Foreword: 

 AND MAN 



IF THE LAND PERISH, HOW SHALL MAN SURVIVE? 



Against the wooded hill it stands, 



Ghosts of a dead home staring through 



Its broken lights on wasted lands 

 Where old-time harvests grew. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 



THE successors of Columbus beheld a continent of abun- 

 dance beyond their fondest dreams a continent rich in 

 land, minerals, and water; in fertile soils, timber, game, fish, 

 and furs. They believed these things to be inexhaustible, and 

 generally their descendants still cling to that belief. 



Yet today fur-bearing animals and fish are to be found in 

 quantities only in the more remote localities; and mere frag- 

 ments remain of the great pine and hardwood forests of the 

 North Atlantic and Central States. 



But, you say, there remain the rich soils and the waters! 

 We can no longer afford to be so confident, for there is some- 

 thing wrong, ominously wrong, about these also. 



The rains and the snows still come as of old, but often their 

 waters are returned to the seas more quickly, and without 

 our receiving more than a fraction of the benefits they have 

 to offer. 



And in many places these waters now flow off the land in 

 such a manner that rich topsoils are being washed into the 

 rivers and the oceans, or blown away for lack of moisture, 

 out of reach and use by man. 



