FOREST TREES. Il 
graphically described in the following quotation from 
the above mentioned author: 
“If we compare the present physical condition of 
the countries of which I am speaking (the Roman 
Empire), with the descriptions that ancient historians 
and geographers have given of their fertility and gen- 
eral capability of ministering to human uses, we shall 
find that more than one-half of their whole extent— 
including the provinces most celebrated for the pro- 
fusion and variety of their spontaneous and their 
cultivated products, and for the wealth and social 
advancement of their inhabitants—is either deserted 
by civilized man and surrendered to hopeless desola- 
tion, or, at least, greatly reduced, both in productive- 
ness and population. Vast forests have disappeared 
from mountain spurs and ridges; the vegetable earth 
accumulated beneath the trees by the decay of leaves 
and fallen trunks; the soil of the alpine pastures, 
which skirted and indented the woods, and the mould 
of the upland fields, are washed away; meadows once 
fertilized by irrigation are waste and unproductive, 
beeause the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the 
ancient canals are broken, or the springs that fed 
them dried up; rivers, famous in history and song, / 
have shrunk to humble brooklets; the willows that 
ornamented and protected the banks of the lesser 
water-courses are gone, and the rivulets have ceased 
to exist as perennial currents, because the little water 
that finds its way into their old channels is evaporated 
by the droughts ofsummer, or absorbed by the parched 
earth before it reaches the lowlands; the beds of the 
