214 FIRST BOOK OF FORESTRY 



including over forty-six million acres of land, an area 

 nearly as large as North and South Carolina together. 

 Largely for the same purpose the state of New York 

 has established the Adirondack Park, of which it now 

 owns about one million three hundred thousand acres; 

 and the state of Pennsylvania also is beginning to buy 

 some of its denuded and burned-over mountain districts 

 for similar use. 



SOME HISTORY 



Even the ancients, the Greeks and Romans, had some 

 notion of the value of their forests, and put forth many 

 efforts to prevent their useless destruction. These efforts 

 were of little avail, and the Mediterranean lands to-day 

 are sorely in need of more wood, and their mountains of 

 a better cover. 



In the colder climates of central Europe the value of 

 forests was fully recognized as early as the year 1300. 

 Though at that time the increasing population required 

 larger and larger fields to provide grain and fodder, yet 

 the clearing away of forest was regulated, and in many 

 localities entirely forbidden. Many of the towns began 

 to buy forest land to guard against a wood famine. The 

 fundamental principles of forestry, that the land must be 

 kept stocked with trees and that we must not cut more 

 than the growth if the forest is to be kept up, were also 

 clearly recognized. 



