FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONER. 67 



into mile square lots. Some townships containing 30,000 acres are merely 

 quartered. And so the lots vary from quarter-sections of 40 acres to 

 quarter-townships of 7,500. But, whether small or large, each one of these 

 6.262 parcels of State land in the Forest Preserve has its own surveyed 

 boundary, stands on its own title, and is a distinct, independent piece of 

 real estate. Several of these lots, when purchased, may be conveyed to 

 the State in the same deed; but one does not have to go back very far in 

 the abstract of title before there is a divergence in the line of ownership. 

 Your attention is thus called to the large number of separate properties 

 in order to give a better idea of the work necessary in keeping a proper 

 record of all this real estate and protecting the various titles. 



Adirondack Park, 



The area of the Adirondack Park, of which the State owns only a 

 part, is 3,313,564 acres. So many persons are apt to think or speak of the 

 Adirondack Park and the Forest Preserve as being the same, it may be 

 well to state that, of the 1,347,280 acres in the Forest Preserve lands of 

 Northern Xew York, 1,228,357 acres are situated within the Park, and the 

 remainder, 118,923 acres, are outside the boundary or "blue line" as 

 shown on the last edition of the Adirondack map issued by your Commission. 



The actual acreage of the Adirondack Park is somewhat greater than 

 the area indicated by the figures given — how much so it is difficult to say. 

 The statement of area, as reported here, is based on the assessed acreage 

 of each lot, which as we have learned by experience is generally less than 

 the real acreage when determined by a careful survey. Most of the lands 

 in the A lirondacks are bought and sold by the assessed acreage, the old 

 conveyances specifying the number of acres and always qualifying the 

 statement with the words " more or less." Whenever we have found it 

 necessary to make a careful survey and chaining of a lot, parcel or town- 

 ship, we have discovered almost invariably that there was a surplus, that 

 the lot " overrun " the acreage called for in the various deeds, and on which 

 the assessment is made. 



This condition is largely due to the loose methods of work in use by 

 the old surveyors who made the original allotments. They used a drag 



