American Fisheries Society. 165 
The forest serves as a mechanical barrier to a ready surface 
run-off. The forest keeps the ground in a more receptive con- 
dition and thus facilitates the soaking in of water. 
The forest forms a large “brush cover” acting like an artifical 
cover of any kind, and thus reduces the action of wind and sun. 
The forest is a shelter house and thus produces conditions which 
tend to preserve moisture, exactly as the walls and roof of a 
green-house do. 
That the forest as a mass of growing plants also uses up mois- 
ture and thus wastes exactly what we claim that it conserves, is 
understood. 
Keeping these facts in mind, it is clear that a forest covered 
area may be regarded as a reservoir, that the greater this reser- 
voir, the more moisture and vice versa. Also that if all land is 
forest, there comes a time when equilibrium is reached, and that 
if all forest is removed there will finally come a condition of 
equilibrium, in keeping with these new conditions. 
Our prairies and some of the large provinces of China are 
perhaps in this cleared land-equilibrium. A hundred years ago 
Michigan was in a state of equilibrium as to water distribution 
and especially in the southern half, it was rather too wet for safe 
and comfortable human habitation. Since then the surface has 
changed, a large part of the forest is gone, the surface run-off is 
made easy by cleared land, furrow and ditch, and we are gradual- 
ly approaching another equlbrium, probably less satisfactory 
than the first. The gullying and washing of our lands, flood 
and drought have caused people to become alarmed at the pros- 
pect of drifting into an unsatisfactory extreme and the munici- 
palities affected by floods, the water-power men and other indus- 
trials like yourselves have joined hands with the forestry people 
to see if the matter might not in some way be modified and seri- 
ous losses averted. 
Believing in the influence of the forest, the reforestation of 
denuded lands naturally suggests itself as one of the most re- 
hable means. 
To the fisherman this reforestation is of importance in vari- 
ous ways and to various degrees. ‘To beautify the stream and 
landscape, to shade the water and affect its temperature ; to keep 
