whose soil is almost completely at the mercy of the floods. Trees have 

 been left only where they could not be reached. Almost the sole use 

 for lumber now is the manufacture of coffins. The heavy two or three 

 inch planks for this purpose are so scarce, and the cost of transporting 

 them by coolies is so high, that they sell for $2.00 or $3.00 apiece. 



Nowhere in the world is the forest cleaned off down to the very soil 

 as it is in China. When the trees are gone, the saplings, the shrubs, 

 and even the herbage are taken. Slender poles are used to build 

 houses; inconsiderable shrubs are turned into charcoal. In the lower 

 mountains of northeastern China, where the stripping process has 

 reached its extreme phase, there is no trace of anything worthy of the 

 name of forest. In the graveyards and courts of the temples a few 

 aged cedars have been preserved by the force of public opinion, and 

 poplars and fruit trees planted about dwellings are protected as pri- 

 vate property by the peasant owners. 



In the province of Shantung, where deforestation is practically com- 

 plete, fuel and fodder for cattle are literally scratched from the hill- 

 sides by boys who go out from villages with their iron rakes in autumn 

 to secure winter supplies. Grazing animals, searching every ledge 

 and crevice, crop the remaining grass down to the very roots. 



A dearth of wood is not the only forlorn result of forest devasta- 

 tion a dearth of water and the ruin of the soil follow in its train. 

 In western China, where forest destruction is not yet complete, 

 enough vegetation covers the mountains to retard the run-off of the 

 rains and return sufficient moisture to lower levels, where it can be 

 reached by the roots of crops and where springs are numerous. But 

 on the waste hills of eastern China the rains rush off from the barren 

 surfaces, flooding the valleys, ruining the fields, and destroying towns 

 and villages. No water is retained at the higher levels, so that none 

 is fed underground to the lower soils or to the springs. As a result, 

 even on the plains the water level is too far beneath the surface to 

 be used. Without irrigation and the ingenious terracing of hillsides, 

 by which the rains are made to wash the soil into thousands of minia- 

 ture fields whose edges are propped up by walls, agriculture would 

 be entirely impossible. Even irrigation calls for the immense labor 

 of drawing the needed water from wells. 



In a word, the Chinese, by forest waste, have brought upon them- 

 selves two costly calamities floods and water famine. 



OUR NEIGHBOR'S FOREST 



The Government of British Columbia has put into forest reserves at 

 one stroke a hundred and fifty million acres five eighths of all the 

 land in the province. In British Columbia the lumberman who wishes 

 to cut trees must deal with the Government, whose enlightened policy, 

 giving the people the control of their timber resources, is carried out 

 by the local government of the province, unlike some of our western 

 states, which hang back in sullen protest while salvation is forced upon 

 them by a distant national authority. 



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