In spite of these drawbacks, the propaganda had progressed so far in 1891, that, through the earnest insistence of the then Secretary of the Interior, John W. Noble, who had been won over to the views for which the Division and the Association stood, a clause was enacted by Congress in “An act to repeal timber-culture laws and for other purposes,” giving authority to the President to set aside forest reservations from the public domain. Again, this important legislation, which changed the entire land policy and all previous notions of the government’s functions concerning the Public Domain, was not deliberately enacted, but slipped in as a “rider”, at the last hour, in Conference Committee. In this connection the name of Edward A. Bowers, in 1887 Special Agent in the Department of the Interior, and later Assistant Commissioner of the General Land Office, deserves mention as most active in securing this reservation policy. Acting under this authority, Presidents Harrison and Cleveland proclaimed, previous to 1894, seventeen forest reservations, with a total estimated area of 17,500,000 acres. The reservations were established usually upon the petition of citizens residing in the respective States and after due examination, the Forestry Association acting both as instigator and as intermediary. Meanwhile no provision for the administration of the reserves existed, and the comprehensive legislation devised by the Chief of the Division of Forestry, which included withdrawal and administration of all public timberlands, failed to be enacted, although in the Fifty-third Congress it was passed by both Houses, but failed to become a law merely for lack of time to secure a conference report. But the purpose of the advocates of forestry was to create such a condition as would compel Congress to act, by continually withdrawing forested lands that would lie useless until authority was given for their proper use and administration. In order to secure influential support from outside, a committee of the Forestry Association induced the then Secretary of the Interior, Hoke Smith, in 1896, to request the National Academy of Sciences, the legally constituted adviser of the government in scientific matters, to investigate and report “upon the inauguration of a rational forest policy for the forested lands of the United States.” After an unnecessary so-called “junket” of a committee of the Academy to investigate the public timberlands, a preliminary report was submitted recommending the creation of thirteen additional reservations, with an area of over 20 million acres, and later a complete report was made with practically the same recommendations which had been urged by the Forestry Association.