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Treeless regions are tlie breeding places of storms that seriously affect health in re- 

 gions like this, that are not yet wholly deforested. If we enquire whence comes the 

 deadly cold storms that so fearfully increase the winter mortality of children, and of old 

 persons in the Mississippi Valley, the unerring arrows of the Signal Service point to the 

 north-west. Seeking further, we find that these " blizzards " come into the United States 

 from a region still further to the north-west, and meteorologists are assured that they are 

 bred upon the vast treeless plains in the British possessions, where radiation is unchecked 

 by an arboreal investment. It is believed, also, that the sudden, cold, north-east storms, 

 which in Europe so greatly increase the winter mortality, descend from the great treeless 

 plateau of Asia, bringing a taste of Siberian horror to the capitals of Europe. It is per- 

 fectly certain that the deadly dry winds which sometimes sweep, hissing hot, across our 

 Mississippi Valley are engendered in the great treeless region lying this side of the 

 Rocky Mountains, and it is equally certain that similar winds coming into Europe from 

 the south are bred in the treeless African Dessert. Russia, even Russia, with all her 

 inertia, is moving to increase the extent of her Siberian forests for climatic reasons. It 

 is certain that, for economic reasons, the great prairies traversed by the terrible "blizzards" 

 will soon become a fairly wooded country. Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, and 

 Illinois are planting trees, and even Colorado is afforesting a portion of her domain, un- 

 til, perhaps, in this very spot men now living may live to see a climate more equable in 

 summer and in winter. 



We may partly understand what may be done to ameliorate climate by tree-planting, 

 when we reflect upon the frightful mischief that has been done by the axe in many 

 quarters of the world. In Europe, within recent historic times, the climate has so greatly 

 changed that the limits of vine-growing have been continuously contracting. Beautiful 

 Palestine, ravished of her woods, has become an uncanny desert with a fickle climate. 

 The Appenines have been stripped, and the adjacent parts of Spain are noted no longer 

 for salubrity — but for terrible deluges, drouths and cold storms. The climate of New 

 England has been greatly modified in the last one hundred and fifty years, and always 

 for the worse. In Algiers marked changes in the climate have followed upon the de- 

 foresting of extensive tracts, and wonderful results have followed the systematic planting 

 of other regions. The islands of the sea have been made so many isolated experimental 

 stations, where men have learned how essential to health the forests are ; while on some 

 of them the conclusive test of re-foresting has been made with a return of showers, and a 

 more equable distribution of heat and cold. Saint Jago, the chief of the Cape de Verde 

 Archipelago, was, at its discovery, clothed with a forest which has been recklessly de- 

 stroyed. Rain is now lacking sometimes for a whole year, a green leaf can scarcely be 

 detected over what were once fertile lava plains, while certain of the harbours of the 

 island have been filled up by the precious soil of the island, which has been carried down 

 by the fierce torrents which, alternating with drouth, curses this naked island. 

 Similar results have followed the destruction of forests on St. Helena, the Mauritius, and 

 certain of the Canary Islands. For this central region of the North American continent 

 we must admit that, while trade and the arts have left our hills more bare than ever they 

 were before, there was not in eighty years a summer so horribly hot as the last summer, 

 nor in the memory of man a winter so rigorous as that which preceded. If, in that year, 

 a pestilence had come upon us, it would have been the subject of our thoughts, our plans, 

 our prayers, and our dreams. But no pestilence stalking through the land ever caused 

 half the mortality that was caused by that frightful winter of 1880-81, and the sickening 

 summer that followed. To arrest a pestilence by quarantine, the State sternly interrupts 

 trade, travel and pleasure ; but the far greater mortality from the increasing fickleness 

 and cruelty of our climate can be arrested by the gentlest means. It is needed only that 

 our broad States shall have one fourth or one fifth of their surface covered with trees — 

 which, by the way, may be so distributed as to increase the value and producing power 

 of lands. It is needed only that the road-sides shall be well planted, that all hills shall be 

 fixed forever with woods, that the rivers shall be fringed with appropriate species, and 

 that woods shall be wood in fact, and not struggling collections of the dying monarchs of 

 the primeval forest. Along with a better climate will come not only the better health 

 and longer lives, which I preach to-day, but forgotten springs will gush anew from the 



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