162 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 
EVIDENCES OF CLIMATIC CHANGES. 
The United States, with an area of 2,968,700 square miles exclusive of 
distant possessions, has 1,720,000 square miles of arid plains and_ treeless 
prairie, almost 60 per cent of our territory. re 
The great interior elevated plateau and mountain region where rain sel- 
dom falls is increasing in aridity with no prospect of improvement under ex- 
isting circumstances. And yet all this now arid territory was once the home 
of magnificent forests, with a climate as moist as that which our Atlantic and 
Gulf States now enjoy. 
There are no people of all the world who are more patriotic than Ameri- 
cans, and if we can once realize the vast import of leaving to future gener- 
ations a land arid, desolate, unproductive, infertile—the life blood wrung out 
by greedy, avaricious efforts of the present generation; or a country fertile, 
watered by natural streams, a land capable of maintaining the dense popu- 
lation which will very soon inhabit it—then will patriotism rise to that su- 
preme character which shall demand that proper efforts be made to secure the 
best results. 
EVIDENCES OF FOREST INFLUENCES IN THE PAST. 
I shall endeavor to point out some of the evidences of forest influences 
in the past and draw inferences from these lessons which may lead us to an 
appreciation of our responsibilities as a people, that the agricultural condition 
may be improved. The span of human life is so brief, and the most careful 
observations so incomplete, during any single generation, they are not con- 
vincing when applied to regulations governing the elements. Yet the laws 
which control and influence cloud movement, evaporation and precipitation 
by forests are as positive as are those of gravitation or tidal motion, both the 
latter of which are fully understood. But we have in Holy Writ a history 
covering many centuries which would be indisputable even were it not cor- 
roborated by contemporaneous writers, and this is convincing as to forest 
influence. 
IN CANAAN. 
When the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire out 
of the midst of a bush, a covenant was made that He would bring the Israelites 
out of Egypt “unto a land flowing with milk and honey.” The promise of 
the Lord was repeated upon various occasions and after thorough preparation 
