Mr. Le Baron. 
334 DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
fluence of the forest is there particularly observable, because that 
country is, in general, low, so that the excessive rainfall on the eastern 
side, amounting to 365 in. per year at Greytown, cannot be attributed 
to mountains. On the western side of that Republic, the precipitation 
is only about 45 in., and the forests are very different, being more 
open, and there are many large areas of cultivated lands and un- 
wooded plains. All the moisture held by the eastern trade-winds is 
dropped when they pass over the dense and cool forest jungles that 
cover the entire eastern water-shed. 
The author falls into another error of generalization, due, probably, 
to the fact that his observations have been confined to the limited 
area of the central and western United States. He states that “pre- 
cipitation is nearly always greater upon the hills than upon the neigh- 
boring lowlands.” This statement is quite true in British Columbia, 
where the observed rainfall in the Fraser River Valley is about 60 in., 
while less than 10 miles away, at Lake Coquitlam, among the mountains, 
but in the same water-shed, the precipitation is 180 in. On the Central 
American Isthmus, however, the reverse is true. While the precipita- 
tion at Greytown is 365 in., and at Bluefields, about 290 in., at 
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, at an elevation of 3000 ft. above the sea, it 
is about 90 in., and at Suina, Nicaragua, about 260 miles from the sea, 
it is about 100 in. Observations were taken for two years under the 
writer’s immediate supervision, at Greytown and vicinity and near 
Suina, when he was in charge of the work of the Nicaragua Canal 
and other and later enterprises in that-country. 
Touching the fourth subdivision of this paper, the author says that 
“the increased erosion of the soil * * * does not result from forest 
cutting, but from cultivation.” Cultivation, however, is a concomitant 
of deforestation; not the intensive cultivation of the market gardener 
on the outskirts of a great city, but the rough cultivation of the first 
settler. In the broad sense of the word, deforestation is not the 
cutting down of the trees alone, for, as the author remarks, the stumps 
and roots remain and a new growth succeeds, perhaps closer and more 
impermeable to water erosion than before. In the sense in which we 
speak of the deforestation of the United States, there is meant the 
complete eradication of the forest, not the cutting down of the timber 
alone, and this includes clearing and grubbing to eradicate the trees, 
root and branch. That is what has actually been done in the United. 
States and in any country that is deforested. When this is done, the 
soil is broken and its subsequent cultivation is of secondary importance. 
The trees are gone, the roots and many of the stumps are removed, 
the soil has been broken, and, although the land may-lie fallow and. 
be uncultivated for several years, it is exposed to the wash of the rain.. 
The effect of this wash is very noticeable on the hill slopes in Tennessee 
and Georgia, and even in New England, Ohio, and on all denuded hill 
slopes known to the writer. 
