12 



Formerly the interspersing belts and large masses of yet untouched forests held, in a 

 manner afterwards to be explained, during the summer period of vegetation, great 

 reservoirs of moisture, which causing a continual flow of water-courses throughout and 

 under our fields, watered and fertilized the land, and was in itself, as we shall hereafter 

 see, at once the cause and the result of the frequent spring and summer showers which so 

 greatly aided the labours of the husbandmen. 



It is noticeable, I may remark at this point, that in many parts of Ontario where 

 formerly portions of newly cleared forest ground could be reasonably expected to yield a 

 large crop per acre, adjoining land as well wooded and of precisely the same constituents, 

 so far as soil is concerned, will not now when cleared and cropped give anything like 

 the same amount. It is also observed that ploughed land some years under cultivation," 

 in similar localities, compared with ploughed land of many years back, although now 

 worked with the advantage of improved implements, far greater care in the rotation of 

 crops, and the application of a quantity of manure quite unobtainable in the old days, 

 frequently fails to yield an equal return to that formerly secured with rougher cultivation 

 and infinitely less labour. 



The old settler remembers the once spontaneous growth, and is apt to say with 

 Hood in the " Haunted House " : — 



" A merry place it was, in days of yore ; 

 But something ails it now ; the place is curst." 



The land is haunted by the spectre of its former fertility ; the fertility which in our 

 greed we slew. We were not satisfied with the golden egg of the field, we must, to get 

 all at once, kill the goose — the woodland which nurtured the field; and we have neither 

 fair forest nor fat meadow. We said with the fabled rebellious members, " What is the 

 good of feeding this useless stomach t The limbs are the valuable parts." " What," said 

 we, " is the value of this woodland'! The field it is which gives the crop." But as the 

 stomach got thin the limbs got thinner ; as the forest grew small the field returns grew 

 smaller. We had destroyed the regularity of the summer rain, that for which Virgil bids 

 his husbandmen pray : — 



" Hnmidae soktitia atque hiemes orate serenas, 

 Agrieolae," — 



or, if you accept my translation of the first part : — 



" That moist and warm arrive the spring, 

 That frequent showers the summer bring ; 

 Still, farmers, ask when vespers ring 

 Ask in your matin prayer. '' 



As I have just remarked in the case of Lower Canada, we have been too apt to 

 believe that over-cropping alone has occasioned the evil. It has no doubt had something 

 to do with the matter, but there is too much reason to believe that an equally powerful 

 factor is to be found in the far less favourable distribution of moisture which our careless 

 disforesting operations have brought about ; and if this be the case even at present, what 

 have we to look forward to as our present scanty interspersing reserves disappear, except 

 a still more unfavourable climatic condition and one becoming worse much more rapidly 



