390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of this earth. " The ills that flesh here is heir to," he says, " are only 

 thi-ee: wounds, the efiects of poison, and decrepitude the latter 

 rarely makes its appearance before the completion of the ninetieth 

 year." Since the Portuguese have felled their glorious forests for the 

 sake of madeira (building-material), these islands have become hot- 

 beds of disease. 



The valley of the Guadalquivir, us late as a century before the dis- 

 covery of America, supported a population of 7,000,000 of probably 

 the healthiest and happiest men of Southern Europe. Since the live- 

 oak and chestnut groves of the surrounding heights have disappeared 

 this population has shrunk to a million and a quarter of sickly wretches, 

 who depend for their sustenance on the scant produce of sandy barrens 

 that become sandier and drier from year to year. 



It would be exaggeration to say that the barrenness of a treeless 

 country is an evil without remedy. Nature is always ready to assist 

 in any work of regeneration, and there is no desert so void and naked 

 that it might not be reclaimed in the course of half a century. The 

 Khedive of Egypt has wrested land from the sand-wastes as the Hol- 

 landers win it from the sea, and by a cheaper process than the build- 

 ing of extensive dikes. By planting date-palms and olive-trees, Egypt 

 has added many hundred square miles to her arable surface, and, as 

 Baker-Pasha assures us, her annual rainfall has almost doubled. 

 Between Karnak and Soodan the rain-gauge shows now a yearly aver- 

 age of sixteen inches, where nine inches was the maximum before 

 1820. And not only the limits of these tree-plantations, but also 

 the adjoining districts, have been benefited ; on the table-land of 

 Wady-Halfa the present temperature is not nearly as oppressive as it 

 was within the memory of men now living, and currant-bushes and 

 wild-mulberries have sprung up where they never grew before. In 

 France, too, the Government has reclaimed the Landes^ a sandy steppe 

 on the southwestern coast, by planting willows and bay-trees ; and 

 even Algeria has been improved by the persistent tree-culture of the 

 French colonists. 



But how slow and laborious is this work of restoration, and how 

 easily might we forestall its necessity if we would begin in time ! A 

 legislative act to jDrotect the woods of all the upper ridges in hill- 

 countries, and of a certain percentage of acres, say fifteen in a hun- 

 dred, in the plains, would be an effectual guarantee against evils which 

 otherwise will assuredly overtake us, and speedier than Europe, on 

 account of the compact shape of our continent, that deprives us of the 

 advantages of a marine climate. 



Let us remember that the aphorism of the greatest physician of 

 modern times applies to other organisms as well as to the human body. 

 " Timely prevention," said Dr. Radcliffe, " not only saves us from dis- 

 eases, but from those greater evils the remedies.'''' 



