FOREST TREES. 51 



FOREST TREES. 



HAMPSHIRE, 



From the Report of the Committee. 



It is well known that many countries, which were formerly 

 well watered and populous, as portions of Egypt, Syria and Per- 

 sia, have, by the destruction of the forests, been converted into 

 treeless, arid, uninhabitable wastes. The same change is rapidly 

 coming over our ow^i land, and, unless arrested soon, will pro- 

 duce equally disastrous eflFects. 



Forests are useful in many ways ; they furnish fuel and 

 timber ; they absorb carbonic acid, and purify the atmosphere 

 by evolving in its place an equal amount of oxygen ; they 

 attract electricity and rain from the clouds, and by their shade 

 prevent the too rapid evaporation of water from the earth ; and 

 they exert a wonderful power in decomposing rock, loosening 

 and deepening the soil and supplying it with a vast amount of 

 vegetable matter. 



Did the space allotted to this report permit, it would be inter- 

 esting to consider at length the question, whether the members 

 of the society could not profitably transform one-half, or, at 

 least, one-third of their, over-large farms into plantations of 

 valuable trees. Would it not pay better to have a plantation 

 of healthy pines growing rapidly every year, and at the same 

 time benefiting the soil, beautifying the landscape, and purify- 

 ing the air, rather than to own a barren, sun-burnt, old field, 

 which will yield ten bushels of rye per acre, once in three 

 years ? Would it not be well to have fine forests of European 

 larch at work, decomposing the granite rocks of the hill pas- 

 tures, and at the same time, protecting the thin turf and cattle 

 from the scorching rays of the sun, and breaking the furious 

 wintry blasts which are ever stripping off the snowy covering, 

 so kindly furnished to keep out the cold ; and, in addition to 

 all this, attracting every neighboring thunder cloud, disarming 

 it of its deadly power, and absorbing its life-giving electricity 

 and its refreshing waters, and receiving from every passing 



breeze its poisonous carbonic acid to be converted into carbon 

 8* 



