DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 489 
his argument, supplemented by the statements of Messrs. Leffingwell, mr. Chitten- 
Strong, and Johnston, and even of Colonel Pickett himself. He would ai 
also cite the article from Science which is included in the Appendix. 
The proposition has come to many as a surprise, and their first impulse 
has been to deny it, and this, impulse has led to the only efforts of 
consequence, and these very feeble ones, to controvert the writer’s 
argument. 
Mr. Leighton says that drifts form in forests. Occasionally; but 
such drifts may generally be accounted for by the topography. A 
sharp ridge, for instance, by forming an eddy in the air, causes the 
snow to collect more deeply behind it. Such instances are in direct 
line with the writer’s theory. The only situation where the trees them- 
selves form drifts is on the edge of the timber, where the wind blows 
into it from the open.” In such eases drifts will accumulate for a hun- 
dred yards or so under cover, depending on the density of the timber. 
But Mr. Leighton is wholly wrong in asserting that but a small 
part of the snow in the open gathers into drifts. Omitting the very 
early and very late snows, which are generally wet and accompanied 
by less wind, the vast bulk of the mountain snows falls under the 
influence of the wind. This snow is dry and floury, and yields to the 
slightest breeze. In the open country it is nearly all thrown into drifts 
of greater or less magnitude. 
The writer craves the pardon of the Society for referring so much to 
his personal experience, but the position taken by certain participants in 
this discussion, in holding that there is no essential difference between the 
forest and open in the way in which snow collects on the ground, seems so 
extraordinary that he is inclined to specify more particularly the sources 
of his own knowledge. For many years his work brought him frequently 
in the heavy forest during the worst storms of winter, while in the spring 
he was almost constantly in the woods in connection with the making of 
maple sugar, from the very earliest melting until the leaves were out 
on the trees. This was in a dense, primeval, deciduous forest, and in 
a country of very heavy snowfall. He states most positively that in 
such a forest the snow never drifts to any great extent unless there 
are sharp hills, or openings, or other similar disturbing elements, and 
that then it does not drift as in the open country. In the region here con- 
sidered, drifting in the open was the rule everywhere after cold weather 
really set in, and was a source of great inconvenience to travel wherever 
there were fences along the roadside. Nothing was more common than 
to see roads staked out through these drifts, or the highway abandoned 
altogether, and travel taken to the open fields. No such trouble was 
ever experienced where roads lay. through extensive forests. These 
open country drifts often lasted until the land around them was dry 
and dusty and the forest bed, well dried out. 
So in the mountain forests; there is a long belt of open country, 
