12 Transactions of the 



charcoal pit, a person will fell tree after tree of noble proportions, will 

 select for use a few of the choice Jimbs and branches, and will leave the 

 trunks to decay. The like process will be resorted to if a few shakes 

 are needed to roof in a cabin that ma} r be deserted a month or two later. 

 If this were a desultory practice, or obtained locally only, it would be 

 less a cause for apprehensive reflection; but it is the rule throughout 

 the entire State, and has been supplemented in these later years by a 

 practice scarcely less reprehensible — that of mercilessly cutting down 

 young pines, firs, and cedars — a most wanton system of extravagant 

 waste and improvident destruction. The loss of valuable timber, great 

 as it is, is trifling when compared with the danger that menaces us from 

 the shrinkage in rainfall which must eventually result from such an 

 immense curtailment of forest areas. Centuries of experience and ob- 

 servation in long-settled countries have indisputably established that 

 moisture and fertility disappear with forests; that if broad shafts of 

 sunlight are belted into cleared and devastated uplands, a fatal dryness 

 will characterize the dependent lowlands; that falling forests may ruin 

 distant meadows; that if trees be shorn from the face of the land there 

 will be little grain to reap in after years. 



We cannot, therefore, too strongly urge that forest culture should con- 

 stitute a feature in the operations of every agriculturist in this State. 

 Not alone because in view of the danger threatened the planting of 

 trees is plainly a duty of good citizenship; but for the reasons, too, that 

 it would prove profitable in the immediate future, and would add to our 

 great resources one of almost inestimable value. 



We believe that if the subject should receive proper consideration, the 

 practice of planting forest trees would become very general; and that 

 to the favorite eucalyptus would be added many valuable varieties. 



DRAINAGE AND IRRIGATION. 



The recent disaster at Marysville, apprehension at Sacramento, and 

 devastating inundation of a large area of country supposed to be safe 

 by reason of ditches, embankments, floodgates, and other costly works 

 of' reclamation, present the drainage question in such a shape that not 

 merely one section of our communitj', but the people of the entire State, 

 and the General Government as well, must give it more than a passing 

 notice. The immediate. neighborhood, because the law of self-preserva- 

 tion compels it; the people of the entire State, because the problem is 

 one of grave interest to them collectively; and the General Government, 

 because it is of such magnitude, and touches so closely both inland and 

 ocean commerce. Our situation is very peculiar; neither precedent nor 

 parallel for it exists in history. Extensive rivers have for the most part 

 the common features of: sources remote from the sea; various tributary 

 streams; constant disintegrating power and action, enriching or ruining 

 low lands with sedimentary deposits, and equalizing the flow of their 

 own waters — slow in broad channels, rapid through deep gorges — in 

 such a manner that the beds of streams are, as a rule, kept serviceable 

 to the exact necessary degree. In regions where the alternate cloud- 

 less and rainy seasons are similar to those of California, the rule is 

 constant, that waters are loaded by freshets with earthy matters. The 

 Mississippi, the Amazon, the Ganges, and the Brahmapootra, and the 

 Nile, as well as the Sacramento, and rivers of its class, periodically 

 sweep to the sea great volumes of accumulated waters surcharged with 



