DISCUSSION: FOREST'S, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 347 
are only a makeshift at best, and that they can be eliminated ultimately 
by some other treatment. Some very eminent civil engineers have ex- 
pressed this opinion openly, and, in the minds of some laymen, it 
places in a bad light the engineers of the valley who are earnestly 
laboring, with extremely limited means, to bring the levees to a 
completed state. 
The writer states emphatically that the levees are a complete suc- 
cess, and, if the caving banks can be minimized, they can be com- 
pleted with a very moderate expenditure, as compared with even the 
smallest of the reservoir estimates. 
The needs of the Lower Mississippi, to render it navigable to the 
very highest degree of usefulness, are well known and thoroughly 
demonstrated, and these consist in three steps, as follows: 
1. Complete confinement by levees, making the high- and low-water 
channels practically coincident; 
2. Revetment of all the most serious caving reaches, without which 
it will never be possible entirely to complete the levee system; 
3. Dredging at low water, where found necessary; and it may not 
be necessary after the first two steps are completed and the low-water 
channel is thoroughly established. Contraction works may have to 
be resorted to in a few instances to close up chutes and secondary 
channels. 
Forestry and reservoirs can never be of any direct benefit. Reservoirs 
may serve finally, if built for other purposes, to render certain condi- 
tions of maximum and minimum flow somewhat less acute, but the 
amount of benefit is absolutely indeterminate beforehand, and for 
this reason they cannot be considered seriously by engineers on river 
regulation and control, at least in so far as concerns the Mississippi 
River below Cairo. 
Wituiam W. Harts, M. Am. Soc. C. E.* (by letter).—The adoption 
of extensive projects for the reforestation of our mountain regions, 
and for the construction of a system of impounding reservoirs, to 
provide for increasing the navigable capacity of our inland rivers, to 
prevent floods, to create water-power, and to secure many incidental 
advantages, has recently been proposed and is being persistently 
urged as an advisable governmental policy. In two bulletins of the 
Department of Agriculture,t some of these ideas have been publicly 
advocated, and in many periodicals the officials of the U. S. Forestry 
Bureau have heralded their hopes and plans. These theories have been 
elaborated in more than sanguine terms, occasionally in engineering 
publications, sometimes in public addresses, and often in the popular 
magazines. It seems well, therefore, to scrutinize the claims of these 
earnest advocates, and test their theories in the light of facts not pre- 
*Major, Corps of Engineers, U. 8. Army. 
tNos, 143 and 144. 
Mr. Todd. 
Mr. Harts. 
