210 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



aud all her treasure is drawn from our State, that every river and stream on 

 our ^vestern border is made to pour this forest \vealth into the Chicago market, 

 to supply the comparatively treeless region wliicli stretches to the foot of the 

 Kocky Mountains, when Ave see these 'portable steam saw-mills,' like ' Hying 

 artillery,' sweeping over our State, at every cross-road, opening their guns upon 

 the trees still left in the settled portion of the State, your committee think our 

 people should ponder, and ask themselves whether they are not ' killing the 

 goose that lays the golden egg.' " 



The lack of timber for mechanical purposes is not by any means the greatest 

 evil which results from the wholesale clearing away of our forests. It is a well 

 establisiied fact that the removal of large bodies of woodland lias a decided 

 effect upon the climate of a country; that the humidity of the atmosphere, the 

 temperature, the moisture retained in the soil, the supply of water to springs 

 and streams, are all unfavorably affected when too large a proportion of wood- 

 land is cleared. 



If it is not demonstrated to a certainty that the annual rainfall is diminished 

 by the removal of forests, it is apparent, from observations whicli have been 

 made, that those portions of the country which have a high percentage of for- 

 est surfaces, are those which receive the greatest amount of rainfall. I pre- 

 sume each one of you can recall instances of streams in various parts of the 

 country which, when the country was new, flowed with a copious supply of 

 water in the dryest summer months, but which now are dry, or nearly so, a 

 considerable portion of the year. I remember wlien a boy of having a small 

 boat upon the Thread Creek, which flowed through the township of Burton, 

 where I lived, and often in midsummer I have rode for several miles up and 

 down that stream, wliere now a chip thrown in would hardly float over its shal- 

 lows. Regions of country which are thickly timbered, or which have frequent 

 clumps and masses of trees growing, are always better supplied with flowing 

 springs and streams than are the open plains. The cause of this is, that the 

 soil wiiich is siiaded by trees does not as rapidly evaporate the moisture which 

 it contains as when the sun shines upon it, or wlien it is exposed to drying 

 winds. The moisture tlius remaining in the soil gradually and continuously 

 percolates through the earth in thousands of little rills, till it comes to the sur- 

 face in some spring, or finds its way into a stream, which is thus kept well sup- 

 plied with water. This fact is also proved by the increase in the depths of 

 wells made necessary by the receding of the water level from the surface of the 

 ground. Gen. M. R. Patrick, formerly President of the New York State Ag- 

 ricultural Society, in an address made some years since, stated that statistics of 

 tlie pump trade showed a gradual increase in the length of tubing required. 

 In central Illinois this increase in the depth to water in wells had increased 

 about nine feet within the last ten years. Frequent belts of timber also pre- 

 vent the sudden melting of large bodies of snow, which so often causes terrible 

 and destructive floods. The circumstance that snow remains latest in the woods 

 in spring is a fact well known to you all. The tem[)eraturc of a country is also 

 largely affected by the depletion of its forest growth. 



In the report of the State Board of Agriculture for 18G5, T. T. Lyon, Esq., 

 an experienced fruit grower and a careful observer of the effects of climatic 

 changes on vegetation, says: " The natural result of this wholesale destruction 

 of forests is manifesting itself in the higher winds, the more sudden changes 

 and the more extreme cold of our winters; although in consequence of this 

 state of affairs the peach, once almost as sure throughout our State as the 



