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Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Crs. a Copy. | 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1898 
VOL. LI. -No. 4 
No. 846 Broadway, New York, 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
PRIZES FOR AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHS, 
The Forest and Stream offers prizes for meritorious 
work with the camera, under conditions which follow: 
The prizes will be divided into three series: (1) for 
live wild game; (2) for game in parks; (3) for other sub- 
jects relating to shooting and fishing. 
(1) For live game photographs three prizes are of- 
fered, the first of $50, the second of $25, and the third of 
$10, 
(2) For live game in parks, for the best picture, a 
prize of $10. 
(3) For the best pictures relating to Forest and 
Stream's field — shooting and fishing, the camp, camp- 
ers and camp life, sportsman travel by land and water, 
incidents of field and stream — a first prize of $20, a sec- 
ond of $15, a third of $10, and for fourth place two prizes 
of $5 each. 
There is no restriction as to the time nor as to where 
the pictures have been made or may be made. 
Pictures will be received up to Dec. 31 this year. 
All work must be original; that is to say, it must not 
have been submitted to any other competition or have 
been published. 
There are no restrictions as to the make' or style of 
camera, nor as to size of plate. 
A competitor need not be a subscriber to the Forest 
and Stream. 
All work must be that of amateurs. 
The photographs will be submitted to a committee, 
who, in making their award, will be instructed to take 
into consideration the technical merits of the work as 
a photograph, its artistic qualities, and other things be- 
ing equal, the unique and difficult nature of the subject. 
Photographs should be marked for identification with 
initials or a pseudonym only, and with each photograph 
should be given, answering to the initials, the name of 
sender, title of view, locality, date and names of camera, 
and plate or film. 
FLOOD AND FOREST. 
The progress of humanity depends on man's familiar- 
izing himself with the laws of nature, and adapting him- 
self to the conditions of his surroundings; for to man 
is given the power to modify those conditions beneficial- 
ly or prejudicially. But this power, always exerted un- 
consciously by a people at large, is rarely guided intelli- 
gently until the fatal results of misdirection are experi- 
enced. Asia Minor, and the tract extending eastward to 
the Caspian and southeasterly between the Caucasus 
range and Arabia into northern Persia, was once the 
garden of the world, and is now capable of supporting 
but a scanty population. It is the hand of man that 
has marred the fair face of nature. The region is one of 
scant rainfall, but as long as its mountains and a con- 
siderable proportion of its area were covered with forest 
the rainfall, not of the year only, but of many pre- 
ceding years, was stored up in its subsoil as in a reser- 
voir, from which it was pumped up constantly by the 
tree roots to be exhaled as vapor during the day and 
condensed as dew at night, giving fertility to the occu- 
pied area. In course of time the whole land was- brought 
under cultivation, the mountains cleared of their forests, 
and the scant rainfall, instead of sinking slowly into the 
subsoil, rushed precipitately into the stream beds, and 
was carried rapidly away to the sea, and the subsoil 
waters sank lower and lower, until finally, the country 
having only its scant annual rainfall to depend on for 
its fertility was degraded to the rank of a subdesert 
region. 
One may point to a dozen different regions or coun- 
tries in which man, by the destruction of the forests, has 
converted once fertile regions into barren wastes, subject 
to periodical floods and droughts; but in all these cases 
the great majority of men will pooh-pooh your conclu- 
sions as baseless speculations, and the combined ignor- 
ance of the world is a very heavy force to contend 
against.. Ignorance is power, but it can make no head- 
way against the evidence of the magnificent works un- 
dertaken in France for the arrest of whilom destructive 
floods, the regulation of the flow of the rivers, and the 
restoration to fertility of barren wastes by the restock- 
ing of denuded forest areas. 
The first great work of this kind undertaken in France 
was the taming of the torrent of the Garonne, a river 
subject to periodical devastating floods which in the 
year 1875 did damage to the extent of $60,000,000, along 
with the sacrifice of over a thousand lives, and the suc- 
cess which attended the efforts to curb this stream in- 
spired full confidence in the capacity of the State en- 
gineers to regulate the flow of rivers everywhere. The 
region drained by the Garonne is a hilly region fissured 
by deep ravines. For more than 300 years the wood 
cutting had been carried on in the most improvident 
manner, until it was all cut out, the higher lands con- 
verted into pasture land, and the lower slopes and valleys 
broken up for agriculture. Then began the work of 
destruction, slowly, imperceptibly, but surely. The slim 
soil of the ravines and of the hill tops dried in the sun 
was cut up by the hoofs of the sheep and cattle, and 
gradually washed away by the rains, which, instead of 
percolating slowly into the soil of the ravines, rushed 
precipitately down their slopes, carrying the soil along 
with them, and undermining and dislodging boulders and 
great masses of rock; the pasture grew poorer and poor- 
er, the fields suffered from alternate flood and drought, 
while every rainfall caused a torrent in the ravines, 
which, rolling along with it a mass of sand, gravel, 
boulders and rock fragments, spread it out over the 
fertile valleys below, embracing them in the general de- 
struction. In one province alone, that of Ardeche, some 
7c,cco acres of rich land were covered up and rendered 
worthless in this manner. 
Now these ravines have been planted with trees, and 
the hill tops have either been planted or returfed, and 
now, in the works of a great French writer, one has only 
to look at the work so ingenious in its simplicity to 
understand how it is effectual. "Every liquid molecule, 
so to speak, is seized individually, the thin sheet of 
water flowing down is retarded - in its course by a 
thousand thirsty little plants, by the lines of cultivated 
herbage, and by the hedges of shoots and trees. It is 
compelled to tarry a little on each terrace to slake the 
thirst of the ground, and when it reaches the lower 
end of a furrow it spreads itself out on the flattened bed 
there prepared for it. Stopped at every barrier, it loses 
its vital force on every hand, and finally, from resting 
place to resting place, and from descent to descent, it 
arrives after a thousand retardations, and still limpid in 
the channel which conveys it to the river." 
All floods are but accumulations of rain drops, which 
ought to be slowly absorbed into the earth, each where 
it falls, and contribute to the perennial flow of springs 
and streams and rivers. Foods in this country are as 
much the result of denudation of forest area as in France. 
The evil has not yet been carried to the same extent in 
this country. The clearing has been as reckless, but it 
has not yet borne its full fruit. At the same time the 
devastations to which we are annually subjected by flood 
constitute a very considerable bar to progress. 
It is more economical to spend ten millions in guard- 
ing against floods than to allow property to the value of 
one million to be swept away by flood. The ten millions 
once spent constitutes a perpetual safeguard; the flood 
which sweeps away one million hightens the liability to 
further loss. 
And periodic floods carrying devastation in their train 
are but one of a numerous set of consequences result- 
ing inevitably from reckless forest clearance. We clear 
the forest to enlarge the agricultural area, and the 
conditions which create floods leave the crops parched 
for want of moisture, so that if the one prime considera- 
tion were to increase the measure of agricultural pro- 
duce of the country, the steps necessary to secure it would 
be, not the conversion of all the forest into cornfields, 
but the conservation of so much forest area as would 
regulate the supply of moisture for the agricultural area. 
And this forest area must be judiciously distributed to 
effect the desired results. It is not enough to conserve 
the timber along the crests of the principal ranges. 
These constitute but a small proportion of the area of 
the continent, and they can do no more than prevent 
floods originating in their own area, and insure the lower 
country a certain measure of perennial river flow, even 
when its own rainfall has been carried off to the sea in 
floods. But this is not enough. The agricultural inter- 
ests require local forests everywhere to create or main- 
tain conditions favorable to them. Every State wants its 
own forests, every county wants its own forests, and 
every hillside and valley farm in interested in the main- 
tenance of forest on the crest of the hill above it. 
But no one is slower to recognize his dependence upon 
controllable conditions than the farmer, and the ob- 
stinacy with which the French peasantry opposed the 
State measures for retrieving the ever-growing evil, as 
set forth in the Tittle volume "The Forest Waters the 
Farm," is both instructive and amusing. 
And not only do forests regulate the flow of the rain- 
fall back to the sea, and conserve a supply in the subsoil 
which, by creating dews, sensibly affects the precipita- 
tion over large areas; not only do they save the hills 
from erosion and the subjacent valleys from being buried 
under the debris from the hills; not only do they create 
springs which fertilize lands below them, but there is lit- 
tle doubt that they exert a very powerful influence on 
the arrest of wind storms. 
Wind storms, like floods, if unobstructed, are apt to 
gather force as they go, but in transit through a forest 
country their force is broken, it is only on the ocean, 
the desert, and the prairie that wind storms accumulate 
their greatest force; and when we take into consideration 
the enormous destruction of life and property resulting 
from storms as well as from floods on this continent, and 
realize that it might be averted by means which would 
favor the future development of the country, it will be 
seen that there are few problems of greater national in- 
terest than forest conservancy. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
We invite careful reading of the thoughtful and well 
considered paper from the pen of our English contribu- 
tor, Mr. J. J. Meyrick. It is a very clear and well round- 
ed discussion of the relation of the sportsmen's interests 
to those of the public; or more accurately, it is an en- 
deavor, and a successful one, to demonstrate the identity 
of those interests. 
We have been printing from time to time a series of 
interesting and suggestive accounts of wild creatures in 
domestication: Mrs. Le Plongeon's sparrows, Mr. 
Perry's egret, Mr. C. M. Stark's coon, Mrs. Willson's 
cranes, and to-day Mr. Robt. P. Stark's hawks. Next 
week we shall have a sketch of Mrs. Willson's otters. 
Doubtless there are other tamed animals quite as deserv- 
ing of record, and we should be glad to have their ways 
told in our National History columns. 
The progressive element of the Florida press is show- 
ing an appreciative realization of the fact that the native 
game and fish of the peninsula constitute a source of 
wealth which has been squandered by lamentable short- 
sightedness and folly. This fact that the subject is 
now receiving editorial attention is significant of a 
changed public attitude. It is not too much to hope that 
even at this day, before it shall have become irrevocably 
late, an adequate system of conservation and restriction 
may be put into operation. 
Dr. G. E. Hill sends us a letter, addressed by him to the 
Indian River Advocate, which is a well considered pre- 
sentation of the case by one who has traveled extensive- 
ly, and from experience and observation can testify to 
the dollars and cents aspect of game resources, with their 
opportunities and attractions for visitors and permanent 
residents. The sight of a flock of wild ducks, seen by 
him at Titusville eight years ago, he avers, was the ac- 
cident which prompted him eventually to invest $15,000 
in Florida real estate. What Florida had to offer the 
sportsman tourist even eight years ago — and the sup- 
ply was barren enough even then, to those who had 
known it in the 70s — and the paucity of the present are 
contrasted, and the sound deduction— not sentimental, 
but practically commercial — is that in permitting the ex- 
termination of its wild creatures the State has unwitting- 
ly turned away tens of thousands of dollars. 
