bis APPEARANCE OF FORESTS. 3? 



time have equalled the elephant in bulk, we seem to have 

 been for years of the same size and our bulk unchanged. It 

 may seem to be so ; but it is not exactly so. Never have 

 we lifted a finger, never have we unconsciously winked, 

 but the act has occasioned a waste of tissues of the body ; 

 and as it is with these so it has been with every act of our 

 life ; and the food we have taken has gone to supply this 

 waste, and therefore have I spoken of these two processes 

 being correlative. If, however, we were by a well-known 

 practice to represent the measure of these processes at the 

 progressive stages of man's life by a line we should find 

 that the form taken by neither would be a straight line, 

 but that of a curve, starting from a low point, gradually 

 ascending, and again descending : little being eaten in 

 childhood ; more in youth and in manhood ; less again in 

 old age. But it would be found that the curve represent- 

 ing the waste and elimination, though similar in its general 

 outline differed from this in its curvature ; the curve 

 representative of the quantity of food assimilated in the 

 early life representing an excess above that of waste, 

 growth in stature and in bulk being a consequence ; with 

 the two curves approaching to parallelism in middle life : 

 but the assimilation being then slightly in excess of waste, 

 is accompanied by a slight increase in bulk but not in 

 stature ; while in old age the curve of assimilation is far 

 below that of waste and elimination, with the accom- 

 panying result that he who was once a strapping youth, and 

 presented afterwards a noble manly figure, has become a 

 little wee, wee old man. 



Thus has it been with forests in Europe. Once they 

 covered extensively the whole land, now they are reduced 

 in most lands to a limited area, and in many localities 

 they have entirely disappeared, while in others, though 

 they still retain a footing, they look like things which are 

 ready to perish and vanish away. 



