SECRETARY'S REPORT. 59 



channels during the summer. Moreover, the winds, having 

 no Longer to blow over those immense forests, under the shade 

 of which they were refreshed, and where they were impregnat- 

 ed during the dry weather with a warm moisture which they 

 spread over the country, no longer bear with them freshness 

 and life; forced, on the other hand, to blow over large extents 

 of country parched by the sun, they become hot, and bear with 

 them heat and sterility. Consider what North America was 

 on the arrival of the Europeans. The soil, covered with dense 

 forests throughout nearly its whole extent, offered to its occu- 

 pants only frosts and snows for half the year ; but the Euro- 

 peans changed this state of things ; the draining of stagnant 

 waters, and, still more, the clearing of woods, which, they 

 effected soon after their settlement, were not long iu dimin- 

 ishing the abundance of rains, and consequently drying the soil 

 and rendering it warmer. Now, the Americans enjoy the ad- 

 vantages of their labor and industry ; but let them take care 

 not to pass the line of demarcation, which indicates the quantity 

 of wood to be preserved, in order to have always the quantity 

 of water necessary to the fertility of the soil ; let them take 

 care, especially, not to touch those grand forests, which, by 

 their position, are in the way to arrest the clouds." 



The grand old forests of Massachusetts have, unfortunately, 

 long since been " touched ; " and if they had not, the arm of the 

 government even could hardly protectUhem from the hands of 

 individual proprietors at the present prices of wood. The 

 remedy for this evil would be, as the writer just quoted sug- 

 gests, to form new plantations of wood in elevated places 

 from which it has been cut, and to increase it in others where 

 there seems not to be enough of it to produce the effect de- 

 sired. In some locations, it would be a source of profit to the 

 individual and the public to plant a large part of the poor soil 

 with forest trees. It is, however, a well-established fact, that 

 the forests of this State are at the present moment actually 

 increasing in extent, though most of them are of a young 

 growth.* 



Professor Espy, whose Philosophy of Storms has given him 



* A reference to my last Annual Report will show the manner of forming planta- 

 tions of pines. 



