causes a very rapid evaporation to take place almost immediately. Hence, 
during the hot months, a number of secondary showers quite often fol- 
lowed a thunder-storm under forested conditions. The old weather adage 
that ‘Fog rising from the hills will soon give water to the mills,” seldom 
failed of fulfillment. The benefits derived from the more gently faliing 
showers following the hard downpour of the thunder-storm in filling the 
soil of the cultivated fields and pasture lands can hardly be estimated. 
It is the moisture from these rains that adds very greatly to the ground 
water, especially on the firmer earth surfaces. 
Again, if it be true, as now appears from records kept during the last 
ten years, that the summer rainfall of the trans-Mississippi states, par- 
ticularly Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, be increasing, it would uphold 
the theory just advanced. In contrast with the naked prairie of the past, 
which had a large immediate run off, the plowed lands of today are a 
much better absorber of moisture, and would inerease very much the ground 
water supply. The early summer cultivation of extensive cornfields would 
tend to conserve this moisture, until the rank growth of corn or other 
cultivated vegetation, with its extensive leaf surface, would add greatly 
to the evaporating surface. This would increase the local atmospheric 
moisture, especially during July and August. Hence, if the above theory 
be true, there should be ordinarily an ever-increasing rainfall during those 
months year by year, just in proportion to the area of original prairie 
land put under cultivation. If trees were more extensively planted, the 
results in increased rainfall should be marked to the same degree. 
In résumé, we may say that theory upholds, and observation sub- 
stantiates the statement, that deforestation greatly increases the immedi 
ate run off, and as greatly decreases the ground-water supply of a given 
region. It is equally true that the absence of forests seriously decreases 
the evaporation, and the amount of vapor in the atmosphere, during the 
hot months. Again, the absence of evaporation permits of higher local 
temperatures on the approach of low barometric areas and hence the rela- 
tive humidity of the atmosphere must be lower. All tend toward the re- 
duction of the rainfall during the late summer months, when of all times 
it is most needed for the growth and maturing of vegetation. 
Furthermore, we believe that it can be shown that deforestation has 
a tendency in a region of rough topography, such as is found among the 
hills of southern Indiana, to localize the hot season rainfall, and to pro- 
duce conditions approximating those of the so-called “‘cloudbursts” of the 
