FOEESTS OF ITALY. 311 



destructive. Some of these regions must be abandoned to abso- 

 lute desolation, and for others the opportunity of physical restora- 

 tion is rapidly passing away. But there are still millions of square 

 miles which might profitably be planted with forest-trees, and 

 thousands of acres of parched and barren hillside, within sight of 

 almost every Itahan provincial capital, which might easily and 

 shortly be reclothed with verdant woods.* 



The denudation of the Central and Southern Apennines and 

 of the Italian declivity of the Western Alps began at a period of 

 unknown antiquity, but it does not seem to have been carried to 

 a very dangerous length until the foreign conquests and extended 

 commerce of Rome created a greatly increased demand for 

 wood for the construction of ships and for mihtary material.f 



* To one accustomed to the slow vegetation of less favored climes, the ra- 

 pidity of growth in young plantations in Italy seems almost magical. The 

 trees planted along the new drives and avenues in Florence have attained in 

 three or four years a development which would require at least ten in our 

 Northern States. This, it is true, is a special case, for the trees have been 

 planted and tended with a skill and care which can not be bestowed upon a 

 forest ; but the growth of trees little cared for is still very rapid in Italy. 

 According to Toscanelli, Economia rurale nella Provincia di Pisa, p. 8, note 

 — one of the most complete, curious and instructive pictures of rustic life 

 which exists in any literature — the white poplar, Populus alba, attains in the 

 valley of the Serchio a great height, with a mean diameter of two feet, in 

 twenty years. Selmi states in his Miasma Palustre, p. 115, that the linden 

 reaches a diameter of sixteen inches in the same period. The growth of for- 

 eign trees is sometimes extremely luxuriant in Italy. Two Atlas cedars, at 

 the well-known villa of Careggi, near Florence, grown from seed sown in 

 1850, measure twenty inches in diameter, above the swell of the roots, with 

 an estimated height of sixty feet. 



f An interesting example of the collateral effects of the destruction of the 

 forests in ancient Italy may be found in old Roman architecture. In the 

 oldest brick constructions of Rome the bricks are very thin, and very thor- 

 oughly burnt. A few generations later the bricks were thicker and less well 

 burnt. In the after ages of the Imperial period the bricks were still thicker, 

 and generally soft-burnt. This fact, I think, is due to the abundance and 

 cheapness of fuel in earlier, and its growing scarceness and dearness in later, 

 ages. When wood cost little, constructors could afford to burn their brick 

 thoroughly ; but as the price of firewood advanced, they were able to con- 

 sume less fuel in brick-kilns, and the quality and quantity of brick used in 

 building were gradually reversed in proportion. 



The multitude of geographical designations in Italy which indicate the 

 former existence of forests, show that even in the Middle Ages there were 

 woods where no forest-trees are now to be found. There are hundreds of 



