14 
forests on climate, soil, and water conditions warranted a policy of 
forest conservation in regions where the public domain is principally 
situated; and what specific legislation should be enacted to remedy 
existing evils. 
Under date of February 1, 1897, the academy submitted to Secre- 
tary Francis a preliminary report recommending the creation of 
thirteen additional forest reserves with a total area of 21,379,840 
acres. These reserves were proclaimed, as recommended, by the 
President, February 22, 1897. On May 1, 1897, the president of the 
academy submitted his complete report, embodying a comprehensive 
review of the subject, with recommendations and bills for the estab- 
lishment of a bureau of forestry in the Department of the Interior. 
This report has been printed as Senate Document No. 105. 
The sundry civil appropriation bill, passed June 4, 1897 (see Sen. 
Doc. No. 102), set aside the proclamations of February 22, 1897, sus- 
pending the reservations, which were made upon the recommendation 
of the committee of the academy, until March 1, 1898, presumably to 
give time for the adjustment of private claims and to more carefully 
delimit the reservations, an appropriation of $150,000 for the survey 
of the reservations under the supervision of the Director of the Geo- 
logical Survey being made. The provisos attached to this appro- 
priation embody the most important forestry legisiation thus far 
enacted by Congress. These provisos had been in the main formu- 
lated in a bill known as the McRae bill (H. R. 119), which was passed 
by the House of Representatives and the Senate of the Fifty-third 
Congress—without, however, becoming a law; and again had passed 
the flouse in the Fifty-fourth Congress, it being the legislation advo- 
cated by the American Forestry Association as a first step toward 
a more elaborate forest administration of the public timber lands. 
Excluding minor items, the law provides that— 
All public lands heretofore designated and reserved by the President of the 
United States under the provisions of the act approved March third, eighteen 
hundred and ninety-one, the orders for which shall be and remain in force and 
effect, unsuspended and unrevoked, and all public lands that may hereafter be 
set aside and reserved as public forest reserves under said act shall be as far 
as practicable controlled and administered in accordance with the following 
provisions : 
‘No public forest reservation shall be established, except to improve and pro- 
tect the forest within the reservation, or for the purpose of securing favorable 
conditions of water flow, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the 
use and necessities of citizens of the United States; but it is not the purpose or 
intent of these provisions or of the act providing for such reservations to 
authorize the inclusion therein of lands more valuable for the mineral therein 
or for agricultural purposes than for forest purposes. 
‘‘ For the purpose of preserving the living and growing timber and promoting 
the younger growth on forest reservations, the Secretary of the Interior, under 
‘such rules and regulations as he shall prescribe, may cause to be designated and 
appraised so much of the dead, matured, or large growth of trees found on such 
forest reservations as may be compatible with the proper utilization of the forests 
thereon, and may sell the same for not less than the appraised value in such 
quantities to each purchaser as he shall prescribe, to be used in the State or Ter- 
ritory In which such timber reservation may be situated, respectively, but not 
for export therefrom. Before such sale shall take place, notice thereof shall be 
given by the Commissioner of the General Land Office for not less than sixty 
days, by publication in a newspaper of general circulation, published in the 
county in which the timber is situated, if any is therein published, and if not, 
then in a newspaper of general circulation published nearest to the reservation, 
and also in a newspaper of general circulation published at the capital of the 
State or Territory where such reservation exists; payments for such timber to 
