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Report of the Secretary of Agriculture in relation to the forests, rivers, and mountains of the southern Appalachian region

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  • 170 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. flora 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 lie 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 forest reserves, and it is believed that the measure now proposed will encourage such a movement on tin1 part of other States. In New York large expenditures are being made to purchase reserve forest lands lying entirely within that State, about the headwaters 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 its 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 land- 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 oe expected to establish such forest reserves as are absolutely essential, it is evidently the duty ot 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
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