138 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Second. The}- will be needed as an important source of timber 

 supply for the Western States for all time to come. If the popu- 

 lation of this country is to continue what it is now, to say nothing 

 of its probable great increase, these forests must always be looked 

 to to supply the people of a vast region with timber for buildings, 

 railroads, mining, and many manufacturing industries. Any 

 serious diminution of this supply, owing to deforestation on a 

 large scale, would prove a serious check to the prosperity of the 

 Western States. 



TJiird. The greatest value of these forests to the present and 

 future inhabitants of the Western States is in the assistance they 

 render to agi-iculture through their influences on the water supply 

 and the climate. The mere loss of national property, though 

 measured by millions, can be endured. The absence of a timber 

 supply at home can in a measure be made up for by purchases 

 from more prudent foreigners, and by the substitution of other 

 materials in the place of wood products. But there is absolutely 

 nothing, natural or artificial, that will take the place of the moun- 

 tain forest as a regulator of rainfall and water supply. Every 

 inland region without forests is a region of long droughts, varied 

 by destructive storms. Every mountain region without forests is 

 a region whose streams, instead of watering the valleys below 

 with a constant adequate flow, alternatel}' dwindle into insignifi- 

 cance and swell into raging torrents, not only flooding the country, 

 but covering it with rocks and sand from the mountain sides. 

 Great as is the damage caused by the loss of mountain forests, 

 to a region naturall}' well watered, it would render agriculture 

 impossible in that extensive district which has so recently begun 

 to be rendered fertile by the use of irrigation. No S3'stem of 

 -reservoirs, even the most costly and ingenious, can take the place 

 of the forests on any large scale. The most that it can do is to 

 co-operate with them. 



It is respectfully suggested that the true value and use of these 

 mountain forests has never been properly considered by this 

 Government. It has apparently never realized that mountain 

 forest land differs from all other land in this important respect, that 

 its condition cannot substantially be changed without disastrous 

 results ; that it must, for the sake of the properly agricultural 

 land, always remain in forest. On the contrary, it has been sold 

 and given away like other land without any restrictions whatever 



