Man and Nature; Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action

IRST REMOVAL OF THE WOODS-EFFECTS OF FIRE ON FOREST SOIL-EFFECTS OF THE DESTRUCT

CONDUCTORS OF HEAT; c, TREES IN SUMMER AND IN WINTER; d, DEAD PRODUCTS OF TREES; e, TREES AS A SHELTER TO GROUNDS TO T

TEMPERATURE-TOTAL INFLUENCE

E FLOW OF SPRINGS-GENERAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WOODS-LITERATURE AND CONDITION OF THE FOREST IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES-THE INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON INUNDATIONS-DESTRUCTIVE ACTION OF TORRENTS-THE PO AND ITS DEPOSITS-MOUNTAIN SLIDES-PROTECTION AGAINST THE FALL OF ROCKS AND AVALANCHES BY TREES-PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION

e Earth Orig

getable remains-trunks, branches, roots, fruits, seeds, and leaves of trees-so often found in conjunction with works of primitive art, in the boggy soil of districts where no forests appear to have existed within the eras through which written annals reach; from ancient historical records, which prove t

tively expressed and reduced to these three: exemption from defect or excess of moisture, from perpetual frost, and from the depredations of man and browsing quadrupeds. Where these requisites are secured, the hardest rock is as certain to be overgrown with wood as the most fertile plain, though, for obvious reasons, the process is slower in the former than in the latter case. Lichens and mosses first prepare the way for a more highly organized vegetation. They retain the moisture of rains and dews, and bring it to act, in combination with the gases evolved by their organic processes

canic sand and molten rock thrown out by Vesuvius soon becomes productive. George Sandys, who visited this latter mountain in 1611, after it had reposed for several centuries, found the throat of the volcano at the bottom of the crater "almost choked with broken rocks and trees that are falne therein." "Next t

eedpods of the sont and other acacias, which, like the American Robinia, thrive well on dry and sandy soils, and he spares no tree the branches of which are within his reach, except, if I remember right, the tamarisk that produces manna. Young trees sprout plentifully around the springs and along the winter watercourses of the desert, and these are just the halting stations of the caravans and their rou

es not Furnis

sh either bulb or fruit suited to the nourishment of man; and the fowls and beasts on which he feeds are scarcely seen except upon the margin of the wood, for

oval of t

s and savannas of the interior, where such existed,[118] he could find room for expansion and further growth, only by the removal of a portion of the fore

of his rude agriculture and handicrafts. Windfalls would furnish a thin population with a sufficient supply of such materia

d vegetation, was particularly rapid and luxuriant on soils which had been burned over, and thus a new stimulus would be given to the practice of destroying the woods by fire, as a means of both extending the open grounds, and making the acquisition of a yet more productive soil. After a few harvests had exhausted the first rank fertility of the virgin mould, or when weeds and briers and the sprouting roots of the trees had begun to choke the crops of the half-subdued soil, the gro

Fire on F

es, and dries the earth; it destroys reptiles, insects, and worms, with their eggs, and the seeds of trees and of smaller plants; it supplies, in the ashes which it deposits on the surface, important elements for the growth of a new forest clothing, as well as of the usual objects of agricultural industry; and by the changes thus produced, it fits the ground for the reception of a vegetation different in character from that

estruction o

ll their manifestations, as well as on every branch of rural economy and productive industry, and, therefore, on all the material interests of man. The first respects the meteor

cists respecting it are, in a great degree, inferential only, not founded on experiment or direct observation. They are, as might be expected, so

Influence

he uncertainty is even greater. The data which alone could lead to certain, or even probable, conclusions are wanting, and we should, therefore, only embarrass our argument by any attempt to discuss this meteorological element, important as it may be, in its relations of cause and effect to more familiar and better understood meteoric phenomena. It may, however, be observed that hail storms-which were once generally supposed, and are still held by many, to be produced by a specific electrical action, and which, at least, are always accompanied by electrical disturbances-are believed, in all countries particularly exposed to that scourge, to have become more frequent and destructive in proportion as the forests have been cleared. Caimi observes: "When the chains of the Alps and the Apennines had not yet been stripped of their magnificent crown of woods, the May hail, which now desolates the fertile plains of Lombardy, was much less frequent; but since the general prostration of the forest, these tempests are laying waste even the mountain soils whose older inhabitants scarcely knew this plague.[

fluence of

, and of their trunks and branches when they fall a prey to time. But the quantity of gases thus abstracted from and restored to the atmosphere is inconsiderable-infinitesimal, one might almost say-in comparison with the ocean of air from which they are drawn and to which they return; and though the exhalations from bogs, and other low grounds covered with decaying vegetable matter, are highly deleterious to human health, yet, in general, the air of the forest is hardly chemically distinguishable from that of the sand plains, and we can as li

considered as Inorganic

scopical and the thermoscopical conditions of the atmosphere are, therefore, inseparably connected as reciprocally dependent quantities, and neither can be fully discussed without taking notice of the other. But the forest, regarded purely as inorganic matter, and without

g and Emitt

e and exposure.[130] An acre of chalk, rolled hard and smooth, would have great reflecting power, but its radiation would be much increased by breaking it up into clods, because the actually exposed surface would be greater, though the outline of the field remained the same. The area of a triangle being equal to its base multiplied by half the length of a perpendicular let fall from its apex, it follows that the entire superficies of the triangular faces of a quadrangular pyramid, the perpendicular of whose sides should be twice the length of the base, would be four times the area of the ground it

aves everywhere meet, it is evident that, when in full foliage, the trunks, branches, and leaves would present an amount of thermoscopic surface much greater than that of an acre of bare earth; and besides this, the fallen leaves lying scattered on the ground, would somewhat augment the sum total.[131] On the other hand, the growing leaves of trees generally form a succession of stages, or, loosely speaking, layers, corresponding to the animal growth of the branches, and more or less overlying each other. This d

s in their outline-all circumstances which tend to augment their power of emitting heat by reflection or radiation. Direct experiment on growing trees is very difficult, nor is it in any case practicable to distinguish how far a reduction of temperature produced by vegetation is due to radiation, and how far to exhalation of the fluids of the plant in a gaseous form; for both processes usually go on

s Conducto

, and warmer in summer than those a few inches lower, and their shifting temperature approximates to the atmospheric mean of the respective seasons. The roots of large trees penetrate beneath the superficial strata, and reach earth of a nearly constant temperature, corresponding to the mean for the entire year. A

n Summer a

and their radiating as well as their shading surface is very much greater in summer than in winter. In the latter season, they little obstruct the reception of heat by the

Products

mposition; then, a mass of black mould, in which traces of organic structure are hardly discoverable except by microscopic examination; then, a stratum of mineral soil, more or less mixed with vegetable matter carried down into it by water, or resulting from the decay of roots; and, finally, the inorganic earth or rock itself. Without this deposit of the dead products of trees, this latter would be the superficial stratum, and as its powers of absorption, radiation, and conduction of heat would differ essentially from those of the layers with which it has been covered by the droppings of the f

helter to Groun

effluvia, though, in this last case, it may exercise a chemical as well as a mechanical agency. In the report of a committee appointed in 1836 to examine an article of the forest code of France, Arago observes: "If a curtain of forest on the coasts of Normandy and of Brittany were destroyed, these two provinces would become accessible to the winds

winds, over the surface. This, I think, has been an increasing fact within my own remembrance. As the cultivation of the country has extended farther to the north, the winds from the south have reached distances more remote from the

e Po, in the Parmesan territory, and in a part of Lombardy; it injures the harvests and the vineyards, and sometimes ruins the crops of the season. To the same cause many ascribe the meteorological changes in the precincts of Modena and of Reggio. In the communes of these districts, where f

s one of the oldest pine woods in Italy-having been replanted with resinous trees after it was unfortunately cut, has re

that have exerted a sensible deteriorating effect on the climate of that peninsula, which has no mountains to serve at once as a ba

elf, which must always exist when the atmosphere within the wood is warmer than the stratum of air above it, and must be of almost constant occurrence in the case of cold winds, from whatever quarter, because the still air in the forest is slow in taking up the temperature of the moving columns and currents around and above it. Experience, in fact, has shown that mere rows of trees, and even much lower obstructions, are of essential service in defending vegetation against the action of the wind. Hardy proposes planting, in Algeria, belts of trees at the distance of one hundred mètres from each other, as a shelter which experience had proved to be useful in France.[138] "In the valley of the Rhone," says Becquerel, "a simple hedge, two mètres in height, is a sufficient

ests which formerly both screened it as by a wall, and communicated the warmth of their soil to the air and earth to the leeward. Caimi states that since the cutting down of the woods of the Apennines, the cold winds destroy or stunt the vegetat

nced within thirty years a climatic disturbance, of which the late frosts, formerly unknown in the country, are one of the most melancholy e

ravages, diminished indeed by a long career which had partially exhausted its force, over the whole maritime frontier. The people thought this wind a curse sent of God. They raised altars to it and offered sacrifices to appease its rage." It seems, however, that this plague was less destructive than at present, until the close of the sixteenth century, when further clearings had removed most of the remaining barriers to its course. Up to that time, the northwest wind appears not to have attained to the maximum of specific effect which now characterizes it as a local phenomenon. Extensive districts, from which the rigor of the seasons has now banished valuable

ts are more frequent in many localities north of the Alps; that fruit tree

Protection a

d to miasmatic exhalations are numerous, and belts of trees, if not forests, are of so frequent occurrence that their efficacy in this respect can be easily tested. The belief that rows of trees afford an important protection against malarious influences is very general among Italians best qualified by intelligence and professional experience to judge upon the subject. The commissioners appointed to report on the measures to be adopted for the improvement of the Tuscan Maremme advised the planting of three or four rows of poplars, Populus alba, in such directions as to obstruct the currents of air from malarious localities, and thus intercept a great proportion of the pernicious exhalations."[145] Lieutenant Maury even bel

end, nevertheless, that they are themselves active causes of the production of malaria. The subject has been a good deal discussed in Italy, and there is some reason to think that under special circumstances the influence of the forest in this respect may be prejudicial rather than salutary, though this does not

anic Matter, tends t

thermometrical influences, because they exert themselves under infinitely varied conditions; and it is equally impossible to make a quantitative estimate of any partial, still more of the total effect of the forest, considered as dead matter, on the temperature of the atmosphere, and of the portion of the earth's surfac

timately connected with their effects upon the humidity of the air and the earth, and with all their living processes, that it is difficult to separate the former from

AS ORG

ific

er mode by which their living processes may warm the air around them, independently of the thermometric effects of condensation and evaporation. The vital heat of a dozen persons raises the temperature of a room. If trees possess a specific temperature of their

he tree does not rise and fall in proportion to that of the atmosphere. So long as the latter is below 18° [= 67° Fahr.], that of the tree is always the highest; but if the temperature of the air rises to 18°, that of the vegetable growth is the lowest. S

roach of fecundation. In certain arums the temperature rises to 40° or 50° Cent. [= 104° or 122° Fahr.]. It is v

ith a tenth only of this calorific power, they could not fail to exert an imp

these principles are not present. Hence, in midwinter, when all vegetable functions are dormant, we do not believe that any heat is developed by a tree, or that its interior differs in temperature from its exterior further than it is protected from the external air. The experiments which have been made on this poi

"[151] Warm weather in winter, of too short continuance to affect the temperature of the ground sensibly, stimulates a free flow of sap in the maple. Thus, in the last week of December, 1862, and the first week of January, 1863, sugar was made from that tree, in various parts of New England. "A single branch of a tree, admitted into a warm room in winter through an aperture in a window, opened its buds an

il beneath it must have remained still frozen, for the holes around the trees were full of water resulting from its melting, and this would have escaped below if the ground had been thawed. In this case, although the roots had not tha

at that season. But, however this may be, the "circulation of the sap" commences at a very early period in the spring, and the temperature of the air in contact with trees may then

of the Forest

g, upon temperature, and investigators differ much in their conclusions on this subject. It seems probable that in every particular case the result is

mate of a great country, or of a particular locality. By closely examining the effects of clearing off the woods, we should perhaps find that, far from being an evil, it is an

sts is accompanied with an elevation of the mean temperature, and he thinks it highly probable that it ha

frigorific cause

against solar irradiation an

cutaneous transpira

ion of their branches, the surfa

climatology of a country, take into account the proportion between the area of the

t desert of the Sahara were to become wooded in the course of ages, the sands would cease to be heated as much as at the present epoch, when the mean temperature is twenty-nine degrees [centigrade, = 85° Fahr.]. In that case, the ascending curren

e, and at the same elevation above the sea, in localities comprised between the eleventh degree of north and the fifth degree of south latitude, that is to say, in

hat, inasmuch as the same and sometimes a greater difference is found in favor of the open ground, at points within the tropics so elevated as to have a temperate or even a polar climate, we must conclude that the forests in Northern America exert a refrigerating influence equally powerful. But the conditions of the soil

ON THE HUMIDITY OF

norgani

are broken into smaller ones, and consequently strike the ground with less mechanical force, or are perhaps even dispersed into vapor without reaching it.[156] As a screen, it prevents the access of the sun's rays to the earth, and, of course, an elevation of temperature which would occasion a great increase of evaporation. As a mechanical obstruction, it impedes the passage of air currents over the ground, which, as is well known, is one of the most efficient agents in promoting evaporation and the refrigeration resulting

s that would otherwise flow rapidly over the surface and perhaps be conveyed to the distant sea, and then slowly gives out, by evaporation, infiltration, and percolation, the moisture thus imbibed. The roots, too, pen

orest as

re is affected by the forest regarded as lifeless matter. Let us in

sorbed from the earth by the roots, and thence distributed to all parts of the plant. Popular opinion, indeed, supposes that all the vegetable fluids, during the entire period of growth, are thus drawn from the bosom of the earth, and that the wood and other products of the tree are wholly formed from matter held in solution in the water abstracted by the roots from the ground. This is an error, for, not only is the solid matter of the tree, in a certain proportion not important to our present inquiry, received from the atmosphere in a gaseous form, through the pores of the leaves and of the young shoots, but water in the state of vapor is absorbed and contributed to the circulation, by the same

sses an

idity of the air than writers on the forest have usually assigned to them, perish with the trees they grow on; but, in many situations, nature provides a compensation for the tree mosses in ground species, which, on cold soils, especially those with a northern exposure, spring up abundantly both before the woods are felled, and when the land is cleared and employed for pastura

of

d up by their roots from the ground-for we cannot extract from a tree its whole moisture-but numerical data which may aid

ater abstracted from the earth by the roots during this season, when the yet undeveloped leaves can hardly absorb an appreciable quantity of vapor from the atmosphere;[163] for all this fluid runs from two or three incisions or auger holes, so narrow as to intercept the current of comparatively few sap vessels, and besides, experience shows that large as is the quantity withdrawn from the circulation, it is relatively too small to affect very sensibly the growth of the tree.[164] The number of large maple trees on an acre is frequently not less than f

g, and especially in clear weather, when the nights are frosty and the days warm; for it is then that the melting snows supply the

eneath their scaly covering, the ground has become drier, the thirst of the roots

nd Exhalatio

combined gases and an unascertained but perhaps considerable quantity

egetable physiology tells us that there is a current of sap toward the roots as well as from them.[170] I do not know that the exudation of water into the earth, through the bark or at the extremities of these latter organs, has been directly proved, but the other known modes of carrying off the surplus do not seem adequate to dispose of it at the almost leafless period when it is most abundantly received, and it is therefore difficult to believe that the roots do not, to some extent, drain as well as flood the watercourses of their stem. Later in the season the roots absorb less, and the now developed leaves exhale a vastly increased quantity of moisture into

radiation. Visible vapors or clouds, it is well known, prevent frosts by obstructing radiation, or rather by reflecting back again the heat radiated by the earth, just as any mechanical screen would do. On the other hand, clouds intercept the rays of the sun also, and hinder its heat from reaching the earth. The invisible vapors given out by leaves impede the passage of heat reflected and radiated by the earth and by all terrestrial objects, but oppose much le

ion of the vapor by absorption disengages heat, and consequently raises the temperature of the soil which absorbs it. Von Babo found the temperature of sandy earth thus elevated from 20° to 27

Conflicting

ering acts in the contrary direction by accumulating, in a reservoir not wholly inaccessible to vaporizing influences, the water of precipitation which might otherwise suddenly sink deep into the bowels of the earth, or flow by superficial channels to other climatic regions. We now see that, as a living organism, it tends, on the one hand, to diminish the humidity of

y are sometimes, but certainly not always, contemporaneous in their action, whether their tendency is in the same or in opposite directions, and, therefore, their influence is sometimes cumulative, sometimes conflicting; but, upon the whole, their general effect seems to be to mitigate extremes of atmospheric heat and cold

t is far from certain that he has thereby affected the mean, however much he may have exaggerated the extremes of atmospheric temperat

rest on Temperature

ll find that probably not one tenth of the total superficies of our planet was ever, at any one time in the present geological epoch, covered with forests. Besides this, the distribution of forest land, of desert, and of water, is such as to reduce the possible influence of the former to a low expression; for the forests are, in large proportion, situated in cold or temperate climates, where the action of the sun is comparatively feeble both in elevating temperature and in promoting evaporation; while, in the torrid zone, the desert and the sea-the latter of which always presents an evaporable surface-enormous

horter, the winters milder, drier, longer, than in the same regions after the removal of the forest. The slender historical evidence we possess seems to point to the same conclusion,

eds upon it, and the snow which the woods protect from blowing away, or from melting in the brief thaws of winter. I have already remarked that bare ground freezes much deeper than that which is covered by beds of leaves, and when the earth is thickly coated with snow, the strata frozen before it fell begin to thaw. It is not uncommon to find the ground in the woods, where the snow lies two or three feet deep, entirely free from frost, when the atmospheric temperature has been for several weeks below the freezing point, and for some days even below the zero of Fahrenheit. When the ground is cleared and brought under cultivation, the leaves are ploughed into the soil and decomposed, and the snow, especially upon knolls and eminences, is blown off, or perhaps

ut insisting that the removal of the forest has diminished the sum total of snow and rain, we may well admit that it has lessened the quantity which annually falls within particular limits. Various theoretical considerations make this probable, the most obvious argument, perhaps, being that drawn from the generally admitted fact, that the summer and

nce is conflicting in tendency, and sometimes equivocal in interpretation, but I believe that a majority of the foresters and physicists who have studied the question are of opinion that in many, if not in all cases, the destruction of the woods has been

s barr

n grow, because

in can fall to

ught grows

essarily, in most cases not probably, entitled to any weight whatever, as a proof that more or less rain fell formerly than now; because the accumulation of water in the channel of a river depends far less upon the quantity of pr

is not universally, or even generally true, that the atmosphere returns its humid

tempests s

and, from lan

with the laws of general atmospheric motion, but of the origin and limits, the beginning and end of that motion, as it manifests itself at any particular time and place, we know nothing. We cannot say where or when the vapor, exhaled to-day from the lake on which we float, will be condensed and fall; whether it will waste itself on a barren desert, refresh upland pastures, descend in snow on Alpine heights, or contribute to swell a distant torrent which shall lay wast

es. M. Boussingault states that in the region comprised between the Bay of Cupica and the Gulf of Guayaquil, which is covered with immense forests, the rains are almost continual, and that the mean temperature of this humid country rises hardly to twenty-six degrees (= 80° Fahr.). M. Blanqui, in his 'Travels in Bulgaria,' informs us that at Malta rain has become so rare, since the woods were cleared to make room for the growth of cotton, that at the time of his visit in October, 1841, not a

being more highly heated during the day by the influence of insolation, cool with greater rapidity by radiation. But it must be remarked, that this increased deposition of dew on the neighboring fields is partly due to the forests themselves; for the dense, saturated strata of air which hover over the woods descend in cool, calm evenings, like clouds, to the valley, and in the morning, beads of dew sparkle on the leaves of the grass and the flowers of the field. Forests, in a word, exert, in the interior of continents, an influence like that of the sea on the climate of islands and of c

the Rev. Mr. Van Lennep, well known as a competent observer, gives the following remarkable a

es, several trees had each furnished a small stream of water, and these, uniting, had run upon the road, so that travellers had to pass through the mud; although, as I said, everywhere else the ground was perfectly dry. Moreover, the collected moisture was not sufficient to drop directly from the leaves, but in every case it ran down the branches and trunk to the ground. Farther on we found a grove, and at the foot of each tree, on the north side, was a lump of ice, the water having frozen

e grove of walnut, oak, and black mulberry trees, which shade the village of

apor is raised by the solar heat, the winds are the guiding tubes which carry the vapor with them to the forests where a lower temperature prevails. This

inues he, "one of the reasons of the extreme aridity of Spain. The hatred of a Spaniard toward a tree is proverbial. Many districts in France have been materially injure

ise in summer nights and at the beginning of winter, when there is a higher temperature in the forest, which is not favorable to that effect. * * * The wood is, further, like the mountain, a mechanical obstruction to the motion of rain clouds, and, as it checks them in their course, it gives them occasion

ratum of air resting upon a wood to give up its moisture, which thus, as rain, fog, or dew, is returned to the forest. * * * The warm, moist currents of air which come from other regions are cooled as they approach the wood by its less heated atmosphere, and obliged to let fall the humidity with which they are charged. The woods contribute to the same effect by mechanically impeding the motion of fog and rain cloud, whose particles are thus accumulated and condensed to rain. The forest thus has a greater power than the open ground to retain within its own limits already existing humidity, and to preserve it, and it attracts and collects that which the wind brings it from elsewhere, and forces it to deposit itself as rain or other precipitation. * * * In consequence of these relations of the forest to humidity, it

es were the granaries of Europe, fertile and populous, similar consequences have been experienced. These lands are now deserts, and it is the destruction of the forests alone which has produced this desolation. * * * In Southern France, many districts have, from the same cause, become barren wastes of stone, and the cultivation of the vine and the olive has suffered severely since the baring of the neighboring mountains. Since the extensive clearings between the Spree and the Oder, the inhabitants complain that the clover crop is much less productive than before. On the other hand, examples of the beneficial influence of planting and restoring the woods are not wanting. In Scotland, where many miles square have been plant

out being covered or otherwise protected from injury by the atmosphere; but since the making of plantations, an obstacle has been created which retards the current of air from the north. The air thus checked, accumulates, dilates, cools, and yields rain.[186] The forests of the Vosges and Ardennes produce the same effects in the north east of France, and send us a great river, the Me

n the atmosphere as refrigerating causes. The second scale of the balance predominates over the other, for it is estab

in was thereby diminished-after examining the question with much care, remarks: "In my judgment it is settled that very large clearings must diminish the annual fall of rain in a country;" and o

ficial conduit for the discharge of lacustrine waters exists, we can seldom or never be sure that nature has not provided subterranean channels for their escape. Indeed, when we consider that most earths, and even some rocks under great hydrostatic pressure, are freely permeable by water, and that fissures are frequent in almost all rocky strata, it is evident that we cannot know in what proportion the depression of the level o

er received by the lake, and it would always be impossible to know to what territorial extent influences thus affecting the level of a lake might reach. Boussingault admits that extensive clearing below an alpine lake, even at a considerable distance, might affect the level of its waters. How it would produce this influence he does not inform us, but, as he says nothing of the natural subterranean drainage of surface waters, it is to be presumed that he refers to the supposed diminution of the quantity of rain from the removal of the forest, which might manifest itself at a point more elevated than the cause which occasioned it. The elevation or depression of the level o

ely to be found, and the opportunity for making them is rapidly passing away, except so far as a converse series might be collected in countries-France, for example-where forest plantation is now going on upon a large scale. The Smithsonian

e rain; but though the arguments of the advocates of this doctrine are very plausible, not to say convincing, their opinions are rather à priori conclusio

ns of drying morasses, because the plants draw from the earth a quantity of water larger than the average annual fall of rain.[190] Kl?den, admitting that the rivers Oder and Elbe have diminished in quantity of water, the former since 1778, the latter since 1828, denies that the diminuti

. At the first of these places it was 881 millimètres, at the latter 581 millimètres. The two cities are not more than eight miles apart. They are at the same altitude, and it is stated that the only difference in their geographical conditions consists in the different

GRENE

42.2 millimètr

er, "

, 1853,

4 in three

27.1 millimètre

852, 2

" 56

" 22

er, " 2

9 in five w

E BOU

51.3 millimètr

er, "

, 1853,

9 in three

43.8 millimètre

852, 1

" 55

" 19

er, " 2

5 in five w

in wooded countries, but this result is so contrary to what has been generally accepted a

me-does not examine this particular point, and as, in the summary of the results of his investigations, he does not ascribe to the forest a

ngly favor the opinion that more rain falls in wooded than in open countries. One important conclusion, at least, upon the meteorological influence of forests is certain and undisputed: the proposition, namely, that, within their own limits, and near their own borders, they maintain a

Forest on the Hum

the humidity, the texture and consistence, the configuration and distribution of the mould or arable soil, and, very often, of the mineral strata below, and on the permanence and regularity of springs a

t once obstructed insolation and prevented the radiation of heat from the earth. These influences go far to balance each other; but familiar observation shows that, in summer, the forest soil is not raised to so high a temperature as open grounds exposed to irradiation. For this reason, and in consequence of the mechanical resistance opposed by the bed of dead leaves to the escape of moisture, we should expect that, except after recent rains, the superficial strata of woodland soil would be more humid

e Forest on the

both in number and in volume. This fact is so familiar throughout the American States and the British Provinces, that there are few old residents of the interior of those districts who are not able to testify to its truth as a matter of personal observation. My own recollection suggests to me many instances of this sort, and I remember one case where a small mountain spring, which disappeared soon after the clearing of the ground where it rose, was recovered about ten or twelve

statement rests on very doubtful authority, and Foissac cites no evidence in support of his own proposition.[193] In the American States, it is always observed that clearing the ground not only causes running springs to disappear, but dries up the stagnant pools and the spongy soils of the low grounds. The first roads in those States ran along the ridges, when practicable, because there only was the earth dry enough to allow of their construction, and, for the same r

osphere, as argued by Vallès[195]-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 superficial 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 th

purpose. The interest of the question will justify me in giving, in Boussingault's own words, the facts and some of the remarks with which he accompanies the details of them: "In many localities," he observes,[196] "it has been thought that, within a certain number of years, a sensible diminution has been perceived in the volume of water of streams utilized as a motive power; at other points, there are grounds for believing that rivers have become shallower, and th

and soon after to dry up again. These latter observations, it will be easily conceived, warn us not to admit hastily the common opinion that the felling of the woods lessens the quantity of rain; for not only is it very possible that the quantity of rain has not changed, but the mean volume of running water may have remained the same, in spite of the appearance of drought presented by the rivers and springs, at certain periods of the year. Perhaps the only difference would be that the flow of the same quantity of water becomes more irregular in consequence of clearing.

to inquire whether it is an established fact that running waters diminish on the surface of a country in which extensive clearing is going on; in a word, to examine whether an apparent fact has not been mistaken for a real one. And here lies the practical point of the question; for if it is once established that clearing diminishes the volume of streams, it is less important to know to what special cause thi

well on the heights of Victoria. Bounded on the north by the coast chain, on the south by a system of mountains connected with the Llanos, the valley is shut in on the east and the west by lines of hills which completely close it. In consequence of this singular configuration, the rivers which rise within it, having

with its actual condition, even making large allowance for exaggeration, it was easy to see that the level was considerably depressed. The facts spoke for themselves. Oviedo, who, toward the close of the sixteenth century, h

o admirable plantations of cotton, bananas, and sugar cane; and buildings erected near the lake showed the sinking of the water from year to year. In 1796, new islands made their appearance. An important military point, a fortress

the ocean. Humboldt disposed of these hypotheses, and, after a careful examination of the locality, the distinguished traveller did not hesitate to

any of the best-peopled parts of France. * * * Such was the prosperous c

s, were submerged. The islands of Nuevas Aparecidas, which appeared above the surface in 1796, had again become shoals dangerous to navigation. Cabrera, a tongue of land on the north side of the valley, was so narrow that the least rise of the water completely inundated it. A protracted north wind sufficed

mination had desolated these smiling lands and decimated their population. At the first cry of independence a great number of slaves found their liberty by enlisting under the banners of the new republic; the great pla

he lake were diverted, to serve for irrigation, and the rivers were dry for more than six mo

of 14° to 16° centigrade [= 57°, 61° Fahrenheit], had formed but one, a century before his visit; that the waters were gradually retiring, and the plantations extendin

covered, to a certain height, with American oaks, laurels, and other trees of indigenous species; but at the time of his visit the mountains had been almost entirely stripped of their wood, chiefly to furnish fuel for salt-works. Our author adds that other cases, simil

ing, at the foot of a wooded mountain in the Island of Ascension, dried up when the mountain was cleared, but reappeared when the wood was replanted; the other at Marmato, in the province of Popayan, where the streams employed to drive machinery were much diminished in volume, within two years after the clearing of the heights from which they derived their supplies. This latter is an interesting case, because, although the

upon the question of the diminution of springs by clearings, but they logically infer it from the subsidence of

water for the iron works of Unterwyl, which was almost unaffected by drought or by heavy rains. The Sorne has now become a torrent, every shower occasions a flood, and after a few days of fine weather, the current falls so low th

d, from time immemorial, sufficed for the machinery of a previous factory. Afterward, the woods near its sources were cut. The

pite of the severest droughts, to supply all the fountains of the town; but, as soon as considerable forests were felled in Combe-de-pré Martin and in t

its water after the clearing of Varieux and Rongeoles. These woods have been replanted, th

rt has entirely vanished since the surrounding

middle of a very steep pasture inclining to the south. Eighty years ago, the owner of the land, perceiving that young firs were shooting up in the upper part of it, determined to let them grow, and they soon formed a flourishing grove. As soon as they were well grown, a fine spring appeared in place of the occasion

wn are cut in regular succession every twentieth year. As the annual cuttings approach a certain point, the springs yield less water, some of them

pond owes its existence to a stream which has its source in the hills which stretch some miles to the south. Within the time mentioned, these hills, which were clothed with a dense forest, have been almost entirely stripped of trees; and to the wonder and loss of the mill owners, the water in the pond has failed, except in the sea

battle of Lake Erie, in which the gallant Perry was victorious, was built at Old Portage, six miles north of Albion, and floated down to the lake. Now, in an ordinary stage of the water, a canoe or skiff can hardly pass down the stream. Many a boat of fifty tons burden has been built and loaded in the Tuscarawas,

re ably on the ascertained phenomena than Cantegril. The facts presented in the following case, communicated b

f the Forest of Montaut, and belonging to that commune. It extends along the northern slope of the Black Mountains. The

uses of the right of pasturage had converted the wood into an immense waste, so that this vast property now scarcely sufficed to pay the expense of protecting it, and to furnish the inhabitants with a meagre supply of fuel. While the forest was thus ruined, and the soil thus bared, the water, after every abundant rain, made an eruption into the valley, brought down a great quantity of pebbles which still clog th

the manufactories has become less and less precarious, and the action of the water is completely modified. For example, there are, no longer, sudden and violent floods which make it necessary to stop the machinery. There is no increase in the delivery until six or eight hours after the beginning of the

changes in the action of the stream can be attributed only to the restoration of the forest-changes whi

est in

in the North of Europe, the open ground freezes and remains impervious to water during a considerable part of the winter; though, even in climates where the earth does not freeze at all, the woods have still an important influence of the same character. The difference is yet greater in countries which have regular wet and dry seasons, rain being very frequent in the former period, while, in the latter, it scarcely occurs at all. These countries lie chiefly in o

re most sensibly felt, the winters are not attended with much frost, while, in Northern Europe, where the winters are rigorous enough to freeze the ground to the depth of some inches, or even feet, a humid atmosphere and frequent summer rains prevent the drying up of the springs observed in southern latitudes when the woods

ed the perennial fountains and streams, the ground remains covered with snow during the winter; for the trees protect the snow from blowing from the general surface into the depressions, and new accessions are received before the covering deposited by the first fall is melted. Snow is of a color unfavorabl

snow and the layers of leaves in contact with it often seem comparatively dry, when, in fact, the under surface of the former is in a state of perpetual thaw. No doubt a certain proportion of the snow is returned to the atmosphere by direct evaporation, but in the woods it is partial

snow does not exceed one fifth of the total precipitation for the year.[200] Although, in the open grounds, snow and ice are evaporated with great rapidity in clear weather, even when the thermometer stands far below the freezing point, the surface of the snow in the woods does not indicate much loss in this way. Very small deposits of snowflakes remain unevaporate

, while another body of snow, much more sheltered from the sun than the first, six feet in depth, and about sixteen feet square, was fully exposed to the wind. When the thaw came

one case, a constant current of air was kept passing over the open vessel, while the other was protected by a cover. The snow in the fi

rface. The immense importance of the forest, as a reservoir of this stock of moisture, becomes apparent, when we consider that a large proportion of the summer rain either flows into the valleys and the rivers, because it falls faster than the ground can imbibe it; or, if absorbed by the warm superficial strata, is evaporated from them without sink

Southern Europe, where nature has denied to the earth a warm winter-garment of flocculent snow, she has, by one of those compensations in which her empire is so rich, clothed the hillsides with um

nels of springs, or oozes out of the ground in drops which unite in rills, and so all is conveyed to the larger streams, and by them finally to the sea. The water, in percolat

ole year. The rivers fed by springs and shaded by woods are comparatively uniform in volume, in temperature, and in chemical composition. Their banks are little abraded, nor are their courses much obstructed by fallen timber, or by earth and gravel washed down from the

mpensated, and tree, bird, beast, and fish, alike, find a constant uniformity o

es of the Destruct

ibrous rootlets which held it together, dried and pulverized by sun and wind, and at last exhausted by new combinations. The face of the earth is no longer a sponge, but a dust heap, and the floods which the waters of the sky pour over it hurry swiftly along its slopes, carrying in suspension vast quantities of earthy particles which increase the abrading power and mechanical force of the current, and, augmented by the sand and gravel of falling banks, fill the beds of the streams, divert them into new channels and obstruct their outlets. The rivulets, wanting their former regularity of supply and deprived of the protecting shade of the woods, are heated, evaporated, and thus reduced in their summer currents, but swollen to raging torrents in autumn and in spring. From these causes, there is a constant degradation of the uplands, and a consequent elevation of the beds of watercourses and of lakes

others, the evil consequences of man's improvidence have not yet been experienced, only because a sufficient time has not elapsed, since the felling of the forest, to allow them to develop themselves. But the vengeance of nature for

ich he accompanies his extraordinary statement respecting the prevention of springs by the growth of forest trees, though, as is usual with him, his philosophy is wrong. "Destructive torrents are generally formed when hills

y furnished a retreat for rebels and robbers, sometimes protected because they were necessary to breed stags and boars for the chase, and sometimes spared with the more enlightened view of securing a supply of timber and of fuel to future generations.[204] It was reserved to l

t, and its Literature

the latter country, perhaps, that the relations of the woods to the regular drainage of the soil, and especially to the permanence of the natural configuration of terrestrial surface, have been most thoroughly investigat

tectural construction; for generations she has maintained no military or commercial marine large enough to require exhaustive quantities of timber,[206] and the mildness of her climate makes small demands on the woods for fuel. Besides these circumstances, it must be remembered that the sciences of observation did not become knowledges of practical application till after the mischief was already mainly done and even forgotten in Alpine Italy, while its evils were just beginning to be sensibly felt in France when the claims of natural philosophy as a liberal study were first acknowledged in modern Europe. The former political condition of the Italian Peninsula would have effectually prevented the adoption of a general system of forest economy, however clearly the importance of a wise administrat

f Genoa as early at least as the seventeenth; and Marschand states that the latter Government passed laws requiring the proprietors of mountain lands to replant the woods. These, however, do not seem to have been effectually enforced. It is very common in Italy to ascribe to the French occupation under the first Empire all the improvements, and all the abuses of recent times, according to the political sympathies of the individual; and the French are often said to have prostrated every forest which has disappeared within a century.[207] But, however this may be, no energetic system of repression or restoration was adopted by any of the Italian states after the downfall of the Empire, and the taxes on forest propert

dds: "Howbeit thus much I dare affirme, that if woods go so fast to decaie in the next hundred yeere of Grace, as they haue doone and are like to doo in this, * * * it is to be feared that the fennie bote, broome, turfe, gall, heath, firze, brakes, whinnes, ling, dies, hassacks, flags, straw, sedge, réed, rush, and also seacole, will be good merchandize euen in the citie of London, whereunto some of them euen now haue gotten readie passage, and taken vp their innes in the greatest merchants' parlours. * * * I would wish that I might liue no longer than to sée foure things in this land reformed, that is: the want of discipline in the church: the couetous dealing of most of our merchants in the preferment of the commodities of other countries, and hinderance of their owne: the holding of faires and markets vpon the sundaie to be abolished and referred to the wednesdaies: and that euerie man, in whatsoeuer part of the champaine soile enioieth fortie acres of land

of the Forest

processes of civilized life, the attention of French foresters and public economists has been specially drawn to three points, namely: the influence of the forests on the permanence and regular flow of springs or natural fountains; on inundations by the overflow of rivers; and on the abrasion of soil and the transportat

lence of river floods, as in securing the permanence and equability of natural fountains; for any cause which promotes the absorption and accumulation of the water of precipitation by the superficial strata of the soil, to be slowly given out by infiltration and percolation, must, by preventing the rapid flow of surface water into the natural channels of drainage, tend to check the sudden rise

inquiries; for, so far as we know the primitive conditions of the regions brought under human occupation within the historical period, it appears that the overflow of river banks was much less frequent and destructive than at the present day, or, at least, that rivers rose and fell less suddenly before man had removed the natural checks to the too rapid drainage of the basins in which their tributaries originate. The banks of the rivers and smaller streams in the North American colonies were formerly little abraded by

elds also. But the heaviest snows usually fall after midwinter, and are succeeded by warm rains or sunshine, which dissolve the snow on the cleared land before it has had time to act upon the frost-bound soil beneath it. In this case, the snow in the woods is absorbed as fast as it melts, by the soil it has protected from freezing, and does not materially contribute to swell the current of the rivers. If the mild weather, in which great snowstorms usually occur, does not continue and become a regular thaw, it is almost sure to be followed by drifting winds, and the inequality with which they distribute the snow leaves the ridges comparatively bare, while the depressions are ofte

the melting of the snow which covers it, it is already saturated with moisture, or very soon becomes so, and, of course, cannot relieve the pressure by absorbing more water. The consequence is that the face of the country is suddenly flooded with a quantity of melted snow and rain equivalent to a fall of six or eight inches of the latter, or even more. This runs unobstructed to rivers often still bound with thick ice, and thus inundations of a fearfully devastating character are produced. The ice burs

s, more or less unmixed, to the depth of several inches, sometimes even of feet, and this stratum is usually able to imbibe all the water possibly resulting from the snow which at any one time covers it. But the vegetable mould does not cease to absorb water when it becomes

ally the same at all seasons, and are analogous to those which it performs in the Northern United States in summer. Hence, in the former countries, the winter floods have n

d the bottoms which skirt them not yet covered with improvements whose cost is counted by millions, and, consequently, a smaller amount of property is exposed to injury by inundation. But the comparative exemption of the American people from the terrible calamities which the overflow of rivers has brought on some of the fairest portions of t

wooded ground, and that clearing diminishes rather than augments the intensity of inundations. Neither of these conclusions is warranted by their data or their reasoning, and they rest partly upon facts, which, truly interpreted, are not inconsistent with the received opinions on these subjects, partly upon assumptions which are contradicted by experience. Two of these lat

r autumn. Water runs over them only in the spring, when they are pressed down smoothly and compactly, a state in which they remain only until they are dry, when shrinkage and the action of the wind soon roughen the surface so as effectually to stop, by absorption, all flow of water." I have observed that when a sudden frost succeeds a thaw at the close of the wi

heir swelling growth powerfully tends to enlarge the crevices of rock into which they enter; and as the fissures in rocks are longitudinal, not mere circular orifices, every line of additional width gained by the growth o

between precipitation and evaporation, the abstraction of water from the surface and surface currents, by absorption and infiltration-an element unquestionably of great value, but hitherto much neglected by meteorological inquirers, who have very

longer shows traces of the deluge that had overwhelmed it. Inundations have even their compensations. The structures they destroy are replaced by better and more secure erections, and if they sweep off a crop of corn, they not unfrequently leave behind them, as they subside, a fertilizing deposit which enriches the exhausted field for a succession of seasons.[213] If, then, the too rapid flow of the surface waters occa

e Action o

have but rare and imperfect opportunities of observing the destructive causes in action. Still more rarely can they compare the past with the actual condition of the provinces in question, and trace the progress of their conversion from forest-crowned hills, luxuriant pasture grounds, and abundant cornfields and vineyards well watered by springs and fertilizing rivulets, to bald mountain ridges, rocky declivities, and steep earth banks furrowed by deep ravines with beds now dry, now filled by torrents of fluid mud and gravel hurrying down to spread themselves over the plain, and dooming to everlasting barrenness the once productive fields. In traversing such scenes, it is difficult to resist th

ral rule, fell his woods, unless he believes that it will be for his pecuniary interest to preserve them. Few of the new provinces which the last three centuries have brought under the control of the European race, would tolerate any interference by the law-making power with what they regard as the most sacred of civil rights-the right, namely, of every man to do what he will with his own. In the Old World, even in France, whose people, of all European nations, love best to be governed and are least annoyed by bureaucratic supervision, law has been found impotent to prevent the destruction, or wasteful economy, of private forests; and in many of the mountainous departments of that country, man is at this moment so fast laying waste the face of the earth, that t

In Switzerland, on the other hand, except in some few cases where woods have been preserved as a defence against avalanches, the forests of the communes have been productive of little advantage to the public interests, and have very generally gone to decay. The rights of pasturage, everywhere destructive to trees, combined with toleration of trespasses, have so reduced their

far the largest proportion of the surface. Through this territory, the soil is generally poor, and even the new clearings have little of the luxuriance of harvest which distinguishes them elsewhere. The value of the land for agricultural uses is therefore very small, and few purchases are made for any other purpose than to strip the soil of its timber. It has been often proposed that the State should declare the remaining forest the inalienable property of the commonwealth, but I believe the motive of the suggestion has originated rather in poetical than in economical views of the subject. Both these classes of considerations have a real worth. It is desirable that some large and easily accessible region of American soil should rem

the chilling blasts of the north wind, which meet no other barrier in their sweep from the Arctic pole. The climate of Northern New York even now presents greater extremes of temperature than that of Southern France. The long continued cold of winter is far more intense, the short heats of summer not less fierce than in Provence, and hence the preservation of every influenc

erican Atlantic States, but still they have rapid slopes and loose and friable soils enough to render widespread desolation certain, if the further destruction of the woods is not soon arrested. The effects of clearing are already perceptible in the comparatively unviolated region of which I am speaking. The rivers which rise in it flow with diminished currents in dry seasons, and with augmented volumes of water after heavy rains. They bring down much larg

descriptive and statistical details of facts of actual occurrence. I select for this purpose the southeastern portion of France, not because that territory has suffered more severely than some others, but becaus

of the peaks in Dauphiny rise above the limit of perpetual snow. The climate, as compared with that of the United States in the same latitude, is extremely mild. Little snow falls, except upon the higher mountain ranges, the frosts are light, and the summers long, as might, indeed, be inferred from the vegetation; for in the cultivated distric

h which it was charged.[217] At a later period the Crusaders brought home from Palestine, with much other knowledge gathered from the wiser Moslems, the art of securing the hillsides and making them productive by terracing and irrigation. The forests which covered the mountains secured an abundant flow of springs, and the p

f plough land and pasturage had been added to the soil before reduced to cultivation. It was found, in fact, that the augmented violence of the torrents had swept away, or buried in sand and gravel, more land than had been reclaimed by clearing; and the taxes computed by fires or habitations underwent several successive reductions in consequence of the gradual abandonment of the wasted soil by its starving occupants. The growth of the large town

des Torrents et des Inondations, of Charles de Ribbe, one of the h

a lake which covers the best part of the soil. 1746: New slides buried twenty houses compo

d by its inhabitants a

the best grounds have been swept off sinc

ne has destroyed the most va

tants have emigrated, all th

loods of the torrent Var became more formidable, and had already carried off much land as early as 1708. "The clearing continued, and more soil was swept

vence is in danger of total destruction, and the waters which lay it waste threaten also the ruin of the most valuable grounds on the plain below. Vi

road beds and little water, impetuous torrents, which in floods lay waste the cultivated land upon their banks and roll huge rocks along their channels; steep and parched hillsides, the melancholy consequ

nts were compared to the effects of an earthquake, half t

learing is still going on, and the little rivulets are becoming torrents. Many communes have lost their harvests, their flocks, and

re the Revolution, but the desolation they descr

he valley of Dévoluy, on page 152, says: "Everything concurs to show that it was anciently wooded. In its peat bogs are found buried trunks of trees, monuments of its former vegetation. In the framework of old houses, one sees enormous timber, which is no longer to be found in the

adually extended into the valleys and then to the highest accessible peaks. Then followed the Revolution

flocks of sheep, by straying, in the forests of Mont Auroux, which covered the flanks of the

ll, page 153, "gives rise to a new torrent. Examples of such are shown, which, though not yet three years old, have laid waste the finest fields of their valleys, and whole villages have narrowly escaped

sides of mountain abysses, I cite his description of a valley descending from the Col Isoard, which he calls "a complete type of a basin of reception," that is, a gorge which serves as a common point of accumulation and discharge for the waters of several lateral torrents. "The aspect of the monstrous channel,"

lt of this destruction is this: that the agricultural capital, or rather the ground itself-which, in a rapidly increasing degree, is daily swept away by the waters-is totally lost. Signs of unparalleled destitution are visible in all the mountain zone, and the solitudes of those districts are assuming an indescribable character of sterility and desolation. The gradual destruction of the woods has, in a thousand localities, annihilated at on

?a of the department of the Upper Alps, called Dévoluy, knows that there is no time to lose, that in

oil, and in such a climate we are not to suppose a country barren because it is mountainous. The valleys I have visited are, in general, beautiful."[219] He ascribes the same character to the provinces of Dauphiny, Provence, and Auvergne, and, though he visited, with the eye of an attentive and practised observer, many of the scenes since blasted with the wild desolation described by Blanqui, the Durance and a part of the cour

sume my

from the spots themselves, to attest the rigorous exactness of this picture of their wretchedness. I have never seen its equal even in the Kabyle villages of the provin

their swift course exhibit the most convulsive movements. If you overlook from an eminence one of these landscapes furrowed with so many ravines, it presents only images of desolation and of death. Vast deposits of flinty pebbles, many feet in thickness, which have rolled down and spread far over the plain, surround large trees, bury even their tops, and rise above them, leaving to the husbandman no longer a ray of hope. One can imagine no sadder spectacle than the deep fissures in the flanks of the mountains, which seem to have burst forth in eruption to cover the plains with their ruins. These gorges, under the influence of the sun which cracks and

ataracts, and rolling before them blocks of stone, which are hurled forward by the shock of the waves like balls shot out by the explosion of gunpowder. Sometimes ridges of pebbles are driven down when the transporting torrent does not rise high enough to show itself, and then the movement is accomp

astations are increasing with the progress of clearing, and are every

d has much increased under the pressure of immediate want. It has now reached an extreme point, and m

ten feet in a single year. The devastation advances in geometrical progression as the higher slopes are bared o

der, where all the springs are dried up, and where a dead silence, hardly broken by even the hum of an insect, prevails. But if a storm bursts forth, masses of water suddenly shoot from the mountain heights into the shattered gulfs, waste without irrigating, deluge without refreshing t

de Bonville, prefect of the Lower Alps, addressed to the

All our Alps are wholly, or in large proportion, bared of wood. Their soil, scorched by the sun of Provence, cut up by the hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface th

d of the Durance, which now in some places exceeds 2,000 mètres [about 6,600 feet, or a mile and a quarter] in width, and, at ordinary times, has a current of water less than 10 mètres [about 33 feet] wide, shows something of the exten

2, I reported to the General Council that, according to the census of that year, the population of the dep

and 1856 will show a further decrease of population. In 1862, the ministry will announce a continued and progressive reduction in the number of

l the provinces formerly remarkable for their forests. This diminution is not to be ascribed to a passion for foreign emigration, as in Ireland, and in parts of Germany and of Italy; it is simply a transfer of population from one part of the empire to another, from soils which human folly has

und, and it is only when they ascend the Alpine passes and traverse the mountain chains, that scenes somewhat resembling those just described fall under the eye of the ordinary traveller. But the extension of the sphere of devastation, by the degradation of the mountains and the transportation of their debris

with which they are charged. To prevent the spread of sand and gravel over the fields and the deluging overflow of the raging waters, the streams are confined by walls and embankments, which are gradually built higher and higher

m, that the seemingly unbroken rock which overhangs the valley is full of cracks and fissures, and really in such a state of disintegration that every frost must bring down tons of it. If he compute the area of the basin which finds here its only discharge, he will perceive that a sudden thaw of the winter's deposit of snow, or one of those terrible discharges of rain so common in the Alps, must send forth a deluge migh

, at least, with great abrasion, and, as you follow the deposit along the course of the waters which transport it, you find the

f the smaller channels, by which that chain is drained, owe their origin to higher causes. They are primitive fissures, ascribable to disruption in upheaval or other geological convu

the waters that wash their bases. The torrent-worn ravines, of which I have spoken, are of later date, and belong more properly to what may be called the crust of the Alps, consisting of loose rocks, of gravel, and of earth, strewed along the surface of the great declivities of the centra

ing Power

epth of nine or ten inches, so as to present a regularly formed concave channel, lined with sand, and reducing the depth of water, in some places, from five or six feet to fifteen or eighteen inches. Observing this deposit after the river had subsided and become so clear that the bottom could be seen, I supposed that the next flood would produce an extraordinary erosion of the banks and some permanent changes in the channel of the stream, in consequence of the elevation of the bed and the filling up of the spaces between the stones through which formerly much water had flowed; but no such result followed. The spring freshet of the next year entirely washed out the sand its predecessor had deposited, carried it to ponds and still-water reaches below, and left the bed of the river almost precisely in its former condition, though, of course, with the slight displacement of the pebbles which every flood produces in the channels of such streams. The pond, though often previously discharged by the

nd its D

chiefly with rock ground down to sand or gravel.[226] The bed of the river has been somewhat elevated by the deposits in its channel, though not by any means above the level of the adjacent plains as has been so often represented. The dikes, which confine the current at high water, at the same time augment its velocity and compel it to carry most of its sediment to the Adriatic. It has, therefore, raised neither its own channel nor its alluvial shores, as it would have done if it had remaine

avel, common earth, and vegetable mould, and restored to the situations where eruption or upheaval originally placed, or vegetation deposited it, would fill up hundreds of deep ravines in the Alps and Apennines, change the plan and profile of their chains, and give their southern and northern faces respectively a geographical aspect very different from that they now present. Ravenna, forty miles south of the principal mouth of the Po, was built like Venice, in a lagoon, and the Adriatic still washed its walls at the commencement of the Christian era. The mud of

rts to the shores of the Adriatic not less than 42,760,000 cubic mètres, or very nearly 55,000,000 cubic yards, which carries the coast line out into the sea at the rate of more than 200 feet in a year.[229] The depth of the annual deposit is stated at eighteen centimètres, or rather more than seven inches, and it would cover an area of not much less than ninety square miles with a layer of that thickness. The Adige, also, brings every year to the Adriatic many million cubic yards of Alpine detritus, and the contributions of the Brenta from the same source are far from inconsiderable. The Adriatic, however, receives but a small proportion of the soil and rock washed away from the Italian slope of the Alps and

f Como by the Maira and the Adda, into the lake of Garda by its affluents, and the yet vaster heaps of pebbles, gravel, and earth permanently deposited by the torrents near their points of eruption from mountain gorges, or spread over the wide plains at lower levels, we may safely

ording to the progress of population and the consequent extension of clearing and cultivation. The transporting power of torrents is greatest soon after their formation, because at that time their points of delivery are lower, and, of course, their general slope and velocity more rapid, than after years of erosion above, and deposit below, have depressed the beds of their mountain valleys, and elevated the channels of their lower course. Their eroding action also is most powerful at the same period, both because thei

,000,000 cubic yards of earth and disintegrated rock. We have, then, an aggregate of 300,000,000,000 cubic yards of such material, which, allowing to the mountain surface in question an area of 50,000,000,000 square yards, would cover the whole to the depth of six yards.[232] There are very large portions of this area, whe

by great geological causes, but it would reduce the length and diminish the depth of ravines of later formation, modify the inclination of their walls, reclothe with earth

e flanks of every Alpine valley in Central Europe below the snow line were once covered with earth and green with woods, but

ions, and has laid waste the face of the earth more hopelessly than if it had been buried by a current of lava or a shower of volcanic sand. Now torrents are forming every year in the Alps. Tradition, written records, and analogy concur to establish the belief that the ruin of most of the no

ly raised them above the surface, and finally expanded them into broad plains traversed by gently flowing streams. If we could go back to earlier geological periods, we should find this theory often verified, and we cannot fail to see that the torrents go on at the present hour, depressing still lowe

is to be carried down by floods. If, in this state of things, a new channel be formed at an elevation above the head of the valley, it may divert a part, or even the whole of the rain water and melted snow which would otherwise have flowed into it, and the once furious torrent now sinks to the rank of a humble and harmless brooklet. "In traversing this department," says Surell, "one often sees, at the outlet of a gorge, a flattened hillock, with a fan-shaped outline and regular slopes; it is the bed of dejection of an ancient torrent. It sometimes

formed by fluviatile deposits, would clothe themselves with shrubs and trees, the intensity of the causes of degradation would be diminished, and nature would thus regain her ancient equilibrium. But these processes, under ordinary circumstances, demand, not years, ge

ain S

ich I have yet described. The slide in the Notch of the White Mountains, by which the Willey family lost their lives, is an instance of the sort I refer to, though I am not able to say that in this particular case, the slip of the earth and rock

tion; and it is a familiar observation that the fire, in burning over newly cleared lands, breaks up and sometimes almost pulverizes the stones. This effect is due partly to the unequal expansion of the stone, partly to the action of heat on the water it contains in its pores. The sun, suddenly let in upon rock which had been covered with moist earth for centuries, produces more or less disintegration in the same way, and the stone is also exposed to chemical influences from which it was sheltered before. But in the climate of the United States as well as of the Alps, frost is a still more powerful agent in breaking up mountain masses. The soil that protects the lime and sand stone, the slate and the granite from the influence of the sun, also prevents the water which filters into their crevices and between their

population of 2,430 inhabitants, is one of the most memorable of these catastrophes, and the fall of the Rossberg or Rufiberg, which destroyed the little town of Goldau in Switzerland, and 450 of its people, on the 2d of September, 1806, is almost equally celebrated. In 1771, according to Wessely, the mountain peak Piz, near Alleghe in the province of Belluno, slipped into the bed o

e valley of the Tiber, which consequently flooded the village to the depth of fifty feet, and was finally drained off b

e been stripped of their native covering, and, in many cases, so easily explicable by the drenching of incohesive earth from rain, or the free admission of water between the strata of rocks-both of which a coating

tes itself between the strata, it creates a sliding surface, or it may, by its expansion in freezing, separate beds of rock, which had been nearly continuous before, widely enough to allow the gravitation of the superincumbent mass to overcome the resistance affor

tratum beneath. The whole summer of 1806 had been very wet, and an almost incessant deluge of rain had fallen the day preceding the catastrophe, as well as on that of its occurrence. All conditions then, were favorable to the sliding of the rock, and, in obedience to the laws of gravitation, it precipitated itself into the valley as soon as its adhesion to the earth beneath it was destroyed by the conversion of the latter

yer of calcareous marl intervening, which, by long exposure to frost and the infiltration of water, had l

fall of Rocks and A

dry air of lower regions, would crumble and fall by the weight of its own particles. When loose rocks lie scattered on the face of these declivities, they are held in place by the trunks of the trees, and it is very common to observe a stone that weighs hundreds of pounds, perhaps even tons, resting against a tree which

t snow to gather itself into what is called the Rutsch-Lawine, or sliding avalanche. Marschand states that, the very first winter after the felling of the trees on the higher part of a declivity between Saanen and Gsteig where the snow had never been known to slide, an avalanche formed itself in the clearing, thundered down the mountain, and overthrew and carried with it a hitherto unviolated forest to the amount of nearly a million cubic feet of timber.[241] The path once opened down the flanks of the mountain, the evil is almost beyond remedy. The snow sometimes carries off the

of the Destruct

r soil. With growing numbers, too, come the many arts for which wood is the material. The demands of the near and the distant market for this product excite the cupidity of the hardy forester, and a few years of that wild industry of which Springer's "Forest Life and Forest Trees" so vividly depicts the dangers and the triumphs, suffice to rob the most inaccessible glens of their faires

vals the commerce of the greatest European cities. Immense rafts are collected at Quebec from the great Lakes, from the Ottawa, and from all the other tributaries which unite to swell the current of the St. Lawrence and help it to struggle against its mighty tides.[243] Ships, of burden formerly undreamed of, have been built to convey the timber to the markets of E

n of the insects which breed in dead wood, and are, some of them, injurious to living trees. The escape and spread of camp fires, however, is the most devastating of all the causes of destruction that find their origin in the operations of the lumberman. The proportion of trees fit for industrial uses is small in all primitive woods. Only these fall before the forester's axe, but the fire destroys, in

n Fores

ak were spared for two centuries, the largest now standing would not reach the stature of hundreds recorded to have been cut within two or three generations.[248] Dr. Williams, who wrote about sixty years ago, states the following as the dimensions of "such trees as are e

ter H

feet,

5 " 9

wood,

m,

9 " - From 10

k,

wood

h,

ch,

umbers along the northern parts of Connecticut River." In another letter, he speaks of the white pine as "frequently six feet in diameter, and two hundred and fifty feet in height," and states that a pine had been cut in Lancaster, New Hampshire, which measured two hundred and sixty-four feet. Emerson wrote in 1846: "Fi

d the pine, the diameter stated by him would not be thought very extraordinary in trees of far less height, now standing. Even in the species I have excepted, those diameters, with half the heights of Dr. Williams, might perhaps be paralleled at the present time; and many elms, transplanted, at a diameter of six inches, within the memory of persons still living, measure six, and sometimes even seven feet through. For this change in the growth of forest trees there are two reasons: the one is, that the great commercial value of the pine and the oak have cause

be th

great

turdy as the mightiest of their pr

em into rafts. The lumbermen usually haul the timber to the banks of the rivers in the winter, and when the spring floods swell the streams and break up the ice, they roll the logs into the water, leaving them to float down to their destination. If the transporting stream is too small to furnish a sufficient channel for this rude navigation, it is sometimes dammed up, and the timber collected in the pond thus formed above the dam. When the pond is full, a sluice is ope

the Destruction

in the Mediterranean provinces of France as recently as the time of Napoleon I.[253] The severe and even sanguinary legislation, by which some of the governments of medi?val Europe, as well as of earlier ages, protected the woods, was dictated by a love of the chase, or the fear of a scarcity of fuel and timber

ests and

adopted rather for the preservation of game than from any enlightened views of the more important functions of the woods. Ordericus Vitalis informs us that William the Conqueror destroyed sixty parishes, and drove out their inhabitants, in order that he might turn their lands into a forest,[256] to be reserved as a hunting ground for himself and his posterity, and he punished with death the killing of a deer, wild boar, or even a hare. His successor, William Rufus, according to the Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et d

the Wood, to learn the speech of France, went out into the forest of the abbey, with their bows and iron-headed arrows, to disport them in shooting hares, chased the game, which they had started in the wood of the abbey, into the forest of Enguerrand, lord of Coucy, and were taken by the sergeants which kept the wood. When the fell and pitiless Sir Enguerrand knew this, he had the children straightway hanged without any manner of trial."[258] The matter being brought to the notice of good King Louis, Sir Enguerrand was summoned to appear, and, finally, after many feudal shifts and dilatory pleas, brought to trial before Louis himself and a special council. Notwithstanding the opposition of the other seigniors, who, it is needless to say, spared no efforts to save a peer, probably not a greater crimin

provisions, and, according to Bonnemère, even so good a monarch as Henry IV re?nacted them, and "signed the sentence of death upon peasants guilty of having defended their fields against devastation by wild beasts." "A fine of twenty livres," he continues,

onsumed or trod down a harvest of grain, the sole hope of the year for a whole family; and the simple driving out of such animals from this costly pasturage brought dire vengeance on the head of the rustic, who had endeavored to save his children's bread from their voracity. "At all times,

d with relentless fury, unscrupulously plundered and wantonly laid waste, and even the rights of property in small private woods were no longer respected.[262] Various absurd theories, some of which are not even yet exploded, were propagated with regard to the economical advantages of converting the forest into pasture and ploughland, its injurious effects upon climate, health,

lants, and Vit

its humidity, and its vegetable mould appear to be indispensable necessities.[263] We cannot positively say that the felling of the woods in a given vegetable province would involve the final extinction of the smaller plants which are found only within their precincts. Some of these, though

rest old enough to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed years, perhaps centuries before, sp

istance of many miles from the clearing. Its seeds, whether the fruit of an ancient vegetation or newly sown by winds or birds, require either a quickening by a heat which raises to a certain high point the temperature of the stratum where they lie

bly brought by birds, and found in the loose, clayey soil remaining from the streams of mud, the conditions of growth which the other soil of the mountain refused them." This is probable enough, but it is hardly less so that the flowing mud brought them up to the influence of air and sun, from depths where a previous convulsion had buried them ages before. Seeds of small

al numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed, but twelve species of plants (not counting grasses and sedges) flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath."[265] Had the author informed us that these twelve plants belonged to a species whose seeds enter into the nutriment of the birds which appeared with the young wood, we could easily account for their presence in the soil; but he says distinctly that the birds were of insectivorous species, and it therefore seems more probable that the

ef done to the young trees by browsing animals. Upon the whole, the importance of this class of vegetables, as physic or as food, is not such as to furnish a very telling popular argument for the conservation of the forest as a necessary means of their perpetuation. More potent remedial agents may supply their place in the materia medica, and an acre of grass land yields more nutriment for cattle than a range of a hundred acres of forest. But he whose sympathies with nature have taught him to feel that there is a fellowship between all God's creatures; to love the brilliant ore better than the dull ingot, iodic silver and crystallized red copper better than the shillings and the pennies forged from them by the coiner's cunning; a venerable oak tree

and the pursuit of the reptiles and quadrupeds which prey upon them. The borders of the forests are vocal with song; and when the gray morning calls the creeping things of the earth out of their night cells, it summons from the neighboring woo

ching of the eggs, gather no moisture to destroy them, and harbor no bird to feed upon the larv?.[269] It is only since the felling of the forests of Asia Minor and Cyrene that the locust has become so fearfully destructive in

of the

said, abundant experience has shown that no legislation can secure the permanence of the forest in private hands. Enlightened individuals in most European states, governments in others, have made very extensive plantations,[270]

f river inundations, prevent the formation of torrents, mitigate the extremes of atmospheric temperature, humidity, and precipitation, restore dried-up springs, rivulets, and sources of irrigation, shelter the fields from chilling and from parching winds, pre

which fill them, trees subserve a valuable purpose, in lower positions, as barriers against the spread of floods and of the material they transport with them; but this will be more appropriately consider

mented the demand for wood,[272] and, but for improvements in metallurgy which have facilitated the substitution of iron for that material, the last twenty-five years would almost have stripped Europe of he

ests of

y have grown. The total area of France, excluding Savoy, is about one hundred and thirty-one millions of acres. The extent of forest supposed by Mirabeau would be about thirty-two per cent. of the whole territory.[276] In a country and a climate where the conservative influences of the forest are so necessary as in France, trees must cover a large surface and be grouped in large masses, in order to discharge to the best advantage the various functions assigned to them by nature. The consumption of wood is rapidly increasing in that empire, and a large part of its territory is mountainous, sterile, and otherwise such in character or situation that it can be more profitably devoted to the growth of wood than to an

nse forests, which we expect to meet, one sees only scattered groves thinned by the wind or by the axe of the moujik, grounds cut over and more or less recently cleared for cultivation. There is probably not a single district in Russia which has not to deplore the ravages of ma

ne provinces of Bavaria and Austria, the same improvidence which marks the rural economy of the corresponding districts of Switzerland, Italy, and France, is producing effects hardly less disastrous. As an instance of the scarcity of fuel in some part

e United Stat

in the same proportion, because comparatively little is exported in that condition, and because masonry is fast taking the place of carpentry in building, and stone, brick, and iron are used instead of timber more largely than they were ten years ago. Still a much greater quantity of unsawed lumber must have been marketed in 1860 than in 1850. It must further be admitted that the price of lumber rose considerably between those dates, and consequently that the increase in quantity is not to be measured by the increase in pecuniary val

here as very aggravated trespasses upon them.[280] Under such circumstances, it is difficult to protect the forest, whether it belong to the state or to individuals. Property of this kind would be subject to much plunder, as well as to frequent damage by fire. The destruction from these causes would, indeed, considerably lessen, but would not wholly annihilate the climatic and geographical influences of the forest, or ruinously diminish its value as a regular source of supply of fuel and timber. For prevention of the evils upon which I have so long dwelt, the American people must look to the diffusion of general intelligence on this subject, and to the enlightened self interest, for which they are remarkable, n

omy of t

ts of ancient civilization and empire, except upon a small scale, and in remote and almost inaccessible glens quite out of the reach of ordinary observation. The oldest European woods, indeed, are native, that is, sprung from self-sown seed, or from the roots of trees which have been felled for human purposes; but their growth has been controlled, in a variety of ways, by ma

is the Cours élémentaire de Culture des Bois créé à l'école Forestière de Nancy, par M. Lorentz, complété, et publié par A. Parade, with a supplement under the title of Cours d'Aménagement des Forêts, par Henri Nanquette. The études sur l'économie Forestière, par Jules Clavé, which I have often quoted, presents a great number of interesting views on this subject, and well deserves to be translated for the use of the English and American reader; but it is not designed as a practical guide, and it does not profess to be suf

rees of similar character and uses, require, for their perfect growth, a density of forest vegetation around them, which protects them from too much agitation by wind, and from the persistence of the lateral branches which fill the wood with knots. A pine which has grown under those conditions possesses a tall, straight stem, admirably fitted for masts and spars, and, at the same time, its wood is almost wholl

s much more distinctly the divisions of annual growth, is of coarser grain, harder and more difficult to work into mitre joints. Intermixed with the most valuable pines in the American forests, are met many trees of the character I have just described. The lumbermen call them "saplings," and generally regard them as different in species from the true white pine, but botanists are unable to establish a distinction between them, and as they agree in almost all respects wit

perations, we must have a diligent eye to the requirements of nature, and must remember that a wood is not an arbitrary assemblage of trees to be selected and disposed according to the caprice of its owner. "A forest," says Clavé, "is not, as is often supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each other in long perspective, without bond of union, and ca

American Tr

es. Rossm?ssler enumerates fifty-seven species of forest trees as found in Germany, but some of these are mere shrubs, some are fruit and properly garden trees, and some others are only varieties of familiar species. The valuable manual of Parade describes about the same number, including, however, two of American origin-the locust, Robinia pseudacacia, and the Weymouth or white pine, Pinus

ich, from the color of its foliage and the beautiful form of its dome-like crown, is among the most elegant of trees, the white birch of Central Europe, with its pendulous branches almost rivalling those of the weeping willow in length, flexibility, and gracefulness of fall, and, especially, the "cypresse funerall," might be introduced into the United States with great advantage to the landscape. The European beech and chestnut furnish timber of far better quality than that of their American congeners. The fruit of the European chestnut, though inferior to the American in flavor, is larger, and is an important article of diet among the French and Italian peasantry. The walnut of Europe, though not equal to some of the American species in beauty of growth or of wood, or to others

n inadequate substitute for the thick and shady wood; but they perform to a certain extent the same offices of absorption and transpiration, they shade the surface of the ground, they serve to break the force of the wind, and on many a steep declivity, many a bleak and barren hillside, the chestnut binds the soil together with its roots, and prevents tons of earth and gravel from washing down upon the fields and the gardens. Fruit trees are not wan

llsides and fringe the watercourses with a rainbow splendor of foliage, unsurpassed by the brightest groupings of the tropical flora. It must be admitted, however, that both the northern and the southern declivities of the Alps exhibit a nearer approximation to this rich and multifarious coloring of autumnal vegetation than

xibility of that tree. In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the most ungraceful, or-if I may apply such an expression to anything but human affectation of movement-the most awkward of trees. The poplar trembles before the blast, flut

tree, and its beauty is not so much that of the individual as of the group. The frequency of the cypress and the pine-combined with the fact that the other trees of Southern Europe which most interest a stranger from the north, the orange and the lemon, the cork oak, the ilex, the myrtle, and the laurel, are evergreens-goes far to explain the beauty of the winter scenery of Italy. Indeed it is only in the winter that a tourist who confines himself to w

icul

cribe its processes with technical propriety of language, without occasionally borrowing a word from the forest literature of France and Germany. A full discussion of the methods of sylviculture would, indeed, be out of place in a work

land and of timber; but it is essentially a wasteful economy. If the woodland is, in the first place, completely cut over, as is found most convenient in practice, the young shoots have neither the shade nor the protection from wind so important to forest growth, and their progress is comparatively slow, while, at the same time, the thick clumps they form choke the seedlings that may have sprouted near them. If domestic animals of any species are allowed to roam in the wood, they browse upon the terminal buds and the tender branches, thereby stunting, if they do not kill, the young trees, and depriving them of all beauty and vigor of growth. The evergreens, once cut, do not shoot up again,[295] and the m

uries and the height of a hundred fathoms, is, that in the multitude of accidents to which they are exposed, the chances of their attaining to such a length of years and to such dimensions of growth are a million to one against them. But another explanation of this fact is possible. In trees affected by no discoverable external cause of death, decay begins at the topmost branches, which seem to wither and die for want of nutriment. The mysterious force by which the sap is carried from the roots to the utmost twigs, cannot be conceived to be unlimited in power, and it is probable that it differs in different species, so that while it may suffice to raise the fluid to the height of five hundred feet in the se

still more emphatically true of the artificial forest. In France, according to Clavé, "oaks, in a suitable soil, may stand, without exhibiting any sign of decay, for two or three hundred years; the pines hardly exceed one hundred and twenty, and the soft or white

re relied upon to replant the vacancies, by natural sowing, which they seldom or never fail to do. The seedlings are watched, are thinned out when too dense, the ill formed and sickly, as well as those of inferior value, and the shrubs and thorns which might otherwise choke or too closely shade them, are pulled up. When they have attained sufficient strength and development of foliage to bear or to require more light and air, the second step is taken, by removing a suitable proportion of the old trees which had been spared at the first cutting; and when, finally, they are hardened enough to bear frost and sun without other protection than that which they mutua

are not sufficiently seeded, or that the species, or essences, as the French oddly call them, are not duly prop

s from every wood which is not destined to be cleared. No growth of young trees is possible where cattle are admitt

rtificial than of the natural forest to injury from this cause is perhaps the only point in which the superiority of the former to the latter is not as marked as that of any domesticated vegetable to its wild representative. But the better quality of the wood and the much more rapid growth of the trained and regulat

igs is to withdraw much of the pabulum upon which the tree was destined to feed. The small branches and leaves are the parts of the tree which yield the largest proportion of ashes on combustion, and of course they supply a great amount of nutriment for the young shoots. "A cubic foot of twigs," says Vaupell, "yields four times as much ashes as a cubic foot of stem wood. * * For every hundred weight of dried leaves carried off from a beech forest, we sacrifice a hundred and sixty cubic feet of wood. The leaves and the mosses are a substitute, not only for manure, but for plou

rvoir of moisture and a regulator of the flow of springs; and, finally, it exposes the surface roots to the drying influence of sun a

or to serve as supports for the vine, it is often very advantageous. The willows, and many other trees, bear polling for a long series of years without apparent diminution of growth of branches, and though certainly a polled, or, to

unt of food for beast, as well as for man. With these exceptions, all this vast army of quadrupeds is fed wholly on grass, grain, pulse, and roots grown on soil reclaimed from the forest by European settlers. It is true that the flesh of domestic quadrupeds enters very largely into the aliment of the American people, and greatly reduces the quantity of vegetable nutriment which they would otherwise consume, so that a smaller amount of agricultural product is required for immediate human food, and, of course, a smaller extent of cleared land is needed for the growth of that product, than if no domestic animals existed. But the flesh of the horse, the ass, and the mule is not consumed by man, and the sheep is reared rather for its fleece than for food. Besides

ts further encroachments upon the forest. The commerce in these articles, therefore, constitutes in America a special cause of the destruction of the woods, which does not exist in the numerous states o

or three generations, more than repay its original cost, still, in general, the value of its timber will not return the capital expended and the interest accrued.[304] But when we consider the immense collateral advantages derived from the presence, the terrible evils necessarily resulting from the destruction of the forest, both the preservation of existing woods, and the far more costly extension of them where they have been unduly reduced, are among the most obvious of the duties which this age owes

ty of Ame

a sedentary people.[305] We have now felled forest enough everywhere, in many districts far too much. Let us restore this one element of material life to its normal proportions, and devise means for maintaining the permanence of its relations to the fields, the meadows, and the pastures, to the rain and the dews of heaven, to the springs and rivulets with which it waters the earth. The establishment of an approximately fixed ratio between the two most broadly characterized distinctions of rural surface-woodland

d, the slope down which the waters run," As a point of historical etymology, it is probable that the word in question was suggested to those who first used it by the German Wasserscheide; but the spelling water-sched, proposed by Herschel, is objectionable, both becaus

shelter. It is the root of the English verbs to shed and to shade, and i

e (Lesclarcissement, etc., p. 717) defines I shede, I departe thinges asonder; and the word still means to divide in several E