63 



your permission, I would suggest that not only would the work of 

 this division be advanced, but that of the whole Department (and 

 possibly of other departments) if there were had some legal relief in 

 this respect. 



By Act of Legislature (June 18, 1883, P. L. 112), the county commis- 

 sioners, through the assessors, were required to furnish annually 

 upon the first day of June, "a full statement of all property taxable 

 for county purposes, showing the real and personal in separate 

 columns" "the same to be enclosed by mail to the Secretary of 

 Internal Affairs." 



The returns are made upon blanks furnished by the Department of 

 Internal Affairs, which (blanks) contain separate columns for cleared 

 land and timber land. In the report of the Secretary of Internal 

 Affairs, Part II, for 1895, pages 216a and 217a, is a very clear show 

 ing of the insufficiency of this classification of the area of the State 

 for the purposes of that Department. With the best intention and 

 even after laborious effort to report the exact ratio of cleared and 

 timbered land, there might still be wide discrepancies in the state- 

 ments of two observers, if placed in the same district. For example, 

 take the latest statistics from the county of Wayne, and we find 

 that the proportion of timber land to that of the whole county is 

 placed at 9.2 per cent. Whereas, in the adjacent county of Lacka- 

 wanna, the proportion of timber land to the entire area of the county 

 is placed at 16 per cent. It must be clear to any observer passing 

 through these counties that Wayne, as a matter of fact, has a larger 

 proportion of its area in real lumber than Lackawanna. The dis- 

 crepancy here arises from the fact that some of the assessors in 

 Wayne county failed, probably, to consider hard wood, such as 

 beech, birch and maple, as timber, because it had so little value 

 in the market, or was so little used for purposes of construction. 

 The "acid factories" have been unusually active in that region be- 

 cause of the abundance of these woods. 



The real fact is that a very large proportion, even of our couniry 

 citizens, fail to discriminate sufficiently between the different kinds 

 of trees. Of course this lack of exact knowledge is, as a rule, even 

 more marked among those who have spent their entire lives in the 

 lowns. This condition of affairs is humiliating, but it has to be 

 reckoned with in all of our reports. Much as this division desires 

 exact specific knowledge, it is thought better to suggest a classifi- 

 cation of the wild or wooded lands not under cultivation, which will 

 now lead to the least error and encourage the hope that in the near 

 future we may be able to insist upon a more exact classification. 



I would suggest, first, that for the purposes of the Department of 

 Agriculture, land which is now in sod, or in crops, or which has been 

 cultivated within three years, or which is about to be cultivated for 

 the first time, be regarded as cleared land. 



