402 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



the water by means of the hydro-extractor, it is spread upon 

 racks to a thickness of from four to six inches, and submitted 

 to a gas generated from a combination of materials, which, 

 serves to entirely decompose the claw, or beard, of the bur, 

 or other vegetable matter or scurf mixed with the wool ; so 

 that all the burs, grass seeds, and other foreign substances, 

 when submitted to the action of the bur-picker, are at once 

 removed, and the wool is left in a soft and elastic condition. 

 The labor and material required to produce this result are 

 trifling: the spreading of the wool to receive the gas being 

 about the only addition to the work that is usually required. 

 U.S. Economist, November 29, 1873. 



KAIN-FALL AND FORESTS IN THE WEST INDIES. 



Mr. F. Hubbard, in some remarks on the relation of rain- 

 fall and forests in the West India Islands, states that the dim- 

 inution in rain-fall in the island of Santa Cruz is noticeable, 

 and that in the past twenty-seven years the effect is percep- 

 tible in the gradual change from fertility to barrenness. 

 Every plantation newly swallowed up by the onward march 

 of desolation augments the cause, and renders the arrest of 

 the evil more and more hopeless. The movement is from the 

 east and toward the west, every few years an estate, former- 

 ly green with cane- fields, being abandoned to the graziers, 

 whose cattle, however, find a meagre pasture upon it for only 

 a few seasons longer. There are no streams upon the island 

 with the exception of a few rills, and the wells are failing. 

 Cultivation is impossible without constant irrigation, and no 

 means remain to sustain life. A planter not long since set 

 out a few trees upon his estate, and lost every one. The 

 island of St. Thomas is similarly affected, although, being 

 loftier, it seems to have rather more rain. In the island of 

 Porto Rico, which is almost wholly mountainous, the rain- 

 fall still continues abundant, and the flora does not appear 

 to have suffered. The sad change which has befallen the 

 smaller islands is without any doubt to be ascribed to human 

 agency alone to the removal of the trees the present evil is 

 attributed. The rainy seasons in these climates are not con- 

 tinuous cloudy days, but a succession of sudden showers, with 

 the sun shining hot in the intervals ; and the opening of the 

 soil to the vertical heat of the sun causes its rapid drying, 



