INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 11 
May also the forests be pleaded for here in this assembly ? 
It should be a fixed plan in national economy anywhere, to 
maintain masses of forest-vegetation near sources of rivers, 
and to establish some broad arboreous bordering on streams, 
where it does not extensively exist, as much calculated to reduce 
sweeping water-volumes by soakage and mechanical retention. 
For this purpose, nut-trees, cork-oaks, basket-willows and 
other trees, prominently utilitarian, could be chosen. To what 
reflections are you led, when a recent flood of the Mississippi 
not only devastated the adjoining land in its course, but destroyed 
also, through protracted submersion, much of the existing riparian 
woods ; when property counting by millions of dollars is lost to a 
Californian railway company through one single flood directly 
traceable to destruction of forests; when two-thirds of the 
inhabitants of the populous Connemaugh Valley perished by the 
dam-disaster ; when so recently and so terrifically quite a million 
of people were drowned in the floods of the Yellow River, and 
another million of inhabitants died from starvation, epidemics 
and other miseries as the sequence of such vast calamity. 
Merely a small fraction of the monetary losses involved would 
have sutticed to avert all this, if spent in well-regulated forestry. 
The cooling of temperature in forests under ordinary circum- 
stances means the reduction of much aqueous vapour to liquid 
humidity, and further the local re-precipitation of gaseous moisture 
in aqueous density, with proportionate lessening "of evaporation. 
Each of “our friends, the trees,” is a factor, however small, in 
this calculation. 
It really it could be demonstrated, that forests exercise no 
influence whatever on atmospheric precipitation, not even 
through electricity,—an opinion lately advanced, but about 
the correctness of which many do yet entertain the gravest 
doubt—then still remains to be considered whether through 
forests any country can obtain the fullest benefit from such 
aerial downpours as do occur. In North-western America 
the expression seems proverbial, “ Rain follows the plough.” 
The principle in both cases would be the same. Though moisture 
promotes spontaneous forest-growth, we are fortunately not by 
its absence prevented, even in almost rainless zones, to clothe 
bare tracts of country with an arborescent mantle of verdure. 
Should some one in opulence desire to build up for himself one 
of the most lasting of monuments, it would be by the bequest of 
an isolated primeval forest, ever untouchable, for the free enjoy- 
ment of the orderly portion of the public. The annual “ arbor- 
day,” let us trust, will become universal as a legitimate holiday, 
which will be looked forward to with delight, particularly by the 
juveniles, who, with a life of hope before them, can await results 
from pleasurable action and intelligent forethought. Celebrations 
like these are not without a lesson. to the w vhole community. 
