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Reasons in Favor of the Establishment of a National Park

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  • Within about a day's travel of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington and most of the Atlantic seaboard, and quite as accessible to Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis and St. Louis, there are vast stretches of virgin forests—along the line of the great Smoky mountains, on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina—that are 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 thirty miles, the late Prof. Gray, the eminent botanist of Harvard, tells us that he encountered a greater number of species of indigenous trees than could be observed in a trip from Turkey to England through Europe, or from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountain plateau. The region surrounding that described by Prof. Gray, especially to the west, with the headwaters of the Tenneessee, 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 preserve, where every sort of North American animal or fish would thrive and where almost every tree or plant found within our borders from the Atlantic to the Pacific would grow uncared for. — Scientific American. JUL Already the timber cutter is at work and the Heaviest trunks of trees are being felled and hauled to the railroad, carried to Norfolk and Wilmington, and shipped to Germany. Men are buying up walnut trees at $100 as they stand in the forest. Every squatter who has a clump of trees has an offer from a timber cutter for his grove, while sawmills are work-
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