Daily Arizona silver belt., 1908-12-09

, mattox or axe, scale the steepest noun tain sides, and cut down and grub out. root and branch, the small trees and
 shrubs still to be found. The big
 trees disappeared centuries ago, so that
 now one of these is never seen save in
 the neighborhood of temples, where
 they are artifcially protected; and leven here it takes all the watch and
 care of the tree-loving priests to pre-
 vent their destruction. Each family each community, where there is a com
 mon care exercised in the interest of all of them to prevent deforestation. finds its profit in the immediate use of
 the fuel which would otherwise be used
 by some other family or some other
 community. In the total absence of
 regulation of the matter in the inter
 est of the whole people, each small
 group is invariably pushed into the pol | icy of destruction which can not afford
 to take thought for the morrow This
 is just one of those matters which it is
 fatal to leave to unsupervised individ-
 ual control. The forests can only be protected by the state, by the nation: and the liberty of action of individuals
 must be determined upon what the state or nation determines to be neces sary for the common safety.
 The lesson of deforestation in China is lesson which mankind should have. learned many times already from what has occurred in other places. Denuda ton leaves naked soil; then gullying cuts down to the bare rock; and mean while the rock-waste buries the bottom l lo nIc Nhat ,u must go; and the process does not take long
 This ruthless destruction of the for ests in northern China has brought about, or has aided in bringing about desolation, just as the destruction of the forests in central Asia aid in bring ing ruin to the once rich centralAsian cities; just as the destruction of the forests in northern Africa helped to- wards the ruin of a region that was fertile granary in Roman days. Short sighted man, whether barbaric, semi civilized, or what he mistakenly re- gards as fully civilized, when he has destroyed the forests, has rendered cer- tain the ultimate destruction of the land itself. In northern China the mountains are now such as are shown by the accompanying photographs, ab- solutely barren peaks. Not only have the forests been destroyed, but because of their destruction the soil has been washed off the naked rocks. The terri ble consequences is that it is impossible now to undo the damage that has been done. Many centuries would have to pass before soil would again collect, or could be made to collect, in suffi cient quantity once more to support the old-time forest growth. In conse- quence the Mongol desert is practically extending eastward over northern China. The climate has changed and is still changing. It has changed even within the last half century, as the work of tree destruction has been con summated The great masses of ar boreal vegetation on the mountains formerly absorbed the heat of the sun and sent up currents of cool air which brought the moisture laden clouds low CT and forced them to precipitate in rain a part of their burden of water. Now that there is no vegetation, the barren mountains, scorched by the sun, send up currents of heated air which drive away instead of ting the rain clouds, and cause their moisture to be disseminated. |. In consequente, instead of the regular and plentiful rains which existed in these regions of China when the forests were still in evidence, the unfortunate inhabitants of the deforested lands now see their crops wither for lack of rainfall, while the seasons grow more and fore irregu- lar; and as the air becomes dryer cer- tain crops refuse longer to grow at all That everything dries out faster than formerly is shown by the fact that the level of the wells all over the land has sunk pereepitably, many of them hay ing become totally dry. In addition to the resulting agricultural distress, the water courses have changed. Form erly they were narrow and deep, with an abundance of clear water the year round; for the roots and humus of the. forests caught the rainwater and let it escape by slow, regular seepage. They have now become broad, shallow stream beds. in which muddy water trickles in slender currents during the dry seasons, while when it rains there are freshcts, bringing disaster and des- truction everywhere. Moreover, these floods and freshets, which diversity the general dryness, wash away from the mountain sides, and either wash away or cover in the valleys, the rich fertile soil which it took tens of thousands of years for nature to form; and it is lost forever. and until the forests grow again it can not be replaced. The sand and stones from the mountain sides are washed loose ard come rolling down to cover the arable lands, and in consequence. throughout this part of China, many formerly rich districts are now sandy wastes, useless for human cultivation ard even fc: pasture. Thes cities have been of cou;se seriously for the streams have gradually ceased to be navigable. There is test- mony that even within the memory of men now living there have been serious dminution of the rainfall in north eastern China. The level of the Sun gari river in northern Manchuria has been sensibly lowered during the last fifty years, at least partly as the result of the indiscriminate cutting of the for ests forming its watershed Almost all the rivers of northern China have be-