QQ BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



with the utmost degree of brevity consistent with the magnitude 

 of the subject, some leading considerations, which will commend 

 themselves to your attention, in the following 



MEMOEIAL : 



Man, in all ages and in all countries, has been a wasting agent, 

 rather than an aid or conservatory of nature in fitting the earth for 

 his continuous occupancy. Not the least of the evidences showing 

 the progress of man in the present era, is his ability and his desire 

 to examine the physical conditions of the habitable portions of the 

 earth, and to estimate the past and present efiects of his own 

 labors as they have contributed to those conditions. As man has 

 increased in the numbers of his kind, and extended his agricultural 

 and pastoral industry, he has of necessity encroached upon the 

 forests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surface 

 otherwise adapted to his occupation. The removal of the woods 

 has been attended with consequences so vast and varied, that the 

 importance of human life as a transforming power is clearly seen 

 in the changed conditions of soil and local climate. Countries 

 once densely peopled are now waste deserts. These extreme 

 changes of condition, we have now much reason to believe, were 

 the slow but sure results of man's own improvidence. 



When we look at the multitude and extent of architectural ruins, 

 and of decayed works of internal improvement, that show a once 

 dense population over the present thinly inhabited districts of 

 western Asia, northern Africa, and southern Europe, we may 

 apply to this vast region our present theory of cause and efiect, 

 and see in the gradual waste of natural forests, a coi'responding 

 change in climate — a decrease of humidity, and as a consequent, a 

 diminished productiveness of soil. These physical changes in this 

 garden of the world were extended over vast epochs of time, and 

 the high civilization there attained, the perfected state of science 

 and art, conceived and executed the most gigantic works of irri- 

 gation, by which the mountain streams for a time contributed to 

 man's prolonged occupancy of these fair fields. If we compare 

 the present physical condition of these countries with the descrip- 

 tion of them by the ancient historians and geographers, we see 

 the luxuriant harvests of cereals that waved on every field from 

 the Rhine to the Nile, the vine-clad hill sides of Syria, Greece and 

 Italy, the olives of Spain, the domestic animals known to ancient 

 husbandry, — all these, the spontaneous or naturalized products of 



