FORESTRY BUREAU. 



163 



ries of several Stages. Six or seven States are affected by the floods of 

 the Ohio. Indiana is more likely to be damaged by them than is West 

 Virginia, but the most efficient protection against them is to be made 

 in the latter State rather than in the former. Yet it would be difficult 

 to engage Indiana in establishing protective forests in West Virginia 

 or to induce the latter State to plant forests for the benefit of Indiana. 



A FOREST COMIVnSSION. 



The only wny of securing the end desired, therefore, seems to be by 

 the action of the General Government. The passage by Congress ot 

 such a bill as that introduced at the last session by Senator Sherman, 

 constituting a Forestry Commission for the purpose of ascertaining the 

 forest condition of the country in the vicinity of navigable streams, 

 would be an important step in the right direction. The bill of Mr. Ed- 

 munds is one of similar character and ought not to fail. It may well 

 be asked also why the General Government may not as well appropriate 

 money, in conjunction with the States most interested, for the purpose 

 of preventing floods in the Ohio and Mississippi, those great arteries of 

 commerce, by reclothing their upper waters with forests, as to expend 

 millions in building dikes to check the ravages of the floods. 



For many years France has been engaged in stopping the ravages of 

 torrents by replanting the mountain sides with trees. These torrents 

 had been growing more destructive from year to year, as the forests 

 were cut down by the peasantry, chiefly for the sake of extending their 

 pasture grounds. Great masses of rock and gravel were swept down 

 the mountain sides from time to time into the valleys and plains below. 

 To such an extent did this destuictive process go that the cultivated 

 lauds of whole villages and districts were in some cases overspread 

 with the debris brought down by the torrents, and the inhabitants were 

 compelled to abandon their homes and fields and remove to other por- 

 tions of the country in order to continue to gain a livelihood by agri- 

 culture. Aroused by these desolating calamities, the Government in- 

 stituted an inquiry into the cause and the proper remedy for the evil. 

 After a careful investigation of the subject, conducted in a most scien- 

 tific manner, the Government undertook to check the devastations 

 of the torrents by restoring their woody covering to the mountain 

 slopes, and by regulating the cutting of their forests by the proprietors. 

 Wherever it was deemed necessary that there should be trees for pro- 

 tection, the proprietors were directed to replant their denuded acres. 

 If circumstances required it, they were assisted by the State, to the ex- 

 tent of furnishing them with seeds or young trees fit for planting. If 

 with this help the proprietors declined to comply with the demand to 

 replant, the State asserted its right of eminent domain, took possession 

 of the needed land and planted the requisite trees, leaving the proprie- 

 tors still the right of redeeming their lands within a certain period, on 

 condition of paying to the State the expense which it had incurred in 

 the work of reforesting. This work of reforesting, so far as it has 

 gone, has been entirely successful. Wherever it has been carried out 

 the ravages of the torrents have been checked, and it has been abun- 

 dantly proved that the forests are an instrument by means of which tor- 

 rents and Hoods can be controlled, and that if man can mar the face of 

 nature by his heedlessness or reckless selfishness he can also heal the 

 wounds which he has made. 



In some such way as that adopted by France and other European na- 

 tions must the General Government of this country meet the problem. 



