SURVEYS OF FOREST RESERVES. 41 



PRINCIPLES WHICH SHOULD GOVERN THE CHOICE OF BOUNDARIES. 



1. All forest lands belonging to the United States, more valuable for 

 forest purposes than for agriculture, should be reserved and protected 

 from fire, and all their resources should be opened to development under 

 the regulations of the Department. 



2. With suitable modifications, the reserves now existing should be 

 maintained. 



3. Mining and forest protection are not incompatible, but under 

 proper management mutually helpful, and except in the case of densely 

 populated mining districts, mineral lands should not be excluded from 

 the reserves. 



4. Forest lands denuded by fire or otherwise may be as suitably in- 

 cluded in a forest reserve as though covered with trees. 



5. Considerable bodies of agricultural land should be excluded from 

 the reserves. Small areas within the boundaries should be subject to 

 location and entry for a definitely restricted number of years. 



6. Eailroad lands should be excluded from the reserves by exchange. 



7. Open forests valuable for grazing should be used for that purpose, 

 under suitable regulations, without exclusion from the reserves. 



IL ADMINISTRATION. 



The administration of forest lauds differs from Government work in 

 other departments in several very imijortant respects. In dealing with 

 the forest it has to do with a peculiarly delicate subject, of long life 

 and late maturity, and of peculiar susceptibility to injury or destruction 

 from accidents and injudicious handling. Forests are subject to wide- 

 spreading calamities, such as forest fires, difficult to prevent, and, when 

 once under way, often passing wholly beyond the reach of human inter- 

 vention. The work of management in the field must be performed at 

 a distance from centers of Government activity, and under circum- 

 stances which render control and inspection both matters of consider- 

 able labor and difliculty. The importance of individual initiative and 

 devotion is therefore particularly marked. Finally, the duties which 

 forest management entail require for their performance a kind of 

 knowledge not widely distributed, and in general but moderately in 

 demand for other than Government work. These and other similar 

 facts lead naturally to the statement of the following three conditions, 

 which are essential to successful Government forest administration, and 

 which have been recognized as such in the organization of every Gov- 

 ernment forest service with which I am acquainted. They are: 



1. PERMANENCE OF TENTTEE OF FOREST LANDS. 



The reforestation of burned areas ; public acceptance and support of 

 Government ownership; the establishment of permanent boundaries; 

 and the possibility of successfully carrying out plans whose final com- 

 pletion often can not take place for more than a hundred years; all 

 these considerations demand that the lands in question should belong 

 to the Government permanently and without the possibility of dispute, 



2. CONTINUITY AND STABILITY OF PLAN. 



In the management of the forest, the long life of the trees which com- 

 pose it must be recognized in the treatment to which it is subjected. 

 Mistakes are peculiarly dangerous from the number of decades which 



