88 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



There is the Roman Canipagna, once the glory of Etruscan industry and 

 civilization. "Roman conquests, rapacity and cupidity destroyed the 

 neighboring forests, and turned the fertile and beautiful plains into a 

 pestilential morass where now only a few shepherds and swineherds drag 

 out a miserable and precarious existence." The author of "The Cities and 

 Cemeteries of Etruria" (2d Ed. 1, p. 16) says that the unhealthy state of 

 the neighborhood of the old Etruscan capital, the ancient Veii, spread to 

 the whole campagna, "which in very early times was studded with towns, 

 but under the Roman domination became, what it ever since has remained 

 a desert, whose wide surface is rarely relieved by habitation." 



So in Magna Grecia, in Lombardy, in Palestine, in the Valley of the 

 Euphrates, in any and every part of the world where the forests have been 

 literally wasted under the ignorance and greed of man, civilization has 

 reverted into barbarism. The sequestered deserts have made humanity 

 as desolate in body and character as are the howling winds among the ruins 

 of ancient temples on those once forested and luxuriant plains. 



We of the West, boasting of our liberty and national wealth, are pro- 

 voking the very causes that destroyed oriental civilization. The health 

 boards of the great cities of Europe and the United States give statistics, 

 showing that vast multitudes of young children die every year for want of 

 the pure, fresh air which trees and plants furnish fit for breathing. Dr. John 

 H. Ranch, in his "Report on Public Parks," with special reference to 

 the city of Chicago, "gives a series of facts, clearly proving that the 

 infection and diffusion of malaria or noxious emanations are arrested by 

 trees, whose structure and canopy of foliage act in a threefold capacity 

 first, as a barrier to break the flow, second, as an absorbent of those eman- 

 ations, and third, as eliminators of oxygen." 



GUARDIAX OF HEALTH. 



Springs and wells are more uniform in the woods than in the open, and 

 purer and cooler. The forest is the guardian of the people's health. It 

 wards off germ diseases. It fits the gases for blood vitalization. It generates 

 nitrifying elements under its leafy and moist floor for the growth of our 

 advanced plants. By its network of roots it sups up the stagnant water 

 that would otherwise breed pestilences. Dangerous bacteria found in 

 crowded cities and towns does not trouble wooded districts. Biederman's 

 Ceneralblatt (Germanic) affirms that "the innumerable leaves and branches 

 of a forest in a manner filter the air, and retain the micro-organisms which 

 float in the lower grounds; besides woods cut the cold and dry winds so 

 dangerous to the organs of respiration, and render the temperature more 

 uniform." The air in treeless streets and badly ventilated rooms cannot 

 produce healthful assimilation of blood and tissue, and germ diseases are 

 there breeded. Wheat rust, potato blight and black rot are evidences of 

 non-oxidized tissues. It is a well-known fact that rheumatic and catarrhal 

 troubles are quite common in treeless regions. The free range of acces- 

 sive hot and cold winds, depleting vital action, favor the development of 

 malicious compounds in the blood. In view of the correlation between un- 



