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AGRICULTURE ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE 



What becomes of rain water? When rains fall on 

 bare or hard ground, most of the water runs off without 

 soaking in. This is called " run-off. " On its way to 

 the streams it often makes deep gullies in the surface 

 of the land (figure 17). Except as it may be caught 



by reservoirs and streams 

 used for irrigation, it is 

 wasted by flowing into 

 the sea. 



Enormous injury is often 

 done in this way by the 

 washing-away of the sur- 

 face soil (and even subsoil) 

 from the hill lands, and 

 the burying of the flowing 

 streams in the valleys. 

 Figure 18 shows how in 

 China the rich soil which 

 is thus washed away into 

 the streams is sometimes 

 caught by building low 

 mud walls in the river bed. 



The rich soil carried by the stream settles within these 

 walls, and as soon as the floods are over, seed is 

 planted and rich crops are harvested. 



All this happens when the forest and shrubby growth 

 is destroyed; or when the fields are plowed shallow and 

 up-and-down-hill instead of " circling " around the 



FIG. 17. As the result of faulty 

 methods of cultivation the land 

 is fast being cut up and washed 

 away by the rains, and the farm- 

 house must soon fall. 



