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This comparative deforestation would make agriculture easily possible where today it is out of the question. At the same time the relatively dry climate and the clearing away of the vegetation would to a large degree eliminate the malarial fevers and other diseases which are now such a terrible scourge in wet tropical countries.
In one year alone , and in the sole province of Cosenza wherein San Giovanni lies, there were 156 landslides; they destroyed 1940 hectares of land, and their damage amounted to 432,738 francs. The two other Calabrian provinces Reggio and Catanzaro doubtless also had their full quota of these catastrophes, all due to mischievous deforestation.
I dare say the deforestation of the country, which prevented the downflow of the rivers choking up their beds with detritus and producing stagnant pools favourable to the breeding of the mosquito has helped to spread the plague in many parts of Italy. In Horace's days Venosa was immune, although Rome and certain rural districts were already malarious.
To study modern science is considered a waste of time by the orthodox Chinese for "everything good must be old," and all his life he delves into the past utterly neglectful of the present. Every valley along the road was green with rice fields and this, together with the deforestation of the mountains, is responsible for the almost total lack of animal life.
Each family, each community, where there is no common 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.
The forest can only be protected by the State, by the Nation; and the liberty of action of individuals must be conditioned upon what the State or Nation determines to be necessary for the common safety. The lesson of deforestation in China is a lesson which mankind should have learned many times already from what has occurred in other places.
It matters not whether this deforestation is due to the actual reckless cutting of timber, to the fires that inevitably follow such reckless cutting of timber, or to reckless and uncontrolled grazing, especially by the great migratory bands of sheep, the unchecked wandering of which over the country means destruction to forests and disaster to the small home makers, the settlers of limited means.
There are small sections of our own country, in the East and the West, in the Adriondacks, the White Mountains, and the Appalachians, and in the Rocky Mountains, where we can already see for ourselves the damage in the shape of permanent injury to the soil and the river systems which comes from reckless deforestation.
It can be summed up in four words: deforestation, overgrazing, erosion, drifting sands. Another aspect of man's aggressions against nature is the wanton destruction of wildlife like the American bison and the wood pigeon.
So important are these investigations that I herewith attach as an appendix to my message certain photographs showing present conditions in China. They show in vivid fashion the appalling desolation, taking the shape of barren mountains and gravel and sand-covered plains, which immediately follows and depends upon the deforestation of the mountains.
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