38 



" The dryness increasing, the growing plant has neither the means nor the time for its 

 perfect development, while the dryness of the last months of summer has become so 

 extreme as to cause entire uncertainty as to the existence of good pastures. The young 

 clover is frequently " burnt up, " and general failure results. 



" Mr. Bryce discussed at considerable length the causes of the wholesale destruction of 

 our forests ; the action of our Indian and Australian Governments regarding forests ; the 

 extent and condition of forests in Britain, Germany, JFrance, Austria, Hungary, and the 

 means adopted for preservation there. 



" The remedies he suggested were reconstruction of at least part of what had been 

 destroyed, and replanting in an intelligent manner. Another remedy was irrigation. He 

 argued to show that cultured woodland is the most profitable form in which land can be 

 held, and quoted the produce of an acre in seventy years to have been £469. 15s. 6d. 

 Such facts he adduced to combat the idea of non-practibility of any organized system of 

 tree-planting as a source of profit. The remainder of the paper was devoted to sugges- 

 tious for legislation on the subject." 



The Lessons op History and some Contemporary Evidence. 



We have now studied the scientific aspect, let us have a word on the results histori- 

 cally and geographically noticed, where forests were destroyed. 



The progress made by Germany in tree-planting is but part of her general progress. 

 The credit is given to the great Frederick ; it was part of the National policy of his day, 

 which raised Prussia from a small power to a great one, and to the energetic continuance 

 of that policy, Germany owes Sadowa and Sedan. By this forethought vast armies have 

 been maintained where once the sandy deserts would not nourish a flock of goats, 

 and successive regiments of hardy soldiers have poured forth from the fertile soil where, 

 two hundred years ago, the ruggid debris of winter torrents, the thorn and the thistle, 

 overspread a thirsty and an impoverished land. 



In France, the aristocrats, not unwise in all, had preserved the forfests. But when 

 Jacques Bonhomme, not wise in all, had overthrown their tyranny, he bethought him 

 that no good policy could flow from so bitter a fountain, proceeded straightway to 

 emulate with the axe the ravages of the guillotine, and succeeded in no long time in almost 

 staying crop growth in field or meadow adjacent to where he had heaviest laid his grove- 

 destroying hand. Wiser councils now prevail ; experience has borne its fruits, and the 

 French forests, particularly those near the sea, bear witness how readily Providence 

 assists a liberal, how sternly she repays a greedy and a grasping cultivator. There is a 

 deep lesson in the old verse, " Thou shalt not reap the comers of thy field." 



It may be said of a large part of Italy, of Spain, and of Turkey, that, owing to the 

 injudicious clearing of the forests from their most elevated portions — the watersheds, in 

 fact, which fed the nether springs, bubbling spontaneous up, the source and feeders of 

 many a river through all the lower land — fully one-third of those countries are in a state 

 of infertility and insalubrity as unnecessary as it is complete. The tourist of to-day, full 

 of Cervantes and of Le Sage, passes through Spain in wonder whither have gone the 

 umbrageous forests, the pleasant groves, the cool fountains which, however few their 

 other comforts, never failed to the philosophic Gil or the chivalrous Don. In Turkey, 

 too, he can well see why the crescent pales, when he observes vast pachaliks, once sending 

 many thousand strong sons of Islam to the horse-tail standards, now desert and barren, 

 despoiled of their forests, and necessarily, thereafter, stripped by the elements of the soil 



