ANCIENT Babylonia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, once upon 

 a time the center of prosperity contains now scarcely 

 one-half of its former population. Crop failures are an 

 annual occurrence and the country is cursed with poverty. 

 The cities of Ninevah, Babylon, and Memphis, once the seat 

 of culture, refinement and riches, are now in ruins, and desert 

 sands are drifting over the remnants of past splendor. 



Striking Examples. 



Palestine, its hills, formerly fringed with the cedar of Le- 

 banon, a land where milk and honey floweth, is now a land of 

 crop failures and desolation. Morrocco, Algiers, Tripoli, and 

 Tunis, once the graneries of the Roman empire, are now large- 

 ly a desert waste, here and there only an oasis breaking the 



>litude, formerly inhabited by thriving communities now 



irnishing a home only for roaming bands of Bedouins. 



Sicily, paid an annual tribute of 80 million bushels of wheat 

 the Roman Caesars. Now she is scarcely able to produce 



rer fifteen million bushels. Greece, once . fertility itself is 



>w suffering from repeated crop failures. 



Results of Depredation. 

 The downfall of a prosperous nation is to be attributed to 

 lany reasons, but the transformation of a rich and' fertile 

 country to that of poverty and desolation is attributed to one 

 reason only, to deforestation. 



These examples are cited, not as a proof that the same fate 

 may take place here, by no means, but simply to bring out the 

 fact that forests are essential to the welfare of a nation. 



M'illiam Pcnii, in his Charter of Rights, provided that for every 

 five acres .of forest cleared one acre should be left in woods. 

 Foresters today maintain that on an average one-fifth of every 

 farm should be in timber. 



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