160 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



owners from which the trees have been swept or from which they are 

 being rapidly taken, will furnish for a long time to come all the fields 

 needed for the uses of agriculture. The timber lands yet remaining as 

 the property of the Government are needed for a use that combines 

 with agricultural prosperity many other important interests. 



PROTECTION OF RIVERS BY FORESTS. 



It has been ascertained beyond question that the flow of streams is 

 dependent upon the extent of the forests in their vicinity. Where these 

 abound the flow is comparatively uniform as to the supply of water. This 

 is of great importance, both to agriculture, commerce/ and manufact- 

 ures. In the absence of forests the streams are subject to great varia- 

 tions in their volume. Now they flow along their course in great and 

 disastrous floods, and now again shrink away in their channels or 

 almost disappear. The difference of a few feet in the depth of water 

 in a river may make the difference between a stream under control 

 and one that has become a source of widespread disaster. It- is only 

 the difference of a few feet in depth which converts the Mississippi 

 from a great and beneficent artery of commerce to a sea of water carry- 

 ing destruction to crops and producing suffering which requires 

 millions for its relief. That difference may easily be produced by the 

 presence orabsence of forests, especially on the headwaters of that stream 

 and of its tributaries. The Government is called upon from time to 

 time to contribute liberally for the relief of those who are suffering from 

 the overflow of the great river of the West, and to expend millions in 

 building embankments for the purpose of restraining the angry waters 

 which come pouring down from the Rocky Mountains on the one hand 

 and from the Alleghanies on the other. It is only with great difficulty 

 that these embankments are maintained, and from time to time they 

 are burst asunder by the flood and have to be rebuilt. 



FORESTRY BETTER THAN DIKES. 



If the forests along this stream and its affluents had not been 

 removed the floods would seldom have reached a dangerous point, and 

 the true remedy for them now is the establishment of forests along the 

 upper water-courses, rather than the building of dikes on the lower 

 portions of the stream. These are but a temporary and ineffective 

 remedy at the best, and attended with great and constant expense. 

 The former, once established, would be an abiding protection, and also 

 a lasting source of revenue. With the aid of the forests, we may say 

 without hesitation that our great navigable waters, not less than the 

 smaller streams, are completely within our control. Observation and 

 experience in European countries, reaching through a long course of 

 years, have shown this to be so. Large masses of forest in the vicinity 

 of rivers perform to a great extent the office of reservoirs or reserve 

 basins in which the waters are stored up when over-abundant and from 

 which they are discharged when needed, thus preserving an equable 

 flow. In a region destitute of forests, the falling rains or the rapidly 

 melting snows find their way at once to the nearest river channels and 

 fill them often beyond their capacity, causing, it may be, a disastrous 

 overflow. But where masses of woods are present the waters make 

 their way more slowly into the river channels, and consequently pass 

 away gradually without overtasking those channels or causing harmful 

 floods. This effect of forests has been very strikingly shown in France 



