WOODLAND IN EUEOPEAN COUNTEIES. 297 



consume charcoal very largely, the forests have not diminished 

 rapidly enough to produce very sensible cHmatic or even econom- 

 ical evils. 



At the opposite end of the scale we find Holland, Denmark, 

 Great Britain, Spain and Portugal. In the three first-named 

 countries a cold and humid chmate renders the almost constant 

 maintenance of domestic fires a necessity, while in Great Britain 

 especially the demand of the various industries which depend on 

 wood as a material, or on mechanical power derived from heat, 

 are very great. Coal and peat serve as a combustible instead of 

 wood in them all, and England imports an immense quantity of 

 timber from her foreign possessions. Fortunately, the character 

 of soil, surface and climate renders the forest of less importance, 

 as a geographical agent, in these northern regions than in Spain 

 and Portugal, where all physical conditions concur to make a 

 large extent of forest an almost indispensable means of industrial 

 progress and social advancement. 



Rentzsch, in fact, ascribes the poHtical decadence of Spain 

 almost wholly to the destruction of the forest. " Spain," ob- 

 serves he, " seemed destined by her position to hold dominion 

 over the world, and this in fact she once possessed. But she has 

 lost her pohtical ascendency, because, during the feeble adminis- 

 tration of the successors of Philip II., her exhausted treasm-y 

 could not furnish the means of creating new fleets, the destruc- 

 tion of the woods having raised the price of timber above the 

 means of the State."* On the other hand, the same writer argues 



60,000,000 cubic feet of lumber. — Wulfsberg, Norges Velstandskilder. Chris- 

 tiania, 1872. 



Since 1872 the quantity of the annual exportation of timber from Norway 

 and Sweden has steadily increased, and in 1881 it was so large that it might 

 well excite the grave anxiety of all friends of the primeval forest. 



* Der Wald, p. 63. Antonio Ponz (Viage de Espaila, i., prologo, p. Ixiii.) 

 says : ' ' Nor would this be so great an evil, were not some of them declaimers 

 .against tree,s, thereby proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the 

 works of God, who gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we 

 should be even now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it." 



I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their woods, 

 but the Spaniard's proverbial " hatred of a tree " is of long standing. Her- 

 rera combats this foolish prejudice ; and Ponz, in the prologue to the ninth 

 volume of his journey, says that many carried it so far as wantonly to destroy 

 the shade and ornamental trees planted by the municipal authorities. " Trees," 

 13* 



