22 



must put back a cubic foot of timber — that is to say, 70 million cubic 

 feet per year for the anthracite industr}^ alone. '■' * * Four hun- 

 dred million cubic feet a year will hardly suffice for the underground 

 work in mines. This fact establishes a place for the mining industry 

 as a good customer to the lumberman and emphasizes its interest in 

 the maintenance of the timber supply. 



F. H. NEWELL, 



Chief Eng-ineer, Reclamation Service. 



* * * The Government, through the operation of the reclama- 

 tion act of June 17, 1902, is building large irrigation works through- 

 out the West. The fund for that purpose now amounts to about 

 $25,000,000, and large works, national in character, are being built as 

 rapidly as possible. The protection of these works, their future use, 

 their stability through all time, are very largely dependent upon the 

 proper treatment of the forests which lie upon the mountains above 

 the reservoirs. In fact there is hardly a project which is under con- 

 sideration which is not very closely joined with the questions of the 

 best use and the best preservation of the forests, and perhaps of the 

 grazing land immediately adjacent to or above them. If these great 

 works, which are built, as I have said, to last for all time, are to be 

 preserved, it can only be after we have solved this whole question of 

 the best use of the forests. * * * Forest protection has an impor- 

 tant, practical, definite value not only to the people of the West, but 

 to the people of the whole country, in the making of homes and mak- 

 ing possible the maintenance of a large population. This population 

 will support itself from the soil of the West, and will draw upon the 

 East for its manufactures, and draw upon the transportation inter- 

 ests of the whole country to carry those manufactures. 



GUY E, MITCHELL, 

 Secretary National Irrigation Association. 



In the western half of the United States the destruction of the for- 

 ests has an intimate bearing upon the capacity of the State to sustain 

 population, for population results from irrigation, irrigation depends 

 upon water supplies, and the water supply is furnished from the 

 melting snows caught and held by the forest clothing the great 

 mountain chains of the Sierras and the Rockies. * * * What is 

 needed to-day is vastly more strength to the arm of American for- 

 estry for the vigorous prosecution of its carefully outlined plan to 

 save what we now possess. 



J. B. LIPPINCOTT, 

 Supervising- Engineer, Reclamation Service. 



* * * A striking example of the output of a barren, treeless 

 drainage basin is shown in the case of Queen Creek, xA^rizona. This 



