534 DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
Mr. Chitten- St. Louis, whose fancy was captured by the wierd appearance of the 
den. 
dead standing timber. This, with several other pictures, was given 
to the writer, and it was the only one in his collection bearing upon 
the subject in hand when he came to write his paper. If he had had an 
opportunity to get others, he could have selected hundreds of places 
of all degrees of slope that would have illustrated his argument just 
as well. If Mr. Pinchot ever visits that region the writer would ask 
him to examine the steép slopes of Bunsen Peak and Terrace Moun- 
tain, burned over several years ago, and now grown up to grasses and 
underbrush where hundreds of deer graze during a large portion of 
every year; and also a steep hillside at Bluff Point, on the shore of 
Yellowstone Lake, where a former fire has been succeeded by a growth 
of jack pines so dense that it is impossible to take a horse through it. 
In fact, in all his travels of many hundreds of miles in burned-over 
districts in those mountains, the writer has never found any marked 
erosion resulting from such fires, and does not believe that there is 
any. 
But the course which Mr. Pinchot has quite unjustly ascribed to 
the writer in this matter is one of constant regular practice by the 
forestry propaganda. Let anyone examine the photographs illustrat- 
ing erosion in the Southern Appalachians and other places—bald, rocky 
knobs, seamed river bluffs, gorges, chasms, and ravines assumed to have 
resulted from deforestation—and see what exaggerated evidence they 
constitute. They bear no more resemblance to the normal aspect of 
cleared land than do the gullied precipices of the Bad Lands to the 
corn-clad hills of Iowa. 
As to the writer’s impression, which has so excited Mr. Pinchot’s 
astonishment, that the forest under scientific management is kept free 
of débris, the writer will say that he has derived it from general read- 
ing, from the description of German and French forests, from con- 
versation with those who have inspected those forests, from official 
publications of the Government,* and finally from correspondence with 
Mr. Pinchot’s bureau itself. It is the writer’s understanding that 
dead timber will not be allowed to accumulate in such forests, that 
tree tops are cut up for wood or else destroyed as a measure of fire 
protection, and that the ground will generally be kept clear of the 
litter that fills the ordinary forest. Possibly the writer’s use of the 
word “rake” gave Mr. Pinchot the impression that he meant that the 
forest was carefully combed over with a garden rake as one clears up 
* For example. in discussing the cause of forest fires, the Secretary of Agriculture says 
(Senate Document 91, 60th Congress. First Session, p. 29): ‘All kinds of waste materials 
left in the woods supply food for the flames, but the leaving of large, unlopped softwood 
tops on the ground adds enormously to the fury of a brushwood fire and greatly prolongs 
the length of time that a slash remains a menace to its own and surrounding areas.” 
And Senate Report 1596, 59th Congress, First Session, p. 7, says: ‘The dried branches 
and tops of felled trees also furnish ready material for the spread of the great forest fires 
which constitute the second agency contributing to the destruction of the forests.” 
‘ath The nabural inference from this language is that it is desirable to avoid such accumu- 
lations 0: ris. 
