The great number of marked papers and essays sent us on forestry shows the widespread interest in it. Before us is a Boston paper with a two-column article, suggested by the late floods in the Ohio and Mississippi. It says :

"We have continuous reports from the West of overflows and inundations, destruction of city property and farming lands, loss of life and ruin of the finances of many, all of which is a blight on our prosperity. The reason why has been sought, and the conclusions of many are that the indiscriminate and lawless manner in which our forests are felled from the mountains, hills and valleys is the true cause for these incredible flows of water in such immense quantities and at one time. It is argued, and it seems with reason, that a mountain side, when wooded, prevents the sudden melting of the snows and ice, which cause our freshets; that the dissolution is more regular; whereas, when exposed to the full rays of the sun and to the rains, there can be no doubt that the snows and ice melt with greater rapidity."

All of which is but another illustration of the point we often make, that impractical people can write for an hour about that which five minutes of practical experience would dispel. Everybody except chronic "writers on forestry" knows that the recent floods came from very heavy and warm rains pouring down on a deep deposit of snow, and that a warm rain will melt snow under trees just as rapidly as it will melt it out in the open. The " full rays of the sun " had nothing to do with these Western floods. But there is little chance of the crop of such essayists melting away.