418 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



and replacement of forests and in aiding them to form protective associations. It shall 

 be his duty to examine all timbered lands belonging to the state, and report to the 

 conservation commission upon their timber condition and actual value, and also whether 

 some of those lands may not be held as state forest reserves. He shall be responsible 

 for the protection and management of lands donated to or purchased by the state, and of 

 all other lands reserved by the state as state forests. He shall make statistics of 

 forest conditions, or forest resources of the state, the extent for forest injuries, conduct 

 experiments in tree planting and note the effect of forest grazing and turpentining and 

 along other lines of forest work. He shall prepare an annual report of the progress 

 and conditions of the state work in forestry to the conservation commission and 

 therein recommend plans for improving the state system of forest protection, manage- 

 ment and replacement. Whenever it shall be reported to him that any person or 

 persons engaged in a timber business subject to license tax are operating without 

 license, he shall cause the same to be collected according to law. 



Sec. 4. Be it further enacted, etc.. That the governor of the state is hereby 

 authorized to accept gifts of land to the state to be held, protected and administered 

 by the conservation commission as state forests, and to be used to demonstrate their 

 practical utility for reculture and as breeding places for game. Such gifts must be 

 absolute except for the reservation of all mineral rights, and in no case shall exceed 

 (10) ten per cent, of the area of any parish wherein such lands may be situated. The 

 attorney general is directed to see that all deeds to the state are properly executed 

 and that the titles thereto are free and clear of all encumbrances before the gift is 

 accepted. When any donation exceeding six hundred acres is made, the name of the 

 donor, or any name he may suggest, on the approval of the conservation commission, 

 shall be given such donation, as the designation of such reserve. 



Sec. 5. Be it further enacted, etc., That any person that wilfully and negligently 

 sets on fire or causes to be set on fire any wood, brush or grass land not his own, or sets 

 on fire or causes to be set on fire any land belonging to himself and allows such fire 

 to escape to any wood, brush or grass land not his own; and any person that wilfully 

 suffers any fire set by himself to damage any property of another, is guilty of a mis- 

 demeanor, and, upon conviction, shall be punished by a fine of not less than $20.00 nor 

 more than $300.00, or by imprisonment of not less than ten days nor more than six 

 months, or both such fine and imprisonment. Every person that wilfully or maliciously 

 sets on fire any such wood, brush or grass lands or causes to be set on fire any such 

 wood, brush or grass lands, wherebj^ the property of another is injured or destroyed, 

 shall, upon conviction, be punished by a fine of not less than $25.00 nor more than 

 $1,000.00 or by imprisonment for a term of not less than three months nor more than 

 five years, or by both such fine and imprisonment. Any person who shall cause a 

 fire in any wood, brush or grass lands by carelessly, negligently or deliberately dropping 

 a burning match or emptying fire from a pipe, or dropping a lighted cigar or cigarette, 

 or discharging a combustible wad from firearms, or failing to extinguish a camp fire 

 upon leaving it, shall be deemed guilty of setting the forest on fire. 



Sec. 6. Be it further enacted, etc., That nothing in this act shall be construed as 

 affecting the right of action for damages. The liability of persons or corporations 

 for all damages shall include the injury to young growth resulting from fires. The 

 damage to young growth shall be calculated as the expense of artificially planting and 

 cultivating such small growth to the point of development at the time when the fire 

 occurred. 



Sec. 7. Be it further enacted, etc.. That it shall be the duty of all railroad com- 

 panies operating any railroad through forest lands within this state to keep their 

 right of way cleared of all combustible materials and safely dispose of the same within 

 said limits of said right of way between the fifteenth day of November and fifteenth day 

 of A])ril. No railroad company shall permit its employees to leave a deposit of fire or 

 live coals on its right of way other than between the rails, in the immediate vicinity of 

 woodland or lands liable to overrun by fires, and when engineers, conductors or trainmen 

 discover that fences or other materials along the right of way, or woodland adjacent 

 to the railroad, are burning or in danger from fire they shall report the same promptly 

 at the next telegraph station that they pass. In seasons of drought the railroad 

 companies shall give particular instructions to their section foremen for the prevention 

 and prompt extinguishment of fires originating on its right of way, and they shall 

 cause warning placards furnished by the forest commissioner to be posted at their 

 stations in the vicinity of the forest lands. Any railroad company wilfully violating 

 the requirement of this act shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and be punished by 

 a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars for each offense, and railroad employees wilfully 

 violating the requirements of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall 

 be punished by a fine of not less than five dollars nor more than fifty dollars. But this 

 section shall not be construed to prohibit or prevent any railroad company from 



