THE FOREST AS A CONDITION. 59 



which had preserved the cover of the higher 

 mountain ranges were abolished and the present 

 sad condition of things was inaugurated in Italy. 



Mesopotamia, once praised as the paradise of 

 fertility, where, according to Herodotus, the cul- 

 ture of the grape could not succeed on account 

 of its moisture, has become a sand waste, in which 

 the Euphrates, once an ample source of water sup- 

 ply, is drowned. Most of the springs and brooks 

 of Palestine, and with them the fertility still cele- 

 brated in the early middle ages, have gone. Greece 

 shows the progress of a similar decadence ; Sicily, 

 once the never-failing granary of the Roman Em- 

 pire, once well wooded, now entirely deforested, 

 suffers from repeated failures of crops. The so- 

 called fumari, deep gullies in gravel, filled with 

 washed debris, encroach after every rain upon the 

 fertile fields, emptying them of water in a few hours. 



The first definite expression of such relations 

 of forest cover to climate appears in a biography 

 of Admiral Almirante, written before 1540, by 

 the Spaniard, Fernando Colon, in the following 

 words : 



" The Admiral ascribed the many invigorating, 

 cooling rains, to which he was exposed while sail- 

 ing along the coast of Jamaica, to the extent and 

 density of the woods which covered the slopes of 

 the mountains, and adds that formerly Madeira, 

 the Canaries, and Azores enjoyed the same abun- 

 dance of water, but that since the woods which 



