COMMITTEES ON BEHALF OF THE GOVERNMENT 32I 



The final report of the committee was to a certain extent fore- 

 stalled by the action of Congress which in the Sundry Civil Act 

 for 1898, passed June 4, 1897, made the following provision: 



" The Secretary of the Interior shall make provisions for the protection 

 against destruction by fire and depredations upon the public forests and forest 

 reservations which may have been set aside or which may be hereafter set aside 

 under the said Act of March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, and which 

 may be continued ; and he may make such rules and regulations and establish 

 such service as will insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate 

 their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction, 

 etc." "8 



In the Sundry Civil Act for 1899, $110,000 was appro- 

 priated " to meet the expenses of protecting timber on the public 

 lands," and for other similar purposes, and $75,000 " for the 

 care and administration of the forest reserves, to meet the 

 expenses of forest inspectors and assistants, and for the employ- 

 ment of foresters and other emergency help in the prevention 

 and extinguishment of forest fires, and for advertising dead 

 and matured trees for sale within such reservations." ^" These 

 amounts were to be expended under the Department of the 

 Interior. The control of the public forests thus remained with 

 the Interior Department without the formation of a separate 

 bureau, as recommended by the committee of the Academy. 



In the meantime the Government had in the Division of 

 Forestry in the Department of Agriculture another organiza- 

 tion concerned with questions of forest management and preser- 

 vation. The activities of this division increased rapidly year by 

 year, and finally on February i, 1905, the management of the 

 public forests was transferred to it from the Department of the 

 Interior. A special Act of Congress, approved on that date, 

 provides " that the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture 

 shall, from and after the passage of this Act, execute or cause 

 to be executed all laws affecting public lands heretofore or here- 

 after reserved under the provisions of section twenty-four of the 



'"Stat, at Large, vol. 30, p. 35, 55th Congress, ist Session, chap. 2, 1897. 

 "'Op. cil., p. 618, 55th Congress, 2d Session, chap. 546, 1898. 



