TREE STUDY AND CIVIC FORESTRY 57 



Every particle of soil that a farmer in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, 

 or Montana allows to wash from his farm eventually raises 

 the mud bed of the Mississippi, helps to cause floods, taxes 

 the nation to build higher levees. The clearing of a watershed 

 at the headwaters of the Ohio or Missouri is the business of 

 every one whose spring or well runs dry below it or whose 



FIG. 28. Deforested slope, North Carolina, showing erosion 

 United States Bureau of Forestry 



home is flooded farther down the rivers, and also of every one 

 who is taxed or who is called upon to contribute or to suffer 

 in sympathy for the common loss. 



Solution of problem. By the adequate planting of trees on 

 every hill and mountain side and along every gully and ravine, 

 the rootlets of which will bind the soil and filter the water as 

 it falls, we should have the water leaving every farm clear as 

 crystal from perennial springs. Vast national projects are 



