Woods And Forests

By Act of March 3, 1891, and subsequent acts, the secretary of agriculture was authorized to make provisions for the protection against destruction by fire and depredations of the public forests and forest reservations and to make such rules and regulations and establish such service as would insure the object of the reservations, namely, to regulate their occupation and use, and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction. This act was held constitutional and not to be a delegation of legislative power; Bight v. U. S., 220 U. S. 523, 31 Sup. Ct. 485, 55 L. Ed. 570; the power conferred is administrative; U. S. v. Grimaud, 220 U. S. 506, 31 Sup. Ct. 480, 55 L. Ed. 563. The federal courts have been divided on the question as to whether violations of the regulations of the secretary of agriculture constitute a crime, but in U. S. v. Grimaud, 220 U. S. 506, it was held that, where the penalty for a violation of regulations to be made by an executive officer is prescribed by statute, the violation is not made a crime by such officer, but by congress, and congress, and not such officer, fixes the penalty, nor is the offense against such officer, but against the United States, reversing TJ. S. v. Grimaud, 170 Fed. 205, and sustaining a regulation made by the secretary of agriculture as to grazing sheep on forest reserves. In Light v. U. S., 220 U. S. 523, 31 Sup. Ct. 485, 55 L. Ed. 570, it was held that where cattle were turned loose under circumstances showing that the owner expects and intends that they shall graze upon a reserve, for which he has no permit, and he declines to apply for one, and threatens to resist efforts to have the cattle removed, and contends that he has a right to graze his cattle, he can be enjoined at the instance of the government, whether the land has been fenced or not. Not decided whether the United States is required to fence property under the laws of the state. The location of a mining claim within a forest reserve was held not to operate to withdraw the land embraced therein from the jurisdiction of the secretary of agriculture, nor to give to locators having acquired a possessory interest only any authority to usq the surface for the erection of a saloon, without a permit from the secretary of agriculture; U. S. v. Rizzinelli, 182 Fed. 675. Whatever rights the holders of unpatented mining claims may have in the timber on their claims are subject to the paramount tiis dead, matured, and infested with insects, so as to be a menace to the young and growing trees, may be sold by the forest service under the regulations prescribed by the secretary of agriculture; Lewis v. Garlock, 168 Fed. 153.