INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON SPRINGS. 
199 
able among the many improvements which later generations 
have witnessed in the interior of New England and the other 
Northern States. 
Almost every treatise on the economy of the forest adduces 
numerous facts in support of the doctrine that the clearing of 
the woods tends to diminish the flow of springs and the hu¬ 
midity of the soil, and it might seem unnecessary to bring 
forward further evidence on this point.* But the subject is of 
too much practical importance and of too great philosophical 
interest to be summarily disposed of; and it ought particu¬ 
larly to be noticed that there is at least one case—that of some 
loose soils which, when bared of wood, very rapidly absorb 
and transmit to lower strata the water they receive from the 
atmosphere, as argued by Yalles f—where the removal of the 
forest may increase the flow of springs at levels below it, by 
exposing to the rain and melted snow a surface more bibulous, 
and at the same time less retentive, than its original covering. 
Under such circumstances, the water of precipitation, which 
had formerly flowed off without penetrating through the super¬ 
ficial layers of leaves upon the ground—as, in very heavy 
showers, it sometimes does—or been absorbed by the vegetable 
mould and retained until it was evaporated, might descend 
through porous earth until it meets an impermeable stratum, 
and then be conducted along it, until, finally, at the outcrop- 
* “ Why go so far for the proof of a phenomenon that is repeated every 
day under our own eyes, and of which every Parisian may convince him¬ 
self, without venturing beyond the Bois de Boulogne or the forest of 
Meudon ? Let him, after a few rainy days, pass along the Chevreuse road, 
which is bordered on the right by the wood, on the left by cultivated 
fields. The fall of water and the continuance of the rain have been the same 
on both sides; but the ditch on the side of the forest will remain filled 
with water proceeding from the infiltration through the wooded soil, 
long after the other, contiguous to the open ground, has performed its 
office of drainage and become dry. The ditch on the left will have dis¬ 
charged in a few hours a quantity of water, which the ditch on the right 
requires several days to receive and carry down to the valley.”— Clave, 
fttudes, etc., pp. 53, 54. 
t Yalles, Etudes sur les Inondations , p. 472. 
