INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON SPRINGS. 225 
grove. As soon as they were well grown, a fine spring ap- 
peared in place of the occasional rill, and furnished abundant 
water in the longest droughts. For forty or fifty years this 
spring was considered the best in the Clos du Doubs. A few 
years since, the grove was felled, and the ground turned again 
toa pasture. The spring disappeared with the wood, and is 
now as dry as it was ninety years ago.” * 
Siemoni gives the following remarkable facts from his own 
personal observation : 
“In a rocky nook near the crest of a mountain in the Tuscan 
Apennines, there flowed a clear, cool, and perennial fountain, 
uniting three distinct springs in a single current. The ancient 
beeches around and particularly above the springs were felled. 
On the disappearance of the wood, the springs ceased to flow, 
except in a thread of water in rainy weather, greatly inferior 
in quality to that of the old fountain. The beeches were 
succeeded by firs, and as soon as they had grown sufficiently 
to shade the soil, the springs began again to flow, and they 
gradually returned to their former abundance and quality. 
This and the next preceding case are of great importance 
both as to the action of the wood in maintaining springs, and 
particularly as tending to prove that evergreens do not exercise 
the desiccative influence ascribed to them in France. The latter 
instance shows, too, that the protective influence of the wood 
extends far below the surface, for the quality of the water was 
determined, no doubt, by the depth from which it was drawn. 
The slender occasional supply after the beeches were cut was 
rain-water which soaked through the superficial humus and 
oozed out at the old orifices, carrying the taste and temperature 
of the vegetable soil with it; the more abundant and grateful 
water which flowed before the beeches were cut, and after the 
firs were well grown, came from a deeper source and had been 
purified, and cooled to the mean temperature of the locality, 
by filtering through strata of mineral earth. 
* Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge, pp. 20 et seqq. 
+ Manuale @ Arte Forestale. 2%* edizione, p. 492. 
15 
