Forestry Notes. 



83 



of June 13, 1902, in which it is contemplated that the Govern- 

 ment will establish in arid regions reservoirs for the use of the 

 small landholder by controlling all the neighboring irrigable land 

 until the reservoir is completed, when it will sell to permanent 

 occupants only small tracts from forty to one hundred and sixty 

 acres on the homestead plan. 



President Roosevelt in his last two messages has urged the 

 repeal of the three laws or clauses of laws named above, and has 

 been consistently supported by the Secretary of the Interior and 

 the heads of the bureaus most concerned in these questions. It 

 was the subject of the chief debate at the Irrigation Congress at 

 Ogden in September, and a resolution has been introduced into 

 Congress providing for inquiry into the operation of our land 

 laws. The matter will eventually be set right. When a ques- 

 tion concerning the welfare of the people and the nation becomes 

 the subject of warm and thorough discussion, with men of the 

 Roosevelt type on one side and the land speculators and land 

 barons on the other, it is in a fair way for an early and just set- 

 tlement. 



We have referred in both numbers for 1903, to the activity of 

 land speculators in their favorite field of fraudulent use of the 

 land laws. The Department of the Interior, after collecting a 

 mass of evidence in this direction, has made a number of arrests ; 

 probably more will follow. The arrest causing the greatest com- 

 ment is that of John A. Benson, of San Francisco, once a Gov- 

 ernment "surveyor," when he made the notorious "Benson sur- 

 veys," all of which have been or should be resurveyed on account 

 of glaring inaccuracies. His present arrest is, however, based 

 on accusations of fraudulent use of the land laws in his extensive 

 real-estate dealings. Whether he can be proven guilty or not, 

 his case deserves the most careful and thorough investigation 

 on the part of the Interior Department. His former well- 

 known good understanding with prominent newspapers in the 

 West is still manifest in their allusions to the persecutions 

 he is suffering. 



was based on the veto of the annual appropriation from the 

 New York Legislature, by Governor Odell during the preceding 

 May. The Governor based his veto on the report of a legislative 

 committee, adverse to the management of the forestry school 

 lands belonging to the State in the Adirondacks, and the legisla- 



The New York 

 State College 

 OF Forestry. 



This valuable training-school was discontinued 

 on June 17th, by a vote of the Trustees of 

 Cornell University, under whose control the 

 College of Forestry was placed. This action 



