COMMITTEES ON BEHALF OF THE GOVERNMENT Bar 
The final report of the committee was to a certain extent fore- 
stalled by the action of Congress which in the Sundry Civil Act 
for 1898, passed June 4, 1897, made the following provision: 
“The Secretary of the Interior shall make provisions for the protection 
against destruction by fire and depredations upon the public forests and forest 
reservations which may have been set aside or which may be hereafter set aside 
under the said Act of March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, and which 
may be continued; and he may make such rules and regulations and establish 
such service as will insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate 
their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction, 
etc,” 178 
In the Sundry Civil Act for 1899, $110,000 was appro- 
priated “ to meet the expenses of protecting timber on the public 
lands,” and for other similar purposes, and $75,000 “‘ for the 
care and administration of the forest reserves, to meet the 
expenses of forest inspectors and assistants, and for the employ- 
ment of foresters and other emergency help in the prevention 
and extinguishment of forest fires, and for advertising dead 
and matured trees for sale within such reservations.” ** These 
amounts were to be expended under the Department of the 
Interior. The control of the public forests thus remained with 
the Interior Department without the formation of a separate 
bureau, as recommended by the committee of the Academy. 
In the meantime the Government had in the Division of 
Forestry in the Department of Agriculture another organiza- 
tion concerned with questions of forest management and preser- 
vation. The activities of this division increased rapidly year by 
year, and finally on February 1, 1905, the management of the 
public forests was transferred to it from the Department of the 
Interior. A special Act of Congress, approved on that date, 
provides “ that the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture 
shall, from and after the passage of this Act, execute or cause 
to be executed all laws affecting public lands heretofore or here- 
after reserved under the provisions of section twenty-four of the 
*2 Stat. at Large, vol. 30, p. 35, 55th Congress, rst Session, chap. 2, 1897. 
1™ Op. cit., p. 618, 55th Congress, 2d Session, chap. 546, 1898. 
