594 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
nearly all the mountains seen from the coast were denuded, while at 
the same time the valleys and plains were ravaged by malaria, as 
Mr. Rose has recently demonstrated.t 
Deforestation was a result of the depopulation of the countrysides. 
In fact, the cultivation of the soil, which the lack of laborers ren- 
dered impossible, was replaced by exploiting the elevations, since a 
few men could superintend immense herds and drive them every 
summer into the mountains, while the dried-up plain could not support 
them. The pasturage would not have entailed waste if it had been 
rationally regulated. But the ignorant and avaricious proprietors 
overburdened the pastures; the too numerous cattle devoured the 
herbs down to the roots, trampling and destroying them. With each 
year the pastures grew more impoverished. To feed a herd which 
was always so numerous, it was driven into the woods, where the 
cattle browsed on the young roots, the seedlings—all the future 
trees. In the long run the old trees perished; occasionally the cat- 
tlemen hastened their end by setting them on fire. Then desolation 
began. The water, no longer held in place by the trees and turf, 
rushed tearing down the slopes, carrying away the entire vegetal 
soil; it was the death of the mountains. 
With deforestation, malaria developed. Mr. Rose claimed that the 
Anophele mosquito had been imported into Greece from a foreign 
land, probably from Egypt. M. Cawadias? has demonstrated that 
swamp fever had always raged in Hellas. At first its area was 
limited, but deforestation favored its extension. ‘This, in fact, ren- 
ders the run of rivers unequal. In summer, when there is no flow, 
the river beds still in places contain pools favorable to the breeding 
of mosquitoes. It is in this way that the plain of Argos, once healthy 
_ and fertile, is ravaged by malaria. On the other hand, silt is deposited 
at the mouths of the streams, forming vast marshy plains, where the 
Anophele develops. 
The condition of the lakes was altered. The detritus carried by 
the water over the deforested slopes choked the outlets of the lakes 
and kept the water on a nearly constant level. Besides, there are 
long intervals between the high-water and low-water levels, and 
during the latter period the marshy banks become favorite nests of 
the Anopheles. 
Finally, as another consequence of deforestation, new lakes are 
formed by the movement of subterranean waters and the breaking 
up or subsidence of the soil, which are subject to the same conditions 
and thus produce malaria. 
At present Greece has a high birth rate, but since she can not sup- 
port all her children, they emigrate in large numbers, for the old 
1W. H.S. Jones, Malaria and Greek history, with a preface by H. Rose, Cambridge, 1907. 
2 A. Cawadias, La Paludisme dans l’histoire de l’ancienne Gréce. (Bull. Soc. Fr. histoire de la Médi- 
eine, 1909, pp. 158-165. ) 
