Forestry Notes, 



327 



when the administration of each reserve is left very largely in the 

 hands of the local officers, under the eye of thoroughly trained 

 and competent inspectors." 



These are words of the highest wisdom; use of the reserves 

 without injury to the forests, first to the home-builder, and second 

 to the local industries, always modified by local conditions and 

 local needs. As citizens, men of science, or sentimentalists, we 

 could wish for no better articles of belief. For this transfer of 

 our forests to the trained hands in the Forestry Bureau, we have 

 labored more persistently than for any other end, believing that 

 all the vexed questions which come before the laymen in forestry 

 in the West can only be settled through the dominion of the 

 trained forester over his proper domain, the forests; the above 

 words of promise from the Secretary of Agriculture justify all 

 efforts made to effect this change. It is also ruled that "Forest 

 Service is the new official title of the organization having imme- 

 diate charge of all National forest work under the Secretary of 

 Agriculture. It replaces the Bureau of Forestry in the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture and the Division of Forestry in the General 

 Land Office." 



The members of the Sierra Club who can look back to our 

 meeting at the California Academy of Sciences, less than ten 

 years ago, held to arouse public thought upon the condition of 

 our forests at a time when interest in them was at its lowest 

 ebb, can best realize how greatly the public has been educated 

 during this period in a knowledge of forestry problems, and how 

 rapidly a statesman-like policy can advance under the leadership 

 of a few capable men. The time was ripe and the leaders came 

 in the persons of Roosevelt, Pinchot, and Wilson, all of one mind, 

 and of the right mind. The transfer of the reserves has not been 

 heralded with great headlines in the newspapers, but it will so 

 affect business methods in connection with interests so vast in 

 extent and so vital to our well-being as a nation that the historian 

 of a century hence will reckon it as the beginning of one of the 

 most important influences in our national life. 



The last Congress also repealed the law allowing 

 HE lEU owners of land inside of forest reserves to select 

 L,AND AW. equal areas of non-mineral-bearing land elsewhere. 

 This law was the cover to great frauds, because it allowed specu- 

 lators of the Benson-Hyde type to buy up tracts, often nearly 

 worthless cut-over or brush-lands, inside forest reserves, at a 

 low figure, and locate equal amounts in the most valuable timber- 

 lands of the public domain. This law was not wholly baneful, 



