622 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1432 



To THE Editor of Science: There is one 

 point in Dr. Allen's letter of April 28 that I 

 think will bear further emphasis. As he points 

 out, most editors will print sovmd scientific 

 "stufl!" which they can get for nothing. But 

 they won't pay a living wage to the man who 

 writes it. 



I have teen doing this sort of work, off and 

 on, for a quarter ceutiu-y. In fact, for some 

 years I actually supported myself — at about 

 the clerical: level. Those were the days when 

 "the Old Man" edited McClure's and eared 

 more for the permanent repute of his magazine 

 than for selling out any single issue. News- 

 paper work paid decently. One could occasion- 

 ally make a short story of a scientific item. 

 Even the women's publications used to buy 

 semi-scientific articles on diet and child train- 

 ing. 



Now all this is past; I haven't tried to sell 

 anything since the war. It takes about as long 

 to verify all the statements in one article as it 

 does to write another. The verification is a 

 labor of love, for which no editor will pay. 

 The writer with an unhampered imagination 

 can turn out stuff' that the public prefers ; and 

 he can do twice as much of it in a day. My old 

 market' is absolutely dead. In the present day 

 market, I can compete neither with the men who 

 are selling their product, nor with those who 

 are giving it away. 



Dr. Allen's solution, I heartily agree, is for 

 the moment the only practical one — though I 

 doubt whether, in the long run, the public will 

 get much good out of anjiihing that it isn't 

 willing to pay for. Nevertheless, I cannot help 

 thinking that the condition which Drs. Allen 

 and Slossonare trying to cure is only a symp- 

 tom, not the real disease. For the fact is that 

 the world just now is being simply drowned in 

 a vast wave of superstition, that is bringing in 

 every sort of pre-seientiflc opinion that the 

 nineteenth century thought disposed of for 

 good and all. My own town, for examijle, 

 makes education its leading industry. But our 

 public library has to buy books, just off the 

 press, on palmistry, handwriting, character 

 reading and fifty-seven other %'arieties of non- 

 sense; while, significantly, it owns no old vol- 

 umes on any such topics. T'ie current number 



of the Atlantic Monthly carries the advertise- 

 ment of a professional astrologer ! 



Here then lies the real trouble : The reading 

 public does not know good science from bad; 

 but if it did, it would certainly choose the bad. 

 E. T. Brewster 



Andover, Mass. 



NOTES ON METEOROLOGY AND 

 CLIMATOLOGY 



THE STREAMFLOW EXPERIMENT AT 

 WAGON WHEEL GAP, COLORADO 



Students of hydrology have always had a 

 keen interest in the relation of run-off to the 

 forestation of watersheds, and there has been 

 much theorizing as to the probable relation. 

 But there are so many factors involved — evap- 

 oration, transpiration, interception, etc., these, 

 in turn, being influenced by the geological, 

 phenological, and meteorological character of 

 the watershed, — that it is difficult, if not im- 

 possible, to estimate correctly the degree of 

 influence of each. It has been the purpose of 

 the Forest Service and the Weather Bureau to 

 conduct an actual experiment in order to obtain 

 quantitative measures of these influences and, 

 in general, the response of streamflow to a 

 forested and denuded watershed. The site 

 selected for this large-scale experiment is near 

 the railroad station of Wagon Wheel Gap, 

 Colorado, the station having an elevation of 

 8,437 feet above sea-level. The plan was to 

 select two contiguous watersheds of similar 

 character, make extensive meteorological and 

 hydrological observations on each, and, after 

 the lapse of a certain number of j'ears, denude 

 one watershed of its trees and continue ob- 

 .servations for a sufficient number of years to 

 determine in what manner the streamflow is 

 influenced. 



On June 30, 1919, an eight-year continuous 

 series of stream-flow obseiwations and a nine- 

 year meteorological record had been obtained, 

 and, after a general survey of the results, it 

 was decided that the trees could properly be 

 removed from one watershed. The denudation 

 was completed in the autumn of 1920. This, 

 therefore, marked the completion of the fu-st 

 stage of the experiment. Observations are 

 being continued, and will continue for several 



