56 FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 



The state of New Yoik had a tax law like ours. It has been 

 changed exactly in the method that I have recommended. Under 

 the operation of the amended tax laws, New York has already 

 acquired title to a territor}', mostly in the Adirondack forests, of 

 about 1,000,000 acres, and is prosecuting, under the direction of 

 state forest commissioners, experiments in tree planting with a view 

 of preserving the water supply of large rivers, and restoring the nat- 

 ural beauty of a region much frequented by tourists. 



In this, as in many other enterprises, it is only the first step that 

 costs. If a single town should begin in an intelligent wa}', either 

 by encouraging the natural growth or by artificial planting, on how- 

 ever small a tract, the nucleus of a new forest, it would stimulate 

 other towns to follow the example, especially if a favorable local 

 public opinion could be created by the visit and lectures of the for- 

 est commissioner, and by a dissemination of his reports. It would 

 not be long before the citizens would come to feel how much the 

 preservation and increase of the woods had to do with the enhance- 

 ment of the natural beauty of their homes, making them attractive 

 to visitors, with the shelter they afford for game birds and beasts, 

 and with those climatic conditions necessary to successful agricul- 

 ture and manufacturing. 



The municipal forests would constantly tend to increase, first by 

 the operation of the same law that, exempting church properly from 

 taxation, as in Mexico, gradually attracts all lands into that pro- 

 prietorship ; second, b}' annual forfeitures for non-payment of taxes, 

 and third, by the free gift of wealthy citizens in their lives, or by 

 devise to operate after their deaths, of waste lands, unsalable f nd 

 yielding no income, and subj acting the owner only to taxation and 

 trouble. As soon as the town officers had developed a reasonable 

 prudence in the management and preservation of such lands, it is 

 believed that ihere would be a strong tendency on the part of the 

 owners of waste lauds to donate them to such public uses. 



After the experiment of re-forestation had gotten hopefully under- 

 way it might be aided by the annual payment by the State of one 

 hundred dollars to be paid to that town in each county, which after 

 ten years could show the best and most ihrifty growth of new forest 

 under such management ; the premium to be awarded by the forest 

 commissioner, and the amount to be expended in improving, plant- 

 ing or enlarging the municipal forest lands. 



