FOREST DESTRUCTION. 3 
wastes of Mount Lebanon made famous by the life of 
our Saviour. From these mountains once came the tim- 
ber to supply the surrounding countries; it has long 
since disappeared, and with it the population. Other 
causes no doubt assisted to desolate these countries, but, 
says Marsh: “the destruction of the forests was the chief 
cause of the present barrenness.” I doubt if man can 
exist in any country entirely destitute of timber.* As 
: countries entirely covered with timber are fit only for 
‘the abode of savages, so countries entirely denuded of 
_ timber become fit only for wild beasts and uncivilized. 
_people.; Nature seems to have designed that there should 
"ha a happy medium in this respect which we cannot 
disregard without bringing upon ourselves evil conse- 
quences. Either extreme produces a like effect—the 
total destruction of forests unfits a country for the abode 
of civilized man, while the clothing of it in impenetrable 
forests does the same. Look at the country around the 
Mediterranean Sea, once the most populous in the world. 
Compare the descriptions of ancient writers with what 
is said of it to-day. Marsh says: “The vast forests have 
disappeared from the 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 uplands are washed away; the meadows 
once fertilized by irrigation are waste and unproductive, 
because the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the an- 
cient 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 watercourses are gone, 
and the rivulets have ceased to exist as perennial cur- 
rents, because the little water that finds its way into their 
old channels is evaporated by droughts of summer, or ab- 
sorbed by parched earth before it reaches the lowlands; 
the beds of the brooks have widened into broad expanses 
