5 i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that reckless destruction of forest-trees which by its consequences 

 has turned many of the most fruitful regions of ancient Europe 

 into almost irreclaimable deserts. Rational agriculture became a 

 tradition of the past ; the culture of secular science was fiercely 

 denounced from thousands of pulpits ; improvidence, " unworldli- 

 ness," and blind reliance on the efficacy of prayer were system- 

 atically inculcated as supreme virtues. A warning against the 

 consequences of that infatuation would have been answered by 

 the prompt anathemas of the miracle-mongers ; but it would be a 

 mistake to suppose that their rant imposed on any independent 

 thinker, even . of that ghost-ridden age. " When I consider the 

 value of the least clump of trees," says Bernard Palissy, a perse- 

 cuted dissenter of the sixteenth century, " I much marvel at the 

 great ignorance of men, who, as it seems, do nowadays study only 

 to fell and waste the fair forests which their forefathers did guard 

 so carefully. I would think no evil of them for cutting down 

 the woods, did they but replant again some part of them ; but 

 they care nothing for the consequences of their wastefulness, 

 nor do they reck of the great damage done to their children 

 which come after them." (" GEuvres completes de Bernard Pa- 

 lissy," p. 88.) 



The folly of the insane bigotry which left such protests un- 

 heeded was only too soon demonstrated by its natural conse- 

 quences. When the highlands of the Mediterranean peninsulas 

 had been deprived of their woods, the general failing of springs 

 turned rivers into shallow brooks and brook valleys into arid 

 ravines, which at last ceased to supply the irrigation canals by 

 which the starving farmers hoped to relieve their distress. Vast 

 tracts of once fertile lands had to be entirely abandoned. And 

 while the summer droughts became more severe, winter floods be- 

 came more frequent and destructive. The steep mountain-slopes, 

 denuded of their vegetable mold, sent down torrents of snow-water, 

 turning rivers into rushing seas and inundating their valleys in 

 spite of protecting dikes. Hill-sides which once furnished past- 

 ures for thousands of herds were torn up by ever-deepening ravines 

 and reduced to a state of desolation as complete as that of a vol- 

 canic cinder-field. Harbors once offering safe anchorage for the 

 fleets of an empire became inaccessible from the accumulating 

 deposits of the diluvium which had been swept down from the 

 torrent-rent mountain-slopes, while a detritus of coarse sand and 

 gravel covered the fields of the intermediate valleys. 



On the shores of the Adriatic alone 250,000,000 cubic yards of 

 highland soil are thus yearly deposited in the form of pestilential 

 mud-banks. A million square miles of uplands in southern Europe 

 and western Asia have become almost as arid as the mountains of 

 the moon. The Rhone, the Loire, the Ebro, the Guadalquivir, the 



