The Boone and Crockett Club 



gressmen, in the forests, and gradually all these 

 persons began to work together. At the close of 

 the first Cleveland Administration, while no 

 legislation had been secured looking toward forest 

 protection, a number of men in Washington had 

 come to feel an interest in the subject. Some of 

 the bills introduced in Congress passed one House 

 and some the other, and finally one, the McCrea 

 bill, so-called, passed both Houses, but did not 

 reach the Conference Committee. Finally on 

 March 3, 1891, was passed the bill on which our 

 national forest system is based, entitled u An Act 

 to Repeal Timber Culture Laws and for other 

 Purposes." The meat of the bill, so far as forestry 

 matters are concerned, is found in its Section 24, 

 which seems to have originally been introduced in 

 the Senate by the late Cushman K. Davis, of Min- 

 nesota, as a bill of a single section. It reads: 

 "That the President of the United States may, 

 from time to time, set apart and reserve in any 

 State or Territory having public lands bearing 

 forests, any part of the public lands, wholly or in 

 part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether 

 of commercial value or not, as public reservations, 

 and the President shall, by public proclamation, 

 declare the establishment of such reservations and 

 the limits thereof." 



456 



