[5] 



have been committed against flock owners and their flocks in every range 

 state. It is not intended to claim that sheep men are not sometimes ag- 

 gressers in these troubles : they are not angels. 



The use of the word "nomadic,'' as defining this mode of sheep-keep- 

 ing, is calculated to give a false conception of the pursuit. The owners are 

 not " nomads," nor are their flocks, indeed. The former have their settled 

 homes in the dry pastoral regions of the range states — are themselves the 

 equals of other men engaged in developing their localities, both in public 

 spirit and private enterprise. This fact can be proved by looking at the de- 

 velopment of a country much more closely resembling that claimed to have 

 been examined by the committee than does that of central Europe — Aus- 

 tralasia. But Australia, and the lessons to be derived from Australia's en- 

 terprise, in the conservation of scant water supply, its records of rainfall, its 

 experiences of the encroachment of "pine scrub" upon sheep and cattle 

 ranges, the greater success of the former on driest ranges as compared with 

 the latter, has received no notice from this intelligent committee. Why ? 

 It would seem as though the work was already cut out for this respectable 

 committee — as a stalking horse to the forestry association ; and it came 

 very near telling by whom, when it follows John Muir and B. E. Fernow 

 in holding up to the secretary of the interior, and through him to the presi- 

 dent of the United States, the examples of the imperial governments of 

 Germany, Russia and British rule in India in regard to forestry ; as though 

 the citizenship of the United States were on the same level as the laboring 

 populations of those countries, and there were no agreement between the 

 states and the nation in the way of its recommendations. 



The committee recommends the use of the army to guard these reserves, 

 now aggregating nearly forty million acres, needed, as it claims, for the 

 preservation of the water supply in the dry interior ; and as a means of 

 making money where the best timber is and water is not needed, as in the 

 Olympic range in Washington. It recommends the exclusion of sheep 

 from pasturage within these reservations, as destroyers of the forest and 

 desolators of the plains. The herders are singled out as incendiaries of for- 

 ests. The major reasons for its recommendations are that forests protect 

 the sources of streams in mountain and highland districts, by preserving 

 the snow from melting and impeding the percolation of melted snow or 

 rain from reaching the valleys below. My observation teaches me that 

 mountains and highlands are the attracting causes of precipitation, and 

 trees and brushwood are effects of this precipitation ; that all other things 

 being equal, snow melts first in belts of timber or brush, partly because the 

 trees and brush break up the snow when falling and partly because of the 

 influence of color on solar rays, dark objects absorbing, white, reflecting 

 heat. The bulletin ( No. 38) of the experiment station of the University of 

 Missouri is now sending out the result of color on peach trees, showing that 



