Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1884-02-28
The Lesson of the Ohio Deluge.

For years an almost unheeded voice
raised here and there has protested against
the rash haste with which, all over the
country, the timber has been cut from
the hills. The Beautiful River" has be-
gun to utter the same protest: is it too
much to hope that men will listen?
There is nothing more amazing than the
apathy with which we have heard the
warning of science against the folly, en-
forced as that warning has been by .ap-
peals to the terrible experience of other
lands
No man of our time had better right
to speak and to be heard with attention
by his countrymen, especially upon this
subject, than the Hon. George P Marsh,
our late Minister to Italy. In his great
work, The Earth as Modified by Human
Action" he shows how terribly forest
spoliation has reduced the capacity for
sustaining human life Of many once pop
ulous countries and especially those bor-
dering the Mediterranean. Many parts
of the North of Africa, Syria, Asia Minor,
Greece, Sicily, Italy and Spain, which
once gave generous support to swarm
ing populations, are either uninhabitable
or at best can only supply the wants of a
few impoverished people At vast eX-
pense science is replanting many of the
hillsides of these sterile districts, and the
results have already richly repaid the
outlay. Streams, whose beds in the dry
seas n were wide eXpanses of rock,
sand and gravel, and in winter were filled
with savage torrents have been in some
degree brought back to their normal con.
dition. But the immense mass of soil
and rock which have been torn from the
fanks of the mountains, pulverized, and
deposited in lakes and in the channels OF
navigahle streams and harbors. or have
swept out to sea to be returned by the
currents to make peStiiential lagoons and
to Go great and varied harm in other
ways; this material 10 science can ever
put back upon the mountains where it is
so sorely needed. Mr.. Marsh estimated
that the Po has carried away from the
surface of the hills drained by that stream
euough soil and rock to cover the entire
alea OF its basin above the point where il
mas received all its affluentS-more than
seventeen million acres-tu "a depth of A
feet. Only small part of this sad rob
berry could have been done had the woods
been left upon the steep hillsides.
Thu finpd. in tha yallnv of Mallu
in Lombardy. in the Ardeche and Other
streams tributary to the Rhone, and espe
cially that in the Garonne in 1915, which
did damage estimated at 3O0,000.0 .00C
francs and destroyed many thousand
hyes-over 1000 in one town-these
floods were all directly caused by the
came kind of vandalism which the Adj
ronGock Company la now doing and plan.
ming 10 do. The flood of 1915 in the
Garonne is especially instructive because
the hills of the upper part of its basin
are. like large part of the Adiondacks
composed of very hard azoic rocks When
THESE slopes became bare of vegetation
they were like steep slate roofs, and sent
melted snow and rain into the main
channel so fast that a huge wall of water
swept down stream at the rate of thirty
miles an hour. In view of the terrible
c;liami les which those living in the Ohio
valley are now suffering, and those which
iii past experience has proved are sure to
follow forest spoliation like that which
Is now going on in the Adirondacks, it
viii be shame and lasting disgrace
to the present Legislature if it does not
pass some act at least as stringent as the
Compromise bill agreed upon between the
Committee of the Chamber of Commerce
and Senator Lansing, which is about to
be introduced.-N. Y. Tribune.