OUR HOMES. 69 



Among the many properties of trees, that of their influence 

 upon the electrical state of the atmosphere, should not be over- 

 looked in this country. Hailstorms are always accompanied by 

 electrical disturbance, and may be produced by a specific elec- 

 trical action ; and the belief is, in all countries particularly exposed 

 to that scourge, they have become more frequent and destructive 

 in proportion as the forests have been cleared. 



It is written, " when the chains of the Alps and the Appenines 

 had not yet been stripped of their magnificent crown of woods, 

 the hail, which now desolates the fertile plains of Lombardy, was 

 much less frequent; but since the general prostration of the 

 forest, these tempests are laying waste even the mountain soils, 

 whose older inhabitants scarcely knew this plague. "I 



In some seasons tornadoes are of comnion occurrence, sweep- 

 ing over the prairies of Illinois, involving the crops and the build- 

 ings in a common destruction. 



It is hoped that our people will awake to a sense that we are on 

 the swift road to dire evils consequent to reckless waste ; and 

 such facts as stand in proof of our imminent peril should be kept 

 constantly in sight, till such a course of practice attains as shall 

 here secure a country improved beyond any that the combined 

 forces of nature and art have yet revealed. Timber trees have been 

 cut on the Pacific coast so as already to materially lessen the 

 amount of rain-fall. 



The ingenuity of Maine lumbermen is employed in cutting the 

 hitherto inaccessible pines on the Alleghanies, and to operate 

 through the entire pine groves of the north-west. We see it 

 stated that the annual receipts of white pine lumber at Chicago 

 alone are in excess of one thousand million feet ; and the same 

 authority claims, as based on careful explorations, that the exten- 

 sive pineries of Michigan and Wisconsin will be exhausted in the 

 next twenty years.* 



The valuable lumber trees of this variety in Maine, in accessible 

 positions, cannot last much longer. A western writer on the 

 rapid destruction of the forests in the United States says : " The 

 products of the lake pineries are distributed over nearly half a 

 continent. From them are built the farm houses of the pioneers 



*"The Mississippi Valley," a work almost exhaustive in its presentation of the phy- 

 sical geography of our country, its topography, botany, climate, geology and mineral 

 resources, and of the progress of its development. By J. W. Foster, LL. D. Chi- 

 cago, 18Cy. t Caimi. 



