338 
through the illicit killing of its cows and 
calves was to leave it absolutely alone? A 
cattle man would stop the killing of the fe- 
males and young, would look out for a reserve 
of bulls, and market his steers as usual. Espe- 
cially would he do this if it were necessary 
for him to pay for the cooperation of his 
neighbors in suppressing the illicit killing. 
Mr. McLean would have us take a different 
course. He would have the government begin 
by depriving itself of an immediate income of 
about $400,000. The herd has _ probably 
yielded this amount in the lowest year of its 
existence. This income has possibilities of 
indefinite increase with the recovering herd. 
But there would be no increase. With no 
quota to share with the cooperating nations 
the treaty would lapse. Pelagic sealing would 
be resumed. The herd would continue on its 
way to extinction. Is this what Mr. McLean 
and the Camp Fire Club want? 
GrorcE ARCHIBALD CLARK 
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIr., 
February 7, 1912 
ANOTHER VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES OF 
POWER DEVELOPMENT 
WATER- 
In Scrence of December 15 the foremost 
place is given to Dr. W J McGee’s statement 
of the above-mentioned principles. As the 
subject is one of general scientific interest, I 
beg leave to present it from a different point 
of view. 
A couple of centuries of legislation, follow- 
ing decade by decade the settlement of the 
country and the appropriation and use of its 
waters for power, irrigation, etc., have left 
little scope for the application of Dr. McGee’s 
principles, at least on the part of the federal 
government. He writes as if he were laying 
out plans for a continent not yet occupied by 
human beings. It may as well be recognized 
that in the older part of the United States the 
more desirable water powers have all passed 
completely into private ownership. The prac- 
tical application of his principles, if there be 
any, must then be in the newer, and chiefly 
the western, part of the United States. But 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 896 
even here irrigation waters are already appro- 
priated very generally except in those not rare 
cases where a large capital is required for the 
first installation. Water-power can not be 
dissociated from the subject of irrigation in 
the west, because the same water often serves 
both purposes, and may even be taken away 
from one to serve the other. It is surprising 
to see all through the west that every spot 
where irrigation can be cheaply applied to 
good soil has been farmed with the aid of 
water for many years. Many cases have come 
under my observation, from forty to a hundred 
miles from a railroad, where irrigation has 
been practised for thirty or forty years, gen- 
erally up to the limit of the water supply or 
of the good land. It is very late in the day 
to talk about the general principles which 
should govern the framing of laws on irriga- 
tion, but it is astounding to read (McGee’s 
principles 34 and 386) that legislation at pres- 
ent should be tentative and experimental. 
Every western state has voluminous laws on 
the subject, and ten times more voluminous 
legal decisions on those laws. The general 
principle has had full acceptance for a long 
time that the states have complete authority 
over the use of waters within their respective 
borders except for the purpose of navigation 
and in a few unusual cases. While there is a 
“)borderland” here that is not worked out, 
there is no reason to suppose that the general 
control of its own irrigation waters by the 
state will be materially impaired. 
This control necessarily extends to the pub- 
lic lands within the state. In nearly every 
case where the settler puts in a small irriga- 
tion system for his own use, his head-gate and 
the most of his ditch are on government land, 
since he has to go some distance above his own 
land to get the fall requisite. A later home- 
steader above him can not disturb his ditches, 
even though occupying a tract across which 
they run. This policy runs back almost be- 
yond history, and is as well settled as any- 
thing can be. 
Turning now to the subject of water-power, 
we find that all the western states have pro- 
