Mr. Chitten- 
den. 
496 DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
or properly controlling it. The natural growth which always follows 
the destruction of a forest is fully as effective in preventing erosion, 
and even in retaining run-off, as the natural forest.” 
This proposition, like the one preceding, has been received with 
more or less protest, and exclamations of “impossible;” but a calm 
review of the discussion will disclose a complete failure to shake its 
essential correctness. Mr. Leighton characteristically tosses it aside 
with a promise that if the writer will accompany him to certain regions 
he will convince him; but the writer ventures to predict that, if the 
suggested visit were made, he would find, in practically every instance 
which might be pointed out, that the erosion was initiated by attempts 
to reduce the land to cultivation. In fact there is nothing about a tree 
8 in. above the ground that has any influence on erosion. The only 
feature connected with the removal of timber, per se, that can induce 
erosion is the log roads developed in hauling it out. These, of course, 
may start washing which may develop into large gullies. But the 
primary cause of erosion is injudicious efforts at cultivation, and in no 
place is the fault more in evidence than in the region to which Mr. 
Leighton refers. A recent writer incidentally refers to this matter in 
the following language: 
“Of all the crimes of poor tillage which have aroused the workers 
toward conservation; of all the reckless clearing of timber,. burning of 
soil, washing away and eroding of fields; all the process of robbing the 
land of its fertility by endless succession of the same crops, the worst 
examples are to be found among these mountains.” 
The writer lays particular stress upon this point because the prob- 
lem of erosion is a problem in cultivation. There must always be a 
large percentage of cleared land in all parts of the country to sustain 
the population. The problem is to handle this cultivation in such a 
way as to reduce soil wash to a minimum. Coupled with the associated 
problems of crop rotation, fertilization, etc., it is easily the most im- 
portant conservation problem before the people to-day, out-ranking 
forestry, or water-power, or navigation. In the great majority of situa- 
tions, nearly all classes of cultivation can be managed so as to prevent 
excessive erosion. In all but a very few, grass cover is an effective 
agent; as much so as the forest itself. But there are some soils which 
are so unstable that the scratch of a hoe leads to erosion, and un- 
doubtedly such should be reserved for that class of vegetation which 
never requires extensive breaking of the soil, viz., the rearing of forests. 
This is a very different thing from the wholesale and sweeping asser- 
tions that tree cutting naturally and inevitably leads to erosion. 
Mr. Le Baron raises the point that cultivation is a concom- 
itant of deforestation, and that therefore the writer’s distinction is 
not a valid one. But his statement is not correct, either as to fact 
or conclusion. Let him look out of a car window on any railroad in 
