42 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



the protection of one of our great natural resources. It 

 is well also to remember in this connection, as Emerson 

 Hough says, "We do not really own that wealth even as 

 a nation. It is raised in these days almost wholly out- 

 side our national confines." Canada raises most of our 

 wild fowl and we have done the shooting. Major Lacey 

 secured the passage of a bill forbidding the importation 

 of the eggs of wild fowls for commercial purposes from 

 Canada. Under the Lacey act the Audubon societies and 

 sportsmen secured the designation of many low marshes 

 and islands as game preserves. Major Lacey drafted a 

 public land bill which was but slightly changed for the 

 Philippines, under which the forests, lands, and mines are 

 governed, and for the adjustment of all controversies as 

 to church lands. 



In an address before the Iowa Federation of Women's 

 Clubs, at Waterloo, Iowa, in 1905, he said: "We have a 

 wireless telegraph, a crownless queen, a thornless cactus, 

 a seedless orange, and a coreless apple. Let us now have 

 a birdless hat." 



The subject of national forest reserves early received 

 Major Lacey 's attention. During the session of the 51st 

 Congress, the forest reserve act was passed, and a na- 

 tional system of forest reserves was established, regu- 

 lated and under the control of the Department of the 

 Interior. Under this statute reserves have been estab- 

 listed by executive order, chiefly in the western states. 

 Later he was instrumental in the transfer of these re- 

 serves to the Department of Agriculture, largely because 

 he thought expert knowledge was essential for the proper 

 control of the forest reserves. The preservation of the 

 national domain, now amounting to more than 100,000,000 

 acres, an area as large as Iowa and Missouri combined, 

 was not only for sentimental purposes, but the utility of 



