DISCUSSION : FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 529 
Mr. Pinchot’s remarks upon snow-melting are explainable only mr. Chitten- 
through lack of observation. Does he really mean to say that the “™ 
forest temperature i in fall, winter, or spring is lower than in the open? 
The reverse is generally the case. The more rapid melting in the open 
is due to the direct action of the sun upon the thin snows. This melt- 
ing often takes place even when, in the shadow of a tree or rock, freez- 
ing is going on. It is not the warmth of the general atmosphere, but the 
direct action of the sun that melts snow in the open when it is not 
melting in the forest. Mr. Pinchot adds: “If the melting went on as 
fast in the forest as it does in the open, the discharge of the water 
would be greater, * * * and floods would thereby be intensified.” 
This is precisely what happens when the forest melting begins. The 
forest snows then melt a great deal faster than in the open, and do 
materially intensify the floods. This is why our mountain floods in 
the spring, the “June rise,” come from the forests. Again: “The only 
condition under which the melting, for like conditions, is anything 
like as fast as in the open is during a warm rain.” Does a warm rain 
prevail in a cold atmosphere? And, when the rain stops, does it at 
once become cold? It is not the Chinook wind in the intra-mountain 
regions that does the melting of which the writer speaks. It is the 
natural warmth of summer. The forests hold the snows until genuine 
summer conditions arrive, with flowers blossoming wherever there is 
a bare foot of ground, and then yield up their water with a rush. 
Nearly always at such times, rains develop which accelerate the melt- 
ing, and contribute their own water to the flood. The net result is 
to add together the precipitation of several storms. 
Mr. Pinchot says that the drifts melt as fast as the shallow snows 
of the forest. As a matter of fact, this is not so. The heavy, solid 
drifts, like a mass of ice, melt much more slowly. But admitting for 
argument’s sake that it were so, it is entirely foreign to the point 
which the writer brought out, viz., that the area exposed in the drift 
is but a small fraction of the area exposed in the forest for a like 
amount of snow. He would refer again to his illustration of a cubic 
yard of snow situated so that only 1 sq. ft. is exposed, and again so 
that 27 sq. ft. are exposed. 
Mr. Pinchot questions the writer’s assumption that, of an 18-in. 
snowfall, 12 in. might be stopped in the dense forests of the Pacific 
Coast before it reaches the ground. Very well. The writer will accept 
any proportion that Mr. Pinchot thinks more nearly correct. The 
principle involved does not depend upon absolute quantities; but, as a 
matter of fact, more than a foot of snow is often held by these forests, 
and anyone who has passed through the snow-shed district of the 
Southern Pacific Railroad in the Sierra Nevada in winter will not 
doubt that there is an average of a foot of snow on the trees. Mr. 
Pinchot’s attention is invited to the photographs shown on Plate 
XLVI, taken while this writing was in progress, after a snowfall of 
