282 Illinois State Dairymen's Association. 



square miles, or more than 36 million acres. Oii this large area 

 about eight million acres are rolling or hilly and subject to serious 

 erosion. Most of this can be cultivated and cropped, but it is so 

 rolling or steeply sloping that every practical means should be 

 taken to prevent the rapid ruin of the land by surface washing. 

 Some Illinois land has already been completely ruined, and even 

 abandoned fields, impoverished by sheet washing or- gashed by 

 gullies beyond all chance of reclamation, are now to be found, 

 especially in the southern counties. In some cases this land should 

 never have been robbed of its protecting forest, the only thing 

 that made it valuable in the first place. 



There is a large area of undulating to rolling land, both tim- 

 ber and prairie, not included in the above estimate, that has not 

 been badly damaged as yet, but with continued cropping and loss 

 of organic matter from the soil these lands are becoming more 

 subject to surface erosion, and reports of such injury are now 

 frequently made to the Experiment Station. 



The table below gives areas of some of the counties of 

 which a detail soil survey has been made, also the area of rolling 

 and hilly land in square miles and the percentage of this in the 

 county. 



Table 1. — Broken and Hilly Land. 



Broken and Broken and 

 County. Area, hilly land, hilly land, 



sq. mi. sq. mi. percent. 



Alexander 207 83.3 40.2 



Bond 372 62.1 16.6 



Clay 468 23.0 4.9 



Clinton 498 13.3 2.6 



Cumberland 347 36.2 10.4 



Edgar 648 113.0 17.4 



Hancock 765 165.5 21.6 



Hardin 168 132.9 79.1 



Jackson 558 264.8 47.4 



Jo Daviess 656 432.3 65.9 



Johnson 340 282.5 83.0 



Kankakee 692 9.1 1.3 



Knox 720 103.0 14.3 



Lake 463 185.0 40.0 



LaSalle 1156 143.2 12.4 



