4 Report or Forest, Fish AND GAME CoMMISSION. 
In section 216, chapter 20, Laws of 1900, the Preserve is 
defined as follows: 
The Forest Preserve shall include the lands owned or hereafter 
acquired by the State within the county of Clinton, except the 
towns of Altona and Dannemora, and the counties of Delaware, 
Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Lewis, Oneida, 
Saratoga, St. Lawrence, Warren, Washington, Greene, Ulster and 
Sullivan, except 
1, Lands within the limits of any village or city, and 
2. Lands not wild lands acquired by the State on foreclosure of 
mortgages made to loan commissioners. : 
The second exception renders it difficult in some instances to 
determine whether a parcel of land belongs to the Preserve. A 
farm property, sold under foreclosure, may contain a large tract of 
woods or ‘“* wild land” as well as cleared or cultivated ground. The 
question then arises whether the portion containing the woodlands 
does not belong to the Preserve. 
It is not always easy to draw the line between wild land and 
pasture. Then, again, some of the areas acquired by the State 
under foreclosure of mortgages made to loan commissioners are 
now abandoned farms that have grown up to brush or trees, and 
which in a few years will become second-growth forests. For these 
reasons several lots obtained through foreclosures are included in 
the list. 
The list contains, also, some lands acquired through tax sales, the 
title to which may be doubtful, owing to errors on the part of the 
assessors or tax collectors. These errors had not been discovered at 
the time of the tax sale, and so the title to the lands passed 
nominally to the State. As these lots are entered upon the books 
of the comptroller as State land, it becomes necessary to include 
them here as part of the Forest Preserve. In fact, these lands with 
