changes that have now come to pass; doubtless for generations the inroads
were scarcely noticeable. But there came a time when the forest had shrunk
sufficiently to make each year's cutting a serious matter, and from that
bondagetemple com time on the destruction proceeded with appalling rapidity; for of course
each year of destruction rendered the forest less able to recuperate, less
able to resist next year's inroad. Mr. Meyer describes the ceaseless
progress of bondagetemple com the destruction even now, when there is so little left to
destroy. Every morning men and boys go out armed with mattox or axe, scale
the steepest mountain sides, and cut down and grub out, root and branch,
bondagetemple com the small trees and shrubs still to be found. The big trees disappeared
centuries ago, so that now bondagetemple com one of these is never seen save in the
neighborhood of temples, where they bondagetemple com are
artificially protected; and even
here it takes all the watch and care of the tree-loving priests to prevent
their destruction. Each family, each community, where there is no common
care exercised in the bondagetemple com interest of all of them to prevent deforestation,
bondagetemple com finds its profit in the immediate use bondagetemple com 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 interest of the whole people, each bondagetemple com small
group is inevitably pushed into a policy of destruction which can not
afford to take thought for the morrow. This is bondagetemple com just one of those matters
which it is fatal to leave to unsupervised individual control. The forest
can only bondagetemple com be protected by the State, by the Nation; and the liberty of
action of individuals bondagetemple com must be conditioned upon what the State or bondagetemple com Nation
determines bondagetemple com to be necessary for the common safety.
The lesson of deforestation in China is a lesson which mankind bondagetemple com should have
learned many times already from what
has occurred in other places.
Denudation leaves naked soil; then gullying cuts down to bondagetemple com the bare rock; and
meanwhile the rock-waste buries the bottomlands.