CHAPTER XIV 

 FOREST INFLUENCES 



OPINION is very likely to go to extremes in everything, 

 but more especially is this true when there is very little 

 definite knowledge of the facts, and the imagination has 

 full play. The influence of forests on the natural phe- 

 nomena within and around them offers a splendidly vague 

 field for all kinds of fanciful theories. 



At first no one thought of any such influence. There 

 was nothing to bring it forcibly to the attention, and what 

 little was read of it in foreign books was taken for useless 

 theories of the detail-loving Germans. Moreover, the con- 

 ditions were not diversified enough to offer different view- 

 points. Every place was covered with woods and plenty 

 of it. There had been no experience with the open prairies, 

 or with cut-over mountain slopes. When the develop- 

 ment of the country pushed civilization out over the plains, 

 and the great commercial rivers of the East became spas- 

 modic in their flow with the clearing of the timber from 

 the mountains, people began to read on these subjects in 

 the histories of other countries. The newspapers took 

 the cue with a will, the possible results of deforestation 

 in this country were carried to the limit of the imagination, 

 and the theory of forest influence grew apace in the public 

 mind. Naturally, public opinion has gone to the other 

 extreme and it now attributes to the forest many ridicu- 

 lously impossible powers, but there is, nevertheless, a 



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