Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 51 



On the hillsides which wash so badly, the soil expert says, we ought 

 to study contour farming, as it is called. A vertical or slanting furrow 

 will soon become a vertical gully. The horizontal furrow at the same 

 elevation all around the hill has, on the other hand, a tendency to stop 

 the running off of water. Great benefit, also, comes from using strips of 

 grass land, lying in bands of the same elevation around the sides of a 

 dangerous hill. . Terracing of farms is new in this country, where we 

 have always just gone West instead. We see the terraces of Chinese 

 and Japanese lands, and suppose they must have been made at the 

 expense of great labor, but in reality it was Time and Nature that made 

 them. The soil which is washed out of the horizontal furrow is in part 

 or in whole stopped when it strikes the edge of the grass land. In many 

 years it banks up more and more. If not controlled it would not bank 

 up, but simply run down the hill and fly away into the mighty ocean. 



In rolling lands the canny farmer plants crops toward the tops of the 

 hills to produce cover and mulch, and so to stop wash. He reserves 

 some of his bottom lands for grass, to catch the soil-wash and use it. If 

 he did not, some of his farm would run away, and not only impoverish 

 him, but, perhaps, work injury to his neighbor. It is not good farming 

 to farm every inch of a rich bottom. A few bands of trees would break 

 the driving force of rain. The roots would stand against soil-wash and 

 regulate the flooding which make bottom farming so risky in some 

 localities. The average farmer may not believe in the sense of this, any 

 more than the average lumberman would hesitate to cut away the forest ; 

 but the fact remains. Of course, in any very broken country, so says 

 Uncle Sam, there should be forestry mixed with farming; otherwise, 

 the rainfall goes off in torrents. Even Uncle Sam sometimes forgets 

 this, for, after establishing forest reserves, he very often leases them out 

 as sheep or goat ranges. These animals trample little paths, which soon 

 become gullies, which, in their time, become great avenues of waste. I 

 have seen mountains in New Mexico ruined by goats. 



For fuller particulars, any anxious inquirer might do much worse 

 than refer to the Department of Agriculture, where many of these 

 great, slow problems are now under careful consideration. As to actual 

 remedy, however, nothing can be done so long as we ourselves remain 

 ignorant or careless in politics, religion and business. We must see 

 higher than the walls of our little grooves. Also, we must see about 

 us in our own little grooves. Waste begins on your own forty acres, 

 right at your door. You are the unit, the individual citizen. From you 

 it is a step up to your hundred, under the old Saxon law. Thence you 

 go to your town, your State, your National Government. Your wish can 

 prevail, if you like, at each and every step of that advance. You can 

 say to that legislator who thinks of himself and not of you, that you 

 would rather have in his place a man who stands for guarded resources, 



