TAX LANDS AND FORESTRY. 27 



provision as must necessarily quiet tlie apprehension and allay the fear 

 upon which so much objection and opposition has heretofore been based. 

 It is -wise therefore to have the law expressly limit the area of forest 

 reserves in any county to such proportion of the total area of the county 

 as must, by any candid mind, be conceded to be well within the limits 

 of a fair, proper and advantageous balance or proportion between agri- 

 culture and forestry. The law may, therefore, wisely provide that the 

 State reserves shall be limited to 20 per cent, of the total area of the 

 county in which they are situated. It will be wise also to put a limit 

 upon the acreage, both of State reserves and private timber reserves 

 hereafter mentioned. If this limit be fixed at 25% of the total area 

 of the county it will leave no room for legitimate doubt that a proper 

 balance between forestry and tilled land will never be upset by reason 

 of the action of the Sate in dealing with, the tax lands. 



TA^XATION OF STATE FOREST EBSERVES. 



A ground of objection that has been strongly insisted upon, not only 

 in this State but elsewhere, to the establishment of State forest re- 

 serves, is that a relatively large part of the township or townships in 

 which the reserves are located will be thereby removed permanently 

 from the tax roll, making the burden of taxation unduly severe on the 

 rest of the locality. We believe this objection is well founded. New 

 York and Pennsylvania met the same objection by providing either for 

 taxation, for local purposes, of the State's holdings of forest land, or 

 for payment annually, in lieu of taxes, of a fixed sum per acre. This 

 tax, or payment in lieu of taxes, should, as in the States mentioned, be 

 required by law to be expended only for roads and other specified local 

 purposes. We believe it wise to follow the example of Pennsylvania, 

 and to fix the amount, thus making it an annual acreage fee; and to 

 require, in lieu of taxes, payment of the same amount by the holders of 

 the private timber reserves, provision for which is recommended here- 

 after. Such a provision will be found in the. draft of the proposed law 

 for putting into operation the plan recommended by this report, and 

 reference is made to it for details. We recommend the adoption of this 

 provision, not only because we believe it just that the State should bear 

 its share of the burdens of local expanses, but also because it will tend 

 to secure the good will of the residents of the regions to be most directly 

 affected by the location of State forest reserves — a matter of vital 

 necessity to forestry, as already pointed out. 



DONATION OF FORFEITED TAX LAND frOR PRIVATE TIMBER RESERVES. 



The fire problem is the most fundamentally important of all the prob- 

 lems before us. Nothing is so much responsible for the dangers of fire 

 and the difficulty of protection against it as the mental attitude of the 

 residents of the regions of the cut-over lands. Young forest growth is 

 almost universally considered valueless and entitled to no protection. 

 If this unfortunate belief can be changed, and a local sentiment be sub- 

 stituted in favor of forestry and of fire protection, the greatest diflflculty in 

 the fire problem, and the chief obstacle to reforestation, will be removed. 

 For the purpose of eradicating the widespread and pernicious notion that 



