CLIMATIC CHANGES. 253 



Tsveuty years ago peaches were a profitable ci'op ; now we 

 must depend on New Jersey and Delaware for our supply, 

 and our apples and other orchard fruits now come from 

 beyond the limits of New England. The failure of these 

 and other crops in the older States is generally ascribed to 

 exhaustion of the soil ; but with greater reason it can be 

 referred to the destruction of the forests which sheltered us 

 from the cold winds of the north and west, and which, keep- 

 ing the soil under their shade cool in summer and warm in 

 winter, acted at once as material barriers and reservoirs of 

 moisture. It is not necessary to go beyond the limits of the 

 United States for examples of the climatic changes which 

 follow the destruction of the forests. Mr. Chamberlain, in 

 the memorial to which I have already referred, says: "A 

 decline in fruit products in Maine has been apparent for a 

 considerable time ; other farm crops are seemingly in a de- 

 cline also. Potatoes, oats and wheat, now rarely give such 

 crops as they did thirty or forty years ago. Fruit-trees take 

 on disease, apples become scabbed and distorted, pears 

 knotty, cracked, and extremely perverse, plum and cherry- 

 trees forget former habits and old friendships ; blight and 

 rust and insect-destroyers are everywhere. The ftirmer's 

 crops are invaded from all sides. The cry of local exhaustion 

 of the elements of the soil, negligent culture, and a long 

 chapter of local complaints, fail to account for any portion of 

 the diihculty." According to Lapham, the winter in the 

 State of Michigan has greatly increased in severity during 

 the last twenty years, and this severity seems to keep pace 

 with the cutting off of the forests. "Thirty years ago," he 

 says, " the peach was one of the most abundant fruits of 

 that State ; at that time frost injurious to corn, at any time 

 from May to October, was a thing unknown. Now the peach 

 is an uncertain crop, and frost often injures the corn." It 

 has been estimated that the same State has lost during four 

 years, twenty millions of dollars from the failure of the winter 

 wheat, a crop which, in the early history of the State, was 

 never injured. 



Forests, by preventing the escape of moisture by rapid 

 superficial flow and evaporation, insure, it is now generally 

 acknowledged, the permanence of springs, which in their turn 



