256 



ARBORICULTURE 



forests skirled ihc banks and shaded llic 

 headwaters of rivers like the Ohio and 

 the Mississii)i)i. 'J'he porous soil was held 

 in plaeo. Tlie rainfall and the melting 

 snow sank into the ground to feed springs 

 and to furnish a regular supply to 

 streams. 



"The forests have been cut. The rich 

 porous soil has been washed away. Now 

 the snow, unprotected by trees, melts 

 (juickly. The rainfall is swept in great 

 volumes into the rivers. In the treeless 

 sections electrical storms produce cloud- 

 bursts. Everywhere the volume of flood 

 water has increased. This is Mr. Brown's 

 theory and there is no mystery about it. 



'"■The only remedy is reforestation of 

 areas shorn of timber. Something has 

 been done in this direction. There are 

 planted in the United States every year 

 about 5,000,000 trees, but in the same 

 year we destroy 0,000,000 acres of trees. 

 In other words, for every tree we plant, 

 we are cutting down two acres of trees. 



''Instead of planting 5,000,000 trees 

 each year, Mr. Brown insists that we 

 should plant 500,000,000. If the people 

 can be aroused to a full a|)])reciation of 

 the danger and to a knowledj^e of the 

 remedy that is necessary to prevent this 

 continent from becoming what China is, 

 all the prophecies of Mr. Brown will 

 come to naught. 



"If the remedy for Hoods and unpro- 

 ductiveness is the planting of trees, the 

 trees should be planted. But in this 

 enormous undertaking the people of the 

 cities and the ])eo])le of the farms and 

 the ranches must join hands with one 

 another and with the government." — 

 Birmingham, Ala., Xews. 



IT IS WORTH CONSIDERING. 

 Cincinnati Commercial Teibune. 



John P. Brown, Secretary of the Inter- 

 national Society of Arlxtricnlture, proph- 

 esies, according to the Inter Ocean, that 

 the country is entering upon ;in era of 

 disastrous floods, and that : 



"In twenty-five years floods like those 

 that have prevailed this season in Kan- 

 sas, Nebraska and Missouri will be gen- 

 eral throughout the continent, and with- 

 in half a eenturv the irrejit atrriciiltural 



regions of the i'jiited States will be as 

 sterile as the deserts of Arizona or the 

 plains of China." 



Just how Mr. lirown knows all this is 

 among the unknowable things; neverthe- 

 less, what lie says is worth considering, 

 because of the reasons he gives. Claim- 

 ing that Americans are destroying annu- 

 ally 9,1:^5,000 acres of woodlands, and 

 that more timber has been destroyed on 

 the Ameriean Continent in the jiast sixty 

 years than China has destroyed in 3,000 

 years, Mr. Brown supplements his claims 

 with figures which are startling in his 

 support. It is, beyond contradiction, the 

 fact that Hoods have become more and 

 more frequent and more and more disas- 

 trous as the forests are destroyed; that 

 the seasons are later and more unrelia- 

 ble, and that the exhaustion of the moist- 

 ure necessary for the welfare of the 

 crops, but used in the making of floods, 

 is followed by periods and seasons of 

 drought, completing the destruction of 

 that which tlie Hoods overlooked. 



It is not alone by laying the ax at the 

 foot of the . tree that forests are de- 

 stroyed. The mountains of Maine, Ver- 

 mont, New llaiiipshire. New York, Penn- 

 sylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West 

 A^irginia are giving frightful testimony 

 of the fact that the fire is mightier than 

 the ax, and it is not diflicult to believe 

 that Mr. Morton is right when he says 

 that not less than 25,000 acres of forests 

 are destroyed daily — 9,125.000 annually. 

 The time is at hand for calling a halt, a 

 strenuous bait, at the hand of the au- 

 thorities, Federal or State, or both. The 

 tariff as an economical question has been 

 settled. The finam-ial question disturbs 

 no one, for the public will neither have it 

 disturbed nor be disturbed by it, aiul the 

 country would be immeasurably benefited 

 by State Legislatures taking up the ques- 

 tion of forestry and settling it as ('on- 

 gress has settled the question of immense 

 reservations in the far Northwest. IT 

 State action could be supplemented by 

 the esjablisbnient of a forestry reserva- 

 tion in lb" A])palachian range, the (|iies- 

 tion would be on the wav to settlement as 

 accuratelv and as Ijeneficially as the tariff 

 and the finances have been settled. 



