EFFECTS OF DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST. 301 
formity of condition most favorable to the regular and harmo- 
nious coexistence of them all. 
General Consequences of the Destruction of the Forest. 
With the extirpation of the forest, all is changed. At one 
season, the earth parts with its warmth by radiation to an open 
sky—receives, at another, an immoderate heat from the unob- 
structed rays of the sun. Hence the climate becomes excessive, 
and the soil is alternately parched by the fervors of summer, 
and seared by the rigors of winter. Bleak winds sweep unre- 
sisted over its surface, drift away the snow that sheltered it 
from the frost, and dry up its scanty moisture. The precipita- 
tion becomes as irregular as the temperature; the melting 
snows and vernal rains, no longer absorbed by a loose and 
bibulous vegetable mould, rush over the frozen surface, and 
pour down the valleys seawards, instead of filling a retentive 
bed of absorbent earth, and storing up a supply of moisture to 
feed perennial springs. The soil is bared of its covering of 
leaves, broken and loosened by the plough, deprived of the 
fibrous rootlets which held it together, dried and pulverized by 
sun and wind, and at last exhausted by new combinations. 
The face of the earth is no longer a sponge, but a dust-heap, 
and the floods which the waters of the sky pour over it hurry 
swiftly along its slopes, carrying in suspension vast quantities 
of earthy particles which increase the abrading power and 
mechanical force of the current, and, augmented by the sand and 
gravel of falling banks, fill the beds of the streams, divert them 
into new channels, and obstruct their outlets. The rivulets, 
wanting their former regularity of supply and deprived of the 
protecting shade of the woods, are heated, evaporated, and 
thus reduced in their summer currents, but swollen to raging 
torrents in autumn and inspring. From these causes, there is 
a constant degradation of the uplands, and a consequent eleva- 
tion of the beds of water-courses and of lakes by the deposition 
of the mineral and vegetable matter carried down by the 
waters. The channels of great rivers become unnayigable, their 
