7 
not fit for cultivation. In many places in England and Scotland, 
where the timber has been cut, the sands have encroached on the 
cultivated fields at the rate of over five miles in a century, and the 
sites of towns once teeming with busy life, are now but heaps of ever 
moving sands. That the country in which is situated the Pyramids 
and the Sphynx was once fertile is known, and Babylon and Palmyra 
WHITE SPRUCE. (ABIES AMERICANA ALBA.) 
are but further examples of what sand may do when released from the 
useful bondage of the woods. The influence of the trees on the snow 
is also to be considered. In such places as are not protected by 
forests of tree-belts, the snow is blown into drifts, leaving the crops 
unprotected in many places, and the loss of the snow’s protection 
