HAS NEW ENGLAND BECOME A DESERT 1 173 



lakes 01' by an inland sea;* and of course it can nevei' have been disforested. 

 All about the Bay of San Francisco the removal of the timber has gone on, 

 within the past few ^-ears, with the greatest rapiditj' ; more so than anywhere 

 else in the State. But there is no statistical proof that the rain-fall in that 

 region has been diminished since the occupation of it by an English-speaking 

 people. On the other hand, it is believed that there is no portion of this 

 continent which is considered by its inhabitants to have so well founded a 

 claim to be recognized as an earthly pai\adise. 



An excellent opportunity appears to the writer to have been offered in 

 New England for throwing light on the question whether disforesting a 

 country does really change the character of its climate or materially di- 

 minish its rain-fall. There is no doubt that New Ensrland was, not loner 

 since, a country well covered Avith a forest growth. That it was such w'hen 

 its settlement by the whites began, 250 years ago, is a generally admitted 

 fact. The aboriginal inhabitants had not in any perceptible degree taken 

 from it, during their occupancy, its character as a great forest.f For the 

 purposes, however, of the present illustration, attention will be called to 

 the southwestern portion of the region in question, or the area included 

 within the States of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and the 

 southern half of Vermont and New Hampshire, embracing in all about 

 25,000 square miles. 



At the present time the area designated has been so far disforested that 

 nearly all of it is placed on Professor Brewer's " Map showing in five degrees 

 of density the distribution of woodland within the Territory of the United 

 States " t in the lowest of those grades, having thus been apparently reduced 

 from the highest to almost the.lowest condition, as respects the abundance of 

 its timber, since the settlement of the country by the whites. 



That a large part of this destruction of the forests has taken place within 

 the past fifty years, and since railroads were generally introduced, seems 

 to the writer a not unreasonable statement. His own recollections would 



* As mentioned on pp. 104, 105. 



t Sep, on this point, Palfrey's Histoiy of New England, Vol. I. p. 16. He says : "The woods were so vast 

 that the early writers describe them as covering the country," — quoting, in sujjport of this statement, from 

 Higginsou, in Mass. Hist. Coll. I. 117 : " Though all the country he, as it were, a thick wood in general, yet in 

 divers places there is much ground cleared by the Indians." Also from Josselyn's New England's Rarities : " The 

 country generally is .... extremely overgi-own with wood;" and from Early Records of Charlestown: "An 

 uncouth wilderness full of timber." Here we have the word "timber," which is in common use all over the 

 United States instead of forest. 



J In Walker's "Statistical Atlas of the United States." 



