1877 J 201 [Prices 
According to Cesar and Tacitus, middle Europe was found by the Ro- 
mans heavily covered with forests, and in Gaul and Britain were the 
deeply shaded woods where the Druids had practiced their gloomy religious 
rites, and offered in sacrifice the victims of their terrible superstition. 
Now pass from eastward of Persia westward, and take a survey of both 
sides of the Mediterranean as far as the Atlantic ocean, and we behold 
countries on every hand stripped of their forests, with decrease of rains, 
with fallen rivers, extended deserts, and depleted populations. This 
change from plenty to poverty is justly ascribed mainly to the destruction 
of the forests, which exposed the lands to a burning sun. The waters 
were dried up, and the soil was washed away by floods, or driven off by 
the winds, or covered over by ever drifting sands. 
The following are the percentages of woodlands left in the once densely 
timbered countries of Europe where forests have not been adequately pro- 
tected: Naples, 9.43; Sardinia, 12.29 ; Italy, 20.7; Spain, 5.52 ; Portugal, 
4.40; France, 16.79; Belgium, 18.52; Holland, 7.10; Denmark, 5.50 ; 
Great Britain, 5; Switzerland, 15; while Germany yet has 26.3; Russia 
in Europe, 40; Sweden, 60; and Norway 66 per cent. of their surface in 
forests. 
The lessons taught us by the other continents of the Eastern Hemis- 
phere, are both to avoid the cause of aridity, and to repair in time the 
mischiefs caused by man’s improvidence. We have in the west our ‘‘bad 
lands,’’ our natural deserts, grassless and treeless, for want of water, and 
our grass covered prairies, also treeless, which can only be made productive 
of trees by the presence of water, and the absence,of fires. Waters must 
be had by rains, or be drawn from the earth, or saved in reservoirs or 
tanks, to be spent in irrigation. We also have our exhausted lands on the 
Atlantic seaboard, which only need rest from tillage, and to be sown with 
the seeds and planted with forest trees. 
What we can do for these may be seen by observing what has been be- 
gun to be done in other countries, not more favorably situated, where men 
have yet life and energy sufficing to repair ancestral delinquency. France 
has taken alarm and has begun the work of reparation. John Croumbie 
Brown has published a book of 851 pages entitled, ‘*Reboisement in 
France,’’ in which he describes the evils suffered, and the remedies 
of prevention and restoration. He shows the effect of stripping the 
mountains in east France of their trees has been to increase snow 
and land slides, which destroying that set in motion, also destroys that 
swept over in the descent, and that covered by the deposit. When 
the rains come, or the snows melt, the torrents come quick, are rapid and 
resistless. They undermine the banks, and carry destruction with them. 
Nature here again begins the work of restoration by scattering the seeds of 
the forest, and men have learned the wisdom of co-operating with Nature, 
and of letting her more alone. They now protect the forests, and the forests 
promote ‘infiltration, retention, and percolation of water through the soil 
and subsoil, on which they grow.’’ p. 38,50. In other Departments the like 
PROC. AMER. PHILOS. soc. XvIT. 100. Z. PRINTED JAN. 9, 1878. 
