4 
The Necessity for Forest Planting. 
• 
The necessity for more accurate and extensive information in regard 
to the cultivation of trees, owing to the great destruction of native 
timber to supply the increase of population and the ever growing 
wants of men, have compelled mankind to devote considerable 
attention to the subject during the last half century, and many 
facts, interesting and profitable, especially to the farmer, have 
been established as cardinal truths in the field of investigation. 
It has been found that in those countries in which the cutting of tim- 
ber has been left to the interest or caprice of the individual, the 
destruction of the forests have been followed by such climatic changes 
as in nearly all cases to make the country barren, and from this cause 
uninhabitable, and the Governments of a number of European States 
have, in view of this fact, established Bureaus of Forestry, and pro- 
hibit the cutting of the trees except under its direction and by its 
permission. The steppes of Central Asia, once the garden of the 
world, covered by great forests, and producing support for the vast 
hords of Aryans, the ancestors of all the Caucasian races has, since 
the destruction of its trees, become a pathless and almost lifeless 
waste, producing only the saksaval, a species of bramble. Although 
this country is in the same latitude as Ohio and Illinois, yet Capt. 
Burnaby, in his account of his ride to Khiva, in the winter of 1875-6, 
describes the cold of the Kinghis Desert a thing unknown in the 
Arctic region. The summers are very short, and the Russian expedi- 
tion of ’73 suffered intensely from the heated glare of the atmoshpere, 
and both the men and animals nearly perished from the want of water, 
the thermometer often standing at upwards 130 degrees Fah. Egypt, 
once the world’s granary, would now, was it not for the annual over- 
flow of the Nile, be uninhabitable ; and that this is caused by the loss 
of its forests is amply proved by the fact that those portions in which 
the Khedive has begun the planting of trees, are being again visited 
by rain after the lapse of unknown centuries. The plantation of the 
Khedive already number over thirty millions of trees. Since the 
opening of the Suez Canal and the planting of trees on its borders, 
the adjacent country has improved in a wonderful manner in its fer- 
tility. Palestine, described in the Bible as a land “ flowing with milk 
and honey,” now produces less than the scattered population con- 
sumes. Large portions of Italy, Southern France, and especially 
Spain, which abounded with forests in former days, have since their 
loss become untenable for ordinary agricultural purposes. 
It is a proved fact tliat timber protection is absolutely necessary for 
the successful growing of certain crops and fruits. In the time of 
Napoleon the First, the woods at Piazzatore having been desolated, 
maize, the principal crop, could, from the severe change in the 
climate, no longer be produced, but upon the replanting of the trees, 
its production was once more easy. Lands adjoining the western 
shore of Lake Michigan, at an early period in the history of the 
settlement of the country, produced an annual yield of from 25 to 35 
bushels of wheat per acre. At this time, when only about one-tenth 
