



. . ' 



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Excessive Erosion on Nearly Level Land, Yazoo Uplands. Gull.es With Vertieal Walls Eat into Cultivated Land With 

 Remirkable Rapidity, and This May Be Prevented Only by Reforestation (page 24) 



I'liion, unless measures are adopted to 

 prevent these calamities. 



Go t<> the forests of La Salle, Cata- 

 houla, Jackson, Winn, Grant, Rapides, 

 Vernoti, Sabine, Calcasieu, Bienville, 

 ( 'aldwell. Livingston, St. Tammany, 

 I angipahoa, St. Helena, and Washington 

 parishes, where the pine forests flour- 

 i>lu-d in imperial magnificence, and 

 watch tin- "up-to-date ' method of 

 hut< hnv. Virgin forests which produce 

 from ten to twenty-five thousand feet 

 of timber per acre are being absolutely 

 denuded just as completely as you 

 would strip a bird of its feathers or 

 the beasl of the field of the covering 

 uhich nature provided. 



Hardly a dozen saplings, the size of 



one's arm, to the acre are left standing, 



and these lands are practically deserts, 



a wa^te where soil-erosion takes place, 



\\hcre rains fall and the water rushes off 



in torrent-, flooding the streams and val- 



h-aving a sterile soil on the rich 



bottom lands, where the wind has a 



26 



clean sweep and acquires such a velocity 

 as to- scatter destruction to the towns, 

 cities, and villages a land reduced to 

 poverty, which even the state could re- 

 fuse to take for its taxes so far as its 

 future usefulness is concerned. Am- 

 man who loves nature would shed tears 

 every time he passes through our 

 forests and sees the criminal waste that 

 is going on. 



Hardened as I am to these sights, 1 

 feel sad and depressed when I see this 

 slaughter. What has the state done? 

 Fought year after year to collect a 

 pitiful taxation from these forests, 

 sometimes reasonable and again exorbi- 

 tant. No sys'em whatever, no thought 

 of to-morrow, no idea of the worthless- 

 ness of denuded forests to any one, 

 and no thought of dire calamities which 

 are now upon us. What has the lum- 

 berman done? Proceeded to cut up 

 these forests just as fast as he can, not 

 leaving even seed to reforest his lands ; 

 running his mills night and day ; pro- 



