SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 521 



progress of each individual drop of water. And how ? Simply by replacing 

 the trees and grass that had been destoyed by the shortsighted owners of the 

 land. Each blade of grass helps to detain the water from the clouds, or the 

 melting snow in its course down the hillside; and each detention increases the 

 chances that the drop will never become a part of a torrent at all, but will sink 

 into the earth and give life to the grass and trees, and flow into the streams 

 through springs. 



Pines and Tempekature. — The New England Farmer puts the matter in 

 this way: 



Our greatest regret regarding pines is that we cannot get enough of them or 

 set them fast enough. We would have a line of them on the northerly side of 

 •every orchard we cared to cultivate, and on every barren or unsightly knoll and 

 in every spot on the farm where they would protect the fields from the fierce 

 winds and storms of winter. There is scarcely a farm upon any sandy plain 

 or exposed hillside, that could not be made to produce more and better crops if 

 one eighth of the land now cultivated were judiciously set to evergreen trees. 

 They break the force of violent winds in summer, when the tender crops are 

 growing, and in winter when the fields are bare. Growing around farm build- 

 ings, they afford a welcome shelter for poultry and other animals, and scattered 

 over a farm, in the right places, they add a charm to the scenery which noth- 

 ing else can. 



Forests and Eainfall. — The editor of the Country Gentleman takes a 

 most sensible view of the question of our water supply as affected by forest 

 destruction. We quote as follows : 



We have always held the opinion that trees at the surface of the earth can- 

 not sensibly affect the clouds in their onward march miles above, from which 

 the rain is pouring; and that there is no practicable difference between the 

 distance from the tops of forest trees, and from the foliage of a corn field or 

 of a meadow, to the high clouds above. Both would operate, if at all, in 

 the same way. The difference in distance between trees fifty feet high and 

 corn eight feet high, to clouds two miles high, would not be one two- 

 hundredth part, and one would be about as likely to draw water down, if at 

 all, from two miles as the other. But facts disprove the theory. Many 

 loose observations are quoted to sustain it ; but where accurate records are 

 kept, although varying with the changes of the season on both sides, some 

 giving u.minished rains where the woods have been cleared, and others 

 increased rain, the average is very nearly equal. The signal service has kept 

 records of the rain for from forty to sixty years, at posts in Ohio and Ken- 

 tucky ; for the first ten years, when the forests were mostly standing, the 

 rain was slightly less than for the last ten years, when they had been largely 

 •cut away. The annual average for tne first period was 43.01 inches; for the 

 last, 43.93 inches — a very small difference, and doubtless to be accounted for 

 wholly by the variations of wet and dry summers. Several other records 

 could be quoted, which go to prove that there is no average difference. 



This opinion appears to have been adopted in the first place by some one 

 who made a single observation, or else who thought it a handsome theory; 

 and writers, without full examination, have copied it and continue to copy 

 it down to the present time. It is a common and correct opinion that forests 



66 



