SOUTHERN APPALACHIATSr EEGION. 



25 



ward slopes the damages have exceeded those on slopes 

 toward the north or west. Trees have been liurned near 

 the roots, making their bases defective (see PI. XLVII); 

 the 3^oung growth has been burned down (see PI. XL VI); 

 the grasses and other wild forage plants have been tem- 

 porarily exterminated, so that instead of pasturage being- 

 improved, as some have believed it would be, in the end 

 it has been seriously damaged. This destruction of the injuries resuit- 



1 1 1 1 n • 1 '"S h-om the 



humus has always resulted seriously both to the forests burning of the 



- , . 11,. humus. 



and to the sous, in some cases, where the forests covering 

 the steep, rocky slopes were thin, the loss of the humus 

 has resulted in the washing and leaching away of the soils 

 to such an extent as to destroy the forests entirely; and 

 in all cases where the humus is thus removed the work of 

 land erosion among the trees goes on as surel}^ as though 

 the forest itself were gone, though of course the process is 

 far less rapid. Furthermore, the storage of water (in soils 

 from which this humus has been removed) is far less perfect 

 than in the original perfect forest. 



The rapid rate at which these lumbering operations have 

 extended during the past few years and the still more 

 rapid rate at which the}^ are being extended at the present 

 time, considered in connection with the destructive work 

 of the fires and the clearing for agriculture, indicates that 

 within less than a decade every mountain cove will have 

 been invaded and robbed of its finest timber, and the last 

 of the remnants of these grand primeval Appalachian 

 forests will have been destro3^ed. Hence the very possi- 

 bility of securing a forest reserve such as now contem- 

 plated is a possibility of the present, not of the future. 

 This great activity indicates, furthermore, in the most 

 striking way possible, the growing anxietj^ as to the future 

 supply of hard-wood timber. And indeed the time is now imperative 

 at hand Avhcn the great interests involved make it impera- est policy, 

 tive that the Government take hold of this problem and 

 inaugurate here in these great broad-leaved forests of the 

 East, a new conservative forest policy, as it is already 

 doing for the pine forests of the West. 



FOREST CLEARING AND AGRICULTURE IN THE 

 SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS. 



Ordinary farming on these mountain slopes can not 

 exist i)ermancntly and should never exist at all. As stated 

 above, not more than 10 per cent of the land of this 

 region has a surface slope of less than 10 degrees (approxi- 



