November 25, 1905 



HORTICULTURE 



A Forest Reserve for New England 



Primeval Spruce and Hardwood Forest, Mt. Adams. 

 Typical White Mountain Forest Before Lumbering. 



During the last session of Congress a bill was intro- 

 duced in the Senate calling for the establishment of a 

 federal forest reserve in tlie White Mountains of New 

 Hampshire. By the terms of the bill the total extent of 

 the reserve was not to exceed one million acres, and the 

 cost was not to exceed five million dollars. The bill re- 

 ceived the endorsement of the Congressional committee 

 on forest reservations, but it failed to receive the atten- 

 tion of the Congress as a whole before adjournment. At 

 the coming session it will be reintroduced and pushed, 

 and every citizen of Xew England 

 who has any interest in the welfare 

 of this section of our country 

 should lend his strength in the 

 pushing. 



A similar measure is also pend- 

 ing calling for a reservation in 

 the Southern Appalachian Moun- 

 tains, and both bills, by agreement 

 of the men in charge of each. 

 will be advanced together as a 

 common cause. 



To those who understand the 

 relation of plant life, and especially 

 of woody plant life, to soil and 

 water, as the readers of this paper 

 do understand it, it is unnecessary 

 to argue the need for this reserve. 

 It is sufficient for them to know 

 that four of the principal mill 

 streams of New England derive 

 their headwaters or primary tribu- 

 taries from those mountains, and 

 to state that the records of stream- 

 flow, kept by the engineers of 

 those mills for a number of years, 

 show increased freshet force each 

 spring, and greater summer short- 

 ages of water, and that these 



Result of Average 

 Steep 



changes liave been coincident with the destructive 

 logging operations in the mountains. The rivers thus 

 affected are the Saco and the Androscoggin, which flow 

 through New Hampshire and Maine; the Merrimac, 

 which turns spindles in New Hampshire and Massa- 

 chusetts, and the Connecticut. Thus all the New Eng- 

 land States except Ehode Island are interested in the 

 water conserving powers of those mountains. 



Our two illustrations show the "loefore and after" of 

 destructive lumbering in the White Mountains. The 

 ■'after" is "a hopeless case" in this 

 instance. It shows a typical steep 

 uiountain slope on which originally 

 stood a fine spruce forest, the home 

 of many a fine and steady spring 

 of purest water. It was lumbered 

 in the ordinary way, everything 

 marketable being cut, and the 

 land left littered with slash. Fire 

 followed the loggers, as it, unhap- 

 pily, very often does, and as a 

 result the remaining small growth, 

 and even the vegetable soil, or 

 ihiff. was wholly burned out. The 

 I'dllowing season's rains and melt- 

 ing snows continued the devastat- 

 ing work, washing down into the 

 valley the last particle of loose 

 mineral soil, and frost and water 

 are still carrying on the work, 

 spending tons of avalanche tearing 

 down the steeps each spring and 

 burving the soil of the lower levels 

 far' out of sight. Soil, trees and 

 springs have disappeared forever. 

 This case is not an exception. 

 Logging and Fire on j^ ig the usual result of logging the 

 Slopes. steep upper slopes of those moun- 



1 and \vasiii.ci Away. tains, and leaving the slash to 



