How Far Will Nature Restore Her Gifts? 47 



can also keep it from flowing back to the sea as rapidly as 

 it otherwise would, by leaving uninjured the covering of 

 vegetation which' has been spread over the mountain slopes. 

 - The water will run from bare rocks and bare soil much more 

 quickly than it will from soil that is covered with leaf mold 

 and held by plant roots. Do you not see, then, that we 

 have almost as much control over water and its distribu- 

 tion as though we could increase or decrease the rainfall? 



What about the forests ? If we cut them down, will they 

 ever come back ? All through the eastern part of our coun- 

 try and in the mountains of the West are lands once forested 

 which have been cleared and turned into farms. Many of 

 these farms, when abandoned, have in a few years been 

 covered with a growth of young trees. The scattering 

 trees that had been left in the vicinity of the clearings fur- 

 nished the seed. The winds and the birds carried the seed 

 to the. open fields and so the forests began again. 



It will be hundreds of years before the trees are as large 



B. W. Fairbanks 



But Nature, after a lapse of fifty years, has spread a new carpet of soil over the 



valley. 



