PROTECTIVE FORESTS. 47 



to say that they would at this time indorse a proposition for the State 

 to purchase and apply forest management upon such lands. That 

 would mean such a radical departure from precedent and tradition in 

 the State's activities as doubtless to encounter strong opposition. 



(5) If the State should turn buyer and acquire pine lands enough to 

 establish a forest reserve, it could place these lands under a well- 

 devised p'lan of business management which would in a reasonably 

 brief time be brought to a revenue-yielding basis. This would cer- 

 tainly be the ease on those tracts where lumbering operations had left 

 a fair stand of } T oung timber. Such a course of management success- 

 fully carried out would be a most valuable object lesson to private 

 owners, large and small, and might be expected to result in such an 

 introduction of practical forestry on a large or small scale as would 

 give the region a far greater value than would result from either an 

 all-farm or an all-forest condition. 



PROTECTIVE FORESTS ON THE EDWARDS PLATEAU. 



Both the welfare of the Edwards Plateau itself and the welfare of 

 the Coast Plain adjacent to it strongly demand the retention of a per- 

 manent timber covering on the plateau. 



The relation of the Edwards Plateau to the Coast Plain between the 

 Colorado and Devils rivers is like that of the Sierras to the valleys of 

 central California, and of the Rocky Mountains to the adjacent plains 

 in Colorado. Kings River and the San Joaquin River in California 

 find their counterparts in the Guadalupe, San Antonio, and other rivers 

 rising in the Edwards Plateau. In both cases the highlands furnish 

 the water — in the former from snows, in the latter from springs. In 

 both cases this water is both a boon and a menace to the country below. 

 It is beneficial or destructive according to the rate at which it runs off 

 the hills. Nature has placed a great reservoir high above the irrigated 

 farms. The water is held back and distributed in even flow, not from 

 a lake, but from the face of the county itself. On the Edwards Pla- 

 teau the rock strata, exposed by erosion and dislocated b} r faulting, 

 normally take up the water, which then percolates slowly to feed the 

 steady-flowing streams. But to make this possible there must be a 

 soil covering to hold the water when it falls. The plateau is a deeply 

 cut up, mountainous area, with canyon-like vallej's and highlands, 

 thinly covered with soil. The rain comes in sudden cloudbursts, which, 

 if not held back by forest growth, pours rapidly from the hillsides, 

 carrying down soil and stones, and rushes off in destructive floods to 

 inundate great areas of farm land below. The region is that of the 

 arid Southwest, where agriculture without irrigation is uncertain. 

 Destruction of the forest cover does not take awa} T the reservoir; it 

 opens the gates to pour the water down in successive inundations, 

 instead of holding it in check until it is needed. 



