288 The Farm Woodlot 



were continually avoided, and it led to a great deal of fraud. 

 Moreover, the poorly handled plantations and excuses 

 for plantations were largely unsuccessful and brought 

 discredit upon prairie tree-planting generally. 



In the meanwhile, the marvelous extension of the rail- 

 roads after the Civil War and various acts of Congress, — 

 such as the Homestead, Desert Land, and Timber and 

 Stone acts, — to encourage settlement, hastened the de- 

 struction of the forest to an alarming degree. 



Emerson Hough brought the matter to the attention 

 of the American Society for the Advancement of Science 

 and was in 1877 appointed special agent by that body to 

 make a detailed report on forestry. The result of that 

 report was the establishment of the Division of Forestry 

 in the Department of Agriculture. The office thus es- 

 tablished gave forestry official recognition, which helped, 

 but that is about all it accomplished. The forester was 

 left almost wholly without funds or support and could 

 do little besides educational work by means of reports. 



The Timber Culture Act was the cause of so much fraud 

 that it was repealed in 1891 and with its repeal came the 

 first big step in advance. The same bill that repealed the 

 Timber Culture Act gave to the President the right to 

 create forest reserves by proclamation. President Harri- 

 son immediately took advantage of it to set aside about 

 17,000,000 acres of forest reserves. They were under the 

 charge of the Department of the Interior, but lack 

 of funds made it' impossible to do anything with 

 them; however, they were of tremendous importance 

 because they marked the beginning of an almost contin- 

 uous advancement. These reservations were challenged 



