CHILDREN'S GARDENS 173 



that very fine top soil which he gives so much time, 

 thought, money and hard labor to acquire, constantly 

 and rapidly being carried by these surface washings 

 to the bottomless pit of the great ocean, from which 

 he can never recover it. A year or two of such wash- 

 ings will take from him forever the accumulations 

 of the intelligent labor of generations. Ten years of 

 such washings will make the whole countryside un- 

 profitable, uninhabitable, and desolate. 



Foresters and writers on agriculture and kindred 

 subjects have preached such information, almost since 

 the beginning of written history, and yet so difficult 

 a thing to overcome is public ignorance, that the 

 United States to-day is experiencing to a great de- 

 gree, most of the evils and privations resulting from 

 an ignorant, or else a criminal destruction of its forest 

 areas. 



The primary education leaves out of its curriculum, 

 definite instruction about these things, and the system 

 of Government raises to high office and authority, 

 men who have not been taught to think wisely or well 

 about great economic sources of wealth and pros- 

 perity. 



If the people who elect the legislators for the 

 United States, for each state, for each city, and those 

 officers who are called upon to enforce regulations, 

 had been trained in a system of public education, 

 which had properly presented to them, as children, 

 in a simple, convincing manner, some vital facts and 

 principles regarding such matters as the Forest Prob- 



