460 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Provision is also made for the cutting and sale of the timber and 

 the carrying on of mining and irrigation enterprises within the re- 

 serves, under permits to be granted and regulations to be established 

 by the Secretary of the Interior. Essentially all the authority rec- 

 ommended in the final report of the Forestry Commission of the 

 National Academy of Sciences is given by this legislation, with the 

 exception of authority to employ troops in policing the reserves. 

 The wording of the amendment is broad, and leaves the manner of 

 establishing the administration and protection of the reserves in the 

 control of the Secretary of the Interior. As soon as the surveys are 

 completed, and the boundaries of the reserves determined, the final 

 establishment of a rational forestry policy can be entered upon. 

 Meantime, a beginning has been made through the authority granted 

 by the act appropriating money for the protection of timber on 

 public lands. 



Surveys. — The forest-reserve legislation was enacted June 4, 

 1897, and arrangements were at once made for the topographic and 

 subdivisional surveys of those portions of the suspended reserves in 

 which there are large interests that may be injuriously affected if 

 those areas are included within the reserves; for instance, the agri- 

 cultural and mining interests of portions of the Black Hills Reserve 

 of South Dakota, the mining interests of the southwestern portion of 

 the Washington Reserve of Washington, and the timber interests of 

 the eastern portion of the Bitter Root Reserve in Montana. 



The topographic surveying parties were organized and left Wash- 

 ington the latter part of June. The purposes of the topographic 

 surveys are (a) the preparation of topographic maps, on a scale of 

 two miles to the inch, with contour intervals of one hundred feet, as 

 base maps for the representation of forestry details, agricultural and 

 mineral lands, and future geologic surveys; (b) the establishment 

 of bench marks indicating elevation above sea level, for vertical 

 control in topographic mapping, and for all mining, engineering, and 

 geologic work; (c) the subdivision of reserves, where necessary, by 

 running township lines for the purpose of designating tracts of land ; 



(d) the demarcation by means of section lines of tracts which are 

 more valuable as agricultural and mineral lands than for timber; and 



(e) the mapping by the topographer in charge of each party of the 

 outlines of all wooded and forest areas. 



Early in July the forestry survey was organized, and soon there- 

 after the special forest experts began the study of the distribution of 

 the forests and woodlands, the size and density of the timber, the 

 distribution of the leading economic species, the effect of the ravages 

 of forest fires and the amount of damage inflicted by them, the 

 amount of dead timber, the extent to which the forests are pastured, 



