12 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 



IMPORTANCE OF FORESTS. 



At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, the greater portion of the 

 United States east of the Mississippi River was covered with a dense forest. 

 The Indian still claimed his home on the banks of these streams, subsisting on 

 the game which was then so abundant, and such productions as nature pro- 

 vided, unaided by the labor of man. 



For a thousand years the surface of the land had been enriched by falling 

 leaves, decaying trunks and branches of ancient monarchs of the forest region, 

 while mosses and ferns, decaying logs and thickets of shrubs made it a vast 

 sponge to hold back the water which fell as rain and snow, to feed the springs 

 and rivulets when the summer drouths should come. 



But the land in this condition could not support the civilized man who was 

 now to take possession, and so the work of clearing away the timber has taken 

 place increasing the area of open land from year to year, that it might become 

 profitable through cultivation and thus support the growing population of the 

 present day. 



Here and there tracts of woodland were left untouched by the pioneers, but 

 subsequent owners have completed the work of destruction until many of our 

 formerly wooded States might almost be classed as prairies. 



We can still see the mouldering remains of Oak, Ash, Walnut and Chest- 

 nut rails from a million miles of fences, which strongly impresses us with the 

 abundance which once existed. 



With this radical change in clearing up so vast an area of timber, there 

 have come several evil results. Lands which were so rich and mellow with 

 accumulated vegetable mould, have been washed by beating rains, the 

 soil transported to the delta of the Mississippi, leaving rocks and stiff, hard 

 clay for the husbandman to waste his labor upon with scant remuneration. 



Springs and rivulets have long since ceased to flow except for a few hours 

 during a heavy rain fall. Rivers rise with great rapidity and as quickly return 

 to their ordinary !<>\v water stage. The Ohio becomes so low that wagons 

 cross with farm produce along the usual channel for steamboats; and again it 

 rises to the height of seventy-one feet, spreading for miles over the cultivated 

 lands, and submerging cities along its banks. The soil no longer absorbs suffi- 

 cient moisture during the season of rains to support vegetation in the time 

 of drouth. 



Our prairie States appreciate the value of trees, and plant groves to aid in 

 controlling the wind storms, guiding the air currents to a higher level, and 



