ACADIA An Old Account of Mt. Washington A Word Upon its Insect Life A Word on Mt. Katahdin Sieur de Monts Publications XVIII

The Wild Gardens of Acadia were incorporated under the conviction that absolute sanctuaries in which the wild life of a region — plant, bird or animal — can dwell securely and perpetuate itself under its original conditions, are the only means by which such life can be preserved to-day with any approximation to its natural wealth and fullness. Such a sanctuary, though in its early stages yet, has now been established on the coast of Maine by the creation of the Sieur de Monts National Monument upon Mount Desert Island.

Lying in the midst of one of the most interesting and naturally prolific life-provinces in the world, that of eastern Maine and early French Acadia, it is singularly fitted by its mountainous character and ocean-tempered air to shelter in the broadest way a single area can its region's life, while its position on the great bird-migration route of the Atlantic shore gives it unique importance in relation to any comprehensive scheme for bird protection.

To the west of this, a distant landmark to the men who sailed between Acadia and Boston in the 17th and early 18th centuries, lie the White Mountains, now included in a National Forest. These two are linked together now as forming the only National possessions of biologic interest marine biology apart or landscape interest yet created to the east of the Mississippi and the north of Washington.

The earliest account of the White Mountains next to those of the Rev. Jeremy Belknap and the Rev. Manasseh Cutler (1784), and of Dr. Timothy Dwight, President of Yale (1797), the latter elsewhere quoted, is that of Dr. Jacob Bigelow of Boston — a distinguished botanist as well as one of the leading physicians of his time — which follows.

THE WILD GARDENS OF ACADIA