216 INFLUEl^CE OF THE FOKEST OlST SPEIN^GS. 



States and tlie Britisli Provinces, that there are few old residents 

 of the interior of those districts who are not able to testify to its 

 truth as a matter of personal observation. My own recollection 

 suggests to me many instances of this sort, and I remember one 

 case where a small mountain spring, which disappeared soon after 

 the clearing of the ground where it rose, was recovered about 

 twenty years ago, by simply allowing the bushes and young trees 

 to grow up on a rocky knoll, not more than half an acre in ex- 

 tent, immediately above the spring. The ground was hardly 

 shaded before the water reappeared, and it has ever since con- 

 tinued to flow without interruption. The hills in the Atlantic 

 States formerly abounded in springs and brooks, but in many 

 parts of these States which were cleared a generation or two ago, 

 the hill pastures now suffer severely from drought, and in dry 

 seasons furnish to cattle neither grass nor water. 



Almost every treatise on the economy of the forest adduces 

 facts in support of the doctrine that the clearing of the woods 

 tends to diminish the flow of springs and the humidity of the 

 son, and it might seem unnecessary to bring forward further evi- 

 dence on this point.* But the subject is of too much practical 

 importance and of too great philosophical interest to be summa- 

 rily disposed of ; and it ought to be noticed that there is at least 

 one case — ^that of some loose sandy soils which, as observed by 

 Yall^s,t when bared of wood very rapidly absorb and transmit to 

 lower strata the water they receive from the atmosphere — where 

 the removal of the forest may increase the flow of springs at lev- 

 els feelow it, by exposing to the rain and melted snow a surface 



* "Why go so far for the proof of a phenomenon that is repeated every day 

 under our own eyes, and of which every Parisian may convince himself, with- 

 out venturing beyond the Bois de Boulogne or the forest of Meudon ? Let 

 him, after a few rainy days, pass along the Chevreuse road, which is bordered 

 on the right by the wood, on the left by cultivated fields. The fall of water 

 and the continuance of the rain have been the same on both sides ; but the 

 ditch on the side of the forest will remain filled with water proceeding from 

 the infiltration through the wooded soil, long after the other, contiguous to 

 the open ground, has performed its office of drainage and become dry. The 

 ditch on the left will have discharged in a few hours a quantity of water, 

 which the ditch on the right requires several days to receive and carry down 

 to the valley," — Clave, Mudes, etc., pp. 53, 54. 



f VallSis, Etudes sur les Inondations, p. 472. 



