The Soil is the Secret
But this is by no-means the whole of the story. Soil conditions range from the extremes of good and evil. If the latter, soil is like dust or cement ; if the former, like a sponge. When soil is iron-hard-it lacks humus, and in heavy rain ': run-off " occurs and so flooding. But porosity is the effect of a humus-fed soil, and its powers of rain- absorption are illimitable, provided hard pan is absent. The more starved tire soil the greater the flooding, which in its turn scoops up the top-soil and deposits it as silt in the rivers and hence in the. sea. By depositing this silt floods deplete, not fill, rivers, scour the banks and ,are deleterious to food-fish. How often has not authority assisted these processes by straightening our river-courses and removing their bank-binding and soil-retaining willows ? What we have failed to realise is that run-off and flooding concern soil even more than water. Were our fields properly fed, rain would run in, not off, and flooding On a large scale belong to the bad old days.
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