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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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  • 190 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. executive department, while the leading statesmen are grasping that modern geography which seeks to assimilate science. So it is but natural that the mountaineers of the Appalachian region, a virile and farseeing race, and various representatives of public interests have come to read alike the public lesson of conservation, the conservation of forests, in order that the very mountains may be conserved. Naturally, too, the applications of the lesson first came home to the hearts of the mountaineers amid their beloved ranges and rivers. They first noted the gullying of hillsides, with the accompanying loss of soil and clogging of valleys and polluting of streams, when clearings were pushed too far up the valley sides. They first observed that the carelessly- set forest fire produced, although more slowly, effects as disastrous as those of injudicious clearing. They first noticed that reckless lumbering robbed the land not merely of trees but of soil, of welling springs, and of the trout-filled brook, which were converted into muddy, freshet-ridden streams, running dry in midsummer. They7 first realized that the stripping of the chestnut oaks for tan bark was but the first step in a cumulative desolation. They were the first to realize the gradual change of brook and river from crystal streams flowing steadily all the season round to dirty danger lines mapped out by disastrous wrecks with every storm, only to lose themselves in mud between storms. Naturally, then, the agitation of a policy began among the mountaineers, and their voices were heard first in local conventions, then in the legislative halls of several States, and finally before Federal Congress and Cabinet. Such, in brief, is the history of the movement toward an Appalachian forest reserve, a movement which may lag or lunge according to the firmness of the alliance between science and statecraft, but which is manifestly destined for ultimate success, to the immeasurable benefit of mankind. RESOLUTION OF THE LEGISLATURE OF VIRGINIA. R, sol veil by the senate of Virginia, the house of delegates concurring, That the general assembly of Virginia, hereby expresses its approval of the movement looking to the establishment by the Federal Govern- mentof an extensive national forest in the Southern Appalachian Mountain region as a wise and beneficent measure, such as many other nations have already adopted, and which this country has already adopted in the West and should adopt in the East before it is too late, looking to the conservation of its forests and the protection of the sources of important streams; and Whereas the proposal to establish this forest reserve has been approved and urged by the leading scientific societies and forestry associations of this country and by both the general and technical press; and
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