I 



THE PERIOD OF BEGINNINGS 25 



alue on some of the tracts. The result was that in 1843 Congress 

 opened some of the lands to settlement, and in 1853 the cedar lands 

 which had been reserved in Clarke County, Alabama, were opened to 

 sale." 



The development of iron ships subsequent to the Civil War rendered 

 wood almost obsolete for shipbuilding, and in 1879 Congress author- 

 ized the restoration of all reserves in Florida which were no longer 

 needed for naval purposes. A similar act affecting all tracts in Ala- 

 bama and Mississippi was passed in 1895. Certain small tracts in 

 Louisiana are still held by the national government in the status of 

 naval reserves.^* 



While these were thus naval reservations, related to the king's forest 

 policy of colonial times rather than to the forest reserve policy of 

 later years, yet they are of sufficient importance to merit brief treat- 

 ment for several reasons. In the first place, they showed a disposition 

 to conserve a natural resource of which future scarcity was appre- 

 hended. If naval construction had not, in the sixties, turned to iron 

 ships, these early reservations might now be recognized as marking 

 out a policy of the greatest importance. In the second place, it was 

 in connection with these reserves that the first laws were passed for 

 the protection of timber on the public domain, the law of 1831 being 

 the ruling statute on the subject of timber depredations down to the 

 present time. Furthermore, the first appropriations for protecting 

 timber lands were closely connected with these naval reserves, for in 

 1872 the first appropriation, of $5000, for the protection of timber 

 lands, was made in the naval appropriation act.^^ 



GENERAL INDIFFERENCE IN THE EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD 



These early forest reserves are thus seen to have been of little impor- 

 tance and of little significance as to the attitude of the country toward 



^^Stat. 5, 611; 10, 259. Mr. Hough, in his report, states that a total of 244,452 

 acres of timber land was reserved under these acts, but Mr. Kinney puts the figure 

 at approximately 25,000 acres. The writer is unable to account for so great a dis- 

 crepancy, and is unable, from any sources at his disposal, to ascertain whether Mr. 

 Hough was correct in his figures or not. (Hough, "Report on Forestry," I, 11: 

 Kinney, "Forest Law in America," 240.) 



i*Stat. 20, 470; 28, 814. See also S. 196; 50 Cong. 1 sess. 



15 Stat, n, 151. 



