THE IMPORTANCE TO THE FRUIT CUL- 

 TURIST OF SHELTER OR PRO- 

 TECTION. 



AN ESSAY READ BEFORE THE MICHIGAN STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCI- 

 ETY AT SOUTH HAVEN, BY T. T. LYON, OF PLYMOUTH. 



In approaching the question of shelter for plantations of fruit, our first 

 gerious embarrassment arises from the copiousness of the subject; especially 

 when associated, as in some respects it is found to be, more or less directly, 

 with questions of temperature, evaporation, rain-fall, and other atmospheric 

 phenomena of a varied character. 



Since it is manifestly impracticable, within the narrow limits of an essay, to 

 give even a general elucidation of so broad a subject, we shall mainly confine 

 ourselves, aside from a statement of some important or significant facts or the- 

 ories, to the questicfn of shelter, in its application to our State, and that with 

 more or less special reference to its bearings upon the circumstances existing 

 along the east shore of Lake Michigan, as they appear to a remote but inter- 

 ested observer. 



It has long been considered an admitted fact, that the existence of timber 

 growths in a country has the effect to secure to such country a more consider- 

 able rainfall than would otherwise occur; and as evidence of such fact it is 

 stated that the island of Madeira, when first discovered by Europeans, was 

 clothed with timber and enjoyed an ample and well distributed rain-fall ; but 

 that, since their advent, the forests have been gradually melting away, till little 

 is now left to decoy the moisture from the passing clouds ; and, as a consequence, 

 droughts have been steadily becoming more and more severe, occasioning the 

 failure of the ordinary crops, and compelling the levy of contributions, in 

 other countries, to save the population from the horrors of famine. 



Spain is also quoted as furnishing a similar result from the same cause, but 

 on a far more considerable scale, and extending over a far more lengthened 

 period. 



A very striking instance of change of climate from this cause is said to be 

 even now in progress on (if we recollect aright) the island of Barbadoes, one of 

 the more eastern West Indies, on a portion of which the timber has been 

 entirely removed in the process of converting it into plantations, for tropical 

 crops; thus giving the ocean winds full sweep from shore to shore. The por- 

 tion Oi the island so denuded of timber is said to have become in consequence 

 almost or quite a desert from lack of rain ; and this process is extending over 

 the now fertile portions of the island, as rapidly as the forests disappear. 



