other color illustrations show Abrams Falls, in the Great Smokies, and the great basin in Reelfoot Lake State Park. Black and white photographs include an aerial view of the CCC-built quail brooders and pens at Buffalo Springs, and on a foot trail at Chickamauga-Chattanooga, is shown Miss Barbara Frost, daughter of Resident Landscape Architect Robert T. Frost.

TCHEFUNCTE STATE PARK STUDIES CONTINUED

A third installment of "The Family of Marigny de Mandeville and the Fontainebleau Plantation, 1700-1938: A Brief Chronology of the Tchefuncte Park Area," by Senior Foreman Historian Clarence L. Johnson, appears in the current quarterly issue of Louisiana Conservation Review, Vol. VIII, No. 1. It brings the family record to 1829 when, Mr. Johnson's researches indicate, Fontainebleau was purchased by Bernard Marigny. The article points out that many statements concerning the entertainment of Louis Phillippe and his brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and the Comte de Beaujolais, while Bernard Marigny was a plantation host on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, are based more on legend than on fact in view of the chronological difficulties presented. Photographs and a map illustrate the article, yet to be concluded.