138 "Mature Stufcies in Berkshire. 



the valleys are sure of enrichment. The soil will not 

 grow poor. The trees on the heights will furnish 

 dressing and furnish it for nothing. But cut away 

 the trees and the soil has lost its feeders. It grows 

 poor, thin, and meagre. The fields below are equally 

 losers. They have been deprived of their best friends. 

 There is many a region in this country where the 

 hills and the mountains have been denuded of their 

 trees, which is now too barren to do more than 

 support a meagre crop of huckleberry bushes. The 

 secret of this poverty lies in the fact that the settlers 

 and their farmer-descendants have squandered their 

 woodlands ; and he who wastes his fruitful trees lays 

 waste the very soil beneath his feet. 



He commits a blunder even worse than this. He 

 is accessory to the destruction of that soil altogether. 

 He opens the door for the entrance of two foes of the 

 harvest, — drought and freshet. The trees are our 

 great defence against these two enemies of fertility 

 and abundance ; and singularly enough the two are 

 exactly opposite in their nature, — excess of wet and 

 excess of dryness. Woods and their undergrowth 

 are man's only protection against inundations, and 

 the only means by which these floods held back can 

 be stored up for distribution through whole seasons. 

 The reason, however, is simple enough. Let the 

 hillsides be wooded, and the roots of the trees, with 

 the soil they accumulate, the mosses, and the veget- 

 able mould, make a spongy, oozy mass, which holds 

 the falling showers and the heavy rains, and lets the 



