406 



of this report he says: "The lumbermen, however, have inflicted little 

 direct damage upon the Adirondack forests; the proportion of soft 

 woods in these forests is small; probably lumbermen caused five 

 per cent of the whole forest growth; and as these are the only trees 

 cut for lumber, serious injury is not directly inflicted by lumbering;" 

 he goes on to compare it with the actual danger to damage from fire; 

 I have been of the opinion that a park created as it will be for all time, 

 that the question of whether the evergreen growth in such forest was 

 young or mature made very little difference for park purposes; that 

 it would be but a very few years when there would be a fine mature 

 growth of timber that would be all of hard woods to start with. 

 t Q. That is to say the large evergreens could be cut out without 

 injury? 



- A. I should say so; I am not an expert, I am so informed and 

 believe it. 



Q. With reference to a park as distinguished from the forest pre- 

 serve, what is your idea in regard to that ? 



A. The Governer's recommendation is from fifty to seventy miles 

 square, being a man of peace and compromise I thought about mid- 

 way between the minimum and maximum would be quite as large a 

 tract as the State would undertake to create; the area within our 

 boundaries is 2,300,000 acres, which is just about sixty miles square, 

 within a fraction of that. 



Q. Now, with reference to the fixing 6f the boundaries of the park 

 what was the direction of the commission in that respect ? 



A The understanding between the commissioners was that each 

 man should give an outline, give his idea of the proper tract; I pre- 

 pared mine without any consultation with the others but not without 

 conference with other gentlemen who are interested in Adirondack 

 park matters and having no pecuniary interest in the woods; at a 

 meeting in Albany in the latter part of December or the first of January, 

 I produced this map, this outline, and I put the matter to a vote and 

 it was adopted and Mr. Train and Mr. Fox were directed to make the 

 west boundary more complete, mine was kind of rough, and to carry 

 out the idea which he had adopted of making the outline follow county, 

 town and patent lines and streams as far as possible. 



Q. Was such plan subsequently presented to you; was that the plan 

 adopted ? 



A. That was the plan adopted; I have forwarded a definite 

 mathematical, as far as possible, outline of the park. 



Q. For what reason ? 



A. Because it conformed to my v idea of a park. 



