A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 753 



The opiate administered to the State forestry organization in 1893 

 remained potent for 12 years. Its Rip Van Winkle slumber ended 

 with the act of March 18, 1905, creating anew a State board of 

 forestry, and under it the office of State forester. The first report of 

 the State forester contains this paragraph : 



From 1893 to 1903 forestry in California was at a standstill, yet this period 

 was one of marked need and of rapid development along other lines. It was the 

 decade during which the lumbermen from the Lake States and southern pineries 

 flocked to California to invest in timberlands, and during which time California 

 disposed of the bulk of her sole forest possessions by the sale of school lands at 

 the ridiculously low price of $1.25 per acre. Similarly it was the period during 

 which land fraud flourished, whereby much of the public timberland in California 

 was lost to the National G overnment and the State. 



The date of 1903 in the preceding paragraph calls for explanation. 

 The national forestry movement had not been dormant during the 

 previous decade. The feeble and ill-supported, though valiantly 

 struggling, little bureau of information officially known as the 

 Division of Forestry of the United States Department of Agriculture 

 had been transformed into the strong, rapidly growing, nationally 

 observed Bureau of Forestry, in the same Department. In 1903 the 

 California Legislature made provision for the undertaking of a 

 thorough investigation of the forest resources of the State by the 

 Federal Bureau of Forestry, under a cooperative agreement by the 

 terms of which the cost of the survey was borne equally by the 

 Federal Government and the States. As a result of this investiga- 

 tion, measures were formulated and recommended to the State 

 legislature in the form of a bill which led to the act of March 18, 1905. 



For Ohio, the story of its short-lived first forestry bureau can be 

 much more briefly told. It was a case of good seed dropped on too 

 shallow soil. In the early eighties there w r ere evidences of marked 

 forestry interest in the State, with enthusiastic leadership. The 

 legislature created in 1885 the Ohio State Forestry Bureau, as a 

 central office for the promotion of forestry, with headquarters at 

 the State university, and with a frugal appropriation of $1,000. It 

 was charged with the duties of inquiring into the extent and character 

 of the forest resources of Ohio and investigating the causes that are 

 operating to destroy the forest; of suggesting legislation; and, per- 

 missively, of establishing a forest station on the university grounds, 

 with the consent of the university trustees. Six successive annual 

 reports testify to the activity and diligence with which the secre- 

 tary said to have studied forestry in Europe endeavored to gather 

 and diffuse information. Presumably waning interest due to the 

 dropping off of the leaders in the State forestry movement was the 

 cause of the extinction of the bureau in 1890. 



And, finally, New York. 



The State forest policy of New York has been throughout sui 

 generis. In less degree than in any other State has it been subject 

 to external influences. Throughout it has been a policy developed by 

 the State to meet its own conditions and in response to its own felt 

 needs. And to a greater degree than in any other State it has 

 centered in and been mainly preoccupied with State forest-land 

 administration. 



As early as 1868 public advocacy of a policy of reservation for lands 

 of the State in the Adirondacks began. Sale of these wilderness 

 lands had been going on from the latter part of the eighteenth century, 



