LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. 
U. 8S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 
DIVISION OF FORESTRY, 
Washington, D. C., July 8, 1899. 
sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith a report entitled Practi- 
cal Forestry in the Adirondacks, by Henry S. Graves, superintendent 
of working plans in the Division of Forestry, and to recommend its 
publication as Bulletin No. 26 of this Division. 
In addition to an account of the general conditions which govern - 
forest management in the Adirondacks, this report contains a state- 
ment of work done and results accomplished in that region under the 
provisions of Circular No. 21 of the Division of Forestry. In this cir- 
cular, under date of October 8, 1898, the Department offered to assist 
farmers, lumbermen, and others in handling their forest lands. The 
response was immediate and widespread. Requests for such assistance 
have been received for about one and one-half million acres of forest land, 
approximately 400,000 acres of which have already received attention. 
Of the latter, the two tracts dealt with in this bulletin form a most 
important part. So far as the Division is informed one of the tracts, 
of an area of 68,000 acres, supplies the first instance of the practice of 
systematic forestry by a lumber company in the Adirondacks, and 
by far the most extensive example of forest management in the 
United States. The other tract, Nehasane Park, though smaller, is of 
peculiar interest, because its conditions are exceptionally favorable for 
forest management and because the methods of lumbering upon it are 
being rapidly improved. 
It is shown in the report that the first year’s work on the above- 
mentioned tracts was in sume respects unsatisfactory, but that, under 
the circumstances, the high class of lumbering which is being done during 
the present season could not have been expected until the new methods 
had been tried and the woodsmen had had experience in them. Any 
attempt violently to overturn established ways of doing work in the 
woods must fail. Methods consecrated by years of practice yield slowly 
to the changes advocated by the Division, but still they yield. The first 
year’s work in the Adirondacks under the provisions of Circular No. 21, 
although it secured the safety and reproduction of the forest, was rough. 
It is a matter for congratulation that the second year’s lumbering is 
beginning under much better conditions and with the promise of great 
improvement in the character on the work. 
Respectfully, 
GIFFORD PINCHOT, Forester. 
Hon. J. H. BRIGHAM, 
Acting Secretary. 
