BOTANICAL SURVEY— SUG A E GKOVE REGION 297 



Thus many exposed fields are discarded as worn out, when the worst 

 trouble ai^parently is excessive acidity. 



Third, the slope of most of the land is so great that it is in danger 

 of washing whenever cultivated. Hundreds of acres throughout the 

 area which might have continued as fairly good upland pastures have 

 become hopelessly gullied "bad lands" (fig. 27) because the owner 

 attempted to cultivate them. 



This state of affairs is generally accepted as irremediable on the 

 supposition that the land is so poor that early exhaustion is inevitable. 

 Long observation of the deterioration of this land, however, has eon- 



itmM Mm^M * 



Fig. 27. A Badly Waslied Upland. Little but Dewberries (Rubus procumbens) Can Survive 



the Erosion. 



vinced the writer that the ease is by no means hopeless. While he would 

 not pretend to recommend a remedy on the basis of present knowledge, 

 there is abundant prospect that an experimental study of the situation 

 would develop a system of management which would be profitable in 

 the long run to both the land-owner and the community. 



If the conditions described were confined to the Sugar Grove area 

 alone there would be little justification for the expenditure of the time 

 and money necessary to determine the best means of meeting the situa- 

 tion. But while such conditions may reach their climax in the present 

 area, they are more or less general over all of the unglaciated portions 



