362 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



. The question, I suppose, is asked: "Does it pay to reforest these wastes?" The 

 answer is, that if the State really proposes to hold, protect, and improve this forest 

 area as a whole, it does pay unquestionably, even were we to look at it merely as a 

 work of internal improvement. And if, as the indications are, the cost of restocking 

 these, at present, worse than worthless areas can be kept below ten dollars per acre on 

 the average, it can be figured out even as a profitable financial proposition. This 

 work of reclaiming wastes is, by the way, one against which no constitutional bar 

 exists, and which, therefore, could be taken in hand by the Forest Commission 

 without any change of present functions, if sufficient appropriations are made. 



Mow to Manage tl)e Called I^ands. 



The other problem, that of handling the culled lands, is one presenting much 

 greater difficulties. While the reclaiming of the waste lands is merely one of financial 

 capacity and of expenditures which can be more or less accurately determined, the 

 rational treatment of the forest lands requires not only much more skill, but their 

 improvement, if it is to be kept within practically advisable expenditures, is dependent 

 on market conditions, over which even the State may not exercise control. To 

 understand the problem we must state the conditions. 



The Adirondack forest is one composed of a variety of species, in which the hard- 

 woods, birch, maple, and beech preponderate, and in which the conifers, pine, spruce, 

 and hemlock, form a variable, more or less prominent part. The culling has been of 

 the latter, so-called soft woods, especially pine and spruce, because they were most in 

 demand and most easily handled and transported by water. As a consequence, after 

 the culling process, the hardwoods, preponderating before, became still stronger, and 

 only the tolerance of shade, which is a characteristic of the spruce, has maintained it 

 in younger individuals, besides the decrepit old ones which the logger has left; while 

 the white pine, which cannot reproduce itself under the shade of the hardwoods, is 

 almost extirpated, except in occasional openings. 



The hardwoods, while furnishing a full and pleasing canopy of foliage, which may 

 mislead the uninstructed into the belief that he is looking upon a virgin woods, exhibit 

 in the old specimens the decrepitude of age, dead branches and rotten heart, and 

 many of the younger, thrifty-looking trees, upon closer investigation, also show the 

 signs of decay as a result of the running fires which have swept over nearly every 

 culled tract of the wild woods. This, then, is the condition : a forest of old decrepit 

 hardwoods, deteriorating from year to year, with a tainted progeny struggling 

 beneath, and a small though promising number of young spruces impeded in their 

 development by the former, with occasional older trees that can be used as seed trees. 



