124 



The intimate connection of the forests with the meteorologi- 

 cal character of countries, is too well known and understood to 

 provoke incredulity. Countries periodically destitute of rain, 

 and those where severe droughts may at any season occur, have 

 been made or become so by the indiscriminate destruction of 

 their woods ; the cooling and condensing properties of lofty 

 growing vegetation arresting and depositing the moisture al- 

 ways present in the atmosphere. In the newer States, where 

 timber is only to be sought in narrow belts, and this too often 

 of inferior sort, bordering the larger streams, droughts, such as 

 New England Avith its green woods and piny clad hills, hap- 

 pily as yet has never known, are always to be apprehended. — 

 It is by no means a fair inference, that because the drier por- 

 tions of such States, like the rolling prairies, are treeless and 

 their herbage the coarser grasses, that they will not produce a 

 timber growth : the reason lies in the practice of annual burn- 

 ing, and in consequence of this conflagration, the inability of a 

 young woody growth to appear. When this savage treatment 

 of the soil shall cease, when Agriculture shall convert these 

 broad acres into farms, and an enlightened policy shall plant 

 the greatest variety of timber possible, the most frightful desert, 

 may blossom like the rose, and the parched surface be mois- 

 tened with dews and gush with brooks aud streams. 



A celebrated naturalist, resident for many years in California, 

 for researches among her forests, in speaking of the Red-Wood, 

 a gigantic cypress, has observed this same result, where it cov- 

 ers the country with its growth. This species acts especially 

 in no small degree in condensing the fogs and mists, turning a 

 heavy fog into a rain as it strikes its limbs and tops, thorough- 

 ly wetting the earth and supplying springs of water during the 

 usual dry seasons. The crops on the Coast Range are not liable 

 to fail ; and the springs in the vicinity are never in want of a 

 full supply of water. So valuable are the services of these 

 noble forest trees, that on their future and possible destruction, 

 California will become a desert ; on their safety depends the 

 welfare of the State. 



