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190 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
less abundance, and was thickly populated by a highly cultivated people. 
But then the sierras and mountain slopes were covered with a luxuriant 
growth of timber, which was afterwards wantonly destroyed under the 
tule of the kings. * * Now nearly all the plateau lands of Spain, being 
fully one-third of its entire area, are desert-like and unfit for agriculture 
because of the scarcity of rain and the want of water. Another one-third 
of its territory is covered with worthless shrubs and thorn bushes, and 
affords a scanty pasture for the merino sheep, the number of which is de- 
creasing from year to year. The average depth of the fine rivers that 
cross Spain in all directions has greatly diminished.” 'The ‘*Encyclopedia 
Britannica” says, also: ‘The evils of denudation are, perhaps, nowhere 
more signally exemplified than in Spain. Rentzsh goes so far as to 
ascribe the political decadence of Spain wholly to the destruction of the 
forests.” She lost that prestige which she had on the sea in the days of 
her ‘‘Invincible Armada,” when her forests had been so far destroyed that 
she could not rebuild her navy, and now she is only a third or fourth rate 
power among the nations. 
Other nations of the old world might be mentioned which, also have 
declined in population and power as the result of the reckless destruction 
of their forests. Once the basin of the Mediterranean Sea was the center 
and seat of the world’s population and wealth. The shores of that sea 
were bordered with great cities, and the surrounding country abounded in 
fertile fields, which sustained a dense population. ‘There the arts flour- 
ished,and wealth was ample. Great empires there had their seat and dis- 
played their power. Now those cities are either lost to sight, or have 
mostly sunk to insignificance. 
Speaking of the part of Europe here alluded to, Mr. George R. Marsh, in 
his well known work, ‘‘The Earth as Modified by Human Action,” says: 
“Tf we compare the present physical condition of the countries of which I 
ain speaking, with the descriptions that ancient historians and geo- 
graphers have given of their fertility and general capability of minister- 
ing to human uses, we shall find that more than one-half of their whole 
extent—not excluding the provinces most celebrated for the profusion 
and variety of their spontaneous and their cultivated products, and for / 
the wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants—is either 
deserted by civilized man and surrendered to hopeless desolation, or at 
least greatly reduced in both productiveness and population.” And 
again, this distinguished author, speaking on this same subject, says: 
‘‘When the forest is gone, the greatreservoir of moisture stored up in 
its vegetable mold is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to 
wash away the parched dust, intc which that mould has been converted. 
The well wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which 
encumbers the low grounds and chokes the water-courses with its debris, 
and--except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain 
through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination of surface-— 
the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical degrada- 
tion to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of 
barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains.” 
Gradually the European nations became sensible of the fact that their 
deteriorated condition was the result of their own carelessness and mis- 
conduct, and they began to take measures to arrest the downward pro- 
