F. E. Olmsted, District Inspector for California, United States 

 Department of Agriculture, representing Chief Forester Gifford 

 Pinchot, read a paper entitled, "The Use of the California 

 National Forests." He pointed out the importance, especially to 

 •California, of the laws creating the reserves, and showed that the 

 system encouraged homeseekers to locate on the reserves, made 

 timber for the miners available (a most important service), regu- 

 lated the water supply from the streams, increased the pasturage 

 for stock, and controlled forest fires. He then sketched the modus 

 operandi of the service. 



L. E. Blochman, secretary of the Santa Maria Chamber of 

 Commerce, asked permission to say a few words, and told the 

 delegates of the benefits to his section of the State that had 

 resulted from the enforcement of the forest laws, particularly in 

 the prevention or control of forest fires. 



Francis Cuttle, chairman of the Tri-Counties Reforestration 

 Committee, representing the counties of Riverside, San Bernar- 

 dino and Orange, also president of the Riverside Chamber of 

 Commerce, read a paper on "Forestry and Irrigation South of the 

 Tehachapi." He said, in part: 



"Water from the San Bernardino watershed irrigates a hun- 

 dred thousand acres of land in San Bernardino, Riverside and 

 Orange Counties. This land produces from fifteen to twenty mil- 

 lions' worth of products annually. Scientific forestry, now 

 being worked out in the San Bernardino Forest Reserve, will 

 double the summer flow of water and make it possible to increase 

 the irrigated area in proportion." 



Robert Newton Lynch, secretary of the Petaluma Chamber 

 of Commerce, took the floor to make some announcements about 

 ^ the program of entertainment for the following day, urging that 

 all promptness be observed in following out the schedule. 



Lewis E. Aubury, State Mineralogist, was to have read a 

 paper on the "Preservation of the Forests," but was unable to 

 attend the meeting. A statement by him to the convention was 

 read by the secretary. Reference was made to the Public Lands 

 Convention to be held in Denver in the middle of the month. 

 He stated that the call for the convention seemed to intimate that 

 it was intended to recommend the conveyance to the States of 

 the reserved areas within their respective borders and the throw- 

 ing open to entry of the land. 



The Committee on Resolutions announced that it was ready 

 to make its report, and Chairman Edwin Stearns, secretary of 



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