Flood. Water and Land Use
We are indignant with the weather for the recent floods, but the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the clouds but in ourselves. Floods are a symptom, not-of excess water, but of loss of it, of our failure to utilise the rainfall from which the only beneficiary is the sea. Floods are direct evidence- that we have been playing the fool with nature-and that she is getting her own back. The business of rain is to replenish the springs, not the ocean, and, by allowing it to become horizontal instead of vertical, we are betraying _our own incapacity in land-use. Look at the watersheds, the prime source of flooding, and where in Britain is contour-ploughing or strip-cultivation to be seen on bare -slopes ? If these were practised, at least 50 per cent, of flood-water would never reach the lowlands. ,Moreover, mixed hanging woods are the supreme governors and- regulators of rainfall, and, the more they are felled, the worse inevitably is the flooding.
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