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A comparison of the present area of the upland forest at Alto Pass 
with soil and topographic maps of the same area shows that a large per 
cent of the forest is on the yellow silt loam along streams, where woods 
are needed to protect the banks and prevent erosion, and that clearing has 
about reached the limit of safety for the ultimate good of such lands. The 
increase, year after year, in some of the southern counties, of lands once 
farmed and now abandoned, shows that areas hewed out on the slope or 
the top of a ridge are not adapted to permanent agriculture, while grazing 
them will undoubtedly result in erosion and the formation of gullies. 
More intensive cultivation of land already cleared is a better agricultural] 
policy than the further clearing of woodland areas of this description. 
The Mobile and Ohio Railroad runs from Sparta to Cairo through 
this region and divides it into two parts—a western, embracing most of 
the upland timber which is in more or less solid blocks; and an eastern, 
which is also rough and hilly but contains timber in wood-lots interspersed 
with farms and orchards. The Missouri Pacific Railway, from Chester 
to Cairo, traverses the bottomland on its western edge. It is paralleled 
from Gorham south by a branch of the Illinois Central, while the main 
line of the Illinois Central from Chicago to Cairo cuts through its eastern 
side. One of the main auto roads running north and south, the “Egyptian 
Trail,” is being built through it, while other roads, hilly but quite pass- 
able, connect Anna and Jonesboro with Cape Girardeau, Mo., and other 
points on the Mississippi. The roads in the back country shown on the 
U. S. topographic sheets as dotted lines can be easily traversed in summer 
with a light car or a buggy, since they usually wind up some rocky stream 
bed, or along the tops of the ridges. Where they cross wooded country 
the best mode of travel is on horseback or on foot, since in this way one 
can secure from high points the best idea of the country. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
We are particularly indebted to Dr. R. S. Smith, of the State Soil 
Survey, for base maps of many of the counties, without which rapid cov- 
ering of this territory would have been impossible; also to the chief and 
members of the soil survey party working on the Union county soil report, 
for information about the soil types in advance of publication of the 
report. Our sincere thanks are also due the Director of the United States 
Geological Survey for woodland sheets of the Dongola and Alto Pass 
quadrangles and for the Carbondale topographic sheet, and to Mr. J. A. 
Duck, chief of the topographic survey party in that region, for valuable 
assistance. The woodland sheets published by the State Geological Sur- 
vey have been freely used, and have been of very great assistance as 
accurate base maps and for timber location; and Professor T. E. Savage 
and Mr. Frank Krey, of the Survey staff, have generously furnished us 
