_Injury in the arid regions._—In the arid regions, where the rainfall frequently comes in heavy downpours or “cloudbursts,” immense damage to pasture lands has been brought about by overstocking, in Arizona and New Mexico; involving the destruction of the natural cover of vegetation and the loosening of the surface especially by sheep; after which a heavy rainfall will carry off the surface soil, the muddy water being gathered largely in the trails made by cattle going to water. Thus gradually gullies are formed, which enlarging more and more become ravines and cut up the pasture slopes into “bad lands,” useless equally for pasture and for agriculture.[83] California, eastern Oregon and Washington, and Montana, offer striking and lamentable examples of the same destructive agencies. [83] Open Range and Irrigation Farming. R. H Forbes, in Forester, Nos. 7, 9, 1902. _Deforestation._—The deforestation of hill and mountain lands has, the world over, led to similar results; causing not only the destruction of pasture and agricultural lands, but also the conversion of streams, flowing from springs and seepage all the year, into periodic torrents, flooding the lowlands during rains by the rapid running-off of the water from the bare and hard-baked mountain slopes, and then running dry within a short time, so as not even to afford drinking water to pasturing cattle in summer. Thus for half a century the unsolved problem of the “correction of the waters of the Jura mountains” was before the Swiss and French governments; and the great and costly public work involving re-forestation, deflection of torrents and filling-in of deep ravines and gullies, is not even yet nearly completed. In Spain, which in the time of the Roman occupation was largely a forest country with abundant rainfall, the same results are seen, notably in the South, in the wide, and mostly dry, sandy beds of streams once running deep and clear; and in the scarred hill-and mountain-sides, and scant vegetation of low shrubs (“chaparral”) that replace the once abundant tree growth, _e. g._, in Old and New Castile. Unfortunately the lessons taught by the bitter experience of the old world seem to require actual repetition in the new, before means of prevention are even thought of.