APPENDIX 329 



covered with forest and fertile, though now dried-up and desert. 

 The same story is told of the region of the great Assyrian Empire, 

 once flourishing, now fallen to decay. Beneath the drifting sands 

 of the Gobi desert Dr. Sven Hedin discovered the dwellings of a 

 teeming population, whose cities, built of timber, stood on a fertile 

 and well-watered plain. Now a few tamarisk bushes alone are 

 found half buried in the dunes, and the great rivers of the central 

 plateau are lost in ever accumulating and ever drifting sand. 

 The absence of vegetation reacts on the climate, and the dry 

 climate reacts on the water-supply, until absolute desert is the 

 result. 



Such a catastrophe is not likely to happen in the British Isles, 

 where the moist airs from the Atlantic assist vegetation ; but, in 

 a modified degree, the loss of shelter occasioned by absence of 

 timber and the baring of the soil to the vicissitudes of climate 

 must cause a great loss of fertility. Even close to the sea, in the 

 Landes, a great area of Southern France was becoming a desert 

 until it was planted with Pinus marithna. 



The same treatment of immense areas of waste land reclaimed 

 from the Baltic in the Heide of North Germany, where Scotch 

 fir timber is grown now to the value of ^100 to the acre, is 

 another remarkable instance of the success of State forest culture 

 in restoring the forests and protecting the soil, whereby the 

 climate is beneficially affected. 



The lessons to be learnt in the matter of forest culture from Lessons from 



1 • 1- XT 1 • 1 • 1 /• . , observation of 



observation 01 Nature, which assist the forester to arrive at the Nature in un- 

 most economical and successful methods of growing good crops forest's!^ 

 of timber, are worthy of attention. 



First, as to the position, aspect, and soil which suit the various Nature selects 

 kinds of trees. Nature makes an invariable rule that, wherever the position, 

 proper conditions exist, there the suitable kinds are to be found, 

 and are sure to flourish. For example, in the Himalayas the 

 southern sides of the ranges are clothed with oaks and deciduous 

 trees. On the northern slopes are silver fir and spruce, while the 

 lower sunny slopes are covered with the heat-loving Pinus 

 /ongzfolia, not mixed or jumbled up anyhow, but each separate 

 species in its own legitimate place. We do not see the wrong 

 species planted in the wrong place, with the invariable result 

 — unhealthy trees, stag -headed, decayed at the roots, and 



