FORESTRY COMMISSIONER 43 



The country that gave the world the sewing machine, 

 the electric telegraph, the ocean cable and the telephone 

 is not going to be very slow in scientific forestry after it 

 gets once started; and I confidently predict that in thirty 

 years from now the United States will be in the front 

 rank of countries, if not indeed the leader, for splendid 

 forestry achievement. 



REPORT BY A COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF 

 SCIENCE ON A PLAN OF FOREST ADMINISTRATION. 



It will be valuable here to place on record the first 

 steps taken by the government of the United States in 

 creating a forestry system. 



The Act of Congress of March 3, 1891, section 24, 

 authorized the President to set apart any part of the 

 public lands, wholly or in part covered with timber or 

 undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not, as 

 public reservations, and by public proclamation declare 

 the establishment and limits thereof. By the year 1896 

 sixteen forest reservations had been established under 

 this law, aggregating an area of 17,500,000 acres, but no 

 plan had been devised for their administration. 



February 15, 1896, the Secretary of the Interior, Hon. 

 Hoke Smith, addressed a communication to Professor 

 Wolcott Gibbs, of Newport, Rhode Island, President of 

 the National Academy of Sciences, requesting that an 

 "investigation and report" be made by the National 

 Academy . "upon the inauguration of a rational forest 

 policy for the forested lands of the United States." 

 Congress, June n, 1896, appropriated 125,000 for such 

 investigation and report, and Professor Gibbs appointed 

 a commission consisting of Professor Charles S. Sargent, 

 director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University; 

 Gen. Henry L. Abbott, United States Engineer Corps; 



