93 



large. Becoming State property, such land would no longer be subject 

 to taxation. In reality this is but little hardship to the counties in 

 which it lies because as a matter of fact it now yields little or no rev- 

 enue from taxes. Under the old law it must have continued to yield 

 less with each successive year, while at the same time it would have be- 

 come constantly poorer, and have led to a serious derangement of the 

 water flow and water utilization, which would have wrought vast in- 

 jury to the farm lands below, by freshets on the one hand, and a defi- 

 cient water supply in dry seasons on the other. 



Averting these disasters will be a public benefit which will not be 

 confined to the counties themselves but will extend to the manufactur- 

 ing and agricultural interests of the regions adjacent along the lower 

 courses of the streams. *The increase of the forest areas, which it is 

 safe to expect under State control, will also tend to lessen the rapidity 

 of evaporation from the cultivated areas, and thus to a certain extent 

 will protect the maturing crops in the season when moisture is most 

 required. With a reasonable prospect of such advantage to the com- 

 munity at large, we may anticipate that any loss to the counties will 

 be more than made good, and that means will be discovered of an 

 equitable relief to. the counties for any hardship which might be 

 brought upon them. 



There are counties in this State which have hitherto placed so high 

 a tax upon some of their most valuable timber lands, and at the same 

 time afforded so little protection to them against fire, that the owners 

 have been driven to cut the timber, and thus to render the lands so 

 valueless that they were surrender*! (by failure to pay taxes) to the 

 counties. Thus, by one act, these counties deprived themselves of 

 both timber and taxes. It is hardly necessary to point out that this 

 led to a direct loss to the county in which it was done. It was a wrong 

 to the land owner and to the community, and especially to those who 

 are to follow. 



Under conditions hitherto existing, forest restoration, on any large 

 scale, was out of the question. The annual fires, with a merciless 

 punctuality, swept over the lands which had been cleared by lumber- 

 ing operations, until both the young growth and, often, the soil itself 

 were destroyed. In many cases extensive bodies of mature, valuable 

 timber were killed. We had tolerated this until we ceased to coii- 

 sider it a crime to burn a forest, and had come to regard it as inevit- 

 able. We had lost sight of the fact that very often such conflagra- 

 tions were deliberately started by vagrant, irresponsible persons, on 

 ground to wlrch they had no claim, for no other reasons than to in- 

 crease the yield of berries in subsequent years. Sometimes it was 

 done from malice, or at other times the fires arose from carelessness on 



*See page 152 of Paper by Mr. Geo. S. Rafter, C. E , published in Vol. XII. Proceedings of the Amer- 

 ican Forestry Association. 



