If the public in general understood the difference between a National Park and a National Forest, there could be no doubt as to the opinion of any intelligent citizen. The distinction is so simple that it seems that it should be easy to get it within the comprehension of anybody. A National Park is an open-air museum set apart by Congress either to preserve from commercial development beautiful scenery, trees, natural monuments, or some of the forests that are being cut commercially both in private and national forests. The idea is not commercial development along even conservative and constructive lines, but absolute preservation in a state of nature. Once this distinction is grasped, no one can doubt that these two institutions demand entirely different management. It would be as sensible to put men with the same training in charge of both National Park and National Forest, as it would be to place the same men with the same training in charge of a busy shoe factory and a museum of archæology. [Illustration: MOUNT ST. ELIAS FROM EAST SIDE OF AGASSIZ GLACIER, ALASKA] Says Frederick Law Olmsted:-- Why should there be a distinction between National Forests and National Parks? If the public is at liberty to use both as recreation grounds, why should they not all be under one management, in the interest of a more economical administration? The National _Forests_ are set apart for economic ends, and their use for recreation is a by-product properly to be secured only in so far as it does not interfere with the economic efficiency of the forest management. The National _Parks_ are set apart primarily in order to preserve to the people for all time the opportunity of a peculiar kind of enjoyment and recreation, not measurable in economic terms and to be obtained only from the remarkable scenery which they contain--scenery of these primeval types which are in most parts of the world rapidly vanishing for all eternity before the increased thoroughness of the economic use of land. In the National Parks direct economic returns, if any, are properly the by-products; and even rapidity and efficiency in making them accessible to the people, although of great importance, are wholly secondary to the one dominant purpose of preserving essential esthetic qualities of their scenery unimpaired as a heritage to the infinite numbers of the generations to come.