SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. 



189 



It is, or should be. an accepted principle that the Government is to 

 provide for public needs when private enterprise, for any reason, can 

 not be induced to make adequate provisions. * * * 



Such trul}' imperial gifts have greatly enriched a part of this countrj^; 

 it will be well, before the remnants of primeval nature have vanished, 

 that the other parts of our realm should have like share in them. 



[Prof. W J McGee in the Worlds Work, November, 1901. J 



The geographer in studying the Appalachian region perceives that 

 in the wooded wilderness nature provides a vast reservoir S5^steni for 

 the storage of storm waters — a system at once so perfect and so eco- 

 nomical that all the year's rainfall (and light snow fall as well) is first 

 appropriated to the uses of plant life, then conserved for a time in the 

 subsoil against drought, and finally carried bv subterranean seepage 

 to the lower levels, where only the excess above local plant needs and 

 animal demands is allowed to flow through spring and stream and river 

 down the long way to the distant ocean. * * * 



Now he may turn another leaf to the closing lines of his lesson and 

 read of that delicate interrelation of natural conditions which has 

 resulted throughout the Appalachian region in the development of a 

 floral mantle to sta}' the storms, and thus at once to sustain the flora 

 itself and to estop destructive erosion. These flnal lines run deep into 

 earth science and into plant science and need not be followed save by 

 the specialist. Yet the ultimate axiom is simple, so simple that he 

 who runs might read, so simple as to make it a marvel that observant 

 men did not grasp it at the beginning of knowledge rather than wait 

 until the end — it is the simple axiom that life prevails over death, 

 that plant power is stronger than rock power. Nor can the geographer 

 in the AppaVu-hian region fail to apply the axiom. He may call the 

 application theory, argument, policy, cause; he may whisper it in 

 private council, ma}' announce it in scientific conclave, may proclaim 

 it in legislative halls, may send it ringing through the world and up 

 the corridors of future time to benefit all mankind; he may smother 

 it cravenly in coward breast, or he ma}' sacrifice it to paltry greed, 

 yet if he is hone.st with his facts and with himself he can not fail to 

 realize that the forests must be preserved, else the mountains will be 

 destroyed. 



Only a generation ago science plodded wearily along one side of the 

 pathway of human progress, while statecraft flitted airily along the 

 other side of the straight and narrow path, both led in part by hered- 

 itary theories. But within the work time of men now living science 

 and statecraft have drawn well into the main pathway of practical 

 humanity, and in this country at least, they have joined hands firmly; 

 to day science stands in the Federal Cabinet in all the dignity of an 



