Connecticut western news., 1883-03-07

HE recent disastrous floods ln Ger many and in the West have again directed attention to the question as to the rela- tion between flood and forest. It is an important practical as well as scientific question and we are glad to see that Farmer Goodwin, 9 in a pamphlet of ten pages, has elucidated the subject in his usually clear and exhaustive man. ner. Gen Hawley and other United States senators will probably read it with as much interest as they did his argument before the tariff commission. Some of the leading Lew York papers hava taken the alarm and are clamorous for the general and state government to do somthing to save the forests and thus save us from destruction. They espec- ially want the state of New York to buy up the Adirondacks and stay the de- structive ax of the rapacious lumberman. as the only means of preventing the Erie canal from becoming dry, useless ditch and the Hudson river valley from being swept by flood that will wash Manhattan island out into the ocean.
 There are some curious and interest ing features connected with this question. For instance, some scientists affirm that the destruction of the forests causes the floods, while others affirm that it pro- duces precisely the opposite effect, namely, causes drouth. It seems to act like a two edged sword, ,-cuts both ways. It produces too much water and not water enough.
 Again, if the forests are such import ant factors in the economy of nature, did not our forefathers, when they came to this country make a great mistake in commencing to clear it up and would it not have been better for them to forego even baked beans than to entail upon their descendants the terrible disasters of the floods? Does it not show that after all the noble red man was far su- perior in wisdom and in knowledge of the laws of nature and of the eternal fitness of things, to his much vaunted pale faced brother? Poor Lo never felled a tree, he never went into the lumber business, he was no such vandal. Why? Because he knew that such a transgression would incur the displeas- ure of the Great Spirit and that the floods would come and wash away his wigwam and destroy his hunting grounds, and so he continued to roam the primeval forest and chase the nimble deer and was never troubled by floods, or drouth or grasshoppers.
 Another interesting question suggests itself. Were there any forests before the great flood of Noah's time? If floods are caused by the destruction or absence of forests, does it not follow that forests are postdiluvian? But then we are met with this difficulty. If there were no forests then, of what did Noal build his ark? And if forests were not antediluvian on what grew "the fruit of that forbidden tree whose morta. taste brought death into the world anC all our woe"
 There are those, of course, who deny that the forests have much influence or 1 the floods and who account for the floods in Germany and the West upon { different theory. They say that it i well known that water is never,-that i hardly ever,-used in Germany, tht universal beverage being lager beer while out West it is whiskey, and tha this non-use of water produces surplus which now and then fills the streams and overhows their banks, and in con firmation of this view they point to thu land of steady habits, with its Main' laws and local option laws where wate is the universal drink and where ther has not been much of flood for years
 If this theory is correct, it certainl.
 would be a strong argument in favor o
 constitutional prohibition. But th'
 subject is too great for us to attempt t'
 elucidate and we leave it to our legisla
 tors or to some other Connection
 farmer.