200 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



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days, and showed how far they exceeded those of the present 

 era in Massachusetts, and how the farmers of Massachusetts 

 were prompt to avail themselves of the circumstances in which 

 they were placed, and connected with his remarks the fact that 

 population had crowded into the eastern part of the State, and 

 cities and large towns have created a demand that has cut off 

 very largely the forests of that section, — may see why it is that 

 the fields and the mowing lands yield less to the acre with all the 

 fertilizers that can be applied than they did in years gone by. 

 And if, to the picture presented to us by the Ex-Consul General 

 to Egypt, of the condition of agriculture in that land, and of 

 the round of " pumping and kicking," and " kicking and pump- 

 ing," with which the inhabitants supplied the land with the moist- 

 ure it needed, we add the fact that formerly the banks of the 

 Mle were covered with forest trees, and that the cutting down 

 of all these promoters of rain and preservers of moisture is 

 believed to have been the cause of the excessive barrenness of 

 the soil, and the consequent decline in civilization of the people, — 

 so that now the pasha is causing tracts of country to be planted 

 with forest trees, that he may restore to his kingdom the glory 

 of other days, when it supplied corn for the famishing nations 

 of the world, — we may learn something of the value of forest 

 trees to the productiveness of the soil. And in the town of 

 Truro, on the extreme end of Cape Cod, and at the island of 

 Martha's Vineyard, may be found examples where the existing 

 state of things, contrasted with the undoubted traditions of the 

 not distant past, confirm the correctness of the idea that the 

 distribution of the land into forests and cultivated fields is es- 

 sential to the highest fertility of the fields. Nor need we go to 

 Essex or to the Cape, to Egypt or any foreign land. Why is it 

 that our springs are drying up, and wells that have furnished 

 water for man and beast, as long as the memory of man, run- 

 neth back upon their supply ? The law of vegetation, of evap- 

 oration of moisture, and concentration of the productive ele- 

 ments of earth and air in the snow and the rain, is as unchange- 

 able as the laws that govern the moral creation of God, and the 

 farmer, as well as the mechanic or the philosopher, does well to 

 study these laws if he would evade the penalty of their viola- 

 tion. 



That the influence of forest trees is not less important to the 



