WEST VIRGINIA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



35 



Scientific sewering and sewage disposal will find great difficulty 

 in keeping pace with development in a state like this where so 

 many resources are forcing their way to market." 



"Removal of Soil Through Deforestation." 



**When the ground is laid bare on the steep slopes, rains 

 wash the soil away. It is sometimes worn down over its whole 

 surface, as may be seen in old clay fields on hillsides ; or gullies 

 may form, as is often the case where soils are sandy. In either 

 intance the loss is serious. Every rain carries down a load of 

 silt or sand, and the rivers carry it toward the sea or drop it in 

 their own channels where it forms bars, islands, and shoals. In 

 West Virginia the erosion has not yet progressed far, but 

 agencies are at work, and rapid denudation may be looked for 

 in the near future. In the Appalachian region south of Penn- 

 sylvania it has been estimated that the soil from 100 square 

 miles goes into the rivers every year, from the native hills. The 

 soil is gone forever — ^worse than that, for it is not only lost to 

 agriculture which sorely needs it, but it fills navigable chan- 

 nels which must be dredged at great cost. Much of the hun- 

 dreds of millions of dollars which the Government has spent 

 dredging rivers has gone to remove silt washed in from fields 

 which ought never to have been cleared, and from deforested 

 mountains. 



''West Yirginia can attack this waste in its infancy. It 

 should be borne in mind that every yard of soil that gets into 

 the streams is lost for all time, because it takes ten thousand 

 years for enough rock to decompose to form a foot of soil. The 

 people of West Yirginia should profit by the fate of Dalmatia 

 which let its forests be destroyed and its soil washed away. In 

 some districts of that region the wretched people pound rock 

 into sand with hammers and make little plots of groimd for 

 gardens, some of them scarcely longer than bed quilts. Care 

 of woods once abundant would have prevented the irreparable 

 loss in that country, and it will prevent it in West Virginia." 



