P.ART I. 



THE EXTENSIVE DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



PEELIMINARY STATEMENT. 



Some 2000. years ago Europe was extensively covered with 

 forests. It is not so now. We have remains of forest trees 

 preserved in peat bogs where no forests now exist ; and 

 numerous places bear names given to them in reference 

 to their proximity to forests when they were so named, 

 though there no forests are now to be seen ; and we have 

 extensive remains of some of those ancient forests from 

 which some idea may be formed of what must have been the 

 appearance of the country then. But over areas indefinitely 

 more extensive, fields, and vineyards, and cities, have taken 

 the place of the forests ; architectural monuments now 

 stand where once stood ' the oak, the monarch of the wood ;' 

 and in vain does the sentimentalist sigh for ' a lodge in 

 some vast wilderness, an endless continuity of shade' where 

 are now fields, and manufactories, and populous towns 

 and cities. There all is changed ; and science speculates 

 on what might have been the origin of these forests, 

 as history tells only of the disappearance of the forest 

 wilds. 



There exists an opinion in regard to the succession in 

 which vegetable organisms of ever higher development 

 appeared on the dry land of the globe, which, though not 

 propounded with such explicit references to ascertained 

 facts as might be desired in a scientific theory, has been 



