6 The New York State College of Porestry 
at least up to 3,000 feet elevation. Now, of course, New York 
State, even before the coming of Europeans, was not all forest.* 
Even the Adirondack region, with which we are here especially 
concerned, was not pie forest land though very generally so, 
and the forest cover was not all of the climax type composed of 
we 
* This statement is not to be taken as intimating that any consider- 
able area of New York State was not heavily forested at the beginning 
of the period of colonization by European nations. As a matter of fact 
the ‘State was peony a vast forest wilderness in common with the 
Atlantic region generally. The forests were regarded in those days as 
the great obstacle against colonization, since the land had to be cleared 
of this dense growth in order to extend the farming areas and in estab- 
lishing sites for homes and villages. Rightly to understand the situation 
one should bear in mind that ‘climatically considered, the region com- 
prised in the present area of New York State was all potentially forest 
and that the natural trend of vegetation development was to culminate 
in a forest stand as rapidly as the lowlands were built up by depositions 
of plant growth and other agencies, or as soon as the rocky uplands, 
notably mountain slopes and summits had been covered by a humus 
blanket. 
During the centuries preceding the coming of white men the course 
of vegetation development had been carried forward to the point where 
not only nearly all of the valley and upland areas were in the final or 
climax forest stage, but large areas of swamp and marshland, even many 
of the shallower lake basins, had been filled to a level which could sup- 
port swamp and bog forest. There were still stretches of marsh meadow 
notably near the coast (see Van Derdonk’s New Netherlands, 1656) and 
vlaies and “beaver meadows” along certain streams and on the borders 
of glacial lakes. It must be remembered that the influence of man was 
felt even in these prehistoric days, for the Indian tribes had their 
cleared cornlands and their hunting grounds which in some sections at 
least they periodically burned over (Van Derdonk speaks cf them as 
“bush burnings”). A noteworthy instance of this sort seems to be 
implied in the existence of open grass lands studded with groves of 
oak in Erie county back of the escarpment bordering the Erie basin 
(see E. H. Perry Hist. Buffalo and Erie Co.). It appears to be con- 
firmed that the Buffalo ranged eastward along the lake region into 
Western New York (see Hornaday, Extermination of the Buffalo: Smith- 
sonian Report, 1887). Sometimes these fires gained such headway as 
to become vastly destructive forest fires which! not only destroyed the 
forest stand but the humus blanket, thus entailing conditions with 
which in more recent times we have become all too “familiar. Forests 
were destroyed then as now also by fires set by lightning, by fierce wind- 
storms, by ‘fungus and insect pests as in these days, so that there were 
always areas where the forest cover was broken or destroyed. In the 
normal course of events, however, these losses and setbacks were replaced 
generally with surprising rapidity, so that the “high tide of vegetation,” 
the virgin climax forests, may really be said to have covered the whole 
area of New York State. As to the several types and zonal boundaries 
of these forests see Bray’s Development of the Vegetation of New York 
State, above cited. 
