t4J 



and to secure the passage of desired legislation." In the same report the 

 committee mentions that "it passed and directed to congress and the execu- 

 tive, resolutions protesting against the modification of the Cascade range 

 forest reserve, which modification the people of Oregon had petitioned for." 

 The report of the executive committe of the American Forestry Asso- 

 ciation was read at its meeting on February 5th. That of the committee 

 whose appointment it secured from the Academy of Sciences, by the help 

 of one or more competent clerks of the general land office detailed by Sec- 

 retary Francis to assisl^vits preparation, had been " completed and sub- 

 mitted about Februai^lsj*." It recommended thirteen additional forest 

 reserves, of an aggregate'' area of 21,379,840 acres. The recommendation 

 was adopted and prodMi^jled on February 22, 1897, without reference to the 

 representatives of the smtes most directly interested or the conditions of their 

 admission as political com,munities, in plain contravention of some impor- 

 tant provisions. The report is introduced by alluding to experiments now 

 under process by Gustave Wex, an eminent engineer having charge of im- 

 provements on the river Danube, giving gauges recorded as to the high and 

 low water marks of ten rivers having their sources in central Europe. As 

 the examinations are incomplete, they are inconclusive as to central Europe, 

 and constitute simply an introduction to the report, which seems to avoid 

 scientific demonstration, to deal in assumption of facts and aspersions of 

 industries in Oregon which cannot be truthfully applied to the natural 

 conditions existing in this state, nor to the actions of its citizens. 



Happily, the report shows such a lack of statesmanship that it caused 

 a halt in the movement of the policy which thus seems to have been initi- 

 ated by the Forestry Association, the general objects of which are certainly 

 worthy and very important where timber is needed. The wording of the 

 report of the committee to the Academy of 8ciences.is such, as to assertions 

 made and language used, as to create the suspicion that the committee 

 trusted too much to the clerk or clerks the secretary of the interior placed 

 to their assistance. Assertions of fact are made and expressions used rela- 

 tive to sheep and sheep husbandry that may be passed over as emanating 

 from an appointee of an appointee of President Cleveland. It is not possi- 

 ble to believe such assertions and expressions to be the composition of any 

 member of a body selected from the American Academy of Sciences, and 

 the letter of Professor Sargent, in appendix a of the report, is so superior 

 as to make it almost certain the members "signed a report none of them 

 would have written." The tenure of the report is so abusive of sheep and 

 sheep owners as to create the conviction that it is the product of personal 

 animosity, as it is but a refined echo of the western cowboy's abuse of sheep 

 and sheep owners — his successful contestants for grass in the range coun- 

 try. The efiiect of this part of the report will be to increase and encourage 

 animosities which have caused the outrages against law and justice that 



