JANUARY 5, 1912] 
already immanent. Though the campaign of 
education may flag, the exploiters of the na- 
tion’s resources, who act without regard to 
ultimate consequences and for self-interest 
only, anxious lest their special privileges may 
be curtailed, are not letting the grass grow 
under their feet. 
It becomes necessary for men of science to 
reiterate the fundamental facts, which they 
can do in the present instance with the cer- 
tainty that scientific prognostications anent 
the passing of the forest and its resulting woes 
can not be made too loud or too often. The 
American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, whose memorial in 18738 was one of 
the beginnings of the present conservation 
movement, could not do a better thing than to 
present at its coming session another memorial 
to Congress, recounting the lessons which the 
engineers have been learning. 
Professor Willis L. Moore, in his report as 
Chief of the Weather Bureau for 1909-10 
(p. 18) says: “ After an elaborate research 
into all available data, the Weather Bureau, 
in company with many eminent engineers, 
concludes that on the principal rivers the 
floods are not higher or longer continued or 
the low water lower than forty years ago, 
while other persons hold to the opposite.” 
Nothing whatever is said as to changes in 
forestation of the river-basins investigated 
during the forty years, a point on which Pro- 
fessor Swain has commented in his review* 
of another work by the same author. In the 
more thickly settled parts of the country, de- 
forestation was already far advanced forty 
years ago. Attention to earlier records shows 
a very different condition. 
Mr. Joseph B. Walker, writing in 1872, said 
that “the rapid destruction of the forests ” of 
New Hampshire was then “ painfully apparent 
everywhere”; and in 1891 the same author 
said: “The volumes of our streams are less 
+<“The Influence of Forests on Climate and on 
Floods,’’ a review of Professor Willis L. Moore’s 
report, by George F. Swain, LL.D., professor of 
eivil engineering, Harvard University, American 
Forestry, Vol. 16, pp. 224-240, April, 1910. 
SCIENCE 33 
equable than formerly. In summer they are 
greatly reduced. Many brooks whose flow was 
once perennial are no longer to be found for 
one half of the year. This fact is due to the 
total or partial denudation of the land from 
which they flow. So serious an evil had this 
become, some thirty or forty years ago, that 
the manufacturing companies upon the lower 
part of the Merrimac were forced to con- 
struct vast storage reservoirs, at great expense, 
which can be drawn upon as water is wanted. 
Winnepesaukee Lake and Long Pond are two 
of these. Total denudation at the source of 
our streams would convert them into destruc- 
tive torrents in spring and their channels into 
dry ditches for the rest of the year.” The last 
is of course an inference, but one that is not 
improbable. 
Similar occurrences have taken place in 
central New York. “ With the clearing away 
of the forests and the burning of the forest 
floor came a failure of canal supply that neces- 
sitated the building of costly dams and reser- 
yoirs to replace the natural ones which the 
fire and axe had destroyed. The Mohawk 
River, which for years had fed the Erie Canal 
at Rome, failed to yield any longer a sufficient 
supply, whereupon the Black River was tapped 
at Forestport, and its whole volume at that 
point diverted southward to assist the Mo- 
hawk in its work.” The reports of the super- 
intendent of public works in New York State, 
thirty or more years back, reiterate the pro- 
gressive failure of the water supply and ap- 
peal for the protection of the forests. We 
hear less of these complaints to-day simply 
because the railroads are in full control and 
many of the early canals are abandoned. But 
the time will surely come when this policy will 
be recognized as a mistake. 
B. E. Fernow, in a paper on the “ Relation 
of Forests to Water Supplies,” writing in 
1892,’ cites the earlier changes in the Schuy]l- 
kill River: “ During the last sixty or sixty- 
five years,” he says, “this river has shown a 
marked diminution in its minimum flow. In 
2 Bulletin No. 7, Forestry Division, U. S. De- 
partment of Agriculture, 1893, p. 165. 
