SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION, 



27 



In the cool climate of New England the native grasses how'^thc soii'o°n 

 form a dense sod which holds the hillside surfaces in place, fi^p^^g mountain 

 so that even where the forests have been removed there is 

 little erosion. In the Southern Appalachians, however, 

 neither the grass, the legumes, nor the other forage plants 

 have been able to prevent this land erosion, and their only 

 safeguard for the future is the protection of the forests. 

 Hundreds of these steep mountain fields where selected 

 grasses were sown have been observed during the past 

 few years, and the results, as indicating a means of per- 

 manently holding these soils, have been generall}^ unsatis- 

 factory. (See PI. XXII.) 



This washing away of the cleared mountain fields does mOTntain u-uids! 

 not always manifest itself in the formation of deep gullies. 

 The majority of these fields have slopes so steep that the 

 water in its downward course can not always move later- 

 ally to a sufiicient degree for its concentration and the 

 washing out of such gullies. Each drop of rain does its 

 own work in battering and loosening the surface; and as 

 it carries downward the particles of soil it has captured it 

 is joined by only its closer neighbors. Hence frequently 

 after a heavy rain the surface of such a field looks as 

 though it might have been harrowed or even raked down- 

 ward rather than plowed in larger furrows. From one of 

 these cleared fields more soil is sometimes removed by a 

 single heavy rain than during the preceding centuries 

 while it was densely forest covered. 



But while the rains are removing the soils of the cleared oj vaUeyYands!^ 

 mountain slopes the floods are removing the soils of the 

 valley farms. This is notably the case in the valleys, where 

 the bordering forests have been cleared to the largest ex- " 

 tent. Year by year the channels of the streams are widen- 

 ing and encroaching upon the adjacent farms, and as the 

 magnitude of the floods increases, these mountain streams, 

 transfoi'med into swollen torrents, leave their course and 

 plow new channels across the fields. During the floods of 

 the present year thousands of acres of the most productive 

 valley lands in this mountain region have been damaged 

 or destroyed by one or both of these processes. (See 

 Pis. XXIII and XXIV.) 



It is, then, exactly true that the making of farms on 

 mountain slopes is destroying the farms in the valleys, 

 and that unless stopped by some external influence this 

 process will proceed more rapidly as the popu^lation of the 



