THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, October 20, 1857, 
and tlieir influence in preventing too rapid evaporation. 
These topics are of the highest importance. 
No Water-power without Trees. —In an open country 
the absolute quantity of water which the rivers discharge is 
not only less than in a wooded country, but the flow is incom¬ 
parably more irregular and unequal. This week the stream 
may be a foaming torrent, forbidding all passage; next week it 
will be only a sluggish pool, which scarcely wets your horse’s 
fetlocks. Since our Western lands have been cleared the 
alternations in the “stage” of water in the rivers have 
been much more marked and violent. 
The fact has been vexatiously brought home to our 
practical men by the constant hinderance of the mill-streams 
from freshets and droughts. Many water privileges, which 
half a century ago were valuable and steady, have now 
become nearly worthless. The dam which was conveniently 
put up to saw an adjoining forest into profitable plank, now 
that its excellent work is done, will drive the saw in the sum¬ 
mer no longer. The good riparian mill-owners of one of the 
ponds in the vicinity of Boston remarked with amazement, 
some ten years ago, that the supply of water seemed to be 
failing them, and that the feeding stream had utterly dried 
up—a thing never known by the oldest inhabitant. Within 
a few years the stream has regained its volume, and now 
flows full, even in the heats of summer. The secret 
of these changes was, that the water first disappeared 
on account of the cutting away of the forests about its 
source, a few miles distant, and returned when the young 
wood had grown there. Not a few of our larger factories 
have been compelled to introduce steam power to supply a 
deficiency in the volume of water, which, a few years ago, 
was not troublesome. Indeed, the word “ inexhaustible ” 
can now hardly be used of any water privilege in New 
England. We do not believe, though some high authorities 
maintain this view, that the cutting away of forests 
diminishes the quantity of rain or snow; but we only 
contend that it deprives the moisture of its beneficent effect 
upon the earth, by causing it to be too rapidly abstracted, 
and producing the pernicious alternations of freshet and 
drought, which are as fatal to the health of the soil as to 
the health of the men who own the soil. 
Trees necessary to Health. —Medical statistics give a 
verdict in favour of woodland as against cleared land. The 
wood-choppers of Maine are far more free from disease than 
the farmers of Illinois, and scarcely know, in all their ex¬ 
posure, what it is to be cramped by rheumatism or parched 
by fever. Dismal Swamp is as healthy as Sullivan’s Island, 
and the malaria which hangs along all the Southern sea¬ 
board finds no place in that dreadful thicket. Pestilence 
does not choose those sections of country or those quarters 
of cities which are greenest, but those which are most bare 
and open. Dampness is not the source of malaria, but 
decomposition caused by too rapid drying, whether of 
vegetable matter or of animal infusoria. Ditches and stag¬ 
nant pools are, to be sure, not very desirable purifiers of the 
surrounding air, and generate more serious plagues than 
their legions of frogs; but a ditch which alternates from 
wet to dry, or a pool that is weekly emptied and replenished 
as wind and shower follow each other, gives forth a much 
more deadly poison than any ground which is steadily and 
uniformly saturated with water. Over these waters to-day 
the poison hangs and lingers, and gives itself to load the 
breeze to-morrow. In woods, on the contrary, while the 
decomposition of vegetable and animal matter goes on far 
more slowly, the poison which is evolved is taken up by the 
trees themselves, to which it is food and nourishment. 
Mr. Timothy Plint, in his account of the Mississippi 
Valley, mentions the fact that the wood-cutters on the banks 
of the streams where the trees had been cut away were 
constantly attacked by malarious fevers, while such diseases 
among workmen in the forest were comparatively rare, 
although the ground on which they worked was quite as 
moist. Every tree which they left to decay on the ground 
helped to create the poison, while every tree left standing 
helped to absorb it. Many cases might be cited where the 
cutting down of woods has had a most unfavourable effect 
upon the health of the surrounding region. The Roman 
Campagna is only a celebrated instance of what is a 
very common experience. Every schoolboy is taught how 
plants purify the atmosphere by removing its excess of 
37 
carbon, and supplying its defect and waste of oxygen, 
though this teaching is unusually coupled with the cautious 
proviso that plants absorb oxygen by night, and are, there¬ 
fore, unhealthy companions of the chamber. But we have 
tested it abundantly, in travelling, that, when one is pro¬ 
perly protected from mosquitoes, the night air is most 
pleasant in the immediate vicinity of woods, more easy to 
breathe, and more softly soporific than even the salt atmo¬ 
sphere of the famed watering-places. A night’s sleep is 
quite as refreshing in the inn at Keswick as in the inn at 
Brighton, i£i a North Conway cottage as in a Northport hotel. 
There are several reasons why forests affect favourably 
the health of a locality or neighbourhood. Two of these we 
have already mentioned—that they check the formation of 
poisonous miasma, and that they absorb it when it is formed, 
and so prevent its pernicious influence. But their effect 
upon climate is even more noticeable and unquestionable. 
They equalise the heat of the atmosphere, and so prevent 
those extremes which have come in these latter years to be 
the bane of New England. There can be little doubt that 
the cutting away of such large tracts of forest in Canada 
and Maine has had a great share in causing the intense cold 
of our recent winters, if not increasing the number of burn¬ 
ing days in summer; and that the rapid changes which 
transpose, at the caprice of the winds, the place of the 
months and seasons, are due largely to this cause. In 
a warm day, certainly, one feels the heat more in the 
woods than on the open prairie when the wind is blowing; 
but a thermometer will give a lower temperature in the 
former than in the latter position. A fair way to test the 
difference is to sit for a while in a boat upon a pond sur¬ 
rounded by woods, and then to go into the woods. The 
sensation will instantly be one of refreshing coolness. In 
winter, on the contrary, the thermometer shows a much 
higher temperature in the woods than in the open field, 
with a wider variation in proportion as the external cold is 
greater. Teamsters know this, and even on a still day in 
January feel a relief from the cold the moment they reach 
the protecting w T oods .—(North American Review.') 
Prince’s Feather and Love-lies-bleeding. —At page 22, 
where they are said to give “ a full yard of brilliant purple 
in one place f read “ a full yard of brilliant purple in one 
face.” To make this face to shine next year the last job 
for the present season should be to dig a trench ten inches 
wide and twelve inches deep in front of your “ evergreens,” 
wdiere you think a.Fuchsia hedge or fringe would look well. 
Cut up your Cucumber ridge, mix it, fill the trenoh with it 
all but two inches, pour a gallon of strong liquid manure 
over every yard of the trench, and then fill the two inches 
with the common soil; but you must not sow the seeds 
over the trench in the spring. You shall hear how to eclipse 
all the Fuchsia hedges in the world in good time.—D. B. 
Uses of the Potato. —In France the farina is largely 1 
used for culinary purposes. The famed gravies, sauces, j 
and soups of France are largely indebted for their ex¬ 
cellence to that source, and its bread and pastry equally 
so; while a great deal of the so-called Cognac imported 
into England from France is the produce of the Potato. 
Throughout Germany the same uses are common; and in 
Poland the manufacture of spirit from the Potato is a most 
extensive trade. “ Stettin brandy,” well known in commerce, 
is largely imported into England, and is sent from thence to 
many of our foreign possessions as the produce of the 
Grape, and is placed on many a table of England as the 
same; while the fair ladies of our general country perfume 
themselves with the spirit of Potato under the designation j 
Eau cle Cologne. But there are other uses which this | 
esculent is turned to abroad. After extracting the farina 
the pulp is manufactured into ornamental articles, such as ! 
picture frames, snuff boxes, and several descriptions of toys; 
and the water that runs from it in the process of manu- | 
facture is a most valuable scourer. For perfectly cleansing j 
woollens and such-like articles it is the housewife’s panacea; j 
and if the washerwoman happens to have chilblains, she 
becomes cured by the operation .—(Paper read before the 
British Association.) 
