22 



whence the flood came, but to those into which it flows. Every small 

 stream furnishes an example of this. The severe dashes of rain which 

 were so common during the past summer in countless instances over 

 the State, visibly, palpably, before our eyes, washed the finest, best 

 soil from our fields, where it was needed, into the public roads 

 where it lay first as mud and then as dust, to the detriment of 

 travel. The ordinary brook, unless it be so narrow that every shower 

 flushes and scours it out completely, will show that the sediment 

 from higher up has clogged its course, and what has taken place in 

 this small way is repeated on a grander scale after the tributaries 

 have become confluent into a main channel. The delta of th,e Nile, 

 and in o-ur own country, the delta of the Mississippi, alike are made 

 up of soil which has followed the course of the river from a greater 

 or less distance to its final destination the tide water; and silt and 

 soil of the same quality which clogs the channels of the streams above 

 the tide water is mostly fertility on its way to the tide level. Let me 

 again quote from Shaler, 1, c. p. 275: "Brief as has been our use of 

 the American land, a perceptible portion of it, probably as much as 

 one-hundredth part of the tillable area, has been reduced to a state 

 of destitution which it will require ages to repair which indeed is 

 scarcely reparable by the hand of man." 



Not only are these facts well known and proven, but the laws gov- 

 erning the rate of water flow requisite to transport material of dif- 

 ferent sizes can be clearly stated. Thus, in the upper part of the 

 stream bed where the water flows as a torrent, massive rocks may 

 be driven before the flood. Lower down as the current slackens its 

 pace the rocks will have been left behind and simply pebbles will be 

 found; and still lower, where the water flow has been reduced in 

 speed to that of an average river, the wash will be simply sand and 

 soil. The figures startle us, but no less authority than Dana has 

 quoted from Humphrey's and Abbott's report the statement that in 

 an average year the Mississippi carries to the Mexican Gulf an 

 amount of silt equal to 812,500,000,000 pounds. This would cover 

 241 square miles evenly one foot deep. Geikie (Great Ice Age, page 

 315) states it thus: "Then again we have to bear in mind that the 

 whole surface of the country is being subjected to the abrading action 

 of running water. Under the influences of rain, soil is continually 

 traveling down from higher to lower levels; rills and brooklets are 

 gouging out deep trenches in the sub-soils and soil rocks: streams 

 and rivers are constantly wearing away their banks and transporting 

 sediment to the sea. The gravel and sand and silt that pave the 

 numerous water courses are but the wreck and ruin of the land." 



It is then, under this view of the case, most important for us tt> 

 bear in mind that of all the substances essential to successful, contin- 

 uous cultivation of the earth, the one thing most difficult to restore 



