158 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 
In the Orient, so long as the forests remained upon the higher elevations, 
the rain belt extended inland more than one hundred miles, but as the 
mountains were cleared of their trees, the desert encroached upon the fer- 
tile lands, gradually but surely, until all the land became arid. 
So the rainless plains of the United States have obtruded their aridity by 
slow degrees, as extensive forests were destroyed by fires, by ice and by man, 
until the Pacific has been reached throughout the greater part of California. 
The logical conclusion must be that forest covered elevations controlled 
the distribution of moisture through the atmosphere and abundant rains pre- 
vailed; but with the removal of these bodies of timber their influence was 
lost and aridity was the consequence. 
When we reflect upon the vast area and density of American forests 
which existed only a century ago, and the terrible destruction of wooded 
lands by forest fires as well as by the ax and see the extreme carelessness 
IN PETRIFIED FOREST 
of Americans in setting fires and permitting them to destroy these forests 
with no effort toward prevention by either state or National Government 
and consider that the greater destruction of forests have occurred in the 
Occident during the nineteenth century than in the Orient throughout the 
thirty centuries preceding, we well may contemplate upon the future of this 
land as more rapid climatic changes shall occur from this excessive denuda- 
tion. It is of great importance that this nation should make earnest efforts 
to check such wastefulness and commence a thorough system of afforestation 
throughout the entire country. 
The soils of all the semi-arid and arid lands contain every element of 
fertility, only wanting water to make them as productive as the most favored 
lands of the earth. To support the population which America will have 
but a few decades hence, every effort should be made by state and nation 
to promote an increased rainfall in localities where moisture is insufficient. 
