FOREST PLANTING 



PART I. — Forest Culture. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



About sixty yeai-s ago, Governor DeWitt Clinton, in 

 a message to the Legislature of New York, urged the 

 fostering of forest planting, and declared that the repro- 

 duction of our woods was an object of primary import- 

 ance. This sensible advice did not receive that legisla- 

 tive consideration which the great interests involved 

 therein merited. The devastation of our forests, especi- 

 ally of those situated in the Adirondack region, went on 

 as before, nay even increased from year to year, so that 

 now the formerly densely wooded summits of those 

 mountains are nearly denuded. We will not expatiate 

 here on the calamities which have already befallen the 

 country by the continual deforestation of our mountains, 

 and which undoubtedly will in time grow to much larger 

 dimensions ; we only point to the fact that since the axe 

 of the tanner, lumberman and miner has reached the 

 previously well -stocked high plateaus on the Adirondacks 

 (whence the sources of the Hudson, the Black Eiver, 

 some tributaries of the Mohawk and other rivers take 

 their rise), our noble Hudson river has lost nearly five 

 feet in its average depth. This fall in the level of the 



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