Within the limits of the United States the degradation of the soil, owing to the peculiar conditions of the country, is in many districts going forward with startling rapidity. It has been the habit of our people--a habit favoured by the wide extent of fertile and easily acquired frontier ground--recklessly to till their farms until the fields were exhausted, and then to abandon them for new ground. By shallow ploughing on steep hillsides, by neglect in the beginning of those gulches which form in such places, it is easy in the hill country of the eastern United States to have the soil washed away within twenty years after the protecting forests have been destroyed. The writer has estimated that in the States south of the Ohio and James Rivers more than eight thousand square miles of originally fertile ground have by neglect been brought into a condition where it will no longer bear crops of any kind, and over fifteen hundred miles of the area have been so worn down to the subsoil or the bed rock that it may never be profitable to win it again to agricultural uses. Hitherto, in our American agriculture, our people have been to a great extent pioneers; they have been compelled to win what they could in the cheapest possible way and with the rudest implements, and without much regard to the future of those who were in subsequent generations to occupy the fields which they were conquering from the wilderness and the savages. The danger is now that this reckless tillage, in a way justified of old, may be continued and become habitual with our people. It is, indeed, already a fixed habit in many parts of the country, particularly in the South, where a small farmer expects to wear out two or three plantations in the course of his natural life. Many of them manage to ruin from one to two hundred acres of land in the course of half a century of uninterrupted labour. This system deserves the reprobation of all good citizens; it would be well, indeed, if it were possible to do so, to stamp it out by the law. The same principle which makes it illegal for a man to burn his own dwelling house may fairly be applied in restraining him from destroying the land which he tills. There are a few simple principles which, if properly applied, may serve to correct this misuse of our American soil. The careful tiller should note that all soils whatever which lie on declivities having a slope of more than one foot in thirty inevitably and rapidly waste when subject to plough tillage. This instrument tends to smear and consolidate the layer of earth over which its heel runs, so that at a depth of a few inches below the surface a layer tolerably impervious to water is formed. The result is that the porous portion of the deposit becomes excessively charged with water in times of heavy rain, and moves down the hillside in a rapid manner. All such steep slopes should be left in their wooded state, or, if brought into use, should be retained as pasture lands.