Trriiisoctions. 73 



equalised the flow of rivers aud lesser stieams. Tlie destruction 

 of forests in hot countries tui'ned fertile lands into deserts ; in 

 more temperate regions was the occasion of desolating Hoods. It 

 had been declared by a recent writer that indiscriminate forest 

 clearing was the sin that had cost the human race its earthly 

 paradise, and that war, pestilence, storms, fanaticism, and intem- 

 perance, together with all other mistakes and misfortunes, had 

 not caused half as much permanent damage as this fatal crime 

 against mother earth. The evil was of long standing, and its 

 consequences might be traced throughout all history. Never- 

 theless it was still proceeding, and, until recently, without check. 

 The North American Continent, on its first discovery almost one 

 continuous woodland from sea to sea, had been nearly, and often 

 wantonly, denuded of trees, so that timber was becoming alarm- 

 ingly scarce in the United States. The Central Asian table-land, 

 that offioiiia gentium, tlie original home of our Aryan race, was 

 now almost a desert, mainly from this cause. As a proof of this, 

 the state of the Khanate of Bokhara was adduced, a region 

 which, by the foolish destruction of its woods, had been in quite 

 recent times shorn of fertility. It had been well wooded and 

 watered, and was regarded by the Central Asiatics as a sort of 

 terrestrial paradise. But the mania of forest clearing and the fury 

 of civil war had wasted the country of its woods, and now immense 

 tracts, once well-peopled and cultivated, were disappearing under 

 the stealthy and unceasing advance of the sands of the surround- 

 ing deserts. The Russian possessions in the Caucasus were 

 menaced by a similar fate from the same cause. Our recent 

 acquisition, Cyprus, was once fertile to a proverb, but tlie waste- 

 ful cutting down of its forests had been followed by drought aud 

 sterility If tlie higher lands of that island were, liowever, re- 

 clothed witli timber, tliere was no doubt that its plains would 

 again become well-watered and fertile. It was tlius tliat Egypt 

 was losing its proverbial character of a rainless country. 



Even single trees induced precipitation. The inhabitants of 

 one of the most arid of the Canaries were at one time supplied 

 with water by a solitary tree, growing at the head of a deep 

 valley, whicli daily strained a large quantity of water from the 

 humid mist conveyed inland by the sea breeze. But tliis tree of 

 life was now gone, and the mists, though they still remained, 

 passed away without yielding their accustomed supply. Tliis 

 phenomenon might sometimes be observed in our own country on 



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