FOKEST PKESERVATION" AND NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 19 



i 



great purposes of the forester — are exactly suited to meet the two 

 chief branches of the metalliferous mining industry, lode mining 

 and placer mining. The lode miner must have timber for his under- 

 ground workings ; and without water the placer miner is helpless. 



* * * Every successful lode miner is the consumer of enormous 

 quantities of forest products. Such properties as the Homestake 

 mine in South Dakota, the great copper mines of Butte and Anaconda 

 in Montana, or the lead-silver producers of the Coeur ci'Alenes in 

 Idaho, require almost incredible amounts of timber for their opera- 

 tion. The first impulse of the miner in the hurry and scurry of the 

 newly discovered mining region is to cut and slash indiscriminately. 

 He is heedless of the damage that may be done to the remaining tim- 

 ber, and he is utterly extravagant in the use of that which costs him 

 nothing and which there is no one to claim or protect. What might 

 be expected ensues. Fires start in the cut-over tracts, spread through 

 the accumulated debris to the adjacent forests, and the country for 

 miles around is devastated. In a relatively few years the mining 

 camp is surrounded by denuded hills and the miners are face to face 

 with a timber famine. 



FORESTS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICAL POWES. 



A. L. FELLOWS, 

 Consulting Engineer, United States Geological Survey. 



* * * One of the greatest needs that this country has to-day is a 

 cheaper form of power, so that industries as yet undeveloped may, 

 in their turn, add to the national wealth. Electrical power may be 

 generated in many ways, but in none more practically than by the 

 use of water. We here avail ourselves of one of nature's resources 

 without in any way exhausting her reserve supplies, as is done in the 

 present wasteful use of coal. The development of electrical energy 

 on a commercial basis upon a given stream and with a given fail 

 will depend upon a variety of conditions, and in nearty every one of 

 these conditions the forestation or lack of such upon the headwaters 

 of the streams plays an important part. Those regions that ap- 

 proach most closely to ideal conditions are those which are densely 

 forested, and can therefore act as conservators of the water supply 

 with the least artificial aid. 



DEPENDENCE OF IRRIGATION UPON FORESTRY. 



GUY E. MITCHELL, 



Secretary National Irrigation Association. 



* * * In the western half of the United States the destruction of 

 the forests has an intimate bearing upon the capacity of the State to 

 sustain population, for population results from irrigation, irriga- 



