SIEUR DE MONTS PUBLICATIONS 



VIII 



TPIE ACADIAN FOREST 

 George B. Dorr 



The Acadian forest, using the word Acadian in its 

 early French sense, stretched dense and unbroken in 

 de Monts' and Champlain's time over the wide coastal 

 territory now occupied by eastern Maine, by Nova 

 Scotia and New Brunswick. Plundered of its wealth and 

 existing- but in fragments now, no forest of a temperate 

 zone clothes with more vigorous growth the land it occu- 

 pies, none has greater charm or shelters a wild life more 

 interesting. 



This forest is typically represented, with singular com- 

 pleteness, upon Mount Desert Island, where land and 

 sea conditions meet and where a unique topography 

 creates a correspondingly exceptional range of woodland 

 opportunity. To establish on the Island, in connection 

 with its now realized national park, a permanent ex- 

 hibit of this forest growing under original conditions, 

 lias been from the first a constant aim with those who 

 sought the park's creation. 



Such an exhibit has extraordinary value. A forest is 

 far more than the mere assemblage of its trees; asso- 

 ciated with them it contains, in regions of abundant 

 moisture such as the Acadiau, a related life, both plant 

 and animal, of infinite variety and richness, whose home 

 and sheltering habitat it makes. If it perish, the plants 

 that dwell beneath its shade and draw their sustenance 



