Show FORESTSDRY FARM Several Reasons Why Farmer Is Interested in Conserving Trees They Catch Snow In Blizzards and Hold It Late In Season and Leaves and Rubbish Form Dams Holding Water Back Tho dry farmer Is Interested In the conservation of the forests for several good reasons writes E It Parsons In Ranch and Itange The trees catch snow In the blizzards bliz-zards and hold It Into In the season the leaves and rubbish dam It hack from running oft Into tho streams and thus prevent waste of moisture and erosion of our mountain soils Every drop of water that remains with us to help dampen our atmosphere atmo-sphere Is so much gain Every drop that finds Its way Into the rivers and down to tho sea a dead loss nut tho most Important reason of all Is this Every plant every tree takes up Its food In solution with water when this plant food In tho sap has been digested di-gested and assimilated tho surplus water IB thrown oft by tho leaves and transpires Into the atmosphere An ordinary applo tree may glvo off from 20 to 10 gallons of water a day a good slzed cotttinwood 100 gallons n big Kngolmann spruce several sev-eral hundred gallons Now If one tree can transpire Into the atmosphere several hundred gallons gal-lons a forent ten miles square can throw oil during tho day enough i moisture to make a goodsized cloudburst cloud-burst over nn area of several square miles This Is easy to figure out Now most of this water is from molted snows which hut for the existence exist-ence of these trees would have runoff run-off and been lost The roots of some of our big evergreens reach n hundred feet down to bedrock and pump water back Into the atmosphere from great o depths which otherwise would have escaped from the surface perhaps fornver Perhaps you will say What has all this to do with the dry farm 1 Just this much In tho growing season sea-son when our clouds como floating gayly over the mountains and strUm n nn dry streak of air they begin to dissipate dis-sipate and dry up without giving usa us-a shower They are absorbed by the hot dry atmosphere Hut on the other hand suppose they strike a damp forest lakes and reservoirs reser-voirs what happens then 1 The clouds begin to gain In moisture moist-ure growing before our very eyes until un-til tho point of saturation Is reached they can hold no mores the floodgates are opened and we got a shower When our hygrometers show plenty of moisture In tho air and wo hear tho train whistles from afar wo know I that almost any cloud will mako a I rain but when the air overhead Is dry i then our clouds go floating by to raise crops In Kansas and Nebraska Our rainfall has undoubtedly suffered suf-fered through the firing and devastating devastat-ing of our forests but on tho whole I believe wo have gained more than we have lost by tho building of reservoirs reser-voirs ditches and Irrigation works In general the water from which when turned onto tho heated soil of our Holds evaporates millions of tons Into the atmosphere every day of the summer sum-mer season besides this we must take Into account every plowed field which catches and holds moisture every crop which transpires this moisture Into the atmosphere for every hill of corn every plant of alfalfa al-falfa or grain throws off Into tho air many times Its own weight in water vapor before It reaches maturity matur-ity Thus wo see that the conservation conserva-tion of forests and tho settling up ota ot-a country conduce to a moisture condition con-dition of the atmosphere and as I have already shown a moist condition of tho atmosphere conduces to more dow and more rain Tears ago dew was a rare occurrence occur-rence and when wo did happen to discover any wo would call out the wholo family to look at It Nowadays we have so much dew and so many damp nights In June that wo usually wait until July before cutting our alfalfa al-falfa which we used to put up two weeks earlier The weather bureau people contend that wet and dry weather comes In cycles and that It will become dry again before long However I have never been able to discover any evidence evi-dence yet that the difference amounted amount-ed to morn than an Inch or so or that any of these dry cycles havo over been too dry to raise crops In fact many men myself among tho number num-ber have raised crops every year for 30 and some for 10 years without a failure dry cycles or wet cycles but i of one thing I feel certain that In years to como our dry cycles will not bo so dry and our wet cycles wetter than over for sooner or later all of this atmospheric moisture must and will make Itself felt |