164 ‘TREES AS SHELTER TO GROUND TO THE LEEWARD. 
Parmesan territory, and in a part of Lombardy; it injures the 
harvests and the vineyards, and sometimes ruins the crops of the 
season. To the same cause many ascribe the meteorological 
changes in the precincts of Modena ‘and of Reggio. In the 
communes of these districts, where formerly straw roofs resisted 
the force of the winds, tiles are now hardly sufficient; in others, 
where tiles answered for roofs, large slabs of stone are now 
ineffectual ; and in many neighboring communes the grapes 
and the grain are swept off by the blasts of the south and 
south-west winds.” 
According to the same authority, the pinery of Porto, near 
Ravenna—which is twenty miles long, and is one of the oldest 
pine woods in Italy—having been replanted with resinous trees 
after it was unfortunately cut, has relieved the city from the 
sirocco to which it had become exposed, and in a great degree 
restored its ancient climate.* 
The felling of the woods on the Atlantic coast of Jutland 
has exposed the soil not only to drifting sands, but to sharp sea- 
winds, that have exerted a sensible deteriorating effect on the 
climate of that peninsula, which has no mountains to serve at 
once asa barrier to the force of the winds, and as a storehouse of 
moisture received by precipitation or condensed from atmos- 
pheric vapors. 
* Le Alpi che cingono Italia, pp. 370, 371. 
+ BERGSOE, Reventlovs Virksomhed, ii., p. 125. 
The following well-attested instance of a local change of climate is probably 
to be referred to the influence of the forest as a shelter against cold winds. To 
supply the extraordinary demand for Italian iron occasioned by the exclusion of 
English iron in the time of Napoleon I., the furnaces of the valleys of Bergamo 
were stimulated to great activity. ‘‘ The ordinary productiou of charcoal not 
sufficing to feed the furnaces and the forges, the woods were felled, the copses 
cut before their time, and the whole economy of the forest was deranged. At 
Piazzatorre there was such a devastation of the woods, and consequently such 
an increased severity of climate, that maize no longer ripened. An associa- 
tion, formed for the purpose, effected the restoration of the forest, and maize 
flourishes again in the fields of Piazzatorre.”—Report by G. Rosa, in Jl Politec- 
nico, Dicembre, 1861, p. 614. 
Similar ameliorations have been produced by plantations in Belgium. In 
an interesting series of articles by Baude, entitled, ‘‘ Les Cotes de la Manche,” 
