Current Literature. 311 



of forestry whatever — upon the Forest Reserve of the State. At the same 

 time, large sums were spent in the purchase of wild lands, to be added 

 to the Forest Reserve — that is, to increase the area of State lands thus 

 doomed to useless and mischievous decay. The constitutional prohibition 

 was adopted by the Constitutional Convention against the urgent protest 

 of the American Forestry Association, and was carried at the polls, with 

 the rest of the Constitution, by the votes of those who assumed it to be 

 all right, because it sounded so wise and patriotic. Moreover, there were 

 amateur foresters in plenty, who learnedly expounded an American' 

 system pursued by Nature, who would take care of her own forests, if 

 we only let her alone. The necessity of such a jungle in the Adirondacks 

 to protect the water-supply of the Frie canal, to conserve water-powers, 

 and to furnish fresh air to invalids, was eloquently set forth. Above all, 

 the wickedness of corporations engaged in actually using the whole 

 forest-crop from one area after another — turning even the little branches 

 and twigs into paper-pulp, and such-like odious products — was rhetorically 

 set forth to a sympathetic and credulous public. Much of this lamentable 

 performance was doubtless sincere; but behind the ignorant sincerity 

 there was an influence which finally made itself recognized as well as felt — 

 the influence of individual owners of small pieces of land, and summer 

 residences thereon, who were determined that the State should preserve 

 at public expense an unbroken old-fashioned wilderness around them — a 

 wilderness in which they could camp or fish or shoot one another by mis- 

 take, without being disturbed by the sound of the axe or the saw. To 

 this party, the thing to be conserved was a great open-air sanitarium and 

 game-preserve, with incidental attractions of 'scenery,' unmarred by any 

 unesthetic, because useful, touch of man. The whole history of the matter 

 has never been clearly and connectedly told ; indeed, it is not yet ended. 

 But among its unhappy results have been already the arbitrary destruc- 

 tion, through the veto of an ill-advised Executive, and at the dictation of 

 interested parties who knew more, of the foremost forestry school of 

 the United States the abandonment, upon false pretenses, of a forestry 

 experiment, outside of the State Forest Reserve, which, if suffered to con- 

 tinue, would have furnished an object-lesson of incalculable value to private 

 land-owners as well as official bureaus everywhere ; and the surrender 

 by the State of New York of its proud position at the head of the great 

 work of the conservation of forest-resources for an ignominious place 

 at the tail of that procession of progress. I say 'at the tail,' but perhaps 

 it would be more accurate to say that New York is out of the procession 

 altogether ; for I do not think that any other State, however backward in 

 popular intelligence, has ever gone quite so far as to forbid forestry upon 

 its public land. 



"Meanwhile a State Commission has gone on adding by purchase or 

 otherwise to the Forest Reserve. But since the Constitution forbids 

 the subsequent cutting and sale of timber from any tracts thus purchased, 

 after the title has passed to the State, the Commission cannot afford to 

 buy timber-lands at prices including any value assigned to the timber. 

 Consequently, it bargains for such lands, to be delivered to the State after 

 the timber has been cut. off, within a limited period, by the present owners, 

 And the present owners, unless they happen to be within market-distance 

 of a wicked pulp-mill, cut the salable timber as fast as they can, and 

 turn over to the State the land with the unsalable underbrush, tops, 

 branches and twigs of the forest — an ideal nursery for forest-conflagra- 

 tions. 



"The final result of all these attempts at conservation by legislation was 

 exhibited last year, when the City of New York was darkened for many 

 days by the smoke from the burning of hundreds of square miles of that 

 Adirondack wilderness which had been prepared by ignorant legislation to 

 nourish just such a bonfire. The destruction of property thus occasioned 



