Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



we are treated each spring to destructive floods, as has been many times 

 proven in the valleys of those great rivers draining the sites of the old 

 pine forests in the East. Contrariwise, in California, where the neces- 

 sities of irrigation cause the people to pay great attention to such 

 matters, it has been found by actual measurement that the stream-flow 



has increased twenty- 

 five per cent since the 

 establishment of effi- 

 cient protection for the 

 forest cover. 



Since these things 

 are so, it follows nat- 

 urally that sooner or 

 later nations would see 

 through the haze of 

 immediate expediency 

 to the vital truth, 

 force home .boldly on 

 the individual camper. 

 From this realization 

 would come a system 

 of forestry. 



In Switzerland we 

 find the earliest in- 

 telligent treatment of 

 the question." Switzer- 

 land 's mountainous 

 situation would have 

 rendered her peculiarly 

 liable to complete ex- 

 tinction by flood, ava- 

 lanche and the erosicn 

 of the agricultural soil, 

 once the natural protection was removed. But to-day Switzerland is 

 prosperous and very much alive. Over one thousand years ago she 

 possessed a forest system, and had developed a scientific forestry by the 

 fifteenth century. As early as Louis XIV, France awoke to the fact 

 that her forests and her life were draining away together. But it was 

 too late. To-day she is spending $34 an acre to reforest her watersheds. 

 The same experience is costing Italy $20 an acre. Italy is not a wealthy 

 nation; yet she is appropriating cheerfully this enormous sum in the 

 realization that on it depends the question as to whether or not she will 



How the forests hold back the water and check the 

 floods and keep the streams from washing their 

 banks away. 



