454 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



leys of the Atlantic Slope, and the greater valleys of the Ohio, the Cumber- 

 land, the Tennessee, and finally of the Mississippi, have been saved as the 

 garden land of the United States. 



The Servians have a proverb worth rt'peating: ''Whoever kills a tree kills 

 a Servian." The sandy isles of the West Indies, the once populous regions 

 of Asia and Africa, which are now deserts; the barren wastes of Soain, which 

 were once gloriously prolific ; and that historic land formerly " flowing with 

 milk and honey," but now the " abomination of desolation," prove the truth 

 of the proverb as to other people than the Servians. In the destruction of 

 the forests man has been the enemy of nature, and nature has retaliated by 

 ceasing to minister to human needs. 



These are the teachings of science and of history, and we are going substan- 

 tially the same way in this country. The frequent overflow of the IV-ississippi, 

 the Ohio, the Susquehanna, and other water-courses, large and small, with 

 the resultant loss of life, destruction of property, and arrest of business, may 

 be largely traced to the extirpation of the woods along the Appalachian mount- 

 ains. Like results, too, are being realized from strippin^j the water-sheds of 

 New England. Brooks in which I fished in my boyhood, during the summer 

 months do not noAV carry a drop of water from the hills to the river and lake, 

 and thence on to the ocean, except during the spring freshets, and then they 

 bear away much of the best soil. Their sources have been ruined, the springs 

 that fed them have dried up, and no longer do they furnish drink for the pas- 

 tures or meander through the meadows. 



What has taken place in other lands must also come to pass here unless we 

 save our forests. Cause and effect are the same the wide world over. Mak- 

 ing due allowance for the waste, destruction and depopulation of countries 

 by Avar and its crushing burdens of taxation, it is now generally recognized 

 that the dispeopling of portions of the old world, the decline in political and 

 commercial influence of once powerful and progressive nations, the decadence 

 of prosperous communities into squalid and degraded hamlets, because nature 

 yields insuflicient to sustain anything better — fruitful fields having been 

 changed into fruitless solitudes — have had the extermination of their forests 

 as one of the most efficient causes and potent agencies for such results. 



The evils of deforestation have been many times rehearsed, but they need 

 repetition. They are events in the world's history, and men are educated by 

 events rather than by arguments. The politician will do nothing to save a 

 land from destruction unless driven thereto by the people. But it is not 

 my purpose to suggest a remedy. Public sentiment must first be aroused to 

 the fact that nothing is more certain than that trees are necessary on 

 the hills and mountains to perfect and preserve the springs and insure 

 a steady supply of water to the valleys throughout the year. If the woods 

 about the sources of the streams are cut away the springs will flow but a 

 short time after the winter snows have disappeared and the spring rains 

 ceased. In early summer they disappear entirely and with them the small 

 brooks they have fed, and the creeks and rivers are greatly reduced in vol- 

 ume or they vanish entirely. Drouth, poverty, sufl'ering ensue, and fine 

 agricultural possibilities are ruined, because the soil is deprived of its 

 needed moisture. 



The other evil, already alluded to, is scarcely less serious. This comes 

 from the inundations that devastate the valleys where the mountains have 

 been denuded of their forests. Spain, it is said, has be.'U the worst sullerer. 



