12 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 
IMPORTANCE OF FORESTS. 
At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, the greater portion of the 
United States east of the Mississippi River was covered with a dense forest. 
The Indian still claimed his home on the banks of these streams, subsisting on 
the game which was then so abundant, and such productions as nature pro- 
vided, unaided by the labor of man. 
For a thousand years the surface of the land had been enriched by falling 
leaves, decaying trunks and branches of ancient monarchs of the forest region, 
while mosses and ferns, decaying logs and thickets of shrubs made it a vast 
sponge to hold back the water which fell as rain and snow, to feed the springs 
and rivulets when the summer drouths should come. 
But the land in this condition could not support the civilized man who was 
now to take possession, and so the work of clearing away the timber has taken 
place increasing the area of open land from year to year, that it might become 
profitable through cultivation and thus support the growing population of the 
present day. 
Here and there tracts of woodland were left untouched by the pioneers, but 
subsequent owners have completed the work of destruction until many of our 
formerly wocded States might almost be classed as prairies. 
\We can still see the mouldering remains of Oak, Ash, Walnut and Chest- 
nut rails from a million miles of fences, which strongly impresses us with the 
abundance which once existed. 
With this radical change in clearing up so vast an area of timber, there 
have come several evil results. Lands which were so rich and mellow with 
accumulated vegetable mould, have been washed by beating rains, the 
soil transported to the delta of the Mississippi, leaving rocks and stiff, hard 
clay for the husbandman to waste his labor upon with scant remuneration. 
Springs and rivulets have long since ceased to flow except for a few hours 
during a heavy rain fall. Rivers rise with great rapidity and as quickly return 
to their ordinary low water stage. The Ohio becomes so low that wagons 
cross with farm produce along the usual channel for steamboats: and again it 
rises to the height of seventy-one feet, spreading for miles over the cultivated 
lands, and submerging cities along its banks. The soil no longer absorbs suffi- 
cient moisture during the season of rains to support vegetation in the time 
of drouth. 
Our prairie States appreciate the value of trees, and plant groves to aid in 
controlling the wind storms, guiding the air currents to a higher level, and 
