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1883.] MODIFYING EFFECTS OF FORESTS. 115 



this paternal, shielding covering. The sun penetrates and exhausts 

 its soil of its moisture; the winds whistle along unimpeded; storms 

 are repelled from, rather than attracted to such areas, and when 

 they do drift over them they gather no increased vitality and mois- 

 ture, ready to precipitate it upon New England when they reach 

 us — and we watch all their delusive promises in vexation and dis- 

 appointment. 



Providence so administers and attempers matters with mercy as 

 to turn man's follies, as his wrath, to her account: our exhaustive 

 system of husbandry has already, here in our older states, long 

 since retired our worn out lands back to a state of nature to again 

 become covered with forests, recompensing man's neglect by again 

 ministering to his necessities — and ultimately regaining her original 

 fertility to again cater to*his food wants also. It is not so much 

 the want of forests here in the westerly part of our state and in 

 that of Massachusetts also that I would call your attention to; our 

 mountainous formations in these regions insure to us a comfortable 

 proportion of wooded lands, with their natural adaptation to for- 

 estry — always readily sprouting up and growing again when cut 

 off — while in Central and Western New York their timber lands,, 

 when once stripped oS rarely sprout again from the roots as ours do^ 

 It is these remote regions that prepare the clouds as they pass over 

 them to precipitate upon us, and all that storm phenomena of 

 to-day which turns out a mere abortion of cloudy days should pre- 

 cipitate more and more upon us, as of old, before these regions had. 

 thus become denuded of their stately forests. I would also call, 

 your attention to the difference in their climatic influence between 

 our old original growths of forests, with their tall, majestic, com- 

 manding oaks interspersed throughout, to that of the new, more 

 bushy, scrubby growth; the powers and influence of the one 

 when compared with that of the other is like that of our revolu- 

 tionary races of men, compared with the present generation — and 

 I have often thought that the physical development of man par- 

 took of and was in keeping with his forest surroundings. Some 

 ten years since I attended church in Rochester — ^the church of the 

 Puritans* choice, where you would expect to find men springing 

 from the blood of her first pioneers from New England — and I 

 was astonished at the number of the extremely tall, broad-chested, 

 well developed men, well on to eighty, while none of the young 

 sprouts indicated such promise of vigor and power. 



