The Association now holds between 5,000 and 6,000 acres upon the island in one continuous reservation, including the highest mountain peaks and the greater part of the water-shed of the highlying lakes between them from which the water supplies of the residential portions of the island are chiefly drawn. The area also includes much forest land, with deep valleys which offer admirable shelter for wild life, open marshes and pools suitable for wading and aquatic birds, streams on which beavers formerly built their dams and which would make fit homes for them again, and some of the best opportunities along the whole Maine coast for preserving and studying the native flora. The latter comprises, besides characteristic trees and shrubs, many plants and wild flowers which like the Mayflower and the wild orchids of the region are likely to become exterminated as the coast becomes more thickly populated unless protected in such shelters. This land has all been carefully selected with reference to withdrawing no good farming land from cultivation nor any sites from residence that might later prove important to the development of the Island, and the Association as a public service corporation holds it free of tax by special act of the State Legislature. The Legislature has also granted it rights which devolve upon it the protection of the Island's most important drinking-water sources.

As opportunity to do so at reasonable cost shall offer, the Association hopes to extend its ownership till it includes the whole range of bold, ice-worn granite hills, from twelve to fifteen miles in length, which extends across the Island-offering magnificent views of sea and land together with the lakes and marshes and the one deep fiord on our Atlantic coast which lie between them. The completion of this purpose will create a wild park of remarkable beauty, unique character and great variety of landscape feature, and one that will afford exceptional opportunity for sheltering wild life and for exhibiting at its best the characteristic plant life of our northern coast and country. To assure the permanence of such a park and to place it under a control whose ability to take wise advantage of the opportunities it offers and whose sole interest in the public good shall be established on the surest footing, it is proposed to place it under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, as a gift to the Nation.

From the Government's point of view, this is an opportunity of unusual advantage. The mountain range on the Island is not only exceedingly bold but its mountains are the only ones south. of Labrador on the Atlantic coast, with the exception of a few lower peaks such as the Gouldsboro and Camden Hills in its vicinity. From the higher summits of these mountains one looks out over forty or more miles of sea to the horizon, while the ancient granite masses which compose them have been shaped by ice-sheet grinding into forms of striking picturesqueness. The granite soils formed at their bases and in their every hollow unite, moreover, with the varying conditions of moisture, shelter and exposure they afford to give exceptional variety and vigor to the plant life about them.

Such a park, with special portions set aside for arboretum and wild garden work, would be of the greatest value to future landscape planting along the whole Maine coast, for the trend of the coast is so largely to the eastward that what will thrive upon one portion of it will, with rare exception, thrive in suitable exposure along it all. And this coast, formed by the drowning of an old land surface by the sea, has over twenty-five hundred miles of actual length islands included within a straight-line distance of 180 miles from Portland eastward, the greater part of which is singularly picturesque, accessible and attractive for summer residence.

For another reason also the Island is especially appropriate for plant protection and botanical study. A book upon the Island's flora the only one ever published on the sea-coast flora of New England from Massachusetts eastward was published twenty years ago through President Eliot's interest in the matter, by Mr. Edward L. Rand, himself a summer resident on the island and one of the best botanists in the country. He embodied in it the results of years of observation on his own part and on that of other botanists who had spent their summers there. The material for a new and much fuller edition of this work has been slowly accumulating since that time, and studies now ranging over a period of thirty years and more will make it, when published, one of the most thorough pieces of botanical work ever accomplished in this

country. Herbarium specimens representing the plants described have already been lodged with the Gray Herbarium at Cambridge, Mass., which will catalogue them for the new edition of the book and stand permanently ready thereafter to answer questions on the Island's flora.

With regard to the value of the island for bird protection, Mr. Edward Howe Forbush of Boston, Mass.- the Massachusetts State Ornithologist, a man of wide experience and deeply interested in this field has made a careful study of the opportunity which the island offers for the encouragement of bird life and says that these are great. It lies directly in the coast-wise stream of bird migration and is naturally visited by great numbers of northward and southward flying birds which rest there on their journey. It is also the summer home of many birds which spend the winter in the south. Moreover, whatever may be done there of this nature will be certain to arouse great interest, and be given wide publicity; and, being seen by people of education and influence coming from all portions of the country, will lead on quite certainly to the establishment of like work elsewhere.

These and other opportunities of rare interest and value this Island Park can offer, but to secure them and assure the permanence of what may be achieved it is deemed essential that the Federal Government should assume control.

In view of this and of the unique landscape character of these bold mountains by the sea; in view of the fact that such a park would be the only one which the Government yet has or will be likely to acquire on the North Atlantic coast, in contrast with the many which it now has in the far interior; in view of its accessibility by land and sea from the great eastern centers of population, and the rapidity with which these centers are growing, distances lessening and the wild regions of the country losing their wildness, it can hardly be doubted that the Government will avail itself of the generosity of the donors and for the public benefit accept the splendid gift when it is offered.

Proposed Mount Katahdin National Park in Maine.

A proposition for another National Park in Maine was embodied in a bill which was before the last session of Congress for

the Federal protection of the region including Mount Katahdin. This mountain, with an elevation of 5,386 feet, lies inland about 125 miles from the ocean just southeast of the intersection of the 46th parallel of north latitude and the 69th meridian of west longitude. It is a vast mass of ancient granite, lying between the east and west branches of the Penobscot River, isolated by the river valleys which enclose it, with massive forest-clad shoulders and deep basins left by ancient glaciers between them. Scenically, it is one of the most striking landscape features of the East. Around it and stretching northward to the Canadian border lies the greatest natural fish and game preserve in the eastern United States. Beyond the border, the same characteristic ice-scoured country, full of lakes and forests, marshes and streams, reaches unbroken to Hudson's Bay and Labrador. The country is so wild that in all probability it will always remain a wilderness. But civilization is pressing close around it, and its forests and wild life will be subject to destructive inroads unless something effective is done to protect them. The history of the Adirondack region in the State of New York, which we give on other pages of this Report, indicates how the wild life may be extinguished and the forests ravaged by prodigal lumbering and forest fires, even when not densely populated.

The bill introduced in Congress by the Hon. Frank E. Guernsey of Dover, Me., had the full endorsement of the State and a public sentiment not limited to the borders of that commonwealth. Mr. George B. Dorr of Boston, one of the most earnest advocates of the Mount Katahdin National Park, has said very truly that there is great present need of conserving for the future the natural resources of the Nation in beauty, in opportunity for wholesome recreative life and in the interesting wild life, particularly in the more densely populated East; and it is to be hoped that the bill which failed to become a law at the last session of Congress will address itself to the more favorable consideration of the next.

INDIAN AFFAIRS.

Progress of the Red Man.

As the oldest historical landmarks in America are associated with the American Indian, everything pertaining to the red man has an historic and romantic value. Elsewhere in this Report we have referred to the ceremonies attending the inauguration of a national memorial to the Indian on Staten Island in New York Harbor on February 22, 1913, and to the changes which the Indians are undergoing under the influence of civilization. While the purity of the Indian blood is gradually diminishing by reason of the intermingling of other strains, and their characteristic modes of life are undergoing visible changes, so that it may be said that as a pure race they are diminishing, yet the total number of persons with Indian blood in their veins is increasing, and on June 30, 1912, amounted to 327,348. Besides increasing in numbers, the Indian is advancing in his intellectual and material conditions. Dr. Charles A. Eastman of Amherst, Mass., a Sioux Indian, in a letter to the New York Times of November 12, 1912,

says:

"We were living the nomadic life a few years ago, with the skin or bark tepee and the dog travois. We had not even domestic animals or permanent homes. Some of us are to-day engineers and firemen on the great transcontinental lines; others are advocates of no mean ability, and yet others are ministering to the sick of your own race in the approved ways of modern medicine. There are scores successfully engaged in business and the skilled trades, and many hundreds in stock raising and agriculture. You will find men of Indian blood in the Congress of the United States and in several of the State Legislatures. Many of these men were born in the tepee. Is this not much to achieve in half a century ?

The Indians of New York State.

In response to an inquiry addressed to Dr. John M. Clarke, Director of the New York State Museum, in January, 1913, as to the provision made by the State of New York for the care of its Indian population, Dr. Clarke has furnished us with the following interesting information: