THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 157 



The assessors, with the aid of the county commission- 

 ers, put the valuation of these lands at $75 per acre on 

 all of this tract of forest, or timber land, with an ad- 

 ditional $4 per acre as mineral land, making the total 

 valuation on these lands $79 per acre, which is the 

 amount the assessment books in the commissioner's 

 office shows. There is about 1,200 acres of this tract 

 which the timber was cut off of something like twenty 

 years ago, so that would leave nearly 23,000 acres of 

 this tract of timberland in the two townships above 

 mentioned. The taxes levied on the assessed valua- 

 tion in the county is about 33 mills on the dollar. 

 Twenty-three thousand acres valued at $79 per acre, 

 would put the valuation of this tract of land at $1,817,- 

 000 ; but with a 33 mill levy it would make the annual 

 tax on this property $59,961. In ten years' time the 

 taxes on this same property would amount to $599, 

 610. Now, with the risk of cyclones and wind storms 

 which blow down quite a lot of trees annually, and the 

 risk they run against forest fires, what chance have 

 the owners of forest lands but only to cut off the trees 

 as quickly as possible? For no man living can pay 

 such outrageous taxes and live on. It would only 

 take a few years to put him to the wall. This looks 

 to me like a legal robbery. 



One of the assessors who raised this valuation to 

 $75 per acre owns a farm that is nearly surrounded by 

 the lands in question, there being only about eleven; 

 rods of his boundry line at the northeast corner which 

 do not join these wild lands. He has two houses, two 



