Fortunately a large proportion of the shores and of the adjoining country belongs to the public and rests under the administration of the Forest Service. Fortunately, too, these immeasurable scenic values can be preserved without the slightest interference with the timber values or with the greater grazing interests in this territory. Here everything is to be gained and nothing lost by a frank recognition of esthetic values and an administration based on the policy of making all utilities (lumbering, grazing, irrigation, watershed protection, mining, and landscape beauty) fully available to the citizens of the entire country.

In our scheme of legislation and administration the National Monuments are frankly a makeshift. The man in the road finds the idea a puzzle. Let it be explained thereThe National fore that each National Monument is created Monuments presumably for the preservation of some natural wonder or some historic or prehistoric relic. The land including the objects to be preserved is withdrawn from the usual status of public lands. It can not be taken up for private use either as farm homesteads or for mining or other similar commercial uses. It is closed to commercial exploitation. This withdrawal is made by presidential proclamation, and herein lies an important difference between a National Monument and a National Park, which can be created only by act of Congress.

Here is another inconsistency which troubles the average man, in that some of the National Monuments are administered by the Department of the Interior while others are under the management of the Department of Agriculture, and two are under the authority of the War Department. The practical explanation of this discrepancy is to be found in the fact that some of the Monuments were erected out of lands already under administration of the Department of Agriculture as National Forests, and the

proclamations which altered the status of the lands did not disturb the existing administration of those lands. It was more simple and economical to leave the care of these areas in the hands of the men already in charge, with an organization on the ground which had to be maintained in any case.

On the other hand, some National Monuments were established from other lands in the hands of the Department of the Interior; and in these cases likewise the status of the land was changed without affecting the administrative authority.