COMMENT. 



Calls for better volume tables have reached the Editor from 

 time to time. The latest inquiry is worded as follows: "I am 

 considerably dissatisfied with volume tables now in common use 

 for estimating spruce pulp in cord feet. I find a prevailing 

 custom of underestimating to a degree that I cannot account for 

 except through inaccuracy of volume tables. At the present time 

 I am using the volume table given in Gary's Manual, but make 

 additions to the figures therein given. Do you know of any more 

 recent volume tables for estimating spruce pulp which I could 

 obtain for comparison." 



Will our readers respond ! 



The disastrous spring floods in the Ohio and Mississippi Valley 

 again bring to the fore the question of reforestation in connection 

 with flood run-off and stream control- Col. C. McD. Townsend, 

 Corps of Engineers, U. S. A,, President of the Mississippi River 

 Commission, at a meeting of the National Drainage Congress in 

 April, linked reforestation with reservoirs and levees as one of 

 the possible methods of preventing floods. While it is well known 

 that floods were never known in the wooded sections of the coun- 

 try while the forests were still standing, it is perfectly obvious 

 that in a rich agricultural country, such as is found around the 

 headwaters of the tributaries of the principal streams in the 

 middle West, a forest cover of sufficient area cannot be main- 

 tained except at the sacrifice of agricultural development. 



The retention of forests on non-agricultural ground is unques- 

 tionably the duty of the Federal government, States, individuals, 

 and land owning municipalities, and by the same token the pre- 

 vention of fire and wasteful, destructive denudation should be 

 prevented on areas already timbered. Several fundamental in- 

 fluences of forests oii stream flow are accepted by scientists, de- 

 spite statements to the contrary made by what should have been 

 recognized authority in the person of the whilom Chief of the 

 Weather Bureau. That good and sufficient reasons were found 

 for his dismissal, indicates that he had good reason unto himself 

 for the erroneous and misleading statements made in reference 

 to the effect of forests on the catchment basins. Fortunately, we 



