Leave the upper part of the slopes in the woods. Then the water that carries off the soil will not run entirely away, as it does in ploughed fields, but will creep down slowly, and, charged with the decay of the woods, help fertilize the lower lands and change the rocks beneath them into soil--the acids from the decaying vegetable matter eating into them. "But still," you say, "there are farm lands that must be ploughed even if they do wash away; they're all the land a man has, sometimes. What then?" Plough deep. Then the soil soaks up more of the rain and lets the water pass away in clear springs. This not only saves soil but, as we have just said, helps to decompose the subsoil and the bed rock. Then there's another thing that good farmers do in such cases. They plough ditches along the hillside leading by a gentle slope to the natural watercourses; so the water of the rains, instead of going down the hills with a rush, and going faster the farther it runs--like a boy on a toboggan--is caught and checked in these sloping ditches, and much of the soil it contains deposited before it reaches the streams. [Illustration: HOW THE FRENCH PROTECT THEIR HILLSIDE FARMS This is how the French peasant keeps the mountain torrents from carrying off his precious soil.] The best way of all, of course, is to build terraces, as they do in the thickly settled parts of Europe. But this is only profitable for the more valuable crops and not for ordinary grains. SUCH SPENDTHRIFTS OF GOD'S GOOD SOIL! My, but it's a shame the way we've wasted soil in this country. What spendthrifts! To start with--when the country was first settled--there seemed no end to the fine land, and every one could have a good farm for the asking. All he had to do was to make his wants known to Uncle Sam and then go out and help himself. What happened then? Why, what always happens? Easy come, easy go. These pioneer farmers worked their farms for all there was in them; didn't bother, many of them, even to haul the barn manure into the fields. Then when the old farm was exhausted they moved off to new lands and did the same thing over again. [Illustration: A HOME IN THE DESERT Doesn't look much like a home in the desert, does it? But it is--a lovely home in what the old geographies called "The Great American Desert." In the Sahara oases are few and far between, but modern irrigation engineering makes oases to order--thousands and thousands of acres of them!] They ploughed on steep hillsides; they allowed gulches to form, as they will quickly do on sloping ploughed land, if you don't watch out; they cut away the timber. It's easy in a hill country like the eastern part of the United States to have all the good top-soil washed away in twenty years after the forests have been destroyed; the good soil that it probably took 2,000 years to make.