" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 9 



REBOISEMENT IN FRANCE. 



Dr. Brown's valuable work on " Reboisement in France," which con- 

 tains the essence of many previous books on the same subject, and notably 

 that of M. Surell's " Etude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes" deals ex- 

 clusively with the causes, consequences and correctives of the Alpine tor- 

 rents; proves that man is responsible for them, exhibits their appalling 

 effects, and describes what measures have been or ought to be taken, to 

 check the growth of this terrible evil. Dr. Brown, page 46, alludes to 

 the torrent producing cause as follows: " Seeing then a very remarkable 

 double fact; everywhere where there are recent torrents, there are no more 

 forests; and wherever the soil has been stripped of wood, recent torrents 

 have been formed; so that the same eyes which have seen the forests felled 

 on the slope of a mountain, have there seen incontinently a multitude of 

 torrents. The whole population of this country (the sub-Alpine region) 

 may be summoned to bear testimony to these remarks. There is not a 

 commune where one may not hear from old men, that on such a hillside 

 now naked and devoured by the waters there have been formerly tine 

 forests standing, without a torrent." Nothing can be simpler than the 

 relationship of cause and effect in this case. 



A FEW OF THE FRUITS FROM WHOLESALE FOREST DESTRUCTION. 



A little over two years ago the following appalling particulars appeared 

 under the heading of " The Unfortunate States" in the London Evening 

 Standard, and reappeared in the Melbourne (Australk) Daily Telegraph 

 of September 20th, 1890 : 



" The United States are at present suffering from a varied series of calamities. 

 Daring tbe last few months cyclones have again and again swept over broad acres 

 of the country, and now within the space of four and twenty hours earthquakes, 

 rainstorms and tornadoes have been doing their worst to make many parts of the 

 country, from New York to the Rocky Mountains, less endurable than ever. . 



. The torrents ot rain commenced, no doubt, with the tornadoes, which 

 have, however, been more destructive, while the latter have not, it seems, extend- 

 ed over so wide an extent as u^ual. Tlie most aggravating feature about these 

 great wind-storms is that by no possible contrivance can they be either lessened 

 in violence or their effects diminished by one iota. On the contrary, as time 

 advances and the country gets more thickly settled (on deforested soil] their 

 destructiveness mutt necessarily become greater (the italics are mine). All 

 that science is likely to ascertain regarding their origin, nature and progress, have 

 been already garnered into ample repertories of American ineterology, and 

 though, thanks to the recent researches of Farrell, Davis and Hogan, the theory 

 of the cyclone and tornado is now almost perfect. This perfection affords no hope 

 of the future bringing any relief to the sorely-tried dwellers in the western States. 

 The many peculiarities of the American climate are due to the unique position of 

 the new world, and especially of the United States, in being placed between two 

 oceans, and bounded on the south by a tropical sea like the Gulf of Mexico, and 

 on the north by the eternal ice of the Polar ocean. Its breadth is also productive 

 of inconvenient consequences, thus while the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the Con- 

 tinent are, so far as they can be reached by the moist breezes from either ocean in 

 the enjoyment of a plentiful rainfall, the central region of the prairies is dry and 

 arid for the greater part of the year, extremely cold in winter, and more than 

 usually warm in summer. The latter circumstance, to a large ' extent, accounts 

 for this section of the United States being the scene of the violejit rainstorms and 

 wniilwincls which have of late years attracted more and more attention owing to 

 their frequency and the loss they cause to life and property. Earthquakes, though 

 by no means rare in the Mississippi valley, are neither so numerous or so violent 

 as in California. Whirlwinds are common features of every dry hot region, being 



