The trees are great regulators of many conditions of life, principally facilitating the atmospheric precipitation and their profit. The aqueous vapors penetrating the cool atmosphere of the forest at the contact of the foliage of the trees, condense resolving into rain or dew; and the water that falls on the soil, protected against evaporation by the shade, having its surface-flow impeded and its absorption facilitated by the roots, penetrates in greatest quantity into the land, guaranteeing the permanency and abundance of the source that it forms. The rainfall without the protecting vegetation rapidly flows on the surface soil forming the run-off, which takes from the earth the fertilizing humus, excavating the mountain and producing the destructive overflow in the valley. In the countries where ice and snow do not appear the regimen of the water courses in a great measure depends upon the vegetation that covers the head of the streams; and such an influence is as great as the porosity of the soil is small in the generative basin of the sources. If there is yet controversy which is progressively disappearing with more serious study about some forests’ influences, there is not, all over the earth, any one who can scientifically contest this truth that history and geography, the facts of the past and the observation of the present so clearly confirm. The Nile, which comes from the heart of Africa, born among the virgin forests where fire and men never have penetrated, keeps today, in an average, the same flow that it had when it fertilized Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs. The effects of forests do not appear in confined zones. Their influence is not bounded by a certain region, and the calamity coming from their devastation passes over the individual property affecting the public welfare. This is an incontestible truth that science demonstrates and facts corroborate. Therefore there is no reason why protection of forest must be concerned to a certain extension, not affecting the private lands. The individual right ought not to affect the high interests of the Union which ought to save its own future, guaranteeing by the preservation of the natural resources of the country, the general well-being of the present and future generations. This rational theory, applied to the case of forests, each day gains assent in this country being already accepted in the higher tribunals in favor of the legislation protecting such resources, which legislation is earnestly advocated by President Roosevelt, accordingly it was adopted on March 10, 1903 by the supreme court of Maine, and on April 6th of the same year, the supreme court of the United States sustained it, confirming the opinion of the court of errors and appeals of New Jersey.