494 United States. 



permission has also been granted by the legislature to 

 remove trees from burnt areas in order to reduce the 

 fire danger the foolish objection of a Constitution 

 notwithstanding. 



In 1897, new legislation was passed to authorize the 

 State to purchase additional forest lands within a pre- 

 scribed limit, to round off the State's holdings, a 

 special agency, the Forest Preserve Board, being 

 constituted for that purpose. Under this law, some 

 $3,500,000 have been spent, and by 1907, over one 

 and a half million acres had been added to the State 

 Forest Preserve. This large area is withdrawn from 

 rational economic use, reserved for a pleasure ground 

 of wealthy New Yorkers, who have located their 

 camps in the "wilderness" under the avowed assump- 

 tion that the State can be forced to maintain forever 

 this anomalous condition. 



In later years, private planting has been encouraged 

 by the Commission selling plant material from the 

 State nurseries at low rates. 



The most important administrative function of the 

 Commission has been the reduction of forest fires, in 

 which, also owing to political conditions, only partial 

 success has been attained. The legislation of 1885 for 

 the first time attacked this problem in a more thor- 

 ough manner, providing for the organization of a 

 service, and this served as an example to other States 

 who copied and improved on it. Notably the forest 

 fire legislation of Maine (1891), of Wisconsin (1895), 

 and of Minnesota (1895) was based on this model. 



Another of the large States to start upon and, dif- 

 ferently from New York, to develop consistently a 



