Joseph Russell Smith

“ Of the city only a few mud houses remained, scarcely enough to lead one's mind back to the time when people and household industry teemed within the protecting wall.
The slope below the Great Wall was cut with gullies of which were fifty feet deep. As far as the eye could see were gullies, gullies, gullies—a gashed and gutted countryside. The little stream that once ran past the city was now a wide waste of coarse sand and gravel which the hillside gullies were bringing down faster than the little stream had been able to carry them away. ”

“ Upon the hills and mountains it is appallingly thin. In some places there is no soil at all, and rocks protrude. Sometimes the earth mantle may be only a few inches in depth; rarely does the soil on hill or mountain attain a depth of many feet. Often soil is so shallow that one great rain storm can gash and gully a slope down to bare rock. Where man has removed nature's protecting cover of plants and plant roots, the destroying power of rain is increased a hundredfold, a thousandfold, even at times a millionfold, or perhaps even more than that. ”

“ The creation of soil by the weathering of rock is a very, very slow process. Years may have passed in making soil that, if unprotected, may be washed away in an hour. Therefore, today an observer in the Old World might see myriad landscapes once rich with farms where now only poverty-stricken men creep about over the ruined land, while their sheep and goats, scavengers and destroyers, pick the scanty browse that struggles for life in the waste. A handful of men are now living uncomfortably where once there were prosperous villages. ”

“ We have tilled crops—corn, cotton, and tobacco. Europe did not have these crops. The European grains, wheat, barley, rye, and oats, cover all of the ground and hold the soil with their roots. When a man plows corn, cotton, or tobacco, he is loosening the earth and destroying such hold as the plant roots may have won in it. Plowing corn is the most efficient known way for destroying the farm that is not made of level land.
We in America have another factor of destruction that is almost new to the white race—the thunder storm. South Europe has a rainless summer. ”

“ As plants the cereals are weaklings. They must be coddled and weeded. For their reception the ground must be plowed and harrowed, and sometimes it must be cultivated after the crop is planted. This must be done for every harvest. When we produce these crops upon hilly land, the necessary breaking up of the soil prepares the land for ruin—first the plow, then rain, then erosion. Finally the desert.
CAN WE GET ECONOMICS INTO BOTANY?
Must we continue to depend primarily upon the type of agriculture handed to us by primitive woman? It is true that we have improved the old type. ”

“ The plant kingdom has become almost as clay in the hands of the potter. Where we now have one good crop plant, we may some day have five or ten. We need to start in earnest to apply some of our science to producing genius trees—trees that are to other trees as human geniuses are to other men. ”

“ If we think of ourselves as a race, a nation, a people that is to occupy its country generation after generation, we must change some of our habits or we shall inevitably experience the steadily diminishing possibility of support for man. ”

“ When the American heavens open and pour two inches of rain in an hour into a hilly corn field, there may result as much erosion as results from two hundred inches of gentle British or German rain falling on the wheat and grass. ”

“ Syria is an even more deplorable example than China. Back of Antioch, in a land that was once as populous as rural Illinois, there are now only ruin and desolation. The once prosperous Roman farms now consist of wide stretches of bare rock, [4] whence every vestige of soil has been removed by rain. Greece, once so great, is shockingly ruined by soil wash. In parts of Europe people even pound stone to get a little bit of loose material in which plant roots can work. ”

“ FLAT LAND AGRICULTURE GOES TO THE HILLS
How does it happen that the hill lands have been so frightfully destroyed by agriculture? The answer is simple. Man has carried to the hills the agriculture of the flat plain. In hilly places man has planted crops that need the plow ”

“ These grafted chestnut orchards produced an annual crop of food for men, horses, cows, pigs, sheep, and goats, and a by-crop of wood. Thus for centuries trees had supported the families that lived in the Corsican villages. The mountainside was uneroded, intact, and capable of continuing indefinitely its support for the generations of men.
Why are the hills of West China ruined, while the hills of Corsica are, by comparison, an enduring Eden? The answer is plain. Northern China knows only the soil-destroying agriculture of the plowed hillside. ”

“ This is a regular practice of the Greek growers of a grape that enters the world market tinder the name of currant. It appears that the quantity of fruit a tree bears is in part a matter of habit. I have no idea that most trees bear all the fruit they are physiologically capable of producing. ”

“ We usually think of Illinois as level land, not subject to destruction by erosion; yet this Illinois bulletin states and shows by this map that "about 51⁄2 millions of acres of land are subject to serious erosion." ”

“ We test cement in every possible way, make it of all possible materials, mix all possible combinations, test it by twisting it, pressing it, pulling it; test it thousands of times, hundreds of thousands of times, millions of times, and in a few years our whole physical equipment is made over by reënforced cement made possible by these millions of tests. ”

“ As the evil progressed, large areas of uplands were denuded completely of their loam or culture stratum, leaving nothing but bare, arid sand, wholly useless for cultivation; while the valleys were little better, the native vegetation having been destroyed and only hardy weeds finding nourishment on the sandy surface. ”

“ This is very suggestive of the way by which through a selection of parents we have changed the cow so marvelously for milk production. The object of selection here is to find desirable strains that produce uniform progenies. Page 15 shows that tree breeding has a more easily attainable objective—namely, one good specimen.
Second, varying combinations in offspring of qualities of parents. A hybridization of hazels and filberts (Fig. 20) produced plants ranging from 12 inches to 12 feet in height—suggestive of variations in great degree for each quality a plant can have. ”

“ Primitive woman needed a crop in a hurry, and naturally enough she planted the seeds of annuals. Therefore, we of today, tied to this ancient apron string, eat bread from the cereals, all of which are annuals and members of the grass family. ”

“ Yes, something can be done. Therefore, this book is written to persons of imagination who love trees and love their country, and to those who are interested in the problem of saving natural resources—the basis for civilization. ”

“ The Appalachian slope above the cabin has been reduced to desert while the logs of the original trees still sprawl, wasted, across its wasting gullies. The gullies also carry ruin to the meadows and navigation below. More deadened trees stand in the new clearing at far left. Will we complete this suicide? ”

“ Specific names have been given to the erosional features of this district; a 'break' is the head of a small retrogressive ravine; a 'gulf is a large break with precipitous walls of great depth and breadth, commonly being one hundred or one hundred and fifty deep; a 'gut' is merely a road-cut deepened by storm-wash and the effects of passing travel. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1966, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 57 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
It is imperative that contributors search the renewal databases and ascertain that there is no evidence of a copyright renewal before using this license. Failure to do so will result in the deletion of the work as a copyright violation. ”

“ Corsica on the contrary has adapted agriculture to physical conditions; she practices the soil-saving tree-crops type of agriculture.
Man lives by plants. Plants live in the soil. The soil is a kind of factory in which the life-force of plants, using plant food and assisted by bacteria and the elements of the weather, Fig. ”

“ By hand labor the Chinese near Nanking carry from a lake bottom back to the mountain side a small fraction of that which need never have left it. (Photo by Prof. Joseph Bailic. Courtesy U. S. Forest Service.) resource wastes. [2] It removes the basis of civilization and of life itself. It is far worse than burning a city. A burned city can be rebuilt. A field that is washed away is gone for ages. ”