100 
THE PERIL OF BARE EARTH. 
The printed page that falls at our doors every morning convicts us of halting 
logic. We carefully record the few scores or hundreds of sheep that are drowned 
in some phenomenal flood. We rarely pause to reflect that the swollen river is 
every time dyed brown with precious humus and soil from our fields and hillsides. 
Sheep can be replaced. The loss of soil is‘ irreparable. No power on earth can 
ever bring it back. 
We are spending great sums in teaching people how to plant trees and how to 
grow crops. But of what ultimate avail will all this be unless we at the same time 
teach them to save from erosion and wasting the soil surface of the land whereon 
alone trees can be planted and crops can be grown. Forestry and agriculture are 
both confronted with the menace of a poorer world in which to plant and sow. 
All our methods and practices must be tested by this master truth. Nature 
warns us to keep all surfaces covered. If we do not cover them usefully, she may 
cover them with stubborn plants that we shall call weeds. Nature warns us to 
maintain the forest floor as nearly as possible after her own manner. She 
persistently spreads thereupon a carpet of decaying leaves and tender undergrowth. 
Necessity may compel us sometimes to use fire as a protection against fire; but 
all burning of the forest floor is an outrage against nature. It may undo in a day 
the gains of a century. 
We think lightly of browsing animals; but in a plantation or forest they are 
scarcely less destructive than fire. Their pitiless voracity prompted by pleasure in 
destruction soon kills out all seedlings and smaller growths. Their sharp hoofs 
penetrate the soil and wound the roots of the larger trees. Freely admitted to 
our tender and beautiful New Zealand bush they rapidly reduce its constituent 
flora. Within years that will take no long counting they will perpetrate a ruin 
that admits of no recovery. The planted belt or forest may offer less that is tender 
and succulent. To assume therefore that browsing animals will therein do no harm 
is to fail in observation. The forest floor is a vital part of the forest. Given over 
to an alien and destructive life, it must ever fail of its best service to the trees. 
It falls too near to the condition of bare earth to fulfil its natural function. 
When the white man took custody of streams and rivers in this unique land, he 
found them fringed with shrubs and trees that held the banks without unduly 
impeding the flow of the waters. Axe and fire and browsing animal stripped 
away this protecting vegetation. The rains were not heavier than in former years, 
but they gathered more quickly into rushing torrents. Banks were undermined, 
and soon the steady roar of the stream was punctuated by great falls of earth into 
its turbid bosom. 
Frosts, winds, rains, and floods will not halt because they are hurting us. 
Only when we cover the land with grass and crops and gardens and forests will 
they cease their hurting and combine to bless. 
