8 MISCELLANEOUS CIRCULAR <J 1 



6. ON FOREST LAND 



(To be sung to the tune of My Maryland) 



Great forests grew in days gone by 



On forest land, on forest land. 

 Where now bare sands and black stumps lie 



On forest land, on forest land : 

 For saw and ax in careless hand 

 Have swept the trees from forest land, 

 And fire has flung his glowing brand 



On forest land, on forest land. 



The acres burned, the acres bare, 



On forest land, on forest laud, 

 The acres wrecked by lack of care. 



On forest land, on forest land, 

 Now spread their millions, barren, dead, 

 Where no man works, no game is fed ; 

 And muddy streams their banks o'erspread, 



On forest land, on forest land. 



Drive out the fire that seeks to spoil 



Our forest land, our forest land. 

 And save the trees and save the soil, 



On forest land, on forest land. 

 We'll cut our trees with careful hand, 

 Leave seed to trrow a later stand. 

 And plant with trees t lie idle land — 



Make forest land a harvest land. 



— L. C. Everard. 



7. STATE FORESTRY 



Some of the States began forestry work before tbe 

 Federal Government did so, and until nearly the 

 close of the nineteenth century it might have been 

 supposed that the States would take the chief part 

 in working out the country's forest problem. 



In 1872 New York created a commission to con- 

 sider State ownership of " the wild lands lying 

 northward of the Mohawk/' and the definite building 

 up of the present Adirondack and Catskill forest 

 preserves dates from 1S85. In 1876, when Colorado 

 became a State, its constitutional convention asked 

 Congress to transfer the pubiic timberlands within 

 its boundaries to the care and custody of the Stale, 

 and its constitution provided that the general as- 

 sembly should enact laws to preserve the forests upon 

 the State's lands. California created a State board of 

 forestry in 1885. 



Other forms of State forestry legislation and activ- 

 ities began still earlier. Present laws aimed at the 

 control of forest fires had their antecedents in colon- 

 ial times. Michigan and Wisconsin both made inquir- 

 ies into their forest conditions and needs in 1SG7. In 

 1869 the Maine Board of Agriculture appointed a com- 

 mittee to report on a forest policy for the State, and 

 in 1872 the Maine Legislature enacted a law M for the 

 encouragement of the growth of trees " by which 

 lands planted with trees were exempt from taxation 

 for 20 years. Laws offering tree planters either 

 bounties or tax exemption were passed between 1868 

 and 1S72 in Connecticut. New York. Minnesota. 'Wis- 

 consin, Iowa, Missouri. Dakota. Nebraska. Kansas. 

 and Nevada — and at that time the first Federal tim- 

 ber-culture law had not yet been passed. Forestry 

 bureaus or commissions were created by a number of 

 States in the eighties. 



In spite of this early start in forestry, the States 

 now own only 11,000,000 acres of forest land, of which 

 less than half is being managed for forestry purposes. 

 All tree-growing States should have State forests, as 



