22 GAME REFUGES. 



this time only 3 of the States had done so out of 16." I said: 

 "What is the longest period that has elapsed before that cession has 

 been made?" He said, "As nearly as I can recall, six years, in one 

 case. Only 3 out of 16 have actually performed that act." 



Mr. Mondell. Where we have any legislation asserting control 

 over the game, the cession has been made. 



Mr. Williams. My understanding, with all deference to Mr. 

 Mondell, is as Dr. Hornaday has stated ; but that is wholly immate- 

 rial. There is another very serious constitutional question which is 

 raised by that, namely, whether a State can cede to the Federal 

 Government its police power. The only exclusive jurisdiction that 

 the United States has or can acquire over any land inside of a State 

 that I know of is the constitutional power of exclusive jurisdiction 

 over such land as is purchased with the consent of the State for its 

 magazines, forts, arsenals, dock yards, and other needful buildings. 

 There is therefore the constitutional question involved as to 

 whether the State can confer upon Congress the right to protect 

 game. The Supreme Court of the State of Washington has very 

 recently held that it could not do so. (State v. Towessnute, 154 

 Pac, 805.) But that is beside the mark. 



No States have ceded any jurisdiction to Congress to set aside the 

 national forests or to regulate grazing and various things on the 

 national forests, and it never has been claimed, with any confidence, 

 that such a cession was necessary. 



I will refer here to a decision by Federal Judge Dietrich, of the dis- 

 trict of Idaho (United States v. Regginelli, 182 Fed., 675), in which 

 he held in an exhaustive opinion and one full of good learning that 

 a regulation of the Secretary of Agriculture prohibiting the locator 

 of a mining claim from selling liquor or conducting a saloon on the 

 mining claim within the boundaries of the national forest was within 

 the power of the Secretary of Agriculture to make, and that the 

 locator of the mine had no right to sell liquor thereon, although it 

 might be perfectly legal elsewhere in the State to sell the liquor. 



Mr. Jacoway. Is not that under the theory that the fee to the 

 mine always rests in the Federal Government ? 



Mr. Williams. Yes, sir; I am merely talking now about Congress 

 regulating various things upon lands that belong to the United 

 States. That is true. In that case he decided that the lands be- 

 longed to the Government, because the ultimate fee, the reversion- 

 ary interest in this claim, was still in the United States, and as long 

 as it was the locator of the mine could do nothing upon that land 

 if the Government said he could not, except to develop it as a mine, 

 thereby holding that the Congress could regulate the occupancy and 

 use of even a subsisting mining claim in a national forest and pro- 

 hibit the sale of liquor thereon if it saw fit, even though the sale of 

 liquor elsewhere in the State was perfectly legal. 



The organic act for the creation of the national forests has been 

 held by the Supreme Court to be constitutional in the case of Fred 

 Light v. The United States (220 U. S., 523), where the Supreme 

 Court, in sustaining the power of the Secretary of Agriculture to 

 make regulations forbidding a person to permit his cattle to drift 

 over upon the forest, said — I will merely give the substance of the 

 decision on this question: 



