17 



more waste land, and intended to plant it all. These woods were of all the usual 

 sorts of timber, fir, beech, chestnut, larch, etc. But oaks were the favorite and 

 succeeded extremely well in every sort of soil. 



" Thus can good w>ves, when wise, in every station, 



" On man work miracles of reformation, 



" And were such wives more common, their husbands would endure it, 



" However great the malady, a loving wife can cure it. 



" And much their aid is wanted, we hope they'll use it fairish, 



" While barren ground, where wood should be, appears in every parish." 



TREES FOR SHELTER. 



Fuller in his "Practical Forestry' very truthfully says that pioneers in 

 heavily wooded regions are usually anxious to make a clearing, and as every tree 

 felled not only increases the area which he is to cultivate, but extends his view, 

 the axe is often kept in use long after there is any necessity for the purpose of 

 obtaining land for cultivation. In a few years the settler who was at first so 

 anxious to open up the country, finds he has gone a little too far in this direction, 

 for his own comfort and that of his animals, for on taking clown the screen, he 

 has not only admitted the cold winds of winter, but those of summer sweep over 

 his fields, driving away needed moisture whip the fruit from his trees before 

 it is ripe, and otherwise cause loss that might have been prevented. 



It is then that he begins to feel the need of protection, and to wish that his 

 house and outbuildings were located by the side of some friendly forest or grove. 



The hygroscopicity of humus or vegetable earth is much greater than that of 

 any mineral soil, and consequently forest ground, where humus abounds, absorbs 

 the moisture of the atmosphere more rapidly and in larger proportion than com- 

 mon enrth. The condensation of vapour by absorption develops heat, and con- 

 sequently elevates the temperature of the soil which absorbs it, together with that 

 of air in contact with the surface. Von Babo found the temperature of sandy 

 ground thus raised from 68 to 80 F., that of soil rich in humus from 68 to 88 F. 



The question of the influence of the woods on temperature does not, in the 

 present state of our knowledge, admit of precise solution, and, unhappily,- the 

 primitive forests are disappearing so rapidly before the axe of the woodman that 

 we shall never be able to estimate with accuracy the climatological action of the 

 natural wood, though all the physicial functions of artificial plantations will, 

 doubtless, one day be approximately known. 



But the value of trees as a mechanical screen to the soil they cover, and often 

 to ground far to the leeward of them, is most abundantly established, and this 

 agency alone is important enough to justify extensive plantation in all countries 

 which do not enjoy this indispensable protection. 



2 (F.) 



