[from the text] The summer of 1924 was characterized by an insufficient amount of rainfall throughout the lower Mississippi Delta. A dry fall and winter followed. Many of the usually moist and wet areas in the bottomlands had dried out by the early spring of 1925 and many serious fires resulted. Although foresters and timbermen generally, discount the fire problem in the southern hardwoods, a real problem exists. The fact that much of the damage caused by the 1924-1925 fires is now manifesting itself, shows how sure and insidious this damage really is. On an 81,000 acre tract of virgin timber in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the superintendent has estimated that the virgin redgum, as a result of fire injury, is deteriorating at the rate of one per cent or more per year. On a similar tract a study in 1928 revealed that there had been a loss of 20 per cent in the value of the timber at the time it was cut due to the loss brought about by decay following the fires of 1924-1925 and the similar fires of 1916-1917.