HYDROLOGY OF NEW YORK 



179 



the balance deforested. The reason why dense, primeval forest is 

 specified is because such forest acts more efficiently as a wind- 

 breaker than does an open forest. It has been common to assume 

 that even when the soft wood (pine, spruce, hemlock, etc.) is 

 removed from an area the hard wood still forms about as efficient 

 a covering as before the removal of the soft wood. The writer, 

 however, thinks that anybody who has spent much time in the 

 forest will understand that this is a mistake. Certainly during 

 the late fall, winter and early spring, a period of from six to seven 

 months, when the leaves are absent from the hard woods, they are 

 not a very efficient wind-breaker, although without doubt consid- 

 erably better than nothing. As an estimate based on judgment, it 

 is considered that a hardwood forest is not equivalent in water 

 protective influence, on an average, to more than 50 per cent to 60 

 per cent of dense, primeval forests of spruce, pine, balsam and 

 hemlock. Moreover, the weight of evidence goes to show that the 

 soft wood consumes less water than hard wood. 



In the Adirondack forest beech, maple, birch, elm, ash and 

 other har'd woods are mingled with the soft woods spruce, pine, 

 hemlock, balsam and to some extent, larch. If we remove the 

 soft woods, we have done two things to lessen the protection from 

 evaporation : (1), we have opened up the area for the admission of 

 wind, which by itself will materially increase the evaporation, 

 consequently leaving less water to run off, and which will be 

 specially operative during the six or seven months of the year 

 when the leaves are absent from hardwoods; and (2), we have left 

 on the area the hard woods, which, so far as the evidence goes, 

 . consume more water than the soft woods. The writer has no way 

 of proving the proposition, but assuming that the data as to 

 transpiration of hard woods as compared with soft woods are 

 measurably true, he has no doubt that the combined effect of 

 transpiration and evaporation will be, on an area from which 

 the soft woods have been removed, from 2 to 2y 2 inches more than 

 on the same area with the soft woods standing. 



We have seen in the foregoing that the area of the Adirondack 

 park is 4387 square miles, of which a little over one-half was, in 



