182 DISCUSSION OF THE DESICCATION QUESTION. 



ceding pages. One more quotation from the same work will, at all events, 

 show that its author is most profoundly impressed with the reality of the 

 dire results sure to follow the clearing of the woodlands: "When the forest 

 is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in its vegetable mould is 

 evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to wash away the parched 

 dust into which that mould has been converted. The well-wooded and 

 humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which encumbers the low 

 grounds and chokes the water-courses with its debris, and — except in coun- 

 tries favored with an equable distribution of rain through the seasons, and 

 a moderate and regular inclination of the surface — the whole earth, unless 

 rescued by human art from the physical degradation to which it tends, be- 

 comes an assemblage of bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of 

 swampy and malarious plains." * 



Enough has already' been said in regard to the supposed effect on climate 

 of the removal of the forests. All that need be added, at the present time, 

 is simply to call attention to the assertion quoted above, that Asia Minor, 

 Northern Africa, and Greece are known "within the historic period to have 

 been covered with luxuriant forests." This is a statement which cannot be 

 substantiated by proofs, as has already been remarked.! But, even if it 

 could be shown that the region in question was once densely covered by 

 forests, it would still remain to be proved that their removal had brought 

 about the change in the climate and other unfixvorable conditions so graphi- 

 cally depicted by the author from whose work the above quotation has been 

 taken. 



Barrenness resulting from over-irrigation and exhaustion of the soil by 

 cultivation are also cited by various investigators into this class of problems 

 as among the prominent pernicious effects produced by the agency of man. 

 That the idea of injury to a country by over-irrigation should have taken 

 root in the minds of some is by no means difficult to understand. A region 

 in need of irrigation is one of scanty rain-fall, and of course of excessive 



* 1. c, p. 43. 



+ Theobald Fischer, who has devoted much time to an investigation of the climatic conditions of the countries 

 bordering on the Mediterranean, admits that the region in question has become drier since the historic period. 

 Although inclined to consider a part of the mischief as the result of man's interference with nature, he is obliged 

 to admit that this desiccation cannot be accounted for without calling in the aid of some more general and potent 

 cause, the nature of which, however, he does not suggest. This author also remai-ks that the climate of Greece 

 was already a dr}' one in classical times, and he brings no evidence that this country was then covered, to any 

 extent, with forests. (See Theobald Fischer, Studien iiber das Klima der llittelmeerlander, in Erganzungsheft to 

 Peterniann's Mittheilungen, Xo. 58. pp. 41 -41).) 



