220 



THE ADIRONDACK^. 



FOREST LK< JISLATION. 



A desolation like that which has overwhelmed .many once beautiful and 

 fertile regions of Europe awaits important parts of America, and other com- 

 paratively new countries over which civilization is now extending its sway, 

 unless prompt measures are taken to check the action of destructive causes 

 already in operation. It is almost in vain to expect that mere restrictive legisla- 

 lion can do anything effectual to arrest the progress of the evil, except so far as 

 the State is still the proprietor of extensive forests. Woodlands which have 

 passed into private hands will everywhere be managed upon the same economical 

 principles as other possessions, and every proprietor will, as a general rule, fell 

 his woods unless he believes that it will be for his pecuniary interest to preserve 

 them. In France, law has been found impotent to prevent the destruction or waste- 

 ful economy of private forests. 



Fortunately for the immense economical and sanitary interests involved in this 

 branch of rural and industrial husbandry, public opinion is thoroughly roused to 

 the importance of the subject. Plantations of a certain extent have been made, 

 and a wiser system is pursued in the treatment of the remaining native woods. 



The people of the far west have thrown themselves into the work with much 

 of the passionate energy which marks their action in reference to other modes of 

 physicial improvement. California has appointed a State forester with a liberal 

 salary, and made such legal provisions and appropriations as to render the 

 discharge of his duties effectual. The hands that built the Pacific Railway at the 

 rate of miles in a day are busy in planting belts of trees to shelter the track from 

 snow-drifts, and to supply at a future day timber for ties and fuel for the locomo- 

 tives. The settlers on the open plains, too, are not less actively engaged in the 

 propagation of the woods. 



It was not till 1869 that the legislature of rhe State of New York turned its 

 attention to the subject of tree-planting, when it passed a law to encourage plant- 

 ing trees by the sides of public highways, and in 1872 created by enactment a 

 " Commission for State Parks," whose duty was to enquire into the expediency of 

 providing for vesting in the State the title to the timber regions lying within 

 the Counties of Lewis, Essex, Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence, Herkimer, and 

 Hamilton, and converting the same into a public park. The commission known 

 as the " park commission " made a report recommending that no more lands 

 lying in the counties named should be sold, but that as lands were acquired by 

 the State through tax sales, they should be held for future forest management. 

 The methods recommended by the commission were not acted upon until 1883, 

 when a law was passed prohibiting further sales of lands in the counties named 

 in the Act, and also in the counties of Saratoga and Warren. During the inter- 

 val the sale of State lands had been continued, and in 1883 the State had a 

 much less acreage in its possession than it would have had if it had adopted the recom- 

 mendations contained in the commission's report as soon as they were made. 



At the session of the legislature in 1884 there was appropriated $5,000 to be 

 used by the comptroller of the State in "the employment of such experts as he 

 may deem necessary 'to investigate and report a system of forest preservation." 

 In July of that year the comptroller (Hon. Alfred C. Chapin) appointed as such 

 experts, Prof. Charles S. Sargent, of Cambridge, Mass. ; D. Willis James, Esq., of 

 New York City ; Hon. William A. Poucher, of Oswego, and Edward AI. Shepard, 

 Esq., of Brooklyn. The committee, so constituted, reported the result of their 

 investigations, coupled with their recommendations as to future policy, to the 



