The San Francisco call., 1898-07-28
THE NEED OF FOREST PROTECTION

glad that the interest of the whole country in the forests of part of 1t is receiving attention, even though the treatment of it may be partial and lncom pete
 The forests of country perhaps its most lm- portant and valuable physical feature They bear relation to the precipitation and distribution of that moisture upon which the fertility of the soil de- bends, for which i'll the regions which they dominate, there possible substitute Their destruction is artificial interference with the ways of nature, which is sure of punishment, in dehydrated soil and loss of fertility.
 This statement of the relation of forests to fertility has been contradicted by some superficial observers, who cite the prairie States of the Upper Mississippi Valley example of the non-concurrence ot tor ests with moisture and fertility.
 The contradiction is only apparent and is not real Those prairie regions differ in their physical features from the region of high pateaus, mountains and val leys west of the hundredth meridian
 In the prairie country nature provided substitute for the forests agent in the collection and dis tribution of moisture The prairie States have but few attitudes greater than Goo feet In their primitive condition they were threaded by sloughs, drainage channels with but little fall, where the shed waters moved but slowly, and evaporation during most Of the year not rapid Here accumulated vegetable mold many feet in depth from the roots and the de- cay of the hummock grasses which held water like a sponge. These sloughs reinforced by swanps, marshes, ponds and small lakes, all serving catch basins for the rainfall, and most of them de- tended against evaporation by the overgrowng grasses.
 The moisture for the whole region evaporates from the surface of the great lakes from Superior to Erie Falling upon the prairie watersheds, this moisture | found its way to the natural catchment basins and supplied local evaporation in the hot summer for the seasonabe thunderstorms by which it distributed to mosten the crust of the earth, refresh growing crops and find its way to storage Ill the clay subsoil to be drawn up by capillary attraction and to give life to the deep roots of trees. Within quarter of tury grew up rage for draining these sloughs, swamps, marshes ponds and lakes. Congress wisely passed Swamp land" laws which permitted the cheap alienation to private ownership of these natural catchment basins. They are plowed fields, underlad with drain tile. The spongy character of the soi so we'll calculated for retaining water has been destroyed by cultivation The usual percentage of moisture derived directly from the great lakes, falls every year, but finds resting place. It IS drained quickly through the former catchment basins, goes speedily into the watercourses which have be- come torrental, and passes down them destructvey, deepening their narrowing channels, and is lost to its former useful purpose of supplying the showers and being by them distributed for moistenng the crust of the earth The melancholy results
 
 considerable distance each side, there for merly fine bodies of timber On the river benches, ntervales, this timber consisted of willow, cotton wood, linn, sycamore and soft maple Next there fine growths of white and black walnut, white and black ash, hackberry and hickory. Then the clay hills found white black, red, burr and pin oak shagbark hickory and hard maple, among which lumbermen recognized the most valu- able hardwoods the continent.
 These riparian forests have been too indiscrim- inately cut away and wantonly destroyed But what ! fire and spared is being rapidly swept away by drainage of the soughs and natural storage reser- voirs. The failure in distribution of moisture from them has dried the crust of the earth that all trees of the hickory family, the genus Carya, dying. They are tap root trees and the earth having dried out below their roots, they get no moisture and dis appear. So far the which spread their roots near the surface manage to live the small quantity of moisture supplied by direct precipitation but their doom will come soon or late.
 In that prairie region then, we see that drainage of natural reservoirs is in all respects equivalent to the deforestaton of tmbered region, and that 1t car res with it gradual destruction of the tree producing capacity of the so which naturally bore timber, just as the tmbered region successive fires destroy that capacity.
 This whole subject of natures way of lifting mois by evaporation from the bosom of the lakes and seas carrying 1t inland on the winds in certain sons when their direction was favorable and there storing it, either in soil sheltered by forests or in soughs, swamps and marshes either to be distributed by percoation into streams from which 1t might be artifcially diverted for irrigation, by the means lifted up for distribution by the varying winds of summer when the great currents from their orig nal have ceased is of fascinating interest to the student of physical economics. It requires to be studied and that the conclusions reached be practically applied, our fertile regions will day be as blear as the sands that drift the ruins of Persepolis where
 "The lion and the lizard keep
 The courts where Jamshyd
 gloried and drank deep"