THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



AUGUST, 1877. 



THE CLIMATIC INFLUENCE OF VEGETATION. A 

 PLEA FOR OUE FOEESTS. 



By F. L. OSWALD, M. U. 



" A S a fellow-Unitarian, I feel sorry for the Turks," Dr. Schlie- 

 JOJl. mann writes from Salon ica, " but, as a respecter of God's 

 physical laws, I must own that they deserve their fate. Men who 

 for twenty generations have proved themselves tree-destroyers on 

 principle, have no right to complain if the world rises against them." 



It would be well for the world if for the last twenty generations 

 the Turks had been the only " tree-destroyers on principle." Since 

 the advent of the Christian religion, the physical history of our planet 

 records the steady growth of a desert, which made its first appear- 

 ance on the dry table-land of Southern Syria, and gradually spreading 

 eastward down the Euphrates toward Afghanistan, and westward 

 along both shores of the Mediterranean, now extends from Eastern 

 Persia to the western extremity of Portugal, and sends its harbingers 

 into Southern France and the southeastern provinces of European 

 Russia. Like a virulent cancer, the azoic sand-drifts of the Moab 

 Desert have eaten their way into Southern Europe and Northern 

 Africa, and dried up the life-springs of districts which beyond all dis- 

 pute were once the garden-regions of this earth. 



Prince de Ligne, countryman and contemporary of Maria Theresa, 

 wrote an essay "On the Location of the Earthly Paradise," and, after 

 some reflections on the hygienic influence of different climates, calls 

 attention to the fact that " pnradise-traditions, in locatinjr the garden 

 of Eden, differ only in regard to longitude, but not to latitude. The 

 latitude keeps always near the snow-houndary, a line just south of the 

 regions where snow may fall, but will not stay on the ground. It 

 passes through Thibet, Cashmere, Northern Persia, and Asia Minor, 

 VOL. XI. 25 



