40 



evaporation ; aided by the treading of the hard surface, the rainfall, if the same as of old, 

 rushes off at once, sweeping the soil into the Mississippi delta. The dry winds absorb 

 not only the ancient humidity of the air, but drink up the subsoil evaporation. So that 

 our winters are longer, more changeable, and unendurable. Com can hardly be planted 

 safely till late in April, and drought too often ruins our best efforts. Now, trees do in- 

 fluence rainfall in a State like Kentucky, where the rain is not precipitated by mountain 

 heights, but by the meeting of warm, moist, and cold winds. Here one neighbour has 

 plenty of rain, another scarcely any. And even if the rainfall should be the same for the 

 whole State, the owners of forests have reason to believe that these windbreaks are 

 favourable to rain eddies and rain-bearing currents of air." Prof. Sargent, of Harvard 

 University, who has given perhaps as much study to this question as any one in America, 

 remarked that, " As moderators of the extremes of heat and cold, the benefits derived 

 from extensive forests are undoubted, and that our climate is gradually changing through 

 their destruction, is apparent to the most casual observer. Our springs are later, our 

 summers are drier, and every year becoming more so ; our autumns are carried forward 

 into winter, while our winter climate is subject to far greater changes of temperature 

 than formerly. The total average of snowfall is perhaps as late as ever, but it is certainly 

 less regular,- and covers the ground for a shorter period than formerly. Twenty years ago 

 peaches were a profitable crop in Massachusetts ; now we must depend on New Jersey and 

 Delaware, and our apples now come from beyond the limits of New England. The failure 

 of these and other crops in the older States is generally ascribed to the exhaustion of the 

 soU, but with greater reason it can be referred to the destruction of the forests which 

 sheltered us from the cold winds of the north and west, and which, keeping the soil under 

 their shade, cool in summer and warm in winter, acted at once as material barriers, and 

 reservoirs of moisture." 



Statements Collated prom the Woeks op Distinguished Weitees on the 



Subject. 



We have now gone over the influences which connect the presence of forests with 

 the climate of a country, first considered in a general, and then in a local sense. I will 

 now, by way of corroborative- proof, quote a number of passages from those authors who 

 have made this question their special study. In Europe, where, withia the last ten or 

 twelve years especially the subject is creating very great interest, from the evident 

 decrease in moisture and corresponding fertility, much is being done to examine into the 

 evil and remove its causes. One of the first to move in the matter was a distinguished 

 European gentleman of both theoretical and practical experience. Herr Gustav Wex, 

 Counsellor of State and Director-in-Chief of Works undertaken for the regulation and 

 flow of the Danube. He says : — 



" Having in foregoing statements given indisputable evidence that in the five principal 

 rivers of Central Europe, — the Danube, the Rhine, the Elbe, the Vistula and the Oder, 

 the basins of which embrace an area of 26,860 (German) square miles, — the lowest and the 

 mean annual water levels, and consequently also the quantities of water delivered by 

 these rivers, during a lengthened period of many years, has been continually decreasi ng, 

 we may from this draw the following conclusions : — 



