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Show 43 the laws of the State wherein such forest reservations are situated, or under the laws of the United States and the rules and regulations established thereunder. Not long after passage of this legislation, the Attorney General held in 1907 that appropriations on forest lands could not be taken independently of permits issued by appropriate federal officials.172 Provisions for rights-of-way had been prescribed by Congress after enactment of the 1897 statute.173 And in 1916, the Supreme Court sustained the right of the Federal Government to require such conditional permits for entry upon forest lands, saying:174 * * * we are of opinion that the inclusion within a State of lands of the United States does not take from Congress the power to control their occupancy and use, to protect them from trespass and injury and to pre- scribe the conditions upon which others may obtain rights in them, even though this may involve the exer- cise in some measure of what commonly is known as the police power. "A different rule," as was said in Cam- field v. United States, supra, "would place the public domain of the United States completely at the mercy of state legislation." Reclamation Projects.-Preliminarily, it should be observed that the grant of proprietary power to the United States is one of control over its property, affording Congress no legislative control over the states, being limited to authority over federal property within their limits.175 Hence, while the Supreme Court in 1907 expressly rejected a claim in Kansas v. Colorado by the United States of an "inherent" or "sovereign" power "to control the whole system of the reclamation of arid lands," it in 26 Ops. Att'y Gen. 421, 426 (1907). "s Act of February 15,1901, 31 Stat. 790,16 U. S. C. 522, and Act of Febru- ary 1,1905, § 4, 33 Stat. 628,16 U. S. O. 524. 174 Utah Power d Light Co. v. United States, 243 U. S. 389, 405 (1917). 178 Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U. S. 46, 89, 92 (1907). For a detailed discus- sion of irrigation, see Chapter 5, infra, pp. 151-258. |