188 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
24. Forests and Rainfall. 
1. IN THE PLAINS OF MIDDLE LATITUDES, FoREST LOWERS 
THE LEVEL OF THE PHREATIC WATERS. 
Till 1898, the year when Western Europe learned the unex- 
pected results set forth by M. Ototzky in 1895 with regard to 
the forests which occupy the Black Lands (Tchernozem) of 
Russia, in the governments of Voronej, Kherson, and Saratov, 
it was believed that in countries of the plains, where the subter- 
ranean water stratum is absolutely stagnant and consequently 
there is no flow, the forest played, with regard to water stored in 
the cavities of the earth, the same part as it does in hilly and 
mountainous countries. It has long been known, and often 
stated, that forest under the latter conditions (that is, placed on 
slopes where rain-water would flow down if the soil were bare, 
and where the water that sinks in flows over an impermeable 
bed, more or less sloping) stops all flow, and consequently 
increases and prolongs the supply of the springs, while prevent- 
ing rapid and violent floods. 
Now, the numerous borings carried out on the southern 
border of the region called in Russia ‘“ Forest Steppe,” have 
enabled Monsieur Ototzky to formulate the following con- 
clusion :— 
“From all the observations made in the forests of the steppes 
of Southern Russia, we draw this result—that all physico- 
geographical conditions being equal, the level of phreatic® waters 
in the forests of the steppe belt is lower than in the adjacent steppe 
or in neighbouring open country. . . . The depression of the level 
becomes more marked under old forests than under new planta- 
tions. Under the forest the water is found, in the season of 
vegetation, to be 4 or 5 metres lower than under the steppe 
or the fields. But if, in the whole of this region of Southern 
Russia, where the rains are small, and heat and evaporation 
considerable, forest vegetation lowers to such an extent the level 
of the phreatic waters, has it the same effect in the northern 
1 Les Foréts et les Plutes, par M. Henry, Professeur 4 l’école Nationale des 
Eaux et Foréts. 
2 The name given by Daubrée in his Szbterranean Waters to the sub- 
terranean water nearest the surface—that which supplies the wells. 
