DESERTS DUE TO DEFORESTATION 



599 



with fear that, when weighed in the balance, our Cau- 

 casian race may prove, in this respect, equally remiss 

 with the " turbaned and most malignant Turk." 



Spain, Portugal, Southern Italy, Greece and many 

 portions of both Americas, have suffered from the same 

 reckless vandalism. Spain contains, in many of its prov- 

 inces, only ten per cent of its former population, for 

 even in the time of Vespasian it had, according to Pliny, 



in succession. The climate of that entire region has 

 become 30 degrees warmer than what it was before 

 its forests were destroyed. The climate of Southern 

 and Central Europe is 20 degrees warmer than when in 

 a condition of sylvan normality. 



According to Xenophon, Greece, in his time, had win- 

 ters of intense cold. He records in his " Alemorabilia of 

 Socrates " ( for he was the Boswell of that ancient proto- 





DENUDED MOUNTAINS IN ASIA MINOR 



This view is of the village of Koplu, 130 kilometers southeast of Constantinople. The results of deforestation in the almost completely denuded mountains are 

 seen. The areas of attempted reforestation are indicated by spots in which the shrubs are regularly spaced. 



360 large cities. Greece now supports only 5 per cent 

 of the population it had when it produced sculptors, 

 poets, orators, philosophers, statesmen and soldiers, 

 whom modern times have not surpassed. Indeed, all the 

 coast that abuts upon the Mediterranean suffers more 

 or less from the practices that consign the treeless 

 country to aridity. 



In ancient days, rain was so normally seasonable on 

 all the Mediterranean shore lines that drought was con- 

 sidered a portent of the anger of the gods. 



Northern Africa not only was self-supporting but 

 was, in conjunction with Sicily and Sardinia, the granary 

 of Rome ; now Tunis, the site of the once great capital city 

 of Carthage, is as nearly of furnace heat as the human 

 family can endure. 



De Baudin records the temperature in Eastern Algiers 

 as 128 degrees in the shade for a great number of days 



type of Dr. Samuel Johnson) that in the expedition 

 against Corcyra, Socrates, to silence the complaints of 

 his fellow-soldiers at their exposure, marched bare- 

 footed through the deep snows. 



Cyrus, the same author relates in his " Anabasis," 

 used to pass seven months of every year at Babylon, in 

 the valley of Euphrates, to enjoy the perpetual spring 

 there prevailing: now the heat is so oppressive in that 

 treeless land as to make the people wholly inefficient and 

 to render life well-nigh unbearable. 



Horace in his ode " Ad Thaliarchum " speaks of the 

 hail and snow on Mount Soracte, upon whose sun-baked 

 sides no snow or hail has fallen for many centuries. 



Asia Minor, for these same reasons, has become a 

 parched and dying country. Spain and Portugal have 

 lost productiveness as to 80 per cent of their former 

 agricultural fields. The people are suffering from a 



