92 Proceedings of the 



Bureau of Forestry, should have an opportunity to 

 investigate in a way in which it has never as yet been 

 investigated, so that we may learn positively if there 

 is any such effect ; and it is not a form of investigation 

 that is difficult to carry out. It has been attempted 

 in haphazard ways over limited areas in Europe, but 

 never by the wholesale method of detailed regional 

 study. 



There is another feature of the subject that occurs 

 to me, and that is the claim not infrequently made that 

 forests increase the discharge from streams, and that 

 claim is also not infrequently put forward by over- 

 zealous friends of forestry. And that, too, may be 

 correct, though from any investigation or any research 

 yet made into the subject I fail to find that there is any 

 clear evidence that forests do increase the amount of 

 water available for discharge by streams, and for the 

 uses of man. And that is another investigation which 

 might readily be undertaken in this country by the 

 proper Government officials or others and thrashed out 

 to a definite conclusion, and which might react very 

 favorably upon the subject of forest preservation. I 

 can conceive now that the Reclamation Service or the 

 Hydrographic Branch of the Geological Survey, over 

 which Mr. Newell presides, might undertake such ex- 

 periments as those of Professor Tourney, of the Bu-. 

 reau of Forestry, which Mr. Lippincott illustrated here 

 in the upper diagrams. I can conceive that Mr. 

 Newell's bureau, with the facilities that it has, might 

 readily be encouraged to take up the question of the 

 discharge of streams from forested and from non- 

 forested areas of like conditions and show what Euro- 

 peans, the people of India, and older countries inter- 

 ested in forestry, have not yet been able to show, 

 whether or not forests have any actual effect in in- 

 creasing the water supply. 



