134 
whose superstition they arouse sometimes shadowed by foliage, but of tener exposed 
to the glare of the sun reflected from barren sands. Here the road winds through 
a gorge so steep that the sunlight scarcely enters ; there it traverses a narrow crest 
of earth between chasms scores of feet deep, in which he might be plunged by a single 
misstep. When the shower comes, he may see the road rendered impassable, even 
obliterated, within a few minutes ; always sees the falling waters accumulate as 
viscid mud torrents of brown or red, while the myriad miniature pinnacles and 
defiles before him are transformed by the beating raindrops and rushing rills so 
completely that when the sun shines again he may not recognise the nearer landscape. 
" The destruction is not confined to a single field, nor to a single region, but 
extends over much of the upland. While the actual acreage of soil thus destroyed 
lias not been measured, the traveller through the region on horseback daily sees 
thousands or tens of thousands of formerly fertile acres now barren sands ; and it is 
probably within the truth to estimate that 10 per cent, of upland Mississippi has been 
so far converted into bad lands as to be practically ruined for agriculture under 
existing commercial conditions, and that the ammal loss in real estate exceeds the 
revenues from all sources. And all this havoc has been wrought within a quarter of 
a century. The processes, too, are cumulative ; each year's rate of destruction is 
higher than the last. : >' 
" The transformation of the fertile hills into ?and wastes is not the sole injury. 
The sandy soil is carried into the valleys to bury the fields, invade the roadways, and 
convert the formerly rich bottom lands into treacherous quicksands when wet, 
blistering deserts when dry ; hundreds of thousands of acres have been destroyed 
since the gullying of the hills of a quarter of a century ago. Moreover, in much of 
the upland the loss is not alone that of the soil, i.e., the humus representing the 
constructive product of water-work and plant-work of thousands of years. The 
mantle of brown loam, most excellent of soil stuffs, is cut through and carried away 
by corrosion and sapping, leaving in its stead the inferior soil stuff of the Lafayette 
formation. In such cases the destruction is irremediable by human craft the fine 
loam once removed can never be restored. The area from which this loam is already 
gone is appalling, and the rate of loss is increasing in geometric proportion." 
See also " Washed Soils : how to prevent and reclaim them. " (Farmers' 
Bulletin, No. 20, U.S. Dept. of Agric., 1894, which contains admirable illustrations 
of " An eroded field in the South " and " Another effect of erosion." These illus- 
trations are taken by officers of the U.S. Geological Survey, and are to be also found, 
with valuable additional information, in Hilgard on "Soils." 
II. Intelligent Control of Ringbarking. 
Going back to ultimate beginnings, to the creeklets, the source of all the 
troubles is the indiscriminate ringbarkiug and cutting down of vegetation by indi- 
vidual owners. The ringing or felling of trees in paddocks is, of course, necessary ; 
