835 



forests is continued, for it brings with it increased consumption of 

 the products of the forest ; wood is required for houses, furniture, 

 wagons, and other implements, for bridges, posts, for fences, fuel for 

 cooking, and where the climate is cold, for warming the dwellings. 

 The consumption of wood increases further with industry, with navi- 

 gation and trade. Mining operations require timber, both for the 

 works and for fuel to smelt the metals and ores ; artizans and manu- 

 facturerers use large quantities of the products of forests ; dams 

 against rivers and seas require their shai'e, but above all, navigation. 

 The trunks of millions of trees are used up in ships and masts, in 

 order to connect the highlands and inland districts with the coasts, 

 and the coasts with each other, even beyond the ocean, ]n this way 

 civilization comes into hostile contact with the forests, and thus, under 

 like circumstances, the country in which civilization is oldest, possesses 

 the fewest woods. Hence forests are more sparingly met with in the 

 countries of the Mediterranean than northward of the Alps, and more 

 sparingly in the centre than in the north of Europe, so far as the cli- 

 mate is not an obstacle to the growth of timber. Have not, then, our 

 descendants to expect a great deficiency of timber — a deficiency which 

 may readily become disastrous ? Many public economists and phi- 

 lanthropists have assumed this to be the case, and many do still 

 assume it ; they depict the future destitution of timber in the darkest 

 colours, they loudly complain of the felling of wood, and they demand 

 that governments should prevent in time the ruinous consequences, 

 by limiting the free use of wooded estates. Yet even as I have 

 striven to demonstrate the groundlessness of the idea of the danger 

 which is feared of alteration of climate, by the diminution of the 

 forests in temperate countries, I hope also to be able in some mea- 

 sure to scatter the dark cloud which so many imagine they see hang- 

 ing over future generations in regard to the product of forests. That 

 which is true of so many other inconveniences following in the train 

 of civilization, holds also with this. It has its cure, in a great mea- 

 sure, in itself." 



Mail's Influence on. the Vegetable Clothing of the Earth. — " But 

 the influence of the Caucasian races, and of the Europeans in parti- 

 cular, in changing the distribution of characteristic plants, becomes 

 far more extensively evident when we look to the colonies established 

 in all climates, where in some cases the countries have passed wholly 

 into the possession of an European population. For they have not 

 only carried their own characteristic plants to the colonies, or those 

 also which they had previously transplanted into their own homes. 



