" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE^NATIONS." 7 



their maturity, are all here now, and they are repeating to-day in a much 

 more vicious form the very acts of devastation which they performed in 

 other parts one, two, three, four and five thousand years ago, when Jacob 

 gathered his sons together in order that instructed by God he might 

 tell them what should befall them "in the latter days," To what does any 

 sane man imagine the Moat High to refer to but the last incarnations of 

 the twelve who were all gathered around Jesus 1800 years afterwards, and 

 who are all in the flesh at this moment ? For they had been with 'Him 

 " from the beginning" of time, and will be so at the end. 



"THAT WHICH HATH BEEN is NOW." 



Indeed the very identity of human actions in all ages, and in all 

 countries should suffice to convince those who have any understanding 

 that the same spirit of disobedience have been operating throughout. 

 Once we ravaged and desolated a portion only of the surface of the globe; 

 now we ar making haste to ruin the whole. Look at what we have done 

 by the wholesale denudation of forests all over the earth. Some of the 

 great lakes of Europe and Asia are gradually drying up, because the loss 

 by natural evaporation is no longer compensated for by the influx of tribu- 

 tary rivers; the volume of these being sensibly diminished by the destruction 

 of woods in those regions in which they have their source.* Thus, the level 

 of the Caspean Sea, we learn, is 83 feet lower than that of the Sea of Azoff, 

 and the surface of the Lake Aral is fast sinking. Twenty years ago it 

 was shown that very large portions of the Ligurian province of Italy, i. e., 

 the Genoese territory, had been washed away or rendered incapable of 

 cultivation in consequence of the felling of the woods. In Lombardy the 

 demolition of the forests on the Appenines has led to the most disastrous 

 results. The sirrocco now prevails on the right bank of the Po, injuring 

 the harvest, crops and vineyards; while the blasts of wind, which sweep 

 across the country from the south and south-west, now assume the violence 

 of hurricanes, and whole valleys are periodically visited with terrible in- 

 undations. In the district of Mugello all the mulberry trees have been 

 destroyed with the exception of those which were indebted to neighboring 

 buildings for a protection like that formerly afforded by the forests. 

 North of the Alps we find the cultivation of the orange and many other 

 fruits has had to be abandoned in certain situations on account of the late 

 spring frosts, which were unknown until the mountain ranges had been 

 stripped of their timber. Thirty years have sufficed to bring about these 

 climatic disturbances in the French Department of Ardeche, as also in 

 the plains of Alsace, where a much more genial temperature prevailed, as 

 in the United States of America and Australia, before the neighboring 

 forests were cut down. In Sweeden it has been observed that the spring 

 commences a fortnight later in these districts in which the woods had 

 been demolished than it did in the last century. 



France has suffered to an immense extent by the de-foresting process. 

 In one department alone, that of La Brieime, 200,000 acres which were 

 once covered with woods interspersed with pastures are now bare of tim- 

 ber, and have been converted into a dreary and malarious expanse of pools 

 and marshes. The same thing has happened on a larger scale in La 

 Sologne, where as much as 1,000,000 acres of land that were well wooded, 

 well drained, and productive, are now barren and desolate. This deplor- 

 able state of things is explained by a fact familiar to every forester, name- 

 ly, that, trees are instruments of drainage. Their roots often pierce 



