1883.] MODIFYING EFFECTS OF FORESTS. 119 



bility to heat and cold so destructive to the whole vegetable king- 

 dom, eventuating in the deterioration of the animal race also, 

 including man. As a rule your insect tribes that prey upon vegeta- 

 tion are favored by a dry, warm soil, and by dry, hot seasons ; a 

 cool, moist atmosphere with frequent raias is prejudicial to them. 

 This is in accordance with my observations through a series of years. 

 Now, in most respects, your fruit and vegetable products demand 

 exactly the opposite conditions — they require a moist atmosphere 

 with its tendencies to moderate temperatures yet adequate warmtb, 

 without the extreme, scorching heats peculiar to our climate for 

 the last thirty years. And the wants of the animal organisms, 

 including man, are in harmony with and subject to these same fa- 

 vorable conditions. This audience is too intelligent to suppose for 

 a moment that our inability to raise fruit arises from any want in 

 or deterioration of the soil, consequent upon its age and exhaus- 

 tion. The general average productive capacity of our soils has 

 undoubtedly depreciated very materially, but our home lots and 

 choice patches allotted to fruit culture have not thus become vitia- 

 'ted. It is your climatic changes that lie at the bottom of all these 

 difficulties, resulting in a radical change of your atmosphere as to 

 its moisture and coldness, and evenness of temperatures, condi- 

 tions as favorable to the growth of fruit and the whole vegetable 

 kingdom as they are unfavorable to the propagation of insect life, 

 so prejudicial to the cultivation of these choice products. 



The earth, by a kind Providence, in its primeval or natural state 

 is clothed with a forest covering whose protecting, ameliorating 

 embraces cover our lower stratum of air, and shield it equally 

 from the scorching rays of the sun and the sweeping, exhausting 

 inroads of currents of dry, cold air. Its influence is pater- 

 nal, and you can no more set aside its benign, necessary influence 

 with impunity than you can strip your body of its necessary cov- 

 ering and escape its penalty. The destruction of our forests lies 

 at the bottom of all these evils. The dry, sweeping winds from 

 the northwest rush over us unchecked, taking from our soils their 

 moisture, and the lower stratum of air is left dry, uninvig- 

 orating and deadened like an oven. Formerly, before our forests 

 had thus become decimated, fruit flourished everywhere; equally 

 in our inland towns — in the warm, sheltered valleys therein — and 

 upon the more exposed hills. Now, according to my observation, 

 your orchards are almost an entire failure in these interior towns, 



