374: STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



IV. The rainfall is increased, especially in forest- covered mountains. 



V. The evaporation is decreased and especially when the ground beneath 

 is covered by dead foliage it is very much decreased. 



YI. The covering of leaves tends to prevent the rapid llowing oif of water. 



VII. Forests protect and preserve the natural springs of a territory. 



VIII. The ground water held by the forests fills the soil beneath. 



IX. The forest protects from floods and prevents the formation of new 

 stream beds. 



X. With extensive disforesting weather extremes become sharper. 



XL Disforesting brings with it increased dryness and summer drouths. 



XII. The frequency of rainfall, especially in the summer, decreases with 

 removal of forests. 



XIII. Removal of forests decreases the wetness of the soil and the abund- 

 ance of springs. 



XIV. The removal of the dead leaves causes too rapid evaporation. 



XV. The removal of the dead leaves promotes overflow of adjacent cul- 

 tivated lands and this is still worse when leaves and trees are both taken. 



XVI. The amount of water in streams becomes more and more irregular 

 as forests are removed. 



So much for Germany. In France, where the subject has also received 

 very much attention, a similar list could be made out with one or twa 

 additional specifications. France is especially subject to destructive thunder 

 and hail storms, and it frequently happens that well cultivated vineyards and 

 fruit farms, which have been brought to a high state of perfection at the ex- 

 pense of much labor and money, are, at the very time they are about ready to 

 furnish an abundant harvest, utterly beaten down and destroyed by a sudden, 

 severe, local storm. The owner sees, in utter helplessness, the work of years 

 and the support of his family swept out of existence, and perhaps five min- 

 utes will suffice to do the work of destruction. Hail-storms have naturally 

 received very much attention in France and, though much that is of impor- 

 tance has been learned about them, the only thing so far that will help the 

 cultivator of the soil is this rule that destructive hail-storms are much 

 less common in forests. 



By some writers the effects of forests are given still more importance. 

 Marsh, in his Man and Nature, and in his wake many others have tried to 

 show that disforesting may change the climate of a country completely, alter- 

 ing it from a fertile region capable of supporting a large population to a 

 desert waste. As they read history, Palestine is undergoing this change and 

 has almost completed it. According to some of them the change has already 

 been completed in northern Africa. Carthage, they say, was in a fertile 

 region. Tunis is now largely desert. The Syrtes were once good harbors to 

 a fertile inland ; the desert now comes down to the coast and its drifting sands 

 shallow the waters of the Mediterranean far to the seaward. 



But agreement on the subject is by no means uniform. The idea that dis- 

 foresting may make a general and permanent change in the climate is hotly 

 contested inch by inch, and the victory now inclines strongly toward those who 

 believe either that no such change has occurred as a matter of history, or 

 that if it has occurred, it is due to other causes than disforesting. The 

 meteorologists of India are remarkably active, and they claim that in that 

 country the results of disforesting are entirely local and subordinate. The 

 Scandinavians have always been meteorologists, so much so that the ancient 



