INFLUENCE OF FORESTS. 67 



these fair climes, the cumulations of centuries of persevering 

 labor, — all this wealth, has in extensive districts been surrendered 

 to hopeless desolation, or at least to a great reduction in both pro- 

 ductiveness and population. The forests have disappeared from 

 the mountains, the vegetable earth accumulated through untold 

 ages, the soil of the mountain pastures are washed away ; the 

 once irrigated meadows and fields are waste and unproductive, 

 because the reservoirs and the springs that fed them are dried up ; 

 rivers famous in history have shrunk to brooks, and the trees that 

 protected their banks are gone ; the rivulets have ceased to exist 

 in summer, and in winter they are torrents of terrible force. The 

 decay of these once rich and flourishing countries, is mainly the 

 result of man's ignorant disregard of the laws of nature. He may 

 for a time struggle against oppression and the destructive forces 

 of inorganic nature ; but after a shorter or a longer contest, he 

 yields the fields he has won from primeval nature, to fall into a 

 dry and barren wilderness. 



The evils of man's abuse have been perpetuated and extended 

 to later times, and it is but recently that, in some parts of Europe, 

 public attention has been awakened to the necessity of restoring 

 the disturbed hai'monies of nature, whose well-balanced influences 

 are so propitious to all her organic offspring, of repaying to our 

 mother the debt which the prodigality of former generations has 

 imposed upon their successors. 



We propose to present this subject only in the two-fold aspect 

 of the intrinsic value .of forests as wood and timber, and the con- 

 servative influences of trees on climate. 



No country possessed by a civilized people, has ever been seen^ 

 to preserve for any considerable time a proper proportion of its 

 surface in forest growth. It is but the work of an hour to destroy 

 a tree, that has been reared by the patient labor of centuries. The 

 motives for such destruction are almost innumerable ; and the 

 objects of the restoration are equally numerous ; but unfortunately 

 they have generally been considered as beyond the province of 

 governments and the power of the masses. The condition of the 

 forests of Europe is much the same in each of the countries, with 

 perhaps the single exception of Norway. An inquiry concerning 

 one is equivalent to an inspection of the whole. In 1750, France 

 had by estimate forty-two million acres, — about 32 per cent, of the 

 whole country in forests. In 1860 they were reduced below twenty 

 million acres. It is now estimated that the proportion in 1Y50 was 



