FORESTS AND THEIR USES. 7 



On the other hand, fruit-trees, in orchards and gardens, 

 large parks with ornamental trees, young plantations, 

 and other forms of vegetation, having to a large extent 

 replaced the forests, less disastrous consequences have 

 followed their diminution than have resulted in many 

 other countries, as for example in Spain, as well as 

 some portions of France. 



Forests, which are distributed so universally over 

 the surface of the globe, and are recklessly destroyed 

 in newly-colonized countries, without regard to con- 

 sequences, have important functions to perform in the 

 economy of nature. It is only in most recent times 

 that man has awakened to the consciousness, that in the 

 wholesale destruction of forests the entire aspect of a 

 country is changed, equilibrium disturbed, and the 

 advent of desolation threatened. The destruction of 

 forests in the Island of Cyprus, in order to furnish its 

 celebrated timber to the Romans, Jews, and other 

 nations, has reduced a paradise to a comparative 

 wilderness ; and the progress of similar destruction in 

 India aroused the Government to adopt a complete 

 system of forest conservancy in order to avert the 

 threatened evil. 



Humboldt, the great traveller, could not fail to 

 observe the influence of forests on the climate of a 

 country, and consequently we find him urging in his 

 writings attention to this subject. " By felling the 

 trees which cover the tops and the sides of mountains," 

 he says, " men in every climate prepare at once two 

 calamities for future generations ; want of fuel and 

 scarcity of water. Trees, by the nature of their 

 perspiration, and the. radiation from their leaves in a 



