SECTION FROM THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO POUND GAP. 9 
the surface of which is not adapted’to the holding and flowing 
of water, I should have been in doubt whether to attribute the 
‘dry character of the country to the destruction of the timber 
-or to the formation, had I not been told that water once flowed 
the year round through the now parched stream-beds. All 
that can be said is, that the people owe their present dearth 
to their past thoughtlessness; and the reckless destruction of 
forests now going on throughout the State portends an even 
greater calamity before there is a turn for the better. An 
able investigator of this subject well says: ‘Since 1835, the 
forest area of the western hemisphere has decreased at the 
yearly average rate of 7,600,000 acres, or about 11,000 square 
miles, and this rate in the United States alone has advanced 
from 1,600 square miles in 1835 to 7,000 in 1855, and 8,400 
in 1876, while the last two years have been scarcely less ex- 
haustive. Statistics for eighty years previous to 1835 show 
that we have been wasting the supply of moisture to Ameri- 
‘can soil at the average rate of seven per cent. for each quar- 
ter of a century during the last one hundred and twenty-five 
years, and that we are now approaching the limit beyond 
which any further decrease will materially influence the cli- 
mate of the entire continent. Many eastern regions, such as 
Afghanistan, Persia, India, and Asia Minor, once possessed of 
-.a fine climate and abundant harvests, are now often scourged 
by pestilence and famine; and it is altogether probable that 
their misfortunes began with the disappearance of their native 
forests. It is quite likely that we shall suffer in climate, fer- 
tility, and health before a great while, if we continue to de- 
‘stroy our trees as recklessly as we have done, and.it behooves 
pete be warned in'time: ~* «* * -For one hundréd and 
fifty years we have been felling the forest; for the next one 
hundred and fifty we should try to restore what we have taken 
away.” 
In previous reports attention has been called to the fact 
that certain timbers, especially white oaks, do not seem to 
return again to forests from which they have once been 
‘driven by such an agency as fire. It has also been men- 
179 
