ECONOMY OF THE FOREST. 357 



whicli that destruction has occasioned. It is hoped that the 

 replanting of tlie mountain slopes, and of bleak and infertile 

 plains, will diminish the frequency and violence of river inunda- 

 tions, prevent the formation of new torrents and check the vio- 

 lence of those ah-eady existing, mitigate the extremes of atmos- 

 pheric temperature, humidity and precipitation, restore dried-up 

 springs, rivulets and sources of irrigation, shelter the fields from 

 chilling and from parching winds, arrest the spread of miasmatic 

 effluvia, and, finally, furnish a seK-renewing and inexhaustible 

 supply of a material indispensable to so many purposes of domes- 

 tic comfort, and to the successful exercise of every art of peace, 

 every destructive energy of war.* 



T/ie Econormj of the Forest. 



The legislation of European states upon sylviculture, and the 

 practice of that art, divide themselves into two great branches 

 — the preservation of existing forests, and the creation of new. 

 Although there are in Europe many forests neither planted nor 

 regularly trained by man, yet from the long operation of causes 

 already set forth, what is understood in America and other new 

 countries by the " primitive forest," no longer exists in the ter- 

 ritories which were the seats of ancient civilization and empire, 

 except upon a small scale, and in remote and almost inaccessible 

 glens quite out of the reach of ordinary observation. The oldest 

 European woods are indeed native, that is, sprung from self-sown 

 seed, or from the roots of trees which have been felled for human 

 purposes ; but their growth has been controlled, in a variety of 

 ways, by man and by domestic animals, and they almost uni- 

 formly present more or less of an artificial character and arrange- 

 ment. Both they and planted forests — which, though certainly 

 not few, are of comparatively recent date in Europe — demand,, 

 as well for protection as for promotion of growth, a treatment 

 different in some respects from that which would be suited to the 

 character and wants of the virgin wood. 



* The preservation of the woods on the former eastern frontier of France, 

 as a kind of natural abattis, was recognized by the Government of that 

 country as an important measure of military defence, though there have 

 been conflicting opinions on the subject. 



