110 STATE OF MICHIGAN. 



cradle of the Caucasian race — in Bactria, perhaps, and, spreading west- 

 ward and southward, has blighted the Edens of three continents like a 

 devouring fire, and is now scorching the west coast of Africa, and send- 

 ing its warning sand clouds out to seaward." 



Another author informs us that the eastern borders of the Mediter- 

 ranean, previous to the time of King Solomon, maintained a population 

 of ten millions of people. The rich agricultural region about Jerusalem 

 at that time provided food not only for these millions of Solomon's sub- 

 jects, but for the dwellers of the country round about who dealt with 

 the Israelites. Early it was a land flowing with milk and honey. This 

 is fully attested by all ancient writers, as well as by sacred history. 

 So long as the great range of the Lebanon mountains was covered with 

 trees, the rains were regular and abundant, and agriculture was the 

 principal occupation of the Jews. With the removal of the forests from 

 these ele-\'ated coasts, electrical conditions were changed, droughts be- 

 came more and more frequent, agriculture became a more precarious 

 occupation, grazing took its place, and, finally, Palestine became unin- 

 habitable, except to a handful of wandering Bedouins. 



Hon. George P. Marsh, for many years the United States minister to 

 Italy, in his work on "Man and Nature," declares that if the countries 

 which mankind have ruined could be restored, ''The thronging millions 

 of Europe might still find room on the eastern continent, and the main 

 current of emigration be turned toward the rising instead of the setting 

 sun." He further says: "There are parts of Asia Minor, of northern 

 .Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the operation of 

 causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a deso- 

 lation almost as complete as that of the moon; and though within that 

 brief space of time, which we call the historical period, they were known 

 to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures and fertile 

 meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to he reclaimable by man, 

 nor can they again become fit for human use, except through great 

 geological changes, or other mysterious influences, or agencies of which 

 we have no present knowledge, and over which we have no present 

 control." 



Xo fact is better authenticated than that vast regions of country once 

 fertile and populous, have been rendered sterile and tenantless by the 

 destruction of their forests. Prof. Archibald Geike, the eminent geolo- 

 gist and student of nature, wrote in the Popular Science Monthly for 

 September, 1870 : "It must be owned that man, in most of his struggles 

 with the world around him, has fought blindly for his own ultimate in- 

 terests. His contest, successful for the moment, has too often led to 

 sure and sad disaster. Stripping forests from hill and mountain, he 

 has gained his immediate object in the possession of their abundant 

 stores of timber; but he has laid open the slopes to be burned by 

 drought, or to be swept bare by rain. Countries once rich in beauty, 

 plenteous in all that was needed for his support, are now burned and 

 barren, or almost denuded of their soil." 



In the North American Eeview for January, 1879, Dr. Felix L. Oswald 

 'declares that "since the beginning of the sixteenth century the popula- 

 tion of the four Mediterranean peninsulas has decreased more than 

 fifty-flve millions, and the value of their agricultural products by at 



