14 REPORT ON THE TIMBERS 
would be entirely successful. Certainly,if the present forests 
of Kentucky can be preserved by so small an outlay of thought 
and labor now, it is of the highest importance to the people to 
see that this source of wealth to the State is not allowed to 
waste away. Otherwise, their descendants of a few genera- 
tions hence will be compelled to go through the slow and 
laborious process of planting and cultivating those very tim- 
bers which are so abundant to-day, and which, by a little care 
on the part of their forefathers, might have been left to them 
as a rich inheritance. | 
SOME EFFECTS OF TIMBER CLEARING. 
It is a lamentable practice in most farming regions of Ken- 
tucky, when a piece of ground becomes somewhat exhausted, 
to clear another piece and tear down the fence of the former 
to inclose the latter, leaving the worn-out lands exposed to the 
ravages of stock, in addition to washing rains. The conse- 
quence is, that cattle eat down each little bush or weed, on the 
lands thus suddenly exposed, as fast as it appears. As the soil 
has been lately cultivated, and is comparatively loose, a few 
heavy rains start myriads of ‘‘gullies”’ in the ground, whose 
only protection against such washes was removed by ‘‘turn- 
ing the land out,” and allowing the cattle to eat down the little 
herbage and bushes that might otherwise have cemented the 
surface soil. A few years of such exposure gives the *‘ washes ” 
such a start that no amount of care and labor can preserve the 
land from utter destruction. If one reflects upon how many 
farmers there are in Kentucky, and that the vicious system of 
culture pursued by them consists, in the greater part of the 
State, in thus clearing a piece of land, working it without 
manure or much rotation of crops, year after year, until ex- 
hausted, a process which, on an average, requires only five or 
six years, when they abandon it and clear new ground, one 
can realize how many acres of the land of Kentucky are thus 
annually ‘‘turned out.” Aside from the destruction of valua- 
ble forests entailed by such a system of cultivation, the effects 
upon the soil and climate of the regions thus cleared are very 
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