STATEMENT. D 



epoch. But we find that man has made the forest to give 

 place to the garden and to the fruitful field produced by 

 man's device. He has handicapped the cereal and the 

 fruit -bearing tree ; he has burned or felled the forest; has 

 sown seeds of the vegetables he desired to grow ; has 

 promoted the growth of them by all means at his com- 

 mand, and has succeeded to an extent which he never 

 could have done had he sown his seed on the bare rock, 

 or on the sand dune or the heath, or upon the same spot 

 before it had undergone the preparation through which 

 it has passed. 



In view of this we may be led to conclude that one 

 important function of forests in terrestrial economy is to 

 utilise the area covered by them, and while so utilising it 

 to prepare it for being utilised still more by man when he 

 is so advanced in civilisation as to be able otherwise to 

 make use of it to the benefit of himself, his family, and his 

 people. But all is not gain. Evil as well as good has 

 followed in the wake of the artificial change. Marsh, in 

 continuation of the statement I have cited in regard to 

 the natural production of the forests on what was long 

 before a bare rock, tells : 



' With the extirpation of the forest all is changed. At 

 one season the earth parts with its warmth by radiation 

 to an open sky ; receives, at another, an immoderate heat 

 from the unobstructed rays of the sun. Hence the climate 

 becomes excessive, and the soil is alternately parched 

 by tha fervours of summer, and seared by the rigours of 

 winter. Bleak winds sweep unresisted over its surface, 

 drift away the snow that sheltered it from the frost, and 

 dry up its scanty moisture. The precipitation becomes 

 as irregular as the temperature ; the melting snows and 

 varied rains, no longer absorbed by a loose and bibular 

 vegetable mould, rush over the frozen surface, and pour 

 down the valleys seawards, instead of filling a retentive 

 bed of absorbent earth, and storing up a supply of moisture 

 to feed perennial springs. The soil is bared of its covering 

 of leaves, is broken and loosened by the plough, deprived 



