238 RELATION OF TEEES TO THE SOIL. 



the older inhabitants that these barren fields were since 

 their childhood covered with forest. This wood cannot 

 be restored, because the soil has been washed down from 

 the surface into the plains below, and nothing remains to 

 support a new growth of trees. And then I think, if our 

 predecessors, instead of wrangling about theology, had left 

 its mysteries to be explained by their pastors, and studied 

 some of the plain laws of meteorology, this devastation 

 had not taken place ! 



If these rising grounds, like most of the hills in New 

 England, have a granite foundation and a comparatively 

 barren surface soil, forests are the only means which can 

 be used by nature to render them productive or useful in 

 any way to the prosperity of agriculture. Were they 

 stripped of trees, they could not long maintain their 

 original fertility ; for there is nothing to prevent the soil 

 from washing down their sides, nothing to prevent inun- 

 dations from copious rains, nothing to prevent their be- 

 coming rapidly parched by drought during a great part 

 of every summer. Hence a mountain that is covered 

 with a dense forest, how thin and meagre soever the soil 

 may be from which the trees derive their support, is a 

 source of perpetual fertilization to the lands below. 

 MiUions of living creatures, which are harbored in these 

 woods, annually perish, leaving their remains upon the 

 ground to fertilize it and increase its bulk. During their 

 lifetime also, besides various substances M'hich they have 

 manipulated, they are constantly leaving deposits of many 

 kinds upon the surface ; and if the quantity thus spread 

 upon a single acre of woodland could be measured, we 

 should be astonished at the amount. 



By means of forests, therefore, in favorable situations, 

 a farmer obtains something apparently out of nothing, 

 and makes the barren rocks and hills the sources of a 

 part of the substances with which he fertilizes his grounds. 



