1883.] MODIFYING EFFECTS OF FORESTS. 113 



lantic and Gulf, mainly in a southerly direction, while our atmos- 

 phere, in its normal state of fair weather, rotates almost constant- 

 ly with great regularity eastwardly, carrying its surcharged 

 moisture with it into or over the ocean, and the query is, how does 

 all this moisture again return to cover the continent, restoring this 

 constantly-passing-oif volume. Mother Nature is orderly and har- 

 monious in all her ways — she abhors a vacuum and all her tendencies 

 are toward an equilibrium of forces in her surroundings. 



Now I am not going to enter upon disputed ground and engage in a 

 controversy with theorizing weather prophets. It is a well-established 

 fact or principle that most of our larger, more continental storms 

 strike upon us from the Gulf — tending as a rule in a northeasterly 

 direction — the centre of their track following up the Mississippi 

 valley, striking the Lakes and tending down the St. Lawrence val- 

 ley upon the ocean — varying from this course and extending be- 

 yond or coming short of it according to the innate force, vitality 

 or the off-shooting, propelling power behind. Accumulative forces 

 must have vent and outlet, and the force of the storm may partake 

 of the character of a hurricane — or be of that milder yet grand 

 and commanding type, spreading itself over half the continent — as 

 life-giving and re-invigorating as it is paternal. 



Here, then, we have our waters returned to us in our large, 

 periodica], parent storms; and the question is how to retain them, 

 again to be re-distributed by our local, small storms or showers — 

 as a relief to our parched soils during our hot, decisive summers, 

 in the interval between these recurring larger storms. Unless a 

 large part of your surface is covered with forests, the sweeping 

 winds that usually follow after these storms, and the burning sun, 

 soon exhaust your soils again of this moisture — and that moist sur- 

 face and cool under stratum of air favorable to our summer show- 

 ers is wanting, and it is our forest depletion from the Lakes to the 

 Atlantic that tends more and more to extreme dryness. A less 

 frequent class of storms, covering less areas, are those striking in 

 upon our Atlantic slope from a southerly direction rather than in 

 upon our Gulf Basin — more violent from the fact that their feed- 

 ing, -propelling winds are unrestrained as they strike in upon them 

 from their ocean paths — unlike the feeding, propelling winds of 

 our interior storms — moderated as the latter currents are by your 

 interior land formations with their forest covering to retard them. 

 Hence the distinguishing features of the storms are the intensity 



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