1900. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



171 



investigation point to as desirable. The 

 importance of this work, which will be 

 under the charge of Mr. Elwood Mead, 

 and the value of the service which the 

 Water and Forest Association is rendering 

 the State, may be gathered from part of 

 an editorial which appeared in the San 

 Francisco Chronicle: "Our courts are 

 constantly burdened with water-right liti- 

 gation, so much so that many believe that 

 the expense of litigation is greater than 

 that of physical development. Irrigation 

 enterprises cannot go on under such cir- 

 cumstances. For all these legal troubles 

 there must .be some fundamental cause in 

 the nature of our legislation, but as to 

 what that cause is, or how, if in any wav, 

 it can be removed there is no general 

 knowledge whatever and no agreement 

 among experts." 



Division of the "Somewhat the same 

 Forest Work. ,1 , , ., 



problem which presents it- 



self in the army staff system, where it takes 

 three bureaus to feed one soldier, con- 

 fronts the forestry service of the United 

 States Government. The law covering 

 this subject is now a most ragged piece of 

 patchwork. The administration of the 

 Federal forest reserves is committed to the 

 General Land Office, which does its task 

 badly or not at all ; the mapping and de- 

 scription of the reserves are the care of the 

 Geological Survey, whose share is very 

 creditably done ; while the Forestry Di- 

 vision of the Department of Agriculture, 

 to which the whole business normally be- 

 longs, is clothed only with a general au- 

 thority over the forestry interests of the 

 country and for the establishment of rela- 

 tions between the Government and the 

 private forest-owners. 



The absurdity of thus splitting up a 

 work which ought to be under a single 

 management is obvious when we see what 

 some of the subjects are that occupy the 

 attention of the Forestry Division. Chief 

 among these, perhaps, is the study of forest 

 fires. The division has been for years en- 

 gaged in investigating the causes of such 

 fires, the damage they have done, and the 

 most effective means of preventing them. 



Here, surely, are matters of quite as much 

 consequence to the Government as to any 

 individual land-holder, and involving de- 

 tails of administration on the intelligent 

 performance of which depends the safety 

 not only of a great deal of public property, 

 but of adjacent private property. The 

 recorded losses from fire foot up some 

 $20,000,000 in a year, and to these must 

 be added, for a grand total, a multitude of 

 which the story is never written. Nor is 

 the question of the introduction of the 

 flame to the fuel the only one involved in 

 the investigation of such fires; quite as 

 much importance attaches to the condition 

 in which the flames find a forest after they 

 have got under way. The ill-kept timber 

 tract, with its dry refuse scattered every- 

 where, is in constant jeopardy ; whereas, 

 in the case of a tract scientifically thinned 

 and methodically cleansed of combustible 

 ' slash, 'the danger from fire, though never 

 absent, is reduced to a minimum. 



Or, take the matter of the grazing of 

 sheep in the forests on the public domain. 

 This presents a very serious problem, with 

 which the General Land Office has ap- 

 parently admitted its incompetence to 

 grapple. Upon its solution, if some of the 

 published statements are to be believed, 

 may turn in a large measiu - e the question 

 whether we are to continue to have any 

 public forests or not. What possible ad- 

 vantage is to be gained by intrusting the 

 inquiry to one department of the Govern- 

 ment, and the execution of the judgment 

 when rendered to another? Why could 

 not the whole work of investigation, de- 

 cision, and administration be united in the 

 same hands, with a large saving of both 

 energy and expense ? 



It may, perhaps, be asked why the For- 

 estry Division, and not the General Land 

 Office, should be chosen as the custodian 

 of all the forestry interests of the Laiited 

 States. At first glance it seems as though 

 the public forest domain, being only part 

 of the public land domain, could just as 

 well receive joint treatment with the rest. 

 This logic, however, leaves out of account 

 the fact that, with the advance of economic 

 knowledge, timber has come to be reck- 

 oned as a renewable crop, quite as much 



