42 TREES AND TREE-PLANTING. 
The general forest administration has, therefore, to 
deal with the treatment of a great variety of forests, 
from the cool shade of the cedars that crown the middle 
ranges of the Himalayas, to the arid plains of the South, 
where the stunted vegetation scarcely yields a rafter for 
the peasant’s hut, and thence to the tropical forests of 
Burmah, where the deep-green shade is never pierced by 
the sun’s rays. . 
The utility of these forests consists of their supplies of 
timber-woods and other products for building, manu- 
factures, food, or for the use and convenience of the 
people, while they indirectly affect the climate and soil, 
maintaining the supply of water in springs, streams, and 
even rivers. In certain parts there exist evidences that 
at some former period, where there was rice cultivation 
on a wide scale, there must have been large areas 
flooded with fresh water for a long succession of years, 
and that not by fitful floods of sudden inundation, but in 
a steady, quiet manner. At present there are to be seen 
only the dry beds of torrents, running as a torrent dur- 
ing the rainy season, and having a very small supply of 
water at other times. This phenomenon, as we are in- 
formed in Mr. Powell’s report, so commonly observed in 
all the Punjab streams coming from the now denuded 
lower hills, points inevitably to the conclusion that forest 
denudation has deprived these rivers of their steady 
water supply, and hence ruined the rainless countries 
that were dependent on them. 
The winters in Russia are becoming colder every year, 
and the summers hotter, more dry, and less fruitful, ow- 
ing, as it is clearly proved by Palingston, to the destruc- 
tion of the woodlands which formerly abounded in the 
southern districts. The clearing of these lands has 
caused such an evaporation that many once capacious 
watercourses have become mere swamps, or are com- 
pletely dry. The Dnieper becomes every day more shal- 
low, and its tributaries are no longer worthy the name 
