It will be noted this is more conservative than Mr. Rafter's estimate of 1.5 ft. increased depth from 41.6 billion cubic feet of storage, but it is not quite clear if they considered all of the 52 billion cubic feet of storage necessary to gain this one foot of depth. In reviewing the above conclusions, it should be remembered that Messrs. Sweet and Finch had the benefit of no additional surveys and no precise data, but that both were presumably very familiar from long personal experience with the general characteristics of the territory in question.

RESTRICTIONS ON RESERVOIR BUILDING.

Notwithstanding all the foregoing evidence of remarkably favorable reservoir sites, by the use of which the great shrinkage of the river's flow in summer could be prevented and notwithstanding the requirements of navigation and the great need for more power, various causes have deferred the building of additional reservoirs in the Adirondacks.

In the earlier days, lack of combination of the various mill owners along the stream for united action, and lack of securing a pro rata contribution to the cost of the reservoirs, doubtless had much to do with preventing action by them.

Combinations of this kind even when plainly most advantageous are often difficult to bring about. One mill has less pressing need than another of adding to its supply of power. Some mill owners may not have the ready funds. The owner of a mill may reason that those mill owners whose need is greatest will go ahead with the reservoir building and that by waiting, without effort or expense on his part, he can enjoy the use of the stored water as it flows past his mill, and as suggested in the census report already quoted on page 65 there has been all along a hope that the State would undertake this work with little or no expense to the mill owner, "for the benefit to navigation."

The fact that one using power for grinding pulp, the purpose for which the Hudson power is chiefly used, can not afford so large an expense for power as in textile manufacture, and can more readily arrange to manufacture a surplus in the months of plenty and stop in the months of drought, has also been a factor.

FOREST PRESERVE RESTRICTIONS.

The establishment of a State Forest Preserve in 1890 has had a very important restraining influence on the construction of these storage reservoirs.

The State laws outline two large districts, designated respectively as the Adirondack Park and the Adirondack Forest Preserve, comprising all lands owned or acquired by the State in certain counties and towns.

The outlines of the two districts and the location of the several parcels now owned by the State are shown on certain large scale maps issued by the N. Y. Forest, Fish and Game Commission.

The inner circuit bounds the "Park Lands" and the outer circuit the "Forest Preserve." The Park is a part of the Forest Preserve.

The Adirondack Park as laid out and already about four-fifths acquired, is confined to a contiguous and nearly solid tract, roughly rectangular in shape, averaging about 80 miles across from north to south and about 70 miles from east to west. It consists largely of land from which the valuable coniferous timber had been removed by lumbermen prior to its purchase or recovery by the State, but as a whole, it is still densely covered by the primeval hardwood growth, comprising many magnificent trees, and contains many acres where a new stand of small spruce, balsam, hemlock and pine is rapidly growing.

The Forest Preserve outside the park consists of many large and small detached tracts, widely separated and scattered within a zone varying from 20 to 50 miles in width outside the park, but comprises only a very small percentage of all the lands in this zone.

In the State Constitution, it is now provided, act VII, section 7-"The lands of the State now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed." This provision has come to have a wider scope than those who

framed it probably foresaw, since under certain laws, scattered tracts of land in various parts of the State on which taxes have ceased to be paid revert to the State and become parts of the State forest preserve and subject to the limitations above set forth.

Many small detached tracts of abandoned farm lands, of deforested timber lands and of valueless swamp lands have thus come into the possession of the State and are thus held as part of the forest preserve under the restrictions quoted above, and some of these tracts happen to stand within areas desirable for reservoir purposes.

An instance of this kind is found within the area proposed to be acquired by the city of New York as the site of its great Ashokan reservoir now under construction for purposes of domestic supply. A notable instance is found within the proposed limits of the Sacandaga reservoir, about four miles above Conklingville.

An amendment to the State Constitution may be necessary to remedy these conditions.

In some instances, the land proposed to be flowed is practically worthless for the real purpose of a forest preserve and can be employed for water storage with far greater advantage to the State than in any other use.

For example, in the neighborhood of the great Vly swamp between Cranberry creek and North Broadalbin, or near the long level swamp on the West Branch of the Sacandaga, upstream from the entrance of Piseco outlet, the conditions affecting health and pleasure would surely be improved by converting both of these tracts into storage reservoirs, under proper requirements for cutting the trees and removing the stumps, and for burning all dead timber and other refuse wood, and then flooding this swamp by a dam whose drain gates were set so high that the swamp would become forever covered by water.

EFFECT OF LUMBERING UPON STREAM FLOW.

A clear distinction must be made between deforesting for agriculture and the cutting out of the timber trees, in their effect on stream flow.

As a matter of fact, the vast lumbering operations of the past 75 years have probably had little, if any, measurable effect upon

the flow of the Sacandaga river, for those areas where the forest fires have raged so fiercely as to destroy the leaf mold, denude the soil and prevent new growth, although large to the eye, are so far as I have yet been able to learn, but a small percentage of this whole upper Hudson drainage area, and I saw no such denuded areas on the Sacandaga drainage.

Perhaps in some parts of the Adirondacks, the tracts of barren burned land are larger than on the Upper Hudson drainage area. The dense Northern forest, as seen on our tour through the Indian Lake and Sacandaga drainage already described, comprises magnificent old-growth, hardwood trees left after the lumbering and filled in between with underbrush, which soon grows up again after a small fire, all of which efficiently shade the ground and check the wind movement over the surface and thus lessen evaporation and also furnish sponge-like leaf mold to soak up and retain the rain, so that all of this forest region probably yields at the present day just about as much run-off and just about as even a flow as ever before, the only material difference probably being that the winter's snow was better shaded by the old-growth of evergreens from early melting by the sun.

The new growth of small evergreens doubtless soon restores this shade, and except for the constant menace of fires severe enough to burn the humus and the collection of "spruce duff," there is every reason to expect that the yield of the upper Hudson will forever continue much the same as now, especially so since the recent wise establishment by the State of a great Forest Preserve.

The real storage which regulates the summer yield is not in the forest or in the accumulation of leaf mold but is in the porous sands beneath. The forest cover and the leaf mold retard the run-off and give it more time to soak into the porous sand.

The complete deforesting for purpose of agriculture undoubtedly makes a great decrease in the summer run-off, but the drainage area of the Upper Hudson is mainly too steep, too cold and too sterile for agriculture and will always remain mostly woodland.

Forest fires are the great and pressing danger to maintenance of the volume of stream flow and to its partial regulation by forest influences and the consequent lessening of the extremes of flow between flood and drought.

Means for lessening the present danger of forest fires may well be considered by those who would conserve the sources of the water power of all this region.

Near North Creek can be seen examples of the injury, irreparable largely for a hundred years, that may sometimes follow a forest fire. The unmerchantable standing trees and the underbrush, that furnished shade to retard the melting of the snow are gone, and the sponge-like, fertile covering of leaf-mould and humus that it has taken many years to accumulate is lost. With this protection gone, the scanty covering of earth that it has taken unknown years of frost and disintegration to accumulate over the rocks of the hillsides, soon becomes more or less washed away by the rain. Scant shelter or nourishment is left for new growth to come in, which by giving shade and lessening the wind movement would lessen the evaporation, and by accumulating leaf mold and duff would present a sponge-like surface to retard the flow, and so for many years the rainfall upon these burned barren tracts will run rapidly to the rivers, the snows will melt rapidly and the summer flow of the springs will dry up early.

I was much impressed by these facts as I traveled in September last across the lower half of the Adirondack Preserve from North creek past Indian lake to Lake Pleasant and Piseco lake and along the west branches of the Sacandaga.

A forest to serve its best purpose should not be simply let alone. Portions of the admirable forestry laws recently established by the United States Government under the.wise lead of Mr. Gifford Pinchot, may well serve as a basis for remodeling the foresty laws of New York, and above all the construction of main lines of roads for quick access in fire control and the presence of forest wardens and the presence of scattered small colonies of settlers who may get their living as guides or wardens or keepers of summer vacation camps and thus have a direct interest in preservation of attractive forest conditions, should be encouraged by wise provisions of the State laws.

All this will result in ultimate benefit to water powers and to the many other products of the forest. Likewise, all that can be done to extend the plantations of thickly set pine-cheaply set out about five feet apart by the tens of thousands or hundreds of