456 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



historical period, they are known to have been covered with luxuriant woods, 

 verdant pastures, and fertile meidows, they are now too far deteriorated to 

 be reclaimable by man, nor can they become again lit for human use." 



And that best of all American observers and writers. Dr. Felix L. Oswald, 

 states that " since the beginning of the sixteenth century the population of 

 the four Mediterranean peninsulas has decreased more than fifty-five millions, 

 and the value of their agricultural products by at least sixty per cent." And 

 of the regions once the seat of empires he says: "Afghanistan, Persia, Mes- 

 oi^otamia, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, the southern islands of the 

 Mediterranean, and the whole of northern Africa from Cairo to the western 

 extremity of Morocco — countries which were once blessed with abundance and 

 a glorious climate — are now either absolute sand wastes or abodes of peren- 

 nial drouths, hunger, and wretchedness ; and wherever statistical records have 

 been preserved, it is proved beyond the possibility of a doubt, that their mis- 

 fortune commenced with the disappearance of their arboreal vegetation." 



Do we flatter ourselves that from like causes we can escape like results? It 

 is not safe to trust in Providence unless we act in harmony Avith the laws of 

 nature. Providence never shields men from the consequences of their own 

 conduct. As it has been in France in recent years so will it be here. In ten 

 years, from 1842 to 1852, the department of the Lower Alps alone lost sixty- 

 one thousand acres of arable land, which had been washed away and rendered 

 worthless for cultivation by torrents caused by cutting off the forests, and in 

 the five years, from 1851 to 185G, the departments of the French Alps lost from 

 the same cause 103,000 inhabitants. Since then the government of France, 

 by re-wooding the land formerly in forests at the sources and along the banks 

 of the streams, and other improvements such as only a paternal government 

 can direct, has restored the valleys to much of their original fertility. But 

 in a climate like ours the evil of denudation is not the only one attendant on 

 clearing up the woodlands. An anonymous author says: " Forests obstruct 

 the winds and protect man, animal and plant. They prevent evapora- 

 tion, absorb the rains, and thus feed perennial springs and maintain the con- 

 stancy of the streams below. The forests gone, the floods which follow dam- 

 age the labors of man, and the dearth which follows is often with difficulty 

 made adequate to the supply of civilized needs. Driving winds, now unob- 

 structed, blast the winter vegetation, while frosts strike with more force, 

 and it becomes more difficult to grow the fruits and grains as the country 

 becomes more cleared." 



In Michigan the forest area, according to the latest official reports, is 38 

 per cent of the total acreage. Out of 36,755,000 acres all told but 14,000,000- 

 are covered with forests, about 7,500,000 acres are included in improved farms, 

 and over 10,000,000 acres are designated as waste and unimproved lands. In 

 many of the southern counties there are not half woods enough, even if prop- 

 erly distributed, to afford adequate protection, the area varying from 14 to 

 20 per cent. Even the prairie State of Minnesota has a larger percentage of 

 forests than Michigan — nearly six-tenths, or over 59 per cent being covered 

 with timber. We, in southern Micliigan, have gone far beyond the safety 

 line in the matter of tree destruction, and still the vandal work goes on. 

 AVe are treasuring up wrath — the wrath of the elements — against ourselves. 

 It is hardly worth while to have posterity for a country thus injured. If there 

 was twice the forest area there is now in our portion of the State and the 

 improved land was better fertilized and watered and tilled its aggregate pro- 



