Mr. Chitten- 
den. 
520 DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
Another authority says: “Under good government and with thor- 
ough cultivation, several times the number [of the present in- 
habitants] could be easily supported;” and Professor Socin says of 
Mesopotamia, that now abandoned home of former millions, that a 
restoration of the ancient canals would restore the former productive- 
ness of that region. 
It is not too much to say that, from any point of view, it is doing 
violence to common sense to attribute to the removal of forests 
(where they have been removed) the conditions now prevailing in 
those countries. Those conditions are due to the character of the 
inhabitants and to a demoralizing and despotic government, which sup- 
presses true liberty of trade and industry, and makes even human life 
unsafe. Such a people and such institutions would make a desert of 
Eden in any part of the world. Sweep away the inhabitants and their 
government and replace them with the free institutions and virile life 
of the Anglo-Saxon or German people, and the face of Nature will 
undergo an immediate change whether a tree is planted or not. 
So, likewise, the claim that the present climatic and physical con- 
ditions of Spain and Northern Africa are due to the removal of 
forests that once existed there cannot be supported by evidence that 
would be considered satisfactory upon any other subject. We know 
little if anything of a definite character concerning the extent of the 
forests alleged to have flourished there. We know nothing of the 
rainfall and stream flow, as they were before the period of the sup- 
posed removal of those forests. If there is a difference, we do not 
know that it is even remotely traceable to the removal of forests. All 
we know is that conditions of stream flow in some districts are not 
such as might be desired, and that forests are not as extensive as 
might be desired; but there is absolutely no warrant for connecting 
these conditions in the relation of effect and cause. 
The Nile has apparently not changed its characteristics in the long 
period of recorded history in that valley, and certainly not from any 
traceable relation to a removal of forests on its water-shed. Among 
the replies received in response to a circular letter of August 27th, 
1908, by the Forestry Bureau, inviting answers to certain questions in 
regard to the effect of deforestation upon stream flow, Mr. Oscar T. 
Crosby, formerly an officer of the Army, submitted the results of his 
quite extensive observations upon the Blue Nile in Abyssinia. Judg- 
ing from the presence of a few flourishing groves, and the fact that 
the plateau would evidently support trees, he assumed that forests 
probably existed there prior to the occupancy of the plateau by Man, 
and that they had since been removed for his convenience and use. 
But as to the effect of their absence upon the flow of the river he 
thought it quite negative, and summed up his conclusions as follows: 
“First. The Blue Nile presents a case in which deforestation of 
the drainage area has taken place, followed by a covering of the soil 
