THE ADIRONDACK FOREST. 319 



of considerations have a real wortli. It is desirable tliat some 

 large and easily accessible region of American soil should remain, 

 as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a musemn 

 for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation of 

 the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous tree, and 

 humble plant that loves the shade, and fish and fowl and four- 

 footed beast, may dwell and perpetuate their kind, in the enjoy- 

 ment of such imperfect protection as the laws of a people jealous 

 of restraint can afford them. The immediate loss to the public 

 treasury from the adoption of this pohcy would be inconsiderable, 

 for these lands are sold at low rates. The forest alone, economi- 

 cally managed, would, without injury, and even with benefit to 

 its permanence and growth, soon yield a regular income larger 

 than the present value of the fee. 



The collateral advantages of the preservation of these forests 

 would be far greater. Nature threw up those mountains and 

 clothed them with leafy woods, that they might serve as a reser- 

 voir to supply with perennial waters the thousand rivers and rills 

 that are fed by the raias and snows of the Adirondacks, and as a 

 screen for the fertUe plains of the central counties against the 

 chilKng blasts of the north wind, which meet no other barrier in 

 their sweep from the Arctic pole. The cKmate of iNorthem iN'ew 

 York even now presents greater extremes of temperature than 

 that of Southern France. The long-continued cold of winter is 

 more intense, the short heats of summer even fiercer than in 

 Provence, and hence the preservation of every influence that 

 tends to maintaiu an equilibrium of temperature and humidity is 

 of cardinal importance. The felling of the Adirondack woods 

 would ultimately involve, for JS^orthem and Central !N"ew York, 

 consequences similar to those which have resulted from the lay- 

 ing bare of the southern and western dechvities of the French 

 Alps and the spurs, ridges and detached peaks in front of them. 



It is true that the evils to be apprehended from the clearing of 

 the mountains of ^ew York may be less in degree than those 

 which a similar cause has produced in Southern France, where 

 the intensity of its action has been increased by the incHnation 

 of the mountain declivities, and by the pecuhar geological consti- 

 tution of the earth. The degradation of the soil is, perhaps, not 

 equally promoted by a combination of the same circumstances, in 



