162 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 



EVIDENCES OF CLIMATIC CHANGES 



The United States, with an area of 2,968,700 square miles exclusive of 

 distant possessions, has 1,720,000 square miles of arid plains and treeless 

 prairie, almost 60 per cent of our territory. 



The great interior elevated plateau and mountain region where rain sel- 

 dom falls is increasing in aridity with no prospect of improvement under ex- 

 isting circumstances. And yet all this now arid territory was once the home 

 of magnificent forests, with a climate as moist as that which our Atlantic and 

 Gulf States now enjoy. 



There are no people of all the world who are more patriotic than Ameri- 

 cans, and if we can once realize the vast import of leaving to future gener- 

 ations a land arid, desolate, unproductive, infertile the life blood wrung out 

 by greedy, avaricious efforts of the present generation ; or a country fertile, 

 watered by natural streams, a land capable of maintaining the dense popu- 

 lation which will very soon inhabit it then will patriotism rise to that su- 

 preme character which shall demand that proper efforts be made to secure the 

 best results. 



EVIDENCES OF FOREST INFLUENCES IN THE PAST. 



I shall endeavor to point out some of the evidences of forest influences 

 in the past and draw inferences from these lessons which may lead us to an 

 appreciation of our responsibilities as a people, that the agricultural condition 

 may be improved. The span of human life is so brief, and the most careful 

 observations so incomplete, during any single generation, they are not con- 

 vincing when applied to regulations governing the elements. Yet the laws 

 which control and influence cloud movement, evaporation and precipitation 

 by forests are as positive as are those of gravitation or tidal motion, both the 

 latter of which are fully understood. But we have in Holy Writ a history 

 covering man}' centuries which would be indisputable even were it not cor- 

 roborated by contemporaneous writers, and this is convincing as to forest 

 influence. 



IN CANAAN. 



When the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire out 

 of the midst of a bush, a covenant was made that He would bring the Israelites 

 out of Egypt "unto a land flowing with milk and honey." The promise of 

 the Lord was repeated upon various occasions and after thorough preparation 



