VIEWS OF THE MINOEITY. 



In the first session of the Sixtieth Congress, reporting upon a reso- 

 lution offered by Mr. Bartlett, of Georgia, the Committee on the 

 Judiciary of the House of Representatives declared it to be their 

 opinion that 



The Federal Government has no power to acquire lands within a State solely for 

 forest reserves, but under its constitutional power over navigation the Federal Gov- 

 ernment may appropriate foT the purchase of lands and forest reserves in a State, 

 provided it is made clearly to appear that such lands and forest reserves have a 

 direct and substantial connection with the conservation and improvement of the 

 navigability of a river actually navigable in whole or in part. 



Bearing that opinion in mind (and it has met with universal acquies- 

 cence), it becomes of the very first importance, in considering a bill for 

 the purchase of forest reserves, to determine whether such reserves 

 ' ' have a direct and substantial connection with the conservation and 

 improvement of the navigability of a river actually navigable in whole 

 or in part." The statement that such connection does exist has been 

 so confidently assumed and so often repeated that those who have 

 given but a casual or superficial study to the subject have come to 

 regard it as an established and admitted* fact. 



The truth is that it is neither established nor admitted. On the con- 

 trary, the proposition is very earnestly disputed lay men whose opin- 

 ions are entitled to great weight. It is perhaps not overstating it to 

 say that a majority of the riparian engineers who have given the sub- 

 ject careful s.tudy"are of the opinion that forests do not exercise any 

 effective control in either extremes of high water or of low water. 

 Lieut. Col. H. M. Chittenden, of the United States Army Engineer 

 Corps, who has been studying the control of floods in rivers for many 

 years, is perhaps the most conspicuous exponent of this view in our 

 own country, having recently read a paper before the American 

 Society of Engineers in which is presented a powerful and to many 

 minds a convincing argument in support of his contention. In Europe 

 the same opinion is entertained by M. Ernst Lauda, chief of the 

 hydrographic bureau of the Austrian Government, who has recentl} r 

 made an exhaustive report upon the great floods of the Danube, in the 

 course of which he says: 



It is universally believed that forests have an influence in moderating and prevent- 

 ing floods, and deforestation upon their origin and more frequent occurrence, yet this 

 belief is not better established from a hydrographic standpoint than the entirely un- 

 founded belief that the floods of the past few years in Austria are due to deforesta- 

 tion. Against the popular belief in the favorable influence of forests upon floods 

 resulting from excessive rains may be adduced the interesting fact that lands richest 

 in forests are frequently visited by the severest floods. 



In support of this opinion he traces the history of the Danube River 

 for eight hundred j^ears, drawing the conclusion that floods were for- 

 merly just as frequent and just as high in that river as they have been 

 in recent times. He cites the records of the river Seine also showing 

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