412 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



provisioned more than one hundred fifty 

 thousand men for a period of perhaps twenty 

 years, and supplied Hiram with one hundred 

 fifty thousand measures of wheat, with as 

 much barley, besides one hundred fifty thou- 

 sand gallons of wine, and a like quantity of 

 oil annually, from which we must understand 

 the country was rich and productive. These 

 forests have all been destroyed, with no re- 

 newal thereof, and with their destruction dis- 

 appeared the fertile soil. The rain-bearing 

 clouds still float above the mountains of 

 Syria, but they pass on over the bare and 

 heated rocks, and the brooks and small 

 streams of Palestine no longer exist, and 

 throughout Syria stone furnishes the only 

 material for building, and wood is as precious 

 as silver. 



May it not be true that the destruction of 

 Tyre and Sidon was in great part in conse- 

 quence of the destruction of these forests, 

 which has rendered that country a barren 

 desert, supplying a scanty sustenance to the 

 -parse population its beauty, its fertility, its 

 usefulness gone? So the physical geogra- 

 phers assure us. 



In "Sinai and Palestine," by Dean Stan- 

 ley, an authoratative record, appears the 

 following: 



"The countless ruins of Palestine, of 

 whatever date they may be, tell us at a 

 glance that we must not judge the resources 

 of the ancient land by it- pre-nit depressed 

 and desolate state. They -hmv us. not only 

 that 'Syria might support tenfold its present 

 population, and bring fortli tenfold its pres- 

 ent product,' but that it actually did so. And 

 this brings us to the question which eastern 

 travelers so often ask, and are asked on their 

 return, 'Can these stony hills, these deserted 

 valleys, be indeed the Land of Promise, the 

 land flowing with milk and honey?'' 



The effect and influence of forests on the 

 climate, health and water conditions of the 

 country is evidenced by the chronicles of the 

 Mosaic, the Roman and the Greek writers, 

 and many of their far-seeing priests prevent- 

 ed the destruction of the forests. The conse- 

 cration of groves to religious uses and to va- 

 rious mythological rites connected with them 

 is an evidence of the reverence the ancients 

 had for forests. Homer calls the mountain 

 woodlands the "habitations of the gods, in 

 which the mortals never felled the trees, but 

 where they fell from age when their time 

 had come;" and in his "Tree and Woodland 

 Nymphs," originating in springs, he suggests 

 the intimate relation of forests and springs. 



Aristotle, in his "National Economy," 

 points out that an assured supply of acces- 

 sible wood material is one of the "neces- 

 sary conditions of the existence of a city." 



Plato writes that the consequences of de- 

 forestation is the "sickening of the country." 

 Cicero, in one of his philippics, designates 

 those engaged in forest devastation as the 

 enemies of the public interests. 



Mesopotamia, one of the most sterile coun- 

 tries in the East, was once praised on ac- 



count of its fertility, where, according to 

 Herodotus, "the culture of the grape could 

 not succeed on account of the moisture;" 

 and the Euphrates River, once the source of 

 an ample water supply, is swallowed up in 

 this desert. 



Greece shows the progress of a similar 

 decadence. Sicily, once the never-failing 

 granary of the Roman Empire, while it was 

 well wooded, is now entirely deforested and 

 crop failures are the rule. Caesar and other 

 Roman writers describes the "vast forests" 

 throughout the entire territory. Since then, 

 thousands of square miles have been defor- 

 ested. Many countries, where the destruc- 

 tion has been most reckless, have taken sys- 

 tematic measures to control the destruction 

 and secure the reproduction of exhausted 

 areas. To this they have been driven, not only 

 by the lack of timber and fuel, but also by 

 the prejudicial effects exerted upon the cli- 

 mate and the irrigation of the country by 

 this denudation. 



In Denmark much of the wood-,, which at 

 one time covered nearly the whole country, 

 having been cut down to make way for 

 agriculture and to supply fuel and timber, 

 the vast area thus bared has become a sandy 

 desert. Parts of Bohemia, Hungary, and 

 Austria have been rendered practically val- 

 5S, because the growing forests were de- 

 stroyed. 



In France, the frequent inundations of the 

 last fifty years were caused, as is stated by 

 writers, by the deforesting of the sources of 

 the Rhone and the Saone. Since that time, 

 thousands of acres are annually planted, and 

 where the forests have been restored, the 

 condition- have changed for the better. 



In Encyclopedia Britannica, volume 6, 

 page 4. it is said: "llence, the essential dif- 

 nce 1 iet ween the climate of two countries, 

 the one well covered with forests, and the 

 other not, lies in this, that the heat of the 

 day is more equally distributed over the 

 twenty-four hours in the former case, and 

 therefore less intense during the warmest 

 part of the day; hence the nights are warmer 

 and the days are cooler in wooded districts." 

 \nd so it is also said, "Nothing is more cer- 

 tain than that forests not only prevent evap- 

 oration of moisture by protecting the sur- 

 face of the earth, but they serve to retain 

 the light clouds which otherwise would be 

 distributed until they contain sufficient con- 

 sistence to descend in rain or refreshing 

 mists." 



In the American Forest Congress in 1905 

 the Hon. John Lamb quoted the following 

 from Bernard Palissy, which is so pregnant 

 of truth that it will bear repeating: "For 

 when the forests shall be cut all arts shall 

 cease and they who practice them shall be 

 driven out to eat grass with Nebuchadnezzar 

 and the beasts of the field. I have at divers 

 times thought to set down in writing the 

 arts that would perish when there shall be 

 no more wood, but when I had written down 

 a great number, I did perceive that there 



