EDITORIAL 



821 



definite, or if it is revocable, or if 

 burdensome regulations and restrictions 

 are likely to be imposed. If water 

 power is to be developed, inducements 

 must be offered to investors, including 

 a reasonable assurance of fair treat- 

 ment from the public authorities." 



Chapter VII on "Forests and Stream 

 Flow" is intensely interesting to both 

 the engineer and the forester, with its 

 discussion of sub-surface storage, and 

 the application of inductive and de- 

 ductive reasoning in studying the rela- 

 tion between forests and the flow of 

 streams. 



Chapter VIII is devoted to "Floods." 

 The author expresses the opinion that 

 "There seems little doubt that, speak- 

 ing generally, river floods, and the 

 damage which they cause, are increasing 

 in the United States." He groups the 

 causes of river floods under the follow- 

 ing heads : 



1. "The fact that the rain-fall is 

 unequally distributed, and that large 

 quantities fall during storms in a 

 comparatively short period of time. 



2. "The fact that the rain falling 

 upon the ground is not held back, but 

 flows rapidly from the surface into the 

 streams, or that the melting snows are 

 carried off in the same manner, and 



discharged into the streams in a com- 

 paratively short time. 



3. "The fact that the stream channels 

 are not large enough or smooth enough, 

 or do not have slope enough; in other 

 words, that the stream channels have 

 not the capacity to carry off the maxi- 

 mum amount of water delivered to 

 them without rising above their banks." 



Following this Dr. Swain discusses 

 the remedies available or proposed to 

 prevent floods, by building surface 

 reservoirs, by forestation and cultiva- 

 tion (as noted also in Chapter VII), by 

 increasing the capacity of river channels 

 and by constructing cut-off channels. 



In the various numbers of the 

 Appendix Dr. Swain has presented 

 copies of a number of official documents 

 and Acts of Congress of interest in 

 connection with the general subjects 

 treated in his work. 



Dr. Swain's work will be of value 

 and interest to engineers and foresters 

 and to all students of conservation for 

 it is the product of a master mind, 

 versed in the great subjects treated and 

 endowed with the faculty of presenting 

 them to experts and to the inexpert 

 with impressive yet pleasing and con- 

 vincing insistence. 



EDITORIAL 



NEW YORK'S FOREST PROBLEM 



IN AN effort to modify the present 

 rigid requirements of New York's 

 Constitution, which now prohibits 

 all cutting of timber in the State re- 

 serves, the Constitutional Convention 

 is considering the adoption of an 

 amendment which would allow the sale 

 and removal of dead or down timber, 

 while retaining the clause which pre- 

 vents the cutting down of green or live 

 trees. 



In the decade of 1890-1900 a law ex- 

 actly similar to the proposed statute 

 was passed by Congress to permit the 

 logging of dead and down timber on 

 Indian reservations in Minnesota, in 

 which the green timber could not be 



sold at that time, pending the completion 

 of estimates and other formalities. 

 This law became the cloak for extensive 

 operations, under which green timber 

 was cut right and left, Suits brought 

 by the Government to recover the value 

 of the timber and prevent further tres- 

 pass resulted in a remarkable decision 

 by a Federal judge, to the effect that a 

 "dead" tree was a tree which had 

 "ceased to increase in value." This 

 loophole made it impossible to dis- 

 tinguish "dead" from "live" trees. The 

 entire administration of the law was 

 accompanied by so much scandal that 

 it was repealed in 1902. 



