366 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



Reckoning time and distance as we do in minutes, hours, days and 

 years, distance in yards and miles we can faintly conceive what mil- 

 lions of years eons of time signify. This planet upon which we 

 are destined to spend the few days allotted to us is on a wild career. 

 Flying through space at a distance of eighty million miles from the 

 ruling planet of our system, the sun, the earth is moving through 

 the space at the rate of 19 miles a second, and spinning like a top in 

 its revolutions at the rate of 17 miles per minute. We are certainly 

 traveling at a rapid speed, possibly following other systems the same 

 as ours, all holding their relative j>ositions in the universe. We 

 read and speak of the everlasting hills, but they are not so ever- 

 lasting after all, since the elements are ever at work reducing them 

 to lower elevations, so that thousands of feet of mountains were 

 carried away. Heat, frost and chemical action are reducing by dis- 

 integration the solid rocks forming soil, some of which is constantly 

 on the move by gravity, and through rivulets, streams and rivers, 

 carried to tide water and the oceans. The deltas of the rivers and 

 the coast line from Nova Scotia to the Florida Keys contain vast de- 

 posits swept from the continent among which is some of the best 

 soil from our fields, so that by injudicious tillage we lose the finest, 

 the best and most fertile of our soil. 



Prof. Claypole in his Geology of Perry county, makes a calcula- 

 tion as to the amount of erosion and the material carried by flowing 

 water. 



'In ordinary weather a gallon of Juniata water carries about 8 

 grains of earthy sediment, or a pound for every hundred cubic feet 

 of water, so that, 1,000,000 cubic yards of rock sediment is brought 

 from Juniata, Mifflin, Huntingdon and Blair counties every year. 



Twenty-five thousand feet of the deposit has been removed since 

 the mountains were formed in that section. This is upon the as- 

 sumption that the flow of water and the climate were the same 

 during the period of erosion, it may have required five, ten or more 

 millions of years to carry away five miles of mountain elevation." 

 Thus changing from an Alpine condine to the present features the 

 section drained by the Juniata River. 



If then a comparatively small river removes such quantities of ma- 

 terial we can conceive what a rivei' like the Mississippi carries with 

 its always muddy current which, it is estimated, carries annually a 

 cubic mile of sediment to deposit near its delta, material composed 

 of numerous formations through which it flows. The soil thus 

 formed is among the most productive, and the overflow of the river 

 renews the deposits periodically, forming a soil and conditions sim- 

 ilar to the famous Nile Valley. The mixing of material from so 

 many rock formations gives the soil the mechanical and chemical 

 condition to produce the most productive soil. Much of the sedi- 

 ment deposited by the Mississippi River remains somewhat perma- 

 nently at its mouth, near shore, shallowing the channel used for 

 navigation, that New Orleans in danger of losing its shipping had 

 Captain Eads construct a sort of hamper or wicker work from wil 

 low twigs, which were filled with stones and walled up in the bay, 

 through which the water is forced in a channel used for shipping. 



The U. S. Government only recently performed the same kind of 

 work at New Orleans to prevent the channel from being silted so as 

 to prevent vessels from entering and leaving the harbor. Al- 



