Statistical Shocker

BEHOLD OUR LAND--Russell Lord -- Houghton Mifflin ($3).

Most books about the dangers of soil erosion fall into a class with attacks on man-eating sharks. The work of a veteran reporter for farm journals, Behold Our Land is far livelier than most, partly because Author Lord writes with unaffected moral indignation about the waste of U. S. natural resources, partly because he pictures that waste so vividly, but mainly because it is crammed with arresting figures. Some samples:

> Six inches of precious topsoil, on a hill near Author Lord's Maryland home, was formed in approximately 3,600 years. After 20 years of indifferent farming, the topsoil was washed off, the hill scarred with gullies, growing only weeds, thin grass, briers.

> Approximately 50,000,000 acres of fertile land in the U. S. have been ruined by erosion and another 50,000,000 acres have been seriously impoverished. And 100,000,coo acres could provide 1,250,000 families with 80-acre farms.

> In 1882 a settler found the San Simon Valley of Arizona filled with grassy meadows, cottonwood trees. San Simon Creek was glassy-clear. After careless grazing ruined the cover, the San Simon Wash-- a desolate badland--replaced the creek bed, gashed the soil into a vast dusty ditch 1,000 feet wide, 60 miles long.

> In 1929, ten U. S. Government erosion experiment stations were started. Now 50,000 farmers work with the Soil Conservation Service in demonstrating watershed protection; 80,000 men work in conservation projects.

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