THE ADIRONDACK FOREST. 
235 
covers far the largest proportion of the surface. Through this 
territory, the soil is generally poor, and even the new clearings 
have little of the luxuriance of harvest which distinguishes 
them elsewhere. The value of the land for agricultural uses 
is therefore very small, and few purchases are made for any 
other purpose than to strip the soil of its timber. It has been 
often proposed that the State should declare the remaining 
forest the inalienable property of the commonwealth, but I 
believe the motive of the suggestion has originated rather in 
poetical than in economical views of the subject. Both these 
classes of considerations have a real worth. It is desirable that 
some large and easily accessible region of American soil should 
remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a 
museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the 
recreation of the lover of nature, and an asylum where indi¬ 
genous tree, and humble plant that loves the shade, and fish 
and fowl and four-footed beast, may dwell and perpetuate their 
kind, in the enjoyment of such imperfect protection as the 
laws of a people jealous of restraint can afford them. The 
immediate loss to the public treasury from the adoption of this 
policy would be inconsiderable, for these lands are sold at low 
rates. The forest alone, economically managed, would, with¬ 
out injury, and even with benefit to its permanence and growth, 
soon yield a regular income larger than the present value of 
the fee. 
The collateral advantages of the preservation of these for¬ 
ests would be far greater. Nature threw up those mountains 
and clothed them with lofty woods, that they might serve as a 
reservoir to supply with perennial waters the thousand rivers 
and rills that are fed by the rains and snows of the Adiron- 
dacks, and as a screen for the fertile plains of the central coun¬ 
ties against the chilling blasts of the north wind, which meet 
no other barrier in their sweep from the Arctic pole. The 
climate of Northern New York even now presents greater 
extremes of temperature than that of Southern France. The 
long continued cold of winter is far more intense, the short 
heats of summer not less fierce than in Provence, and hence 
