600 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



mental and psychological dry-rot, superinduced by the 

 physical dessication of their lands. 



We of the United States are traveling the same road, 

 but traveling it with more rapidity. Our population 

 is increasing and our means of feeding it decreasing. 

 In two hundred vears we have slain more trees than 



good crops the exception and not the rule, and which is 

 the precursor of an ultimately desert condition. 



Even as the stripling, coming by inheritance into a 

 large estate, loses sight of the value of his possessions in 

 the ease of their acquisition, so we Americans have 

 prodigally wasted the superabundant advantages af- 



Europe slew in twentv centuries. The deadly work of forded by the resources of the new world. Every intelli- 

 deforestation is manifested in dry creeks and diminished gent man of mature years will recall instances, within 

 rivers, where once those arteries of agricultural and his own obserA-ation, of diminution of rain-fall going 

 commercial life were running bank-full. ^ hand in hand with diminution of tree growth in the 



When the rain comes now, it 

 comes in torrents which rush off 

 to the sea, laden with fertiliza- 

 tion washed from the surface of 

 the water-sheds. Such sudden 

 downpours frequently flood the 

 surrounding plains, with dis- 

 astrous results to property and 

 even to life. 



Germany and France, accord- 

 ing to a distinguished authority, 

 suffered more damage by 

 the floods of the single year 

 1883, than by all the expense and 

 losses caused by the Franco- 

 Prussian war. 



Fifty years ago, De Bonvillc, 

 Prefect of the Lower Alps, 

 addressed to the government a 

 report in which he describes the 

 appearance of the upper moun- 

 tain valleys after the loss of thf 

 forests, from which report the 

 following excerpt is taken : 



"There is no doubt that the ,,,-., ,.,., s- r^- ,, c-,,,, 



vegetable mold of the Alps swept Representative of the Smithsonian (Washington. D. C). astronomical expedition of 1912 near Bassour, Algeria. 



£, 1 . 1 • r ii i This station is on a rolling plateau region about fifty miles south of Algiers. Heavy snowfalls occur in winter and 



Ott Dy tne increase Ot tnat curse occasional small rains in all months. Except for a few scrub oaks the region is now treeless and vegetation is com- 



r . 1 j_ • j_\ ^ j_ • pletely dried up — once this region was well wooded and prosperous. 



of the mountains, the torrents, is 



daily diminishing with frightful rapidity. All our Alps same locality — a steady decrease in regularity and 



are wholly, or in large proportion, bared of wood. Their amount of rain-fall being perceptible wherever the forests 



soil, scorched by the sun of Providence, cut up by the have been devastated by man. 



hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface Utah illustrates the same scientific truth, l)ut con- 

 the grass they require for their sustenance, scratch the versely, for the Mormons, who found the country tree- 

 ground in search of roots to satisfy their hunger, . . . less, have nearly doubled their annual rainfall, and have 

 is periodically washed away and carried ofif by melting largely increased the size of their lakes and streams by 

 snows and rain-storms." planting orchards and by reforestation. In much the 



In our own country the overflows of the Mississippi same way Nebraska has been made productive within 



River alone have caused more loss of property than all the last thirty years. 



the wars in which our government has ever been engaged. Near the close of the last century the great lake in 



and these overflows directly result from ill-regulated the Valley of Aragua, in ^'^enezuela, was found to be 



torrential rains arising from abnormal conditions caused rapidly lessening in area as the clearing increased, so 



by deforestation of its enormous water-shed. that it was about to become dry. A civil war breaking 



Many portions of Europe, occupied by industrious out at that time, with the virulence for which South 



nations for more than a thousand years, are better sup- America political affairs are noted, the forest was allowed 



plied with forest trees than some of our own states, to spring up again through neglect of agriculture, and, 



There are localities in North America which, a genera- in a quarter of a century, the lake and its tributary streams 



tion ago, were a part of the great American forest, yet resumed their original dimensions. 



now, since becoming denuded of tree growth, have fallen Dr. Rogers, of ^Mauritius, gives this testimony: " So 



into that condition of chronic lack of rains which makes late as 1865 this island was resorted to by invalids from 



