of places. A
farmer owned a farm on the mountain side. Much of it was good wheat
land, but the top was covered with forests. At last he decided to cut
and sell the timber, and use the land for raising more wheat. He did
so, but now there was no spreading foliage to check the dash of the
heavy rains as they fell to the ground. As they sank below the surface
there were no masses of tangled roots to hold the moisture in the soil
and to carry it up into the air again through the trees.

As the water penetrated deeper, the soil became softened, and was
carried away down the hillside. It was only a muddy little stream, but
it took away some of the richest soil from the fields, and the next
year's crop was not quite so good. Every rain that fell carried more of
the fertile soil down the hillside, and the next year the farmer
wondered that the yield was still less. After a few years he ceased to
sow the field because it had never paid for its cultivation, and was
constantly growing poorer. But it was too late then to repair the damage
that had been done. There were no seeds of forest trees left in the
ground and the farmer did not plant them, so the ground lay idle and
desolate. The rain wore deep gullies down the hillside, which, as they
grew larger, became more of a menace to the lands below them. The
streams soon grew large enough to take the top-soil from the fields
lower down, and in a few years more the whole farm had grown so
unproductive that the farmer, tired of the struggle, left the farm and
went to the city to make a living.

In the meantime the land in the valley below had been growing more
fertile, for each year the spring floods had left a rich soil deposit
behind them. The farmer down there had been innocently stealing the land
above him, but not all of it, for much had been carried out to sea.

It is not possible to prevent this entirely, but much of the loss might
have been avoided by leaving the hilltops, which are never well fitted
for cultivation, covered with forests. In this way the soil-wash from
above is prevented and the streams run gently and with only a small
amount of muddy deposit, forming proper drainage for the soil.

The preserving of the forests on the great mountain ranges of the
country, where nature has placed them, will mean in the one matter of
soil-wash, fruitful lands and bountiful harvests, instead of barren,
wasted lands, desolated by floods and seamed by great ravines, carrying
de