MAN AND NATURE. 273 



the most vigorous struggle has existed and, despite 

 war, is still going on between a new and energetic 

 people and the native covering of the soil. The forest 

 here must be extirpated or thinned, to make room for 

 a more profitable vegetation ; and a striking feature in 

 American landscape, even in the older States, is the 

 crop of corn growing luxuriantly amidst the stumps of 

 ancient trees. But while this destruction of the native 

 woods of the country is yet in active progress, some 

 prospective alarm has arisen lest it should be carried 

 too far. And as this question involves very directly the 

 influences which forests have upon the climate and phy- 

 sical conditions of a country, we will quote part of a long 

 passage from Mr. Marsh, who is himself a strenuous 

 supporter of forest claims over the globe, and in more 

 than one place presses strongly his complaints against 

 mankind at large, as the habitual destroyers of what 

 Nature has done to enrich and beautify its surface : 



With the disappearance of the forest all is changed. 

 At one season the earth parts with its warmth by radiation 

 to an open sky, and 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 the 

 fervors of summer and seared by the rigors of winter. Bleak 

 winds sweep unresisted over its surface, drift away the snow 

 that sheltered it from the frost, and dry up its scanty mois- 

 ture. The precipitation becomes as irregular as the tempera- 

 ture ; the melting snows and vernal rains, no longer absorbed 

 by a loose and bibulous 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 

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

 covering of leaves, deprived of the fibrous rootlets which held 



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