Prof. Cleveland Abbe in a recent lecture before the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, attacked the "popular error" that forests had any influence on rainfall. He showed that in eastern Pennsylvania during the past one hundred years there had been a slight increase in rainfall, though the forests had almost wholly disappeared. He explained that the increases or decreases in earth elevations influenced the annual rainfall, and not forests. It is too bad, however, to charge this error to the "popular" side. It is an error propagated by so-called men of science, and has been a pet theme with many a science association, - and it has been the work chiefly of this magazine to show that there was no foundation for the notion that was worthy of the name of of science.

We have protested against the error with considerable earnestness, because of its injurious influence on practical forestry. It has led to the waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars in fruitless "commissions" and legislative blundering, and prevented the forestry question from standing on its profit and loss foundation, as a commercial undertaking should be - which by this time might have led to profitable results.