66 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE 



is to survive, conduct himself as an organism of nature, as a biological 

 unit which must keep to its proper place in the natural community. 

 One glaring fault has been a failure to recognize the absolutely essen- 

 tial role of the lower life forms in preparing and maintaining an 

 environment productive enough to support a satisfactory social order. 

 It is a combination of ignorance and egotism which has led us to as- 

 sume that lower organisms are insignificant. Man's superior intellect 

 is fully able to comprehend these facts and should permit him to 

 control his powers. 



An example of such self-control is found in the agriculture of 

 Western Europe. There the drizzling rains of low eroding power, 

 coupled with originally mediocre forest soils which forced man to 

 build fertility since the Middle Ages, combined to establish a perma- 

 nent agriculture. An accident, yes, but it enabled Europe to build a 

 thousand year old civilization. 



But, wherever the West European farmer migrated he seldom 

 found such an environment. When he applied his ancient system 

 here he got destruction because it did not take note of vicious thunder- 

 storm rains, steeper slopes, the new (to him) soil exposing row crops 

 like corn, cotton, tobacco, and the credibility of different soils. He 

 also encountered other situations whose dangers were unknown to 

 him or which he ignored, such as insufficient manuring and composting 

 on larger farms, the availability of plenty of good and cheap land, 

 unusual profits for a time from continuous cropping, and later, faster 

 and more extensive plowing with the moldboard plow and the use of 

 other more efficient implements for pulverizing and exposing the 

 soil. The result has been that in a very short time, as civilizations 

 go, we have in the United States done an almost incalculable damage 

 to the basic landscape resources. We have, for instance, destroyed 

 more good land than the Japanese ever had. (Fig. 24.) 



A constructive principle has been ignored, and it is : When man 

 disrupts the natural climax association (e.g., by removing the forest 

 or the sod) he must substitute a system of agriculture which repro- 

 duces or improves the forces and reactions of the original biologic 

 community. Only thus can the underlying values of soil fertility 

 and water supply be maintained. Which is to say that only thus can 

 we continue to support our population in the manner to which it has 

 become accustomed. And if that population increases (as it is), then 

 it becomes essential not only to preserve what nature so laboriously 

 built, but to improve it. The West Europeans did it. We must do 

 it and the time has come when we must start. 



