298 FOEESTS OF GREAT BEITAIN. 



that the wealth and prosperity of modem England are in great 

 part due to the supply of lumber, as well as of other material for 

 ship-building, which she imports from her colonies and other 

 countries with which she maintains commercial relations. 



Forests of Great Britain. 



The proportion of forest is very small in Great Britain, where, 

 as I have said, on the one hand, a prodigious industrial activity 

 requires a vast supply of ligneous material, but where, on the other, 

 the abundance of coal, which furnishes a sufficiency of fuel, the 

 facility of importation of timber from abroad, and the conditions 

 of climate and surface combine to reduce the necessary quantity 

 of woodland to its lowest expression. 



With the exception of Russia, Denmark, and parts of Ger- 

 many, no European countries can so well dispense with the for- 

 ests, in their capacity of conservative influences, as England and 

 Ireland. Their insular position and latitude secure an abundance 

 of atmospheric moisture ; the general inclination of surface is not 

 such as to expose it to special injury from torrents, and it is prob- 

 able that the most important chmatic action exercised by the for- 

 est in these portions of the British empire, is in its character of a 

 mechanical screen against the effects of wind. The due propor- 

 tion of woodland in England and Ireland is, therefore, a question 

 not of geographical, but almost purely of economical, expediency, 

 to be decided by the comparative direct pecuniary return from 

 forest-growth, pasturage and ploughland. 



Contrivances for economizing fuel came later into use in the 

 British Islands than on the Continent. Before the introduction 

 of a system of drainage, the soil, like the sky, was, in general, 

 charged with humidity ; its natural condition was unfavorable 

 for the construction and maintenance of substantial common 

 roads, and the transportation of so heavy a material as coal, by 

 land, from the remote counties where alone it was mined in the 



they contended, and still believe, " breed birds, and birds eat up the grain." 

 Our author argues against the supposition of the " breeding of birds by trees," 

 which, he says, is as absurd as to believe that an elm-tree can yield pears ; and 

 he charitably suggests that the expression is, perhaps, a manUre de dire, a 

 popular phrase, signifying simply that trees harbor birds. 



