=Effects of Forests on Climate and Floods.= Next to the fallacious belief in a change of climate during the life of an individual there are few if any errors that have gained such wide acceptance as a belief that the cutting away of the forests has caused a marked change in climate and especially in the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts. The writer shared in the mistake with regard to the influence of the forests in restraining run-off and augmenting floods, until compelled by an order of the Congress of the United States to prepare a report on the floods of the nation that had occurred during the time of the gradual reduction of the forest areas. Dividing into two equal periods the forty years for which the Weather Bureau has comprehensive records of the rainfall upon the catchment basins of the Tennessee, the Cumberland, and the Ohio rivers, and for which it has records of the height of the rivers, contrary to his belief, he found that the high waters were no higher with a given rainfall, the floods of no longer duration, nor the low waters of summer lower, during the last half of the period than during the first half. It is now pretty generally conceded by hydraulic engineers that the broken, permeable soil of the husbandman, frequently stirred by cultivation a part of the year and filled with countless billions of the tiny water-absorbing rootlets of the grasses and the cereal crops during the remainder of the annual period, is equally as good a conserver of the rainfall as the forests themselves, even if it is not better.