10 DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS. 



California of the Yosemite Valley grant and the Mariposa Big Tree 

 Grove accepted, and these lands included in the Yosemite National 

 Park ; certain lands excluded from the park and added to the Sierra 

 Forest Reserve (34 Stat. L., 831). Protecting copyrighted matter 

 in Bulletin No. 71, " Rules and specifications for the grading of lum- 

 ber adopted by the various lumber manufacturing associations of the 

 United States " (34 Stat. L., 836). 



After the transfer of forest reserves to the Department of Agricul- 

 ture there were increased efforts to secure rights on the reserves, both 

 by perfecting title to the land and by obtaining special privileges and 

 rights of waj\ Supervision of matters of this kind has been in the 

 hands of a section called " Claims and Privileges," which, before the 

 middle of the fiscal year, was, for administrative reasons, divided into 

 two sections under the Section of Law in the Office of the Forester. 

 On July 1, 1906, the sections of Law, Claims, and Privileges were 

 combined to make the Office of Law. 



CLAIMS. 



From February 1, 1906, to the end of the fiscal year 486 claims 

 reports were obtained from the field and transmitted to the General 

 Land Office with recomniendations. 



Steps were successfully taken to secure an investigation of alleged 

 fraudulent mining claims in the difi^erent forest reserves, in one of 

 which an association of eight persons has located 265,000 am'es under 

 the placer mining laws. Until the validity of these locations has been 

 determined the Forester can neither sell nor grant the free use of tim- 

 ber from them, while the locators are restrained by law from cutting 

 timber except to develop the particular claim where it grows. Under 

 these conditions the business of this locality must stagnate, for few 

 of these claims can be worked for mineral. The Secretary of the Inte- 

 rior has detailed three geologists, an attorney, and a special agent to 

 examine the validity of these locations, in cooperation with an attor- 

 ney from the Section of Law. 



The Section of Claims handles in the office all applications under 

 the agricultural settlement act of June 11, 1906. Applications under 

 this law to July 1 indicate that their number will finally reach well 

 into the thousands. Steps were taken to examine the land as 

 promptly as possible. 



The Section of Claims furnished information to all branches of the 

 Forest Service concerning title to lands in established or proposed 

 forest reserves. 



PRIVILEGES. 



The Section of Privileges has received an ever increasing number 

 of privilege applications. After this section was joined to the Section 

 of Law a carefullj^ considered effort was made to restore, as far as 

 necessary, the policies under which privileges should be granted, 



The underlying principles to be followed, set forth in the first edi- 

 tion of the Use Book, were : 



(1) That forest reserve resources are for the use of the people and 

 no privileges will be denied unless their exercise materially inter- 

 feres with reserve interests or threatens harm to the public. 



