910 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 363. 



lias again carpeted the ground, birds and 

 dt^er are coming back, and hundreds of per- 

 sons, especially from the immediate neigh- 

 borhood, come each summer to enjoy the 

 privilege of camping. Some at least of the 

 forest reserves should afford perpetual pro- 

 tection to the native fauna and flora, safe 

 havens of refuge to our rapidly diminishing 

 wild animals of the larger kinds, and free 

 camping grounds for the ever-increasing 

 numbers of men and women who have 

 learned to find rest, health and recreation 

 in the splendid forests and flower-clad 

 meadows of our mountains. The forest re- 

 serves should be set apart forever for the 

 use and benefit of our people as a whole, and 

 not sacrificed to the short-sighted greed of a 

 few. 



The forests are natural reservoirs. By 

 restraining the streams in flood and re- 

 plenishing them in drought they make pos- 

 sible the use of waters otherwise wasted. 

 They prevent the soil from washing, and 

 so protect the storage reservoirs from fill- 

 ing up with silt. Forest conservation is 

 therefore an essential condition of water 

 conservation. The forests alone cannot, 

 however, fully regulate and conserve the 

 waters of the arid region. Great storage 

 works are necessary to equalize the flow 

 of streams and to save the flood waters. 

 Their construction has been conclusively 

 shown to be an undertaking too vast for 

 private effort. Nor can it be best ac- 

 complished by the individual states acting 

 alone. Far-reaching interstate problems 

 are involved ; and the resources of single 

 states would often be inadequate. It is 

 properly a national function, at least in 

 some of its features. It is as right for the 

 National Government to make the streams 

 and rivers of the arid region useful by 

 engineering works for water storage as 

 to make useful the rivers and harbors of 

 tlie humid region by engineering works of 

 another kind. The storing of the floods in 



reservoirs at the headwaters of our rivers 

 is but an enlargement of our present policy 

 of river control, under which levees are 

 built on the lower reaches of the same 

 streams. 



The Government should construct and 

 maintain these reservoirs, as it does other 

 public works. Where their purpose is to 

 regulate the flow of streams, the water 

 should be turned freely into the channels 

 in the dry season to take the same course 

 under the same laws as the natural flow. 

 The reclamation of the unsettled arid pub- 

 lic lands presents a different problem. 

 Here it is not enough to regulate the flow 

 of streams. The object of the government 

 is to dispose of the land to settlers who 

 will build homes upon it. To accomplish 

 this object water must be brought within 

 their reach. The pioneer settlers on the 

 arid public domain chose their homes along 

 streams from which they could divert the 

 water to reclaim their holdings. Such op- 

 portunities are practically gone. There 

 remain, however, vast areas of public land 

 which can be made available for homestead 

 settlement, but only by reservoirs and 

 main-line canals impracticable for private 

 enterprise. These irrigation works should 

 be built by the National Government. The 

 lands reclaimed by them should be reserved 

 by the Government for actual settlers, and 

 the cost of construction should so far as 

 possible be repaid by the land reclaimed. 

 The distribution of the water, the division 

 of the streams among irrigators, should be 

 left to the settlers themselves in conformity 

 with state laws and without interference 

 with those laws or with vested rights. The 

 policy of the National Government should 

 be to aid irrigation in the several states 

 and territories in such manner as will en- 

 able the people in the local communities to 

 help themselves, and as will stimulate 

 needed reforms in the state laws and regu- 

 lations governing irrigation. 



