FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 275 
It is readily seen that the formidable danger of which so much 
has been written of late becomes quite harmless as to quantity when 
it comes down to the individual farm. The harm is probably not 
so much in the quantity of soil actually lost as in the fact that the 
soil may be leached of some of its more important ingredients. The 
evil is one which can be controlled only by better methods of farming, 
whereby the surface waters will be restrained from eroding the soil; 
but even these measures have their adverse side, for when heavy 
rains prevail for a long time it is more important to the farmer to get 
the water off his land than it is to save a little soil. Most of the soil 
will stop on lower ground and not be wholly lost, but if the water 
is not gotten rid of the crop may be ruined. 
The caving of the banks of our great rivers is constantly cited 
as an example of soil loss on an enormous scale, and it is asserted 
that this condition is worse now than formerly. The Mississippi and 
Missouri Rivers, practically alike in this respect, are the two most 
prominent examples. The writer will consider briefly the case of 
the Missouri because he has had a long and intimate acquaintance 
with that stream from its mouth to its source. 
It may be stated by way of refutation that the actual condition of 
this stream to-day is better than before settlement began in its valley, 
except that possibly the low-water flow is slightly diminished to meet 
the demands for irrigation. The stream is not “constantly becoming 
more and more savage,” as a recent writer asserts. On the other 
hand, its natural savagery is much restrained. Probably 100 miles 
of its banks are protected; snags and drift heaps are largely removed; 
considerable bottom land has been reclaimed and turned to indus- 
trial use; floods are no greater than they used to be, and navigation 
is safer and easier. Navigation has ceased, not because the river has 
deteriorated, as is commonly asserted, but because the natural dif- 
ficulties peculiar to this stream are so great and so hard to over- 
come that boats cannot live and do business at the same rates at 
which railroads transport freight. 
That the river is a most destructive one to the bottom lands along 
its course is only too true; but the character of its destructive work 
is generally misunderstood. The writer just quoted states that the 
river carries away annually 8000 acres of bottom land within the 
limits of the State of Missouri alone. The total acreage of these lands 
