550 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 67. 



in its changed form, as it pursues its south- 

 ern journey. 



But the strongest force at work to save 

 our rivers is the drifting winds which heap 

 up the snow in great banks, and in this the 

 trees are a constant obstacle. There will 

 be miniature drifts, it is true, but nothing 

 to what there are when there is no obstruc- 

 tion. Outside the timber belt, where there 

 is nothing to catch the snow as it falls and 

 nothing to break the force of the wind, 

 one of the most powerful and active agents 

 in preserving the water supply of a country 

 comes into play. By forming solid bodies 

 of snow the most effective means of saving 

 water far summer is reached. Across the 

 bleak summits and down the vast canyons 

 the wind has a well-nigh irresistible foi'ce 

 and it not only gathers up the snow after it 

 has ceased to come down, but it usually 

 keeps at work all the time it is falling and 

 carries it in whirling clouds until it strikes 

 a cliff or a canyon set at just the right an- 

 gle, and there it deposits the whole load. 

 As long as there is any material left outside 

 to woi-k upon this is kept up, and there is 

 no knowing how deep some of the big drifts 

 get to be in the course of a long winter. As 

 the days get warmer, the surface thaws a 

 little and moistens the cake down a few 

 inches, but the cold nights found all the 

 year around at such altitudes soon trans- 

 form it into ice, making a crust u.pon which 

 the heat of the sun and the absorbing power 

 of the air find it difi&cult to make any im- 

 pression. On open ground the process is 

 aided by the packing power of the wind, 

 and it is not an. unusual sight to see a man 

 on horseback traveling comfortably across 

 snow banks high enough to hide both the 

 horse and his rider many times over if they 

 should chance to break through. It is this 

 which has changed the opinion of four set- 

 tlers out of five along the eastern base of 

 the Sierra Nevadas, whei-e the timber has 

 been cut for the Comstock mines. Over 



half a billion dollars in treasure have been 

 taken from that one lode, and it is said that 

 for every ton of ore taken out the equiva- 

 lent of a cord of wood has gone in either in 

 the shape of timber or of fuel. The whole 

 mountain side for a distance of thirty miles 

 has been cut over, covering the heads of 

 such streams as Hunter's Creek, White's 

 Canyon, Thomas Creek, Galena, Steamboat 

 and other small rivers, which have fur- 

 nished water for irrigation since 1860 to 

 the owners of probably twenty thousand 

 acres of land in valleys below. The con- 

 census of opinion among this class of citi- 

 zens, intelligent American farmers all of 

 them, is that there is virtually no diminu- 

 tion in the supply of water that reaches 

 them from the hills. James Mayberry had 

 charge of men who cut over 12,000 acres in 

 the early '70s. He is of the opinion that 

 Hunter's Creek, with which he is most 

 familiar, has a more certain flow and some- 

 what more water than before. John 

 Wright has lived for thirty years on Steam- 

 boat Creek. It was dry in 1861, when the 

 timber was standing, but never has been 

 since, and has furnished water for a con- 

 stantly increasing settlement. Robert Jones 

 lives on low land and says he has had more 

 crops killed by flooding in the ten years after 

 the timber was cut than in the ten before it 

 was touched. G. R. Hplcomb says the supply 

 is equally certain if not more so and attri- 

 butes it entirely to the drifting of the snows. 

 Several made answer that the water melted 

 earlier and ran off sooner and said any one 

 would know that, but failed to convince 

 even themselves that thej^ were lower than 

 in former years. 



Hon Ross Lewers, of this county, read a 

 paper before the American Horticultural 

 Societ^^ a few years ago in which he said : 

 " There are certain peculiar conditions that 

 prevail in Nevada that I think are worthy 

 of notice. One of them is, that wherever 

 the forest timber has been cut off, a new 



