288 SOILS 



unless properly handled, until they may become 

 almost or quite useless for cropping 



W. J. McGee reports: "The destruction is not 

 confined to a single field, or to a single upland, but 

 extends over much of the uplanoT. ... It 

 is probably within the truth to estimate that 10 

 per cent, of upland Mississippi has been so far 

 converted into bad lands as to be practically ruined 

 for agriculture under existing commercial con- 

 ditions, and that the annual loss in real estate 

 exceeds the revenue from all sources; and all this 

 havoc has been wrought within a quarter century." 

 This is an extreme case, but it illustrates what is 



)lace, in a lesser degree, in many other parts 

 of the South. 



We have thousands of square miles of lands that 

 are rapidly approaching desolation by erosion. 

 Over a large area the work of destruction has 

 already gone so far as to make it impracticable to 

 try to save the land for cropping. The problem of 

 erosion is most serious on the hill farms of the 

 South ; but hill lands in California, eastern Oregon, 

 Washington, and Montana, have been grazed so 

 close that the soil has been exposed, gullies have 

 appeared, and the lands are now nearly worthless. 

 Erosion is also serious on sloping lands in all other 

 parts of the country. 



METHODS OF CHECKING EROSION 



I 



The method that will be most practicable de- 

 pends upon the locality, the contour of the land, the 

 nature of the soil, the crop and other local matters. 



Preserve Forests and Wooded Strips. In extreme 

 cases it is necessary to retain wooded areas running 

 across the slopes that are subject to washing. 



