Mrs. Fanny E. Briggs, La Centre, Washington Territory, writes: "This region is covered with a heavy growth of timber, mostly giant firs, with a dense undergrowth, save here and there a small natural opening, and the clearings of settlers. Up and down the Columbia it is the same; the 'continuous woods' still skirt the 'Oregon,' as in the days when it heard 'no sound save its own dashings.'

" Of the eight summers we have passed here, four have been very dry, three or four months without rain, or at most, only slight showers, and vegetation suffers from drouth more or less every summer.

"Now, if the presence or absence of forests is the chief factor in determining the rainfall of any given section, how are these facts to be explained or reconciled?