such character as to be carried away, in particles small enough to be carried away, the water will carry it away.

Mr. Cocks. Such a large percentage of the water enters those streams below the steep slopes that it would seem that a large portion of it must carry a lot of sediment, even though the ability of the water to carry sediment is reduced.

Mr. SWAIN. Undoubtedly some sediment comes in from below the steep slopes. But the point I have just spoken of-the increased transporting power of water dependent on its velocity-is a very important matter. The erosion is greatest on the steep slopes, and it increases very rapidly as the velocity of the water increases.

The CHAIRMAN. To what extent would the preservation of the forests on the steep slopes be profitable if the secondary slopes (what might be called the mesa lands) were deforested and converted into farms?

Mr. SWAIN. I think this whole question is a question to be considered with reference to each particular case. It is a question of slope; it is not a question of elevation above the sea. It does not make any difference whether the slope, which is steep and is being eroded, is toward the base of a mountain or up high on the mountain. It depends on the quantity of water and on the slope.

The CHAIRMAN. To give you a little clearer idea of the question I had in mind, let me call your attention to the conditions that exist in the southern Appalachians, with which you are familiar. I presume you will agree that at the present time the erosion is mostly from the plowed fields, which are on the lower slopes of the mountains?

Mr. SWAIN. I have not been there in some years; but if the plowed fields are on the lower slopes of the mountains, if those slopes are steep enough, and especially if the plowing is not done properly—if the furrow is up and down instead of along the contours there is bound to be a great deal of erosion, of course.

The CHAIRMAN. Up to the present time the lumbering operations in the southern Appalachians have not resulted in materially interfering with the forest covering. Gentlemen from North Carolina are here, and can correct me if I am mistaken about that. Many of the lower slopes, however, have been entirely denuded, and are used for farming purposes. It would seem to me that nearly every observer would be of the opinion that most of the erosion, in fact, practically all of it, is from those farmed slopes. What I desired to inquire was whether you thought any good could be accomplished in that section of the country by holding things in statu quo, or whether it would be necessary to reforest the slopes that are now used for farming purposes?

Mr. SWAIN. I think it would be very desirable to reforest any slopes that are being badly eroded, whether they are used for farming purposes or not. If they are badly eroded, they will soon wash away and not be useful for any purpose.

Mr. WEEKS. Mr. Chairman, in December, 1908, Mr. C. C. Goodrich, of Connecticut, the general manager of the New York and Hartford General Transportation Company, testified before this committee and referred to the deposits at the mouth of the Connecticut River. I should like to insert in this hearing at the proper

point what Mr. Goodrich said about that matter at that time. It is in the hearings, but may be overlooked.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well.

(The statement above referred to is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF MR. C. C. GOODRICH, OF CONNECTICUT, GENERAL MANAGER OF THE NEW YORK AND HARTFORD GENERAL TRANSPORTATION COMPANY.

Mr. GOODRICH. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I have been requested by Governor Woodruff to appear at this hearing. I do not know that the governor expected me to say anything, because I am not a speaker; I am not used to appearing before a committee, and yet the chairman this morning asked for information on certain points that it did seem to me, perhaps, I could be of use to him in. First, as to the flow of the Connecticut River, as observed, and as to the building of the bars and the final disposition of the sand as it reaches the sea. I have been for forty years engaged in marine commerce, at the present time handling more than 40 vessels of from 500 to 5,000 tons register. I have observed in all these years, going back even further than my service as the manager or vice-president, and I remember the time when our river, forty years ago, received its high-water season and continued it away along until the middle of June, when the common inquiry was, "How much snow is there left in the forests in the White Mountains in New Hampshire and in Vermont?" We could depend in those years upon operating without difficulty from low water until about the 15th of June. In those days the Government had not undertaken the care of its rivers and its waterways as within the last twenty years. The result was that those who were using the rivers for their commerce were obliged to have their own dredges for service in summer, their own lighting system for the various rivers, and their own range lights to guide across the various bars which are forming between Hartfort, Conn., and Long Island Sound. In that service we could start our dredges about the 10th of May, in which time the flow got so that we could reach the bar in about 20 feet, and about the 1st of July we had the courses cleared out at an expense of about $58,000, and the rest of the season we could go on with our commerce.

In the last twenty years, and right down to the present time, in an aggravated way, the length of high-water flow in spring has been exceedingly shortened. Starting with March, freshet after freshet comes, with an immense waste of water, freshets ranging from 15 to 20 feet follow close upon one another, so that we lose the use of the water, and by the 20th of May, instead of the 15th of June, we arrive at a point where a full loaded passenger steamer of 1,500 tons must wait, must stop, or else instead of dredging in accordance with the present channel of 150 feet wide, with 9 feet at low water in summer, we must leave one bar and immediately go to another, where we have only a 25-foot channel, just enough to drop the keel into it, and then make another 10 miles, and still another 10 miles, and then put in another 50 or 60 feet wide at the bottom of the slope, and gradually in that way we can keep the daily line of passenger steamers that operate in that river in operation by having every great steamer and having the government engineers immediately attack another bar and keep going. We have been able to navigate very successfully there, and in that time we have been able to dredge through those bars, only half the width that the government project calls for.

If we continued and carried out and spent the rest of the appropriation, amounting in those days to about $16,000 for two years, or about $20,000, out of which the Government received its proportion for the proportionate expense of the engineering department in that district, we found we were throwing away the money, that we could get through with a 70-foot channel, and that we have done right down to the present year for the last ten years, and I presume we may continue to get along in that way for a good while to come. In speaking of the moving of this sand, which I would like to take up now, for, I think, without having statistics that the chairman asked for, I have forty years of practical experience, and I know that which is coming and that which has come. I know how the sand has come through the forest down there, and how it moves; that the sand is composed of a clean, white grit, as sharp as diamonds; that it is heavier than the alluvial soil. At every point from Hartford to the Sound, at every wide bank, this sand deposits, and that makes the bar, say, from 300 to 1,600 feet across, so in the 3 miles we may have from

1 to 3 miles of dredging in each year. As we dredge those bars, that sand, under the direction of the officers of the Government, is deposited in the only place where it can be put, as far out of the channel as we can put it. When the river carries down silt from the mountain it brings a deposit, and that deposit is dropped below this bar, and in the course of the next year it brings up at the next place, and in the course of a number of years it reaches the mouth of the Connecticut River. At that point it is building a shoal straight off to sea on the east side of the mouth of the river, being 1 miles shoaling water, to as shoal as 3 feet on the crest of the bar, and where the buoy guards the outer edge you immediately drop off to 120 feet. I am now looking to south. Looking to the east, that bar extends 5 miles to the eastward. The extensions are going on at the outskirts.

Looking soundward, over between the jetties at the mouth of the river, we have about 3 miles out the long sand shoals, which takes that portion and carries it to the west. That is 6 miles long, and there is a passage between that and the main shore. It lies pretty nearly in mid sound. That drops off into water from 8 to 12 feet, but 150 feet abreast of the light-vessel that is placed there to guard it, called "Cornfield light shoal vessel." It might be thought that the constant action in washing this sand off to sea must eventually blockade the mouth of the river. I noticed that the chairman spoke this morning of the Columbia River. I know that the Connecticut River, when you have extended this shoal off 14 miles from shore and have practically made a dam a mile and a half into the Sound, you have so confined the easterly and westerly flows of those tides past the Connecticut River, that from that day forward the rapidity and force of the current past the eastern buoy and the western spar on the Cornfield Shoal would have such great rapidity that at least 2 feet in three years on each tide of water is a mass of moving smooth sand, rolling over and over, and coming to the surface in perfect piles; so if the Connecticut River continued to discharge this great mass forever, there would be no use of farther building at this point toward the west. The extension would be to the east and west. I know that 20 miles to the westward and eastward, as it moves out of this rapid current, it never gets back toward the Connecticut River, but it does line the shore for all those miles with every southwest storm or southeast storm. It is driven on the shore until the shore now extends 20 miles to the westward and 30 to the easward. There is no alluvial mud in it.

Mr. WEEKS. Now, Mr. Chairman, I should like to introduce Professor Glenn, of Vanderbilt University, to continue the testimony.

STATEMENT OF MR. L. C. GLENN, OF NASHVILLE, TENN., PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AT VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. Chairman, I think, perhaps, just a few words preliminary to what I wish to say are in order here.

I have spent some four summers in active field work in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Most of it has been on horseback, riding up and down the valleys; sometimes going afoot into places where horses could not go; sleeping at night in the mountain cabins wherever night overtook me; living with the people, inquiring of them the conditions, and finding out in the most direct and intimate way possible what the actual conditions down there are. Perhaps I had better say, too, that during those four summers I was not (as was suspected here some years ago at a similar hearing before a preceding committee) in the employ of any private party, any lumber company, any land company, or anybody that wanted to unload anything on the United States Government. I was employed by the North Carolina Geological Survey, the United States Forest Service, and the United States Geological Survey. My work there was primarily a study of erosion-a study of the conditions brought about by stripping the steep slopes of their forest covering.

I need not say to you, in view of the many things you have already heard, that this study of erosion is an exceedingly complex problem. There are a great many factors that enter into it. One of the very prominent factors entering into it is one that appealed to me particularly as a geologist, viz, the fact that of two soils, equally steep in slope, one might erode very rapidly while the other might scarcely erode at all. So that you can not lay down a hard and fast law and say that such and such a slope (naming it in angle) is an unsafe slope to clear.

The CHAIRMAN. But as a general proposition (if you will pardon me for an interruption right there), where did you find the most erosion going on? In the steep slopes or in the cut-over farmed

lands?

Mr. GLENN. As a general proposition, I found that the most erosion went on in the cleared lands.

The CHAIRMAN. Where the slope was comparatively mild?

Mr. GLENN. Where it was either mild or steep. It is not primarily a question of being farmed lands, because the farmed lands down there include many lands that ought not to be so classed; that ought never to have been cleared. Because land is farmed you can not say that it is best for it to be so. Many of those lands are too steep, or are of a soil texture that is not suited to farming. Owing to its slope and the rainfall conditions down there, much of it now farmed is not suited to be cleared. The present practice there includes in fields slopes up to as high as 37 degrees, measured by clinometer. I have measured many fields on slopes of from 30 to 37 degrees. That is well up like that [indicating]. Those slopes are entirely too steep to be cleared under any circumstances. case of lower slopes perhaps 10 or 15 degrees would be a fairly safe estimate as to the upper limit of steepness for cleared lands.

In the

That, too, will vary, as I have said with the particular type of soil. If the soil is a close-grained clayey soil, it will erode very much more rapidly than if it is a loose-grained, porous, gravelly, or stony soil. And of two soils-one a close-grained, clayey soil, without loose stones in it, and the other with loose stones in it-the stony one will stand safely on a steeper slope than the one without stones. I merely throw out those as a few of the results gained in the study of the causes and conditions of erosion. It is a complex problem, and one that I could not attempt to enter into thoroughly at all in the few minutes that I have here.

The information gained led me to the conclusion that we are really dealing with and oftentimes are confusing two distinct problems. There is in the Southern Appalachians an agricultural problem, and there is a forestry problem. The agricultural problem is not to be solved by reforesting the low-slope lands, some of which the chairman of the committee saw in the South. The problem there is primarily one of better methods of agriculture; one of putting back into forest, perhaps, the steeper slopes, but keeping the gentler ones in better cultivation; a problem of hillside ditching, terracing, and so on, perhaps rotating crops differently and cultivating differently. There are a great many ways of improving agricultural practice that would aid in solving the erosion problem.

That is aside from my purpose here this morning; but I wish to call attention to it as a large and vital problem. Oftentimes the idea

prevails that we are to reforest everything. By no means. Much of that land is best tilled, if the slope is low enough. As time passes and population presses more and more upon subsistence our people must learn better methods of agriculture, and come, little by little, as the population increases, to know how to handle agriculturally slopes that they can not successfully handle to-day with present careless methods of agriculture.

The CHAIRMAN. The problem of overcoming erosion in that section of the country is, in your judgment, largely a problem of farming rather than of forestry?

Mr. GLENN. No, I should not say largely a question of farming. I should say it is perhaps 20 per cent a problem of farming and 80 per cent a problem of forestry. If you should divide the slopes there into those that are less than 15 per cent in angle, and so safely classed as agricultural lands, and those that are over 15 per cent in angle, and so too steep to be safely cleared under present conditions of farming, you would get about that proportion of area. There is a decidedly larger proportion of land there that is too steep to be included as agricultural land, under either existing methods or any methods that our people will adopt in any reasonably short time. We must take care of them and treat them as forest lands for decades to come. Ultimately, the methods of terracing and torrent regulation in use in Europe-in France and in northern Italy, on the southern slopes of the Alps, and elsewhere there will come to prevail here. We can then add more and more to the agricultural area. But to carry out the suggestion of Professor Moore, quoted from at length by Professor Swain, that we ought now to clear up more of those southern Appalachians to appease the children's cry for bread, would be entirely disastrous under present methods of agriculture. It would simply invite disaster to do so, and such a plan could not have been advocated by anyone that really knew anything about conditions there to-day. The children are not crying for bread, and too much land is now cleared.

I should like further to call attention to the fact that what I have to say refers particularly to the steep slopes. It does not refer to the broad, undulating lands out in the middle and lower reaches of the great stream basins that have their heads in those mountains, but that flow off, it may be, several hundred or a thousand miles or more before they empty into the Mississippi, or the Gulf, or the Atlantic. Most of the destruction comes on these steep headwater slopes, and on the parts of the streams immediately adjacent to and just out from the mountains.

It is there that we have had the millions of dollars of loss that have characterized the floods in the southern Appalachians during the last eight or ten years.

It was not on the Tennessee River, for instance, away down in Alabama, or across west Tennessee, or near its mouth at Paducah, Ky., that the destruction was wrought. It was up at the very foot of the mountains, at Elizabethton, Tenn., and at many other points similarly situated, where the waters, rushing down from the steep slopes, debouched first on the low-grade plain and there caused the destruction that resulted in immense losses of property and in some cases of life. It was there that there occurred the gouging of the flood-plain into enormous holes into which you could drop an ordi