84 AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 
The second has resulted in the immediate establishment of forestry 
practice. Classification was subordinated to the paramount purpose of the 
dedications—and is not yet complete. But it is being done coordinately 
with the purpose of the National Forests. 
Under the Act of 3 March, 1891, the President was empowered to create 
National Forests, and vast tracts averaging 1,000,000 acres apiece were 
proclaimed as such. 
A following Act of June, 1897, stipulated that it was not intended to 
include lands “chiefly valuable for minerals or for Agriculture,” and the 
Act of 11 June, 1906, authorised the Secretary of Agriculture “at his discre- 
tion” and upon approval or otherwise to locate such lands “ which, in his 
opinion, might be occupied for agricultural purposes without injury to the 
forest reserves, and which are not needed for public purposes,’ and to 
request the Secretary of Lands to make them available in areas of not 
exceeding 160 acres. 
Under this Act preference was given the first applicant for the examin- 
ation of tracts. This preference clause was taken advantage of by land agents 
to instigate floods of applications for new tracts—at a fee of from £1 to £20. 
\ 
Just as often as not the land applied for was located on a rocky mountain 
side unfit even for goats, and the application was turned down. 
Whereupon the resentment of the land-seeker was skilfully deflected by 
the land agent against the Forest Service on the score of error, misrepresenta- 
tion, and fraud. 
Much the same thing has occurred im Australia. 
The amendatory Act of August, 1912, which completed the classification 
scheme, “ directed and required the Secretary of Agriculture to select, classify, 
and ‘segregate as soon as practicable,” all such lands, and granted liberal 
appropriations for the purpose. 
In some respects, the classification problems of American forestry were 
much simpler than those of Australia. Most of the National Forests were 
situated in the high rugged mountain regions of the west, where agricultural 
lands are very limited. Furthermore, such lands as in Australia would be 
regarded as suitable for mixed farming consequent upon the much more 
productive climate could not be classified as such in America, owing to the 
coldness, dryness, and high altitudes. A further feature was remoteness 
and inaccessibility, as opposed to the proximity of our own forests to: civilisa- 
tion. 
Apart from the segregation of agricultural lands within a forest, the 
general character of the lands contemplated by the dedicatory Acts of 1891 
and 1897 had been defined in a joint letter to the President by the Secretary 
of the Interior (Lands) and the Secretary of Agriculture, dated 7 February, 
1910, as follows :— 
(1.) Lands wholly or in part covered with brush or other undergrowth, 
which protects stream flow or checks erosion on the watershed 
- of any stream important to irrigation, water power, or to 
the water supply of any city, town, or community or open 
lands on which trees may be grown, should be retained within 
the National Forests, unless their permanent value under 
cultivation is greater than their value as a protective forest. 
