1901. 



FORESTRY. 



also enabling the air overhead to carry off the more from the 

 soil when other evaporating areas are reduced in size. 



I spend most of my time in the woods in connection with 

 my official duties. From November 2oth to the 27th I was 

 in camp at an altitude of 2,000 feet above tide on one of our 

 State Reservations. When we entered the woods, springs 

 which had almost never been dry had ceased to flow. Stream 

 beds were dry, and the whole country showed signs of suffer- 

 ing from want of water. Never in the history of my State, 

 certainly not for a generation, had the agricultural interests 

 in the central parts of Pennsylvania suffered so severely from 

 lack of water as during the last summer. In the great city of 

 Williamsport, where prosperity had been built upon the 

 lumbering industry, the mills had long been "shut down/' 

 because there had not been enough of water in the Susque- 

 hanna to bring the logs into their boom. It rained on us most 

 of the time during six out of the seven days we were out, and 

 every night the heavens were opened, and the floods de- 

 scended upon us. 



Yet it was not until the fields were pouring their water 

 into the channels that the " run off " from the woods became 

 manifest. Most of the water which fell on the litter of leaves 

 during the first four or five- days went into the earth. This 

 observation led to another. As we were going out of the 

 woods we found that the water which soaked into the forest 

 floor had already started the springs to flowing, but when 

 we reached the open country the springs were not flowing so 

 vigorously as those we had left in the woods, because most of 

 the rain, running off of the surface of the fields, had failed to 

 reach the subterranean channels. This observation, too, 

 effectively disposed of a statement made but a short time ago 

 by an " eminent authority," namely, that it was the snows, 

 and not the rains which maintained and restored our springs. 



It is true that meteorological observations upon the re- 

 lations of forests to climate are unsatisfactory, because too 

 meager. But it does not follow that we are, therefore, to re- 

 ject certain conclusions which our unaided senses bring us. 

 There was much weather wisdom before this science of 

 meteorology was born, and some of that wisdom was as re- 

 liable as the weather forecasts we receive to-day. And by this 

 statement I mean no discourtesy to those patient, trained ob- 



