PLEASURES OF ANGLING. 211 



flowers and the blossoming of fruit-trees having 

 come, with a single companion, and with an elastic 

 buoyancy not at all in keeping with the traditional 

 rheumatic propriety of time-wrinkles and silvered 

 locks, we moved off, on the 23d of May, for that 

 Eden of Anglers, where nature unadorned excels 

 in picturesqueness and grandeur, as well as in vast- 

 ness and magnificence, all the noted parks and pre- 

 serves which have acquired their attractiveness and 

 beauty through the genius, taste and affluence of 

 man. And I trust that this vast forest may never 

 be less a forest than it is to-day. The movement 

 recently initiated to declare it and hold it in perpe- 

 tuity as a state park, marks the wisdom of those 

 who made the suggestion, is in harmony with the 

 spirit of the age, and, a century hence, if now 

 inaugurated, will be recognized as the highest proof 

 of the wisdom, sagacity and foresight of the states- 

 men of our time. And this not simply because it 

 would thus remain forever a resort for the sports- 

 man and invalid, but because it would remain for- 

 ever, as it is to-day, the abundant feeder of several 

 of our navigable rivers, and the best guarantee, as 

 science assures us, of that equable temperature and 

 uniform rain-fall which are so essential to the ma- 

 terial prosperity of the State. The arguments in 

 favor of the proposition are irresistible to all but 

 those who contemn the logic of science and " take 



