62 FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 



in this later year Richard Leader was granted by a court held at 

 Kittery, on the 11th day of March, "all the right to the privilege 

 or mill power on the little river known as Newichawannock, with 

 the liberty and like property in all timber not yet appropriated to any 

 town or person." It is said that the magnitude of Mr. Leader's 

 operations gave the name of "Great Works" to the place, which 

 afterwards became the name of the river. 



In 1654 there were granted to him "all the pine trees up the little 

 river so far as the town bounds went, for the accommodation of his 

 mill." For the privilege of cutting all this pine timber he waste 

 pay the town an annual tax or royalty of £15 currency. 



About this time grants were made of timber lands on all the 

 branches of the Piscataqua. Just then so great activity was mani- 

 fested in the development of lumbering as an industry that laws 

 were required for the protection of the forests. To provide against 

 waste, it was ordered in 1G56 that if any inhabitant should "fall 

 any pipe stave or clapboard timber and let it lie unused up one 

 mouth, any other inhabitant might improve it as his own property." 



At a town meeting of the inhabitants of Portsmouth in 1660, "a 

 penalty of five shillings for every tree was imposed upon any 

 inhabitant for cutting timber or any other wood from off the com- 

 mon, except for their own building, fencing or fire wood." 



Stringent regulations, designed to guard against damage to the 

 woods by fire, were made by several of the New England colonies 

 previous to 1650. Belknap tells us "that as early as 1668 the gov- 

 ernment of Massachusetts, under which the provinces of Maine and 

 New Hampshire then were, had reserved for the public use all white 

 pine tret s of twenty -four inches in diameter at three feet from the 

 ground. In King William's reign a surveyor of the woods was 

 appointed by the crown, and an order was sent to the Earl of Bello- 

 mont, to cause acts to be passed in his several governments for 

 the preservation of the white pines In 1708, a la?!^ made in New 

 Hampshire prohibited the cutting of such trees as were twenty-four 

 inches in diameter at twelve inches from the ground without leave 

 of the surveyor, who was instructed by the Queen to mark with 

 the broad arrow those which were or might be fit for the use of 

 the navy, and to keep a register of them. These regulations, 

 however, were easily evaded by those who knew the woods and were 

 concerned in lumbering, though sometimes they were detected and 

 fined." If the wise laws so early established by the first settlers 



