extent as to raise questions of right and precedence, and otherwise to create difficulties which it became impossible for the absent administration to control. A permanent representative was therefore installed in 1908, after the club had expended a considerable sum in enlarging the house and providing a separate apartment for ladies. The club supplies fuel and utensils for cooking, but not food; also blankets, to defend against the low temperatures at night. The hut is conveniently approached from the highway at Randolph, N. H., the hotels of which shelter doubtless the most enthusiastic clientele of climbers to be found in any eastern mountain resort. An elaborate system of paths, constructed and maintained by the club— or by the personal initiative and at the expense of Mr. J. Rayner Edmands of Cambridge, an original member and officer, later president of the society-has this refuge as one of its objectives, and few of the club paths, of which some 130 miles are under official supervision, are more frequented than those of the northern peaks. They are directly connected with those leading across the summits or skirting the several cones of the Great Range, of which the summit of Mount Washington is the midway point. In traversing this "high line" one enjoys what is doubtless the finest mountain excursion afforded by the mountains of eastern America. Hundreds make it now every year. Probably the number who had made it antecedent to the founding of the Appalachian Club would hardly have exceeded the number of those who may form a single clubparty of the present day. For such as desire to cover the trip in easy stages it is possible to take advantage of certain of the club's log camps, by descending into some of the side ravines. On the other hand those limited in time, but not in strength, may go from the Madison Spring Hut over the range to the Crawford House in the Notch in a single day.

Besides these paths to and along the summits of mountains the club has opened shorter trails to interesting objects in different parts of the White Mountains, such as the Ice Gulch in Randolph, the "Lost River" in North Woodstock, where the stream winds an almost subterranean way among vast boulders, or to that giant erratic, the Madison Boulder, perhaps the largest in the United States, in the town of the same name. And all these facilities, save only Three Mile Island, the club offers as freely to the public as to its own members. Consequently it is not strange that it is regarded

as a society of public utility, and that it is granted special consideration as regards taxation by the legislatures of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and certain privileges by the large owners of forest tracts, whose good will is of no small importance.

It may have been noticed that, in setting forth the objects of the club, the organizing of excursions to accessible points of interest was spoken of as "incidental." So it was and such it has remained; but the incidental bulks large among the popular and truly useful activities of the club. Indeed, one of the hardest worked committces is that on excursions and field meetings. They have in charge not only the arranging annually of a series of excursions with large parties, but the details of these and their personal conducting by one or more representatives of the committee. Such excursions are principally to mountain resorts of New England; yet the Adirondacks, the Catskills, the Appalachians of North Carolina, and even the distant Selkirk and Cascade ranges of the Far West have been the goal of enthusiastic club parties. Since 1886 a new feature has provided the enjoyment of visits by frequent smaller parties to the nearer points of interest, combined with the healthful exercise of walking. These are the weekly "outings" to the hills, parks, groves or seashore in the vicinity of Boston, or within easy access by rail, led by some volunteer member of the club. Foul indeed must be the weather to occasion a postponement. The outings are becoming more popular than the excursions, if we may judge from the statistics of 1908, when the total number on six excursions was 290, an average of 48, and on forty-three outings it reached 2,293, an average of 53.

In this connection mention should be made also of the "Snowshoe Section," an organization within the club and under its control, yet having its own officers and being in most respects independent. It was organized as early as 1886. Its object is to encourage snowshoeing, not only as an exercise, but more especially as a help in mountaineering. All club excursions of more than two days' duration in the months of January and February are in charge of the snowshoe committee. It numbers some 280 members, about onesixth of the entire membership of the parent club.

It would perhaps be claiming too much to say that to the Appalachian Mountain Club is due the extension of its idea and methods to the other parts of the country, yet doubtless its singular

success has been an inspiration to those who led in the founding of the Sierra Club in California and the Mazamas in Oregon, the leading out-of-door societies of the Pacific Coast. With grander mountains readily accessible, the alpinistic feature is more in evidence in those than in the eastern society, which must content itself for the most part with lower altitudes and less exciting ascents, and make more of the exquisite sylvan features of our own forests and lakes.

If the writer of this paper, who has followed the fortunes of the club from its inception to the present day, were called upon to tell wherein the organization has been of chief advantage in the larger social life of the time, he would refer to the conspicuous part it bore in the work of creating the Metropolitan Park system of Boston, the conception of its then councillor of topography, Mr. Charles Eliot, but he would lay even greater stress on its effect in awakening a dormant love of out-of-doors with its clarifying and uplifting ethical influence and in providing the way in which hundreds, and even thousands, who otherwise never might have found them, may enjoy the delights of the deep woods and the cloud-swept mountain top.

The story of the Appalachian Mountain Club and of its successful work deserves to be read and pondered in every city of our land, particularly in those favored by proximity to mountains or to other grand or beautiful natural features. Similar societies might to great public advantage be formed in many places, which later might become affiliated with the Appalachian Club in a way similar to that in which the numerous local "sections" of the great German and Austrian Alpine Club contribute to swell its influential total to well nigh 100,000 members.

THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN PARK RESERVE AS

A NATIONAL PLAYGROUND

BY GEORGE T. SURFACE,

Assistant Professor of Geography, Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

As phenomenal as has been the increase in population and the industrial and commercial development of the eastern half of the United States in the last quarter-century, we have every reason to believe that the next quarter will witness changes even more significant than those of the recent past. It is worthy of note that the development of a diversity of wants has progressed at a more rapid rate than the population increase. This has naturally revolutionized industries as to establishment, relative importance, equipment, labor control, marketing and distribution. The increase of aggregate and per capita wealth has kept pace with our marvelous industrial and commercial growth.

Springing from this maze of material prosperity, arise conditions so perplexing in character and impoverishing in tendency as to demand the serious consideration of every individual who is unwilling that the highest privileges of many be sacrificed to the financial emolument of the few. We are well aware of the influences rife for suppressing any movement which, for the well-being of posterity, thwarts the march of predatory gain. It is, therefore, becoming that we emphasize in a way which cannot be misunderstood the importance of conserving some of nature's stores on a sufficiently large scale, not only to fulfill adequately the urgent demands of this generation, but to meet the more pressing demands of our children and those who shall come after them.

The problem of forest conservation is usually discussed with reference to the primary object of supplying economically the lumber demands of the present and the future, but the prospective forest reserve in the southern Appalachians is far broader in its scope and purposes. For several years the government has had under consideration the feasibility of acquiring in the southern half of the Appalachian Mountains a large forest area geographically

situated in southern West Virginia, southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.

Though the chief aim of this discussion is to point out the importance of this forest reserve from the standpoint of what it will mean to the people of the United States as a national recreative resort, it may be of interest and profit to outline, first, some of the economic benefits to accrue from the project, since these represent the fundamental purpose of the movement in its inception.

The region in question occupies the heart of the largest wooded region which remains east of the Rocky Mountains. Considering the states involved individually, we find that 73 per cent. of West Virginia is wooded, 58 per cent. of Virginia, 62 per cent. of Kentucky, 53 per cent. of Tennessee and 73 per cent. of North Carolina. Only a small proportion of the improved lands of the respective states is situated in the mountainous parts under discussion. From the standpoint of agricultural possibilities the region has little to offer, and the uplands which have been cleared and placed under cultivation are for the most part so unproductive as to give a scant living to the mountain people who have struggled to maintain themselves in these rugged regions since the early part of the last century. The great resource of this region has been lumber, and this is its most important resource at this time, except in the West Virginia-Virginia-Kentucky coal field. Though it is typically a hardwood region, and the part of the Appalachian belt where the hardwoods are developed in greatest variety and excellence, many soft woods also grow luxuriantly in favorable localities. Not only is this the most virgin part of the largest hardwood belt in the United States, but it is the only hardwood region whose economic environment is such as to foster a perpetuation of forest conditions. The wasteful cutting and destruction of the forests throughout this area has naturally resulted in degrading rather than improving the character of the resource. The slaughter continues, and fires of accidental or incendiary origin annually devastate hundreds of square miles of land on which would grow the most valuable cabinet hardwoods to great perfection. The protection which the government has given to her other forest domains is ample evidence that the destruction of the woods in the above region would be largely eliminated under governmental supervision and forest police protection. The present supply of the more valuable hardwoods is not equal