serious results over wide areas. In addition to its probable effect on climate, it is causing irregularities in the flow of the streams, which are destroying their value for water power and navigation during the dry seasons, and during the rainy seasons are washing away the soils on the steeper hillsides and mountain slopes, filling up the stream beds with sediment, and destroying the agricultural value of the lowlands along the streams. Both the diminishing flow of water during the dry season and the deposit of sediment in the stream beds and harbors during periods of flood are becoming yearly more dangerous to navigation and are leading directly to increased annual appropriations for rivers and harbors.

The establishment of the proposed national forest reserve will tend to remedy these serious and growing evils, will protect the sources of many important streams, and, under the management of trained forest experts, will serve as a demonstration of the method of perpetuating forests and yet making them pay. Such an example will lead both States and individuals to encourage and practice forest management and restoration on all lands which are better suited to forest growth than for agricultural purposes.

The proposed national reserve for the protection and use of hardwood forests should be located in the Southern Appalachian Mountains for several reasons.

That region contains the greatest variety of hard woods to be found anywhere on this continent, because the northern and southern forest floras intermingle there. A list of the trees native to the region of the proposed reserve is given hereafter. We find there the largest remaining bodies of these forests in their virgin condition, the largest and highest mountains east of Colorado, and the largest mountain masses covered with hard-wood forests in the United States.

The slopes of these mountains contain the sources of the Tennessee, the Savannah, the Broad, the Catawba, and other rivers, and important tributaries of the Ohio. This fact is doubly significant because this region has none of the extensive glacial gravel deposits which serve in the more northern States as storage reservoirs for water, and so aid the forests to maintain uniformity of flow in the streams. Hence this measure stands on a basis of its own, and need not be regarded as creating a precedent for similar action in other cases.

This should be a national forest reserve, for the reason that the problems and dangers which it is intended to meet are national. It is true that a few States are now establishing State forests reserves; and it is believed that the measure now proposed will encourage such a movement on the part of other States. In New York large expenditures are being made to purchase reserve forest lands lying entirely within that State, about the head waters of important streams which also lie within the limits of the State. But the great mountain masses of this proposed national forest reserve lie in several States, and the streams which rise among them flow through and are of importance to more than as many others. The combined annual income of the several States grouped about this region is but little greater than the appropriation carried by this bill.

It may be urged against this measure that it is a new departure for the Government. But the Western forest reserves have been set aside out of the public domain which was purchased by the Government at a time when the nation was composed largely of the Eastern States. Out

of the lands so purchased nearly 50,000,000 of acres of forest-covered lands have been set aside as national forest reserves and parks for the purpose of perpetuating a timber supply in the Western States and Territories and for preserving forever the sources of their more important streams. Furthermore, the Government has recently been purchasing lands in the East for military parks and reservations and for other purposes. Hence it may be asserted in all fairness that what is now proposed is new neither in principle nor practice. In view of the importance of the measure now proposed in behalf of the hard-wood forests of the country, and considering the fact that there are no public lands covered with hard-wood forests, and that neither individuals nor the States adjacent to this region can reasonably be expected to establish such forest reserves as are absolutely essential, it is evidently the duty of the General Government to take the present step.

It will be asked how far the management and care of such a forest reserve will prove an annual expense to the Government. Attention is called, in reply, to the accompanying letter from the Secretary of Agriculture, in which he says: "I am entirely confident that very soon after its creation the proposed reserve would, under conservative forestry, be self-supporting from the sale of timber." Further, it may be said that many European forests, under government supervision, yield a net annual income from the sale of timber and other products of from $1 to $2 per acre or more. While no such income is expected to result from the proposed reserve in the immediate future, yet it is confidently expected that in the course of a few years this reserve will be self-supporting; and that subsequently, as the hard-wood forests of other regions are cut away and the country more thickly settled, the sale of timber and other products from this reserve will yield a considerable net profit.

Other important questions connected with this measure which have been considered by the committee are fully answered in the statement which follows from the Secretary of Agriculture. The memorial of the Appalachian National Park Association and other documents are added.

The legislatures of the several States within which the proposed forest reserve may be located, with a single exception, have already conferred upon Congress the necessary authority to acquire lands within their boundaries. In the case of the exception a resolution which indorses the plan has passed both houses of the legislature, and further action may confidently be expected in due time.

This is a measure which has every consideration in its favor; and, in view of its importance and the beneficent results which will certainly flow from its adoption, it should commend itself to the wisdom of Congress, as it must appeal to the patriotism of every citizen.

APPENDIX.

FEBRUARY 9, 1901.

MY DEAR SENATOR: I am in receipt of your letter of this date, in which you ask for an expression of my opinion regarding Senate bill 5518, which provides for the purchase of a forest reserve in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. After a thorough investigation of the forest conditions of this region, I am heartily in favor of the creation of the proposed reserve and of Mr. Pritchard's bill. The region in which it is proposed to locate this reserve contains the finest hard-wood forests yet remaining

in the United States; it is admirably adapted to the purposes of a public resort for health and recreation; the land may be purchased at a reasonable price; the preservation of the forest is essential not only to the well-being of the region itself, but to that of great rivers which flow from it and to the interests they subserve; and I am entirely confident that very soon after its creation the proposed reserve would, under conservative forestry, be self-supporting from the sale of timber.

Very respectfully,

Hon. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE,

United States Senate.

JAMES WILSON, Secretary.

You will find a more detailed statement of my position in my letter to the President, transmitted by him to the Congress January 16.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

I transmit herewith, for the information of the Congress, a letter from the Secretary of Agriculture, in which he presents a preliminary report of investigations upon the forests of the Southern Appalachian Mountain region. Upon the basis of the facts established by this investigation the Secretary of Agriculture recommends the purchase of land for a national forest reserve in western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and adjacent States. I commend to the favorable consideration of the Congress the reasons upon which the recommendation rests.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, January 16, 1901.

WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

The PRESIDENT:

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, Washington, D. C., January 3, 1901.

The bill making appropriations for the Department of Agriculture for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1901, provides that a "sum not to exceed $5,000 may, in the discretion of the Secretary of Agriculture, be used to investigate the forest conditions in the southern Appalachian Mountain region of western North Carolina and adjacent States." In accordance with this provision I have made a thorough investigation of the forests in a portion of the southern Appalachian Mountains, as directed above, including an estimate of the amount and condition of the standing timber, an inquiry as to the suitability of this region for a national park, as proposed by the Appalachian National Park Association, and an examination of the validity of the reasons advanced by its advocates for the creation of such a park. In this task I have received generous and effective cooperation and assistance through the United States Geological Survey, from the Department of the Interior, which recognized in this way the deep and widely diffused public interest in the plan.

The forest investigation was made to include a study of the character and distribution of the species of timber trees, the density and value of forest growth, the extent to which the timber has been cut or damaged by fire, the size and nature of the present holdings, the prices at which these forest lands can now be purchased, and the general and special conditions that affect the prosecution of conservative forestry on a large scale.

The hydrographic survey of the region, conducted by the United States Geological Survey, includes a general study of its topographic features; of the relation of the soils, forest cover, and rainfall; of the quantity of water flowing out of it through the various streams during different seasons, and of the influence exerted on the regularity of this flow by forest clearings. More than 750 stream measurements have already been made and much additional data of special value has been secured.

In addition to these investigations I have given thorough attention to the arguments advanced by the movers for the proposed park and to those of their opponents, and as a result I am strongly of opinion that this matter is worthy of careful consid

eration.

I have the honor to transmit herewith a mounted original copy of a large map, which shows in detail the mapping of forests accomplished during the past summer over an area of nearly 8,000 square miles. A full report of the work and of its results is now in preparation and will be submitted for your consideration at an early date.