How Vegetation Holds the Soil 69 



//. W. Fairbanki 

 The layer of routs holds the soil on the mountain side. 



all that they could reach of the unprotected earth at the 

 bottom. How plainly we can see the network of roots. 

 What a hard task it must be for the water to get at the soil 

 in which these roots are growing. 



We will now leave the road and, although it is still rain- 

 ing hard, we will walk a distance through the forest and see 

 if there is anything more that we can learn. We are soon 

 in the deep woods where, perhaps, no one has ever been 

 before. Around us are trees of all ages and sizes, from little 

 seedlings to great giants six feet through. Among them 

 are the crumbling stumps of trees long dead. Their trunks 

 lie on the ground, and many are so soft and rotten that we 

 can kick them to pieces with our feet. 



As we walk our feet never touch the real earth. It is 

 always on the soft, yielding leaves and crumbling branches 

 that we step. These leaves and branches form a thick 

 layer completely hiding the soil. But the strangest thing 



