FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONER. 23 



will be too late to rerjair the injury. The Land Purchasing Board has 

 materially added to the holdings of the State during 1907, having purchased 

 and made contract to purchase 46,156 acres, which will make the total 

 amount of land held by the State 1,518,450 acres. Of this there are in 

 the Adirondacks 1,454,383 acres — the remaining 112,072 acres being in 

 the Catskills. Our State tree nurseries and reforested lands under the 

 supervision and management of this Department continue to attract wide- 

 spread attention among persons interested in the work throughout the 

 United States. During the year 1907, as heretofore, many persons inter- 

 ested in the work of tree growing and tree planting have visited our nur- 

 series and plantations and have pronounced them the best in the United 

 States. Without doubt it is advisable for the State to enter into the 

 planting of trees on a much larger scale to the end that at least 5,000,000 

 trees a year may be set out. The State of New York is the pioneer in 

 this work, and the reports of various States indicate that the State of New 

 York has planted more trees up to the present time than all the other States 

 in the Union, and nearly, if not quite, as many as have been planted by 

 the States and the national government combined. The commencement of 

 tree planting on a very large scale, and by all of the people of the State, 

 should not be put off. It takes a long time for a tree to grow, and every 

 year the work is delayed only hastens the time when the price of lumber 

 will be beyond the reach of a man with small means, and the price of paper 

 will be enormously increased to the consumers thereof. This subject, in 

 the judgment of the Commission, demands the earnest attention of all the 

 people, the hearty co-operation of the Legislature in the way of appro- 

 priations, and the best efforts of everyone to save the forests of the State 

 of New York and to furnish necessary trees for water protection and com- 

 mercial purposes. 



In saving the forest we do not mean that no trees should be cut — 

 that would be an impossible condition. We must have lumber and we must 

 have it for a thousand purposes. We do mean that cutting should be done 

 in a conservative manner down only to a reasonable size, leaving a fair 

 protection for the soil in order to conserve the water and have a new growth 

 of trees coming on. Where the seed trees of the conifers are all cut there 



