18 FOREST LANDS FOR THE PROTECTION OF WATERSHEDS. 



Doctor VAN HISE. There will be a direct relation, unquestionably. 

 It will not reach it at once. Of course the silt picked up high in the 

 mountain is carried part of the way down with this flood and it is 

 dropped on the way; then another flood comes along and it is carried 

 a little farther down and dropped again, and ultimately it either 

 reaches the outlet and fills the harbor or else flows over its banks and 

 destroys the farming lands, as in California, where sand and gravel 

 have been distributed over the lowlands as a result of hydraulic min- 

 ing operations. I do not hesitate to assert that the silt and loosened 

 material that goes down in the Appalachian and White Mountain 

 regions, if those regions were denuded, would be fully one hundred 

 times as much as has been washed down in the rivers of California as 

 a result of hydraulic mining operations. 



The CHAIRMAN. You are very familiar with the Southern Appa- 

 lachians ? 



Doctor VAN HISE. Yes, sir. 



The CHAIRMAN. In your opinion has the erosion which has thus far 

 taken place come from the operations of lumbering or from farming? 



Doctor VAN HISE. Mainly from farming as yet, but of course it is' 

 a twofold thing. It naturally happens that when the timber is re- 

 moved it is removed from the more accessible areas. When once it is 

 removed from an accessible area that accessible area will be made into 

 a farm. Combination of the two results in the erosion. Undoubtedly 

 there have been mistakes in this particular. Some areas from which 

 the timber has been removed, or removed in part, should never have 

 been made into farms. They are too high up, the slopes are too steep, 

 so that the erosion goes on with excessive rapidity, and therefore it 

 can not be asserted to be one or the other ; it is the result of both. 



The CHAIRMAN. Very large sections of the Appalachians have 

 been lumbered. All the valuable merchantable timber has been taken 

 out. In such sections have the lumbering operations gone to the 

 extent of contributing very greatly to the erosion? 



Doctor VAN HISE. I think they have. I want to be perfectly fair 

 and express the things in absolute proportion. I do not believe that 

 the lumbering operations alone, m case the lands had not been 

 farmed afterwards, would have resulted in as great erosion as has 

 resulted from the farming operations after it on lands not' adapted 

 to farming. The great difficulty has come as a result of lumbering 

 operations followed by farming operations on lands that never should 

 have been taken for farming. 



The CHAIRMAN. You know, of course, that the clearing of the 

 slopes for farming in the southern Appalachians has been under the 

 compulsion of necessity. Men have been obliged to find some place 

 upon which to earn a living, and they have cleared certain of the 

 most accessible slopes. They have not deliberately and with malice 

 aforethought gone and taken the steep and almost inaccessible slopes 

 when other land was available. We are obliged, therefore, to take 

 into consideration the conditions that exist and which have resulted 

 as a mere incident of civilization. Remembering that, and remem- 

 bering, as I think we also must, that the people of North Carolina, 

 for example, must continue to live in North Carolina we can not 

 depopulate the State and send it back to the wilderness I would 

 like to ask you, if you were commissioned by the Government to buy 

 land in North Carolina for the conservation of the stream flow, would 



