“The subject of forest preservation is of the utmost importance to the State.  The Adirondacks and Catskills should be great parks kept in perpetuity for the benefit and enjoyment of our people.  Much has been done of late years towards their preservation, but very much remains to be done.  The provisions of law in reference to sawmills and wood-pulp mills are defective and should be changed so as to prohibit dumping dye-stuff, sawdust, or tan-bark, in any amount whatsoever, into the streams.  Reservoirs should be made, but not where they will tend to destroy large sections of the forest, and only after a careful and scientific study of the water resources of the region.  The people of the forest regions are themselves growing more and more to realize the necessity of preserving both the trees and the game.  A live deer in the woods will attract to the neighborhood ten times the money that could be obtained for the deer’s dead carcass.  Timber theft on the State lands is, of course, a grave offense against the whole public.

“Hardy outdoor sports, like hunting, are in themselves of no small value to the National character and should be encouraged in every way.  Men who go into the wilderness, indeed, men who take part in any field sports with horse or rifle, receive a benefit which can hardly be given by even the most vigorous athletic games.

“There is a further and more immediate and practical end in view.  A primeval forest is a great sponge which absorbs and distills the rain water.  And when it is destroyed the result is apt to be an alternation of flood and drought.  Forest fires ultimately make the land a desert, and are a detriment to all that portion of the State tributary to the streams through the woods where they occur.  Every effort should be made to minimize their destructive influence.  We need to have our system of forestry gradually developed and conducted along scientific principles.  When this has been done it will be possible to allow marketable lumber to be cut everywhere without damage to the forests—­indeed, with positive advantage to them.  But until lumbering is thus conducted, on strictly scientific principles no less than upon principles of the strictest honesty toward the State, we cannot afford to suffer it at all in the State forests.  Unrestrained greed means the ruin of the great woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers.

“Ultimately the administration of the State lands must be so centralized as to enable us definitely to place responsibility in respect to everything concerning them, and to demand the highest degree of trained intelligence in their use.

“The State should not permit within its limits factories to make bird skins or bird feathers into articles of ornament or wearing apparel.  Ordinary birds, and especially song birds, should be rigidly protected.  Game birds should never be shot to a greater extent than will offset the natural rate of increase. . . .  Care should be taken not to encourage the use of cold storage or other market systems which are a benefit to no one but the wealthy epicure who can afford to pay a heavy price for luxuries.  These systems tend to the destruction of the game, which would bear most severely upon the very men whose rapacity has been appealed to in order to secure its extermination. . . .”