110 EFFECTS OF FORESTS ON MARSHES, 



In the same year, 1847, Becquerel published a work, entitled 

 Elements de Physique Terrestre et de Mineralogie, and six years later, 

 in 1853, he published another work, entitled Des Climats et de 

 Vinjliience qu exercent les sols Boises et non-hoissees, and in a paper 

 addressed to the Academy of Sciences he examines the subject of 

 forests both as to their commei'cial importance, and as to their 

 influence on climate. In this paper he casts a rapid glance at the 

 effects produced by the destruction of forests from the remotest ages 

 to our time. 



Forests, he shows, existed on the globe long befoi'e the appearance 

 of man, a fact proved by the immense coal deposits which are to be 

 found in every part of it, even in the polar regions. These deposits 

 consist of Equisetacea, Sigillaria, &c., particularly also of ferns of the 

 size of trees, instances of which are now only to be met with under 

 the tropics. In most parts of the old continent, the primitive life of 

 man was, as he shows, passed in forests, and increase of population 

 was the cause of the first attacks upon them ; but the greatest 

 devastations only date from the period when great conquerors cut 

 down and burnt the forests in which the peoples they wanted to 

 subdue had taken refuge. From the Ganges to the Euphrates, from 

 that to the Mediterranean, an extent of ground 1,000 leagues in 

 length and several hundred broad, was ravaged by wars during the 

 lapse of thirty centuries. Nineveh and Babylon, so celebrated for 

 their civilization. Palmyra and Balbeck, renowned for their opulence, 

 now offer nothing but ruins to the exploring gaze of the traveller, in 

 the iTdidst of deserts and s^vamps, once covered by luxuriant forests. 

 From the time of Sesostris to that of Mehemet II., Asia Minor was a 

 constant scene of unrelenting wars leading to similar results. The 

 land of Canaan, so highly praised in the Bible, is now little more 

 than a desert, and the whole coast of Africa along the Mediterranean 

 tells a similar story. 



Turning from historical considerations to the present state of forests 

 in France, he shows that similar operations, though not to the same 

 extent, were being cfirried on there, which could only tend to produce 

 similar effects. 



By Mr Marsh, who has himself given much attention to the 

 subject, it is stated that the subject of climatal change, with and 

 without reference to human action as a cause, has been much dis- 

 cussed by Moreau de Jormis, Dureau de la Malle, Arago, Humboldt, 

 Fuater, Gasparm, Becquerel, and many other writers, in Europe, and 



