DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 335 
In these localities the small brooks are filled with muddy water 
during every sharp rain. This was not so before the lard was cleared, 
and is. not so now in the adjoining woodlands. 
The author states that “no possible development of forestry can 
increase the present percentage of forest-covered areas.” This appears 
to be a very sweeping and unconsidered statement. To any one who 
has ridden over the vast prairies of the West, it is quite conceivable 
that Man, by irrigation or, in many places, solely by care and per- 
severance in judicious selection in tree planting, can and undoubtedly 
will in the next hundred years increase immensely the percentage of 
woodland, and there will still remain abundant open land for cultiva- 
tion. At the same time, as the author states, many abandoned farms 
in the East will be grown up in wood. The writer knows of many such 
places in New England, and there are also many in Florida, and 
other Southern States, where large plantations have grown up in native 
forest trees since the Civil War, owing to inability to cultivate them 
profitably without slave labor. 
The author states that the action of the forest to moderate the run- 
off and mitigate the severity of freshets fails entirely in heavy and 
Mr. Le Baron. 
long precipitation. He admits that the humus and débris in forests. 
retain precipitation and act as a reservoir for a time, but eventually 
may become saturated and thenceforth will be of no value for that 
purpose. In an extensive forest this impounding capacity is very great, 
and by just so much it reduces the peak of the run-off or at least the 
first part of the ascending curve, and there is no proof that, by the 
time the forest reservoir is full, the peak of the flood may not be past. 
In his third proposition, the author says that “while small springs 
and rivulets may dry up more than formerly, this is not true of the 
larger rivers.” If there were no springs, rivulets, or brooks, there 
would be no rivers, and, if these all run dry, the.large streams must 
run dry also. 
The sixth proposition, that climate has not been appreciably modi- 
fied by land clearing, may be true for large areas, in a general. 
sense, but it has been modified, in small areas, in northern latitudes, 
by the added exposure to wind, so that the cold and inclemency are 
more pernicious for the farmer and stock ‘grower. 
In the author’s discussion of the cost ‘of liydro-electric power, using 
the storage reservoirs built by the Government for water conservation, 
he quotes an‘article by Mr. Henry D. Jackson, giving costs based upon 
averages of a number of different plants, compared with steam power.. 
Mr. Jackson’s estimate includes the cost of the dam, “Building and. 
works, steam, $10 000; water $77 000.” The author does not take into. 
account the cost of the dam and spillway, which are supposed to be 
already built by the Government for another purpose, so that this esti- 
mate, as it stands, is not applicable, but should be reduced by $67 000, or 
