92 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1895. 



floods, which are now dry and barren, with infrequent rains and dusty 

 river channels, along which, after a rare storm, impetuous torrents 

 rush with destructive force for a short time, and then dwindle rapidly 

 and soon disappear, leaving the stream-beds as dry as before. 



Those regions, in the days of their happy estate, were well wooded; 

 while now, in the days of their desolation, they are almost destitute of 

 forests. 



In ancient times Syria and the Holy Land, and all the region on 

 the southern shores of the Mediterranean, from the River Nile to the 

 Straits of Gibraltar, were fertile and well- wooded countries ; the very 

 garden territories of the earth. The hills were clothed with groves of 

 olive, sycamore, cedar, and palm trees. The low lands produced, in 

 rich abundance, wheat, barley, figs, pomegranates, milk, and honey. 

 Everywhere springs gushed forth from the well-watered soil, and 

 brooks and rivers flowed through the valleys. In those early days a 

 teeming population flourished upon the productions of the soil, and 

 carried their civilization into the surrounding countries. But now the 

 hillsides are no longer covered with forests, and exhibit bare and pre- 

 cipitous rocks, while dusty and burned-up soil covers the low lands, 

 where frequently not a vestige of vegetable or animal life can be seen 

 for hundreds of miles around. 



When the tree-hating Arabs and Moors overran these countries, 

 they cut down and burned up nearly all the trees then standing, and 

 thereby produced a change in climate and atmosphere which has made 

 this primitive garden soil a desolate waste. 



But the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean are not 

 the only places which have suffered by the destruction of forests. 

 Everywhere, the world over, the greed of men, when unrestrained by 

 law, has cut down the forests without stopping to consider the conse- 

 quences. And many tracts of land which were formerly partially 

 covered with stately forests, and where the soil was well watered and 

 fertile, are now almost arid wastes. Austria, as a whole, is a well- 

 wooded country ; but its shore provinces around the Adriatic Sea are 

 almost denuded of forests, and the land is little better than a desert. 

 In ancient times the hardwood timber of these provinces supplied the 

 Romans with materials for their ships and buildings ; and at a later 

 day this timber, in large quantities, was used for ship-building and 

 pile foundations in Venice, when she was in her glory and queen of 

 the seas ; and in the sixteeutii and seventeenth ceutui'ies the merchants 

 of Holland and England purchased and carried away the rest of it. 

 After the forests had disappeared the native inhabitants dug up the 



