186 



SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. 



Mountains, on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina — 

 that an> thoroughly .suited to the purposes of a great game and forest 

 preserve. Going- up from the lowlands of Walhalla, S. C. , to the high 

 plateau surrounding- Highlands, N. C, a stage trip of about 80 miles, 

 the late Professor Gray, the eminent botanist of Harvard, tells us that 

 he encountered a g-reater number of species of indigenous trees than 

 could be observed in a trip from Turkey to England throug-h Europe, 

 or from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountain plateau. The 

 region surrounding that described by Professor Gray, especially to 

 the west, with the headwaters of the Tennessee, the French Broad, 

 and the Savannah rivers, all within a few miles of each other, with 

 fertile valleys and mountain elevations of 5,000 feet or more, and a 

 density of verdure unapproached elsewhere, is an ideal spot for a pre- 

 serve, where every sort of North American animal or fish would 

 thrive, and where almost eveiy tree or plant found within our borders, 

 from the Atlantic to the Pacific, would grow uncared for. 



[The New York Sun.] 



A national forest reserve in the Appalachian belt can be established 

 only hy the purchase of land, for there is no public domain in that 

 region. The bill now before Congress directs the Secretar}' of Agri- 

 culture to purchase not more than 2,000,000 acres of forest in the 

 Southern Appalachians and appropriates $5,000,000 for that purpose. 

 The lands must be situated within the States of Virginia, North and 

 South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennes.see. The purpose of 

 establishing the proposed reserve is to introduce scientific forestry 

 methods, conserve the forests, and at the same time permit lumbering 

 in this large area of hard woods. 



No one now doubts that it was wise policy to set apart the forest 

 reserves which have been established since 1896 in eleven of our West- 

 ern States and Territories. The idea was at first strongly opposed on 

 the ground that the withdrawal of so much public land from purchase 

 would retard the development of the States concerned and delay the 

 discovery of new sources of mineral wealth. These misgivings, how- 

 ever, were not justified by our policy with regard to the reserves. 

 The Geological Survey has been engaged since the summer of 1897 

 in studying the timber, mineral, and agricultural resources of these 

 regions. All of them may be developed as fast as capital and labor 

 seek employment there. In some of the reserves, as in the Black 

 Hills, for example, large industries have long been established. But 

 these large areas can no longer be stripped of all their timber without 

 a thought of tree replanting. The propagation of timber must here- 

 after go hand in hand with its utilization; and destruction by forest 

 fires that have swept large areas will at least be diminished by proper 

 regulations. 



