Pennsylvania Commission. 427 



Commission has been tlie reduction of forest fires, in 

 which, also owiag to political conditions, only partial 

 success has been attained. The legislation of 1885 for 

 the first time attacked this problem in a more 

 thorough manner, providing for the organization of a 

 service, and this served as an example to other States, 

 who copied and improved on it. Notably the forest fire 

 legislation of Maine (1891), of Wisconsin (1895), and 

 of Minnesota (1895) was based on this model. 



Another of the large States to start upon and, dif- 

 ferently from ITew York, to develop consistently a 

 proper forest policy, was the State of Pennsylvania. 

 As a result of a persistent propaganda by the Pennsyl- 

 vania Forestry Association, formed in 1886, and espe- 

 cially by its active secretary. Dr. J. T. Rothrock, a com- 

 mission of inquiry was instituted in 1893. Before its 

 report was established, the legislature of 1895 provided 

 for an executive Department of Agriculture, and in- 

 cluded in its organization a provision for a Division of 

 Forestry, the botanist member of the previous commis- 

 sion. Dr. Eothrock, being appointed Commissioner of 

 Forestry at the head of the Division. Two years later 

 the final legislation, which firmly established a forest 

 policy for the Stat6, was passed, namely for the pur- 

 chase of State forest reservations. All later legislation 

 was simply in expansion of these propositions. By 

 1908, the State had acquired by purchase, wild, mostly 

 •culled lands to the extent of over 800,000 acres, and the 

 Commission had progressed far towards providing for 

 their management and recuperation. 



The unusually disastrous confiagrations of 1894, the 

 growing conviction that the pleaders of the exhausti- 



