Here, then, for the first time on the American continent, had the idea of State forestry, management of State lands on forestry principles, taken shape; a new doctrine of State functions had gained the day. Not only was the commission charged to organize a service, with a “chief forester” and “underforesters,” to administer the existing reserve according to forestry principles, but also from the incomes to lay aside a fund for the purchase of more lands to constitute the State forest preserve. Unfortunately, instability of purpose, the characteristic of democracy, spoiled the dream of the forester. Both, commission and chief forester were, of course, political appointees, and, rightly or wrongly, fell under the suspicion, when proposing the sale of stumpage, that they were working into the hands of lumbermen. A set of well-meaning but ill-advised civic reformers succeeded, in 1893, in securing the insertion into the Constitution, then being revised, of a clause preventing the cutting of trees, dead or alive, on State lands, declaring that they shall forever be kept as “wild lands.” Later, this constitutional provision was deliberately set aside by the commission, which began to plant up some of the fire-wasted areas, the legislature appropriating money for this breach of the Constitution because it was popular: and lately permission has also been granted by the legislature to remove trees from burnt areas in order to reduce the fire danger--the foolish objection of a Constitution notwithstanding. In 1897, new legislation was passed to authorize the State to purchase additional forest lands within a prescribed limit, to round off the State’s holdings, a special agency, the Forest Preserve Board, being constituted for that purpose. Under this law, some $3,500,000 have been spent, and by 1907, over one and a half million acres had been added to the State Forest Preserve. This large area is withdrawn from rational economic use, reserved for a pleasure ground of wealthy New Yorkers, who have located their camps in the “wilderness” under the avowed assumption that the State can be forced to maintain forever this anomalous condition. In later years, private planting has been encouraged by the Commission selling plant material from the State nurseries at low rates. The most important administrative function of the Commission has been the reduction of forest fires, in which, also owing to political conditions, only partial success has been attained. The legislation of 1885 for the first time attacked this problem in a more thorough manner, providing for the organization of a service, and this served as an example to other States who copied and improved on it. Notably the forest fire legislation of Maine (1891), of Wisconsin (1895), and of Minnesota (1895) was based on this model.