DEVASTATION OF THE EAST. Ill 



by Noali Webster, Ferry, Drake, and others, in America, and his 

 work cited is a valuable repository of infonnation, collected by 

 him from their works and other sources, combined with observations 

 made by himself, and conclusions at which he has arrived, all of 

 which are in accordance with those here stated. 



Besides the writers now named, Professor Laurent, of Nancy 

 Forest School, has given attention to the s'lbject, and has traced the 

 desolation which has been brought on the former homes of teeming 

 life in the East to the destruction of trees. And a writer in the 

 Edinburgh Review, for October 1875, on the subject of forest manage- 

 ment, citing the work of Professor Laurent, says, " Babylon, Thebes, 

 Memphis, and Carthage, now waste and even pestilential, were 

 formerly the very hives of human life. The remains of conduits 

 canals, cisterns, and pools, throughout Palestine, and especially 

 through the now desert couutiy east of the Jordan, are such as to 

 explain the accounts on record of the former population of these 

 regions. So thorough has been not only the change of climate, but 

 the denudation of soil, caused by the cutting down of the olives, 

 palms, and other trees of Palestine during the Roman war, that it 

 would be impossible to attach any credit to the most venerable 

 accounts of the former fertility, beauty, and population of the Holy 

 Land — its brooks and fountains gushing out of valley and hills, being 

 now replaced by bare and solid rock— without the knowledge that we 

 have acquired of the fatal effect of the destruction of timber." This 

 may be considered by others, as it is by me, questionable, but it 

 may be received as indicative of the conviction of the writer, that 

 the connection of the destruction of the forests, eighteen hundred 

 years ago, with the present aridity, as cause and effect, is established 

 beyond all question. 



It is alleged by Mr Draper, while reporting his conclusions from 

 an extensive collating of meteorological records in Amei'ica, which 

 wei-e to the effect that there had been no diminution of the rainfall in 

 the districts in which these observations had been made, that, — 

 "Against this conclusion, which is based essentially on recorded 

 instrumental observations, I cannot admit the force of any alleged 

 historical facts ; " and expressing an opinion that the devastation of 

 ancient empires which is attributable in part to drought, is attribut- 

 able in a great measure to war, and consequences of war other than 

 the destruction of forests, he says, — " It is useless to draw any 



