176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



paired memory, epilepsy or epileptiform attacks, headache, mania, par- 

 tial or complete paraplegia (paralysis of the lower half of the body), 

 partial or complete blindness, extreme intolerance of heat, especially 

 of the sun's rays, rendering a person otherwise fairly healthy quite 

 incapable of living in hot climates or of enduring any exposure to the 

 sun ; or, the attack may gradually end in complete fatuity, dementia, 

 or epilepsy, perchance both ; chronic meningitis, with thickening of 

 the calvarium, accounting for the intense pains in the head ; or, in a 

 lesser degree, in disordered nervous condition and general functional 

 derangement. 



The less severe symptoms those probably of the slighter forms 

 of meningitis, or of cerebral change occasionally pass away after 

 protracted residence in a cold climate ; they are, however, not unfre- 

 quently the cause of suffering, and of danger to and shortening of 

 life, pointing to permanently disturbed if not structurally altered 

 cerebro-spinal centers. Abridged from Brain. 



-- 



THE YALUE OF OUE FOEESTS. 



By N. E. EGLESTON. 



IT may be considered as now established, by the most careful and 

 intelligent investigation of the subject, that the highest welfare of 

 almost any country demands that from one fifth to one fourth of its 

 surface shall be covered with trees, and that these shall be, to a good 

 degree, in masses. England will at once be adduced, perhaps, as a 

 country not well wooded, and yet one which compares favorably with 

 others in regard to the conditions of living and her competency to 

 secure the welfare of all classes of her people. But England is spe- 

 cially favored in other respects. She has a moist and equable climate 

 secured to her by her surrounding seas and high latitude, while the 

 general shape of her surface and her geological constitution exempt 

 her from the alternations of flood and drought which in so many other 

 countries result from the absence of forests. 



Whether the forests insure a greater rainfall in their vicinity than 

 is received upon an equal area of open land has been disputed among 

 scientific men, though the preponderance of opinion now seems to 

 favor the conclusion that the rainfall is most abundant in wooded re- 

 gions. This corresponds also with the prevalent belief of the common 

 people, the unscientific but practical observers. 



A special committee of the Royal Academy of Vienna, reporting 

 in 1874 upon a " Memoir of Mr. Hofrath Wex upon the Diminution of 

 the Water of Rivers and Streams," used the following language upon 

 this particular point : " The question of the influence of forests upon 



