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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



VOL. XXV 



FEBRUARY, 1919 



NO. 302 



5111 



111^ 



FORESTS AND FLOODS IN CHINA 



BY HERMAN H. CHAPMAN 



PERHAPS no phase of forestry has aroused so wide 

 a public interest as the influence of forests upon 

 stream flow. For over a century, the governments 

 of modern nations, notably France, have proceeded on the 

 basis that the denudation of mountain slopes caused 

 ruin by unleashing the demons of flood and erosion, and 

 tliat the only efifectual means of control were reforesta- 

 tion of these slopes, combined with artificial barriers in 

 the beds of the torrents. And the only possible method 

 of bringing these great projects of restoration and pro- 

 tection to a successful conclusion has been found to be 

 national control. 



While France, under the constructive national forces 

 of the republic, has gone a long way towards correcting 

 the evil of denudation which followed the rampant indi- 

 vidualism of the revolutionary era, America has been 



struggling towards a realization of the same truths. For 

 over a century, not counting the colonial era, our nation 

 took no effective steps to safeguard the public interests 

 represented by the protection belts of forested mountains 

 from which our rivers take their rise. Finally, the prin- 

 ciple of national ownership and control was won, both in 

 the west and the east, and we are buying back the lands 

 in the Appalachians and White Mountains which passed 

 from public control under a thoughtless and exaggerated 

 individualism. 



Meanwhile, China has been the principal sufferer from 

 floods due to deforestation, and the best and most con- 

 vincing examples of the devastation and ruin caused 

 thereby may be studied in the great plains of north 

 central China, whose rivers rise in steep mountainous 

 country, which has been converted by unchecked forest 



Cotirtesy of "Asia" 



THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA 



Looking out over the barren hills, one subtly feels that "immemorial mystery of North China, wrapping Peking like an imperial purple mantle, 

 a somber northern inscrutability enfolding the Great Wall as inpenetrably as the mists obscuring its turrets." 



835 



