«"ioned bj the extensive clearing of the forests, and tlie careless management, 

 or rather, the mismanagement of those entrusted with its performance ; and 

 these persons now must ascribe the largest share of the misery which has 

 and will befall them, to their selfishness, and tieir disregard of the lav/s of 

 nature. 



Timber protection is absolutely necessary for th« successful cultivation of 

 •certain crops and fruit-trees. Dussard maintains, that the mistral, the 

 dreaded northwest wind of France, whose chilling blasts are so fatal to ten- 

 der vegetation in spring, " is the child of man, the result of his devastations. 

 Under the reign of Augustus, the forests which protected the Cevennes, were 

 felled or destroyed by fire, en masse A vast country, before covered with 

 impeaet'able woods — powerful obstacles to the movement and even the 

 formation of hurricanes— was suddenly denuded, swept bare, stripped, and 

 soon after a scourge, hitherto unknown, struck terror over the land, from 

 Avignon to the Buches duEhone, and thence to Marseilles, and along the 

 whole maritime frontier. The people thought this wind a curse sent of God 

 They raised altars to it, and offered sacrifices to appease its rage." 



Professor Rosa, in the Polytechnic Journal for December, 1861, gives tbe 

 following: "To supply the extraordinary demand for Italian iron, occasioned 

 by the exclusion of English iron, in the time of Napoleon I., the Turnaces of 

 the villages of Bergamo were stimulated to great .activity. The ordinary 

 productions of charcoal not being sufficient to feed the furnaces and the 

 forges, the woods were felled, the copses cut before their time, and the whole 

 economy of the forest was deranged. At Piazzatore there was such a devas- 

 tation of the woods, and consequently such an increased severity of the cli- 

 mate, that maize no longer ripened. An association formed for the purpose, 

 effected the restoration of the forest, and maize flourished again in the fields 

 of Piazzatore " 



Similar ameliorations have been produced by plantations in Belgium. 

 Bande makes this statement : " a spectator placed on the famous bell towej 

 of the cathederal at Antw.erp, saw, not long since, oii the opposite side of 

 the Scheldt, OBly a vast desert plain; now he sees a forest, the limits of 

 which are confounded with the horizon. Let him enter within its shade. 

 The supposed forest is but a system of regular rows of trees, the' oldest of 

 which is not forty years of age- These plautations have ameliorated the 

 climate which had doomed to sterility the soil where they are planted. 

 While the tempest is violently agitating their tops, the air a little below is 

 still, and sands far more barren than the plateau of La Hague, have been 

 transformed, under their protection, into fertile fields." But to come still 

 nearer home ; many of those immigrants to Wisconsin, who came from Jfaw 

 York and Pennsylvania, look back with pleasure to the days when they gath- 

 ered peaches and plumbs, from the trees, growing wherever the seeds hap- 

 pened to take root ; but if they return again to that old homestead they 

 will find the primeval forests cut away and destroyed, and those trees dead. 



