THE TRAINING OF A FORESTER 



wooden railroad tie has been devised; and 

 our whole system of land transportation is 

 directly dependent for its existence upon the 

 forest, which supplies more than one 

 hundred and twenty million new railroad 

 ties every year in the United States alone. 



The forest regulates and protects the flow 

 of streams. Its effect is to reduce the height 

 of floods and to moderate extremes of low 

 water. The official measurements of the 

 United States Geological Survey have 

 finally settled this long-disputed question. 

 By protecting mountain slopes against ex- 

 cessive soil wash, it protects also the lowlands 

 upon which this wash would otherwise be 

 deposited and the rivers whose channels it 

 would clog. It is well within the truth to 

 say that the utility of any system of rivers 

 for transportation, for irrigation, for water- 

 power, and for domestic supply depends in 

 great part upon the protection which forests 



21 



