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BIG CYPRESS TREE OF TULE, STATE OF OAXACA, MEXICO.

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TRUNK OF BIG CYPRESS TREE OF TULE, STATE OF OAXACA, MEXICO.

Report of Committee on Arbor Day

THE

Planting, 1906.

HE Pennsylvania Forestry Association will appreciate the opportunity that has been afforded through its "Arbor Day Prize Award" of coming in close touch with some of the many persons who quietly and persistently throughout our State are endeavoring to practice the ideals held by this society.

Your Committee believes that you will be especially interested in the truly patriotic efforts made. by some of our public school teachers, and in some interesting experimental work, which is valuable as an object lesson, but which, had it not been for the offer of your Arbor Day prizes, might have been but locally known.

When the Pennsylvania Forestry Association celebrated its Twentieth Anniversary by offering Arbor Day prizes to the value of $100, the conditions imposed were, that the awards were to be based on the conditions of the trees, on or about the Fall Arbor Day.

After the Award Committee was appointed the work was divided geographically.

Prof. David Emmert of Juniata College, Huntingdon, consented to report on plantings in Bedford and Huntingdon Counties, and Mrs. C. Lewis, President of the New Century Club, Wyalusing, on the Wyalusing planting.

Monongahela was reported by Miss Grimes, assisted by Miss Teeters and the Chairman.

Mr. Wirt and Mr. McFarland, who represented respectively a large experience in planting and prize awarding, served as referees; all reports being submitted to them separately, and conferences were also held with them.

Of a total of 388 trees planted by the prizewinners, all but 18 were of valuable species, and on October 25th, 357 were living and 337 in good condition.

After most careful work, your Committee recommend the following schools and individual planters as entitled to an award :

To the First Ward School, Monongahela, for special interest in planting, and efforts to care for trees under difficult conditions. 36 trees planted. $15.

For special care given to the 10 best individual trees by children of the Second and Third Ward Schools of Monongahela. 56 trees planted. $10.

To the Tower City School District, Tower City, Schuylkill County, Pa., for special interest and successful planting under unfavorable soil conditions. 59 trees planted. $15.

To Mr. J. Wilson Weaver, Saxton, Bedford Co., Pa., for successful experiments in reforesting

by plantations of valuable species of native trees. 100 walnut and 75 ash trees planted. $15.

To Asa K. McIlhenny, and Bath Public Schools, for exercises of special interest and originality at Bath, Pa., on Arbor Day, 1906. One hickory tree. $15.

To Mrs. Kate L. Shoemaker, Hollidaysburg, Blair Co., Pa., for meritorious example of roadside planting, with valuable species of native trees. I walnut, 38 sugar maples, planted. $10.

To Mr. Charles Van Allen, Coolbaugh, Monroe Co., Pa., for successful farm and roadside planting of valuable species of native trees. sugar maples planted. $10.

20

To the Wyalusing High School, Wyalusing, Bradford Co., Pa., for special interest taken by pupils in Arbor Day Work, April, 1906. 3 trees planted with interesting exercises. $10.

As the offer of awards was for plantings of the spring of 1906, your Committee has been unable to show, in concrete form, its appreciation of noteworthy planting in former years by three of the contestants, Mr. J. Wilson Weaver, Mr. Asa K. McIlhenny, and Mr. Charles Van Allen, in the latter case extending over thirty years.

Your Committtee recommends the awarding of prizes be continued, and will submit suggestions in regard to so doing.

It seems proper here to say that if prizes continue to be awarded by this Association, special prizes of stated sums might be named after persons no longer living, whose memory is inseparably connected with tree life, as the Lundy prize, the Sterling Morton prize, John Bartram, Thomas Meehan, etc. Respectfully submitted,

MIRA L. DOCK, Chairman,
HELEN GRIMES

J. H. MCFARLAND,
I. C. WILLIAMS,
GEO. H. WIRT.

President Roosevelt in his Annual Message to Congress makes the following remarks in regard to forestry, advocating reserves in the east as well as in the west. .He says: :

"Much is now being done for the States of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains thru the development of the national policy of irrigation and forest preservation; no Government policy for the betterment of our internal conditions has been more fruitful of good than this. The forests of the White Mountains and Southern Appalachian regions should also be preserved; and they can not be unless the people of the States in which they lie, thru their representatives in the Congress, secure vigorous action by the National Government."

Forestry Law Declared Unconstitutional.

IN

'N FOREST LEAVES for June, 1905, the full text was given of an Act passed by the Legislature and approved by the Governor on April 8, 1905. This law provided that an owner of land having on it forest trees averaging not fewer than 50 trees to the acre, each of said trees to measure at least 8 inches in diameter at a height of 6 feet above the ground, no portion of the land being absolutely cleared of trees, upon making proper affidavit through the county commissioners to the assessors, is entitled to receive a rebate equal to 80 per cent. of all taxes, both county and local, assessed on such land, or so much thereof as shall not exceed in all the sum of 45 cents per acre, but no one property owner is entitled to receive said rebate on more than 50 acres.

Under this act Mr. Tubbs, of Osceola, Tioga County, filed an affidavit that he was the owner of 50 acres of land, which would come under the above-mentioned act, on which he was assessed $59.08, and demanded the rebate of 80 per cent. of the taxes for 1906, or as much thereof as did not exceed 45 cents per acre.

Tioga Township contested this claim, and presiding Judge Cameron, before whom the case was tried in the September, 1906, term, handed down the following decision, which is given through the courtesy of T. & J. W. Johnson Co. from the advance sheets of the Pennsylvania Court Reports:

The defendant refused to allow the rebate on the ground that the act above quoted is unconstitutional in that it violates Art. IX., Sec. 1, of the Constitution, which is as follows: "All taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the taxes, and shall be levied and collected under general laws; but the general assembly may, by general laws, exempt from taxation public property used for public purposes, actual places of religious worship, places of burial not used or held for private or corporate profit, and institutions of purely public charity."

To emphasize the exceptions just named, and to put beyond question this restriction upon the legislature in the matter of exempting property from taxation, § 2 provides that "all laws exempting property from taxation other than the property above enumerated shall be void.”.

The provisions of the act allowing a rebate of eighty per centum in certain cases therein de scribed, destroys uniformity of taxation in that it only applies to tracts of fifty acres and under; and so far as its effects are concerned, it offends against uniformity of taxation unless eighty per

centum of the taxes assessed against the lands within the legislative description amount to exactly forty-five cents per acre. Adjoining owners may each own fifty acres within the legislative description, one tract assessed at thirty dollars an acre and the other at seventy-five dollars an acre. If the rebate on the tract assessed at thirty dollars amounts to just forty-five cents per acre, he will be entitled to the rebate. If it amounted to less than forty-five cents per acre, he would not get a rebate of forty-five cents. If the eighty per centum rebate on the tract assessed at seventy-five dollars amounted to more than forty-five cents per acre, he would not get the eighty per centum rebate. This law then would apply, so far as the amount of the rebate per acre is concerned, only to cases where the rebate would amount to exactly forty-five cents.

To illustrate: "A" owned thirty-five acres of land within the legislative description assessed at thirty dollars per acre; the total tax levy is twenty-six mills on the dollar. The taxes on one acre assessed at thirty dollars multiplied by the twenty-six millage rate equals seventy-eight cents; of this seventy-eight cents the act provides that "A" is entitled to eighty per centum rebate, provided said eighty per centum does not exceed on all taxes levied the sum of forty-five cents per acre; now eighty per centum of seventy-eight cents equals sixty-two cents, and sixty-two cents is seventeen cents in excess of forty-five centsthe maximum limit fixed by the act.

On account of the rate of assessment combined with the millage rate of taxation on "A's" acre of land, we find that seventeen cents of his taxes cannot be allowed under the eighty per centum rebate provision because eighty per centum of seventy-eight is seventeen cents in excess of fortyfive cents, the maximum limit. "A," then, instead of being allowed eighty per centum rebate on his acre of land, is allowed fifty-seven per centum rebate.

Take another illustration: "B" owns land within the legislative description with the same tax levy of twenty-six mills, which is assessed at nineteen dollars per acre. One acre assessed at nineteen dollars multiplied by twenty-six, the millage, equals forty-nine cents-the total taxes per acre on "B's" land. Eighty per centum of forty-nine cents equals thirty-nine cents, the amount of rebate to which "B" is entitled on every acre. As thirty-nine cents, the amount of rebate to which "B" is entitled, does not exceed the maximum limit of forty-five cents per acre, "B" is then entitled to the whole of his eighty per centum rebate. "C" owns one hundred and fifty acres within the legislative description, with

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