33 



was the best, because it was the most *soluble, and therefore best 

 adapted to the uses of the growing crop. This soil had also, in each 

 depression, been worn out more deeply because the water had there 

 gathered into small rivulets or streams, and its erosive power was 

 greater along such lines. Finally, this soluble soil found its way 

 out of the field and into the edge of the road, where it lay duringmot 

 of the summer in a condition alternating between mud and dust. If 

 the soil which had been washed away from that acre of good land, 

 in a single season, had been placed on one of the many impoverished 

 acres of the Commonwealth, it is probable that there would have 

 been enough of it to have produced a fair crop. As it was, instead 

 of being a source of benefit to the land owner, it had become more 

 or less of a nuisance to the traveling community. In the autumn 

 this material was gathered up (wisely enough) to be replaced upon 

 the field whence it came. It is worthy of no-te that in the woods ad- 

 jacent (visible in the illustration,) there is almost no sign of wash. 

 The rain appears to have been either wholly absorbed, or its flow 

 so held in check that it was incapable of doing any damage on wood- 

 land having that same degree of slope. Its damage upon the same 

 field, if it had been in sod, would have been vastly less than it was 

 on the plowed field, but it would, probably, have been considerably 

 greater than in the woods. 



Another instance of the effect of wash it may be worth while to 

 give here. In traveling through a very beautiful valley in the cen- 

 tral part of Pennsylvania, it was observed that portions had but 

 recently been cleared of the trees. There were signs of abundant 

 crops on the ground from which the stumps had not as yet 

 wholly disappeared. On the other hand, where the land had been 

 longer under cultivation the yield was scanty. The solution of this 

 was easily reached when the wash from the field into the road was 

 observed. 



The question is sometimes asked why a ridge top, or a portion of 

 a hillside near the top, remains fertile so much longer than the 

 ground just at the foot of the hill. Instances, or alleged instances, 

 have recently come to my notice. The fact is not hard to understand, 

 though the same explanation will not always answer on the same 

 spot. Time is an element of the problem. For example, when the 

 land is first cleared, that portion which is highest, whether it be the 

 top of a hillside or a level table-land, can receive no considerable 

 volume of water from any higher point. On the table-land an im- 

 mense proportion of the rainfall goes into the ground. The de- 

 composing rocks below the surface renew fertility as fast as it is 

 washed out on the surface. The same is true of the top of the hill- 



*Not soluble in a chemical a-enu*. but capable of bein suspended in and oanv 

 rled by water. 

 3 



