400 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



"Of this act [the Mineral Land act] the Commissioner of the General Land 

 Office, in a letter addressed to the Secretary of the Interior [May 27, 1878], ex- 

 presses the following opinion : 



'It is a fact well known that while almost all the timber-bearing land in 

 those States [Colorado and Nevada] and all the Territories, except Dakota 

 and Washington, is regarded as mineral, only a small portion is so in reality. 

 The effect of this bill will, in my opinion, be to prevent the survey and sale 

 of any of the timber lands, or the timber upon the lands, in the States and 

 Territories named, thus cutting off large prospective revenues that might 

 and should be derived from the sale of such lands or the timber upon them. 

 It is equivalent to a donation of all the timber lands to the inhabitants of 

 those States and Territories, which will be found to be the largest donation 

 of the public domain hitherto made by Congress. This bill authorizes the 

 registers and receivers of the land offices in the several districts in which 

 the lands are situated to make investigations without any specific directions 

 from the Secretary of the Interior or the Commissioner of the General Land 

 Office, to settle and adjust their own accounts, and retain from the moneys 

 coming into their hands arising from sales of lands such amounts as they 

 may expend or cause to be expended. This method will be found exceed- 

 ingly expensive and result in no good. Experience has shown that the ma- 

 chinery of the land offices is wholly inadequate to prevent depredations.' 



"The 'Rules and Regulations' issued in pursuance of the first section of this 

 act are to be found in the report of the Commissioner of the General Land 

 Office, herewith presented. These rules, drawn up 'with a view to and the in- 

 tention of preserving the young timber and undergrowth upon the mineral 

 lands of the United States, and to the end that the mountain sides may not be 

 left denuded and barren of the timber and undergrowth necessary to prevent 

 the precipitation of the rain-fall and melting snows in floods upon the fertile 

 arable lands in the valleys below, thus destroying the agricultural and pasturage 

 interests of the mineral and mountainous portions of the country,' make it the 

 duty of registers and receivers to see to it that trespassers upon timber lands, 

 not mineral, be duly reported, that upon mineral lands only timber of a cer- 

 tain size be cut, and that young trees and undergrowth be protected, and that 

 timber be cut only for the purposes mentioned in the act. These 'Rules and 

 Regulations' will be enforced with all the power left to this department to that 

 end, in order to save what may be saved. But I deem it my duty to call atten- 

 tion to the fact that, as set forth by the Commissioner in the letter above 

 quoted, the machinery of the land offices is utterly inadequate to accomplish the 

 object in view. 



"After a careful consideration of the above-named act and its probable ef- 

 fects, I venture the prediction that the permission given the inhabitants of the 

 States and Territories named therein, to take timber from the public lands in 

 any quantity and wherever they can find it, for all purposes except export and 

 sale to railroads, will be taken advantage of, not only by settlers and miners 

 to provide economically for their actual current wants, but by persons who will 

 see in this donation a chance to make money quickly; that it will stimulate a 

 wasteful consumption beyond actual need and lead to wanton destruction ; that 

 the machinery left to this department to prevent or repress such waste and de- 

 struction through the enforcement of the rules above mentioned will prove en- 



