WINTER MEETING. 455 



Except in a few localities, principally along the southern base of the Pyrenees, 

 or bordering the blue Mediterrane m, it is described as a treeless country, its 

 olive orchards affording here and there a partial exception. A tourist says 

 •one may travel by train for days here and there over the great central plateau, 

 which constitutes the greater part of the peninsula, and scarcely see a tree, 

 not even an olive on the plain, and not a grove on a hill or mountain side. 

 The desolation seems appalling. As a natural consequence the rains that 

 fall, not being detained by groups or forests of trees, run off at once into the 

 valleys, where they swell the streams to enormous volume and cause frightful 

 inundations two or three times a year. Where the hillsides are covered with 

 vines, as in France, and with olives, as in Italy, some protection is afforded, 

 and then there are laws in both these countries to protect the beneficent for- 

 ests. 



But what have we done in this country ? Nothing for the protection, but 

 everything for the destruction of our forests — giving an indirect bounty of 

 two dollars a thousand feet on all the lumber in them, under the mistaken 

 notion that by so doing we were protecting them and promoting the general 

 welfare. Why, such a policy is like paying a bounty to encourage the eating 

 up of seed corn — contributing a bonus to hasten the destruction of what ought 

 to be preserved. In many instances the destroyed forests are not renewed. 

 The land becomes a waste, or covered with a few pojr scrubs that are a per- 

 petual protest against the destruction that has been stimulated by the pay- 

 ment of bounties — if not for that purpose, certainly with that result. We 

 might at least stop encouraging their extermination. 



President Arthur, in one of his messages to Congress, referred to the rapid 

 disappearance of the forests throughout the country, and stated an obvious 

 truth when he said that ''their total extinction cannot long be delayed un- 

 less better methods shall be adopted for their protection and cultivation." 

 This is a mere hint at their value, but not at the fatal consequences of thjeir 

 extirpation. It suggests the old story as old as civilization itself. The loss 

 of the timber is but a small matter in comparison with the greater evil of ren- 

 dering fertile and populous valleys sterile and tenantless. Professor Geikie 

 says: " It must be owned that man, in most of his struggles with the world 

 around him, has fought blindly against his own ultimate interests. This con- 

 test, successful for the moment, has too often led to sure and sad disaster. 

 Stripping forests from hill and mountain he has gained his immediate object 

 in the possession of their abundant stores of timber, but he has laid open the 

 slopes to be burned by drouth, or to be swept bare by rain. Countries once 

 rich in beauty, plenteous in all that was needful for support, are now burned 

 or barren, or almost denuded of their soil." And this is the result to which 

 we are rushing, with all the haste begotten of avarice, in portions of the United 

 States. 



So fatal has been the consequence of deforestation in other lands that Hon. 

 George P. Marsh tells us, in his work on " Man and Nature," that if the 

 countries which men have ruined could be restored, " the thronging millions 

 of Europe might still find room on the Eastern Continent, and the main cur- 

 rent of emigration be turned towards the rising instead of the setting sun." 

 Eor, he adds, " there are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, 

 and even of Alpine Europe where the operation of causes set in action by man 

 has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that 

 of the moon; and though within that brief space of time which we call the 



