JULY 1, 1902. 
THE AUSTRALIAN GARDENER, 
Shade Trees. 
[From American Gardening. | 
By F., L. Oswatp, M.D., IN HEATH-CULTURE, 
FRENCH translator of the Koran calls 
attention to the curiouscircumstance that 
of all ‘‘ revealed” religions Mohammedan- 
ism alone inculcates the duty of total 
abstinence from intoxicating beverages—the 
so-called temperance law of the Buddhist being 
merely a caution against dietetic excesses. 
Yet it is perhaps a still stranger fact that 
not one of the numerous inspired creeds 
mentions a word of warning against the folly 
of forest destruction. The tree-felling axe 
has turned some 5,000,000 square miles of 
once fertile regions into deserts. It has can- 
celled our tenure of an earthly paradise ; it 
has made one-third of the eastern continent 
an unfit abode of the human species. 
The disappearance of arboreal vegetation 
is the main cause of the sad change which 
the good gardens of our planet have under- 
gone in the course of the last twenty cen- 
turies. Spain, in the glory of her ancient 
woodlands, was the Eden of Southern Eu- 
rope; treeless Spain has become a gehenna 
. of poverty and disease. Forest shaded Sicily 
begat athletes and philosophers, heroes. and 
merchant princes; Sicily in its present sun- 
blistered condition evolves chiefly bandits, 
beggars and vermin. The entire coast region 
of the Mediterranean has been ‘ cleared,” 
with the result of losing four-fifths of its 
former population and at least nine-tenths of 
its former productiveness. 
The same in Southern France, in Portugal, 
Asia Minor, Mesopotamia. Armenia, Persia 
and Hindostan. 
It might indeed be questioned if all human 
follies and crimes taken together have caused 
as much permanent mischief as the insane 
destruction of nature’s safeguards against life 
blighting droughts. A land without trees is 
in as sada plight as a flayed animal. The new 
world’s wealth of woodlands is the chief 
guarantee of its prosperity. 
Forests of shady leaf trees mitigate clima- 
tic extremes, and there is not the slightest 
doubt that they attract rain showers. A few 
hundred square miles of wooded dells in the 
valley of the Rio de San Pedro, Peru, enjoy 
an annual average of twenty inches of rain, 
while in the adjoining desert of Atacama 
droughts have been known to continue for 
six years. Ibrahim Pasha’s tree plantations 
in upper Egypt increased the yearly rainfall 
from nine to fifteen inches. In Italy it has 
decreased one-half; in some districts of 
Northern Africa (the ancient Numidia, for 
instance) at least four-fifths. Forests shelter 
insect destroying birds and prevent thé des- 
tructive effects of inundations by absorbing 
rain showers that would pour down from 
treeless slopes as from a slate roof. 
But even from a purely sanitary point of 
view the blessing of shade trees justifies the 
claims of all Forestry Association. Leaves 
generate oxygen and absorb all sorts of 
noxious gases, thus forming a natural anti- 
dote to the atmospheric grievances of 
crowded cities. In towns like Savannah, 
Ga., with its fourfold rows of stately forest 
trees shading every principal street, sunstrokes 
are far less frequent than in the sun scorched 
(though more elevated) settlements of the 
prairie States, and in that respect the immu- 
nity of our Spanish American neighbours is 
chiefly due to their sensible custom of ex- 
tending the siesta recess from 12 to 3 p.m. 
Mexican ploughmen compelled to resume 
work immediately after dinner would die like 
the peons whom the Spanish conquerors 
forced to work the highways in the bakeoven 
heat of the tropical afternoon. 
Shade trees prevent ophthalmia. It is the 
curse of lower Egypt; it has become fear- 
fully prevalent in Southern Italy, with the ex- 
ception of comparatively well wooded 
Calabria, where the foothills of the Apen- 
nines fringe the coast east and west. In 
Sicily eye sores, in both senses of the word, 
can be found in every village, and I am still 
haunted by the recollection of a scene in the 
harbour suburb of Girgenti, where children 
with red. swollen eyelids were foraging in a 
dump pile and wrangling for bones with a 
number of equally blear-eyed dogs. There 
was not a tree in sight. - Far up and down 
the undulating beach the heat of the sun 
made the air tremble, and the glare of its 
reflection from the refuse of old salt pans was 
almost as afflictive as the glitter of a snow 
field. Yet on the same spot Agrigentum, 
with its: population of keen-eyed Greeks, 
flourished for three hundred years, a city of 
gardens and groves, rivalling the wealth of 
Carthage, the mistress of the Mediterranean. 
Malaria, in many of its forms, is likewise a 
penalty of forest destruction. The clearing 
of the woods that once protected the slopes 
of the southern Alps has avenged itself upon 
the valleys of the North Italian rivers. Mil- 
lions of cubic feet of alluvium are carried 
down by the mountain torrents every spring. 
The mud deluge swamps the fields and forms 
pestilential marches at the mouth of streams 
that were once as salubrious as the Golden 
Gate of the Sacramento. Between Com- 
machio and Adria, in the delta of the Po, 
the coastline has advanced eight miles, the 
spoil of the highland streams having been de- 
posited in the form of festering mudbanks. 
Fevers ripen every summer ; the’ immoderate 
use of antiseptic spices (pepper, etc.) fails to 
check the effects of the malarious atmosphere; 
the coast dwellers, with few exceptions are 
cachetic and short lived. Swarms of virulent 
gnats cloud the air from June to September, 
and probably help to propagate the contagion, 
Similar causes have produced similar effects 
in the Pontine Swamps, where extensive 
tracts of alluvium become almost uninhabit- 
able in midsummer. q 
Among the sanitary equipments of a model 
dwelling-house shade trees should rank with 
the best plumber’s contrivances. Anywhere 
between Boston and Buenos Ayres a house 
in a grove is worth twice the rent of a house 
on a naked hillside. Under the influence of 
the same sunrays that sicken the sandhill 
dweller, leaf trees evolve a lung balm more 
effective than all the specifics of Ober- 
Medicinal Rath Koch, Air currents filtered 
through a maze of green foliage are freed from 
impurities and cooled sufficiently to turn dog- 
day misery into comfort, 
13 
Lack of the tree shade is the curse of 
Italian villas, and if it were not for his trans- 
cendant merits as an apostle of the fresh-air 
cure, one might be tempted to doubt if the 
value of Dr. Dio Lewis’ sanitary. reforms was 
not offset by his crusade against shade trees. 
There was a solarium in his private health - 
resort, and in his zeal for the propaganda of 
the sunshine gospel he caused tbe destruc- 
tion of trees enough to supply a first-class 
sawmill foranumber of years. His objection 
was founded on the belief that sunshine is a 
microbe-killer, nature’s chief specific for the 
cure of germ diseases; but in sparsely 
wooded Hindostan sunrays have not pre- 
vented the spread of frightful epidemics. 
They do not check the development of 
malaria germs in the fens of the Adriatic, 
nor of typhoid germs in the slums of our 
Southern seaport towns. 
Nor would it be easy on that theory to 
explain the longevity of our backwoodsmen, 
or of the German foresters (Government 
forest wardens), who vie in surrounding their- 
cottages with overarching leaf trees. Not a 
sunray reaches the foersterhaus from May to 
November, but in winter, when sunshine is 
really a blessing, the screen opens, or holds 
its own just enough to mitigate the blasts of 
the north wind. 
A Handy Frame for the Amateur. 
At a Cost of About £1. 
To make a handy frame, in which most 
things that need glass house culture will do 
well and flourish, get four jarrah posts about 
4 ft. long and 4 ins. square; dig four holes, 
4 ft. x 6 ft. apart; bury two posts 2 ft. and 
the other two 1% ft. deep, the two higher 
posts form the back of the frame, and the 
shorter ones the front. Nail pailings on the 
outside of the four posts so as to close them 
in, then bank up sand or soil against the 
outside of the pailings, to make the interior 
snug and air-tight. _ Nail four pieces of deal, 
4x1. on top of: the posts, with a narrow 
piece on the two sides for the sash to slide 
between. To make the sash get three pieces 
of oregon, 2 ins. x 1% in. x 6 ft. long, planed 
and grooved ; two pieces deal, each 4 ft. x 
3 ins. x 2 ins. and 6 ft. by 3 ins. x 2 Ins.; 
mortice these together and make tight with 
screws ; mortice the top and bottom plate for 
Io X 12 glass, fix the sash bars in, put the 24 
sheets glass in, glaze them, and the sash is 
camplete. 
Such a frame is a capital substitute for a 
glass house, and is the best possible place 
for raising seeds in. __ By sinking pots in the 
bed of the frame, plants a little over large 
may be carried some months longer, that 
would otherwise have to be shifted. 
A piece of hessian placed over the sash, 
and a coat of whitewash on the glass will be 
necessary on hot days, and the sash will need 
lifting an inch or two for ventilation. 
For raising seed use shallow pans, and 
stand them on inverted pots to get them 
pea the glass, and see that they neyer get 
ry, ' 
