Mr. Leighton. 
416 DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
The author expresses a preference for floods over dry years, and he 
assures the reader that dry seasons are sure to follow floods.* The 
sequence is hardly obvious in the light of past experience. The present 
year, 1908, for example, has been one of the severest in our history, from 
the flood-damage standpoint, and yet the rivers have been extremely 
low a great part of the time. The Ohio has been visited by no great 
floods; yet the drought has been the worst in the last half century. 
On the other hand, the Ohio was visited by disastrous floods in 
January and March, 1907; yet, during the following summer, the river 
was not abnormally low. The author’s generalizations are precarious. 
The expressed preference of the author for floods over dry seasons 
suggests the query whether or not he has ever considered the extent 
of the country’s flood damage. It is plain, from the statement quoted, 
that he has disregarded the worst element of loss, viz., the flood-water 
itself. A flood is essentially a waste of water which might be put to a 
useful purpose; but, apparently, he does not realize that floods, during 
1908, have caused a physical damage of $260 000000, and the end is 
not yet. Nor does this figure take account of the property depreciation 
resulting from flood menace, which would more than double the 
total. ; 
There still remains much to be said, but the speaker will forbear dis- 
cussion of Colonel Chittenden’s statements concerning forest control 
of erosion, except to state that, if he will accompany the speaker on 
a journey of one week to portions of this country with which he is 
evidently now unfamiliar, he will willingly withdraw this section on 
erosion. His fundamental misconceptions concerning erosion may be 
explained by a little consideration of dynamic geology. 
The speaker, at his solicitation, has received from Dr. W J McGee,t 
a comment upon certain features of Colonel Chittenden’s paper, in 
which he remarks that Colonel Chittenden errs in that he assumes 
that there is no connection between rivers considered with respect to 
improvement and the sediment that they carry, and again when he 
holds that water is the object matter of engineering art and sediment 
the object matter of scientific farming. Such misconceptions explain 
the erroneous deductions respecting the Missouri River. Dr. McGee 
notes Colonel Chittenden’s declaration in one sentence that the Lower 
Missouri takes its sediment from the Bad Lands and his equally em- 
phatie utterance in another sentence that the sediment carried by the 
Missouri and other rivers is merely local freight. Dr. McGee then 
testifies that the Missouri is still a clear river after passing the 
Montana Bad Lands. He observes, further, that the Missouri nor- 
mally gathers by bank caving nearly twice as much sediment in the 
State of Missouri alone as it pours into the Mississippi. “The only 
* Page 269. 
+ Erosion Expert of the Bureau of Soils, United States Department of Agriculture. 
