INFLUENCE OF WOODLANDS UPON STREAMS. • 293 



far less water than formerly. Its sources are in Switzerland, where, 

 perpaps, more than in any other country in Europe, the woods have 

 been considered common property, and the uprooting has beeu carried 

 on in the most reckless way.' 



Dr. Lindley, in a leading article in the Oardner^s Chronicle (April 2, 

 1850), says that the effect of felling large quantities of timber in dimia- 

 ishiug atmospheric moisture is notorious. To say nothing of the altered 

 climate of these islands consequent upon the removal of our superfluous 

 ancient forests, there are other and more recent cases which may be 

 safely quoted : 



On the 27th February, 1856, the subject was brought before the Chamber of Deputies 

 by M. Ladoucette, deputy for the Moselle, who adduced numerous modern iustauces of 

 humid countries having become arid in consequence of the immoderate clearing of 

 forests. He cited Fonteney and Provence as places where it had led notoriously to 

 wells and pits becoming dry, and called as evidence to the same effect the prefect of 

 the Haute-Garouno, who asserted that in the whole of the Eastern Pyrenees and tho 

 Hdrault, the destruction of timber had been calamitous. The temperature became 

 higher, wells and water-courses diminished, while the dryness of the climate was 

 greatly increased. Similar evidence was collected by Professor Laurent, of Nancy, of 

 whose numerous statements the following may be taken as specimens : 



After referring to the desolation brought upon so many nations of the East bv the 

 loss of their forests — upon Babylon and Nineveh, Thebes, Memphis, Carthage, Pales- 

 tine, and the Troad — ho concludes by quoting similar examples in the recent history 

 of France. In the Vosges the destruction of forests has gone too far, so that the humid 

 vapors, so necessary to plants, have diminished, while tho soil has become arid and 

 inundations frequent. 



In tho department of the Card it did not rain in 1837 for nine months. Such a dry- 

 ness was not in the memory of man. The people ascribed it to tho successive destruc- 

 tion of the mountain-forests. The town of Nismes, whose name is derived from tho 

 forests that surronud it, exhibits little except sterile wastes. At Berjiers, three hun- 

 dred members of tbe agricultural society reported in 1797 that tho vast forest which 

 once sheltered that place having disappeared, the loss of the olive-crop is tho inevi- 

 table consequence. 



The authorities of the Ishve represented in 1793 that the destruction of forests had 

 altered tho temperature, augmented dryness, and seriously affected the crops. As to 

 wells and pits, their supply, too, had, before 1838, been most seriously diminished.' 

 Violent storms and torrents of rain, indeed, fell from time to time, but they ran off the 

 land without soaking into it, and tho subterranean reservoirs gained nothing. In 

 short, ancient mill-streams were gone, or flowed only in winter; and the old head- 

 waters of the river affluents had disappeared in places where the woods had been 

 grubbed up. 



An effect which, although local, is not less distinctly attributable to 

 its cause, has beeu observed of late years along a belt of country adja- 

 cent to the river Saint Lawrence, on the northern border of Jefferson 

 County, New York — on the north side of the river in Canada, and upon 

 the Thousand Islands. A considerable part of the surface is there occu- 

 pied by ridges and low elevations of a reddish gneiss rock. The surface 

 was formerly for the most part shaded by trees and shrubbery that found 

 root in the narrow pockets of soil and little ravines among the rocks. 

 But most of this growth has been cut off', and the surface is now exposed 

 to the full rays of the sun, so that the rocks become heated by day and 

 retain their warmth in the night. It is now observed that the dews are 

 less frequent, and that the currents of air, just reaching the point at 

 which precipitation would take place, become rarefied in passing over 

 these warm surfaces, so that gentle showers dry up as they approach and 

 leave a belt of country distinctly affected by drought, but a few miles 



1 Consul Wisner's communication to Department of State, November, 1673. 



* General M. E. Patrick, formerly president of the New York State Agricultural 

 Society, in an address made some years since, stated that statistics of the pump-trade 

 show a gradual increase in the length of tubing required. In Central Illinois, this in- 

 crease in the depth to water in wells had increased about 9 feet within tho last ten 

 years. 



