FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 519 



If the foregoing data are even approximately true, it follows that in many places 

 the run-off of streams is gradually decreasing, not only by reason of decrease in forest 

 area, due to clearing up lands for agricultural purposes, but is even changing because 

 of the varying quality of crops raised from year to year. The fact that such changes 

 are taking place has been very strongly impressed upon me in a number of litigations 

 in which I have been at different times employed where the question of damages for 

 diverting water from streams, either for municipal or manufacturing purposes, has been 

 the leading issue. Invariably in such cases a large number of old residents have been 

 sworn as witnesses for the plaintiff and have testified that formerly, say thirty, forty, 

 or fifty years ago, as the case may be, the stream in question had a sufficient summer 

 flow to operate a mill of a given capacity. In Western New York, where several of 

 these cases have occurred, there are many mills from sixty to seventy years old, 

 in which, up to the time of changing from the old-fashioned grinding process to 

 the roller process, the machinery was substantially as it was made at the original 

 erection. 



However valuable water privileges at these mills may have been originally, it is 

 nevertheless certain that now a number of them are practically worthless during 

 several months of the summer and fall of the average year. In order to present a 

 valid reason why the water power of streams in Western New York may be less valu- 

 able now than forty or fifty years ago, I prepared for use in one of the litigations an 

 extended discussion of this question. The discussion in question applies particularly 

 to drainage areas in Wyoming County, in Western New York, the run-off data being 

 from gaugings of the Oatka Creek for the years 1 890-91-92. 



Wyoming County is an elevated region of the same general character throughout. 

 Formerly it was covered with heavy pine, hemlock, oak, beech, maple, ash and elm 

 forests. At the present time the forest area is exceedingly small, and what there is 

 left of it is so scattered and so open as to exercise almost no effect on stream flow. 

 In order to illustrate the progressive changes which may take place in the water- 

 yielding capacity of a given drainage area I compiled from the U. S. Census for each 

 decennial period from 1830 to 1890, inclusive, the statistics as therein given for 

 Wyoming County, the assumption being that whatever was true of Wyoming County 

 must be substantially true of the Oatka Creek drainage area of 27.5 square miles 

 situated in the central part of the county. The census data give the total area, total 

 improved area for a portion of the period, tilled area and permanent meadows, total 

 unimproved area, woodland and forest area, and the miscellaneous unimproved area. 

 As illustrating the changes which have taken place in Wyoming County since 1850, I 

 may merely cite from the tabulations that, with a total area of 337,840 acres, the total 

 improved area was 223,533 acres in 1850, and 356,880 acres in 1890. The total 



