8 THE AMES FORESTER 



When the land has been listed but not filed upon there is 

 some chance for real public service by bringing the land and 

 real home-builders together. The records in each Supervisor's 

 office are open to the public, and these records show what land 

 has not been listed. Similarly, the records in the local land 

 office are available and show, what land has not been filed 

 upon. Inquiries addressed to Washington can not bring re- 

 sults for the reasons that filings may be made in the local 

 land office at any time, and advice concerning available lands, 

 which may be accurate today ntay be in error tomorrow. It 

 is, therefore, almost a foregone conclusion that any land which 

 is open to settlement will be secured by local people, if at 

 all desirable. 



Following the classification work thus done by the piecemeal 

 examination of area applied for under the Forest Homestead 

 Act, the Forest Service, in 1909, undertook a wholesale over- 

 hauling of the National Forest boundaries for the purpose of 

 determining what areas had in the great haste of boundary ex- 

 amination been improperly included within the forest, and 

 should therefore be eliminated, and also what areas were 

 omitted which should properly be added. The work begun in 

 the spring of 1909 is not yet completed, and probably will not 

 be for several years to come. This is due, first, to the magni- 

 tude of the area requiring examination ; second, to the manifold 

 difficulties of the task; third, to the great care necessary to 

 give all interests due consideration for the purpose of in- 

 variably taking uniform action under uniform conditions. 



As a result of this boundary campaign the gross area of the 

 National Forests, inclusive of Alaska, and not including the 

 purchase areas in the Appalachians, was reduced by January 

 1, 1916, to a gross total of 156,446,486 acres, a total net reduc- 

 tion of 11,264,470 acres from the high tide total of April 30, 

 1910. This gross total, however, includes over twenty-one mil- 

 lion acres of alienated land, the actual net area of National 

 Forests of the United States, exclusive of Alaska and the Ap- 

 palachian purchases of the East, being reduced at this time 

 to 135,389,328 acres. As a matter of fact, the total area elim- 

 inated has been much greater than this figure, which represents 

 the total decrease over and above two additions made by a 



