17 



heights, the lowest flow, and the medium average flow, show 

 that the floods are unquestionably higher than in former 

 years, and the contrast between the highest and lowest flow 

 is greater, and that these higher floods are no compensation 

 for the diminution of the medium and low flood, and that many 

 manufactories built during the last fifty years have experi- 

 enced a marked diminution in the water supply of their 

 streams, and steam-engines have been employed to meet the 

 deficiency of water-power, once ample to do the same work. 



The cause of this remarkable phenomena lies in the exten- 

 sive clearing away of the forests, especially in the mountains, 

 where deluges of rain occur more frequently ; for, in lands 

 devoid of trees, the rain water sinks less ii^to the soil, 

 but more speedily reaches the brooks, streams, and rivers, 

 and fills and overflows these water-courses, and results 

 in disastrous floods. The correctness of this conclusion is 

 sadly attested by the now frequently recurring inundations in 

 Italy, in the south of France, Hungary, Bohemia, and in 

 many other lands. It may be worthy of inquiry whether the 

 general clearing of the mountain forests around Salisbury, 

 Connecticut, to meet the growing demand for charcoal for the 

 furnaces, had any connection with the desolating flood which 

 occurred in that town four years ago. A resident of Salis- 

 bury, whose farm lies near the base of the mountain skirting 

 that town, says that a stream on his land, formerly never fail- 

 ing, has dried up every summer for the last twenty years. 



By several learned societies — like the Royal Academy of Sci- 

 ence of Vienna, and the Imperial Academy of Science of St. 

 Petersburg — commissioners were appointed to report upon the 

 paper of Wex, and their reports substantially confirm his 

 views, and say : "Forests exercise a beneficial influence which 

 can hardly be estimated too highly in an increased humidity 

 of the air, a reduction of the extremes of temperature, a 

 diminution of evaporation, and a more regular distribution of 

 the rainfall, while the injurious effects of their destruction is 

 seen in an alternation of periods of drought at one time with 

 wasting floods at another." The forests serve as storehouses 

 of moisture, both from their leafy canopy which shuts out the 



2 



