16 HAND-BOOK OF TREE-PLANTING. 



forces and bring ultimate injury upon himself. 

 In many cases he has been obliged to flee from 

 the desolation which his own reckless action has 

 produced. He has often changed a garden into 

 a desert, and has been compelled to migrate to 

 new regions in order to preserve his life. And 

 where evil has not come upon him to such an 

 insupportable extent, he has been obliged to 

 maintain his life under less pleasant conditions, 

 and attended with burdens and hardships which 

 otherwise might have been avoided. The Old 

 World is full of illustrations of this. 



We have been pursuing the same course. 

 But it is only recently that we have begun to 

 see and feel the evils which are threatening us. 

 Our forest wealth was so great, in many parts 

 of the country it is still so ample, that it is only 

 within a few years that our attention has been 

 drawn to the connection between the presence 

 or absence of trees and our personal and nation- 

 al welfare. It has been noticed that many of 

 our streams have been gradually diminishing in 

 volume. It has been noticed also that their 

 flow has become less uniform, that floods have 

 become more frequent, and that as these have 



