OTJR FORESTRY-PROBLEM. 233 



agricultural States — Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, with 14*7 per cent ; 

 the Prairie States, with a continental climate, and with only 4*4 per 

 cent ; Texas, with 23'2 per cent, all in one corner ; the Rocky Mountain 

 States, with 14'1 per cent of forest-land, and their water-supply de- 

 pending on the forest-cover ; the Pacific slope States, though heavily 

 timbered on the Northwestern coast, with 34 per cent, and in the 

 southern and interior parts largely dependent on irrigation — these, 

 I may say, come nearer to that lowest limit of forest-cover which is 

 claimed as desirable for climatic considerations. Especially where the 

 forest had been destroyed, and the climate made unfavorable before 

 the advent of the white man, in the vast prairies, reforestation is de- 

 manded for purely climatic amelioration. 



This has been recognized by the prairie settlers, tree-planting in 

 shelter-belts and small groves has been begun, and the change for the 

 better, aided by the breaking of the soil in large areas, is gratefully 

 acknowledged. But a radical change in the inclement climate of those 

 plains we can expect only from extensive and densely shaded forest- 

 belts, dispersed over the country, such as only entire communities, or 

 citizens aggregated in a government, will be able to provide. 



Of injuries wrought locally by the reckless clearing of hill-sides and 

 of deterioration of the soil due to inconsiderate action of man, I could 

 entertain you by the hour ; the country is full of examples. Any one 

 who wishes to study the effect of such denuding of hill-sides upon the 

 soil, the water-flow, and agricultural conditions, need not go to France, 

 Spain, Italy, Greece, or Palestine. The Adirondack Mountains are 

 within easier reach, where the thin cover of earth exposed to the wash- 

 ing rains is carried into the rivers, leaving behind a bare, forbidding 

 rock and desolation, while at Albany the Hudson River is being made 

 unnavigable by the debris and soil carried down the river ; the Govern- 

 ment has spent more than ten million dollars, I believe, and spends 

 every year a goodly sum, to open out a passage over the sand-bar thus 

 formed. 



Go to the eastern Rocky Mountains, or to Southern California, and 

 you can gain an insight into the significance of regulated water-supply 

 for the agriculture below, and also learn how imprudently we have 

 acted and are acting upon the knowledge of this significance by allow- 

 ing the destruction of mountain-forests in the most reckless and un- 

 profitable manner. Along the shores of Lake Michigan, and along the 

 sea-coast, we are creating shifting sands by the removal of the forest- 

 cover, to make work for the ingenuity of our children in devising 

 methods for fixing these sands again. The vegetable mold with 

 which the kind forest had covered the alluvial sands of the Southern 

 coast-plain we are taking pains to burn off in order to replace it with 

 expensive artificial fertilizers. 



That the great flood of the Ohio, which cost the country more than 

 twenty million dollars, was entirely due to deforestation, I will not 



