204 N. CHURH ST. - VlSALIA, 278O38 581 Carter C Man on the landscape '66 ,N1TY SCHOOLS ^ i • V.SAUA.CAU* 004 N.CHUUH at. 204 Withdrawn! From the collection of the 7 n z m Prelinger i a JLJibrary San Francisco, California 2006 MAM DIV THE LANDSCAPE MM ON THE LANDSCAPE The Fundamentals of Plant Conservation BY VERNON GILL CARTER Educational Director National Wildlife Federation Supervisor of Conservation Education Zanesville, Ohio, Public Schools Published by NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION WASHINGTON, D. C. 1949 o Copyright 1949 by National Wildlife Federation All rights reserved, except that quotations may be used in book reviews. Second Printing, January, 1950 Third Printing, November, 1950 Printed in the United States of America Monumental Printing Company, Baltimore TO ZANESVILLE One of America's most conservation conscious cities — center of varied official watershed laboratory studies embracing soil and water conservation, reforestation, fish and game manage- ment, flood control, and climatic research— pioneer in con- servation education, with organized curriculum work in this field since 1937 — to the teachers, and all other citizens of Zanesville, this book is dedicated. A CONTRIBUTION BY THE NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION Distributed by the Committee on Conservation Education NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION WASHINGTON, D. C. Other Publications THE FOUNDATIONS OF CONSERVATION EDUCATION ONCE UPON A TIME — A CONSERVATION FILM (SILENT) POVERTY OR CONSERVATION? BOTANY AND OUR SOCIAL ECONOMY MY LAND AND YOUR LAND — ELEMENTARY SERIES: WOULD You LIKE TO HAVE LIVED WHEN — ? PLANTS AND ANIMALS LIVE TOGETHER RAINDROPS AND MUDDY RIVERS NATURE'S BANK — THE SOIL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND RESPONSIBILITY I have stated publicly the opinion that no man could, from his own resources alone, successfully write a book on the total relations of man to his environment. There are too many sciences involved. Having, with much travail and the aid of a corps of obstetricians, brought forth the following brain child, I have found no reason to change my mind. It is with deep gratitude that I acknowledge the help of the following men: Clyde H. Jones of the Ohio State University Department of Botany, who has saved me from many a technical error in his field ; Charles Dambach of the Ohio State University Department of Zoology, whose grasp of the field of organic resources is exceeded by few; William A. Albrecht, Chairman, Department of Soils, University of Missouri, outstanding pioneer in the relations of soils to health ; H. A. Morgan, Director of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the following members of the TVA staff : Rosslyn B. Wilson, Writer ; William M. Landess, Head, Program Exposition Unit; E. 0. Fippin, Agriculturalist, Program Review and Analysis staff; Paul E. Johnson, Nutritionist, Tests and Demonstration Staff — all of the Agricultural Relations Department; Ira N. Chiles, Area Education Officer, Reser- voir Properties Department; E. A. Johnson, Acting Chief, Range Division, Soil Conservation Service ; L. E. Thatcher, Associate in Agronomy, and Wise Burroughs, Department of Animal Industry, Ohio Agricultural Experiment Sta- tion ; 0. D. Diller, Associate State Forester, Ohio Division of Forestry. To these men, and to innumerable others whose writings, re- searches, and remarks have contributed to my still feeble grasp of the complex landscape, I offer thanks for their help. It must be clearly understood that no one of those mentioned is responsible for statements in this book, except when a direct refer- ence is made. I have not in every instance agreed with their opinions or with their interpretations of data. No apology is made for laying hold of the most advanced thinking in the relations of man to the landscape. A few phases of those relations may still be controversial. My stand on such questions is deliberate. I choose boldness rather than the extreme caution of the scientific and technical specialists — because I do not believe that modifications resulting from further (and needed) research will make any great difference in the broad social conclusions now apparent. V.G.C. vii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND RESPONSIBILITY vii INTRODUCTION _ xi APOLOGY FOR CHAPTER I . xv CHAPTER I — A GLOBAL VIEW . 1 CHAPTER II — How Do WE LIVE AND GROW ? _ 13 CHAPTER III — Do PLANTS HAVE QUALITY? .. 20 CHAPTER IV — ARE THERE ENOUGH PLANTS? _ 35 CHAPTER V — THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS .. 48 CHAPTER VI — THE EVOLUTION OF ENVIRONMENT __ 57 €HAPTER VII — RELATIONS BETWEEN PLANTS AND ENVIRONMENT . 68 CHAPTER VIII — LIFE AND THE NATURAL LAWS .. 83 CHAPTER IX — THE PROBLEM OF MAINTAINING THE CLIMAX ._ 92 APPENDIX A — EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS _ _ 108 APPENDIX B — CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES .. .. 113 INDEX .. . 125 ILLUSTRATIONS For illustrations the author wishes to acknowledge the fine assis- tance of Mr. Hermann Postlethwaite, photo editor, and his assistant, Mrs. Elizabeth B. Elmore, of the U. S. Soil Conservation Service. From SCS files came the following : Frontispiece (2), Figs. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 50, 51, 53. The U. S. Forest Service supplied Figs. 21, 43, 52. The U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Fig. 3. The Issac Walton League of America, Figs. 47, 48, 49. Dr. William A. Albrecht, the University of Missouri, Figs. 8, 9, 11, 12, 13. By the author, Figs. 27 through 37. INTRODUCTION TO START WITH- There ought to be a reason why anyone should read this book. Some people have itching brains and will read anything. They are welcome, but in the main we are after more cautious game. To be blunt, we hope to snare those who think plants a fit topic for exer- cising the intelligence, and fit objects for engaging the muscles. Thus far, we have as our potential audience the curious citizen, the agriculturist in all his forms, the forester, the home gardener, the feeder of animals both gentle and wild, the sportsman, the nature lover, that considerable body of folk who eat plants on occasion, and in particular, we have the teacher and student of plant life. Teachers and students of plant science doubtless think the subject important. It is our thesis that it is more important than even they claim. The demonstration of this proposition is a task on which we descend with considerable enthusiasm. Assuming that we shall be successful, we must conclude that those among our readers who happen to teach or will some day teach may want to pass on to their students the facts, ideas, and proofs here presented. And so, we can- not refrain from making suggestions on how to do it. However, these suggestions will not be imposed upon those remote from the teaching art, but will be buried in that Potter's field of the penman — an appendix. If we were to assume anything about our audience, it would be that it has some knowledge of plants — that it knows an oak from a pine. However, we are not going to assume anything in this connec- tion except that it is interested in plants or is willing to become in- terested. In fact, little will be said about individual plants. We shall proceed quickly to a consideration of plants in the mass. It is in the mass that plants affect man most strikingly. It is the pasture, the meadow, the range which eventually put the beefsteak on the platter or the rabbit in the game bag. It is the grove, the woodlot, the forest which put the newspaper on the front porch, the vension on the peg. It is when we do not have plants in the mass that trouble starts for man. AND SO, NATURALLY- In the chapters which follow we shall discuss many of the troubles of man. We shall see how he has brought them upon himself, and how he can throw them off — by using plants en masse. In diagnosing and prescribing for these troubles we must, like the physician, inquire into what may seem unrelated conditions, but which turn out to be fundamentally inseparable. In nature we find wheels within wheels; and, as in a watch, a flaw in one immediately disrupts the proper functioning of the whole instrument. Each wheel is important and worthy of attention, but to the user it is the function of the whole that counts most. It is comparatively simple to become an expert xi concerning one of nature's wheels, such as soils, or water, or birds, or wildflowers; but, for real understanding we must consider the total landscape. Plants can be only the starting point, certainly not an end. The functions of plants as society feels them is our concern here. Let us pre-view some of the obvious functions of vegetation, and some not so obvious. Without plants there could be no people. Without plants the whole earth would be a desert. Man is a great manufacturer, and through the misapplication of his power he has manufactured- well over 50,000 square miles of desert in the United States. He did it by preventing plants from functioning. Without plants there would be no humus-laden topsoil, no pro- ductivity worth mentioning. Without the continuous service of plants, animals would exhaust the oxygen of the air. Without plants there would be few reliable springs, few constant streams, few clear rivers, few long lived lakes. Without plants past and present there would be no great indus- trial regions depending on freshwater, no cities, no coal, no oil, no gas. And, let us repeat, without plants there could be no people, no you and I. We have in these statements considered plants at the zero point. ^ As we move the amount of vegetation upward toward the maximum, the related factors move upward with it, until we have the richest possible natural environment — such as the frontiers man found, and such as formed the basis of this richest of nations. We may go even farther, and on certain areas exceed nature — as by irrigating arid lands or supplying missing soil minerals in certain regions. Today, the maximum vegetation is only a memory on vast acreages of our country. The headaches of man came thick and fast when it dropped to the fifty per cent mark or thereabout. A single phrase — plant deficiency — will help answer all the fol- lowing questions, each of which indicates a flaw in the social order of in an. 1. What causes our streams to be muddy? 2. Why do once permanently flowing streams become intermit- tent streams — with alternate floods and dry beds? 3. What makes people think the climate is getting drier? 4. Why are we forced to spend, above and beyond the natural necessity, hundreds of millions on flood control? 5. Why are new flood crest records being set from time to time ? (I. Why do reservoirs for water supply, power, navigation and recreation fill up with mud ? xii 7. Why must millions be spent to keep our harbors from filling with silt? 8. Why 'do streams wander here and there, far more than they did under virgin land conditions, changing course, altering field patterns and property lines ? 9. Why do new. industries often avoid many seemingly desirable locations ? 10. Why does the fertility of sloping land decrease several times as fast as mere cropping should cause ? 13. Why are nutrient minerals, not long ago found near the sur face, now found beyond the reach of roots? 12. Why are millions of acres of once rich soils now gashed, gullied, or skinned down to a whiskery covering of weeds? 13. Why is the humus content of the nation's soils falling? 14. Why is the cost of meat so high ? 15. Why do we reclaim arid lands at such high cost? 10. Why do we have so much trouble with weeds, almost none of which the pioneer knew? 17. Why do livestock on a vast total of forage acres now require, per animal, from three to six times the former area for sup- port? 13. Why do great stretches of former hardwood forest areas refuse to produce hardwoods today? ^19. Why do we maintain national forests at a cost which is double the value of the harvested timber? 20. Why is the cost of lumber so high ? 21. Why does the hunter complain of lack of game? 22. Why does the fisherman moan? 23. Why are marine fish and shellfish scarce and high priced? 24. Why do large areas have only half or a fourth the number of insects, especially bees, necessary for full crop pollination? 25. Why are plant diseases so prevalent and costly? 26. Why are nutritional deficiencies prevalent among domestic animals and the human clan ? 27. Why do we have rural slums ? AS WE SHALL DEMONSTRATE— The answer, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, to all these questions is: plant deficiency. The deficiency is, for most of them, a matter of quantity. Or, the quantity may be adequate for only part of the time, part of the j'ear or period of years. The deficiency may also be one of quality ; that is, a deficiency in the amount or number of nutrients composing the plant parts. Very often the quantity of plants cannot be increased without also providing for better quality. Plant qualit}' is of greater importance than most of us realize. xiii There is 110 need to labor the point. These questions are mo- mentous, economically, socially, personally. The opportunity for doing something about them and the responsibility of doing something about them rest on the people who have any relation whatever to plants. That is all of us. But, we must first know precisely what each problem is, and, to the best of present scientific knowledge, what to do. This is in part a task in education, and on those teachers and teachers-to-be, who are con- cerned with both the natural and social sciences, falls a large share of the burden in saving a civilization from the sure decline which must follow resource destruction. At least the attempt to save it must be made. Otherwise, wrhy teach? What benefit is it to know a pistil from a stamen if one day there are no pistils or stamens? When we employ a man we want to know quite a lot about him : his name, race, habits, family background. Those things may influ- ence his fitness for the service we want from him. But, most im- portant, we want to know what he can do. Similarly with plants. Their structure, internal processes, name, and classification are perti- nent information for certain purposes. But, the great question is : what can they do for us? And, how can we get them to do it? We certainly do not want to be like the tradition bound Chinese, who (as that former Chief of the U. S. Biological Survey, J. N. Darling, put its) spent so much time worshiping the family tree, talking about the family tree, studying the family tree, that they let their country go to pot unnoticed. If we are going to inquire into the nature of plants, then by all means let us go all the way and see how they enter into the great, intricately geared machine of soil, water, sunshine, air, men, jobs, health, prosperity and happiness. TO SUM UP— The purposes of this book are : (1) To establish plants en masse as a much neglected and exceed- ingly important factor in the welfare of man. (2) To identify the social and personal problems arising from deficiencies in the quantity and quality of vegetation. (3) To reach an understanding of the complex maze of relation- ships found in the landscape, and how they have developed. (4) To set forth the principles of landscape management or en- vironmental engineering by which man can ease many of his troubles and avoid others. (5) To suggest how the younger generation may be made aware of the great part vegetation will play, for good or evil, in its life. xiv APOLOGY FOR CHAPTER I The first 'chapter, "A Global View/' is a paradox. It belongs at the end of the book. And vet, it belongs at the beginning. We suspect that it will Le disappointing to the reader in its present position. That is because it cannot be understood very well without the back- ground of the chapters to follow. And, on the other hand, those chapters contain a widely ranging array of facts and ideas. They need a unifying preamble, which Chapter I attempts to provide. The dilemma cannot be solved. The essence of a dozen sciences cannot be distilled and blended into a philosophy of unity in a few minutes. Although it cannot be done, "A Global View" tries. The only reasonable course is to read it again as a final chapter. Such a second reading, backed and sustained by a mosiac of related informa- tion, will doubtless be more rewarding. xv CHAPTER I A GLOBAL VIEW Before we launch into the details of man's successes and failures in living on the world landscape, let us pause a moment and consider what we are getting into. Educational experts study such things as the learning process and its handmaid, memory. They have done a great deal of experiment- ing. They conclude that the best way to begin absorbing, under- standing, or memorizing a body of knowledge is first to take an over- view of the entire passage to be learned. First, get a general idea of what it is all about. Get an airplane view of the field. Study a map of the whole territory. In such a general overview, the details are invisible or blurred. But, with such a view fixed in mind, when we later burrow into the details we shall know how they fit into the entire scene. We can see the parts in relation to the whole. In the field of natural sciences, we are only beginning to fit tke parts together so as to make possible a look at the whole. What we see is both discouraging and encouraging. In too many landscapes we find that our past blind misshaping, mishandling of parts and components has produced weird, abnormal scenes. These under- nourished, sickly, unbalanced, puny, abnormal landscapes are largely inhabited by abnormal people — people so uniformly abnormal that they think they are normal, and believe that the environment in which they live is normal. It is only recently that these abnormalities have begun to come into the light of general understanding. Science is slowly discovering what is normal for civilized man and the modern landscape. The core of that normality is a robust, timeless, cyclical flow of energy and elements. This endless flow may be likened to a hydro-power plant on a stream. The stream supplies energy perpetually through the opera- tion of the climatic water cycle. Water is sidetracked over the blades of turbine or waterwheel, then returns to the stream. The energy drawn off is replaced by nature from the immense powerhouse of the sun. The used water is vaporized by sun-born heat and carried by sun-created air currents and winds back to the headwaters of the stream. The compounded mineral elements of the water are the carriers of energy. They must be returned, not dispersed nor de- stroyed, if the flow of energy is to be maintained. Fortunately, man has been unable to lay violent hands on this phase of the water cycle. It remains as an example of normally. (Fig. 1.) 278038 GROUND WATER TO OCEANS THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE FIG. 1. The hydrologic cycle chart merits careful study. There are two points in the cycle where man alters the natural course: (1) Where the rain strikes the earth, man has decreased the infiltration and increased the runoff, with attendant erosion, lower yields, siltation of storage basins, increase of floods, etc. (2) By excessive pumping1 of ground water for municipal, industrial, and irrigation use, the water table has in many places fallen so low as to threaten such supplies. Man, on the whole, has never thought to compare this simple physical cycle to the complex cycle of life. The energy for life is carried by certain elements in soil, water and air. Few men indeed have given attention and thought to the revolving of the proper fraction of these elements from the point of human use back to the soil, so that they maintain a perpetual flow of vigorous plant, animal, and human life. Not enough men have given penetrating thought to preserving even the soil storehouse itself, a storehouse very easily destroyed and depleted. Nor has man in general considered the intricate, repetitive processes by which the living soil captures, impounds, and transmits to man the complex and varied materials and energies which make him man. These processes are quite delicate in their system of checks and balances, their interdependencies. Man has waded into them, like (if we may draAV a caricature) a drunken Cro-Magnon running berserk with a bull-dozer in a watch factory. Abnormal thinking and actions are rooted in greed, ignorance, mis- information, superstition, fears, and doubtless other unfortunate fac- tors. Civilized man's usage of the landscape usually evolved in just A GLOBAL VIEW 3 such a mental and emotional climate. The raw truth is that the land- scape under civilized occupancy has seldom been allowed or encour- aged to function normally. The channels which thoughts follow are shaped and directed very largely by the personal world we live in. The restricted world most of us live in remains abnormal, and our thinking strongly reflects this fact. Cities are abnormal in many ways. The ugliness of most houses and business buildings is accepted as normal by 90 per cent or more of city dwellers. The constricted, crowded streets, the lack of parks and playgrounds, the absence of natural scenery, the ignorance of basic production problems and sources of food and clothing, the arti- ficial entertainment, the synthetic stimuli to work and play, the loose standards of conduct — all these are generally abnormal in cities, yet are accepted as normal to city life. Most American farms, forests, and rangelands are abnormal. The erosion of topsoil, the straight furrow on curving lands, the easy sub- stitution of chemical fertilizers for organic manuring, the exhaustion of humus, the thin, scanty pasture and range, the annihilation cutting of forest and woodlot, the putrid, muddy streams, the scarcity of polli- nating insects, the meager populations of birds and other wildlife — these things are abnormal, yet are accepted by a great majority of land owners and land users as normal. Normal thinking, with a longtime background of abnormal envi- ronment, is extremely difficult. It requires search for scientific knowl- edge. It requires mental labor. It requires social courage. It is not popular. Its conclusions will be resented by many. The forces dis- couraging normal thinking are great and few will overcome them. The overview which follows is an attempt to relate man to the landscape, and to point out that the original landscape, and man him- self originally, were products of normal forces within the universe. It is a condensed attempt (as is this entire book) to cut through the smoke screens of abnormality and see some of the real modern prob- lems which confront us. That we approach the task from the view- point of a particular science is not essential ; it is merely a convenient entry into the mazes of the total landscape. The Organization Behind Life. It is instructive to stop and con- sider sketchily, what it takes to place a modern mechanical contriv- ance, say an automobile, at our disposal. We are at least dimly aware of the giant factory with its thousands of workers which fabricate many of the parts and put them together. We may know that many of the parts are made in still other factories. The different metals used are dug out of the earth all over the world. These mining operations are complex procedures involving men and materials. Refining and processing them require mills, and sources of power. Various modes of transportation are involved in moving these earth products to the factories — trucks, railroads, steamships. Many automobile parts are grown on soils — rubber, wool and cotton, soybean plastics — and again 4 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE many men, animals, machinery, fertilizers, sunshine, rain, processing plants, transportation systems and communication systems are used. The whole universe contributes to the completion of the automobile; and for its operation an extensive industry, petroleum, had to be created ; and highway networks had to be built. It is not too difficult to appreciate the tremendous organization and the resource operations necessary in this instance — because man is responsible for most of the manipulative work invloved. We know what such effort is. Living plants are far more complex than any machine. Of the role of the organized universe, the solar and earth factors which are necessary to produce plants, most of us are only vaguely aware. Chemists have found hundreds of chemical compounds in leaves alone. Botanists can dissect plants and study their parts, can bring the mi- croscope and test tube to bear on the many kinds of tissues and cells. A master mechanic may know all about how an automobile works. No botanist knows all about how a plant works. Fortunately the botanist knows some things, and a part of what he knows, everyone ought to know, because that part relates intimately to the quality, satisfaction, and success of human living. The botanist does not progress very far until he realizes (as does the specialist in any branch of science) that he cannot bottle himself up in an air-tight compartment of knowledge. If he does completely isolate his field of study, he never finds the answers to the great, intri- cate questions which man asks about life and death. The most elementary study of a plant (or of an animal, for that matter) immediately brings up three questions: Of what is it made? How does it operate? What is the source of the energy by which it works ? The bio-chemist (we are already knocking on the door of another science) cooks up a plant brew and runs it through his test tubes. He reports that some thirty of the world's ninety-six elements are to be found in a wide range of plants. Fourteen elements, at least, are found in every green plant. Somewhat surprised, he steps next door and asks the physicist to check his findings. The physicist heats plants until the ashes glow. Viewing or photographing through a spectro- scope the light rays given off by the white-hot mineral ashes, he con- firms the chemist's report and adds another 30 minerals to the list. Each of the sixty elements is identified by the wavelength of its light rays. So, plants are packets of elements, cunningly arranged and or- ganized. But what are elements? Again the physicist supplies the answer. An element is composed of atoms which are all alike. An atom is an organized and active arrangement of electrons, protons and neutrons. Each of the more than ninety elements has a different number and arrangement of electrons, protons, neutrons. And what A GLOBAL VIEW 5 are electrons? Negative charges of electricity. Protons? Positive charges of electricity. Neutrons? Neutral charges. And what, the botanist inquires, is electricity? The physicist says it is a form of energy, force, power. The plant, it appears, is an organized collection of energy. Some- what timidly, the botanist asks ''What is energy?" The physicist can only reply "I am working on that," which is his way of saying, "I don't know much about it, except that it can do work, produce action." The botanist and his chemist friend go to work. They find that the plant gets its elements from three sources: air, water, and soil. A seed lies in the skin of the earth. It lies in soil, and the soil con- tains air and water. The plant grows. It takes in elements, and from them constructs itself, according to a certain, largely hereditary, pat- tern. For something that has no brain, the plant does an amazing architectural job. Having traced the plant down into the very bowels of atoms, the botanist becomes curious about the air, water and soil — those ware- houses of raw stuff from which plants are constructed. The water, he knows, usually conies as rain or snow. In the days of his youth he learned in geography class how the intimate and wonderfully con- venient relationship of sun and earth produces weather and climate, how weather turns big rocks into little rocks, even into dust. The effect of sunlight on plants is knowledge which a human can hardly escape. The astronomer tells him that these actions — weather, soil formation, growth — all originated in the energy of the sun. And so, it becomes clear that the tremendous largeness and pre- cision of the solar system, as well as the unimaginable smallness and precision of atoms, play their parts in the intricate operation of pro- ducing a living plant. Life — the Master Organizer. The solar system is dead. The atoms of mineral elements are dead. With all their clockwork organization they are dead. The air, the waters, the rock dusts, the sunshine are dead. It is these dead things which the chemist and physicist analyze. Yet, out of this death has come life. Life draws upon them all, these simple, natural forms, and transforms them quietly and with ease into such complex living compounds that our greatest scientists are thus far baffled by many of them. If undisturbed, these living or- ganisms grow, reproduce, and die, always enriching that thin zone, enriching that one foot (so far as we know) in all the millions of miles of the solar system 's axis which supports life — the topsoil ! This enrichment of soil is an active, energetic process. It is a cumulative process. In it, life overlaps and continues, generation by generation, working over and over the elements life uses, reaching a bit deeper into the rock dust as each century passes, building fertility slowly. As the fertility level rises, the life level inevitably rises. The level of life rises not only in numbers of living things but in com- 6 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE plexity of organization. It rises to the ceiling set by the supply and kinds of elements and climate to be found in each region. At the ceiling, each region finally contains the best kinds of life it can sup- port. The final, human triumph is to bring into a region any missing elements and thus raise the ceiling, raise the fertility, raise the level of life there. The sad story is that man, the acme of life, has generally failed to do this natural, normal duty in enriching his home. He has become a robber of the family goods and a fouler of his own nest. The en- couraging story is that in still small but constantly growing number he has realized his error and is correcting it. This reformation is most evident in the agricultural revolution occuring now in the Tennessee Valley, in the Muskingum Valley, in soil conservation districts across the land. The reformation in land use is based on a belated recognition of the values and lessons of natural organization on the landscape. Na- ture's system kept the books balanced reasonably well. What life took from the soil, it returned. Water and air were used over and over. They nourished, and seldom injured, life. Each life form, whether plant or animal, drew its substance from the landscape, lived, and when it died its substance went back into the landscape where it would benefit life to follow. Man, the Disorganizer. The organization set up by nature, with- out benefit of man's technology, was an intricately geared set of cycles. These cycles were intermeshed, driven by power from the sun, and were relatively timeless. They could not run down and stop. Man has, figuratively, straightened out the wheels of this living machine and built a single track, one way road to the sea, the dump, the incin- erator, and the cemetery, for the greater part by way of our cities. The substance of the landscape is loosed from its mooring and traded to the cities for money and fabricated goods. The chief product of the landscape, food, is largely routed through the gullets and alimentary tubes of city people, then through the sewers and down our reeking rivers to the sea. The return phase of the mineral cycle does not operate to any significant extent. The soil is weakened, weakened a little more each year. Minerals are being withdrawn from the soil bank faster than nature can release new sup- plies from the rocks. Scores of years ago, Victor Hugo warned that the real wealth and strength of France was gushing out to sea through the stone-walled guts of Paris, its sewers. The United States is a younger, stronger land, but already our soils show unmistakable signs of developing mineral shortages. On some 75 million acres the soil itself is gone. If this continues long enough, the last gasp of Ameri- can civilization may sound remarkably like, may be in fact, the swooshing gurgle of a voracious watercloset. This ingenious device will then sit, in its porcelain and functional beauty, as did its marble prototype in Home, and wait a thousand years for nature to build a new landscape once again to feed its insatiable maw. A GLOBAL VIEW FIG. 2. "Water, instead of nurturing: life, destroys it." This Maryland corn needs the water which is escaping1. A. full yield cannot be secured without it. Not only water and crop growth are 'being' lost, the runoff is heavy with topsoil. Two hundred such episodes — perhaps 30 corn crops — and there will he no topsoil, no corn, no man on this landscape. And if by chance the watercloset, cold and dry, does not become the symbol of America's decline, it will be because the gully got there first. Erosion is robbing us of soil minerals five or six times as fast as the harvest of crops. Here again, man has placed a heavy hand on the balance scale of nature. Normally, on a mature land- scape, weathering and the acid juices of former life eat down into new soil as fast as the surface soil is lost or exhausted. Man, by his choice of row crops for sloping land, by his exposure of bare soil to the power of rain and wind, by his exhaustion of spongy organic matter through continuous year after year cultivation, by harvesting to the last crop remnant, has destroyed the soil cycle. He has, at the same time, by the same acts, short circuited the water cycle ; water, instead of soaking in to feed crops, runs away with the soil — water, instead of nurturing life, destroys it. (Fig. 2.) All power may be used for benefit or destruction, according to our management of it. One of the fundamental problems facing the world is the proper use of power. The power of nuclear fission released by a bomb is no more dangerous in the long run than the power of falling raindrops or sweeping wind. (Figs. 3, 4.) Each can play its part in destroying civilization, or enriching it. There may be differences in the speed at which they work, but the result can be the same. The primary result of man's disruption of the natural cycles of soil minerals, air, water, and organic matter is reduced vegetative production. (Fig. 5.) This brings shortages of food, clothing, housing, and chemurgic products. The shortage of food does not operate like a carefully supervised and balanced reducing diet; the food from FIG. 3. Atomic power released by nuclear fission in a bomb destroyed this city, this laboriously constructed landscape. How competent is mankind to control this power? APPLICATIONS OF POWER FIG. 4. Atomic power originating' in the sun operates the earth's water cycle; it is thus the basic force which, guided in this case by an incompetent human mind, destroyed this landscape. Gone are the plantlife, wildlife, and their values to human life. How competent is mankind to control this power? A GLOBAL VIEW 9 poor land is usually lacking in nutrient quality — it may not, for in- stance, provide the proteins needed by the man to produce antibodies; and, human health suffers — resistance to disease decreases. Abnormal men on an abnormal landscape inevitably engage in abnormal behavior. Aggressive individual fighting and aggressive FIG-. 5. Here man's mismanagement of the power residing- in falling1 rain has disrupted every natural cycle on this landscape. The concentrated minerals of the topsoil are being- dispersed; the normal infiltration of water has been disas- trously reduced. The hydrologlc cycle, perverted from its normal, healthy course, grinds away the foundation of all life. war are abnormal, regardless of their antiquity. Normal behavior is never wilfully destructive. We could go through a long list of un- desirable and destructive behavior traits, which operate in abnormal situations such as deprivation of a completely normal diet, shortages of other necessities to daily living, or even lack of luxuries to which one thinks he is entitled. Inadequate supplies of earth products stimu- late fears, suspicions, and aggressive acts between individuals, groups, regions, and nations. The chaotic state of the world has become chronic over the cen- turies. It is certainly not a modern phenomenon. Every civilization has eventually exhausted itself, either by wars between nations or by internal war with nature. No one, no group can win a war against nature. The disruption of natural cycles, the doctrine of "take and never repay," is suicidal and never more than temporarily profitable. 10 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE There have been and there are islands of normality in the world, where men have learned to live largely in harmony with the land- scape. (Fig. 6.) Such a happy status always involves control of the human population by one means or another. (Every kind of life has the capacity to reproduce at a greater rate than the landscape can support.) These tiny islands of sanity in landscape management are probably in some degree accidental. Sufficient scientific knowledge, which would permit a deliberate attempt to establish widespread nor- mal relations between civilized man and nature, has only recently become available. Man, the Re-Organizer. The natural cycles of life, energy, and matter are a trinity, unified and inseparable. They are a product of the universe. Nature exerts forces to maintain these cycles in opera- tion, and restore then to balance when disturbed. Yet, these balances are so delicate that even a small remnant of the former human popu- lation, if it continues destructive practices, can prevent the landscape from recuperating. We see evidence of this on impoverished farms, pastured timberlands, overgrazed rangelands. We see it in once thickly peopled, now largely barren areas in North China, Mesopo- tamia, North Africa, Greece, Yucatan, Phoenicia, Mexico, South Afri- ca, and others, including the United States of America. Naturally, we should like to prevent such drastic procedures. We should like to see these impoverished areas restored. We should like to see the down- ward trend stopped on still other areas. Prevention of slow disaster requires reorganization of man 's land- scape activities. Where he has been siphoning off energy and sub- stance from the natural cycles without providing for a proper frac- tion of return, he must provide such return. (Fig. 7.) Furthermore, science is discovering that the life producing cycles can be enlarged and speeded by feeding into them through the soil (and sometimes through the leaves of plants) certain elements (such as phosphorus and calcium, zinc and copper.) Man found these and other elements lying about in deposits, inert and seemingly useless to organic processes. The possibilities for human betterment which lie in such improvements on nature Iiardly have been touched by the rank and file of land users. Nor has there been a sustained and in- sistent demand from consumers for rational management of our resources. The job is only well started. The masses sense vaguely and intuitively that such activities will benefit them. But, there is no strong awareness of its full importance. It is certain that the future security of all peoples is linked with material abundance. People in the mass will never conduct them- selves on a purely intellectual and moral plane. Morals, personal or national, are powerfully influenced by the fullness or emptiness of the gut. Hundreds of millions of hungry people (and they are hungry for more than food) are a constant force toward war. America alone cannot feed, clothe, and house them. We can only help them help themselves. They can only help themselves by enriching their own landscapes, FIG. 6. On this mountainside in Lebanon, man has established normal rela- tionship with Nature, under difficult terms. The laws of the landscape are being1 observed, and in return for such cosmic citizenship, this mountain has fed, clothed and sheltered the people for 3,000 yearn. u 12 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE FIG-. 7. This Virginia landscape is slowly toeing- brought toward a state of normalcy. Fart of the change has bsen forced toy Nature, as when man was driven, by erosion, from the mountain sides, and the forest now creeps down to reclaim its usurped domain. Another part of the change has been made volun- tarily by man, as the strip cropping-, enriching of pastures, etc., result from scientific knowledge. A rich landscape not only provides abundance for a maximum population, but releases workers for industrial production. It pro- vides leisure for the individual and opportunity for self-development. A rich landscape provides surpluses above the bare necessities; it makes possible education, scientific research, art and music, commu- nity services and improvements. Social progress rests on the land- scape. All things are bound together. Man's power to reorganize and improve his operations on the landscape increases day by day. The customary lag of 10 to 50 years, between laboratory discovery of basic facts and widespread benefits of their application, must be, is being, shortened. Education at all stages must be alert to absorb at once the rich juices of research bear- ing on the fundamentals of life and living. The technicalities of gadgets are not important to the average citizen or student. He hardly has time to learn the essentials. Careful selection of learning experiences is necessary. Every citizen of the world has the right to sense, to see, to know the complete unity of which he is a part. He has a right to know the imperfections of his total environment. He has a right to know the causes of these defects. He has the duty to use a portion of his talents to remedy those defects. Otherwise he is a mouse, not a man. CHAPTER II HOW DO WE LIVE AND GROW? The Powerhouse of Life. Most of the ancients were nature wor- shipers. Very reasonably, many of them worshiped the sun as the fountainhead of life. Not that it did them any good — but they had a sound idea, the same one that we examined back in high school science courses. From the sun comes the power which activates the life pro- cesses of plants, and indirectly of animals. This same powerline of sunlight activates the water cycle, bringing back again and again the moisture by which all living cells function. Since this sunlight does not reach us at all times because of night, clouds, fog, smoke and rarer reasons, it is fortunate that nature pro- vides means of storing it. Thus life can proceed for a time with the powerline short-circuited, much as an auto can operate for a time on the battery, even if the generator fails. Storage of sun power is found in water, deposited at high points. Such water, on its way to lower levels, releases sun power. Sun power also is stored in plants in the form of carbohydrates, fats, and in proteins. It is released by oxida- tion, as when it is burned as firewood, or eaten by an animal and transformed into muscular energy. This energy may reappear, for example, as sound produced by vocal apparatus. The screech of a bob-cat is powered by sunlight. This sun power as stored in plants may be millions of years old. When coal is burned this archaic sun energy is liberated as heat. You may perhaps warm your shins with the regurgitated breakfast of a dinosaur, embalmed in the earth by an overburden of silt and sand, changed by pressure and its heat from carbohydrate into hydrocarbon. Natural gas and petroleum are hydrocarbons, and are stored sun- light. Whether they are derived from prehistoric plants or from the bodies of animals, or both, is irrelevant here. In either case, since animals are made principally of plant substances, the sun's heat is the thing which has been preserved and which we can use. These three mineral forms of sun energy are of course fixed in amount. If any are now being formed, the process is so slow that it can have no possible meaning to our present culture. There is con- siderable controversy as to how long the oil and gas of the United States will last. The most pessimistic estimates give liquid petroleum a life of a decade or two. Then we must use oil-bearing surface sands and shales, which must be mined and distilled. This will probably boost the cost and reduce consumption. Natural gas can be changed into gasoline and oil, but it too is limited. Coal is more plentiful, and 13 14 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE gasoline and lubricants can be got from it by hydrogenation. But the high grade, low priced portion of our coal deposits is noticeably shrinking. When the hydrocarbons do become scarce and expensive, we may be forced to turn to carbohydrates, forced to use sun energy which green plants can imprison from year to year, crop by crop. (This would present a staggering problem because the world's soils today are not even feeding, clothing or sheltering its population decently.) The use of direct sunlight, concentrated by some scientific marvel and changed into a transportable form, offers future possibilities. It also offers almost insuperable practical difficulties. Science will probably be able to use the enormous energies of atoms as a source of controlled power. This could perhaps give us a higher standard of living. Water power cannot supply more than a fraction of our energy needs. Carbohydrates in the form of starch, sugar, and cellulose, for the powering of the earth 's animal population must continue to come from plants. Science to date has not made more than a dent in the problem of duplicating the process which plants use in making carbohydrates. There is at present no glimmer of hope that we shall ever be able to live without plants. Fats are also energy sources, and are basically carbonaceous. Sugar is their foundation. The energy residing in plant and animal oils is derived from sunlight — sunlight acting through plants on raw ma- terials from atmosphere and water. The oil of the castor bean was used to lubricate airplanes in the First World War. No petroleum product was then good enough. Today better mineral lubricating oils are available. Our machine civilization could operate on plant oils, and may be forced to do so some day. This will mean that vastly more plants will be needed. Instead of gasoline we may find it necessary to use an alcohol, derived from carbohydrates, e.g., from potatoes, grain, wood. And again plants in the mass will be called for. These possi- bilities, if we may speak parenthetically, offer a very sound argument for conserving and keeping productive every acre of soil in the world. And in order that such a burden be kept from our soils as long as possible, the life of mineral fuel and power supplies should be pro- longed by every known means. Green Food Factories. Of all the physiologic processes which occur, that of photosynthesis is, in a sense, most important. Without it there could be no plants, no animals, no human race. The only logi- cal challenger to the importance of this primary process could be the reverse action, respiration (a form of combustion) which takes place in cells. By respiration, the sun energy concentrated by the green plant into carbohydrate is reconverted again into energy, to appear finally, for one thing, as all the works of man. Toward maintaining these processes all other physiologic activities of plants are pointed. It is not out of place to review here one of the greatest mysteries confronting man: how green plants make food. If and when science discovers just how chlorophyll does this job, we may know the secret of life. What we know is this : In certain plant cells are bits of matter HOW DO WE LIVE AND GROW? 15 called chloroplasts. These contain the green chlorophyll — if sunlight, natural or artificial, reaches the cells. (In rare cases already existing sugars may be substituted for direct sunlight). Interfere with the energy supply and the chlorophyll decreases rapidly. Covered sprouts are white. So are the hidden leaves of cabbages, the banked lower stems of celery, the inside leaves of head lettuce — no sunlight, no chlorophyll. The chlorophyll acts as a catalyst, a promoter of chemical action. It enables the cell to take carbon dioxide (C02) from the air, and water (H20) from the soil, split their molecules, and recombine the atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen into sugar, (e.g., CcH^Oc).1 Some oxygen is left over and this is returned to the air, fortunately for us animals. In this process of photosynthesis, the chlorophyll is not consumed. It continues to repeat the same job, as the sugars are carried away to other parts of the plant and new supplies of air and water are admitted to the green manufacturing cells. What is the significance of this operation ? According to Darling,2 "Chlorophyll . . . plus sunshine has laid down all the topsoil, all the coal, all the oil, and every organic living thing on which mankind has subsisted and must subsist forever. . . Without countless centuries of chlorophyll and sunshine cooperation we could have no food, 110 fire, no crops, no life, nothing. When we inherited this continent we fell heir to a hundred-million years of cumulative transformation of raw volcanic rock to rich loam, grassy plains, primeval forests, a myriad population of fur-bearing animals and waters teeming with fish and other aquatic life — all the product of the chlorophyll factory. Don't forget that when this rich endowment is gone its only replenishment must come through that same small bottleneck of chlorophyll plus sun- shine. - "v~ '.'•€! "Can any thoughtful person say that with 80% of our forests al- ready cut down, 75% of our grasslands grazed to a stubble, and mil- lions of acres of underbrush cleared from our hillsides that we have not constricted the bottleneck instead of enlarging it?"3 Anyone with a little practice can learn to judge the power poten- tial of a landscape by evaluating the amount of photosynthesis going on there. The more and richer green you can see, the more fuel is being stored. It will be used by both plant and animal life, including man. Of course, we must be familiar with a really fertile countryside iWhat happens is that six molecules of carbon dioxide (6C02) unite, through the influence of active chlorophyll, with six molecules of water (6H2O). In these 12 molecules, there are 6 carbon atoms, 12 hydrogen atoms, and 18 oxygen atoms. When the sugar is formed (C6H15,Ofi), there are 12 oxygen atoms left over. The chemical equation is expressed in this manner: 6C02 -)- 6H2O — Cr¥H12Ofi 4- 602. 2Darling, J. N., Poverty or Conservation, National Wildlife Federation, Wash- ington, D. C., 1944, p. 11. 3Of course it must be realized that Mr. Darling is an artist (as well as a biologist) whose powerful editorial cartoon effects are found in his writings. He uses a broad pen. and makes free use of artistic liberties. We cannot tie him down to complete accuracy of detail, but his protest is basically sound. 16 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE in order to judge the degree of chlorophyll activity on one less luxuri- ant. Such judgment, it must be noted, is of questionable value in determining the nutrient quality of the landscape. Power Output of Growing Plants. Plants not only store energy useful to lower animals, to man, and to man's mechanical engines, but plants themselves use a part of the incoming sun power to op- erate themselves. Plants share with animals certain functions. They grow and reproduce. These activities require energy, and the active cells draw on the stored manufactured fuel as needed. This is a point on which the layman is often confused. He mistakenly supposes that plants and animals are purely opposite in function, that plants make fuel, use carbon dioxide and release oxygen; while animals use fuel and oxygen and release carbon dioxide. It should be emphasized that most plant cells function much as do animal cells, that plants play a dual role, both storing energy and using it. Fortunately, like bees, they store far more than they use. Albrecht4 states that a 40 acre field of corn at peak activity con- sumes as much fuel as a 40 horsepower engine. This represents the power output of all the plant and animal cells which contribute to the growth of the crop. It includes the growing and multiplying cells of the bacteria, the fungi and the animal population in the soil, in- cluding protozoa, earthworms, insects and others. The figure is secured by measuring the carbon dioxide released from the soil — a sort of metabolism test of the earth working at high speed with the sun power at full throttle, and supported by release from the soil of accumulated energy of the past. The Building Blocks of Life. In speaking of carbohydrates and fats, we are dealing with materials compounded almost wholly from atmosphere and moisture. They are quite flimsy in a sense and change back into energy forms with little difficulty. Let us consider proteins. By adding nitrogen and certain other elements to sugar, plants can produce a protein. The catch is that plants cannot use gaseous nitro- gen as found in the air. It must be in a different form, as nitrate — something you can get your hands on, something found in soil. Nitrogen, plus sulphur, and a wide range of other minerals, enable the plant to make proteins, the materials of which living cell parts are constructed. These cells make up the plant itself. Obviously, unless the plant can come into existence, it cannot store energy. The remark- able fact is that plants construct their own building blocks, proteins, out of not less than 23 sub-materials, 23 amino acids. These amino acids are compounded in various proportions from air, water, and a minimum of 10 soil minerals. This construction job has been called biosynthesis, and no specific machinery in the plant for doing it has been discovered. The amount and number of proteins in a plant depends then on soil fertility. Lime (calcuim) is especially important because of its 4 Albrecht, Wm. A., Why Do Farmers Plow, American Potash Institute, Inc., Washington, D. C., (no date), p. 2. HOW DO WE LIVE AND GROW? 17 relation to nitrogen fixation and cell division. Regardless of the amount of sunlight, if the soil is poor we will not get much protein, nor minerals, nor vitamins. Poor soils primarily produce woody plants, strongly dependent on potassium, topheavy with carbohy- drates, and to various degrees indigestible. Try living on sawdust. It is high in fuel value, but not for you. Termites depend on certain protozoa in their digestive tracts to pre-digest wood for them. Even if you could digest it, it would probably not provide sufficient pro- teins for your body-building needs. It has had to rely on air and water for its bulk, while soil has played a very minor part. Legumes are plants which indirectly add nitrogen to the soil. This is accomplished by certain bacteria living in nodules on the roots. These bacteria have the ability to change atmospheric nitrogen into protein-like nitrate compounds. The presence of these compounds insures for the legume plant a supply of protein building material. When the plant dies a part of the nitrogen (in the roots) remains in the soil. Crop residues above the surface may add more nitrogen as decay proceeds. Future plants may use them. If a grazing animal eats young, vigorous, growing, leguminous plants, it is guaranteed a good supply of body building protein. (Older, senile plants lose much of their earlier value.) However, legumes, such as clover, alfal- fa, and soybeans, must have a generous supply of calcium; and so, great areas of eastern United States must have lime applied to the soil in order to grow them. To put it another way, most of the orig- inally forested area needs lime, and probably other fertilizers, particu- larly phosphorus, because the woody vegetation itself is evidence of lower fundamental fertility than the grasslands. This is especially true of coniferous forests. Since animals need from plants both energy factors and growth factors, we must insist on food which supplies both, and in the proper proportion. It is basic that our state of health, nutritionally speak- ing, depends heavily on the quality and variety of the proteins we consume. We shall have more to say about this later. Sparkplugs of Life. It was suspected about 1800 and proven around 1905 that no animal can live on a diet consisting only of pure protein, fat, and carbohydrate. In 1885 the Japanese removed beri- beri as a devitalizer of their navy by altering the diet of sailors. Spe- cifically, they cut out most of the polished rice, an energy food de- ficient in vitamin BI and other vitamins, replacing it with barley and other foods. In 1926 vitamin BI was isolated, and 10 years later it was manu- factured synthetically. Today the study of vitamins is a science in itself. Feeding vitamins to plants became a public fad a few years ago, and geraniums from coast to coast were dosed with growth stimu- lators (regulators). As with most such fads there was a scientific basis for it. The only reason, however, for feeding vitamins to plants is that the soil being used is infertile. Give the plant a soil well stocked with all the necessary minerals in available form, and 18 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE plants will make their own vitamins. It is much cheaper to let the plant do this, and to supply the minerals which may be lacking, than to spoon-feed it with a laboratory product. Plants do not make vitamins (or incomplete vitamins in some cases) merely to serve the needs of animal nutrition. Plants create them because they are an important factor in plant growth. The fact that animals also need them simply shows our kinship to and dependence on the vegetable world. Vitamins are not directly photo- synthetic like sugars; but are biosynthetic, like proteins — a result of mysterious life processes still not understood by man. They are com- plex chemical compounds and their parts come from air, water, and soil. It is obvious by now that soil plays an important role in plant pro- duction. While the sun is the prime mover and keeps the ball rolling, we cannot have a full quota of chlorophyll, photosynthesis, and biosyn- thesis unless the soil can provide the proper mineral base to build the necessary bodies of plants. Thus, any force, or land management practice, which reduces either the necessary depth of topsoil or its fertility results in a waste of available sun power and in a poorer environment. Loss of Vitamins: Persistent accelerated erosion, the washing or blowing away of the topsoil itself, usually prevents a full quota of vitamins and minerals from appearing in plants. Exhausting the soil by heavy cropping, with no provision for returning minerals to it, will eventually result in crops which are sick because of deficiencies. The solicitous care which greenhouse men give their soils arises from the fact that a perfect, richly colored plant cannot be produced from an imperfect soil. The plant is a factory powered by solar radiations, but it cannot be expected to produce a high grade product from in- ferior materials. Finally, it does an animal little good for plants to produce nutriti- ous food if the nutrients are lost between the field and the gullet. This may occur in canning or cooking by too much heat, stirring air in, contact with metal, too much water, exposure to air, using soda. A recent study shows that cutting an orange with a metal knife de- stroys by chemical reaction a significant fraction of the Vitamin C. We cannot dwell on these losses here, but they are very important in the use of plants for animal nutrition. Vitamins are often fragile and elusive, and they can be lost from hay as easily as from lettuce. Vitamin pills, by their huge sales, indicate an intuitive public feel- ing that modern foods fail properly to feed us. This is in part due to processing the very life out of our crops. Milling and bleaching wheat into white flour, for instance, reduces a nutritious, protein-bearing, mineral- and vitamin-rich natural food to an emasculated, starchy product. A most valuable and complete product of the reactions of sun, plant, and soil is reduced markedly toward that of sunshine alone. For instance, when whole wheat is converted into plain white flour the protein goes down 17% ; the riboflavin drops 72% ; thiamine falls 90% ; niacin fades by 80% ; iron decreases 82% ; calcium drops 50%, HOW DO WE LIVE AND GROW? 19 Conversely, slice for slice of bread, the carbohydrate goes up some The advertisers are quite right in calling bread an ' ' energy food, ' ' but as handed to us by nature it is the "staff of life," not just a charge of fuel. To overcome this ingenious devitalization, the millers have, at the urging of the medical profession, or because of laws in some 20 states, begun to "enrich" white flour by adding a couple of vitamins and one or two minerals, these to replace some 17, more or less, which were partly or largely removed. Thus we have the vicious circle of one group of industrialists removing many vitamins, a few of which another group then sells to us for replacement. This would not be too bad if we could eventually get all the nutrients we need by this system — but we usually do not. To Sum Up. Thus far we have perhaps said little that the well- informed citizen does not already know. Plants live and grow by a complex process which is easily and commonly interfered with by man. The fundamental idea to be once and for all time fixed in the mind in this: With the exception of certain minute plants, chloro- phyll is the bottleneck through which all life must pass; there can be little growth or biological activity of any kind without it, no plants, no animals, no human race. Managing the environment to provide the greatest possible amount of active chlorophyll on every acre of the earth should be the basic activity of civilized man. (See Appendix B for classroom suggestions.) 5Foods — Enriched, Restored, Fortified, Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics, II. S. Dept. of Agriculture, (Publication ASI-39), December, 1945, pp. 3-7. CHAPTER III DO PLANTS HAVE QUALITY? Succulence vs. Woodiness. As previously stated, plants supplied with adequate calcium (lime) are richer in proteins than when this element is scarce. Calcium, of course, can be effective only if the other nine absolutely necessary nutrient soil minerals are present. Each of these is essential to life, and of course if calcium is lacking in any considerable degree the plant is severely handicapped in utilizing the others. Calcium is stressed because it is the mineral most commonly lacking over the humid half of the country. Another critical mineral is phosphorus. (Phosphorus deficiency is probably the most common mineral lack in animals. ) It is essential to the production of a variety of proteins. Like calcium, it is depleted in many soils of the eastern and southeastern states, as well as locally in most states. With a shortage of calcium and phosphorus the nitrogen fixing, protein-rich legumes cannot grow successfully. Those plants which will grow, in spite of such shortages, are forced to depend more on air and water. The cells, heavily charged with carbon, thicken their walls with fibrous cellulose and lignose (sugars) and become woody. Such woody ma- terial is not only less digestible, but is relatively poor in minerals, vitamins, and proteins. Thus, the nutrition of human being's, domes- tic animals, and wildlife is intimately linked with soil fertility. These soil conditions are determined primarily by climate and the mineral composition of the parent rock. Freezing and thawing, the influence of warm season length on the amount and activity of soil biota, winds and evaporation rates, rainfall and leaching — all these in- fluence soil formation, soil structure, and fertility. On the Great Plains the scanty rainfall has resulted in less weath- ering; soluble minerals generally have not been carried by leaching beyond the reach of roots. Vegetation is nourishing, able to build much flesh, and so the buffalo, antelope, coyote, prairie chicken, prairie dog and other animals were present in large numbers. Later the steer and pheasant were introduced to replace the decimated buffalo and depleted game birds. Wheat in some areas has been grown, with- out fertilization, continuously for 30 or 40 years and more, with little drop in yield, testimony to the mineral wealth of the plains soil. Ob- viously, however, it cannot take this kind of beating indefinitely. This basic soil situation is reflected in the army figures on rejec- tions of men for service in World War II. The plains states con- tributed a far higher percentage of men called than our southeastern states. In the latter region, as one factor in this situation, the doubled and tripled rainfall coupled with long hot summers have put soluble soil minerals into solution and leached them deep, out of reach of plants. This means they are out of reach of bacteria, insects, livestock, and man. The woodiness of the principal southern crops is well known — pines, corn, cotton, tobacco. Certainly it is reasonable to 20 DO PLANTS HAVE QUALITY? 21 suspect that these poorly nourishing products would have something in common with most of the vegetation produced there. When it is known that the cotton belt is the nation's greatest consumer of ferti- lizers, the basic status of its soils is clear. When it is further revealed that soil scientists are bawling for a widespread increase in such soil amendments, plus manures, plus crop rotations, plus diversified farm- ing, plus more permanent pastures, we do not wonder that the collec- tive rural manhood of the region has tended to be susceptible to diseases, plagued by deficiencies, and lacking in stamina. Thus does climate hover over human destiny. Wooden plants make wooden people. If the southeast listens to the soil scientist — and it is — it may succeed in creating soils good enough to remedy the situation. It is a fact that soil can be improved, and in many cases may be brought to a state of fertility superior to that found by the pioneer settler. Not infrequently it happens that only one or two or three minerals are short, and adding them to a soil makes a remarkable difference in that soil 's productivity. It is often like putting gasoline in an empty tank, whereupon the entire machine can go into useful action. Sometimes a considerable variety of soil minerals are lacking or are in such a chemical state that plants cannot get them ; then the problem is more complex and difficult. Three hundred years ago the early tobacco growers of the southern Atlantic Coast discovered something. It was that three years of tobacco (a notorious soil depleter) exhausted the soil so thoroughly that new fields had to be cleared.1 For this reason the English planters were constantly pestering Charles II for additional grants of land. Thirty thousand acres was considered a reasonable area for staying in business. This was virgin soil. What three hundred years of care- less use have done to it may be imagined. But, imagination is not necessary. The facts are available. If we go on south into the tropical jungles, we find still poorer red clay soils and still less nourishing plants. Most people think the heavy vegetation of the tropics indicates high basic fertility. It does not. It indicates a superficial productivity. The vegetation is mostly woody, and one generation of it is living on the decaying remains of the last. The soil is merely receiving nutrients from one plant and handing them quickly, by swift decay, to another. A high fraction of these limited nutrients is thus saved from leaching by being con- stantly imprisoned in organic matter. The animal and human popu- lation is small, primarily as a result of protein shortage. Only in the higher altitudes of the equatorial region do we find any natively de- veloped civilization, and in climate these areas are not tropical at all. In the low areas, when natives clear a space for gardening they use it two or three years then move ; in that short time its fertility has been exhausted. *It will be argued by some that tobacco had to be discontinued because of diseases. There is considerable evidence that plants growing in a truly complete and fertile soil are not subject to diseases on a scale sufficient to force -abandon- ment of the crop. See Pay Dirt by J. I. Rodale, The Devin-Adair Co., New York, p. 165 and chapter 4. 22 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE In contrast to woodiness, the protein and mineral rich forage plants are succulent, at least during their youth or prime of life. This is not to say that all succulent plants or succulent parts of plants are rich in proteins and minerals. Species differ. Most young plants are succulent, but in poor soil this stage is often brief; the roots skim the cream off the meagre fertility available to them, and then the plants quickly begin to develop woodiness or toughness. In the succulent stage cell walls are thin and these units are wrell filled with water and minerals in solution, giving a crisp quality to the PIG. 8. Foraging1 hog's, using1 some form of basic intelligence unknown to mod- ern man, took the grain from this fertilized sector of a field in preference to the remainder of the 40 acres. (Cliff Love farm, near Warrensburgr, Missouri). tissues so that they pop when broken or chewed. They are easy to eat and digest, in contrast with more woody tissues. Albrecht2 reports that farm animals will find and consume first the vegetation on these parts of a field which have received fertilizer. For instance, some Missouri hogs consistently traveled back and forth between a limed and fertilized section of a cornfield and the feeding troughs, ignoring the intervening corn until the fertilized area was exhausted. (Fig. 8.) In another case cattle singled out unerringly the barley in part of a field where a double dose of fertilizer had been accidentally applied. (Fig. 9.) Again, cattle with 190 acres of virgin prairie pasture to roam over confined their early spring grazing to a few acres which had been limed eleven years previously, Albrecht ascribes this selectivity to the greater amounts of nutrients in these plants which the animal detects by taste or smell. However, and we have not seen this idea advanced elsewhere, it may be due to the 2Albrecht, Wm. A., "Animals Kecognize Good Soil Treatment," Better Crops With Plant Food Magazine, Vol. 23 (1939), pp. 20-21. DO PLANTS HAVE QUALITY? 23 corollary condition of greater succulence, less laborious chewing. We will take a tender steak anyday before a tough one. This is something the jaws can detect, while a difference in mineral content may elude our taste. In either event, the animal instinct leads it to a sound conclusion. It should be clear that this selectivity will have a notable effect on the distribution of wildlife, which is free to roam in search of satisfactory food supplies, and probably explains many of the spotty concentrations of upland game found, and not found, by sportsmen and students of wildlife. *srVV> . -lit *.•*.., ?^.<.?J^V,Y<&