90 The Great World's Farm 



entirely absent, is more or less scanty, and more or less 

 peculiar, because it is especially adapted to the special 

 circumstances of its situation. 



The soil of the desert may, or may not, be poor, but 

 it is the want of water which renders these regions com- 

 paratively barren. 



Well -watered, the Kalahari Desert might, it is said, be 

 one of the richest grazing lands in the v/orld; and the utter 

 barrenness of certain tracts of the Sahara is owing merely 

 to the lack of rain, for the soil beneath the sand is actu- 

 ally rich, and is not only quite capable of supporting vege- 

 table life, but is extremely fertile wherever there is 

 moisture. 



The other marked characteristic of desert lands is the 

 dearth, if not absence, of trees, and the question we have 

 now to consider is whether these two characteristics — the 

 want of water and the scarcity of all vegetation, but espe- 

 cially of trees — are brought about the one by the other. 



Vegetation cannot thrive, though it may manage to 

 exist, without a regular supply of water; but does vege- 

 tation bring rain or increase the rainfall .'' 



There is no doubt whatever that where forests have 

 been recklessly destroyed there the climate has been most 

 seriously injured. The Ceylon coffee-planters cut down 

 forests to make more room for their plantations, and many 

 of them were ruined in consequence. The trees were 

 gone, but so, to a large extent, was the rain also; and the 

 additional space gained was valueless, for the coffee could 

 not grow for lack of moisture. 



So, also, the destruction of the olive-trees in Palestine 

 has diminished the rainfall there, and with the rainfall 

 the productiveness of the land, for centuries past. Now 



