26 Injuries resulting from excessive .Clearings. 



They will speak of winters of uniform but not extreme cold, and 

 steady and long-continued seasons for making maple sugar, and 

 other incidents of farm life, denoting a regularity in the return of 

 seasons, and a similarity in their character that does not now exist. 



110. In respect to loss of fertility, something may be ascribed to 

 the exhaustion of the soil by careless cultivation, and something to 

 the drainage of swamps and the deepening of water-courses. But 

 the most conspicuous difference in the general condition of the coun- 

 try, and the most obvious cause of this decline, is to be found in 

 the excessive clearing off of woodlands, and the loss of the equaliz- 

 ing tendencies which their presence occasioned. 



The Ruin that is brought upon Countries by the Clearing off of Woodlands. 



111. It is a familiar fact there are many regions in Asia and 

 Southern Europe, once exceedingly fertile and densely populated, 

 that are now utterly sterile and desolate. The country bordering 

 upon the Euphrates, and portions of Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Italy, 

 and Spain, are now incapable of cultivation from this cause. The Hon. 

 Geo. P. Marsh, in a work entitled " Man and Nature," and a later 

 edition entitled " The Earth as Modified by Human Action," has 

 devoted a large space to the discussion of this question. A more 

 recent illustration of these effects is published in the principal 

 French Journal of Forestry, 1 and, for comparison, we place by its 

 side a description of the same region only about fifty years before : 



(About 1876.) (About 1826.) 



"The Khanate of Hueharia pre- ". . . The finest provinces of 



sents a striking example of the con- Tartary remain to bo described, be- 



scquences brought upon a country by ing generally known under the name 



clearings. Within a period of thirty of Great Bucharia. . . . The 



y<ars, this was one of the most fertile most noted and fertile of all the 



regions of central Asia, a country provinces is that of Sogd, so named 



which, when well wooded and wat- from the river that flows through it. 



cred, was a terrestrial paradise. But 'For eight days,' says Iban Hankcl, 



within the last twenty-five years, a 'We may travel in the country of 



mania of clearing has seized upon Sogd and not be out of one delicious 



the inhabitants, and all the en-rat garden. On every side, villages, rich 



forests have been cut away, and the corn-fields, fruitful orchards." Conn- 



little that remained was ravaged by try houses, gardens, meadows inter- 



(1) Revue des Eaux et Forces, March, 1876, p. 93. 



