490 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 117. 



tive relief. Bill after bill has been intro- 

 duced for the protection of the public tim- 

 ber, but most of these never found consid- 

 eration even in the committees, much less 

 on the floor of the two Houses of Congress. 



HISTOEY OF FOREST RESERVATIONS. 



In 1887 the then Secretary of the Ameri. 

 can Forestry Association formulated and 

 had introduced into the 50th Congress an 

 elaborate bill (afterwards in modified form 

 known as the 'Paddock Bill,' 52d Cong.) 

 Senate 3,235) providing for the withdrawal 

 of all timber lands on the public domain 

 from entry or other disposal, setting the 

 same aside as public forest reservations, 

 and instituting a fully organized service in 

 the Department of the Interior to take care 

 of such forest reserves, protecting them 

 against fire and theft, regulating their oc- 

 cupancy by prospectors, miners and herders, 

 and permitting the cutting and sale of the 

 timber under a system of licenses and under 

 application of rational forestry methods. 



Of this radical yet reasonable legislation 

 all that could be obtained was the enact- 

 ment of a brief clause, inserted at the last 

 hour of the 51st Congress into ' An Act to 

 repeal Timber-culture laws and for other 

 purposes.' The credit for securing this 

 recognition belongs to the then Secretary of 

 the Interior, Hon. John W. Noble. This 

 clause, approved March, 1891 (Public — No. 

 162, Sec. 24), by which the important policy 

 of forest reservations was established, reads 

 as follows : 



That the President of the United States may from 

 time to time set apart and reserve in any State or 

 Territory having public land bearing forests, in 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 the President 

 shall, by public proclamation, declare the establish- 

 ment of such reservations and the limits thereof. 



Under this law seventeen forest reserva- 

 tions were made, sixteen by President 

 Harrison, largely at the end of his admin- 



istration, and one by President Cleveland, 

 on September 28, 1893. The estimated 

 area of these is 17,500,000 acres. In some 

 cases these were asked by petition and 

 were investigated by the General Land 

 Office; in others they were announced 

 without previous public notice. In the 

 absence of specific legislation the Secre- 

 taries of the Interior construed the reser- 

 vation of these lands as a withdrawal not 

 only from sale and entry, but from all use 

 whatsoever, the Department being power- 

 less to protect or utilize the same. This 

 was never the intention of the projectors of the 

 forest reservations. 



As a result, strong opposition has grown 

 up in the States where these large areas 

 had been withdrawn from use. Although 

 petitions for a number of other reserva- 

 tions had been prepared, the advocates of 

 the reservation policy have not considered 

 it wise to extend the reservations until the 

 needed legislation could be had providing 

 for their rational use and administration. 



When it became apparent that the 

 original bill (the Paddock bill), although 

 most desirable was too elaborate to be con- 

 sidered by Congress, a short bill, leaving 

 the detail of framing rules of occupancy 

 and use to the Secretary of the Interior, 

 was prepared. This has become known as 

 the McRae Bill (53d and 54th Congress, 

 H. E. 119), Hon. Thos. C. McRae, Chair- 

 man of the Committee on Public Lands of 

 the 53d Congress, having with great in- 

 terest forwarded the same. This bill, with 

 amendments, was passed by the House of 

 Representatives in December, 1895, and 

 almost the same bill, with further amend- 

 ments was passed by the Senate, but failed 

 to become law. During the second session 

 of the 54th Congress the McRae Bill (H. R. 

 119), again modified, was again passed by 

 the House, but remained unreported from 

 the Committee on Forest Reservation in 

 the Senate, while a bill, essentially the 



