9161 $6 YVA 
PREFACE. 
In publishing this bulletin, the New York State College 
of Forestry at Syracuse University is carrying out a purpose 
announced in 1912 of presenting in a series of bulletins re- 
sulting from careful studies and extended investigations, the 
conditions which govern the behavior of plant life in New 
York State. The College was fortunate in securing Dr. Wm. 
L. Bray, Professor of ‘Bowny of Syracuse University and 
head of the Department of Botany in the College of Liberal 
Arts, for his sabbatical year to study the development of vege- 
tation in New York State. Because of the work which Dr. 
Bray carried on in the State of Texas and elsewhere, results 
of which were published by the U. S. Forest Service and by 
the University of Texas, he brought to his studies of the 
vegetation of New York not only unusual previous experi- 
ence, but rare insight into the many questions involved in 
the covering of the land surface of the state with vegetation 
culminating in one of the finest forests of any of the Eastern 
States. The purpose of the College in having a study carried 
on by Dr. Bray and in the publication of this report is to have 
a clearly defined basis upon which to add more detailed in- 
vestigations, and especially a stock taking of the forest re- 
sources, all of which will lead to the establishment of definite: 
ness and continuity of policy in the covering of the non- 
agricultural lands of the state with a profitable forest. 
A broad analysis of the history and present aspects in the 
development of our native vegetation, together with some 
consideration of the status of vegetation as modified by 
human action, should serve as a good ground upon which to 
build detailed investigations along any phase of Forestry, 
and especially in such closely related lines of work as fish 
and game propagation and protection and control of injurious 
insects and fungi. The progress which our people have made 
in the older sciences and professions has been based upon 
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