FORESTRY. 13 



far this right has never been exercised, because it has not been 

 necessary. 



There is one feature of our reservation system which is 

 worthy of note. It is the interest the public have in it for 

 other than mere practical reasons. 



Hitherto no State appears to have recognized the right of 

 its citizens to a holding which was the common property of 

 all, except in or near large cities. This idea has with us 

 gradually assumed an importance in the forestry movement. 

 Nothing has done more to make land purchases popular in 

 Pennsylvania than the fact that our notices posted on State 

 lands plainly indicate that lawful hunting and fishing are al- 

 lowed. 



This means more than appears on the surface, for no one 

 can lawfully, in our woods, kill a song or insectivorous bird, 

 and within less than a year means will be provided to' punish 

 those who do. This idea of public ownership has brought to 

 the side of forestry 40,000 members of the State Sportsmen's 

 Association. For that body is not organized simply to en- 

 sure a full game bag; but to perpetuate the game of the State 

 by limiting the period during which those species, which are 

 properly game, may be killed, and to protect all the other use- 

 ful denizens of the woods during twelve months of the year. 

 Game never, during the past twenty years, has been so plenty 

 in my State as now. Hundreds of our citizens now take their 

 annual vacation during November, and go to the woods for 

 it. I saw recently ten deer and a bear hung up in a space of 

 less than two miles in our Clinton County woods. Thus, by 

 our reservation we are providing protection and shelter for the 

 birds which are the natural enemies of the insects which prey 

 upon our crops, and we are providing an outing ground and a 

 sanitarium for our citizens. The governor of Pennsylvania 

 recently stated in conversation with State officials that it was 

 his desire to have something of a forestry reservation in each 

 county in the State. I do not know how this may strike you 

 as an element of the forestry problem, but I assure you it has 

 become with us so much of a popularizer of the movement that 

 I frequently hear the remark made by our citizens, this or that 

 piece of woodland ought to belong to the State. 



Apart from all the minor considerations to which I have 

 alluded and to which I have alluded because they are so 



