DEFORESTATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9678, 30 December 1909, Page 7

DEFORESTATION.

Thus writes Mr J. P. Grossman, M.A., Director of the Schcoi of Commerce, Auckland University College: —"Foremoit among the inevitable effects of deforestation we must, therefore, rank floods and landslip?. It must be clearly understood that, this description of the effects of hushfelling la by no meina simply theoretical. Unfortunately, the theory has been illustrated in only too literal and practical., a fashion in all the countries that have over been endowed with great natural forests. In America this question has alreidy assumed the dimensions of a great national problem, and the disastrous results of erosion are dwelt on impressively in the report recently presented to Congress by the National Conservation Commission. 'One small neglected stream,' we are told, 'has been found by actual measurement to wash enough soil from ita hills to deposit silt equal to one and a half tona per acre of its watershed in a year. The quantity or silt deposited every year by all the streams in tho Unite i states would cover a territory nine hundred miles square a foot deep. Our rivers have washed 783 million tons of the best soil of the United States from the upland farms and carried it into the rivers, where it has formed bars impeded navigation and finally lodged in the great harbours. The Government has already spent 553 millions of dollars for river and harbour improvements,' and this outlay has been rendered necossary almost entirely throught he indirect effects of deforestation.