134 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



A great physician (the late Dr. Hunter McGuire of Virginia), artated that 

 he once performed an operation which restored sight to a child who had been 

 born blind, and that soon afterward he asked the child what was the most 

 beautiful thing in the world, and the instant answer was "a tree." 



It must have been in the realization of this truth of nature that the Holy 

 Record begins with the placing of a tree in the midst of the garden which God 

 planted, and ends with the same conception of beauty — the tree of life whose 

 leaves are for the healing of the nation. 



The discussion of the merely material advantages to be reaped from car- 

 rying out the broad and high-minded plans of the Forestry Association for 

 the conservation of the forests of the Appalachian range through means of 

 great government parks will be left to those more familiar than the writer 

 with the statistics of the subject; as will also the discussion of the technical, 

 legal and constitutional questions which appear to be somewhat involved in 

 the plan be left to those whose responsibility is to direct the destinies of this 

 country by constitutional methods for the benefit of the people of the land. 

 The writer proposes to present his plea for the preservation of the people's 

 possessions in the Appalachian forests on grounds which appeal to him in the 

 hope that if sufficient interest can be aroused among the people of this great 

 country, this important subject maj' be dealt with in such a manner as to 

 preserve this priceless possession of the people to them and their posterity 

 forever, without in any way impairing tlie even more priceless possession of 

 procedure according to unquestioned constitutional methods. 



It is true that most people are touched through appeals to their material 

 interests ; but it is even more true that a gi'eat number may be touched through 

 an appeal to their reason, and that yet higher motive power, their sentiment. 

 The argument of loss through the waste of billions of feet of lumber may 

 appeal only to the limited class of those who might profit by a more conserva- 

 tive and wise method of dealing with these resources. But the argument of 

 saving from destruction at the hands of greed alike "the glory of the forest" 

 and the fertility — indeed, the existence of the soil of not only the contiguous 

 territory, but of the whole surrounding region, will appeal to all lovers of 

 their country. The only thing needed is to educate them — to bring clearly to 

 their intelligent apprehension the fact that the present system of forest de- 

 struction is one that, reversing the poet's dream of the statesman's work, "To 

 scatter plenty o'er a smiling land," is as certain as any other law of nature, 

 to scatter ruin and turn the fertile places into a desert. The history of all 

 countries, written in the unmistakable records of perpetual erosion shows 

 this, where tracts of endless desert stretch in regions once as fertile as a 

 garden and where the silence of the wilderness has succeeded to the life of a 

 teeming population. 



The future of forest conservation in this country depends as does the 

 future of constitutional government of the country on the education of the 

 people. No branch of education has advanced with more rapid steps of late 

 than has that which relates to forestry, and whatever may happen in the 

 future the foundation of this branch of our national development was laid by 

 one who was for several years a high executive officer of the American For- 

 estry Association, who first brought the subject as one of national importance 

 to the attention of the American people. No man in the world comprehends 

 more fully and appreciates more highly the debt which this country now owes 

 and which coming generations will continue to owe to the zeal and far-sight- 

 edness of the man who is the true father of conservation in this country. 

 Forestry is his passion and the ennobling influence of this noble pursuit was 

 never more plainly manifested than in the enlargement of his mind to take in 



