Burning oil can be extinguished by smothering with woolen blankets, or by throwing sand on it. Water merely spreads the fire.
While fires in settled communities do the most damage, a dry season may see many destructive forest fires. Such conflagrations destroy the forests and kill game and song birds, besides being a menace to settlers. This country suffers great losses through forest fires, many of which could be prevented by an observance of the rules already given, especially those relating to smoking. Campers are also responsible for many fires of this kind by failing to extinguish camp fires, or by building them in places where rubbish abounds. A camp fire should never be made except on a spot of clean ground and if necessary a spot should be cleared before building the fire, digging away the vegetable matter on the surface, if need be. Likewise the camper should be certain that there is no danger from the fire spreading before he leaves it.
Ordinarily he can feel sure of this only when he has completely extinguished the fire by pouring water upon it.
BLANKETS
One of the first things to learn is that blankets, no matter how good, are not "warm," they don't generate heat. Wrap a jar of water in the warmest, thickest, softest woolen blanket you can find and place it out of doors over night in a zero temperature and see what you have in the morning. No, there is no warmth coming from the blankets, but the warmth comes from the human body and the purpose of the blanket is to retain this warmth, to prevent its escape. It must therefore be a non-conductor of heat. And remember that there is no such thing as cold, for what we call cold is merely an absence of heat, and we call it cold for convenience.
Suppose you are sleeping, or attempting to sleep out of doors on a night so cold that the trees pop like pistols. You are wrapped in a pair of woolen blankets and it is only this wrapping that is between you and the frosty, chilling air. But inside of those blankets your body is giving out heat waves, the air on the inside becomes warm, and you are comfortable. Suppose again that the blankets are not the right kind, they will not retain heat, and as a consequence you become cold. You sit up, replenish the fire and swear to yourself, but you don't know why you can't keep warm. You say the cold gets through your blankets and you firmly believe this. As a matter of fact it is the heat that gets through, not the cold.
Outside of fur the best heat-retaining material used for blankets is pure wool. A little cotton may do no noticeable harm, if properly used in conjunction with the wool, but it certainly does no good, and it really decreases the warmth of the blanket in direct proportion to the quantity used, therefore I say the best blankets are made of pure wool. And there is a difference in wool, too. Scotch wool is generally admitted to be the finest produced.
It has always been my belief that wool loosely woven, so that it forms a soft, thick cloth, is a better heat retainer than the same quantity of wool tightly woven, so that it makes a thinner, tighter and harder material. Anyway, I think the surface should be as woolly as it is possible to make it.