9 files changed, 75852 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/37957-8.txt b/37957-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7ea9c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/37957-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,24784 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Nature, by George P. Marsh
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man and Nature
+       or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action
+
+Author: George P. Marsh
+
+Release Date: November 9, 2011 [EBook #37957]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND NATURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MAN AND NATURE;
+
+OR,
+
+PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
+
+
+AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION.
+
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE P. MARSH.
+
+
+"Not all the winds, and storms, and earthquakes, and seas, and seasons
+of the world, have done so much to revolutionize the earth as MAN, the
+power of an endless life, has done since the day he came forth upon it,
+and received dominion over it."--H. BUSHNELL, _Sermon on the Power of an
+Endless Life_.
+
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., No. 654 BROADWAY.
+
+1867.
+
+
+
+
+ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER,
+
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
+Southern District of New York.
+
+
+JOHN F. TROW & CO.
+
+PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER,
+
+46, 48, & 50 Greene St., New York.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The object of the present volume is: to indicate the character and,
+approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in the
+physical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of
+imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a
+large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic
+or the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance of
+the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of
+waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate the
+doctrine, that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher
+order than any of the other forms of animated life, which, like him, are
+nourished at the table of bounteous nature.
+
+In the rudest stages of life, man depends upon spontaneous animal and
+vegetable growth for food and clothing, and his consumption of such
+products consequently diminishes the numerical abundance of the species
+which serve his uses. At more advanced periods, he protects and
+propagates certain esculent vegetables and certain fowls and
+quadrupeds, and, at the same time, wars upon rival organisms which prey
+upon these objects of his care or obstruct the increase of their
+numbers. Hence the action of man upon the organic world tends to subvert
+the original balance of its species, and while it reduces the numbers of
+some of them, or even extirpates them altogether, it multiplies other
+forms of animal and vegetable life.
+
+The extension of agricultural and pastoral industry involves an
+enlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment upon the
+forests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surface
+otherwise adapted to his occupation. The felling of the woods has been
+attended with momentous consequences to the drainage of the soil, to the
+external configuration of its surface, and probably, also, to local
+climate; and the importance of human life as a transforming power is,
+perhaps, more clearly demonstrable in the influence man has thus exerted
+upon superficial geography than in any other result of his material
+effort.
+
+Lands won from the woods must be both drained and irrigated; river banks
+and maritime coasts must be secured by means of artificial bulwarks
+against inundation by inland and by ocean floods; and the needs of
+commerce require the improvement of natural, and the construction of
+artificial channels of navigation. Thus man is compelled to extend over
+the unstable waters the empire he had already founded upon the solid
+land.
+
+The upheaval of the bed of seas and the movements of water and of wind
+expose vast deposits of sand, which occupy space required for the
+convenience of man, and often, by the drifting of their particles,
+overwhelm the fields of human industry with invasions as disastrous as
+the incursions of the ocean. On the other hand, on many coasts, sand
+hills both protect the shores from erosion by the waves and currents,
+and shelter valuable grounds from blasting sea winds. Man, therefore,
+must sometimes resist, sometimes promote, the formation and growth of
+dunes, and subject the barren and flying sands to the same obedience to
+his will to which he has reduced other forms of terrestrial surface.
+
+Besides these old and comparatively familiar methods of material
+improvement, modern ambition aspires to yet grander achievements in the
+conquest of physical nature, and projects are meditated which quite
+eclipse the boldest enterprises hitherto undertaken for the modification
+of geographical surface.
+
+The natural character of the various fields where human industry has
+effected revolutions so important, and where the multiplying population
+and the impoverished resources of the globe demand new triumphs of mind
+over matter, suggests a corresponding division of the general subject,
+and I have conformed the distribution of the several topics to the
+chronological succession in which man must be supposed to have extended
+his sway over the different provinces of his material kingdom. I have,
+then, in the Introductory chapter, stated, in a comprehensive way, the
+general effects and the prospective consequences of human action upon
+the earth's surface and the life which peoples it. This chapter is
+followed by four others in which I have traced the history of man's
+industry as exerted upon Animal and Vegetable Life, upon the Woods,
+upon the Waters, and upon the Sands; and to these I have added a
+concluding chapter upon Probable and Possible Geographical Revolutions
+yet to be effected by the art of man.
+
+I have only to add what, indeed, sufficiently appears upon every page of
+the volume, that I address myself not to professed physicists, but to
+the general intelligence of educated, observing, and thinking men; and
+that my purpose is rather to make practical suggestions than to indulge
+in theoretical speculations properly suited to a different class from
+that to which those for whom I write belong.
+
+                                                      GEORGE P. MARSH.
+
+_December 1, 1863._
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST
+
+OF WORKS CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME.
+
+
+_Amersfoordt, J. P._ Het Haarlemmermeer, Oorsprong, Geschiedenis,
+Droogmaking. Haarlem, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Andresen, C. C._ Om Klitformationen og Klittens Behandling og
+Bestyrelse. Kj�benhavn, 1861. 8vo.
+
+Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio. Pubblicati per cura del
+Ministero d'Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio. Fasc i-v. Torino,
+1862-'3. 8vo.
+
+_Arago, F._ Extracts from, in Becquerel, Des Climats.
+
+_Arriani_, Opera. Lipsi�, 1856. 2 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Asbj�rnsen, P. Chr._ Om Skovene og om et ordnet Skovbrug i Norge.
+Christiania, 1855. 12mo.
+
+Aus der Natur. Die neuesten Entdeckungen auf dem Gebiete der
+Naturwissenschaften. Leipzig, various years. 20 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Av�-Lallemant, K. C. B._ Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom in
+der Oekonomie der Indier. Hamburg, 1861. 18mo.
+
+_Babinet._ �tudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Observation. Paris,
+1855-1863. 7 vols. 18mo.
+
+_Baer, von._ Kaspische Studien. St. Petersburg, 1855-1859. 8vo.
+
+_Barth, Heinrich._ Wanderungen durch die K�stenl�nder des Mittelmeeres.
+V. i. Berlin, 1849. 8vo.
+
+_Barth, J. B._ Om Skovene i deres Forhold til National[oe]conomien.
+Christiania, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Baude, J. J._ Les C�tes de la Manche, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15
+Janvier, 1859.
+
+_Baumgarten._ Notice sur les Rivi�res de la Lombardie; in Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss�es, 1847, 1er s�mestre, pp. 129-199.
+
+_Beckwith, Lieut._ Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. ii.
+
+_Becquerel._ Des Climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols bois�s
+et non-bois�s. Paris, 1853. 8vo.
+
+---- �l�ments de Physique Terrestre et de M�t�orologie. Paris, 1847.
+8vo.
+
+_Belgrand._ De l'Influence des For�ts sur l'�coulement des Eaux
+Pluviales; in Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es, 1854, 1er s�mestre, pp. 1,
+27.
+
+_Berg, Edmund von._ Das Verdr�ngen der Laubw�lder im N�rdlichen
+Deutschlande durch die Fichte und die Kiefer. Darmstadt, 1844. 8vo.
+
+_Bergs�e, A. F._ Greve Ch. Ditlev Frederik Reventlovs Virksomhed som
+Kongens Embedsmand og Statens Borger. Kj�benhavn, 1837. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Berlepsch, H._ Die Alpen in Natur- und Lebensbildern. Leipzig, 1862.
+8vo.
+
+_Bianchi, Celestino._ Compendio di Geografia Fisica Speciale d'Italia.
+Appendice alla traduzione Italiana della Geog.-Fisica di Maria
+Somerville. Firenze, 1861. (2d vol. of translation.)
+
+_Bigelow, John._ Les �tats Unis d'Am�rique en 1863. Paris, 1863. 8vo.
+
+_Blake, Wm. P._ Reports in Pacific Railroad Report, vols. ii and v.
+
+_Blanqui._ M�moire sur les Populations des Hautes Alpes; in M�moires de
+l'Acad�mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 1843.
+
+---- Voyage en Bulgarie. Paris, 1843. 12mo.
+
+---- Pr�cis �l�mentaire d'�conomie Politique, suivi du R�sum� de
+l'Histoire du Commerce et de l'Industrie. Paris, 1857. 12mo.
+
+_Boitel, Am�d�e._ Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres par le Pin Maritime.
+2d edition. Paris, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Bonnem�re, Eug�ne._ Histoire des Paysans depuis la fin du Moyen Age
+jusqu'� nos jours. Paris, 1856. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_B�ttger, C._ Das Mittelmeer. Leipzig, 1859.
+
+_Boussingault, J. B._ �conomie Rurale consider�e dans ses Rapports avec
+la Chimie, la Physique, et la M�t�orologie. 2d edition. Paris, 1851. 2
+vols. 8vo.
+
+_Br�montier, N. T._ M�moire sur les Dunes; in Annales des Ponts et
+Chauss�es, 1833, 1er s�mestre, pp. 145, 223.
+
+_Brincken, J. von den._ Ansichten �ber die Bewaldung der Steppen des
+Europ�ischen Russland. Braunschweig, 1854. 4to.
+
+_B�ttner, J. G._ Zur Physikalischen Geographie; in Berghaus,
+Geographisches Jahrbuch, No. iv, 1852, pp. 9-19.
+
+_Caimi, Pietro._ Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi. Milano,
+1857. 8vo.
+
+_Cantegril, and others._ Extracts in Comptes Rendus � l'Acad�mie des
+Sciences. Paris, 1861.
+
+_Castellani._ Dell' immediata influenza delle Selve sul corso delle
+acque. Torino, 1818, 1819. 2 vols. 4to.
+
+Census of the United States for 1860. Preliminary Report on, Washington,
+1862. 8vo.
+
+_Cerini, Giuseppe._ Dell' Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi. Milano,
+1844. 8vo.
+
+_Champion, Maurice._ Les Inondations en France depuis le VIme Si�cle
+jusqu'� nos jours. Paris, 1858, 1862. Vols. i-iv, 8vo.
+
+_Chateauvieux, F. Lullin de._ Lettres sur l'Italie. Seconde edition,
+Gen�ve, 1834. 8vo.
+
+_Chevandier._ Extracts in Comptes Rendus � l'Acad�mie des Sciences.
+Juillet-Decembre, 1844. Paris.
+
+_Clav�, Jules._ �tudes sur l'�conomie Foresti�re. Paris, 1862. 12mo.
+
+---- La For�t de Fontainebleau; Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Mai, 1863.
+
+_Cooper, J. G._ The Forests and Trees of Northern America; in Report of
+the Commissioner of Patents for the year 1860, pp. 416-445.
+
+_Cotta, Bernhard._ Deutschlands Boden. Leipzig, 1858. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+---- Vorwort zu Paramelle's Quellenkunde. See _Paramelle_.
+
+---- Die Alpen. Leipzig, 1851. 8vo.
+
+_Coultas, Harland._ What may be Learned from a Tree. New York, 1860.
+8vo.
+
+_Courier, Paul-Louis._ [OE]uvres Compl�tes. Bruxelles, 1833. 8vo.
+
+_Dana, James D._ Manual of Geology. Philadelphia, 1863. 8vo.
+
+_Delamarre, L. G._ Historique de la Cr�ation d'une Richesse Millionaire
+par la culture des Pins. Paris, 1827. 8vo.
+
+_D. H�ricourt, A. F._ Les Inondations et le livre de M. Vall�s; Annales
+Foresti�res, December, 1857, pp. 310, 321. Paris.
+
+_Diggelen, B. P. G. van._ Groote Werken in Nederland. Zwolle, 1855. 8vo.
+
+_Dumas, M. J._ La Science des Fontaines. 2me edition, Paris, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Dumont, Aristide._ Des Travaux Publics dans leurs Rapports avec
+l'Agriculture. Paris, 1847. 8vo.
+
+_Dwight, Timothy._ Travels in New England and New York. New Haven, 1821.
+4 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Emerson, George B._ A Report on the Trees and Shrubs growing naturally
+in Massachusetts. Boston, 1850. 8vo.
+
+_Emory, Wm. H., Col._ Report of Commissioners of the United States and
+Mexican Boundary Survey, vol. i, 1857.
+
+_Escourrou-Miliago, A._ L'Italie � propos de l'Exposition Universelle de
+Paris. Paris, 1856. 8vo.
+
+_Evelyn, John._ Silva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees. With Notes by A.
+Hunter. York, 1786. 2 vols. 4to.
+
+---- Terra, a Philosophical Discourse of Earth. York, 1786. 4to. in vol.
+ii of Silva.
+
+_F�raud-Giraud, L. J. D._ Police des Bois, D�frichements et Reboisements
+Commentaire pratique sur les lois promulgu�es en 1859 et 1860. Paris,
+1861. 8vo.
+
+_Ferrara, Francesco._ Descrizione dell' Etna. Palermo, 1818. 8vo.
+
+_Feuillide, C. de._ L'Alg�rie Fran�aise. Paris, 1856. 8vo.
+
+_Figuier, Louis._ L'Ann�e Scientifique et Industrielle. Paris, 1862-'3.
+12mo.
+
+Finnboga Saga hins rama. Kaupmannah�fn, 1812. 4to.
+
+_Foissac, P._ Meteorologie mit R�cksicht auf die Lehre vom Kosmos,
+Deutsch von A. H. Emsmann. Leipzig, 1859. 8vo.
+
+_Forchhammer, G._ Geognostische Studien am Meeres-Ufer; in Leonhard und
+Bronn's Neues Jahrbuch f�r Mineralogie, Geognosie, Geologie, etc.
+Jahrgang, 1841, pp. 1-38.
+
+_Fossombroni, Vittorio._ Memorie Idraulico-Storiche sopra la
+Val-di-Chiana. Montepulciano, 3za edizione, 1835. 8vo.
+
+_Fraas, C._ Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit. Landshut, 1847. 8vo.
+
+_Frisi, Paolo._ Del Modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti. Lucca, 1762.
+4to.
+
+_Fuller, Thomas._ The History of the Worthies of England. London, 1662.
+Folio.
+
+_Gilliss, J. M., Capt._ United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to
+the Southern Hemisphere. Washington, 1855. 2 vols. 4to.
+
+_Giorgini._ Paper by; in Salvagnoli-Marchetti, Rapporto sul
+Bonificamento delle Maremme, App. v.
+
+_Girard et Parent-Duchatelet._ Rapport sur les Puits for�s dits
+Art�siens; Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es, 1833, 2me s�mestre, 313-344.
+
+_Graham, J. D., Lieut.-Col._ A Lunar Tidal Wave in the North American
+Lakes demonstrated. Cambridge, 1861. 8vo. _pamphlet_. Also in vol. xiv,
+Proc. Am. Ass. for Adv. of Science for 1860.
+
+_Hakluyt, Richard._ The Principal Navigations, Voyages, &c., of the
+English Nation. London, 1598-'9. 3 vols. folio.
+
+_Harrison, W._ An Historicall Description of the Iland of Britaine; in
+Holinshed's Chronicles. Reprint of 1807, vol. i.
+
+_Hartwig, G._ Das Leben des Meeres. Frankfurt, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Haxthausen, August von._ Transkaukasia. Leipzig, 1856. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Henry, Prof. Joseph._ Paper on Meteorology in its connection with
+Agriculture; in United States Patent Office Report for 1857, pp.
+419-550.
+
+_Herschel, Sir J. F. W._ Physical Geography. Edinburgh, 1861. 12mo.
+
+_Heyer, Gustav._ Das Verhalten der Waldb�ume gegen Licht und Schatten.
+Erlangen, 1852. 8vo.
+
+_Hohenstein, Adolph._ Der Wald sammt dessen wichtigem Einfluss auf das
+Klima, &c. Wien, 1860. 8vo.
+
+_Humboldt, Alexander von._ Ansichten der Natur. Dritte Ausgabe,
+Stuttgart und T�bingen, 1849. 2 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Hummel, Karl._ Physische Geographie. Graz, 1855. 8vo.
+
+_Hunter, A._ Notes to Evelyn, Silva, and Terra. York, 1786. See
+_Evelyn_.
+
+_Jacini, Stefano._ La Propriet� Fondiaria e le Popolazioni agricole in
+Lombardia. Milano e Verona, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Joinville._ Histoire de Saint-Louis. Nouvelle Collection des M�moires
+pour servir � l'Histoire de France, par Michaud et Poujoulat. Tome i.
+Paris, 1836. 8vo.
+
+_Josselyn, John._ New England Rarities. London, 1672. 12mo.
+
+_Knorr, E. A._ Studien �ber die Buchen-Wirthschaft. Nordhausen, 1863.
+8vo.
+
+_Kohl, J. G._ Alpenreisen. Dresden und Leipzig, 1849. 3 vols. 8vo.
+
+---- Die Marschen und Inseln der Herzogth�mer Schleswig und Holstein.
+Dresden und Leipzig, 1846. 3 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Kramer, Gustav._ Der Fuciner-See. Berlin, 1839. 4to.
+
+_Krause, G. C. A._ Der D�nenbau auf den Ostsee-K�sten West-Preussens.
+1850. 8vo.
+
+_Kremer, Alfred von._ �gypten, Forschungen �ber Land und Volk. Leipzig,
+1863. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Kriegk, G. L._ Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkunde. Leipzig, 1840. 8vo.
+
+_Ladoucette, J. C. F._ Histoire, Topographie, Antiquit�s, Usages,
+Dialectes des Hautes Alpes. Seconde �dition, 1834. 1 vol. 8vo. and
+Atlas.
+
+_Lastadius, Lars Levi._ Om M�jligheten och F�rdelen af allm�nna
+Uppodlingar i Lappmarken. Stockholm, 1824. 12mo.
+
+_L�stadius, Petrus._ Journal f�r f�rsta �ret af hans Tjenstg�ring s�som
+Missionaire i Lappmarken. Stockholm, 1831. 8vo.
+
+---- Forts�ttning af Journalen �fver Missions-Resor i Lappmarken.
+Stockholm, 1833. 8vo.
+
+_Lampridius._ Vita Elagabali in Script. Hist., August.
+
+_Landgrebe, Georg._ Naturgeschichte der Vulcane. Gotha, 1855. 2 vols.
+8vo.
+
+_Laurent, Ch._ M�moires sur le Sahara Oriental au point de vue des Puits
+Art�siens. Paris, 1859. 8vo. _pamphlet_. Also, in M�m de la Soc. des
+Ing�nieurs Civils, and the Bulletin de la Soc. G�ologique de France.
+
+_Laval._ M�moire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne; in Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss�es, 1847, 2me s�mestre, pp. 218-268.
+
+_Lavergne, M. L. de._ �conomie Rurale de la France, depuis 1789. 2me
+�dition, Paris, 1861. 12mo.
+
+Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia. Parte 1er, vol. 1er. Torino, 1845. 8vo.
+
+_Lefort._ Notice sur les travaux de Fixation des Dunes; in Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss�es, 1831, 2me s�mestre, pp. 320-332.
+
+_Lenormant._ Note relative � l'Execution d'un Puits Art�sien en
+Egypte sous la XVIII^{me} Dynastie; Acad�mie des Inscriptions et
+Belles-Lettres, 12 Novembre, 1852.
+
+Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London. London, 1861. 4to.
+
+_Loftus, W. K._ Travels and Researches in Chald�a and Susiana. New York,
+1857. 8vo.
+
+_Lombardini._ Cenni Idrografi sulla Lombardia; Intorno al Sistema
+Idraulico del P�; epitomized by Baumgarten in Annales des Ponts et
+Chauss�es, 1847, 1er s�mestre, pp. 129, 199; and in Dumont, Des Travaux
+Publics, pp. 268, 335.
+
+---- Sui progetti intesi ad estendere l'irrigazione della Pianura del
+P�. Politecnico. Gennajo, 1863, pp. 5-50.
+
+_Lorentz._ Cours �l�mentaire de Culture des Bois, compl�t� et publie par
+A. Parade, 4me edition. Paris et Nancy, 1860. 8vo.
+
+_Lyell, Sir Charles._ The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man.
+London, 1863. 8vo. Principles of Geology. New York, 1862. 8vo.
+
+_Mardigny, M. de._ M�moire sur les Inondations des Rivi�res de
+l'Ard�che. Paris, 1860. 8vo.
+
+_Marschand, A._ Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge. Bern, 1849. 12mo.
+_pamphlet_.
+
+_Martineau._ Endeavors after the Christian Life. Boston, 1858.
+
+_Martins._ Revue des Deux Mondes, Avril, 1863.
+
+_Maury, M. F._ The Physical Geography of the Sea. Tenth edition. London,
+1861. 8vo.
+
+_Medlicott, Dr._ Observations of, quoted from London Athen�um, 1863.
+
+_Meguscher, Francesco._ Memorie sulla migliore maniera per rimettere i
+Boschi della Lombardia, etc. Milano, 1859. 8vo.
+
+_Mejdell, Th._ Om Foranstaltninger til Behandling af Norges Skove.
+Christiania, 1858. 8vo.
+
+_Mella._ Delle Inondazioni del Mella nella notto del 14 al 15 Agosto,
+1850. Brescia, 1851. 8vo.
+
+_Meyer, J._ Physik der Schweiz. Leipzig, 1854. 8vo.
+
+_Michelet, J._ L'Insecte, 4me edition. Paris, 1860. 12mo.
+
+---- L'Oiseau, 7me edition. Paris, 1861. 12mo.
+
+_Monestier-Savignat, A._ �tude sur les Ph�nom�nes, l'Am�nagement et la
+L�gislation des Eaux au point de vue des Inondations. Paris, 1858. 8vo.
+
+_Montluisant._ Note sur les Dess�chements, les Endiguements et les
+Irrigations; in Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es, 1833, 2me s�mestre, pp.
+281-294.
+
+_Morozzi, Ferdinando._ Dello Stato Antico e Moderno del Fiume Arno.
+Firenze, 1762. 4to.
+
+_M�ller, K._ Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt. Leipzig, 1857. 2 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Nangis, Guillaume de._ Extracts from, in Nouvelle Collection des
+M�moires pour servir par Michaud et Poujoulat. Vol. i. Paris, 1836.
+
+_Nanquette, Henri._ Cours d'Am�nagement des For�ts. Paris et Nancy,
+1860. 8vo.
+
+_Newberry, Dr._ Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. vi.
+
+Niebelunge-Lied, Der. Abdruck der Handschrift von Joseph von Lassberg.
+Leipzig, 1840. Folio.
+
+_Niel._ L'Agriculture des �tats Sardes. Turin, 1857. 8vo.
+
+Pacific Railroad Report. Reports of Explorations and Surveys for a
+Railroad Route to the Pacific. Washington, various years. 12 vols. 4to.
+
+_Palissy, Bernard._ [OE]uvres Compl�tes, avec des Notes, etc., par
+Paul-Antoine Cap. Paris, 1844. 12mo.
+
+_Parade, A._ See _Lorentz_.
+
+_Paramelle, Abb�._ Quellenkunde, Lehre von der Bildung und Auffindung
+der Quellen; mit einem Vorwort von B. Cotta. Leipzig, 1856. 12mo.
+
+_Parish, Dr._ Life of Dr. Eleazer Wheelock. 8vo.
+
+_Parry, C. C._ Report in United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, vol.
+i.
+
+_Parthey, G._ Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante. Berlin, 1834.
+2 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Piper, R. U._ The Trees of America. Boston, 1858, Nos. i-iv. 4to.
+
+_Plinii, Historia Naturalis_, ed. Hardouin. Paris, 1723. 3 vols. folio.
+
+_Ponz, Antonio._ Viage de Espa�a. Madrid, 1788, etc. 18 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Quatrefages, A. de._ Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste. Paris, 1854. 2 vols.
+12mo.
+
+_Reclus, Elis�e._ Le Littoral de la France; Revue des Deux Mondes, 15
+Decembre, 1862.
+
+_Rentzsch, Hermann._ Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der
+Volkswirthschaft. Leipzig, 1862. 8vo.
+
+_Ribbe, Charles de_. La Provence au point de vue des Bois, des Torrents
+et des Inondations. Paris, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Ridolfi, Cosimo._ Lezioni Orali. Firenze, 1862. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Ritter, Carl._ Einleitung zur allgemeinen vergleichenden Geographie.
+Berlin, 1852. 8vo.
+
+---- Die Erdkunde im Verh�ltniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des
+Menschen. Berlin, various years. 19 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Rosa, G._ Le Condizioni de' boschi, de' fiumi e de' torrenti nella
+provincia di Bergamo. Politecnico, Dicembre, 1861, pp. 606, 621.
+
+---- Studii sui Boschi. Politecnico, Maggio, 1862, pp. 232, 238.
+
+_Rossm�ssler, C. A._ Der Wald. Leipzig und Heidelberg, 1863. 8vo.
+
+_Roth, J._ Der Vesuv und die Umgebung von Neapel. Berlin, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Rozet, M._ Moyens de forcer les Torrents des Montagnes de rendre une
+partie du sol qu'ils ravagent. Paris, 1856. 8vo. _pamphlet_.
+
+_Salvagnoli-Marchetti, Antonio._ Memorie Economico-Statistiche sulle
+Maremme Toscane. Firenze, 1846. 8vo.
+
+---- Raccolta di Documenti sul Bonificamento delle Maremmo Toscane.
+Firenze, 1861. 8vo.
+
+---- Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremmo Toscane. Firenze, 1859.
+8vo.
+
+---- Rapporto sulle Operazioni Idrauliche ed Economiche eseguite nel
+1859-'60 nelle Maremmo Toscane. Firenze, 1860. 8vo.
+
+_Sandys, George._ A Relation of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610. London,
+1627. Folio.
+
+_Schacht, H._ Les Arbres, �tudes sur leur Structure et leur V�g�tation,
+traduit par E. Morren. Bruxelles et Leipzig, 1862. 8vo.
+
+_Schleiden, M. J._ Die Landenge von Su�s. Leipzig, 1858. 8vo.
+
+---- Die Pflanze und ihr Leben. Leipzig, 1848. 8vo.
+
+_Schubert, W. von._ Resa genom Sverige, Norrige, Lappland, etc.
+Stockholm, 1823. 3 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Seneca, L. A._ Opera Omnia qu� supersunt, ex rec. Ruhkopf. Aug.
+Taurinorum, 1831. 6 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Simonde, J. E. L._ Tableau de l'Agriculture Toscane. Gen�ve, 1801. 8vo.
+
+_Smith, Dr. William._ A Dictionary of the Bible. London, 1860. 3 vols.
+8vo.
+
+---- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London, 1854, 1857. 2
+vols. 8vo.
+
+_Smith, John._ Historie of Virginia. London, 1624. Folio.
+
+_Somerville, Mary._ Physical Geography. Fifth edition. London, 1862.
+12mo.
+
+_Springer, John S._ Forest-Life and Forest-Trees. New York, 1851. 12mo.
+
+_Stanley, Dr._ Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. London,
+1863. 8vo.
+
+_Staring, W. H._ De Bodem van Nederland. Haarlem, 1856. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+---- Voormaals en Thans. Haarlem, 1858. 8vo.
+
+_Stevens, Gov._ Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. xii.
+
+_Strain, Lieut. I. C._ Darien Exploring Expedition, by J. T. Headley, in
+Harper's Magazine. New York, March, April, and May, 1855.
+
+_Streffleur, V._ Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildb�che. Sitz.
+Ber. der M. N. W. Classe der Kaiserl. Akad. der Wis. February, 1852,
+viii, p. 248.
+
+_Str�m, Isr._ Om Skogarnas V�rd och Sk�tsel. Upsala, 1853. _Pamphlet._
+
+_Surell, Alexandre._ �tude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes. Paris,
+1844. 4to.
+
+_Tartini, Ferdinando._ Memorie sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane.
+Firenze, 1838. Folio.
+
+_Thomas and Baldwin._ Gazetteer. Philadelphia, 1855. 1 vol. 8vo.
+
+_Thompson, Z._ History of Vermont, Natural, Civil, and Statistical.
+Burlington, 1842. 8vo.
+
+---- Appendix to History of Vermont. Burlington, 1853. 8vo.
+
+_Titcomb, Timothy._ Lessons in Life. New York, 1861. 12mo.
+
+_Treadwell, Dr._ Observations of, quoted from Report of Commissioner of
+Patents.
+
+_Troy, Paul._ �tude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes. Paris et Toulouse,
+1861. 8vo. _pamphlet_.
+
+_Tschudi, Friedrich von._ Ueber die Landwirthschaftliche Bedeutung der
+V�gel. St. Gallen, 1854. 12mo.
+
+_Tschudi, J. J. von._ Travels in Peru. New York, 1848. 8vo.
+
+_Vall�s, M. F._ �tudes sur les Inondations, leurs causes et leurs
+effets. Paris, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Valvasor, Johann Weichard._ Die Ehre des Herzogthums Crain. Laybach,
+1689. 4 vols. folio.
+
+_Van Lennep._ Extracts from Journal of, in the Missionary Herald.
+
+_Vaupell, Chr._ B�gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove. Kj�benhavn, 1857.
+8vo.
+
+---- De Nordsj�llandske Skovmoser. Kj�benhavn, 1851. 4to. _pamphlet_.
+
+_Venema, G. A._ Over het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons
+Land. Groningen, 1854. 8vo.
+
+_Villa, Antonio Giovanni Batt._ Necessit� dei Boschi nella Lombardia.
+Milano, 1850. 4to.
+
+_Viollet, J. B._ Th�orie des Puits Art�siens. Paris, 1840. 8vo.
+
+_Walterhausen, W. Sartorius von._ Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau.
+G�ttingen, 1863.
+
+_Webster, Noah._ A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and
+Moral Subjects. New York, 1843. 8vo.
+
+_Wessely, Joseph._ Die Oesterreichischen Alpenl�nder und ihre Forste.
+Wien, 1853. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Wetzstein, J. G._ Reisebericht �ber Hauran und die Trachonen. Berlin,
+1860. 8vo.
+
+_Wild, Albert._ Die Niederlande. Leipzig, 1862. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Wilhelm, Gustav._ Der Boden und das Wasser. Wien, 1861. 8vo.
+
+_Williams, Dr._ History of Vermont. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Wittwer, W. C._ Die Physikalische Geographie. Leipzig, 1855. 8vo.
+
+_Young, Arthur._ Voyages en France, pendant les ann�es 1787, 1788, 1789,
+pr�c�d�e d'une introduction par Lavergne. Paris, 1860. 2 vols. 12mo.
+
+---- Voyages en Italie et en Espagne, pendant les ann�es 1787, 1789.
+Paris, 1860. 1 vol. 12mo.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+  Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire--Physical
+  Decay of that Territory and of other parts of the Old World--
+  Causes of the Decay--New School of Geographers--Reaction of
+  Man upon Nature--Observation of Nature--Cosmical and Geological
+  Influences--Geographical Influence of Man--Uncertainty of our
+  Meteorological Knowledge--Mechanical Effects produced by Man on
+  the surface of the Earth--Importance and Possibility of Physical
+  Restoration--Stability of Nature--Restoration of Disturbed
+  Harmonies--Destructiveness of Man--Physical Improvement--Human
+  and Brute Action Compared--Forms and Formations most liable to
+  Physical Degradation--Physical Decay of New Countries--Corrupt
+  Influence of Private Corporations, _Note_,                         1
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND OF ANIMAL
+SPECIES.
+
+  Modern Geography embraces Organic Life--Transfer of Vegetable
+  Life--Foreign Plants grown in the United States--American
+  Plants grown in Europe--Modes of Introduction of Foreign
+  Plants--Vegetables, how affected by transfer to Foreign
+  Soils--Extirpation of Vegetables--Origin of Domestic Plants--
+  Organic Life as a Geological and Geographical Agency--Origin
+  and Transfer of Domestic Animals--Extirpation of Animals--
+  Numbers of Birds in the United States--Birds as Sowers and
+  Consumers of Seeds, and as Destroyers of Insects--Diminution
+  and Extirpation of Birds--Introduction of Birds--Utility of
+  Insects and Worms--Introduction of Insects--Destruction of
+  Insects--Reptiles--Destruction of Fish--Introduction and
+  Breeding of Fish--Extirpation of Aquatic Animals--Minute
+  Organisms,                                                        57
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE WOODS.
+
+  The Habitable Earth originally Wooded--The Forest does not
+  furnish Food for Man--First Removal of the Woods--Effects
+  of Fire on Forest Soil--Effects of the Destruction of the
+  Forest--Electrical Influence of Trees--Chemical Influence
+  of the Forest.
+
+  Influence of the Forest, considered as Inorganic Matter, on
+  Temperature: _a_, Absorbing and Emitting Surface; _b_, Trees
+  as Conductors of Heat; _c_, Trees in Summer and in Winter;
+  _d_, Dead Products of Tree; _e_, Trees as a Shelter to Grounds
+  to the leeward of them; _f_, Trees as a Protection against
+  Malaria--The Forest, as Inorganic Matter, tends to mitigate
+  extremes.
+
+  Trees as Organisms: Specific Temperature--Total Influence of
+  the Forest on Temperature.
+
+  Influence of Forests on the Humidity of the Air and the Earth:
+  _a_, as Inorganic Matter; _b_, as Organic--Wood Mosses and
+  Fungi--Flow of Sap--Absorption and Exhalation of Moisture by
+  Trees--Balance of Conflicting Influences--Influence of the
+  Forest on Temperature and Precipitation--Influence of the
+  Forest on the Humidity of the Soil--Its Influence on the 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 of
+  the Forest--American Forest Trees--Special Causes of the
+  Destruction of European Woods--Royal Forests and Game Laws--
+  Small Forest Plants, Vitality of Seeds--Utility of the
+  Forest--The Forests of Europe--Forests of the United States
+  and Canada--The Economy of the Forest--European and American
+  Trees Compared--Sylviculture--Instability of American Life,      128
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WATERS.
+
+  Land artificially won from the Waters: _a_, Exclusion of the Sea
+  by Diking; _b_, Draining of Lakes and Marshes; _c_, Geographical
+  Influence of such Operations--Lowering of Lakes--Mountain Lakes--
+  Climatic Effects of Draining Lakes and Marshes.
+
+  Geographical and Climatic Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs,
+  and Canals--Surface and Underdraining, and their Climatic and
+  Geographical Effects--Irrigation and its Climatic and Geographical
+  Effects.
+
+  Inundations and Torrents: _a_, River Embankments; _b_, Floods of
+  the Ard�che; _c_, Crushing Force of Torrents; _d_, Inundations of
+  1856 in France; _e_, Remedies against Inundations--Consequences
+  if the Nile had been confined by Lateral Dikes.
+
+  Improvements in the Val di Chiana--Improvements in the Tuscan
+  Maremme--Obstruction of River Mouths--Subterranean Waters--
+  Artesian Wells--Artificial Springs--Economizing Precipitation,   330
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SANDS.
+
+  Origin of Sand--Sand now carried down to the Sea--The Sands of
+  Egypt and the adjacent Desert--The Suez Canal--The Sands of
+  Egypt--Coast Dunes and Sand Plains--Sand Banks--Dunes on Coast of
+  America--Dunes of Western Europe--Formation of Dunes--Character of
+  Dune Sand--Interior Structure of Dunes--Form of Dunes--Geological
+  Importance of Dunes--Inland Dunes--Age, Character, and Permanence
+  of Dunes--Use of Dunes as Barrier against the Sea--Encroachments
+  of the Sea--The L�mfjord--Encroachments of the Sea--Drifting
+  of Dune Sands--Dunes of Gascony--Dunes of Denmark--Dunes of
+  Prussia--Artificial Formation of Dunes--Trees suitable for Dune
+  Plantations--Extent of Dunes in Europe--Dune Vineyards of Cape
+  Breton--Removal of Dunes--Inland Sand Plains--The Landes of
+  Gascony--The Belgian Campine--Sands and Steppes of Eastern
+  Europe--Advantages of Reclaiming Dunes--Government Works of
+  Improvement,                                                     451
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PROJECTED OR POSSIBLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES BY MAN.
+
+  Cutting of Marine Isthmuses--The Suez Canal--Canal across Isthmus
+  of Darien--Canals to the Dead Sea--Maritime Canals in Greece--
+  Canal of Saros--Cape Cod Canal--Diversion of the Nile--Changes
+  in the Caspian--Improvements in North American Hydrography--
+  Diversion of the Rhine--Draining of the Zuiderzee--Waters of
+  the Karst--Subterranean Waters of Greece--Soil below Rock--
+  Covering Rocks with Earth--Wadies of Arabia Petr�a--Incidental
+  Effects of Human Action--Resistance to great Natural Forces--
+  Effects of Mining--Espy's Theories--River Sediment--Nothing
+  small in Nature,                                                 517
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF THE TERRITORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE--PHYSICAL
+DECAY OF THAT TERRITORY AND OF OTHER PARTS OF THE OLD WORLD--CAUSES
+OF THE DECAY--NEW SCHOOL OF GEOGRAPHERS--REACTION OF MAN UPON NATURE--
+OBSERVATION OF NATURE--COSMICAL AND GEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES--GEOGRAPHICAL
+INFLUENCE OF MAN--UNCERTAINTY OF OUR METEOROLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE--
+MECHANICAL EFFECTS PRODUCED BY MAN ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH--
+IMPORTANCE AND POSSIBILITY OF PHYSICAL RESTORATION--STABILITY OF
+NATURE--RESTORATION OF DISTURBED HARMONIES--DESTRUCTIVENESS OF MAN--
+PHYSICAL IMPROVEMENT--HUMAN AND BRUTE ACTION COMPARED--FORMS AND
+FORMATIONS MOST LIABLE TO PHYSICAL DEGRADATION--PHYSICAL DECAY OF NEW
+COUNTRIES--CORRUPT INFLUENCE OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS, _note_.
+
+
+_Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire._
+
+The Roman Empire, at the period of its greatest expansion, comprised the
+regions of the earth most distinguished by a happy combination of
+physical advantages. The provinces bordering on the principal and the
+secondary basins of the Mediterranean enjoyed a healthfulness and an
+equability of climate, a fertility of soil, a variety of vegetable and
+mineral products, and natural facilities for the transportation and
+distribution of exchangeable commodities, which have not been possessed
+in an equal degree by any territory of like extent in the Old World or
+the New. The abundance of the land and of the waters adequately supplied
+every material want, ministered liberally to every sensuous enjoyment.
+Gold and silver, indeed, were not found in the profusion which has
+proved so baneful to the industry of lands richer in veins of the
+precious metals; but mines and river beds yielded them in the spare
+measure most favorable to stability of value in the medium of exchange,
+and, consequently, to the regularity of commercial transactions. The
+ornaments of the barbaric pride of the East, the pearl, the ruby, the
+sapphire, and the diamond--though not unknown to the luxury of a people
+whose conquests and whose wealth commanded whatever the habitable world
+could contribute to augment the material splendor of their social
+life--were scarcely native to the territory of the empire; but the
+comparative rarity of these gems in Europe, at somewhat earlier periods,
+was, perhaps, the very circumstance that led the cunning artists of
+classic antiquity to enrich softer stones with engravings, which invest
+the common onyx and carnelian with a worth surpassing, in cultivated
+eyes, the lustre of the most brilliant oriental jewels.
+
+Of these manifold blessings the temperature of the air, the distribution
+of the rains, the relative disposition of land and water, the plenty of
+the sea, the composition of the soil, and the raw material of some of
+the arts, were wholly gratuitous gifts. Yet the spontaneous nature of
+Europe, of Western Asia, of Libya, neither fed nor clothed the civilized
+inhabitants of those provinces. Every loaf was eaten in the sweat of the
+brow. All must be earned by toil. But toil was nowhere else rewarded by
+so generous wages; for nowhere would a given amount of intelligent labor
+produce so abundant, and, at the same time, so varied returns of the
+good things of material existence. The luxuriant harvests of cereals
+that waved on every field from the shores of the Rhine to the banks of
+the Nile, the vines that festooned the hillsides of Syria, of Italy, and
+of Greece, the olives of Spain, the fruits of the gardens of the
+Hesperides, the domestic quadrupeds and fowls known in ancient rural
+husbandry--all these were original products of foreign climes,
+naturalized in new homes, and gradually ennobled by the art of man,
+while centuries of persevering labor were expelling the wild vegetation,
+and fitting the earth for the production of more generous growths.
+
+Only for the sense of landscape beauty did unaided nature make
+provision. Indeed, the very commonness of this source of refined
+enjoyment seems to have deprived it of half its value; and it was only
+in the infancy of lands where all the earth was fair, that Greek and
+Roman humanity had sympathy enough with the inanimate world to be alive
+to the charms of rural and of mountain scenery. In later generations,
+when the glories of the landscape had been heightened by plantation, and
+decorative architecture, and other forms of picturesque improvement, the
+poets of Greece and Rome were blinded by excess of light, and became, at
+last, almost insensible to beauties that now, even in their degraded
+state, enchant every eye, except, too often, those which a lifelong
+familiarity has dulled to their attractions.
+
+
+_Physical Decay of the Territory of the Roman Empire, and of other parts
+of the Old World._
+
+If we compare the present physical condition of the countries of which I
+am speaking, with the descriptions that ancient historians and
+geographers have given of their fertility and general capability of
+ministering to human uses, we shall find that more than one half of
+their whole extent--including the provinces most celebrated for the
+profusion and variety of their spontaneous and their cultivated
+products, and for the wealth and social advancement of their
+inhabitants--is either deserted by civilized man and surrendered to
+hopeless desolation, or at least greatly reduced in both productiveness
+and population. Vast forests have disappeared from mountain spurs and
+ridges; the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the trees by the decay
+of leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the alpine pastures which
+skirted and indented the woods, and the mould of the upland fields, are
+washed away; meadows, once fertilized by irrigation, are waste and
+unproductive, because the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the
+ancient canals are broken, or the springs that fed them dried up; rivers
+famous in history and song have shrunk to humble brooklets; the willows
+that ornamented and protected the banks of the lesser watercourses are
+gone, and the rivulets have ceased to exist as perennial currents,
+because the little water that finds its way into their old channels is
+evaporated by the droughts of summer, or absorbed by the parched earth,
+before it reaches the lowlands; the beds of the brooks have widened into
+broad expanses of pebbles and gravel, over which, though in the hot
+season passed dryshod, in winter sealike torrents thunder; the entrances
+of navigable streams are obstructed by sandbars, and harbors, once marts
+of an extensive commerce, are shoaled by the deposits of the rivers at
+whose mouths they lie; the elevation of the beds of estuaries, and the
+consequently diminished velocity of the streams which flow into them,
+have converted thousands of leagues of shallow sea and fertile lowland
+into unproductive and miasmatic morasses.
+
+Besides the direct testimony of history to the ancient fertility of the
+regions to which I refer--Northern Africa, the greater Arabian
+peninsula, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia and many other provinces of Asia
+Minor, Greece, Sicily, and parts of even Italy and Spain--the multitude
+and extent of yet remaining architectural ruins, and of decayed works of
+internal improvement, show that at former epochs a dense population
+inhabited those now lonely districts. Such a population could have been
+sustained only by a productiveness of soil of which we at present
+discover but slender traces; and the abundance derived from that
+fertility serves to explain how large armies, like those of the ancient
+Persians, and of the Crusaders and the Tartars in later ages, could,
+without an organized commissariat, secure adequate supplies in long
+marches through territories which, in our times, would scarcely afford
+forage for a single regiment.
+
+It appears, then, that the fairest and fruitfulest provinces of the
+Roman Empire, precisely that portion of terrestrial surface, in short,
+which, about the commencement of the Christian era, was endowed with the
+greatest superiority of soil, climate, and position, which had been
+carried to the highest pitch of physical improvement, and which thus
+combined the natural and artificial conditions best fitting it for the
+habitation and enjoyment of a dense and highly refined and cultivated
+population, is now completely exhausted of its fertility, or so
+diminished in productiveness, as, with the exception of a few favored
+oases that have escaped the general ruin, to be no longer capable of
+affording sustenance to civilized man. If to this realm of desolation we
+add the now wasted and solitary soils of Persia and the remoter East,
+that once fed their millions with milk and honey, we shall see that a
+territory larger than all Europe, the abundance of which sustained in
+bygone centuries a population scarcely inferior to that of the whole
+Christian world at the present day, has been entirely withdrawn from
+human use, or, at best, is thinly inhabited by tribes too few in
+numbers, too poor in superfluous products, and too little advanced in
+culture and the social arts, to contribute anything to the general moral
+or material interests of the great commonwealth of man.
+
+
+_Causes of this Decay._
+
+The decay of these once flourishing countries is partly due, no doubt,
+to that class of geological causes, whose action we can neither resist
+nor guide, and partly also to the direct violence of hostile human
+force; but it is, in a far greater proportion, either the result of
+man's ignorant disregard of the laws of nature, or an incidental
+consequence of war, and of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny and misrule.
+Next to ignorance of these laws, the primitive source, the _causa
+causarum_, of the acts and neglects which have blasted with sterility
+and physical decrepitude the noblest half of the empire of the C�sars,
+is, first, the brutal and exhausting despotism which Rome herself
+exercised over her conquered kingdoms, and even over her Italian
+territory; then, the host of temporal and spiritual tyrannies which she
+left as her dying curse to all her wide dominion, and which, in some
+form of violence or of fraud, still brood over almost every soil subdued
+by the Roman legions.[1] Man cannot struggle at once against crushing
+oppression and the destructive forces of inorganic nature. When both are
+combined against him, he succumbs after a shorter or a longer struggle,
+and the fields he has won from the primeval wood relapse into their
+original state of wild and luxuriant, but unprofitable forest growth,
+or fall into that of a dry and barren wilderness.
+
+Rome imposed on the products of agricultural labor in the rural
+districts taxes which the sale of the entire harvest would scarcely
+discharge; she drained them of their population by military
+conscription; she impoverished the peasantry by forced and unpaid labor
+on public works; she hampered industry and internal commerce by absurd
+restrictions and unwise regulations. Hence, large tracts of land were
+left uncultivated, or altogether deserted, and exposed to all the
+destructive forces which act with such energy on the surface of the
+earth when it is deprived of those protections by which nature
+originally guarded it, and for which, in well-ordered husbandry, human
+ingenuity has contrived more or less efficient substitutes.[2] Similar
+abuses have tended to perpetuate and extend these evils in later ages,
+and it is but recently that, even in the most populous parts of Europe,
+public attention has been half awakened to the necessity of restoring
+the disturbed harmonies of nature, whose well-balanced influences are so
+propitious to all her organic offspring, of repaying to our great mother
+the debt which the prodigality and the thriftlessness of former
+generations have imposed upon their successors--thus fulfilling the
+command of religion and of practical wisdom, to use this world as not
+abusing it.
+
+
+_New School of Geographers._
+
+The labors of Humboldt, of Ritter, of Guyot and their followers, have
+given to the science of geography a more philosophical, and, at the same
+time, a more imaginative character than it had received from the hands
+of their predecessors. Perhaps the most interesting field of
+speculation, thrown open by the new school to the cultivators of this
+attractive study, is the inquiry: how far external physical conditions,
+and especially the configuration of the earth's surface, and the
+distribution, outline, and relative position of land and water, have
+influenced the social life and social progress of man.
+
+
+_Reaction of Man on Nature._
+
+But, as we have seen, man has reacted upon organized and inorganic
+nature, and thereby modified, if not determined, the material structure
+of his earthly home. The measure of that reaction manifestly constitutes
+a very important element in the appreciation of the relations between
+mind and matter, as well as in the discussion of many purely physical
+problems. But though the subject has been incidentally touched upon by
+many geographers, and treated with much fulness of detail in regard to
+certain limited fields of human effort, and to certain specific effects
+of human action, it has not, as a whole, so far as I know, been made
+matter of special observation, or of historical research by any
+scientific inquirer.[3] Indeed, until the influence of physical
+geography upon human life was recognized as a distinct branch of
+philosophical investigation, there was no motive for the pursuit of such
+speculations; and it was desirable to inquire whether we have or can
+become the architects of our own abiding place, only when it was known
+how the mode of our physical, moral, and intellectual being is affected
+by the character of the home which Providence has appointed, and we have
+fashioned, for our material habitation.[4]
+
+It is still too early to attempt scientific method in discussing this
+problem, nor is our present store of the necessary facts by any means
+complete enough to warrant me in promising any approach to fulness of
+statement respecting them. Systematic observation in relation to this
+subject has hardly yet begun,[5] and the scattered data which have
+chanced to be recorded have never been collected. It has now no place in
+the general scheme of physical science, and is matter of suggestion and
+speculation only, not of established and positive conclusion. At
+present, then, all that I can hope is to excite an interest in a topic
+of much economical importance, by pointing out the directions and
+illustrating the modes in which human action has been or may be most
+injurious or most beneficial in its influence upon the physical
+conditions of the earth we inhabit.
+
+
+_Observation of Nature._
+
+In these pages, as in all I have ever written or propose to write, it is
+my aim to stimulate, not to satisfy, curiosity, and it is no part of my
+object to save my readers the labor of observation or of thought. For
+labor is life, and
+
+  Death lives where power lives unused.[6]
+
+Self is the schoolmaster whose lessons are best worth his wages; and
+since the subject I am considering has not yet become a branch of formal
+instruction, those whom it may interest can, fortunately, have no
+pedagogue but themselves. To the natural philosopher, the descriptive
+poet, the painter, and the sculptor, as well as to the common observer,
+the power most important to cultivate, and, at the same time, hardest to
+acquire, is that of seeing what is before him. Sight is a faculty;
+seeing, an art. The eye is a physical, but not a self-acting apparatus,
+and in general it sees only what it seeks. Like a mirror, it reflects
+objects presented to it; but it may be as insensible as a mirror, and it
+does not necessarily perceive what it reflects.[7] It is disputed
+whether the purely material sensibility of the eye is capable of
+improvement and cultivation. It has been maintained by high authority,
+that the natural acuteness of none of our sensuous faculties can be
+heightened by use, and hence that the minutest details of the image
+formed on the retina are as perfect in the most untrained, as in the
+most thoroughly disciplined organ. This may well be doubted, and it is
+agreed on all hands that the power of multifarious perception and rapid
+discrimination may be immensely increased by well-directed practice.[8]
+This exercise of the eye I desire to promote, and, next to moral and
+religious doctrine, I know no more important practical lessons in this
+earthly life of ours--which, to the wise man, is a school from the
+cradle to the grave--than those relating to the employment of the sense
+of vision in the study of nature.
+
+The pursuit of physical geography, embracing actual observation of
+terrestrial surface, affords to the eye the best general training that
+is accessible to all. The majority of even cultivated men have not the
+time and means of acquiring anything beyond a very superficial
+acquaintance with any branch of physical knowledge. Natural science has
+become so vastly extended, its recorded facts and its unanswered
+questions so immensely multiplied, that every strictly scientific man
+must be a specialist, and confine the researches of a whole life within
+a comparatively narrow circle. The study I am recommending, in the view
+I propose to take of it, is yet in that imperfectly developed state
+which allows its votaries to occupy themselves with such broad and
+general views as are attainable by every person of culture, and it does
+not now require a knowledge of special details which only years of
+application can master. It may be profitably pursued by all; and every
+traveller, every lover of rural scenery, every agriculturist, who will
+wisely use the gift of sight, may add valuable contributions to the
+common stock of knowledge on a subject which, as I hope to convince my
+readers, though long neglected, and now inartificially presented, is not
+only a very important, but a very interesting field of inquiry.
+
+
+_Cosmical and Geological Influences._
+
+The revolutions of the seasons, with their alternations of temperature
+and of length of day and night, the climates of different zones, and the
+general condition and movements of the atmosphere and the seas, depend
+upon causes for the most part cosmical, and, of course, wholly beyond
+our control. The elevation, configuration, and composition of the great
+masses of terrestrial surface, and the relative extent and distribution
+of land and water, are determined by geological influences equally
+remote from our jurisdiction. It would hence seem that the physical
+adaptation of different portions of the earth to the use and enjoyment
+of man is a matter so strictly belonging to mightier than human powers,
+that we can only accept geographical nature as we find her, and be
+content with such soils and such skies as she spontaneously offers.
+
+
+_Geographical Influence of Man._
+
+But it is certain that man has done much to mould the form of the
+earth's surface, though we cannot always distinguish between the results
+of his action and the effects of purely geological causes; that the
+destruction of the forests, the drainage of lakes and marshes, and the
+operations of rural husbandry and industrial art have tended to produce
+great changes in the hygrometric, thermometric, electric, and chemical
+condition of the atmosphere, though we are not yet able to measure the
+force of the different elements of disturbance, or to say how far they
+have been compensated by each other, or by still obscurer influences;
+and, finally, that the myriad forms of animal and vegetable life, which
+covered the earth when man first entered upon the theatre of a nature
+whose harmonies he was destined to derange, have been, through his
+action, greatly changed in numerical proportion, sometimes much modified
+in form and product, and sometimes entirely extirpated.
+
+The physical revolutions thus wrought by man have not all been
+destructive to human interests. Soils to which no nutritious vegetable
+was indigenous, countries which once brought forth but the fewest
+products suited for the sustenance and comfort of man--while the
+severity of their climates created and stimulated the greatest number
+and the most imperious urgency of physical wants--surfaces the most
+rugged and intractable, and least blessed with natural facilities of
+communication, have been made in modern times to yield and distribute
+all that supplies the material necessities, all that contributes to the
+sensuous enjoyments and conveniences of civilized life. The Scythia, the
+Thule, the Britain, the Germany, and the Gaul which the Roman writers
+describe in such forbidding terms, have been brought almost to rival the
+native luxuriance and easily won plenty of Southern Italy; and, while
+the fountains of oil and wine that refreshed old Greece and Syria and
+Northern Africa have almost ceased to flow, and the soils of those fair
+lands are turned to thirsty and inhospitable deserts, the hyperborean
+regions of Europe have conquered, or rather compensated, the rigors of
+climate, and attained to a material wealth and variety of product that,
+with all their natural advantages, the granaries of the ancient world
+can hardly be said to have enjoyed.
+
+These changes for evil and for good have not been caused by great
+natural revolutions of the globe, nor are they by any means attributable
+wholly to the moral and physical action or inaction of the peoples, or,
+in all cases, even of the races that now inhabit these respective
+regions. They are products of a complication of conflicting or
+coincident forces, acting through a long series of generations; here,
+improvidence, wastefulness, and wanton violence; there, foresight and
+wisely guided persevering industry. So far as they are purely the
+calculated and desired results of those simple and familiar operations
+of agriculture and of social life which are as universal as
+civilization--the removal of the forests which covered the soil required
+for the cultivation of edible fruits, the drying of here and there a few
+acres too moist for profitable husbandry, by draining off the surface
+waters, the substitution of domesticated and nutritious for wild and
+unprofitable vegetable growths, the construction of roads and canals and
+artificial harbors--they belong to the sphere of rural, commercial, and
+political economy more properly than to geography, and hence are but
+incidentally embraced within the range of our present inquiries, which
+concern physical, not financial balances. I propose to examine only the
+greater, more permanent, and more comprehensive mutations which man has
+produced, and is producing, in earth, sea, and sky, sometimes, indeed,
+with conscious purpose, but for the most part, as unforeseen though
+natural consequences of acts performed for narrower and more immediate
+ends.
+
+The exact measurement of the geographical changes hitherto thus effected
+is, as I have hinted, impracticable, and we possess, in relation to
+them, the means of only qualitative, not quantitative analysis. The fact
+of such revolutions is established partly by historical evidence, partly
+by analogical deduction from effects produced in our own time by
+operations similar in character to those which must have taken place in
+more or less remote ages of human action. Both sources of information
+are alike defective in precision; the latter, for general reasons too
+obvious to require specification; the former, because the facts to which
+it bears testimony occurred before the habit or the means of rigorously
+scientific observation upon any branch of physical research, and
+especially upon climatic changes, existed.
+
+
+_Uncertainty of our Meteorological Knowledge._
+
+The invention of measures of heat, and of atmospheric moisture,
+pressure, and precipitation, is extremely recent. Hence, ancient
+physicists have left us no thermometric or barometric records, no tables
+of the fall, evaporation, and flow of waters, and even no accurate maps
+of coast lines and the course of rivers. Their notices of these
+phenomena are almost wholly confined to excessive and exceptional
+instances of high or of low temperatures, extraordinary falls of rain
+and snow, and unusual floods or droughts. Our knowledge of the
+meteorological condition of the earth, at any period more than two
+centuries before our own time, is derived from these imperfect details,
+from the vague statements of ancient historians and geographers in
+regard to the volume of rivers and the relative extent of forest and
+cultivated land, from the indications furnished by the history of the
+agriculture and rural economy of past generations, and from other almost
+purely casual sources of information.
+
+Among these latter we must rank certain newly laid open fields of
+investigation, from which facts bearing on the point now under
+consideration have been gathered. I allude to the discovery of
+artificial objects in geological formations older than any hitherto
+recognized as exhibiting traces of the existence of man; to the ancient
+lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, containing the implements of the
+occupants, remains of their food, and other relics of human life; to the
+curious revelations of the Kj�kkenm�ddinger, or heaps of kitchen refuse,
+in Denmark, and of the peat mosses in the same and other northern
+countries; to the dwellings and other evidences of the industry of man
+in remote ages sometimes laid bare by the movement of sand dunes on the
+coasts of France and of the North Sea; and to the facts disclosed on the
+shores of the latter, by excavations in inhabited mounds which were,
+perhaps, raised before the period of the Roman Empire. These remains are
+memorials of races which have left no written records, because they
+perished before the historical period of the countries they occupied
+began. The plants and animals that furnished the relics found in the
+deposits were certainly contemporaneous with man; for they are
+associated with his works, and have evidently served his uses. In some
+cases, the animals belonged to species well ascertained to be now
+altogether extinct; in some others, both the animals and the vegetables,
+though extant elsewhere, have ceased to inhabit the regions where their
+remains are discovered. From the character of the artificial objects, as
+compared with others belonging to known dates, or at least to known
+periods of civilization, ingenious inferences have been drawn as to
+their age; and from the vegetation, remains of which accompany them, as
+to the climates of Central and Northern Europe at the time of their
+production.
+
+There are, however, sources of error which have not always been
+sufficiently guarded against in making these estimates. When a boat,
+composed of several pieces of wood fastened together by pins of the same
+material, is dug out of a bog, it is inferred that the vessel, and the
+skeletons and implements found with it, belong to an age when the use of
+iron was not known to the builders. But this conclusion is not warranted
+by the simple fact that metals were not employed in its construction;
+for the Nubians at this day build boats large enough to carry half a
+dozen persons across the Nile, out of small pieces of acacia wood pinned
+together entirely with wooden bolts. Nor is the occurrence of flint
+arrow heads and knives, in conjunction with other evidences of human
+life, conclusive proof as to the antiquity of the latter. Lyell informs
+us that some Oriental tribes still continue to use the same stone
+implements as their ancestors, "after that mighty empires, where the use
+of metals in the arts was well known, had flourished for three thousand
+years in their neighborhood;"[9] and the North American Indians now
+manufacture and use weapons of stone, and even of glass, chipping them
+in the latter case out of the bottoms of thick bottles, with great
+facility.[10]
+
+We may also be misled by our ignorance of the commercial relations
+existing between savage tribes. Extremely rude nations, in spite of
+their jealousies and their perpetual wars, sometimes contrive to
+exchange the products of provinces very widely separated from each
+other. The mounds of Ohio contain pearls, thought to be marine, which
+must have come from the Gulf of Mexico, or perhaps even from California,
+and the knives and pipes found in the same graves are often formed of
+far-fetched material, that was naturally paid for by some home product
+exported to the locality whence the material was derived. The art of
+preserving fish, flesh, and fowl by drying and smoking is widely
+diffused, and of great antiquity. The Indians of Long Island Sound are
+said to have carried on a trade in dried shell fish with tribes residing
+very far inland. From the earliest ages, the inhabitants of the Faroe
+and Orkney Islands, and of the opposite mainland coasts, have smoked
+wild fowl and other flesh. Hence it is possible that the animal and the
+vegetable food, the remains of which are found in the ancient deposits I
+am speaking of, may sometimes have been brought from climates remote
+from that where it was consumed.
+
+The most important, as well as the most trustworthy conclusions with
+respect to the climate of ancient Europe and Asia, are those drawn from
+the accounts given by the classical writers of the growth of cultivated
+plants; but these are by no means free from uncertainty, because we can
+seldom be sure of an identity of species, almost never of an identity of
+race or variety, between vegetables known to the agriculturists of
+Greece and Rome and those of modern times which are thought most nearly
+to resemble them. Besides this, there is always room for doubt whether
+the habits of plants long grown in different countries may not have been
+so changed by domestication that the conditions of temperature and
+humidity which they required twenty centuries ago were different from
+those at present demanded for their advantageous cultivation.[11]
+
+Even if we suppose an identity of species, of race, and of habit to be
+established between a given ancient and modern plant, the negative fact
+that the latter will not grow now where it flourished two thousand years
+ago does not in all cases prove a change of climate. The same result
+might follow from the exhaustion of the soil,[12] or from a change in
+the quantity of moisture it habitually contains. After a district of
+country has been completely or even partially cleared of its forest
+growth, and brought under cultivation, the drying of the soil, under
+favorable circumstances, goes on for generations, perhaps for ages.[13]
+In other cases, from injudicious husbandry, or the diversion or choking
+up of natural watercourses, it may become more highly charged with
+humidity. An increase or diminution of the moisture of a soil almost
+necessarily supposes an elevation or a depression of its winter or its
+summer heat, and of its extreme, if not of its mean annual temperature,
+though such elevation or depression may be so slight as not sensibly to
+raise or lower the mercury in a thermometer exposed to the open air. Any
+of these causes, more or less humidity, or more or less warmth of soil,
+would affect the growth both of wild and of cultivated vegetation, and
+consequently, without any appreciable change in atmospheric temperature,
+precipitation, or evaporation, plants of a particular species might
+cease to be advantageously cultivated where they had once been easily
+reared.[14] We are very imperfectly acquainted with the present mean
+and extreme temperature, or the precipitation and the evaporation of any
+extensive region, even in countries most densely peopled and best
+supplied with instruments and observers. The progress of science is
+constantly detecting errors of method in older observations, and many
+laboriously constructed tables of meteorological phenomena are now
+thrown aside as fallacious, and therefore worse than useless, because
+some condition necessary to secure accuracy of result was neglected, in
+obtaining the data on which they were founded.
+
+To take a familiar instance: it is but recently that attention has been
+drawn to the great influence of slight changes of station upon the
+results of observations of temperature and precipitation. A thermometer
+removed but a few hundred yards from its first position differs not
+unfrequently five, sometimes even ten degrees in its readings; and when
+we are told that the annual fall of rain on the roof of the observatory
+at Paris is two inches less than on the ground by the side of it, we may
+see that the level of the rain-gauge is a point of much consequence in
+making estimates from its measurements. The data from which results have
+been deduced with respect to the hygrometrical and thermometrical
+conditions, the climate in short, of different countries, have very
+often been derived from observations at single points in cities or
+districts separated by considerable distances. The tendency of errors
+and accidents to balance each other authorizes us, indeed, to entertain
+greater confidence than we could otherwise feel in the conclusions drawn
+from such tables; but it is in the highest degree probable that they
+would be much modified by more numerous series of observations, at
+different stations within narrow limits.[15]
+
+There is one branch of research which is of the utmost importance in
+reference to these questions, but which, from the great difficulty of
+direct observation upon it, has been less successfully studied than
+almost any other problem of physical science. I refer to the proportions
+between precipitation, superficial drainage, absorption, and
+evaporation. Precise actual measurement of these quantities upon even a
+single acre of ground is impossible; and in all cabinet experiments on
+the subject, the conditions of the surface observed are so different
+from those which occur in nature, that we cannot safely reason from one
+case to the other. In nature, the inclination of the ground, the degree
+of freedom or obstruction of the surface, the composition and density of
+the soil, upon which its permeability by water and its power of
+absorbing and retaining or transmitting moisture depend, its
+temperature, the dryness or saturation of the subsoil, vary at
+comparatively short distances; and though the precipitation upon and the
+superficial flow from very small geographical basins may be estimated
+with an approach to precision, yet even here we have no present means
+of knowing how much of the water absorbed by the earth is restored to
+the atmosphere by evaporation, and how much carried off by infiltration
+or other modes of underground discharge. When, therefore, we attempt to
+use the phenomena observed on a few square or cubic yards of earth, as a
+basis of reasoning upon the meteorology of a province, it is evident
+that our data must be insufficient to warrant positive general
+conclusions. In discussing the climatology of whole countries, or even
+of comparatively small local divisions, we may safely say that none can
+tell what percentage of the water they receive from the atmosphere is
+evaporated; what absorbed by the ground and conveyed off by subterranean
+conduits; what carried down to the sea by superficial channels; what
+drawn from the earth or the air by a given extent of forest, of short
+pasture vegetation, or of tall meadow-grass; what given out again by
+surfaces so covered, or by bare ground of various textures and
+composition, under different conditions of atmospheric temperature,
+pressure, and humidity; or what is the amount of evaporation from water,
+ice, or snow, under the varying exposures to which, in actual nature,
+they are constantly subjected. If, then, we are so ignorant of all these
+climatic phenomena in the best-known regions inhabited by man, it is
+evident that we can rely little upon theoretical deductions applied to
+the former more natural state of the same regions--less still to such as
+are adopted with respect to distant, strange, and primitive countries.
+
+
+_Mechanical Effects produced by Man on the Surface of the Earth more
+easily ascertainable._
+
+In investigating the mechanical effects of human action on superficial
+geography, we are treading on safer ground, and dealing with much less
+subtile phenomena, less intractable elements. Great physical changes
+can, in some cases, be positively shown, in some almost certainly
+inferred, to have been produced by the operations of rural industry, and
+by the labors of man in other spheres of material effort; and hence, in
+this most important part of our subject, we can arrive at many positive
+generalizations, and obtain practical results of no small economical
+value.
+
+
+_Importance and Possibility of Physical Restoration._
+
+Many circumstances conspire to invest with great present interest the
+questions: how far man can permanently modify and ameliorate those
+physical conditions of terrestrial surface and climate on which his
+material welfare depends; how far he can compensate, arrest, or retard
+the deterioration which many of his agricultural and industrial
+processes tend to produce; and how far he can restore fertility and
+salubrity to soils which his follies or his crimes have made barren or
+pestilential. Among these circumstances, the most prominent, perhaps, is
+the necessity of providing new homes for a European population which is
+increasing more rapidly than its means of subsistence, new physical
+comforts for classes of the people that have now become too much
+enlightened and have imbibed too much culture to submit to a longer
+deprivation of a share in the material enjoyments which the privileged
+ranks have hitherto monopolized.
+
+To supply new hives for the emigrant swarms, there are, first, the vast
+unoccupied prairies and forests of America, of Australia, and of many
+other great oceanic islands, the sparsely inhabited and still
+unexhausted soils of Southern and even Central Africa, and, finally, the
+impoverished and half-depopulated shores of the Mediterranean, and the
+interior of Asia Minor and the farther East. To furnish to those who
+shall remain after emigration shall have conveniently reduced the too
+dense population of many European states, those means of sensuous and of
+intellectual well-being which are styled "artificial wants" when
+demanded by the humble and the poor, but are admitted to be
+"necessaries" when claimed by the noble and the rich, the soil must be
+stimulated to its highest powers of production, and man's utmost
+ingenuity and energy must be tasked to renovate a nature drained, by
+his improvidence, of fountains which a wise economy would have made
+plenteous and perennial sources of beauty, health, and wealth.
+
+In those yet virgin lands which the progress of modern discovery in both
+hemispheres has brought and is still bringing to the knowledge and
+control of civilized man, not much improvement of great physical
+conditions is to be looked for. The proportion of forest is indeed to be
+considerably reduced, superfluous waters to be drawn off, and routes of
+internal communication to be constructed; but the primitive geographical
+and climatic features of these countries ought to be, as far as
+possible, retained.
+
+
+_Stability of Nature._
+
+Nature, left undisturbed, so fashions her territory as to give it almost
+unchanging permanence of form, outline, and proportion, except when
+shattered by geologic convulsions; and in these comparatively rare cases
+of derangement, she sets herself at once to repair the superficial
+damage, and to restore, as nearly as practicable, the former aspect of
+her dominion. In new countries, the natural inclination of the ground,
+the self-formed slopes and levels, are generally such as best secure the
+stability of the soil. They have been graded and lowered or elevated by
+frost and chemical forces and gravitation and the flow of water and
+vegetable deposit and the action of the winds, until, by a general
+compensation of conflicting forces, a condition of equilibrium has been
+reached which, without the action of man, would remain, with little
+fluctuation, for countless ages.
+
+We need not go far back to reach a period when, in all that portion of
+the North American continent which has been occupied by British
+colonization, the geographical elements very nearly balanced and
+compensated each other. At the commencement of the seventeenth century,
+the soil, with insignificant exceptions, was covered with forests;[16]
+and whenever the Indian, in consequence of war or the exhaustion of the
+beasts of the chase, abandoned the narrow fields he had planted and the
+woods he had burned over, they speedily returned, by a succession of
+herbaceous, arborescent, and arboreal growths, to their original state.
+Even a single generation sufficed to restore them almost to their
+primitive luxuriance of forest vegetation.[17] The unbroken forests had
+attained to their maximum density and strength of growth, and, as the
+older trees decayed and fell, they were succeeded by new shoots or
+seedlings, so that from century to century no perceptible change seems
+to have occurred in the wood, except the slow, spontaneous succession of
+crops. This succession involved no interruption of growth, and but
+little break in the "boundless contiguity of shade;" for, in the
+husbandry of nature, there are no fallows. Trees fall singly, not by
+square roods, and the tall pine is hardly prostrate, before the light
+and heat, admitted to the ground by the removal of the dense crown of
+foliage which had shut them out, stimulate the germination of the seeds
+of broad-leaved trees that had lain, waiting this kindly influence,
+perhaps for centuries. Two natural causes, destructive in character,
+were, indeed, in operation in the primitive American forests, though, in
+the Northern colonies, at least, there were sufficient compensations;
+for we do not discover that any considerable permanent change was
+produced by them. I refer to the action of beavers and of fallen trees
+in producing bogs,[18] and of smaller animals, insects, and birds, in
+destroying the woods. Bogs are less numerous and extensive in the
+Northern States of the American union, because the natural inclination
+of the surface favors drainage; but they are more frequent, and cover
+more ground, in the Southern States, for the opposite reason.[19] They
+generally originate in the checking of watercourses by the falling of
+timber, or of earth and rocks, across their channels. If the impediment
+thus created is sufficient to retain a permanent accumulation of water
+behind it, the trees whose roots are overflowed soon perish, and then by
+their fall increase the obstruction, and, of course, occasion a still
+wider spread of the stagnating stream. This process goes on until the
+water finds a new outlet, at a higher level, not liable to similar
+interruption. The fallen trees not completely covered by water are soon
+overgrown with mosses; aquatic and semi-aquatic plants propagate
+themselves, and spread until they more or less completely fill up the
+space occupied by the water, and the surface is gradually converted from
+a pond to a quaking morass.[20] The morass is slowly solidified by
+vegetable production and deposit, then very often restored to the
+forest condition by the growth of black ashes, cedars, or, in southern
+latitudes, cypresses, and other trees suited to such a soil, and thus
+the interrupted harmony of nature is at last re�stablished.
+
+I am disposed to think that more bogs in the Northern States owe their
+origin to beavers than to accidental obstructions of rivulets by
+wind-fallen or naturally decayed trees; for there are few swamps in
+those States, at the outlets of which we may not, by careful search,
+find the remains of a beaver dam. The beaver sometimes inhabits natural
+lakelets, but he prefers to owe his pond to his own ingenuity and toil.
+The reservoir once constructed, its inhabitants rapidly multiply, and as
+its harvests of pond lilies, and other aquatic plants on which this
+quadruped feeds in winter, become too small for the growing population,
+the beaver metropolis sends out expeditions of discovery and
+colonization. The pond gradually fills up, by the operation of the same
+causes as when it owes its existence to an accidental obstruction, and
+when, at last, the original settlement is converted into a bog by the
+usual processes of vegetable life, the remaining inhabitants abandon it
+and build on some virgin brooklet a new city of the waters.
+
+In countries somewhat further advanced in civilization than those
+occupied by the North American Indians, as in medi�val Ireland, the
+formation of bogs may be commenced by the neglect of man to remove, from
+the natural channels of superficial drainage, the tops and branches of
+trees felled for the various purposes to which wood is applicable in
+his rude industry; and, when the flow of the water is thus checked,
+nature goes on with the processes I have already described. In such
+half-civilized regions, too, windfalls are more frequent than in those
+where the forest is unbroken, because, when openings have been made in
+it, for agricultural or other purposes, the entrance thus afforded to
+the wind occasions the sudden overthrow of hundreds of trees which might
+otherwise have stood for generations, and thus have fallen to the
+ground, only one by one, as natural decay brought them down.[21] Besides
+this, the flocks bred by man in the pastoral state, keep down the
+incipient growth of trees on the half-dried bogs, and prevent them from
+recovering their primitive condition.
+
+Young trees in the native forest are sometimes girdled and killed by the
+smaller rodent quadrupeds, and their growth is checked by birds which
+feed on the terminal bud; but these animals, as we shall see, are
+generally found on the skirts of the wood only, not in its deeper
+recesses, and hence the mischief they do is not extensive. The insects
+which damage primitive forests by feeding upon products of trees
+essential to their growth, are not numerous, nor is their appearance, in
+destructive numbers, frequent; and those which perforate the stems and
+branches, to deposit and hatch their eggs, more commonly select dead
+trees for that purpose, though, unhappily, there are important
+exceptions to this latter remark.[22] I do not know that we have any
+evidence of the destruction or serious injury of American forests by
+insects, before or even soon after the period of colonization; but since
+the white man has laid bare a vast proportion of the earth's surface,
+and thereby produced changes favorable, perhaps, to the multiplication
+of these pests, they have greatly increased in numbers, and, apparently,
+in voracity also. Not many years ago, the pines on thousands of acres of
+land in North Carolina, were destroyed by insects not known to have ever
+done serious injury to that tree before. In such cases as this and
+others of the like sort, there is good reason to believe that man is the
+indirect cause of an evil for which he pays so heavy a penalty. Insects
+increase whenever the birds which feed upon them disappear. Hence, in
+the wanton destruction of the robin and other insectivorous birds, the
+_bipes implumis_, the featherless biped, man, is not only exchanging the
+vocal orchestra which greets the rising sun for the drowsy beetle's
+evening drone, and depriving his groves and his fields of their fairest
+ornament, but he is waging a treacherous warfare on his natural
+allies.[23]
+
+In fine, in countries untrodden by man, the proportions and relative
+positions of land and water, the atmospheric precipitation and
+evaporation, the thermometric mean, and the distribution of vegetable
+and animal life, are subject to change only from geological influences
+so slow in their operation that the geographical conditions may be
+regarded as constant and immutable. These arrangements of nature it is,
+in most cases, highly desirable substantially to maintain, when such
+regions become the seat of organized commonwealths. It is, therefore, a
+matter of the first importance, that, in commencing the process of
+fitting them for permanent civilized occupation, the transforming
+operations should be so conducted as not unnecessarily to derange and
+destroy what, in too many cases, it is beyond the power of man to
+rectify or restore.
+
+
+_Restoration of Disturbed Harmonies._
+
+In reclaiming and reoccupying lands laid waste by human improvidence or
+malice, and abandoned by man, or occupied only by a nomade or thinly
+scattered population, the task of the pioneer settler is of a very
+different character. He is to become a co-worker with nature in the
+reconstruction of the damaged fabric which the negligence or the
+wantonness of former lodgers has rendered untenantable. He must aid her
+in reclothing the mountain slopes with forests and vegetable mould,
+thereby restoring the fountains which she provided to water them; in
+checking the devastating fury of torrents, and bringing back the surface
+drainage to its primitive narrow channels; and in drying deadly morasses
+by opening the natural sluices which have been choked up, and cutting
+new canals for drawing off their stagnant waters. He must thus, on the
+one hand, create new reservoirs, and, on the other, remove mischievous
+accumulations of moisture, thereby equalizing and regulating the sources
+of atmospheric humidity and of flowing water, both which are so
+essential to all vegetable growth, and, of course, to human and lower
+animal life.
+
+
+_Destructiveness of Man._
+
+Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct
+alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste. Nature has
+provided against the absolute destruction of any of her elementary
+matter, the raw material of her works; the thunderbolt and the tornado,
+the most convulsive throes of even the volcano and the earthquake, being
+only phenomena of decomposition and recomposition. But she has left it
+within the power of man irreparably to derange the combinations of
+inorganic matter and of organic life, which through the night of �ons
+she had been proportioning and balancing, to prepare the earth for his
+habitation, when, in the fulness of time, his Creator should call him
+forth to enter into its possession.
+
+Apart from the hostile influence of man, the organic and the inorganic
+world are, as I have remarked, bound together by such mutual relations
+and adaptations as secure, if not the absolute permanence and
+equilibrium of both, a long continuance of the established conditions of
+each at any given time and place, or at least, a very slow and gradual
+succession of changes in those conditions. But man is everywhere a
+disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature
+are turned to discords. The proportions and accommodations which insured
+the stability of existing arrangements are overthrown. Indigenous
+vegetable and animal species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of
+foreign origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and
+the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new and
+reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes of animal
+life. These intentional changes and substitutions constitute, indeed,
+great revolutions; but vast as is their magnitude and importance, they
+are, as we shall see, insignificant in comparison with the contingent
+and unsought results which have flowed from them.
+
+The fact that, of all organic beings, man alone is to be regarded as
+essentially a destructive power, and that he wields energies to resist
+which, nature--that Nature whom all material life and all inorganic
+substance obey--is wholly impotent, tends to prove that, though living
+in physical nature, he is not of her, that he is of more exalted
+parentage, and belongs to a higher order of existences than those born
+of her womb and submissive to her dictates.
+
+There are, indeed, brute destroyers, beasts and birds and insects of
+prey--all animal life feeds upon, and, of course, destroys other
+life,--but this destruction is balanced by compensations. It is, in
+fact, the very means by which the existence of one tribe of animals or
+of vegetables is secured against being smothered by the encroachments of
+another; and the reproductive powers of species, which serve as the food
+of others, are always proportioned to the demand they are destined to
+supply. Man pursues his victims with reckless destructiveness; and,
+while the sacrifice of life by the lower animals is limited by the
+cravings of appetite, he unsparingly persecutes, even to extirpation,
+thousands of organic forms which he cannot consume.[24]
+
+The earth was not, in its natural condition, completely adapted to the
+use of man, but only to the sustenance of wild animals and wild
+vegetation. These live, multiply their kind in just proportion, and
+attain their perfect measure of strength and beauty, without producing
+or requiring any change in the natural arrangements of surface, or in
+each other's spontaneous tendencies, except such mutual repression of
+excessive increase as may prevent the extirpation of one species by the
+encroachments of another. In short, without man, lower animal and
+spontaneous vegetable life would have been constant in type,
+distribution, and proportion, and the physical geography of the earth
+would have remained undisturbed for indefinite periods, and been subject
+to revolution only from possible, unknown cosmical causes, or from
+geological action.
+
+But man, the domestic animals that serve him, the field and garden
+plants the products of which supply him with food and clothing, cannot
+subsist and rise to the full development of their higher properties,
+unless brute and unconscious nature be effectually combated, and, in a
+great degree, vanquished by human art. Hence, a certain measure of
+transformation of terrestrial surface, of suppression of natural, and
+stimulation of artificially modified productivity becomes necessary.
+This measure man has unfortunately exceeded. He has felled the forests
+whose network of fibrous roots bound the mould to the rocky skeleton of
+the earth; but had he allowed here and there a belt of woodland to
+reproduce itself by spontaneous propagation, most of the mischiefs which
+his reckless destruction of the natural protection of the soil has
+occasioned would have been averted. He has broken up the mountain
+reservoirs, the percolation of whose waters through unseen channels
+supplied the fountains that refreshed his cattle and fertilized his
+fields; but he has neglected to maintain the cisterns and the canals of
+irrigation which a wise antiquity had constructed to neutralize the
+consequences of its own imprudence. While he has torn the thin glebe
+which confined the light earth of extensive plains, and has destroyed
+the fringe of semi-aquatic plants which skirted the coast and checked
+the drifting of the sea sand, he has failed to prevent the spreading of
+the dunes by clothing them with artificially propagated vegetation. He
+has ruthlessly warred on all the tribes of animated nature whose spoil
+he could convert to his own uses, and he has not protected the birds
+which prey on the insects most destructive to his own harvests.
+
+Purely untutored humanity, it is true, interferes comparatively little
+with the arrangements of nature,[25] and the destructive agency of man
+becomes more and more energetic and unsparing as he advances in
+civilization, until the impoverishment, with which his exhaustion of the
+natural resources of the soil is threatening him, at last awakens him to
+the necessity of preserving what is left, if not of restoring what has
+been wantonly wasted. The wandering savage grows no cultivated
+vegetable, fells no forest, and extirpates no useful plant, no noxious
+weed. If his skill in the chase enables him to entrap numbers of the
+animals on which he feeds, he compensates this loss by destroying also
+the lion, the tiger, the wolf, the otter, the seal, and the eagle, thus
+indirectly protecting the feebler quadrupeds and fish and fowls, which
+would otherwise become the booty of beasts and birds of prey. But with
+stationary life, or rather with the pastoral state, man at once
+commences an almost indiscriminate warfare upon all the forms of animal
+and vegetable existence around him, and as he advances in civilization,
+he gradually eradicates or transforms every spontaneous product of the
+soil he occupies.[26]
+
+
+_Human and Brute Action Compared._
+
+It has been maintained by authorities as high as any known to modern
+science, that the action of man upon nature, though greater in _degree_,
+does not differ in _kind_, from that of wild animals. It appears to me
+to differ in essential character, because, though it is often followed
+by unforeseen and undesired results, yet it is nevertheless guided by a
+self-conscious and intelligent will aiming as often at secondary and
+remote as at immediate objects. The wild animal, on the other hand, acts
+instinctively, and, so far as we are able to perceive, always with a
+view to single and direct purposes. The backwoodsman and the beaver
+alike fell trees; the man that he may convert the forest into an olive
+grove that will mature its fruit only for a succeeding generation, the
+beaver that he may feed upon their bark or use them in the construction
+of his habitation. Human differs from brute action, too, in its
+influence upon the material world, because it is not controlled by
+natural compensations and balances. Natural arrangements, once disturbed
+by man, are not restored until he retires from the field, and leaves
+free scope to spontaneous recuperative energies; the wounds he inflicts
+upon the material creation are not healed until he withdraws the arm
+that gave the blow. On the other hand, I am not aware of any evidence
+that wild animals have ever destroyed the smallest forest, extirpated
+any organic species or modified its natural character, occasioned any
+permanent change of terrestrial surface, or produced any disturbance of
+physical conditions which nature has not, of herself, repaired without
+the expulsion of the animal that had caused it.[27]
+
+The form of geographical surface, and very probably the climate of a
+given country, depend much on the character of the vegetable life
+belonging to it. Man has, by domestication, greatly changed the habits
+and properties of the plants he rears; he has, by voluntary selection,
+immensely modified the forms and qualities of the animated creatures
+that serve him; and he has, at the same time, completely rooted out many
+forms of animal if not of vegetable being.[28] What is there, in the
+influence of brute life, that corresponds to this? We have no reason to
+believe that in that portion of the American continent which, though
+peopled by many tribes of quadruped and fowl, remained uninhabited by
+man, or only thinly occupied by purely savage tribes, any sensible
+geographical change had occurred within twenty centuries before the
+epoch of discovery and colonization, while, during the same period, man
+had changed millions of square miles, in the fairest and most fertile
+regions of the Old World, into the barrenest deserts.
+
+The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the
+balance which nature had established between her organized and her
+inorganic creations; and she avenges herself upon the intruder, by
+letting loose upon her defaced provinces destructive energies hitherto
+kept in check by organic forces destined to be his best auxiliaries, but
+which he has unwisely dispersed and driven from the field of action.
+When the forest is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in
+its vegetable mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain
+to wash away the parched dust into which that mould has been converted.
+The well-wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which
+encumbers the low grounds and chokes the watercourses with its debris,
+and--except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain
+through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination of
+surface--the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical
+degradation to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains,
+of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains. There are
+parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine
+Europe, where the operation of causes set in action by man has brought
+the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the
+moon; and though, within that brief space of time which we call "the
+historical period," they are known to have been covered with luxuriant
+woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows, they are now too far
+deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted
+for human use, except through great geological changes, or other
+mysterious influences or agencies of which we have no present knowledge,
+and over which we have no prospective control. The earth is fast
+becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and another era of
+equal human crime and human improvidence, and of like duration with that
+through which traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would
+reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of
+shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation,
+barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.[29]
+
+
+_Physical Improvement._
+
+True, there is a partial reverse to this picture. On narrow theatres,
+new forests have been planted; inundations of flowing streams restrained
+by heavy walls of masonry and other constructions; torrents compelled to
+aid, by depositing the slime with which they are charged, in filling up
+lowlands, and raising the level of morasses which their own overflows
+had created; ground submerged by the encroachments of the ocean, or
+exposed to be covered by its tides, has been rescued from its dominion
+by diking;[30] swamps and even lakes have been drained, and their beds
+brought within the domain of agricultural industry; drifting coast dunes
+have been checked and made productive by plantation; seas and inland
+waters have been repeopled with fish, and even the sands of the Sahara
+have been fertilized by artesian fountains. These achievements are more
+glorious than the proudest triumphs of war, but, thus far, they give but
+faint hope that we shall yet make full atonement for our spendthrift
+waste of the bounties of nature.
+
+It is, on the one hand, rash and unphilosophical to attempt to set
+limits to the ultimate power of man over inorganic nature, and it is
+unprofitable, on the other, to speculate on what may be accomplished by
+the discovery of now unknown and unimagined natural forces, or even by
+the invention of new arts and new processes. But since we have seen
+aerostation, the motive power of elastic vapors, the wonders of modern
+telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gunpowder, and even of a
+substance so harmless, unresisting, and inert as cotton, nothing in the
+way of mechanical achievement seems impossible, and it is hard to
+restrain the imagination from wandering forward a couple of generations
+to an epoch when our descendants shall have advanced as far beyond us in
+physical conquest, as we have marched beyond the trophies erected by our
+grandfathers.
+
+I must therefore be understood to mean only, that no agencies now known
+to man and directed by him seem adequate to the reducing of great Alpine
+precipices to such slopes as would enable them to support a vegetable
+clothing, or to the covering of large extents of denuded rock with
+earth, and planting upon them a forest growth. But among the mysteries
+which science is yet to reveal, there may be still undiscovered methods
+of accomplishing even grander wonders than these. Mechanical
+philosophers have suggested the possibility of accumulating and
+treasuring up for human use some of the greater natural forces, which
+the action of the elements puts forth with such astonishing energy.
+Could we gather, and bind, and make subservient to our control, the
+power which a West Indian hurricane exerts through a small area in one
+continuous blast, or the momentum expended by the waves, in a
+tempestuous winter, upon the breakwater at Cherbourg,[31] or the lifting
+power of the tide, for a month, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, or the
+pressure of a square mile of sea water at the depth of five thousand
+fathoms, or a moment of the might of an earthquake or a volcano, our
+age--which moves no mountains and casts them into the sea by faith
+alone--might hope to scarp the rugged walls of the Alps and Pyrenees and
+Mount Taurus, robe them once more in a vegetation as rich as that of
+their pristine woods, and turn their wasting torrents into refreshing
+streams.[32]
+
+Could this old world, which man has overthrown, be rebuilded, could
+human cunning rescue its wasted hillsides and its deserted plains from
+solitude or mere nomade occupation, from barrenness, from nakedness, and
+from insalubrity, and restore the ancient fertility and healthfulness of
+the Etruscan sea coast, the Campagna and the Pontine marshes, of
+Calabria, of Sicily, of the Peloponnesus and insular and continental
+Greece, of Asia Minor, of the slopes of Lebanon and Hermon, of
+Palestine, of the Syrian desert, of Mesopotamia and the delta of the
+Euphrates, of the Cyrenaica, of Africa proper, Numidia, and Mauritania,
+the thronging millions of Europe might still find room on the Eastern
+continent, and the main current of emigration be turned toward the
+rising instead of the setting sun.
+
+But changes like these must await great political and moral revolutions
+in the governments and peoples by whom those regions are now possessed,
+a command of pecuniary and of mechanical means not at present enjoyed by
+those nations, and a more advanced and generally diffused knowledge of
+the processes by which the amelioration of soil and climate is possible,
+than now anywhere exists. Until such circumstances shall conspire to
+favor the work of geographical regeneration, the countries I have
+mentioned, with here and there a local exception, will continue to sink
+into yet deeper desolation, and in the mean time, the American
+continent, Southern Africa, Australia, and the smaller oceanic islands,
+will be almost the only theatres where man is engaged, on a great scale,
+in transforming the face of nature.
+
+
+_Arrest of Physical Decay of New Countries._
+
+Comparatively short as is the period through which the colonization of
+foreign lands by European emigrants extends, great, and, it is to be
+feared, sometimes irreparable, injury has been already done in the
+various processes by which man seeks to subjugate the virgin earth; and
+many provinces, first trodden by the _homo sapiens Europ�_ within the
+last two centuries, begin to show signs of that melancholy dilapidation
+which is now driving so many of the peasantry of Europe from their
+native hearths. It is evidently a matter of great moment, not only to
+the population of the states where these symptoms are manifesting
+themselves, but to the general interests of humanity, that this decay
+should be arrested, and that the future operations of rural husbandry
+and of forest industry, in districts yet remaining substantially in
+their native condition, should be so conducted as to prevent the
+widespread mischiefs which have been elsewhere produced by thoughtless
+or wanton destruction of the natural safeguards of the soil. This can be
+done only by the diffusion of knowledge on this subject among the
+classes that, in earlier days, subdued and tilled ground in which they
+had no vested rights, but who, in our time, own their woods, their
+pastures, and their ploughlands as a perpetual possession for them and
+theirs, and have, therefore, a strong interest in the protection of
+their domain against deterioration.
+
+
+_Forms and Formations most liable to Physical Degradation._
+
+The character and extent of the evils under consideration depend very
+much on climate and the natural forms and constitution of surface. If
+the precipitation, whether great or small in amount, be equally
+distributed through the seasons, so that there are neither torrential
+rains nor parching droughts, and if, further, the general inclination of
+ground be moderate, so that the superficial waters are carried off
+without destructive rapidity of flow, and without sudden accumulation in
+the channels of natural drainage, there is little danger of the
+degradation of the soil in consequence of the removal of forest or other
+vegetable covering, and the natural face of the earth may be considered
+as substantially permanent. These conditions are well exemplified in
+Ireland, in a great part of England, in extensive districts in Germany
+and France, and, fortunately, in an immense proportion of the valley of
+the Mississippi and the basin of the great American lakes, as well as in
+many parts of the continents of South America and of Africa.
+
+Destructive changes are most frequent in countries of irregular and
+mountainous surface, and in climates where the precipitation is confined
+chiefly to a single season, and where the year is divided into a wet and
+a dry period, as is the case throughout a great part of the Ottoman
+empire, and, more or less strictly, the whole Mediterranean basin. It is
+partly, though by no means entirely, owing to topographical and climatic
+causes that the blight, which has smitten the fairest and most fertile
+provinces of Imperial Rome, has spared Britannia, Germania, Pannonia,
+and M[oe]sia, the comparatively inhospitable homes of barbarous races,
+who, in the days of the C�sars, were too little advanced in civilized
+life to possess either the power or the will to wage that war against
+the order of nature which seems, hitherto, an almost inseparable
+condition precedent of high social culture, and of great progress in
+fine and mechanical art.[33]
+
+In mountainous countries, on the other hand, various causes combine to
+expose the soil to constant dangers. The rain and snow usually fall in
+greater quantity, and with much inequality of distribution; the snow on
+the summits accumulates for many months in succession, and then is not
+unfrequently almost wholly dissolved in a single thaw, so that the
+entire precipitation of months is in a few hours hurried down the flanks
+of the mountains, and through the ravines that furrow them; the natural
+inclination of the surface promotes the swiftness of the gathering
+currents of diluvial rain and of melting snow, which soon acquire an
+almost irresistible force, and power of removal and transportation; the
+soil itself is less compact and tenacious than that of the plains, and
+if the sheltering forest has been destroyed, it is confined by few of
+the threads and ligaments by which nature had bound it together, and
+attached it to the rocky groundwork. Hence every considerable shower
+lays bare its roods of rock, and the torrents sent down by the thaws of
+spring, and by occasional heavy discharges of the summer and autumnal
+rains, are seas of mud and rolling stones that sometimes lay waste, and
+bury beneath them acres, and even miles, of pasture and field and
+vineyard.[34]
+
+
+_Physical Decay of New Countries._
+
+I have remarked that the effects of human action on the forms of the
+earth's surface could not always be distinguished from those resulting
+from geological causes, and there is also much uncertainty in respect to
+the precise influence of the clearing and cultivating of the ground,
+and of other rural operations, upon climate. It is disputed whether
+either the mean or the extremes of temperature, the periods of the
+seasons, or the amount or distribution of precipitation and of
+evaporation, in any country whose annals are known, have undergone any
+change during the historical period. It is, indeed, impossible to doubt
+that many of the operations of the pioneer settler tend to produce great
+modifications in atmospheric humidity, temperature, and electricity; but
+we are at present unable to determine how far one set of effects is
+neutralized by another, or compensated by unknown agencies. This
+question scientific research is inadequate to solve, for want of the
+necessary data; but well conducted observation, in regions now first
+brought under the occupation of man, combined with such historical
+evidence as still exists, may be expected at no distant period to throw
+much light on this subject.
+
+Australia is, perhaps, the country from which we have a right to expect
+the fullest elucidation of these difficult and disputable problems. Its
+colonization did not commence until the physical sciences had become
+matter of almost universal attention, and is, indeed, so recent that the
+memory of living men embraces the principal epochs of its history; the
+peculiarities of its fauna, its flora, and its geology are such as to
+have excited for it the liveliest interest of the votaries of natural
+science; its mines have given its people the necessary wealth for
+procuring the means of instrumental observation, and the leisure
+required for the pursuit of scientific research; and large tracts of
+virgin forest and natural meadow are rapidly passing under the control
+of civilized man. Here, then, exist greater facilities and stronger
+motives for the careful study of the topics in question than have ever
+been found combined in any other theatre of European colonization.
+
+In North America, the change from the natural to the artificial
+condition of terrestrial surface began about the period when the most
+important instruments of meteorological observation were invented. The
+first settlers in the territory now constituting the United States and
+the British American provinces had other things to do than to tabulate
+barometrical and thermometrical readings, but there remain some
+interesting physical records from the early days of the colonies,[35]
+and there is still an immense extent of North American soil where the
+industry and the folly of man have as yet produced little appreciable
+change. Here, too, with the present increased facilities for scientific
+observation, the future effects, direct and contingent, of man's labors,
+can be measured, and such precautions taken in those rural processes
+which we call improvements, as to mitigate evils, perhaps, in some
+degree, inseparable from every attempt to control the action of natural
+laws.
+
+In order to arrive at safe conclusions, we must first obtain a more
+exact knowledge of the topography, and of the present superficial and
+climatic condition of countries where the natural surface is as yet more
+or less unbroken. This can only be accomplished by accurate surveys, and
+by a great multiplication of the points of meteorological registry,[36]
+already so numerous; and as, moreover, considerable changes in the
+proportion of forest and of cultivated land, or of dry and wholly or
+partially submerged surface, will often take place within brief periods,
+it is highly desirable that the attention of observers, in whose
+neighborhood the clearing of the soil, or the drainage of lakes and
+swamps, or other great works of rural improvement, are going on or
+meditated, should be especially drawn not only to revolutions in
+atmospheric temperature and precipitation, but to the more easily
+ascertained and perhaps more important local changes produced by these
+operations in the temperature and the hygrometric state of the
+superficial strata of the earth, and in its spontaneous vegetable and
+animal products.
+
+The rapid extension of railroads, which now everywhere keeps pace with,
+and sometimes even precedes, the occupation of new soil for agricultural
+purposes, furnishes great facilities for enlarging our knowledge of the
+topography of the territory they traverse, because their cuttings reveal
+the composition and general structure of surface, and the inclination
+and elevation of their lines constitute known hypsometrical sections,
+which give numerous points of departure for the measurement of higher
+and lower stations, and of course for determining the relief and
+depression of surface, the slope of the beds of watercourses, and many
+other not less important questions.[37]
+
+The geological, hydrographical, and topographical surveys, which almost
+every general and even local government of the civilized world is
+carrying on, are making yet more important contributions to our stock of
+geographical and general physical knowledge, and, within a comparatively
+short space, there will be an accumulation of well established constant
+and historical facts, from which we can safely reason upon all the
+relations of action and reaction between man and external nature.
+
+But we are, even now, breaking up the floor and wainscoting and doors
+and window frames of our dwelling, for fuel to warm our bodies and
+seethe our pottage, and the world cannot afford to wait till the slow
+and sure progress of exact science has taught it a better economy. Many
+practical lessons have been learned by the common observation of
+unschooled men; and the teachings of simple experience, on topics where
+natural philosophy has scarcely yet spoken, are not to be despised.
+
+In these humble pages, which do not in the least aspire to rank among
+scientific expositions of the laws of nature, I shall attempt to give
+the most important practical conclusions suggested by the history of
+man's efforts to replenish the earth and subdue it; and I shall aim to
+support those conclusions by such facts and illustrations only as
+address themselves to the understanding of every intelligent reader, and
+as are to be found recorded in works capable of profitable perusal, or
+at least consultation, by persons who have not enjoyed a special
+scientific training.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND OF ANIMAL
+SPECIES.
+
+MODERN GEOGRAPHY EMBRACES ORGANIC LIFE--TRANSFER OF VEGETABLE LIFE--
+FOREIGN PLANTS GROWN IN THE UNITED STATES--AMERICAN PLANTS GROWS IN
+EUROPE--MODES OF INTRODUCTION OF FOREIGN PLANTS--VEGETABLES, HOW
+AFFECTED BY TRANSFER TO FOREIGN SOILS--EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLES--
+ORIGIN OF DOMESTIC PLANTS--ORGANIC LIFE AS A GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL
+AGENCY--ORIGIN AND TRANSFER OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS--EXTIRPATION OF
+ANIMALS--NUMBERS OF BIRDS IN THE UNITED STATES--BIRDS AS SOWERS AND
+CONSUMERS OF SEEDS, AND AS DESTROYERS OF INSECTS--DIMINUTION AND
+EXTIRPATION OF BIRDS--INTRODUCTION OF BIRDS--UTILITY OF INSECTS AND
+WORMS--INTRODUCTION OF INSECTS--DESTRUCTION OF INSECTS--REPTILES--
+DESTRUCTION OF FISH--INTRODUCTION AND BREEDING OF FISH--EXTIRPATION
+OF AQUATIC ANIMALS--MINUTE ORGANISMS.
+
+
+_Modern Geography embraces Organic Life._
+
+It was a narrow view of geography which confined that science to
+delineation of terrestrial surface and outline, and to description of
+the relative position and magnitude of land and water. In its improved
+form, it embraces not only the globe itself, but the living things which
+vegetate or move upon it, the varied influences they exert upon each
+other, the reciprocal action and reaction between them and the earth
+they inhabit. Even if the end of geographical studies were only to
+obtain a knowledge of the external forms of the mineral and fluid masses
+which constitute the globe, it would still be necessary to take into
+account the element of life; for every plant, every animal, is a
+geographical agency, man a destructive, vegetables, and even wild
+beasts, restorative powers. The rushing waters sweep down earth from the
+uplands; in the first moment of repose, vegetation seeks to re�stablish
+itself on the bared surface, and, by the slow deposit of its decaying
+products, to raise again the soil which the torrent had lowered. So
+important an element of reconstruction is this, that it has been
+seriously questioned whether, upon the whole, vegetation does not
+contribute as much to elevate, as the waters to depress, the level of
+the surface.
+
+Whenever man has transported a plant from its native habitat to a new
+soil, he has introduced a new geographical force to act upon it, and
+this generally at the expense of some indigenous growth which the
+foreign vegetable has supplanted. The new and the old plants are rarely
+the equivalents of each other, and the substitution of an exotic for a
+native tree, shrub, or grass, increases or diminishes the relative
+importance of the vegetable element in the geography of the country to
+which it is removed. Further, man sows that he may reap. The products of
+agricultural industry are not suffered to rot upon the ground, and thus
+raise it by an annual stratum of new mould. They are gathered,
+transported to greater or less distances, and after they have served
+their uses in human economy, they enter, on the final decomposition of
+their elements, into new combinations, and are only in small proportion
+returned to the soil on which they grew. The roots of the grasses, and
+of many other cultivated plants, however, usually remain and decay in
+the earth, and contribute to raise its surface, though certainly not in
+the same degree as the forest.
+
+The vegetables, which have taken the place of trees, unquestionably
+perform many of the same functions. They radiate heat, they condense the
+humidity of the atmosphere, they act upon the chemical constitution of
+the air, their roots penetrate the earth to greater depths than is
+commonly supposed, and form an inextricable labyrinth of filaments which
+bind the soil together and prevent its erosion by water. The
+broad-leaved annuals and perennials, too, shade the ground, and prevent
+the evaporation of moisture from its surface by wind and sun.[38] At a
+certain stage of growth, grass land is probably a more energetic
+radiator and condenser than even the forest, but this powerful action is
+exerted, in its full intensity, for a few days only, while trees
+continue such functions, with unabated vigor, for many months in
+succession. Upon the whole, it seems quite certain, that no cultivated
+ground is as efficient in tempering climatic extremes, or in
+conservation of geographical surface and outline, as is the soil which
+nature herself has planted.
+
+
+_Transfer of Vegetable Life._
+
+It belongs to vegetable and animal geography, which are almost sciences
+of themselves, to point out in detail what man has done to change the
+distribution of plants and of animated life and to revolutionize the
+aspect of organic nature; but some of the more important facts bearing
+on this subject may pertinently be introduced here. Most of the fruit
+trees grown in Europe and the United States are believed, and--if the
+testimony of Pliny and other ancient naturalists is to be depended
+upon--many of them are historically known, to have originated in the
+temperate climates of Asia. The wine grape has been thought to be truly
+indigenous only in the regions bordering on the eastern end of the Black
+Sea, where it now, particularly on the banks of the Rion, the ancient
+Phasis, propagates itself spontaneously, and grows with unexampled
+luxuriance.[39] But, some species of the vine seem native to Europe, and
+many varieties of grape have been too long known as common to every part
+of the United States to admit of the supposition that they were all
+introduced by European colonists.[40]
+
+It is an interesting fact that the commerce--or at least the maritime
+carrying trade--and the agricultural and mechanical industry of the
+world are, in very large proportion, dependent on vegetable and animal
+products little or not at all known to ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish
+civilization. In many instances, the chief supply of these articles
+comes from countries to which they are probably indigenous, and where
+they are still almost exclusively grown; but in many others, the plants
+or animals from which they are derived have been introduced by man into
+the regions now remarkable for their most successful cultivation, and
+that, too, in comparatively recent times, or, in other words, within two
+or three centuries.
+
+
+_Foreign Plants grown in the United States._
+
+According to Bigelow, the United States had, on the first of June, 1860,
+in round numbers, 163,000,000 acres of improved land, the quantity
+having been increased by 50,000,000 acres within the ten years next
+preceding.[41] Not to mention less important crops, this land produced,
+in the year ending on the day last mentioned, in round numbers,
+171,000,000 bushels of wheat, 21,000,000 bushels of rye, 172,000,000
+bushels of oats, 15,000,000 bushels of pease and beans, 16,000,000
+bushels of barley, orchard fruits to the value of $20,000,000, 900,000
+bushels of cloverseed, 900,000 bushels of other grass seed, 104,000 tons
+of hemp, 4,000,000 pounds of flax, and 600,000 pounds of flaxseed. These
+vegetable growths were familiar to ancient European agriculture, but
+they were all introduced into North America after the close of the
+sixteenth century.
+
+Of the fruits of agricultural industry unknown to the Greeks and Romans,
+or too little employed by them to be of any commercial importance, the
+United States produced, in the same year, 187,000,000 pounds of rice,
+18,000,000 bushels of buckwheat, 2,075,000,000 pounds of ginned
+cotton,[42] 302,000,000 pounds of cane sugar, 16,000,000 gallons of
+cane molasses, 7,000,000 gallons of sorghum molasses, all yielded by
+vegetables introduced into that country within two hundred years,
+and--with the exception of buckwheat, the origin of which is uncertain,
+and of cotton--all, directly or indirectly, from the East Indies;
+besides, from indigenous plants unknown to ancient agriculture,
+830,000,000 bushels of Indian corn or maize, 429,000,000 pounds of
+tobacco, 110,000,000 bushels of potatoes, 42,000,000 bushels of sweet
+potatoes, 39,000,000 pounds of maple sugar, and 2,000,000 gallons of
+maple molasses. To all this we are to add 19,000,000 tons of hay,
+produced partly by new, partly by long known, partly by exotic, partly
+by native herbs and grasses, an incalculable quantity of garden
+vegetables, chiefly of European or Asiatic origin, and many minor
+agricultural products.
+
+The weight of this harvest of a year would be not less than 60,000,000
+tons--which is eleven times the tonnage of all the shipping of the
+United States at the close of the year 1861--and, with the exception of
+the maple sugar, the maple molasses, and the products of the Western
+prairie lands and some small Indian clearings, it was all grown upon
+lands wrested from the forest by the European race within little more
+than two hundred years. The wants of Europe have introduced into the
+colonies of tropical America the sugar cane, the coffee plant, the
+orange and the lemon,[43] all of Oriental origin, have immensely
+stimulated the cultivation of the former two in the countries of which
+they are natives, and, of course, promoted agricultural operations which
+must have affected the geography of those regions to an extent
+proportionate to the scale on which they have been pursued.
+
+
+_American Plants grown in Europe._
+
+America has partially repaid her debt to the Eastern continent. Maize
+and the potato are very valuable additions to the field agriculture of
+Europe and the East, and the tomato is no mean gift to the kitchen
+gardens of the Old World, though certainly not an adequate return for
+the multitude of esculent roots and leguminous plants which the European
+colonists carried with them.[44] I wish I could believe, with some, that
+America is not alone responsible for the introduction of the filthy
+weed, tobacco, the use of which is the most vulgar and pernicious habit
+engrafted by the semi-barbarism of modern civilization upon the less
+multifarious sensualism of ancient life;[45] but the alleged occurrence
+of pipe-like objects in Sclavonic, and, it has been said, in Hungarian
+sepulchres, is hardly sufficient evidence to convict those races of
+complicity in this grave offence against the temperance and the
+refinement of modern society.
+
+
+_Modes of Introduction of Foreign Plants._
+
+Besides the vegetables I have mentioned, we know that many plants of
+smaller economical value have been the subjects of international
+exchange in very recent times. Busbequius, Austrian ambassador at
+Constantinople about the middle of the sixteenth century--whose letters
+contain one of the best accounts of Turkish life which have appeared
+down to the present day--brought home from the Ottoman capital the lilac
+and the tulip. The Belgian Clusius about the same time introduced from
+the East the horse chestnut, which has since wandered to America. The
+weeping willows of Europe and the United States are said to have sprung
+from a slip received from Smyrna by the poet Pope, and planted by him in
+an English garden; and the Portuguese declare that the progenitor of all
+the European and American oranges was an Oriental tree transplanted to
+Lisbon, and still living in the last generation.[46] The present
+favorite flowers of the parterres of Europe have been imported from
+America, Japan and other remote Oriental countries, within a century and
+a half, and, in fine, there are few vegetables of any agricultural
+importance, few ornamental trees or decorative plants, which are not now
+common to the three civilized continents.
+
+The statistics of vegetable emigration exhibit numerical results quite
+surprising to those not familiar with the subject. The lonely island of
+St. Helena is described as producing, at the time of its discovery in
+the year 1501, about sixty vegetable species, including some three or
+four known to grow elsewhere also. At the present time its flora numbers
+seven hundred and fifty species. Humboldt and Bonpland found, among the
+unquestionably indigenous plants of tropical America, monocotyledons
+only, all the dicotyledons of those extensive regions having been
+probably introduced after the colonization of the New World by Spain.
+
+The faculty of spontaneous reproduction and perpetuation necessarily
+supposes a greater power of accommodation, within a certain range, than
+we find in most domesticated plants, for it would rarely happen that the
+seed of a wild plant would fall into ground as nearly similar, in
+composition and condition, to that where its parent grew, as the soils
+of different fields artificially prepared for growing a particular
+vegetable are to each other. Accordingly, though every wild species
+affects a habitat of a particular character, it is found that, if
+accidentally or designedly sown elsewhere, it will grow under conditions
+extremely unlike those of its birthplace.[47] Cooper says: "We cannot
+say positively that _any_ plant is _uncultivable_ anywhere until it has
+been tried;" and this seems to be even more true of wild than of
+domesticated vegetation.
+
+The seven hundred new species which have found their way to St. Helena
+within three centuries and a half, were certainly not all, or even in
+the largest proportion, designedly planted there by human art, and if we
+were well acquainted with vegetable emigration, we should probably be
+able to show that man has intentionally transferred fewer plants than he
+has accidentally introduced into countries foreign to them. After the
+wheat, follow the tares that infest it. The weeds that grow among the
+cereal grains, the pests of the kitchen garden, are the same in America
+as in Europe.[48] The overturning of a wagon, or any of the thousand
+accidents which befall the emigrant in his journey across the Western
+plains, may scatter upon the ground the seeds he designed for his
+garden, and the herbs which fill so important a place in the rustic
+materia medica of the Eastern States, spring up along the prairie paths
+but just opened by the caravan of the settler.[49] The hortus siccus of
+a botanist may accidentally sow seeds from the foot of the Himalayas on
+the plains that skirt the Alps; and it is a fact of very familiar
+observation, that exotics, transplanted to foreign climates suited to
+their growth, often escape from the flower garden and naturalize
+themselves among the spontaneous vegetation of the pastures. When the
+cases containing the artistic treasures of Thorvaldsen were opened in
+the court of the museum where they are deposited, the straw and grass
+employed in packing them were scattered upon the ground, and the next
+season there sprang up from the seeds no less than twenty-five species
+of plants belonging to the Roman campagna, some of which were preserved
+and cultivated as a new tribute to the memory of the great Scandinavian
+sculptor, and at least four are said to have spontaneously naturalized
+themselves about Copenhagen.[50] In the campaign of 1814, the Russian
+troops brought, in the stuffing of their saddles and by other accidental
+means, seeds from the banks of the Dnieper to the valley of the Rhine,
+and even introduced the plants of the steppes into the environs of
+Paris. The Turkish armies, in their incursions into Europe, brought
+Eastern vegetables in their train, and left the seeds of Oriental wall
+plants to grow upon the ramparts of Buda and Vienna.[51] The Canada
+thistle, _Erigeron Canadense_, is said to have sprung up in Europe, two
+hundred years ago, from a seed which dropped out of the stuffed skin of
+a bird.[52]
+
+
+_Vegetables, how affected by Transfer to Foreign Soils._
+
+Vegetables, naturalized abroad either by accident or design, sometimes
+exhibit a greatly increased luxuriance of growth. The European cardoon,
+an esculent thistle, has broken out from the gardens of the Spanish
+colonies on the La Plata, acquired a gigantic stature, and propagated
+itself, in impenetrable thickets, over hundreds of leagues of the
+Pampas; and the _Anacharis alsinastrum_, a water plant not much inclined
+to spread in its native American habitat, has found its way into English
+rivers, and extended itself to such a degree as to form a serious
+obstruction to the flow of the current, and even to navigation.
+
+Not only do many wild plants exhibit a remarkable facility of
+accommodation, but their seeds usually possess great tenacity of life,
+and their germinating power resists very severe trials. Hence, while the
+seeds of very many cultivated vegetables lose their vitality in two or
+three years, and can be transported safely to distant countries only
+with great precautions, the weeds that infest those vegetables, though
+not cared for by man, continue to accompany him in his migrations, and
+find a new home on every soil he colonizes. Nature fights in defence of
+her free children, but wars upon them when they have deserted her
+banners and tamely submitted to the dominion of man.[53]
+
+Not only is the wild plant much hardier than the domesticated vegetable,
+but the same law prevails in animated brute and even human life. The
+beasts of the chase are more capable of endurance and privation and more
+tenacious of life, than the domesticated animals which most nearly
+resemble them. The savage fights on, after he has received half a dozen
+mortal wounds, the least of which would have instantly paralyzed the
+strength of his civilized enemy, and, like the wild boar,[54] he has
+been known to press forward along the shaft of the spear which was
+transpiercing his vitals, and to deal a deathblow on the soldier who
+wielded it.
+
+True, domesticated plants can be gradually acclimatized to bear a degree
+of heat or of cold, which, in their wild state, they would not have
+supported; the trained English racer outstrips the swiftest horse of the
+pampas or prairies, perhaps even the less systematically educated
+courser of the Arab; the strength of the European, as tested by the
+dynamometer, is greater than that of the New Zealander. But all these
+are instances of excessive development of particular capacities and
+faculties at the expense of general vital power. Expose untamed and
+domesticated forms of life, together, to an entire set of physical
+conditions equally alien to the former habits of both, so that every
+power of resistance and accommodation shall be called into action, and
+the wild plant or animal will live, while the domesticated will perish.
+
+The saline atmosphere of the sea is specially injurious both to seeds
+and to very many young plants, and it is only recently that the
+transportation of some very important vegetables across the ocean has
+been made practicable, through the invention of Ward's airtight glass
+cases. It is by this means that large numbers of the trees which produce
+the Jesuit's bark have been successfully transplanted from America to
+the British possessions in the East, where it is hoped they will become
+fully naturalized.
+
+
+_Extirpation of Vegetables._
+
+Lamentable as are the evils produced by the too general felling of the
+woods in the Old World, I believe it does not satisfactorily appear that
+any species of native forest tree has yet been extirpated by man on the
+Eastern continent. The roots, stumps, trunks, and foliage found in bogs
+are recognized as belonging to still extant species. Except in some few
+cases where there is historical evidence that foreign material was
+employed, the timber of the oldest European buildings, and even of the
+lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, is evidently the product of trees
+still common in or near the countries where such architectural remains
+are found; nor have the Egyptian catacombs themselves revealed to us the
+former existence of any woods not now familiar to us as the growth of
+still living trees.[55] It is, however, said that the yew tree, _Taxus
+baccata_, formerly very common in England, Germany, and--as we are
+authorized to infer from Theophrastus--in Greece, has almost wholly
+disappeared from the latter country, and seems to be dying out in
+Germany. The wood of the yew surpasses that of any other European tree
+in closeness and fineness of grain, and it is well known for the
+elasticity which of old made it so great a favorite with the English
+archer. It is much in request among wood carvers and turners, and the
+demand for it explains, in part, its increasing scarcity. It is also
+worth remarking that no insect depends upon it for food or shelter, or
+aids in its fructification, no bird feeds upon its berries--the latter a
+circumstance of some importance, because the tree hence wants one means
+of propagation or diffusion common to so many other plants. But it is
+alleged that the reproductive power of the yew is exhausted, and that it
+can no longer be readily propagated by the natural sowing of its seeds,
+or by artificial methods. If further investigation and careful
+experiment should establish this fact, it will go far to show that a
+climatic change, of a character unfavorable to the growth of the yew,
+has really taken place in Germany, though not yet proved by instrumental
+observation, and the most probable cause of such change would be found
+in the diminution of the area covered by the forests.
+
+The industry of man is said to have been so successful in the local
+extirpation of noxious or useless vegetables in China, that, with the
+exception of a few water plants in the rice grounds, it is sometimes
+impossible to find a single weed in an extensive district; and the late
+eminent agriculturist, Mr. Coke, is reported to have offered in vain a
+considerable reward for the detection of a weed in a large wheatfield on
+his estate in England. In these cases, however, there is no reason to
+suppose that diligent husbandry has done more than to eradicate the
+pests of agriculture within a comparatively limited area, and the cockle
+and the darnel will probably remain to plague the slovenly cultivator as
+long as the cereal grains continue to bless him.[56]
+
+
+_Origin of Domestic Plants._
+
+One of the most important, and, at the same time, most difficult
+questions connected with our subject is: how far we are to regard our
+cereal grains, our esculent bulbs and roots, and the multiplied tree
+fruits of our gardens, as artificially modified and improved forms of
+wild, self-propagating vegetation. The narratives of botanical
+travellers have often announced the discovery of the original form and
+habitat of domesticated plants, and scientific journals have described
+the experiments by which the identity of particular wild and cultivated
+vegetables has been thought to be established. It is confidently
+affirmed that maize and the potato--which we must suppose to have been
+first cultivated at a much later period than the breadstuffs and most
+other esculent vegetables of Europe and the East--are found wild and
+self-propagating in Spanish America, though in forms not recognizable by
+the common observer as identical with the familiar corn and tuber of
+modern agriculture. It was lately asserted, upon what seemed very strong
+evidence, that the _�gilops ovata_, a plant growing wild in Southern
+France, had been actually converted into common wheat; but, upon a
+repetition of the experiments, later observers have declared that the
+apparent change was only a case of temporary hybridation or fecundation
+by the pollen of true wheat, and that the grass alleged to be
+transformed into wheat could not be perpetuated as such from its own
+seed.
+
+The very great modifications which cultivated plants are constantly
+undergoing under our eyes, and the numerous varieties and races which
+spring up among them, certainly countenance the doctrine, that every
+domesticated vegetable, however dependent upon human care for growth and
+propagation in its present form, may have been really derived, by a long
+succession of changes, from some wild plant not now much resembling it.
+But it is, in every case, a question of evidence. The only satisfactory
+proof that a given wild plant is identical with a given garden or field
+vegetable, is the test of experiment, the actual growing of the one from
+the seed of the other, or the conversion of the one into the other by
+transplantation and change of conditions. It is hardly contended that
+any of the cereals or other plants important as human aliment, or as
+objects of agricultural industry, exist and propagate themselves
+uncultivated in the same form and with the same properties as when sown
+and reared by human art.[57] In fact, the cases are rare where the
+identity of a wild with a domesticated plant is considered by the best
+authorities as conclusively established, and we are warranted in
+affirming of but few of the latter, as a historically known or
+experimentally proved fact, that they ever did exist, or could exist,
+independently of man.[58]
+
+
+_Organic Life as a Geological and Geographical Agency._
+
+The quantitative value of organic life, as a geological agency, seems to
+be inversely as the volume of the individual organism; for nature
+supplies by numbers what is wanting in the bulk of the plant or animal
+out of whose remains or structures she forms strata covering whole
+provinces, and builds up from the depths of the sea large islands, if
+not continents. There are, it is true, near the mouths of the great
+Siberian rivers which empty themselves into the Polar Sea, drift islands
+composed, in an incredibly large proportion, of the bones and tusks of
+elephants, mastodons, and other huge pachyderms, and many extensive
+caves in various parts of the world are half filled with the skeletons
+of quadrupeds, sometimes lying loose in the earth, sometimes cemented
+together into an osseous breccia by a calcareous deposit or other
+binding material. These remains of large animals, though found in
+comparatively late formations, generally belong to extinct species, and
+their modern congeners or representatives do not exist in sufficient
+numbers to be of sensible importance in geology or in geography by the
+mere mass of their skeletons.[59] But the vegetable products found with
+them, and, in rare cases, in the stomachs of some of them, are those of
+yet extant plants; and besides this evidence, the recent discovery of
+works of human art, deposited in juxtaposition with fossil bones, and
+evidently at the same time and by the same agency which buried these
+latter--not to speak of alleged human bones found in the same
+strata--proves that the animals whose former existence they testify were
+contemporaneous with man, and possibly even extirpated by him.[60] I do
+not propose to enter upon the thorny question, whether the existing
+races of man are genealogically connected with these ancient types of
+humanity, and I advert to these facts only for the sake of the
+suggestion that man, in his earliest known stages of existence, was
+probably a destructive power upon the earth, though perhaps not so
+emphatically as his present representatives.
+
+The larger wild animals are not now numerous enough in any one region to
+form extensive deposits by their remains; but they have, nevertheless, a
+certain geographical importance. If the myriads of large browsing and
+grazing quadrupeds which wander over the plains of Southern Africa--and
+the slaughter of which by thousands is the source of a ferocious
+pleasure and a brutal triumph to professedly civilized hunters--if the
+herds of the American bison, which are numbered by hundreds of
+thousands, do not produce visible changes in the forms of terrestrial
+surface, they have at least an immense influence on the growth and
+distribution of vegetable life, and, of course, indirectly upon all the
+physical conditions of soil and climate between which and vegetation a
+mutual interdependence exists.
+
+The influence of wild quadrupeds upon vegetable life has been little
+studied, and not many facts bearing upon it have been recorded, but, so
+far as it is known, it appears to be conservative rather than
+pernicious.[61] Few if any of them depend for their subsistence on
+vegetable products obtainable only by the destruction of the plant, and
+they seem to confine their consumption almost exclusively to the annual
+harvest of leaf or twig, or at least of parts of the vegetable easily
+reproduced. If there are exceptions to this rule, they are in cases
+where the numbers of the animal are so proportioned to the abundance of
+the vegetable, that there is no danger of the extermination of the plant
+from the voracity of the quadruped, or of the extinction of the
+quadruped from the scarcity of the plant. In diet and natural wants the
+bison resembles the ox, the ibex and the chamois assimilate themselves
+to the goat and the sheep; but while the wild animal does not appear to
+be a destructive agency in the garden of nature, his domestic congeners
+are eminently so. This is partly from the change of habits resulting
+from domestication and association with man, partly from the fact that
+the number of reclaimed animals is not determined by the natural
+relation of demand and spontaneous supply which regulates the
+multiplication of wild creatures, but by the convenience of man, who is,
+in comparatively few things, amenable to the control of the merely
+physical arrangements of nature. When the domesticated animal escapes
+from human jurisdiction, as in the case of the ox, the horse, the goat,
+and perhaps the ass--which, so far as I know, are the only
+well-authenticated instances of the complete emancipation of household
+quadrupeds--he becomes again an unresisting subject of nature, and all
+his economy is governed by the same laws as that of his fellows which
+have never been enslaved by man; but, so long as he obeys a human lord,
+he is an auxiliary in the warfare his master is ever waging against all
+existences except those which he can tame to a willing servitude.
+
+
+_Number of Quadrupeds in the United States._
+
+Civilization is so intimately associated with, if not dependent upon,
+certain inferior forms of animal life, that cultivated man has never
+failed to accompany himself, in all his migrations, with some of these
+humble attendants. The ox, the horse, the sheep, and even the
+comparatively useless dog and cat, as well as several species of
+poultry, are voluntarily transported by every emigrant colony, and they
+soon multiply to numbers very far exceeding those of the wild genera
+most nearly corresponding to them.[62] According to the census of the
+United States for 1860,[63] the total number of horses in all the
+States of the American Union, was, in round numbers, 7,300,000; of asses
+and mules, 1,300,000; of the ox tribe, 29,000,000;[64] of sheep,
+25,000,000; and of swine, 39,000,000. The only North American quadruped
+sufficiently gregarious in habits, and sufficiently multiplied in
+numbers, to form really large herds, is the bison, or, as he is commonly
+called in America, the buffalo; and this animal is confined to the
+prairie region of the Mississippi basin and Northern Mexico. The
+engineers sent out to survey railroad routes to the Pacific estimated
+the number of a single herd of bisons seen within the last ten years on
+the great plains near the Upper Missouri, at not less than 200,000, and
+yet the range occupied by this animal is now very much smaller in area
+than it was when the whites first established themselves on the
+prairies.[65] But it must be remarked that the American buffalo is a
+migratory animal, and that, at the season of his annual journeys, the
+whole stock of a vast extent of pasture ground is collected into a
+single army, which is seen at or very near any one point only for a few
+days during the entire season. Hence there is risk of great error in
+estimating the numbers of the bison in a given district from the
+magnitude of the herds seen at or about the same time at a single place
+of observation; and, upon the whole, it is neither proved nor probable
+that the bison was ever, at any one time, as numerous in North America
+as the domestic bovine species is at present. The elk, the moose, the
+musk ox, the caribou, and the smaller quadrupeds popularly embraced
+under the general name of deer,[66] though sufficient for the wants of a
+sparse savage population, were never numerically very abundant, and the
+carnivora which fed upon them were still less so. It is almost needless
+to add that the Rocky Mountain sheep and goat must always have been very
+rare.
+
+Summing up the whole, then, it is evident that the wild quadrupeds of
+North America, even when most numerous, were few compared with their
+domestic successors, that they required a much less supply of vegetable
+food, and consequently were far less important as geographical elements
+than the many millions of hoofed and horned cattle now fed by civilized
+man on the same continent.
+
+
+_Origin and Transfer of Domestic Quadrupeds._
+
+Of the origin of our domestic animals, we know historically nothing,
+because their domestication belongs to the ages which preceded written
+history; but though they cannot all be specifically identified with now
+extant wild animals, it is presumable that they have been reclaimed from
+an originally wild state. Ancient annalists have preserved to us fewer
+data respecting the introduction of domestic animals into new countries
+than respecting the transplantation of domestic vegetables. Ritter, in
+his learned essay on the camel, has shown that this animal was not
+employed by the Egyptians until a comparatively late period in their
+history; that he was unknown to the Carthaginians until after the
+downfall of their commonwealth; and that his first appearance in Western
+Africa is more recent still. The Bactrian camel was certainly brought
+from Asia Minor to the Northern shores of the Black Sea, by the Goths,
+in the third or fourth century.[67] The Arabian single-humped camel, or
+dromedary, has been carried to the Canary Islands, partially introduced
+into Australia, Greece, Spain, and even Tuscany, experimented upon to
+little purpose in Venezuela, and finally imported by the American
+Government into Texas and New Mexico, where it finds the climate and the
+vegetable products best suited to its wants, and promises to become a
+very useful agent in the promotion of the special civilization for which
+those regions are adapted. America had no domestic quadruped but a
+species of dog, the lama tribe, and, to a certain extent, the bison or
+buffalo.[68] Of course, it owes the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep,
+the goat, and the swine, as does also Australia, to European
+colonization. Modern Europe has, thus far, not accomplished much in the
+way of importation of new animals, though some interesting essays have
+been made. The reindeer was successfully introduced into Iceland about a
+century ago, while similar attempts failed, about the same time, in
+Scotland. The Cashmere or Thibet goat was brought to France a generation
+since, and succeeds well. The same or an allied species and the Asiatic
+buffalo were carried to South Carolina about the year 1850, and the
+former, at least, is thought likely to prove of permanent value in the
+United States. The yak, or Tartary ox, seems to thrive in France, and
+success has attended the recent efforts to introduce the South American
+alpaca into Europe.
+
+
+_Extirpation of Quadrupeds._
+
+Although man never fails greatly to diminish, and is perhaps destined
+ultimately to exterminate, such of the larger wild quadrupeds as he
+cannot profitably domesticate, yet their numbers often fluctuate, and
+even after they seem almost extinct, they sometimes suddenly increase,
+without any intentional steps to promote such a result on his part.
+During the wars which followed the French Revolution, the wolf
+multiplied in many parts of Europe, partly because the hunters were
+withdrawn from the woods to chase a nobler game, and partly because the
+bodies of slain men and horses supplied this voracious quadruped with
+more abundant food. The same animal became again more numerous in Poland
+after the general disarming of the rural population by the Russian
+Government. On the other hand, when the hunters pursue the wolf, the
+graminivorous wild quadrupeds increase, and thus in turn promote the
+multiplication of their great four-footed destroyer by augmenting the
+supply of his nourishment. So long as the fur of the beaver was
+extensively employed as a material for fine hats, it bore a very high
+price, and the chase of this quadruped was so keen that naturalists
+feared its speedy extinction. When a Parisian manufacturer invented the
+silk hat, which soon came into almost universal use, the demand for
+beavers' fur fell off, and this animal--whose habits, as we have seen,
+are an important agency in the formation of bogs and other modifications
+of forest nature--immediately began to increase, reappeared in haunts
+which he had long abandoned, and can no longer be regarded as rare
+enough to be in immediate danger of extirpation. Thus the convenience or
+the caprice of Parisian fashion has unconsciously exercised an influence
+which may sensibly affect the physical geography of a distant continent.
+
+Since the invention of gunpowder, some quadrupeds have completely
+disappeared from many European and Asiatic countries where they were
+formerly numerous. The last wolf was killed in Great Britain two hundred
+years ago, and the bear was extirpated from that island still earlier.
+The British wild ox exists only in a few English and Scottish parks,
+while in Irish bogs, of no great apparent antiquity, are found antlers
+which testify to the former existence of a stag much larger than any
+extant European species. The lion is believed to have inhabited Asia
+Minor and Syria, and probably Greece and Sicily also, long after the
+commencement of the historical period, and he is even said to have been
+not yet extinct in the first-named two of these countries at the time of
+the first Crusades.[69] Two large graminivorous or browsing quadrupeds,
+the ur and the schelk, once common in Germany, are utterly extinct, the
+eland and the auerochs nearly so. The Nibelungen-Lied, which, in the
+oldest form preserved to us, dates from about the year 1,200, though its
+original composition no doubt belongs to an earlier period, thus sings:
+
+  Then slowe the dowghtie Sigfrid a wisent and an elk,
+  He smote four stoute uroxen and a grim and sturdie schelk.[70]
+
+Modern naturalists identify the elk with the eland, the wisent with the
+auerochs. The period when the ur and the schelk became extinct is not
+known. The auerochs survived in Prussia until the middle of the last
+century, but unless it is identical with a similar quadruped said to be
+found on the Caucasus, it now exists only in the Russian imperial forest
+of Bialowitz, where about a thousand are still preserved, and in some
+great menageries, as for example that at Sch�nbrunn, near Vienna, which,
+in 1852, had four specimens. The eland, which is closely allied to the
+American wapiti, if not specifically the same animal, is still kept in
+the royal preserves of Prussia, to the number of four or five hundred
+individuals. The chamois is becoming rare, and the ibex or steinbock,
+once common in all the high Alps, is now believed to be confined to the
+Cogne mountains in Piedmont, between the valleys of the Dora Baltea and
+the Orco.
+
+
+_Number of Birds in the United States._
+
+The tame fowls play a much less conspicuous part in rural life than the
+quadrupeds, and, in their relations to the economy of nature, they are
+of very much less moment than four-footed animals, or than the
+undomesticated birds. The domestic turkey[71] is probably more numerous
+in the territory of the United States than the wild bird of the same
+species ever was, and the grouse cannot, at the period of their greatest
+abundance, have counted as many as we now number of the common hen. The
+dove, however, must fall greatly short of the wild pigeon in multitude,
+and it is hardly probable that the flocks of domestic geese and ducks
+are as numerous as once were those of their wild congeners. The pigeon,
+indeed, seems to have multiplied immensely, for some years after the
+first clearings in the woods, because the settlers warred unsparingly
+upon the hawk, while the crops of grain and other vegetable growths
+increased the supply of food within the reach of the young birds, at the
+age when their power of flight is not yet great enough to enable them
+to seek it over a wide area.[72] The pigeon is not described by the
+earliest white inhabitants of the American States as filling the air
+with such clouds of winged life as astonish naturalists in the
+descriptions of Audubon, and, at the present day, the net and the gun
+have so reduced its abundance, that its appearance in large numbers is
+recorded only at long intervals, and it is never seen in the great
+flocks remembered by many still living observers as formerly very
+common.
+
+
+_Birds as Sowers and Consumers of Seeds, and as Destroyers of Insects._
+
+Wild birds form of themselves a very conspicuous and interesting feature
+in the _staffage_, as painters call it, of the natural landscape, and
+they are important elements in the view we are taking of geography,
+whether we consider their immediate or their incidental influence. Birds
+affect vegetation directly by sowing seeds and by consuming them; they
+affect it indirectly by destroying insects injurious, or, in some cases,
+beneficial to vegetable life. Hence, when we kill a seed-sowing bird, we
+check the dissemination of a plant; when we kill a bird which digests
+the seed it swallows, we promote the increase of a vegetable. Nature
+protects the seeds of wild, much more effectually than those of
+domesticated plants. The cereal grains are completely digested when
+consumed by birds, but the germ of the smaller stone fruits and of very
+many other wild vegetables is uninjured, perhaps even stimulated to more
+vigorous growth, by the natural chemistry of the bird's stomach. The
+power of flight and the restless habits of the bird enable it to
+transport heavy seeds to far greater distances than they could be
+carried by the wind. A swift-winged bird may drop cherry stones a
+thousand miles from the tree they grow on; a hawk, in tearing a pigeon,
+may scatter from its crop the still fresh rice it had swallowed at a
+distance of ten degrees of latitude,[73] and thus the occurrence of
+isolated plants in situations where their presence cannot otherwise well
+be explained, is easily accounted for. There is a large class of seeds
+apparently specially fitted by nature for dissemination by animals. I
+refer to those which attach themselves, by means of hooks, or by viscous
+juices, to the coats of quadrupeds and the feathers of birds, and are
+thus transported wherever their living vehicles may chance to wander.
+Some birds, too, deliberately bury seeds, not indeed with a foresight
+aiming directly at the propagation of the plant, but from apparently
+purposeless secretiveness, or as a mode of preserving food for future
+use.
+
+An unfortunate popular error greatly magnifies the injury done to the
+crops of grain and leguminous vegetables by wild birds. Very many of
+those generally supposed to consume large quantities of the seeds of
+cultivated plants really feed almost exclusively upon insects, and
+frequent the wheatfields, not for the sake of the grain, but for the
+eggs, larv�, and fly of the multiplied tribes of insect life which are
+so destructive to the harvests. This fact has been so well established
+by the examination of the stomachs of great numbers of birds in Europe
+and New England, at different seasons of the year, that it is no longer
+open to doubt, and it appears highly probable that even the species
+which consume more or less grain generally make amends, by destroying
+insects whose ravages would have been still more injurious.[74] On this
+subject, we have much other evidence besides that derived from
+dissection. Direct observation has shown, in many instances, that the
+destruction of wild birds has been followed by a great multiplication of
+noxious insects, and, on the other hand, that these latter have been
+much reduced in numbers by the protection and increase of the birds that
+devour them. Many interesting facts of this nature have been collected
+by professed naturalists, but I shall content myself with a few taken
+from familiar and generally accessible sources. The following extract is
+from Michelet, _L'Oiseau_ pp. 169, 170:
+
+"The _stingy_ farmer--an epithet justly and feelingly bestowed by
+Virgil. Avaricious, blind, indeed, who proscribes the birds--those
+destroyers of insects, those defenders of his harvests. Not a grain for
+the creature which, during the rains of winter, hunts the future insect,
+finds out the nests of the larv�, examines, turns over every leaf, and
+destroys, every day, thousands of incipient caterpillars. But sacks of
+corn for the mature insect, whole fields for the grasshoppers, which the
+bird would have made war upon. With eyes fixed upon his furrow, upon the
+present moment only, without seeing and without foreseeing, blind to the
+great harmony which is never broken with impunity, he has everywhere
+demanded or approved laws for the extermination of that necessary ally
+of his toil--the insectivorous bird. And the insect has well avenged the
+bird. It has become necessary to revoke in haste the proscription. In
+the Isle of Bourbon, for instance, a price was set on the head of the
+martin; it disappeared, and the grasshoppers took possession of the
+island, devouring, withering, scorching with a biting drought all that
+they did not consume. In North America it has been the same with the
+starling, the protector of Indian corn.[75] Even the sparrow, which
+really does attack grain, but which protects it still more, the
+pilferer, the outlaw, loaded with abuse and smitten with curses--it has
+been found in Hungary that they were likely to perish without him, that
+he alone could sustain the mighty war against the beetles and the
+thousand winged enemies that swarm in the lowlands; they have revoked
+the decree of banishment, recalled in haste this valiant militia, which,
+though deficient in discipline, is nevertheless the salvation of the
+country.[76]
+
+"Not long since, in the neighborhood of Rouen and in the valley of
+Monville, the blackbird was for some time proscribed. The beetles
+profited well by this proscription; their larv�, infinitely multiplied,
+carried on their subterranean labors with such success, that a meadow
+was shown me, the surface of which was completely dried up, every
+herbaceous root was consumed, and the whole grassy mantle, easily
+loosened, might have been rolled up and carried away like a carpet."
+
+
+_Diminution and Extirpation of Birds._
+
+The general hostility of the European populace to the smaller birds is,
+in part, the remote effect of the reaction created by the game laws.
+When the restrictions imposed upon the chase by those laws were suddenly
+removed in France, the whole people at once commenced a destructive
+campaign against every species of wild animal. Arthur Young, writing in
+Provence, on the 30th of August, 1789, soon after the National Assembly
+had declared the chase free, thus complains of the annoyance he
+experienced from the use made by the peasantry of their newly won
+liberty. "One would think that every rusty firelock in all Provence was
+at work in the indiscriminate destruction of all the birds. The wadding
+buzzed by my ears, or fell into my carriage, five or six times in the
+course of the day." * * "The declaration of the Assembly that every man
+is free to hunt on his own land * * has filled all France with an
+intolerable cloud of sportsmen. * * The declaration speaks of
+compensations and indemnities [to the _seigneurs_], but the ungovernable
+populace takes advantage of the abolition of the game laws and laughs at
+the obligation imposed by the decree."
+
+The French Revolution removed similar restrictions, with similar
+results, in other countries. The habits then formed have become
+hereditary on the Continent, and though game laws still exist in
+England, there is little doubt that the blind prejudices of the ignorant
+and half-educated classes in that country against birds are, in some
+degree, at least, due to a legislation, which, by restricting the chase
+of all game worth killing, drives the unprivileged sportsman to
+indemnify himself by slaughtering all wild life which is not reserved
+for the amusement of his betters. Hence the lord of the manor buys his
+partridges and his hares by sacrificing the bread of his tenants, and so
+long as the farmers of Crawley are forbidden to follow higher game, they
+will suicidally revenge themselves by destroying the sparrows which
+protect their wheatfields.
+
+On the Continent, and especially in Italy, the comparative scarcity and
+dearness of animal food combine with the feeling I have just mentioned
+to stimulate still further the destructive passions of the fowler. In
+the Tuscan province of Grosseto, containing less than 2,000 square
+miles, nearly 300,000 thrushes and other small birds are annually
+brought to market.[77]
+
+Birds are less hardy in constitution, they possess less facility of
+accommodation,[78] and they are more severely affected by climatic
+excess than quadrupeds. Besides, they generally want the means of
+shelter against the inclemency of the weather and against pursuit by
+their enemies, which holes and dens afford to burrowing animals and to
+some larger beasts of prey. The egg is exposed to many dangers before
+hatching, and the young bird is especially tender, defenceless, and
+helpless. Every cold rain, every violent wind, every hailstorm during
+the breeding season, destroys hundreds of nestlings, and the parent
+often perishes with her progeny while brooding over it in the vain
+effort to protect it.[79] The great proportional numbers of birds, their
+migratory habits, and the ease with which they may escape most dangers
+that beset them, would seem to secure them from extirpation, and even
+from very great numerical reduction. But experience shows that when not
+protected by law, by popular favor or superstition, or by other special
+circumstances, they yield very readily to the hostile influences of
+civilization, and, though the first operations of the settler are
+favorable to the increase of many species, the great extension of rural
+and of mechanical industry is, in a variety of ways, destructive even to
+tribes not directly warred upon by man.[80]
+
+Nature sets bounds to the disproportionate increase of birds, while at
+the same time, by the multitude of their resources, she secures them
+from extinction through her own spontaneous agencies. Man both preys
+upon them and wantonly destroys them. The delicious flavor of game
+birds, and the skill implied in the various arts of the sportsman who
+devotes himself to fowling, make them favorite objects of the chase,
+while the beauty of their plumage, as a military and feminine
+decoration, threatens to involve the sacrifice of the last survivor of
+many once numerous species. Thus far, but few birds described by ancient
+or modern naturalists are known to have become absolutely extinct,
+though there are some cases in which they are ascertained to have
+utterly disappeared from the face of the earth in very recent times. The
+most familiar instances are those of the dodo, a large bird peculiar to
+the Mauritius or Isle of France, exterminated about the year 1690, and
+now known only by two or three fragments of skeletons, and the solitary,
+which inhabited the islands of Bourbon and Rodriguez, but has not been
+seen for more than a century. A parrot and some other birds of the
+Norfolk Island group are said to have lately become extinct. The
+wingless auk, _Alca impennis_, a bird remarkable for its excessive
+fatness, was very abundant two or three hundred years ago in the Faroe
+Islands, and on the whole Scandinavian seaboard. The early voyagers
+found either the same or a closely allied species, in immense numbers,
+on all the coasts and islands of Newfoundland. The value of its flesh
+and its oil made it one of the most important resources of the
+inhabitants of those sterile regions, and it was naturally an object of
+keen pursuit. It is supposed to be now completely extinct, and few
+museums can show even its skeleton.
+
+There seems to be strong reason to believe that our boasted modern
+civilization is guiltless of one or two sins of extermination which have
+been committed in recent ages. New Zealand formerly possessed three
+species of dinornis, one of which, called _moa_ by the islanders, was
+much larger than the ostrich. The condition in which the bones of these
+birds have been found and the traditions of the natives concur to prove
+that, though the aborigines had probably extirpated them before the
+discovery of New Zealand by the whites, they still existed at a
+comparatively late period. The same remarks apply to a winged giant the
+eggs of which have been brought from Madagascar. This bird must have
+much exceeded the dimensions of the moa, at least so far as we can judge
+from the egg, which is eight times as large as the average size of the
+ostrich egg, or about one hundred and fifty times that of the hen.
+
+But though we have no evidence that man has exterminated many species of
+birds, we know that his persecutions have caused their disappearance
+from many localities where they once were common, and greatly diminished
+their numbers in others. The cappercailzie, _Tetrao urogallus_, the
+finest of the grouse family, formerly abundant in Scotland, had become
+extinct in Great Britain, but has been reintroduced from Sweden.[81] The
+ostrich is mentioned by all the old travellers, as common on the
+Isthmus of Suez down to the middle of the seventeenth century. It
+appears to have frequented Syria and even Asia Minor at earlier periods,
+but is now found only in the seclusion of remoter deserts.
+
+The modern increased facilities of transportation have brought distant
+markets within reach of the professional hunter, and thereby given a new
+impulse to his destructive propensities. Not only do all Great Britain
+and Ireland contribute to the supply of game for the British capital,
+but the canvas-back duck of the Potomac, and even the prairie hen from
+the basin of the Mississippi, may be found at the stalls of the London
+poulterer. Kohl[82] informs us that on the coasts of the North Sea,
+twenty thousand wild ducks are usually taken in the course of the season
+in a single decoy, and sent to the large maritime towns for sale. The
+statistics of the great European cities show a prodigious consumption of
+game birds, but the official returns fall far below the truth, because
+they do not include the rural districts, and because neither the poacher
+nor his customers report the number of his victims. Reproduction, in
+cultivated countries, cannot keep pace with this excessive destruction,
+and there is no doubt that all the wild birds which are chased for their
+flesh or their plumage are diminishing with a rapidity which justifies
+the fear that the last of them will soon follow the dodo and the
+wingless auk.
+
+Fortunately the larger birds which are pursued for their flesh or for
+their feathers, and those the eggs of which are used as food, are, so
+far as we know the functions appointed to them by nature, not otherwise
+specially useful to man, and, therefore, their wholesale destruction is
+an economical evil only in the same sense in which all waste of
+productive capital is an evil. If it were possible to confine the
+consumption of game fowl to a number equal to the annual increase, the
+world would be a gainer, but not to the same extent as it would be by
+checking the wanton sacrifice of millions of the smaller birds, which
+are of no real value as food, but which, as we have seen, render a most
+important service by battling, in our behalf, as well as in their own,
+against the countless legions of humming and of creeping things, with
+which the prolific powers of insect life would otherwise cover the
+earth.
+
+
+_Introduction of Birds._
+
+Man has undesignedly introduced into new districts perhaps fewer species
+of birds than of quadrupeds; but the distribution of birds is very much
+influenced by the character of his industry, and the transplantation of
+every object of agricultural production is, at a longer or shorter
+interval, followed by that of the birds which feed upon its seeds, or
+more frequently upon the insects it harbors. The vulture, the crow, and
+other winged scavengers, follow the march of armies as regularly as the
+wolf. Birds accompany ships on long voyages, for the sake of the offal
+which is thrown overboard, and, in such cases, it might often happen
+that they would breed and become naturalized in countries where they had
+been unknown before.[83] There is a familiar story of an English bird
+which built its nest in an unused block in the rigging of a ship, and
+made one or two short voyages with the vessel while hatching its eggs.
+Had the young become fledged while lying in a foreign harbor, they would
+of course have claimed the rights of citizenship in the country where
+they first took to the wing.[84]
+
+Some enthusiastic entomologist will, perhaps, by and by discover that
+insects and worms are as essential as the larger organisms to the proper
+working of the great terraqueous machine, and we shall have as eloquent
+pleas in defence of the mosquito, and perhaps even of the tzetze fly, as
+Toussenel and Michelet have framed in behalf of the bird.[85] The
+silkworm and the bee need no apologist; a gallnut produced by the
+puncture of an insect on a Syrian oak is a necessary ingredient in the
+ink I am writing with, and from my windows I recognize the grain of the
+kermes and the cochineal in the gay habiliments of the holiday groups
+beneath them. But agriculture, too, is indebted to the insect and the
+worm. The ancients, according to Pliny, were accustomed to hang
+branches of the wild fig upon the domestic tree, in order that the
+insects which frequented the former might hasten the ripening of the
+cultivated fig by their punctures--or, as others suppose, might fructify
+it by transporting to it the pollen of the wild fruit--and this process,
+called caprification, is not yet entirely obsolete. The earthworms long
+ago made good their title to the respect and gratitude of the farmer as
+well as of the angler. The utility of the earthworms has been pointed
+out in many scientific as well as in many agricultural treatises. The
+following extract, cut from a newspaper, will answer my present purpose:
+
+"Mr. Josiah Parkes, the consulting engineer of the Royal Agricultural
+Society of England, says that worms are great assistants to the drainer,
+and valuable aids to the farmer in keeping up the fertility of the soil.
+He says they love moist, but not wet soils; they will bore down to, but
+not into water; they multiply rapidly on land after drainage, and prefer
+a deeply dried soil. On examining with Mr. Thomas Hammond, of Penhurst,
+Kent, part of a field which he had deeply drained, after long-previous
+shallow drainage, he found that the worms had greatly increased in
+number, and that their bores descended quite to the level of the pipes.
+Many worm bores were large enough to receive the little finger. Mr.
+Henry Handley had informed him of a piece of land near the sea in
+Lincolnshire, over which the sea had broken and killed all the
+worms--the field remained sterile until the worms again inhabited it. He
+also showed him a piece of pasture land near to his house, in which
+worms were in such numbers that he thought their casts interfered too
+much with its produce, which induced him to have it rolled at night in
+order to destroy the worms. The result was, that the fertility of the
+field greatly declined, nor was it restored until they had recruited
+their numbers, which was aided by collecting and transporting multitudes
+of worms from the fields.
+
+"The great depth into which worms will bore, and from which they push up
+fine fertile soil, and cast it on the surface, has been admirably traced
+by Mr. C. Darwin, of Down, Kent, who has shown that in a few years they
+have actually elevated the surface of fields by a large layer of rich
+mould, several inches thick--thus affording nourishment to the roots of
+grasses, and increasing the productiveness of the soil."
+
+It should be added that the writer quoted, and others who have discussed
+the subject, have overlooked one very important element in the
+fertilization produced by earthworms. I refer to the enrichment of the
+soil by their excreta during life, and by the decomposition of their
+remains when they die. The manure thus furnished is as valuable as the
+like amount of similar animal products derived from higher organisms,
+and when we consider the prodigious numbers of these worms found on a
+single square yard of some soils, we may easily see that they furnish no
+insignificant contribution to the nutritive material required for the
+growth of plants.[86]
+
+The perforations of the earthworm mechanically affect the texture of the
+soil and its permeability by water, and they therefore have a certain
+influence on the form and character of surface. But the geographical
+importance of insects proper, as well as of worms, depends principally
+on their connection with vegetable life as agents of its fecundation,
+and of its destruction.[87] I am acquainted with no single fact so
+strikingly illustrative of this importance, as the following statement
+which I take from a notice of Darwin's volume, On Various Contrivances
+by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects, in the
+_Saturday Review_, of October 18, 1862: "The net result is, that some
+six thousand species of orchids are absolutely dependent upon the agency
+of insects for their fertilization. That is to say, were those plants
+unvisited by insects, they would all rapidly disappear." What is true of
+the orchids is more or less true of many other vegetable families. We do
+not know the limits of this agency, and many of the insects habitually
+regarded as unqualified pests, may directly or indirectly perform
+functions as important to the most valuable plants as the services
+rendered by certain tribes to the orchids. I say directly or indirectly,
+because, besides the other arrangements of nature for checking the undue
+multiplication of particular species, she has established a police among
+insects themselves, by which some of them keep down or promote the
+increase of others; for there are insects, as well as birds and beasts,
+of prey. The existence of an insect which fertilizes a useful vegetable
+may depend on that of another, which constitutes his food in some stage
+of his life, and this other again may be as injurious to some plant as
+his destroyer is beneficial to another. The equation of animal and
+vegetable life is too complicated a problem for human intelligence to
+solve, and we can never know how wide a circle of disturbance we produce
+in the harmonies of nature when we throw the smallest pebble into the
+ocean of organic life.
+
+This much, however, we seem authorized to conclude: as often as we
+destroy the balance by deranging the original proportions between
+different orders of spontaneous life, the law of self-preservation
+requires us to restore the equilibrium, by either directly returning the
+weight abstracted from one scale, or removing a corresponding quantity
+from the other. In other words, destruction must be either repaired by
+reproduction, or compensated by new destruction in an opposite quarter.
+
+The parlor aquarium has taught even those to whom it is but an amusing
+toy, that the balance of animal and vegetable life must be preserved,
+and that the excess of either is fatal to the other, in the artificial
+tank as well as in natural waters. A few years ago, the water of the
+Cochituate aqueduct at Boston became so offensive in smell and taste as
+to be quite unfit for use. Scientific investigation found the cause in
+the too scrupulous care with which aquatic vegetation had been excluded
+from the reservoir, and the consequent death and decay of the animalcul�
+which could not be shut out, nor live in the water without the vegetable
+element.[88]
+
+
+_Introduction of Insects._
+
+The general tendency of man's encroachments upon spontaneous nature has
+been to increase insect life at the expense of vegetation and of the
+smaller quadrupeds and birds. Doubtless there are insects in all woods,
+but in temperate climates they are comparatively few and harmless, and
+the most numerous tribes which breed in the forest, or rather in its
+waters, and indeed in all solitudes, are those which little injure
+vegetation, such as mosquitoes, gnats, and the like. With the cultivated
+plants of man come the myriad tribes which feed or breed upon them, and
+agriculture not only introduces new species, but so multiplies the
+number of individuals as to defy calculation. Newly introduced
+vegetables frequently escape for years the insect plagues which had
+infested them in their native habitat; but the importation of other
+varieties of the plant, the exchange of seed, or some mere accident, is
+sure in the long run to carry the egg, the larva, or the chrysalis to
+the most distant shores where the plant assigned to it by nature as its
+possession has preceded it. For many years after the colonization of the
+United States, few or none of the insects which attack wheat in its
+different stages of growth, were known in America. During the
+Revolutionary war, the Hessian fly, _Cecidomyia destructor_, made its
+appearance, and it was so called because it was first observed in the
+year when the Hessian troops were brought over, and was popularly
+supposed to have been accidentally imported by those unwelcome
+strangers. Other destroyers of cereal grains have since found their way
+across the Atlantic, and a noxious European aphis has first attacked the
+American wheatfields within the last four or five years. Unhappily, in
+these cases of migration, the natural corrective of excessive
+multiplication, the parasitic or voracious enemy of the noxious insect,
+does not always accompany the wanderings of its prey, and the bane long
+precedes the antidote. Hence, in the United States, the ravages of
+imported insects injurious to cultivated crops, not being checked by the
+counteracting influences which nature had provided to limit their
+devastations in the Old World, are much more destructive than in Europe.
+It is not known that the wheat midge is preyed upon in America by any
+other insect, and in seasons favorable to it, it multiplies to a degree
+which would prove almost fatal to the entire harvest, were it not that,
+in the great territorial extent of the United States, there is room for
+such differences of soil and climate as, in a given year, to present in
+one State all the conditions favorable to the increase of a particular
+insect, while in another, the natural influences are hostile to it. The
+only apparent remedy for this evil is, to balance the disproportionate
+development of noxious foreign species by bringing from their native
+country the tribes which prey upon them. This, it seems, has been
+attempted. The United States' Census Report for 1860, p. 82, states that
+the New York Agricultural Society "has introduced into this country from
+abroad certain parasites which Providence has created to counteract the
+destructive powers of some of these depredators."
+
+This is, however, not the only purpose for which man has designedly
+introduced foreign forms of insect life. The eggs of the silkworm are
+known to have been brought from the farther East to Europe in the sixth
+century, and new silk spinners which feed on the castor oil bean and the
+ailanthus, have recently been reared in France and in South America with
+promising success. The cochineal, long regularly bred in aboriginal
+America, has been transplanted to Spain, and both the kermes insect and
+the cantharides have been transferred to other climates than their own.
+The honey bee must be ranked next to the silkworm in economical
+importance.[89] This useful creature was carried to the United States
+by European colonists, in the latter part of the seventeenth century; it
+did not cross the Mississippi till the close of the eighteenth, and it
+is only within the last five or six years that it has been transported
+to California, where it was previously unknown. The Italian stingless
+bee has very lately been introduced into the United States.
+
+The insects and worms intentionally transplanted by man bear but a small
+proportion to those accidentally introduced by him. Plants and animals
+often carry their parasites with them, and the traffic of commercial
+countries, which exchange their products with every zone and every stage
+of social existence, cannot fail to transfer in both directions the
+minute organisms that are, in one way or another, associated with almost
+every object important to the material interests of man.[90]
+
+The tenacity of life possessed by many insects, their prodigious
+fecundity, the length of time they often remain in the different phases
+of their existence,[91] the security of the retreats into which their
+small dimensions enable them to retire, are all circumstances very
+favorable not only to the perpetuity of their species, but to their
+transportation to distant climates and their multiplication in their new
+homes. The teredo, so destructive to shipping, has been carried by the
+vessels whose wooden walls it mines to almost every part of the globe.
+The termite, or white ant, is said to have been brought to Rochefort by
+the commerce of that port a hundred years ago.[92] This creature is more
+injurious to wooden structures and implements than any other known
+insect. It eats out almost the entire substance of the wood, leaving
+only thin partitions between the galleries it excavates in it; but as it
+never gnaws through the surface to the air, a stick of timber may be
+almost wholly consumed without showing any external sign of the damage
+it has sustained. The termite is found also in other parts of France,
+and particularly at Rochelle, where, thus far, its ravages are confined
+to a single quarter of the city. A borer, of similar habits, is not
+uncommon in Italy, and you may see in that country, handsome chairs and
+other furniture which have been reduced by this insect to a framework of
+powder of post, covered, and apparently held together, by nothing but
+the varnish.
+
+The carnivorous, and often the herbivorous insects render an important
+service to man by consuming dead and decaying animal and vegetable
+matter, the decomposition of which would otherwise fill the air with
+effluvia noxious to health. Some of them, the grave-digger beetle, for
+instance, bury the small animals in which they lay their eggs, and
+thereby prevent the escape of the gases disengaged by putrefaction. The
+prodigious rapidity of development in insect life, the great numbers of
+the individuals in many species, and the voracity of most of them while
+in the larva state, justify the appellation of nature's scavengers which
+has been bestowed upon them, and there is very little doubt that, in
+warm countries, they consume a much larger quantity of putrescent
+organic material than the quadrupeds and the birds which feed upon such
+aliment.
+
+
+_Destruction of Insects._
+
+It is well known to naturalists, but less familiarly to common
+observers, that the aquatic larv� of some insects constitute, at certain
+seasons, a large part of the food of fresh-water fish, while other
+larv�, in their turn, prey upon the spawn and even the young of their
+persecutors.[93] The larv� of the mosquito and the gnat are the favorite
+food of the trout in the wooded regions where those insects abound.[94]
+Earlier in the year the trout feeds on the larv� of the May fly, which
+is itself very destructive to the spawn of the salmon, and hence, by a
+sort of house-that-Jack-built, the destruction of the mosquito, that
+feeds the trout that preys on the May fly that destroys the eggs that
+hatch the salmon that pampers the epicure, may occasion a scarcity of
+this latter fish in waters where he would otherwise be abundant. Thus
+all nature is linked together by invisible bonds, and every organic
+creature, however low, however feeble, however dependent, is necessary
+to the well-being of some other among the myriad forms of life with
+which the Creator has peopled the earth.
+
+I have said that man has promoted the increase of the insect and the
+worm, by destroying the bird and the fish which feed upon them. Many
+insects, in the four different stages of their growth, inhabit in
+succession the earth, the water, and the air. In each of these elements
+they have their special enemies, and, deep and dark as are the minute
+recesses in which they hide themselves, they are pursued to the
+remotest, obscurest corners by the executioners that nature has
+appointed to punish their delinquencies, and furnished with cunning
+contrivances for ferreting out the offenders and dragging them into the
+light of day. One tribe of birds, the woodpeckers, seems to depend for
+subsistence almost wholly on those insects which breed in dead or dying
+trees, and it is, perhaps, needless to say that the injury these birds
+do the forest is imaginary. They do not cut holes in the trunk of the
+tree to prepare a lodgment for a future colony of boring larv�, but to
+extract the worm which has already begun his mining labors. Hence these
+birds are not found where the forester removes trees as fast as they
+become fit habitations for such insects. In clearing new lands in the
+United States, dead trees, especially of the spike-leaved kinds, too
+much decayed to serve for timber, and which, in that state, are worth
+little for fuel, are often allowed to stand until they fall of
+themselves. Such _stubs_, as they are popularly called, are filled with
+borers, and often deeply cut by the woodpeckers, whose strong bills
+enable them to penetrate to the very heart of the tree and drag out the
+lurking larv�. After a few years, the stubs fall, or, as wood becomes
+valuable, are cut and carried off for firewood, and, at the same time,
+the farmer selects for felling, in the forest he has reserved as a
+permanent source of supply of fuel and timber, the decaying trees which,
+like the dead stems in the fields, serve as a home for both the worm and
+his pursuer. We thus gradually extirpate this tribe of insects, and,
+with them, the species of birds which subsist principally upon them.
+Thus the fine, large, red-headed woodpecker, _Picus erythrocephalus_,
+formerly very common in New England, has almost entirely disappeared
+from those States, since the dead trees are gone, and the apples, his
+favorite vegetable food, are less abundant.
+
+There are even large quadrupeds which feed almost exclusively upon
+insects. The ant bear is strong enough to pull down the clay houses
+built by the species of termites that constitute his ordinary diet, and
+the curious ai-ai, a climbing quadruped of Madagascar--of which I
+believe only a single specimen, secured by Mr. Sandwith, has yet reached
+Europe--is provided with a very slender, hook-nailed finger, long enough
+to reach far into a hole in the trunk of a tree, and extract the worm
+which bored it.
+
+
+_Reptiles._
+
+But perhaps the most formidable foes of the insect, and even of the
+small rodents, are the reptiles. The chameleon approaches the insect
+perched upon the twig of a tree, with an almost imperceptible slowness
+of motion, until, at the distance of a foot, he shoots out his long,
+slimy tongue, and rarely fails to secure the victim. Even the slow toad
+catches the swift and wary housefly in the same manner; and in the warm
+countries of Europe, the numerous lizards contribute very essentially to
+the reduction of the insect population, which they both surprise in the
+winged state upon walls and trees, and consume as egg, worm, and
+chrysalis, in their earlier metamorphoses. The serpents feed much upon
+insects, as well as upon mice, moles, and small reptiles, including also
+other snakes. The disgust and fear with which the serpent is so
+universally regarded expose him to constant persecution by man, and
+perhaps no other animal is so relentlessly sacrificed by him. In
+temperate climates, snakes are consumed by scarcely any beast or bird of
+prey except the stork, and they have few dangerous enemies but man,
+though in the tropics other animals prey upon them.[95] It is doubtful
+whether any species of serpent has been exterminated within the human
+period, and even the dense population of China has not been able
+completely to rid itself of the viper. They have, however, almost
+entirely disappeared from particular localities. The rattlesnake is now
+wholly unknown in many large districts where it was extremely common
+half a century ago, and Palestine has long been, if not absolutely free
+from venomous serpents, at least very nearly so.[96]
+
+
+_Destruction of Fish._
+
+The inhabitants of the waters seem comparatively secure from human
+pursuit or interference by the inaccessibility of their retreats, and by
+our ignorance of their habits--a natural result of the difficulty of
+observing the ways of creatures living in a medium in which we cannot
+exist. Human agency has, nevertheless, both directly and incidentally,
+produced great changes in the population of the sea, the lakes, and the
+rivers, and if the effects of such revolutions in aquatic life are
+apparently of small importance in general geography, they are still not
+wholly inappreciable. The great diminution in the abundance of the
+larger fish employed for food or pursued for products useful in the arts
+is familiar, and when we consider how the vegetable and animal life on
+which they feed must be affected by the reduction of their numbers, it
+is easy to see that their destruction may involve considerable
+modifications in many of the material arrangements of nature. The whale
+does not appear to have been an object of pursuit by the ancients, for
+any purpose, nor do we know when the whale fishery first commenced.[97]
+It was, however, very actively prosecuted in the Middle Ages, and the
+Biscayans seem to have been particularly successful in this as indeed in
+other branches of nautical industry.[98] Five hundred years ago, whales
+abounded in every sea. They long since became so rare in the
+Mediterranean as not to afford encouragement for the fishery as a
+regular occupation; and the great demand for oil and whalebone for
+mechanical and manufacturing purposes, in the present century, has
+stimulated the pursuit of the "hugest of living creatures" to such
+activity, that he has now almost wholly disappeared from many favorite
+fishing grounds, and in others is greatly diminished in numbers.
+
+What special functions, besides his uses to man, are assigned to the
+whale in the economy of nature, we do not know; but some considerations,
+suggested by the character of the food upon which certain species
+subsist, deserve to be specially noticed. None of the great mammals
+grouped under the general name of whale are rapacious. They all live
+upon small organisms, and the most numerous species feed almost wholly
+upon the soft gelatinous mollusks in which the sea abounds in all
+latitudes. We cannot calculate even approximately the number of the
+whales, or the quantity of organic nutriment consumed by an individual,
+and of course we can form no estimate of the total amount of animal
+matter withdrawn by them, in a given period, from the waters of the sea.
+It is certain, however, that it must have been enormous when they were
+more abundant, and that it is still very considerable. A very few years
+since, the United States had more than six hundred whaling ships
+constantly employed in the Pacific, and the product of the American
+whale fishery for the year ending June 1st, 1860, was seven millions and
+a half of dollars.[99] The mere bulk of the whales destroyed in a single
+year by the American and the European vessels engaged in this fishery
+would form an island of no inconsiderable dimensions, and each one of
+those taken must have consumed, in the course of his growth, many times
+his own weight of mollusks. The destruction of the whales must have been
+followed by a proportional increase of the organisms they feed upon, and
+if we had the means of comparing the statistics of these humble forms of
+life, for even so short a period as that between the years 1760 and
+1860, we should find a difference sufficient, possibly, to suggest an
+explanation of some phenomena at present unaccounted for.
+
+For instance, as I have observed in another work,[100] the
+phosphorescence of the sea was unknown to ancient writers, or at least
+scarcely noticed by them, and even Homer--who, blind as tradition makes
+him when he composed his epics, had seen, and marked, in earlier life,
+all that the glorious nature of the Mediterranean and its coasts
+discloses to unscientific observation--nowhere alludes to this most
+beautiful and striking of maritime wonders. In the passage just referred
+to, I have endeavored to explain the silence of ancient writers with
+respect to this as well as other remarkable phenomena on psychological
+grounds; but is it not possible that, in modern times, the animalcul�
+which produce it may have immensely multiplied, from the destruction of
+their natural enemies by man, and hence that the gleam shot forth by
+their decomposition, or by their living processes, is both more frequent
+and more brilliant than in the days of classic antiquity?
+
+Although the whale does not prey upon smaller creatures resembling
+himself in form and habits, yet true fishes are extremely voracious, and
+almost every tribe devours unsparingly the feebler species, and even
+the spawn and young of its own. The enormous destruction of the pike,
+the trout family, and other ravenous fish, as well as of the fishing
+birds, the seal, and the otter, by man, would naturally have occasioned
+a great increase in the weaker and more defenceless fish on which they
+feed, had he not been as hostile to them also as to their persecutors.
+We have little evidence that any fish employed as human food has
+naturally multiplied in modern times, while all the more valuable tribes
+have been immensely reduced in numbers.[101] This reduction must have
+affected the more voracious species not used as food by man, and
+accordingly the shark, and other fish of similar habits, though not
+objects of systematic pursuit, are now comparatively rare in many waters
+where they formerly abounded. The result is, that man has greatly
+reduced the numbers of all larger marine animals, and consequently
+indirectly favored the multiplication of the smaller aquatic organisms
+which entered into their nutriment. This change in the relations of the
+organic and inorganic matter of the sea must have exercised an influence
+on the latter. What that influence has been, we cannot say, still less
+can we predict what it will be hereafter; but its action is not for that
+reason the less certain.
+
+
+_Introduction and Breeding of Fish._
+
+The introduction and successful breeding of fish of foreign species
+appears to have been long practised in China and was not unknown to the
+Greeks and Romans. This art has been revived in modern times, but thus
+far without any important results, economical or physical, though there
+seems to be good reason to believe it may be employed with advantage on
+an extended scale. As in the case of plants, man has sometimes
+undesignedly introduced new species of aquatic animals into countries
+distant from their birthplace. The accidental escape of the Chinese
+goldfish from ponds where they were bred as a garden ornament, has
+peopled some European, and it is said American streams with this
+species. Canals of navigation and irrigation interchange the fish of
+lakes and rivers widely separated by natural barriers, as well as the
+plants which drop their seeds into the waters. The Erie Canal, as
+measured by its own channel, has a length of about three hundred and
+sixty miles, and it has ascending and descending locks in both
+directions. By this route, the fresh-water fish of the Hudson and the
+Upper Lakes, and some of the indigenous vegetables of these respective
+basins, have intermixed, and the fauna and flora of the two regions have
+now more species common to both than before the canal was opened. Some
+accidental attraction not unfrequently induces fish to follow a vessel
+for days in succession, and they may thus be enticed into zones very
+distant from their native habitat. Several years ago, I was told at
+Constantinople, upon good authority, that a couple of fish, of a species
+wholly unknown to the natives, had just been taken in the Bosphorus.
+They were alleged to have followed an English ship from the Thames, and
+to have been frequently observed by the crew during the passage, but I
+was unable to learn their specific character.
+
+Many of the fish which pass the greater part of the year in salt water
+spawn in fresh, and some fresh-water species, the common brook trout of
+New England for instance, which, under ordinary circumstances, never
+visit the sea, will, if transferred to brooks emptying directly into the
+ocean, go down into the salt water after spawning time, and return again
+the next season. Sea fish, the smelt among others, are said to have been
+naturalized in fresh water, and some naturalists have argued from the
+character of the fish of Lake Baikal, and especially from the existence
+of the seal in that locality, that all its inhabitants were originally
+marine species, and have changed their habits with the gradual
+conversion of the saline waters of the lake--once, as is assumed, a
+maritime bay--into fresh.[102] The presence of the seal is hardly
+conclusive on this point, for it is sometimes seen in Lake Champlain at
+the distance of some hundreds of miles from even brackish water. One of
+these animals was killed on the ice in that lake in February, 1810,
+another in February, 1846,[103] and remains of the seal have been found
+at other times in the same waters.
+
+The remains of the higher orders of aquatic animals are generally so
+perishable that, even where most abundant, they do not appear to be now
+forming permanent deposits of any considerable magnitude; but it is
+quite otherwise with shell fish, and, as we shall see hereafter, with
+many of the minute limeworkers of the sea. There are, on the southern
+coast of the United States, beds of shells so extensive that they were
+formerly supposed to have been naturally accumulated, and were appealed
+to as proofs of an elevation of the coast by geological causes; but they
+are now ascertained to have been derived from oysters, consumed in the
+course of long ages by the inhabitants of Indian towns. The planting of
+a bed of oysters in a new locality might, very probably, lead, in time,
+to the formation of a bank, which, in connection with other deposits,
+might perceptibly affect the line of a coast, or, by changing the course
+of marine currents, or the outlet of a river, produce geographical
+changes of no small importance. The transplantation of oysters to
+artificial ponds has long been common, and it appears to have recently
+succeeded well on a large scale in the open sea on the French coast. A
+great extension of this fishery is hoped for, and it is now proposed to
+introduce upon the same coast the American soft clam, which is so
+abundant in the tide-washed beach sands of Long Island Sound as to form
+an important article in the diet of the neighboring population.
+
+The intentional naturalization of foreign fish, as I have said, has not
+thus far yielded important fruits; but though this particular branch of
+what is called, not very happily, _pisciculture_, has not yet
+established its claims to the attention of the physical geographer or
+the political economist, the artificial breeding of domestic fish has
+already produced very valuable results, and is apparently destined to
+occupy an extremely conspicuous place in the history of man's efforts to
+compensate his prodigal waste of the gifts of nature. The restoration of
+the primitive abundance of salt and fresh water fish, is one of the
+greatest material benefits that, with our present physical resources,
+governments can hope to confer upon their subjects. The rivers, lakes,
+and seacoasts once restocked, and protected by law from exhaustion by
+taking fish at improper seasons, by destructive methods, and in
+extravagant quantities, would continue indefinitely to furnish a very
+large supply of most healthful food, which, unlike all domestic and
+agricultural products, would spontaneously renew itself and cost nothing
+but the taking. There are many sterile or wornout soils in Europe so
+situated that they might, at no very formidable cost, be converted into
+permanent lakes, which would serve not only as reservoirs to retain the
+water of winter rains and snow, and give it out in the dry season for
+irrigation, but as breeding ponds for fish, and would thus, without
+further cost, yield a larger supply of human food than can at present be
+obtained from them even at a great expenditure of capital and labor in
+agricultural operations. The additions which might be made to the
+nutriment of the civilized world by a judicious administration of the
+resources of the waters, would allow some restriction of the amount of
+soil at present employed for agricultural purposes, and a corresponding
+extension of the area of the forest, and would thus facilitate a return
+to primitive geographical arrangements which it is important partially
+to restore.
+
+
+_Extirpation of Aquatic Animals._
+
+It does not seem probable that man, with all his rapacity and all his
+enginery, will succeed in totally extirpating any salt-water fish, but
+he has already exterminated at least one marine warm-blooded
+animal--Steller's sea cow--and the walrus, the sea lion, and other large
+amphibia, as well as the principal fishing quadrupeds, are in imminent
+danger of extinction. Steller's sea cow, _Rhytina Stelleri_, was first
+seen by Europeans in the year 1741, on Bering's Island. It was a huge
+amphibious mammal, weighing not less than eight thousand pounds, and
+appears to have been confined exclusively to the islands and coasts in
+the neighborhood of Bering's Strait. Its flesh was very palatable, and
+the localities it frequented were easily accessible from the Russian
+establishments in Kamtschatka. As soon as its existence and character,
+and the abundance of fur animals in the same waters, were made known to
+the occupants of those posts by the return of the survivors of Bering's
+expedition, so active a chase was commenced against the amphibia of that
+region, that, in the course of twenty-seven years, the sea cow,
+described by Steller as extremely numerous in 1741, is believed to have
+been completely extirpated, not a single individual having been seen
+since the year 1768. The various tribes of seals in the Northern and
+Southern Pacific, the walrus and the sea otter, are already so reduced
+in numbers that they seem destined soon to follow the sea cow, unless
+protected by legislation stringent enough, and a police energetic
+enough, to repress the ardent cupidity of their pursuers.
+
+The seals, the otter tribe, and many other amphibia which feed almost
+exclusively upon fish, are extremely voracious, and of course their
+destruction or numerical reduction must have favored the multiplication
+of the species of fish principally preyed upon by them. I have been
+assured by the keeper of several tamed seals that, if supplied at
+frequent intervals, each seal would devour not less than fourteen pounds
+of fish, or about a quarter of his own weight, in a day.[104] A very
+intelligent and observing hunter, who has passed a great part of his
+life in the forest, after carefully watching the habits of the
+fresh-water otter of the Northern American States, estimates their
+consumption of fish at about four pounds per day.
+
+Man has promoted the multiplication of fish by making war on their brute
+enemies, but he has by no means thereby compensated his own greater
+destructiveness.[105] The bird and beast of prey, whether on land or in
+the water, hunt only as long as they feel the stimulus of hunger, their
+ravages are limited by the demands of present appetite, and they do not
+wastefully destroy what they cannot consume. Man, on the contrary,
+angles to-day that he may dine to-morrow; he takes and dries millions of
+fish on the banks of Newfoundland, that the fervent Catholic of the
+shores of the Mediterranean may have wherewithal to satisfy the cravings
+of the stomach during next year's Lent, without imperilling his soul by
+violating the discipline of the papal church; and all the arrangements
+of his fisheries are so organized as to involve the destruction of many
+more fish than are secured for human use, and the loss of a large
+proportion of the annual harvest of the sea in the process of curing, or
+in transportation to the places of its consumption.[106]
+
+Fish are more affected than quadrupeds by slight and even imperceptible
+differences in their breeding places and feeding grounds. Every river,
+every brook, every lake stamps a special character upon its salmon, its
+shad, and its trout, which is at once recognized by those who deal in or
+consume them. No skill can give the fish fattened by food selected and
+prepared by man the flavor of those which are nourished at the table of
+nature, and the trout of the artificial ponds in Germany and Switzerland
+are so inferior to the brook fish of the same species and climate, that
+it is hard to believe them identical. The superior sapidity of the
+American trout to the European species, which is familiar to every one
+acquainted with both continents, is probably due less to specific
+difference than to the fact that, even in the parts of the New World
+which have been longest cultivated, wild nature is not yet tamed down to
+the character it has assumed in the Old, and which it will acquire in
+America also when her civilization shall be as ancient as is now that of
+Europe.
+
+Man has hitherto hardly anywhere produced such climatic or other changes
+as would suffice of themselves totally to banish the wild inhabitants of
+the dry land, and the disappearance of the native birds and quadrupeds
+from particular localities is to be ascribed quite as much to his direct
+persecutions as to the want of forest shelter, of appropriate food, or
+of other conditions indispensable to their existence. But almost all the
+processes of agriculture, and of mechanical and chemical industry, are
+fatally destructive to aquatic animals within reach of their influence.
+When, in consequence of clearing the woods, the changes already
+described as thereby produced in the beds and currents of rivers, are in
+progress, the spawning grounds of fish are exposed from year to year to
+a succession of mechanical disturbances; the temperature of the water is
+higher in summer, colder in winter, than when it was shaded and
+protected by wood; the smaller organisms, which formed the sustenance of
+the young fry, disappear or are reduced in numbers, and new enemies are
+added to the old foes that preyed upon them; the increased turbidness of
+the water in the annual inundations chokes the fish; and, finally, the
+quickened velocity of its current sweeps them down into the larger
+rivers or into the sea, before they are yet strong enough to support so
+great a change of circumstances.[107] Industrial operations are not
+less destructive to fish which live or spawn in fresh water. Milldams
+impede their migrations, if they do not absolutely prevent them, the
+sawdust from lumber mills clogs their gills, and the thousand
+deleterious mineral substances, discharged into rivers from
+metallurgical, chemical, and manufacturing establishments, poison them
+by shoals.
+
+
+_Minute Organisms._
+
+Besides the larger creatures of the land and of the sea, the quadrupeds,
+the reptiles, the birds, the amphibia, the crustacea, the fish, the
+insects, and the worms, there are other countless forms of vital being.
+Earth, water, the ducts and fluids of vegetable and of animal life, the
+very air we breathe, are peopled by minute organisms which perform most
+important functions in both the living and the inanimate kingdoms of
+nature. Of the offices assigned to these creatures, the most familiar to
+common observation is the extraction of lime, and more rarely, of silex,
+from the waters inhabited by them, and the deposit of these minerals in
+a solid form, either as the material of their habitations or as the
+exuvi� of their bodies. The microscope and other means of scientific
+observation assure us that the chalk beds of England and of France, the
+coral reefs of marine waters in warm climates, vast calcareous and
+silicious deposits in the sea and in many fresh-water ponds, the common
+polishing earths and slates, and many species of apparently dense and
+solid rock, are the work of the humble organisms of which I speak,
+often, indeed, of animalcul� so small as to become visible only by the
+aid of lenses magnifying a hundred times the linear measures. It is
+popularly supposed that animalcul�, or what are commonly embraced under
+the vague name of infusoria, inhabit the water alone, but the
+atmospheric dust transported by every wind and deposited by every calm
+is full of microscopic life or of its relics. The soil on which the city
+of Berlin stands, contains at the depth of ten or fifteen feet below the
+surface, living elaborators of silex;[108] and a microscopic examination
+of a handful of earth connected with the material evidences of guilt has
+enabled the naturalist to point out the very spot where a crime was
+committed. It has been computed that one sixth part of the solid matter
+let fall by great rivers at their outlets consists of still recognizable
+infusory shells and shields, and, as the friction of rolling water must
+reduce much of these fragile structures to a state of comminution which
+even the microscope cannot resolve into distinct particles and identify
+as relics of animal or of vegetable life, we must conclude that a
+considerably larger proportion of river deposits is really the product
+of animalcules.[109]
+
+It is evident that the chemical, and in many cases the mechanical
+character of a great number of the objects important in the material
+economy of human life, must be affected by the presence of so large an
+organic element in their substance, and it is equally obvious that all
+agricultural and all industrial operations tend to disturb the natural
+arrangements of this element, to increase or to diminish the special
+adaptation of every medium in which it lives to the particular orders
+of being inhabited by it. The conversion of woodland into pasturage, of
+pasture into plough land, of swamp or of shallow sea into dry ground,
+the rotations of cultivated crops, must prove fatal to millions of
+living things upon every rood of surface thus deranged by man, and must,
+at the same time, more or less fully compensate this destruction of life
+by promoting the growth and multiplication of other tribes equally
+minute in dimensions.
+
+I do not know that man has yet endeavored to avail himself, by
+artificial contrivances, of the agency of these wonderful architects and
+manufacturers. We are hardly well enough acquainted with their natural
+economy to devise means to turn their industry to profitable account,
+and they are in very many cases too slow in producing visible results
+for an age so impatient as ours. The over-civilization of the nineteenth
+century cannot wait for wealth to be amassed by infinitesimal gains, and
+we are in haste to _speculate_ upon the powers of nature, as we do upon
+objects of bargain and sale in our trafficking one with another. But
+there are still some cases where the little we know of a life, whose
+workings are invisible to the naked eye, suggests the possibility of
+advantageously directing the efforts of troops of artisans that we
+cannot see. Upon coasts occupied by the corallines, the reef-building
+animalcule does not work near the mouth of rivers. Hence the change of
+the outlet of a stream, often a very easy matter, may promote the
+construction of a barrier to coast navigation at one point, and check
+the formation of a reef at another, by diverting a current of fresh
+water from the former and pouring it into the sea at the latter. Cases
+may probably be found in tropical seas, where rivers have prevented the
+working of the coral animalcules in straits separating islands from each
+other or from the mainland. The diversion of such streams might remove
+this obstacle, and reefs consequently be formed which should convert an
+archipelago into a single large island, and finally join that to the
+neighboring continent.
+
+Quatrefages proposed to destroy the teredo in harbors by impregnating
+the water with a mineral solution fatal to them. Perhaps the labors of
+the coralline animals might be arrested over a considerable extent of
+sea coast by similar means. The reef builders are leisurely architects,
+but the precious coral is formed so rapidly that the beds may be
+refished advantageously as often as once in ten years.[110] It does not
+seem impossible that this coral might be transplanted to the American
+coast, where the Gulf stream would furnish a suitable temperature beyond
+the climatic limits that otherwise confine its growth; and thus a new
+source of profit might perhaps be added to the scanty returns of the
+hardy fisherman.
+
+In certain geological formations, the diatomace� deposit, at the bottom
+of fresh-water ponds, beds of silicious shields, valuable as a material
+for a species of very light firebrick, in the manufacture of water glass
+and of hydraulic cement, and ultimately, doubtless, in many yet
+undiscovered industrial processes. An attentive study of the conditions
+favorable to the propagation of the diatomace� might perhaps help us to
+profit directly by the productivity of this organism, and, at the same
+time, disclose secrets of nature capable of being turned to valuable
+account in dealing with silicious rocks, and the metal which is the base
+of them. Our acquaintance with the obscure and infinitesimal life of
+which I have now been treating is very recent, and still very imperfect.
+We know that it is of vast importance in the economy of nature, but we
+are so ambitious to grasp the great, so little accustomed to occupy
+ourselves with the minute, that we are not yet prepared to enter
+seriously upon the question how far we can control and direct the
+operations, not of unembodied physical forces, but of beings, in popular
+apprehension, almost as immaterial as they.
+
+Nature has no unit of magnitude by which she measures her works. Man
+takes his standards of dimension from himself. The hair's breadth was
+his minimum until the microscope told him that there are animated
+creatures to which one of the hairs of his head is a larger cylinder
+than is the trunk of the giant California redwood to him. He borrows his
+inch from the breadth of his thumb, his palm and span from the width of
+his hand and the spread of his fingers, his foot from the length of the
+organ so named; his cubit is the distance from the tip of his middle
+finger to his elbow, and his fathom is the space he can measure with his
+outstretched arms. To a being who instinctively finds the standard of
+all magnitudes in his own material frame, all objects exceeding his own
+dimensions are absolutely great, all falling short of them absolutely
+small. Hence we habitually regard the whale and the elephant as
+essentially large and therefore important creatures, the animalcule as
+an essentially small and therefore unimportant organism. But no
+geological formation owes its origin to the labors or the remains of the
+huge mammal, while the animalcule composes, or has furnished, the
+substance of strata thousands of feet in thickness, and extending, in
+unbroken beds, over many degrees of terrestrial surface. If man is
+destined to inhabit the earth much longer, and to advance in natural
+knowledge with the rapidity which has marked his progress in physical
+science for the last two or three centuries, he will learn to put a
+wiser estimate on the works of creation, and will derive not only great
+instruction from studying the ways of nature in her obscurest, humblest
+walks, but great material advantage from stimulating her productive
+energies in provinces of her empire hitherto regarded as forever
+inaccessible, utterly barren.[111]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE WOODS.
+
+THE HABITABLE EARTH ORIGINALLY WOODED--THE FOREST DOES NOT FURNISH
+FOOD FOR MAN--FIRST REMOVAL OF THE WOODS--EFFECTS OF FIRE ON FOREST
+SOIL--EFFECTS OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST--ELECTRICAL INFLUENCE
+OF TREES--CHEMICAL INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST.
+
+INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST, CONSIDERED AS INORGANIC MATTER, ON TEMPERATURE:
+_a_, ABSORBING AND EMITTING SURFACE; _b_, TREES AS CONDUCTORS OF HEAT;
+_c_, TREES IN SUMMER AND IN WINTER; _d_, DEAD PRODUCTS OF TREES; _e_,
+TREES AS A SHELTER TO GROUNDS TO THE LEEWARD OF THEM; _f_, TREES AS A
+PROTECTION AGAINST MALARIA--THE FOREST, AS INORGANIC MATTER, TENDS TO
+MITIGATE EXTREMES.
+
+TREES AS ORGANISMS: SPECIFIC TEMPERATURE--TOTAL INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST
+ON TEMPERATURE.
+
+INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE AIR AND THE EARTH:
+_a_, AS INORGANIC MATTER; _b_, AS ORGANIC--WOOD MOSSES AND FUNGI--
+FLOW OF SAP--ABSORPTION AND EXHALATION OF MOISTURE BY TREES--BALANCE
+OF CONFLICTING INFLUENCES--INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON TEMPERATURE AND
+PRECIPITATION--INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE SOIL--
+ITS INFLUENCE ON THE 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 OF THE FOREST--AMERICAN
+FOREST TREES--SPECIAL CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN WOODS--
+ROYAL FORESTS AND GAME LAWS--SMALL FOREST PLANTS, VITALITY OF SEEDS--
+UTILITY OF THE FOREST--THE FORESTS OF EUROPE--FORESTS OF THE UNITED
+STATES AND CANADA--THE ECONOMY OF THE FOREST--EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN
+TREES COMPARED--SYLVICULTURE--INSTABILITY OF AMERICAN LIFE.
+
+
+_The Habitable Earth Originally Wooded._
+
+There is good reason to believe that the surface of the habitable earth,
+in all the climates and regions which have been the abodes of dense and
+civilized populations, was, with few exceptions, already covered with a
+forest growth when it first became the home of man. This we infer from
+the extensive vegetable 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 that large provinces, where the
+earth has long been wholly bare of trees, were clothed with vast and
+almost unbroken woods when first made known to Greek and Roman
+civilization;[112] and from the state of much of North and of South
+America when they were discovered and colonized by the European
+race.[113]
+
+These evidences are strengthened by observation of the natural economy
+of our own time; for, whenever a tract of country, once inhabited and
+cultivated by man, is abandoned by him and by domestic animals,[114] and
+surrendered to the undisturbed influences of spontaneous nature, its
+soil sooner or later clothes itself with herbaceous and arborescent
+plants, and at no long interval, with a dense forest growth. Indeed,
+upon surfaces of a certain stability, and not absolutely precipitous
+inclination, the special conditions required for the spontaneous
+propagation of trees may all be negatively 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,
+in decomposing the surface of the rocks they cover; they arrest and
+confine the dust which the wind scatters over them, and their final
+decay adds new material to the soil already half formed beneath and upon
+them. A very thin stratum of mould is sufficient for the germination of
+seeds of the hardy evergreens and birches, the roots of which are often
+found in immediate contact with the rock, supplying their trees with
+nourishment from a soil derived from the decomposition of their own
+foliage, or sending out long rootlets into the surrounding earth in
+search of juices to feed them.
+
+The eruptive matter of volcanoes, forbidding as is its aspect, does not
+refuse nutriment to the woods. The refractory lava of Etna, it is true,
+remains long barren, and that of the great eruption of 1669 is still
+almost wholly devoid of vegetation.[115] But the cactus is making
+inroads even here, while the volcanic 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 to
+this," he continues, "the matter thrown up is ruddy, light, and soft:
+more removed, blacke and ponderous: the uttermost brow, that declineth
+like the seates in a theater, flourishing with trees and excellent
+pasturage. The midst of the hill is shaded with chestnut trees, and
+others bearing sundry fruits."[116]
+
+I am convinced that forests would soon cover many parts of the Arabian
+and African deserts, if man and domestic animals, especially the goat
+and the camel, were banished from them. The hard palate and tongue and
+strong teeth and jaws of this latter quadruped enable him to break off
+and masticate tough and thorny branches as large as the finger. He is
+particularly fond of the smaller twigs, leaves, and seedpods 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 routes of travel. In the
+shade of these trees, annual grasses and perennial shrubs shoot up, but
+are mown down by the hungry cattle of the Bedouin, as fast as they grow.
+A few years of undisturbed vegetation would suffice to cover such points
+with groves, and these would gradually extend themselves over soils
+where now scarcely any green thing but the bitter colocynth and the
+poisonous foxglove is ever seen.
+
+
+_The Forest does not Furnish Food for Man._
+
+In a region absolutely covered with trees, human life could not long be
+sustained, for want of animal and vegetable food. The depths of the
+forest seldom furnish 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 here only grow the shrubs and grasses,
+and here only are found the seeds and insects, which form the sustenance
+of the non-carnivorous birds and quadrupeds.[117]
+
+
+_First Removal of the Forest._
+
+As soon as multiplying man had filled the open grounds along the margin
+of the rivers, the lakes, and the sea, and sufficiently peopled the
+natural meadows 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 forest that hemmed him in. The destruction
+of the woods, then, was man's first geographical conquest, his first
+violation of the harmonies of inanimate nature.
+
+Primitive man had little occasion to fell trees for fuel, or, for the
+construction of dwellings, boats, and the implements of his rude
+agriculture and handicrafts. Windfalls would furnish a thin population
+with a sufficient supply of such material, and if occasionally a growing
+tree was cut, the injury to the forest would be too insignificant to be
+at all appreciable.
+
+The accidental escape and spread of fire, or, possibly, the combustion
+of forests by lightning, must have first suggested the advantages to be
+derived from the removal of too abundant and extensive woods, and, at
+the same time, have pointed out a means by which a large tract of
+surface could readily be cleared of much of this natural incumbrance. As
+soon as agriculture had commenced at all, it would be observed that the
+growth of cultivated plants, as well as of many species of wild
+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 ground would be
+abandoned for new fields won from the forest by the same means, and the
+deserted plain or hillock would soon clothe itself anew with shrubs and
+trees, to be again subjected to the same destructive process, and again
+surrendered to the restorative powers of vegetable nature.[119] This
+rude economy would be continued for generations, and wasteful as it is,
+is still largely pursued in Northern Sweden, Swedish Lapland, and
+sometimes even in France and the United States.[120]
+
+
+_Effects of Fire on Forest Soil._
+
+Aside from the mechanical and chemical effects of the disturbance of the
+soil by agricultural operations, and of the freer admission of sun,
+rain, and air to the ground, the fire of itself exerts an important
+influence on its texture and condition. It consumes a portion of the
+half-decayed vegetable mould which served to hold its mineral particles
+together and to retain the water of precipitation, and thus loosens,
+pulverizes, 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 which had spontaneously covered it. These new
+conditions help to explain the natural succession of forest crops, so
+generally observed in all woods cleared by fire and then abandoned.
+There is no doubt, however, that other influences contribute to the same
+result, because effects more or less analogous follow when the trees are
+destroyed by other causes, as by high winds, by the woodman's axe, and
+even by natural decay.[121]
+
+
+_Effects of Destruction of the Forest._
+
+The physico-geographical effects of the destruction of the forests may
+be divided into two great classes, each having an important influence on
+vegetable and on animal life in all 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 meteorology
+of the countries exposed to the action of these influences; the second,
+their superficial geography, or, in other words, configuration,
+consistence, and clothing of surface.
+
+For reasons assigned in the first chapter, the meteorological or
+climatic branch of the subject is the most obscure, and the conclusions
+of physicists respecting it are, in a great degree, inferential only,
+not founded on experiment or direct observation. They are, as might be
+expected, somewhat discordant, though certain general results are almost
+universally accepted, and seem indeed too well supported to admit of
+serious question.
+
+
+_Electrical Influence of Trees._
+
+The properties of trees, singly and in groups, as exciters or conductors
+of electricity, and their consequent influence upon the electrical state
+of the atmosphere, do not appear to have been much investigated; and the
+conditions of the forest itself are so variable and so complicated, that
+the solution of any general problem respecting its electrical influence
+would be a matter of extreme difficulty. It is, indeed, impossible to
+suppose that a dense cloud, a sea of vapor, can pass over miles of
+surface bristling with good conductors, without undergoing some change
+of electrical condition. Hypothetical cases may be put in which the
+character of the change could be deduced from the known laws of
+electrical action. But in actual nature, the elements are too numerous
+for us to seize. The true electrical condition of neither cloud nor
+forest could be known, and it could seldom be predicted whether the
+vapors would be dissolved as they floated over the wood, or discharged
+upon it in a deluge of rain. With regard to possible electrical
+influences of the forest, wider still in their range of action, the
+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.[122] The _paragrandini_,[123] which the learned curate of
+Rivolta advised to erect, with sheaves of straw set up vertically, over
+a great extent of cultivated country, are but a Liliputian image of the
+vast paragrandini, pines, larches, firs, which nature had planted by
+millions on the crests and ridges of the Alps and the Apennines."[124]
+"Electrical action being diminished," says Meguscher, "and the rapid
+congelation of vapors by the abstraction of heat being impeded by the
+influence of the woods, it is rare that hail or waterspouts are
+produced, within the precincts of a large forest when it is assailed by
+the tempest."[125] Arthur Young was told that since the forests which
+covered the mountains between the Riviera and the county of Montferrat
+had disappeared, hail had become more destructive in the district of
+Acqui,[126] and it appears upon good authority, that a similar increase
+in the frequency and violence of hail storms in the neighborhood of
+Saluzzo and Mondov�, the lower part of the Valtelline, and the territory
+of Verona and Vicenza, is probably to be ascribed to a similar
+cause.[127]
+
+
+_Chemical Influence of the Forest._
+
+We know that the air in a close apartment is appreciably affected
+through the inspiration and expiration of gases by plants growing in it.
+The same operations are performed on a gigantic scale by the forest, and
+it has even been supposed that the absorption of carbon, by the rank
+vegetation of earlier geological periods, occasioned a permanent change
+in the constitution of the terrestrial atmosphere.[128] To the effects
+thus produced, are to be added those of the ultimate gaseous
+decomposition of the vast vegetable mass annually shed by trees, 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 little trace the influence
+of the woods in the analysis of the atmosphere, as we can prove that the
+mineral ingredients of land springs sensibly affect the chemistry of
+the sea. I may, then, properly dismiss the chemical, as I have done the
+electrical influences of the forest, and treat them both alike, if not
+as unimportant agencies, at least as quantities of unknown value in our
+meteorological equation.[129] Our inquiries upon this branch of the
+subject will accordingly be limited to the thermometrical and
+hygrometrical influences of the woods.
+
+
+_Influence of the Forest, considered as Inorganic Matter, on
+Temperature._
+
+The evaporation of fluids, and the condensation and expansion of vapors
+and gases, are attended with changes of temperature; and the quantity of
+moisture which the air is capable of containing, and, of course, the
+evaporation, rise and fall with the thermometer. The hygroscopical 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 reference to
+its living processes of absorption and exhalation of water and gases,
+has, as an absorbent, a radiator and a conductor of heat, and as a mere
+covering of the ground, an influence on the temperature of the air and
+the earth, which may be considered by itself.
+
+
+a. _Absorbing and Emitting Surface._
+
+A given area of ground, as estimated by the every-day rule of
+measurement in yards or acres, presents always the same apparent
+quantity of absorbing, radiating, and reflecting surface; but the real
+extent of that surface is very variable, depending, as it does, upon its
+configuration, and the bulk and form of the adventitious objects it
+bears upon it; and, besides, the true superficies remaining the same,
+its power of absorption, radiation, reflection, and conduction of heat
+will be much affected by its consistence, its greater or less humidity,
+and its color, as well as by its inclination of plane 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 covered, and would add to
+the field on which it stood so much surface capable of receiving and
+emitting heat, though, in consequence of obliquity and direction of
+plane, its actual absorption and emission of heat might not be so great
+as that of an additional quantity of level ground containing four times
+the area of its base. The lesser inequalities which always occur in the
+surface of ordinary earth affect in the same way its quantity of
+superficies acting upon the temperature of the atmosphere, and acted on
+by it, though the amount of this action and reaction is not susceptible
+of measurement.
+
+Analogous effects are produced by other objects, of whatever form or
+character, standing or lying upon the earth, and no solid can be placed
+upon a flat piece of ground, without itself exposing a greater surface
+than it covers. This applies, of course, to forest trees and their
+leaves, and indeed to all vegetables, as well as to other prominent
+bodies. If we suppose forty trees to be planted on an acre, one being
+situated in the centre of every square of two rods the side, and to grow
+until their branches and leaves 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 disposition of the
+foliage interferes with that free communication between sun and sky
+above, and leaf surface below, on which the amount of radiation and
+absorption of heat depends. From all these considerations, it appears
+that though the effective thermoscopic surface of a forest in full leaf
+does not exceed that of bare ground in the same proportion as does its
+measured superficies, yet the actual quantity of area capable of
+receiving and emitting heat must be greater in the former than in the
+latter case.[132]
+
+It must further be remembered that the form and texture of a given
+surface are important elements in determining its thermoscopic
+character. Leaves are porous, and admit air and light more or less
+freely into their substance; they are generally smooth and even glazed
+on one surface; they are usually covered on one or both sides with
+spicul�, and they very commonly present one or more acuminated points 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 together. But the
+frigorific effect of leafy structure is well observed in the deposit of
+dew and the occurrence of hoarfrost on the foliage of grasses and other
+small vegetables, and on other objects of similar form and consistence,
+when the temperature of the air a few yards above has not been brought
+down to the dew point, still less to 32�, the degree of cold required to
+congeal dew to frost.[133]
+
+
+b. _Trees as Conductors of Heat._
+
+We are also to take into account the action of the forest as a conductor
+of heat between the atmosphere and the earth. In the most important
+countries of America and Europe, and especially in those which have
+suffered most from the destruction of the woods, the superficial strata
+of the earth are colder in winter, 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. As
+conductors, they convey the heat of the atmosphere to the earth when the
+earth is colder than the air, and transmit it in the contrary direction
+when the temperature of the earth is higher than that of the atmosphere.
+Of course, then, as conductors, they tend to equalize the temperature of
+the earth and the air.
+
+
+c. _Trees in Summer and Winter._
+
+In countries where the questions I am considering have the greatest
+practical importance, a very large proportion, if not a majority, of the
+trees are of deciduous foliage, 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 ground
+or the radiation from it; whereas, in the former, they often interpose a
+complete canopy between the ground and the sky, and materially
+interfere with both processes.
+
+
+d. _Dead Products of Trees._
+
+Besides this various action of standing trees considered as inorganic
+matter, the forest exercises, by the annual moulting of its foliage,
+still another influence on the temperature of the earth, and,
+consequently, of the atmosphere which rests upon it. If you examine the
+constitution of the superficial soil in a primitive or an old and
+undisturbed artificially planted wood, you find, first, a deposit of
+undecayed leaves, twigs, and seeds, lying in loose layers on the
+surface; then, more compact beds of the same materials in incipient,
+and, as you descend, more and more advanced stages of decomposition;
+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 forest, it would act upon the temperature of the
+atmosphere, and be acted on by it, in a very different way from the
+leaves and mould which rest upon it. Leaves, still entire, or partially
+decayed, are very indifferent conductors of heat, and, therefore, though
+they diminish the warming influence of the summer sun on the soil below
+them, they, on the other hand, prevent the escape of heat from that soil
+in winter, and, consequently, in cold climates, even when the ground is
+not covered by a protecting mantle of snow, the earth does not freeze to
+as great a depth in the wood as in the open field.
+
+
+e. _Trees as a Shelter to Ground to the Leeward._
+
+The action of the forest, considered merely as a mechanical shelter to
+grounds lying to the leeward of it, would seem to be an influence of too
+restricted a character to deserve much notice; but many facts concur to
+show that it is an important element in local climate, and that it is
+often a valuable means of defence against the spread of miasmatic
+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 from
+the west, to the mild breezes of the sea. Hence a decrease of the cold
+of winter. If a similar forest were to be cleared on the eastern border
+of France, the glacial east wind would prevail with greater strength,
+and the winters would become more severe. Thus the removal of a belt of
+wood would produce opposite effects in the two regions."[134]
+
+This opinion receives confirmation from an observation of Dr. Dwight,
+who remarks, in reference to the woods of New England: "Another effect
+of removing the forest will be the free passage of the winds, and among
+them of the southern 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 ocean, and imparted their warmth
+frequently, and in such degrees as, forty years since, were in the same
+places very little known. This fact, also, contributes to lengthen the
+summer, and to shorten the winter-half of the year."[135]
+
+It is thought in Italy that the clearing of the Apennines has very
+materially affected the climate of the valley of the Po. It is asserted
+in Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia that: "In consequence of the felling of
+the woods on the Apennines, the sirocco prevails greatly on the right
+bank of the 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 formerly straw roofs resisted the force of the winds,
+tiles are now hardly sufficient; in others, where tiles answered for
+roofs, large slabs of stone are now ineffectual; and in many neighboring
+communes the grapes and the grain are swept off by the blasts of the
+south and southwest winds."
+
+On the other hand, according to the same authority, the pinery of Porto,
+near Ravenna--which is 33 kilometres long, and is one of the oldest pine
+woods in Italy--having been replanted with resinous trees after it was
+unfortunately cut, has relieved the city from the sirocco to which it
+had become exposed, and in a great degree restored its ancient
+climate.[136]
+
+The felling of the woods on the Atlantic coast of Jutland has exposed
+the soil not only to drifting sands, but to sharp sea winds, that have
+exerted a sensible deteriorating effect on the climate of that
+peninsula, which has no mountains to serve at once as a barrier to the
+force of the winds, and as a storehouse of moisture received by
+precipitation or condensed from atmospheric vapors.[137]
+
+It is evident that the effect of the forest, as a mechanical impediment
+to the passage of the wind, would extend to a very considerable distance
+above its own height, and hence protect while standing, or lay open when
+felled, a much larger surface than might at first thought be supposed.
+The atmosphere, movable as are its particles, and light and elastic as
+are its masses, is nevertheless held together as a continuous whole by
+the gravitation of its atoms and their consequent pressure on each
+other, if not by attraction between them, and, therefore, an obstruction
+which mechanically impedes the movement of a given stratum of air, will
+retard the passage of the strata above and below it. To this effect may
+often be added that of an ascending current from the forest itself,
+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 m�tres 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 m�tres in height, is a
+sufficient protection for a distance of twenty-two m�tres."[139] The
+mechanical shelter acts, no doubt, chiefly as a defence against the
+mechanical force of the wind, but its uses are by no means limited to
+this effect. If the current of air which it resists moves horizontally,
+it would prevent the access of cold or parching blasts to the ground for
+a great distance; and did the wind even descend at a large angle with
+the surface, still a considerable extent of ground would be protected by
+a forest to the windward of it. If we suppose the trees of a wood to
+have a mean height of only twenty yards, they would often beneficially
+affect the temperature or the moisture of a belt of land two or three
+hundred yards in width, and thus perhaps rescue valuable crops from
+destruction.[140]
+
+The local retardation of spring so much complained of in Italy, France,
+and Switzerland, and the increased frequency of late frosts at that
+season, appear to be ascribable to the admission of cold blasts to the
+surface, by the felling of the forests 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 vegetation,
+and that, in consequence of "the usurpation of winter on the domain of
+spring," the district of Mugello has lost all its mulberries, except the
+few which find in the lee of buildings a protection like that once
+furnished by the forest.[141]
+
+"It is proved," says Clav�, "�tudes," p. 44, "that the department of
+Ard�che, which now contains not a single considerable wood, has
+experienced within thirty years a climatic disturbance, of which the
+late frosts, formerly unknown in the country, are one of the most
+melancholy effects. Similar results have been observed in the plain of
+Alsace, in consequence of the denudation of several of the crests of the
+Vosges."
+
+Dussard, as quoted by Ribbe,[142] maintains that even the _mistral_, or
+northwest wind, whose chilling blasts are so fatal to tender vegetation
+in the spring, "is the child of man, the result of his devastations."
+"Under the reign of Augustus," continues he, "the forests which
+protected the C�vennes were felled, or destroyed by fire, in mass. A
+vast country, before covered with impenetrable woods--powerful obstacles
+to the movement and even to the formation of hurricanes--was suddenly
+denuded, swept bare, stripped, and soon after, a scourge hitherto
+unknown struck terror over the land from Avignon to the Bouches du
+Rhone, thence to Marseilles, and then extended its 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 crops, were not then exposed to the loss of their
+harvests by tempests, cold, or drought. The deterioration was rapid in
+its progress. Under the Consulate, the clearings had exerted so
+injurious an effect upon the climate, that the cultivation of the olive
+had retreated several leagues, and since the winters and springs of 1820
+and 1836, this branch of rural industry has been abandoned in a great
+number of localities where it was advantageously pursued before. The
+orange now flourishes only at a few sheltered points of the coast, and
+it is threatened even at Ily�res, where the clearing of the hills near
+the town has proved very prejudicial to this valuable tree.
+
+Marchand informs us that, since the felling of the woods, late spring
+frosts are more frequent in many localities north of the Alps; that
+fruit trees thrive well no longer, and that it is difficult to raise
+young trees.[143]
+
+
+f. _Trees as a Protection against Malaria._
+
+The influence of forests in preventing the diffusion of miasmatic vapors
+is a matter of less familiar observation, and perhaps does not come
+strictly within the sphere of the present inquiry, but its importance
+will justify me in devoting some space to the subject. "It has been
+observed" (I quote again from Becquerel) "that humid air, charged with
+miasmata, is deprived of them in passing through the forest. Rigaud de
+Lille observed localities in Italy where the interposition of a screen
+of trees preserved everything beyond it, while the unprotected grounds
+were subject to fevers."[144] Few European countries present better
+opportunities for observation on this point than Italy, because in that
+kingdom the localities exposed 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 believed that
+a few rows of sunflowers, planted between the Washington Observatory and
+the marshy banks of the Potomac, had saved the inmates of that
+establishment from the intermittent fevers to which they had been
+formerly liable. Maury's experiments have been repeated in Italy. Large
+plantations of sunflowers have been made upon the alluvial deposits of
+the Oglio, above its entrance into the Lake of Iseo near Pisogne, and it
+is said with favorable results to the health of the neighborhood.[146]
+In fact, the generally beneficial effects of a forest wall or other
+vegetable screen, as a protection against noxious exhalations from
+marshes or other sources of disease situated to the windward of them,
+are very commonly admitted.
+
+It is argued that, in these cases, the foliage of trees and of other
+vegetables exercises a chemical as well as a mechanical effect upon the
+atmosphere, and some, who allow that forests may intercept the
+circulation of the miasmatic effluvia of swampy soils, or even render
+them harmless by decomposing them, contend, 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
+appear to be generally the case.[147] It is, at all events, well known
+that the great swamps of Virginia and the Carolinas, in climates nearly
+similar to that of Italy, are healthy even to the white man, so long as
+the forests in and around them remain, but become very insalubrious when
+the woods are felled.[148]
+
+
+_The Forest, as Inorganic Matter, tends to mitigate Extremes._
+
+The surface which trees and leaves present augments the general
+superficies of the earth exposed to the absorption of heat, and
+increases the radiating and reflecting area in the same proportion. It
+is impossible to measure the relative value of these two
+elements--increase of absorbing and increase of emitting surface--as
+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 surface acted on by it.
+But it seems probable that its greatest influence in this respect is due
+to its character of a screen, or mechanical obstacle to the transmission
+of heat between the earth and the air; and this is equally true of the
+standing tree and of the dead foliage which it deposits in successive
+layers at its foot.
+
+The complicated action of trees and their products, as dead absorbents,
+radiators, reflectors, and conductors of heat, and as interceptors of
+its transmission, is so intimately 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 the latter class of
+influences; but upon the whole, the forest must thus far be regarded as
+tending to mitigate extremes, and, therefore, as an equalizer of
+temperature.
+
+
+TREES AS ORGANISMS.
+
+_Specific Heat._
+
+Trees, considered as organisms, produce in themselves, or in the air, a
+certain amount of heat, by absorbing and condensing atmospheric vapor,
+and they exert an opposite influence by absorbing water and exhaling it
+in the form of vapor; but there is still another 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 own, an organic power of generating heat,
+like that with which the warm-blooded animals are gifted, though by a
+different process, a certain amount of weight is to be ascribed to this
+element, in estimating the action of the forest upon atmospheric
+temperature.
+
+"Observation shows," says Meguscher, "that the wood of a living tree
+maintains a temperature of +12� or 13� Cent. [= 54�, 56� Fahr.] when the
+temperature of the air stands at 3�, 7�, and 8� [=37�, 46�, 47� F.]
+above zero, and that the internal warmth of the 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. Since, then, trees maintain at all seasons a constant mean
+temperature of 12� [= 54� Fahr.], it is easy to see why the air in
+contact with the forest must be warmer in winter, cooler in summer, than
+in situations where it is deprived of that influence."[149]
+
+Boussingault remarks: "In many flowers there has been observed a very
+considerable evolution of heat, at the approach of fecundation. In
+certain _arums_ the temperature rises to 40� or 50� Cent. [= 104� or
+122� Fahr.]. It is very probable that this phenomenon is general, and
+varies only in the intensity with which it is manifested."[150]
+
+If we suppose the fecundation of the flowers of forest trees to be
+attended with a tenth only of this calorific power, they could not fail
+to exert an important influence on the warmth of the atmospheric strata
+in contact with them.
+
+In a paper on Meteorology by Professor Henry, published in the United
+States Patent Office Report for 1857, p. 504, that distinguished
+physicist observes: "As a general deduction from chemical and mechanical
+principles, we think no change of temperature is ever produced where the
+actions belonging to one or both of 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
+point, we think, have been directed by a false analogy. During the
+active circulation of the sap and the production of new tissue,
+variations of temperature belonging exclusively to the plant may be
+observed; but it is inconsistent with general principles that heat
+should be generated where no change is taking place."
+
+There can be no doubt that moisture is given out by trees and evaporated
+in extremely cold winter-weather, and unless new fluid were supplied
+from the roots, the tree would be exhausted of its juices before winter
+was over. But this is not observed to be the fact, and, though the point
+is disputed, respectable authorities declare that "wood felled in the
+depth of winter is the heaviest and fullest of sap."[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 and developed its leaves while the
+rest of the tree in the external air remained in its winter sleep."[152]
+The roots of forest trees in temperate climates, remain, for the most
+part, in a moist soil, of a temperature not much below the annual mean,
+through the whole winter; and we cannot account for the uninterrupted
+moisture of the tree, unless we suppose that the roots furnish a
+constant supply of water.
+
+Atkinson describes a ravine in a valley in Siberia, which was filled
+with ice to the depth of twenty-five feet. Poplars were growing in this
+ice, which was thawed to the distance of some inches from the stem. But
+the surface of the soil 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 thawed the thick
+covering of earth above them, the trunks must have melted the ice in
+contact with them. The trees, when observed by Atkinson, were in full
+leaf, but it does not appear at what period the ice around their stems
+had melted.
+
+From these facts, and others of the like sort, it would seem that "all
+vegetable functions are" not absolutely "dormant" in winter, and,
+therefore, that trees may give out _some_ heat 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 be sufficiently affected by heat evolved in the
+vital processes of vegetation, to raise the thermometric mean of wooded
+countries for that season, and, of course, for the year.[153]
+
+
+_Total Influence of the Forest on Temperature._
+
+It has not yet been found practicable to measure, sum up, and equate the
+total influence of the forest, its processes and its products, dead and
+living, upon temperature, and investigators differ much in their
+conclusions on this subject. It seems probable that in every particular
+case the result is, if not determined, at least so much modified by
+local conditions which are infinitely varied, that no general formula is
+applicable to the question.
+
+In the report to which I referred on page 149, Gay-Lussac says: "In my
+opinion we have not yet any positive proof that the forest has, in
+itself, any real influence on the climate 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
+advantage; but these questions are so complicated when they are examined
+in a climatological point of view, that the solution of them is very
+difficult, not to say impossible."
+
+Becquerel, on the other hand, considers it certain that in tropical
+climates, the destruction of the forests is accompanied with an
+elevation of the mean temperature, and he thinks it highly probable that
+it has the same effect in the temperate zones. The following is the
+substance of his remarks on this subject:--
+
+"Forests act as frigorific causes in three ways:
+
+"1. They shelter the ground against solar irradiation and maintain a
+greater humidity.
+
+"2. They produce a cutaneous transpiration by the leaves.
+
+"3. They multiply, by the expansion of their branches, the surfaces
+which are cooled by radiation.
+
+"These three causes acting with greater or less force, we must, in the
+study of the climatology of a country, take into account the proportion
+between the area of the forests and the surface which is bared of trees
+and covered with herbs and grasses.
+
+"We should be inclined to believe _� priori_, according to the foregoing
+considerations, that the clearing of the woods, by raising the
+temperature and increasing the dryness of the air, ought to react on
+climate. There is no doubt that, if the vast 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 currents of warm air would cease, or be less warm, and would
+not contribute, by descending in our latitudes, to soften the climate of
+Western Europe. Thus the clearing of a great country may react on the
+climates of regions more or less remote from it.
+
+"The observations by Boussingault leave no doubt on this point. This
+writer determined the mean temperature of wooded and of cleared points,
+under the same latitude, 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 the portion of the tropics
+nearest to the equator, and where radiation tends powerfully during the
+night to lower the temperature under a sky without clouds."[154]
+
+The result of these observations, which has been pretty generally
+adopted by physicists, is that the mean temperature of cleared land in
+the tropics appears to be about one degree centigrade, or a little less
+than two degrees of Fahrenheit, above that of the forest. On page 147 of
+the volume just cited, Becquerel argues that, 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 are so different in the two regions compared, that I think we
+cannot, with entire confidence, reason from the one to the other, and it
+is much to be desired that observations be made on the summer and winter
+temperature of both the air and the ground in the depths of the North
+American forests, before it is too late.[155]
+
+
+INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE AIR AND THE EARTH.
+
+
+a. _As Inorganic Matter._
+
+The most important influence of the forest on climate is, no doubt, that
+which it exercises on the humidity of the air and the earth, and this
+climatic action it exerts partly as dead, partly as living matter. By
+its interposition as a curtain between the sky and the ground, it
+intercepts a large proportion of the dew and the lighter showers, which
+would otherwise moisten the surface of the soil, and restores it to the
+atmosphere by evaporation; while in heavier rains, the large drops which
+fall upon the leaves and branches 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 from it.[157] In the forest, the air is almost quiescent, and
+moves only as local changes of temperature affect the specific gravity
+of its particles. Hence there is often a dead calm in the woods when a
+furious blast is raging in the open country at a few yards' distance.
+The denser the forest--as for example, where it consists of spike-leaved
+trees, or is thickly intermixed with them--the more obvious is its
+effect, and no one can have passed from the field to the wood in cold,
+windy weather, without having remarked it.[158]
+
+The vegetable mould, resulting from the decomposition of leaves and of
+wood, carpets the ground with a spongy covering which obstructs the
+evaporation from the mineral earth below, drinks up the rains and
+melting snows 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, penetrate far below the superficial soil, conduct the
+water along their surface to the lower depths to which they reach, and
+thus serve to drain the superior strata and remove the moisture out of
+the reach of evaporation.
+
+
+b. _The Forest as Organic._
+
+These are the principal modes in which the humidity of the atmosphere is
+affected by the forest regarded as lifeless matter. Let us inquire how
+its organic processes act upon this meteorological element.
+
+The commonest observation shows that the wood and bark of living trees
+are always more or less pervaded with watery and other fluids, one of
+which, the sap, is very abundant in trees of deciduous foliage when the
+buds begin to swell and the leaves to develop themselves in the spring.
+The outer bark of most trees is of a corky character, not admitting the
+absorption of much moisture from the atmosphere through its pores, and
+we can hardly suppose that the buds are able to extract from the air a
+much larger supply. The obvious conclusion as to the source from which
+the extraordinary quantity of sap at this season is derived, is that to
+which scientific investigation leads us, namely, that it is absorbed
+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 organs.[159]
+The amount of water taken up by the roots, however, is vastly greater
+than that imbibed through the leaves, especially at the season when the
+juices are most abundant, and when, as we have seen, the leaves are yet
+in embryo. The quantity of water thus received from the air and the
+earth, in a single year, by a wood of even a hundred acres, is very
+great, though experiments are wanting to furnish the data for even an
+approximate estimate of its measure; for only the vaguest conclusions
+can be drawn from the observations which have been made on the
+imbibition and exhalation of water by trees and other plants reared in
+artificial conditions diverse from those of the natural forest.[160]
+
+
+_Wood Mosses and Fungi._
+
+Besides the water drawn by the roots from the earth and the vapor
+absorbed by the leaves from the air, the wood mosses and fungi, which
+abound in all dense forests, take up a great quantity of moisture from
+the atmosphere when it is charged with humidity, and exhale it again
+when the air is dry. These humble organizations, which play a more
+important part in regulating the humidity 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 pasturage, or
+deserted. These mosses discharge a portion of the functions appropriated
+to the wood, and while they render the soil of improved lands much less
+fit for agricultural use, they, at the same time, prepare it for the
+growth of a new harvest of trees, when the infertility they produce
+shall have driven man to abandon it and suffer it to relapse into the
+hands of nature.[161]
+
+
+_Flow of Sap._
+
+The amount of sap which can be withdrawn from living trees furnishes,
+not indeed a measure of the quantity of water sucked up by their roots
+from the ground--for we cannot extract from a tree its whole
+moisture--but numerical data which may aid the imagination to form a
+general notion of the powerful action of the forest as an absorbent of
+humidity from the earth.
+
+The only forest tree known to Europe and North America, the sap of which
+is largely enough applied to economical uses to have made the amount of
+its flow a matter of practical importance and popular observation, is
+the sugar maple, _Acer saccharinum_, of the Anglo-American Provinces and
+States. In the course of a single "sugar season," which lasts ordinarily
+from twenty-five to thirty days, a sugar maple two feet in diameter will
+yield not less than twenty gallons of sap, and sometimes much more.[162]
+This, however, is but a trifling proportion of the water 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 fifty,[165] and of course
+the quantity of moisture abstracted from the soil by this tree alone is
+measured by thousands of gallons to the acre. The sugar orchards, as
+they are called, contain also many young maples too small for tapping,
+and numerous other trees--two of which, at least, the black birch,
+_Betula lenta_, and yellow birch, _Betula excelsa_, both very common in
+the same climate, are far more abundant in sap than the maple[166]--are
+scattered among the sugar trees; for the North American native forests
+are remarkable for the mixture of their crops.
+
+The sap of the maple, and of other trees with deciduous leaves which
+grow in the same climate, flows most freely in the early spring, and
+especially in clear weather, when the nights are frosty and the days
+warm; for it is then that the melting snows supply the earth with
+moisture in the justest proportion, and that the absorbent power of the
+roots is stimulated to its highest activity.[167]
+
+When the buds are ready to burst, and the green leaves begin to show
+themselves beneath their scaly covering, the ground has become drier,
+the thirst of the roots is quenched, and the flow of sap from them to
+the stem is greatly diminished.[168]
+
+
+_Absorption and Exhalation of Moisture._
+
+The leaves now commence the process of absorption, and imbibe both
+uncombined gases and an unascertained but perhaps considerable quantity
+of watery vapor from the humid atmosphere of spring which bathes them.
+
+The organic action of the tree, as thus far described, tends to the
+desiccation of air and earth; but when we consider what volumes of water
+are daily absorbed by a large tree, and how small a proportion of the
+weight of this fluid consists of matter which enters into new
+combinations, and becomes a part of the solid framework of the
+vegetable, or a component of its deciduous products, it is evident that
+the superfluous moisture must somehow be carried off almost as rapidly
+as it flows into the tree.[169] At the very commencement of vegetation
+in spring, some of this fluid certainly escapes through the buds, the
+nascent foliage, and the pores of the barb, and vegetable 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 the air. In any event, all the water derived by the
+growing tree from the atmosphere and the ground is returned again by
+transpiration or exudation, after having surrendered to the plant the
+small proportion of matter required for vegetable growth which it held
+in solution or suspension.[171] The hygrometrical equilibrium is then
+restored, so far as this: the tree yields up again the moisture it had
+drawn from the earth and the air, though it does not return it each to
+each; for the vapor carried off by transpiration greatly exceeds the
+quantity of water absorbed by the foliage from the atmosphere, and the
+amount, if any, carried back to the ground by the roots.
+
+The evaporation of the juices of the plant, by whatever process
+effected, takes up atmospheric heat and produces refrigeration. This
+effect is not less real, though much less sensible, in the forest than
+in meadow or pasture land, and it cannot be doubted that the local
+temperature is considerably affected by it. But the evaporation that
+cools the air diffuses through it, at the same time, a medium which
+powerfully resists the escape of heat from the earth by 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 less resistance to the
+transmission of direct solar heat, and indeed the beams of the sun seem
+more scorching when received through clear air charged with uncondensed
+moisture than after passing through a dry atmosphere. Hence the
+reduction of temperature by the evaporation of moisture from vegetation,
+though sensible, is less than it would be if water in the gaseous state
+were as impervious to heat given out by the sun as to that emitted by
+terrestrial objects.
+
+The hygroscopicity of vegetable mould is much greater than that of any
+mineral earth, and therefore the soil of the forest absorbs more
+atmospheric moisture than the open ground. The condensation 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� centigrade, making a difference of
+nearly thirteen degrees of Fahrenheit, and that of soil rich in humus
+from 20� to 31� centigrade, a difference of almost twenty degrees of
+Fahrenheit.[172]
+
+
+_Balance of Conflicting Influences._
+
+We have shown that the forest, considered as dead matter, tends to
+diminish the moisture of the air, by preventing the sun's rays from
+reaching the ground and evaporating the water that falls upon the
+surface, and also by spreading over the earth a spongy mantle which
+sucks up and retains the humidity it receives from the atmosphere,
+while, at the same time, this covering 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 the air by absorbing
+moisture from it, and, on the other, to increase that humidity by
+pouring out into the atmosphere, in a vaporous form, the water it draws
+up through its roots. This last operation, at the same time, lowers the
+temperature of the air in contact with or proximity to the wood, by the
+same law as in other cases of the conversion of water into vapor.
+
+As I have repeatedly said, we cannot measure the value of any one of
+these elements of climatic disturbance, raising or lowering of
+temperature, increase or diminution of humidity, nor can we say that in
+any one season, any one year, or any one fixed cycle, however long or
+short, they balance and compensate each other. They 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, moisture and drought. They serve as
+equalizers of temperature and humidity, and it is highly probable that,
+in analogy with most other works and workings of nature, they, at
+certain or uncertain periods, restore the equilibrium which, whether as
+lifeless masses or as living organisms, they may have temporarily
+disturbed.
+
+When, therefore, man destroyed these natural harmonizers of climatic
+discords, he sacrificed an important conservative power, though it is
+far from certain that he has thereby affected the mean, however much he
+may have exaggerated the extremes of atmospheric temperature and
+humidity, or, in other words, may have increased the range and
+lengthened the scale of thermometric and hygrometric variation.
+
+
+_Influence of the Forest on Temperature and Precipitation._
+
+Aside from the question of compensation, it does not seem probable that
+the forests sensibly affect the total quantity of precipitation, or the
+general mean of atmospheric temperature of the globe, or even that they
+had this influence when their extent was vastly greater than at present.
+The waters cover about three fourths of the face of the earth,[173] and
+if we deduct the frozen zones, the peaks and crests of lofty mountains
+and their craggy slopes, the Sahara and other great African and Asiatic
+deserts, and all such other portions of the solid surface as are
+permanently unfit for the growth of wood, we shall 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--enormously preponderate. It is, upon the whole, not
+probable that so small an extent of forest, so situated, could produce
+an appreciable influence on the _general_ climate of the globe, though
+it might appreciably affect the local action of all climatic elements.
+The total annual amount of solar heat absorbed and radiated by the
+earth, and the sum of terrestrial evaporation and atmospheric
+precipitation must be supposed constant; but the distribution of heat
+and of humidity is exposed to disturbance in both time and place, by a
+multitude of local causes, among which the presence or absence of the
+forest is doubtless one.
+
+So far as we are able to sum up the general results, it would appear
+that, in countries in the temperate zone still chiefly covered with
+wood, the summers would be cooler, moister, shorter, 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, though there is some conflict of testimony and of opinion on
+this point, and some apparently well-established exceptions to
+particular branches of what appears to be the general law.
+
+One of these occurs both in climates where the cold of winter is severe
+enough to freeze the ground to a considerable depth, as in Sweden and
+the Northern States of the American Union, and in milder zones, where
+the face of the earth is exposed to cold mountain winds, as in some
+parts of Italy and of France; for there, as we have seen, the winter is
+believed to extend itself into the months which belong to the spring,
+later than at periods when the forest covered the greater part of the
+ground.[174] More causes than one doubtless contribute to this result;
+but in the case of Sweden and the United States, the most obvious
+explanation of the fact is to be found in the loss of the shelter
+afforded to the ground by the thick coating of leaves which the forest
+sheds 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 half thawed, several times during the winter. The water from the
+melting snow runs into the depressions, and when, after a day or two of
+warm sunshine or tepid rain, the cold returns, it is consolidated to
+ice, and the bared ridges and swells of earth are deeply frozen.[175] It
+requires many days of mild weather to raise the temperature of soil in
+this condition, and of the air in contact with it, to that of the earth
+in the forests of the same climatic region. Flora is already plaiting
+her sylvan wreath before the corn flowers which are to deck the garland
+of Ceres have waked from their winter's sleep; and it is not a popular
+error to believe that, where man has substituted his artificial crops
+for the spontaneous harvest of nature, spring delays her coming.
+
+In many cases, the apparent change in the period of the seasons is a
+purely local phenomenon, which is probably compensated by a higher
+temperature in other months, without any real disturbance of the average
+thermometrical equilibrium. We may easily suppose that there are
+analogous partial deviations from the general law of precipitation; and,
+without 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 even the mean temperature of the forest is below
+that of the open country in the same latitude. If the air in a wood is
+cooler than that around it, it must reduce the temperature of the
+atmospheric stratum immediately above it, and, of course, whenever a
+saturated current sweeps over it, it must produce precipitation which
+would fall upon or near it.
+
+But the subject is so exceedingly complex and difficult, that it is
+safer to regard it as a historical problem, or at least as what lawyers
+call a mixed question of law and fact, than to attempt to decide it upon
+_� priori_ grounds. Unfortunately the evidence 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 followed by a diminution in the annual quantity of rain
+and dew. Indeed, it has long been a popularly settled belief that
+vegetation and the condensation and fall of atmospheric moisture are
+reciprocally necessary to each other, and even the poets sing of
+
+      Afric's barren sand,
+  Where nought can grow, because it raineth not,
+  And where no rain can fall to bless the land,
+  Because nought grows there.[176]
+
+Before stating the evidence on the general question and citing the
+judgments of the learned upon it, however, it is well to remark that the
+comparative variety or frequency of inundations in earlier and later
+centuries is not necessarily, 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 precipitation in its valley, than
+upon the rapidity with which it is conducted, on or under the surface of
+the ground, to the central artery that drains the basin. But this point
+will be more fully discussed in a subsequent chapter.
+
+There is another important observation which may properly be introduced
+here. It is not universally, or even generally true, that the atmosphere
+returns its humidity to the local source from which it receives it. The
+air is constantly in motion,
+
+  ----howling tempests scour amain
+  From sea to land, from land to sea;[177]
+
+and, therefore, it is always probable that the evaporation drawn up by
+the atmosphere from a given river, or sea, or forest, or meadow, will be
+discharged by precipitation, not at or near the point where it rose, but
+at a distance of miles, leagues, or even degrees. The currents of the
+upper air are invisible, and they leave behind them no landmark to
+record their track. We know not whence they come, or whither they go. We
+have a certain rapidly increasing acquaintance 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 waste square miles of fertile corn land; nor do we know
+whether the rain which feeds our brooklets is due to the transpiration
+from a neighboring forest, or to the evaporation from a far-off sea. If,
+therefore, it were proved that the annual quantity of rain and dew is
+now as great on the plains of Castile, for example, as it was when they
+were covered with the native forest, it would by no means follow that
+those woods did not augment the amount of precipitation elsewhere.
+
+But I return to the question. Beginning with the latest authorities, I
+cite a passage from Clav�.[178] After arguing that we cannot reason from
+the climatic effects of the forest in tropical and sub-tropical
+countries as to its influence in temperate latitudes, the author
+proceeds: "The action of the forests on rain, a consequence of that
+which they exercise on temperature, is difficult to estimate in our
+climate, but is very pronounced in hot countries, and is established by
+numerous examples. 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 drop of rain had fallen for three years.[179] The terrible
+droughts which desolate the Cape Verd Islands must also be attributed to
+the destruction of the forests. In the Island of St. Helena, where the
+wooded surface has considerably extended within a few years, it has been
+observed that the rain has increased in the same proportion. It is now
+in quantity double what it was during the residence of Napoleon. In
+Egypt, recent plantations have caused rains, which hitherto were almost
+unknown."
+
+Schacht[180] observes: "In wooded countries, the atmosphere is generally
+humid, and rain and dew fertilize the soil. As the lightning rod
+abstracts the electric fluid from the stormy sky, so the forest attracts
+to itself the rain from the clouds, which, in falling, refreshes not it
+alone, but extends its benefits to the neighboring fields. * * The
+forest, presenting a considerable surface for evaporation, gives to its
+own soil and to all the adjacent ground an abundant and enlivening dew.
+There falls, it is true, less dew on a tall and thick wood than on the
+surrounding meadows, which, 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 coasts:
+both water the soil and thereby insure its fertility." In a note upon
+this passage, quoting as authority the _Historia de la Conquista de las
+siete islas de Gran Canaria, de Juan de Abreu Galindo_, 1632, p. 47, he
+adds: "Old historians relate that a celebrated laurel in Ferro formerly
+furnished drinkable water to the inhabitants of the island. The water
+flowed from its foliage, uninterruptedly, drop by drop, and was
+collected in cisterns. Every morning the sea breeze drove a cloud toward
+the wonderful tree, which attracted it to its huge top," where it was
+condensed to a liquid form.
+
+In a number of the _Missionary Herald_, published at Boston, the date of
+which I have mislaid, the Rev. Mr. Van Lennep, well known as a competent
+observer, gives the following remarkable account of a similar fact
+witnessed by him in an excursion to the east of Tocat in Asia Minor:
+
+"In this region, some 3,000 feet above the sea, the trees are mostly
+oak, and attain a large size. I noticed an illustration of the influence
+of trees in general in collecting moisture. Despite the fog, of a week's
+duration, the ground was everywhere perfectly dry. The dry oak leaves,
+however, had gathered the water, and the branches and trunks of the
+trees were more or less wet. In many cases the water had run down the
+trunk and moistened the soil around the roots of the tree. In two
+places, 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 as it reached the ground. This is a most striking
+illustration of the acknowledged influence of trees in collecting
+moisture; and one cannot for a moment doubt, that the parched regions
+which commence at Sivas, and extend in one direction to the Persian
+Gulf, and in another to the Red Sea, were once a fertile garden, teeming
+with a prosperous population, before the forests which covered the
+hillsides were cut down--before the cedar and the fir tree were rooted
+up from the sides of Lebanon.
+
+"As we now descended the northern side of the watershed, we passed
+through the grove of walnut, oak, and black mulberry trees, which shade
+the village of Oktab, whose houses, cattle, and ruddy children were
+indicative of prosperity."
+
+Coultas thus argues: "The ocean, winds, and woods may be regarded as the
+several parts of a grand distillatory apparatus. The sea is the boiler
+in which vapor 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 naturally condenses the vapor, and showers of
+rain are thus distilled from the cloud masses which float in the
+atmosphere, by the woods beneath them."[181]
+
+Sir John F. W. Herschel enumerates among "the influences unfavorable to
+rain," "absence of vegetation in warm climates, and especially of trees.
+This is, no doubt," continues 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 injured by denudation
+(Earl of Lovelace on Climate, etc.), and, on the other hand, rain has
+become more frequent in Egypt since the more vigorous cultivation of the
+palm tree."
+
+Hohenstein remarks: "With respect to the temperature in the forest, I
+have already observed that, at certain times of the day and of the year,
+it is less than in the open field. Hence the woods may, in the daytime,
+in summer and toward the end of winter, tend to increase the fall of
+rain; but it is otherwise 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 to deposit their water.
+These considerations render it probable that the forest increases the
+quantity of rain; but they do not establish the certainty of this
+conclusion, because we have no positive numerical data to produce on the
+depression of temperature, and the humidity of the air in the
+woods."[182]
+
+Barth presents the following view of the subject: "The ground in the
+forest, as well as the atmospheric stratum over it, continues humid
+after the woodless districts have lost their moisture; and the air,
+charged with the humidity drawn from them, is usually carried away by
+the winds before it has deposited itself in a condensed form on the
+earth. Trees constantly transpire through their leaves a great quantity
+of moisture, which they partly absorb again by the same organs, while
+the greatest part of their supply is pumped up through their widely
+ramifying roots from considerable depths in the ground. Thus a constant
+evaporation is produced, which keeps the forest atmosphere moist even in
+long droughts, when all other sources of humidity in the forest itself
+are dried up. * * * Little is required to compel the stratum 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 follows that wooded
+districts have both more frequent and more abundant rain, and in general
+are more humid, than woodless regions; for what is true of the woods
+themselves, in this respect, is true also of their treeless
+neighborhood, which, in consequence of the ready mobility of the air and
+its constant changes, receives a share of the characteristics of the
+forest atmosphere, coolness and moisture. * * * When the districts
+stripped of trees have long been deprived of rain and dew, * * * and the
+grass and the fruits of the field are ready to wither, the grounds which
+are surrounded by woods are green and flourishing. By night they are
+refreshed with dew, which is never wanting in the moist air of the
+forest, and in due season they are watered by a beneficent shower, or a
+mist which rolls slowly over them."[183]
+
+Asbj�rnsen, after adducing the familiar theoretical arguments on this
+point, adds: "The rainless territories in Peru and North Africa
+establish this conclusion, and numerous other examples show that woods
+exert an influence in producing rain, and that rain fails where they are
+wanting; for many countries have, by the destruction of the forests,
+been deprived of rain, moisture, springs, and watercourses, which are
+necessary for vegetable growth. * * * The narratives of travellers show
+the deplorable consequences of felling the woods in the Island of
+Trinidad, Martinique, San Domingo, and indeed, in almost the entire
+West Indian group. * * * In Palestine and many other parts of Asia and
+Northern Africa, which in ancient times 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 planted with
+trees, this effect has been manifest, and similar observations have been
+made in several places in Southern France. In Lower Egypt, both at Cairo
+and near Alexandria, rain rarely fell in considerable quantity--for
+example, during the French occupation of Egypt, about 1798, it did not
+rain for sixteen months--but since Mehemet Aali and Ibrahim Pacha
+executed their vast plantations (the former alone having planted more
+than twenty millions of olive and fig trees, cottonwood, oranges,
+acacias, planes, &c.), there now falls a good deal of rain, especially
+along the coast, in the months of November, December, and January; and
+even at Cairo it rains both oftener and more abundantly, so that real
+showers are no rarity."[184]
+
+Babinet, in one of his lectures,[185] cites the supposed fact of the
+increase of rain in Egypt in consequence of the planting of trees, and
+thus remarks upon it: "A few years ago it never rained in Lower Egypt.
+The constant north winds, which almost exclusively prevail there, passed
+without obstruction over a surface bare of vegetation. Grain was kept
+on the roofs in Alexandria, without 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 Meuse, which is as remarkable for its volume as for the small extent
+of its basin. With respect to the retardation of the atmospheric
+currents, and the effects of that retardation, one of my illustrious
+colleagues, M. Mignet, who is not less a profound thinker than an
+eloquent writer, suggested to me that, to produce rain, a forest was as
+good as a mountain, and this is literally true."
+
+Monestier-Savignat arrives at this conclusion: "Forests on the one hand
+diminish evaporation; on the other, they act on the atmosphere as
+refrigerating causes. The second scale of the balance predominates over
+the other, for it is established that in wooded countries it rains
+oftener, and that, the quantity of rain being equal, they are more
+humid."[187]
+
+Boussingault--whose observations on the drying up of lakes and springs,
+from the destruction of the woods, in tropical America, have often been
+cited as a conclusive proof that the quantity of rain 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 on a subsequent page, he
+concludes that, "arguing from meteorological facts collected in the
+equinoctial regions, there is reason to presume that clearings diminish
+the annual fall of rain."[188]
+
+The same eminent author proposes series of observations on the level of
+natural lakes, especially on those without outlet, as a means of
+determining the increase or diminution of precipitation in their basins,
+and, of course, of measuring the effect of clearing when such
+operations take place within those basins. But it must be observed that
+lakes without a visible outlet are of very rare occurrence, and besides,
+where no superficial 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 of a lake is to be ascribed to infiltration, to
+percolation, or to evaporation.[189] Further, we are, in general, as
+little able to affirm that a given lake derives all its water from the
+fall of rain within its geographical basin, or that it receives all the
+water that falls in that basin except what evaporates from the ground,
+as we are to show that all its superfluous water is carried off by
+visible channels and by evaporation.
+
+Suppose the strata of the mountains on two sides of a lake, east and
+west, to be tilted in the same direction, and that those of the hill on
+the east side incline toward the lake, those of that on the west side
+from it. In this case a large proportion of the rain which falls on the
+eastern slope of the eastern hill may find its way between the strata to
+the lake, and an equally large proportion of the precipitation upon the
+eastern slope of the western ridge may escape out of the basin by
+similar channels. In such case the clearing of the _outer_ slopes of
+either or both mountains, while the forests of the _inner_ declivities
+remained intact, might affect the quantity of water 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 of natural lakes, then, cannot be relied upon as
+a proof, still less as a measure of an increase or diminution in the
+fall of rain within their geographical basins, resulting from the
+felling of the woods which covered them; though such phenomena afford
+very strong presumptive evidence that the supply of water is somehow
+augmented or lessened. The supply is, in most cases, derived much less
+from the precipitation which falls directly upon the surface of lakes,
+than from waters which flow above or under the ground around them, and
+which, in the latter case, often come from districts not comprised
+within what superficial geography would regard as belonging to the lake
+basins.
+
+It is, upon the whole, evident that the question can hardly be
+determined except by the comparison of pluviometrical observations made
+at a given station before and after the destruction of the woods. Such
+observations, unhappily, are scarcely 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
+Institution at Washington is well situated for directing the attention
+of observers in the newer territory of the United States to this
+subject, and it is to be hoped that it will not fail to avail itself of
+its facilities for this purpose.
+
+Numerous other authorities might be cited in support of the proposition
+that forests tend, at least in certain latitudes and at certain seasons,
+to produce rain; but though the arguments of the advocates of this
+doctrine are very plausible, not to say convincing, their opinions are
+rather _� priori_ conclusions from general meteorological laws, than
+deductions from facts of observation, and it is remarkable that there is
+so little direct evidence on the subject.
+
+On the other hand, Foissac expresses the opinion that forests have no
+influence on precipitation, beyond that of promoting the deposit of dew
+in their vicinity, and he states, as a fact of experience, that the
+planting of large vegetables, and especially of trees, is a very
+efficient means 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 diminution of volume is to be ascribed to a
+decrease of precipitation in consequence of the felling of the forests,
+and states, what other physicists confirm, that, during the same period,
+meteorological records in various parts of Europe show rather an
+augmentation than a reduction of rain.[191]
+
+The observations of Belgrand tend to show, contrary to the general
+opinion, that less rain falls in wooded than in denuded districts. He
+compared the precipitation for the year 1852, at Vezelay in the valley
+of the Bouchat, and at Avallon in the valley of the Greneti�re. At the
+first of these places it was 881 millim�tres, at the latter 581
+millim�tres. 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 proportions of
+forest and cultivated country around them, the basin of the Bouchat
+being entirely bare, while that of the Greneti�re is well wooded.[192]
+Observations in the same valleys, considered with reference to the
+seasons, show the following pluviometric results:
+
+FOR LA GRENETI�RE.
+
+  February, 1852,   42.2 millim�tres precipitation.
+  November,  "      23.8      "           "
+  January,  1853,   35.4      "           "
+                   -----
+           Total,  106.4 in three cold months.
+
+  September, 1851,  27.1 millim�tres precipitation.
+  May,       1852,  20.9      "           "
+  June,       "     56.3      "           "
+  July,       "     22.8      "           "
+  September,  "     22.8      "           "
+                   -----
+           Total,  149.9 in five warm months.
+
+FOR LE BOUCHAT.
+
+  February, 1852,   51.3 millim�tres precipitation.
+  November,  "      36.6      "           "
+  January,  1853,   92.0      "           "
+                   -----
+           Total,  179.9 in three cold months.
+
+  September, 1851,  43.8 millim�tres precipitation.
+  May,       1852,  13.2      "           "
+  June,       "     55.5      "           "
+  July,       "     19.5      "           "
+  September,  "     26.5      "           "
+                   -----
+           Total,  158.5 in five warm months.
+
+These observations, so far as they go, seem to show that more rain falls
+in cleared than in wooded countries, but this result is so contrary to
+what has been generally accepted as a theoretical conclusion, that
+further experiment is required to determine the question.
+
+Becquerel--whose treatise on the climatic effects of the destruction of
+the forest is the fullest general discussion of that subject known to
+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 any
+influence upon precipitation, the presumption is that he rejects the
+doctrine of its importance as an agent in producing the fall of rain.
+
+The effect of the forest on precipitation, then, is not entirely free
+from doubt, and we cannot positively affirm that the total annual
+quantity of rain is diminished or increased by the destruction of the
+woods, though both theoretical considerations and the balance of
+testimony strongly 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 more uniform degree of humidity in the
+atmosphere than is observed in cleared grounds. Scarcely less can it be
+questioned that they promote the frequency of showers, and, if they do
+not augment the amount of precipitation, they equalize its distribution
+through the different seasons.
+
+
+_Influence of the Forest on the Humidity of the Soil._
+
+I have hitherto confined myself to the influence of the forest on
+meteorological conditions, a subject, as has been seen, full of
+difficulty and uncertainty. Its comparative effects on the temperature,
+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
+and greater superficial watercourses, are much less disputable as well
+as more easily estimated, and much more important, than its possible
+value as a cause of strictly climatic equilibrium or disturbance.
+
+The action of the forest on the earth is chiefly mechanical, but the
+organic process of abstraction of water by its roots affects the
+quantity of that fluid contained in the vegetable mould, and in the
+mineral strata near the surface, and, consequently, the consistency of
+the soil. In treating of the effects of trees on the moisture of the
+atmosphere, I have said that the forest, by interposing a canopy between
+the sky and the ground, and by covering the surface with a thick mantle
+of fallen leaves, at 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 than that of cleared land. This
+agrees with experience. The soil of the forest is always moist, except
+in the extremest droughts, and it is exceedingly rare that a primitive
+wood suffers from want of humidity. How far this accumulation of water
+affects the condition of neighboring grounds by lateral infiltration, we
+do not know, but we shall see, in a subsequent chapter, that water is
+conveyed to great distances by this process, and we may hence infer that
+the influence in question is an important one.
+
+
+_Influence of the Forest on the Flow of Springs._
+
+It is well established that the protection afforded by the forest
+against the escape of moisture from its soil, insures the permanence and
+regularity of natural springs, not only within the limits of the wood,
+but at some distance beyond its borders, and thus contributes to the
+supply of an element essential to both vegetable and animal life. As the
+forests are destroyed, the springs which flowed from the woods, and,
+consequently, the greater watercourses fed by them, diminish 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 years ago, by simply
+allowing the bushes and young trees to grow up on a rocky knoll, not
+more than half an acre in extent, immediately above it, and has since
+continued to flow uninterruptedly. The uplands in the Atlantic States
+formerly abounded in sources and rills, but in many parts of those
+States which have been cleared for above a generation or two, the hill
+pastures now suffer severely from drought, and in dry seasons no longer
+afford either water or herbage for cattle.
+
+Foissac, indeed, quotes from the elder Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, xxxi, c. 30)
+a passage affirming that the felling of the woods gives rise to springs
+which did not exist before because the water of the soil was absorbed by
+the trees; and the same meteorologist declares, as I observed in
+treating of the effect of the forest on atmospheric humidity, that the
+planting of trees tends to drain marshy ground, because the roots absorb
+more water than falls from the air. But Pliny's 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 reason, the cabins of the first settlers
+were perched upon the hills. As the forests have been from time to time
+removed, and the face of the earth laid open to the air and sun, the
+moisture has been evaporated, and the removal of the highways and of
+human habitations from the bleak hills to the sheltered valleys, is one
+of the most agreeable among the many improvements which later
+generations have witnessed in the interior of New England and the other
+Northern States.
+
+Almost every treatise on the economy of the forest adduces numerous
+facts in support of the doctrine that the clearing of the woods tends to
+diminish the flow of springs and the humidity of the soil, and it might
+seem unnecessary to bring forward further evidence on this point.[194]
+But the subject is of too much practical importance and of too great
+philosophical interest to be summarily disposed of; and it ought
+particularly to be noticed that there is at least one case--that of some
+loose soils which, when bared of wood, very rapidly absorb and transmit
+to lower strata the water they receive from the atmosphere, as argued by
+Vall�s[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 then be conducted along it, until,
+finally, at the outcropping of this stratum, it bursts from a hillside
+as a running spring. But such instances are doubtless too rare to form a
+frequent or an important exception to the general law, because it is
+only under very uncommon circumstances that rain water runs off over the
+surface of forest ground instead of sinking into it, and very rarely the
+case that such a soil as has just been supposed is covered by a layer of
+vegetable earth thick enough to retain, until it is evaporated, all the
+rain that falls upon it, without imparting any water to the strata below
+it.
+
+If we look at the point under discussion as purely a question of fact,
+to be determined by positive evidence and not by argument, the
+observations of Boussingault are, both in the circumstances they detail,
+and in the weight of authority to be attached to the testimony, among
+the most important yet recorded. They are embodied in the fourth section
+of the twentieth chapter of that writer's _�conomie Rurale_, and I have
+already referred to them on page 191 for another 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 the increasing breadth of the belt of pebbles along their
+banks seems to prove the loss of a part of their water; and, finally,
+abundant springs have almost dried up. These observations have been
+principally made in valleys bounded by high mountains, and it is thought
+to have been noticed that this diminution of the waters has immediately
+followed the epoch when the inhabitants have begun to destroy,
+unsparingly, the woods which were spread over the face of the land.
+
+"These facts would indicate that, where clearings have been made,
+it rains less than formerly, and this is the generally received
+opinion. * * * But while the facts I have stated have been established,
+it has been observed, at the same time, that, since the clearing of the
+mountains, the rivers and the torrents, which seemed to have lost a part
+of their water, sometimes suddenly swell, and that, occasionally, to a
+degree which causes great disasters. Besides, after violent storms,
+springs which had become almost exhausted have been observed to burst
+out with impetuosity, 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. For instance: if the low water of
+the Rhone during one part of the year were exactly compensated by a
+sufficient number of floods, it would follow that this river would
+convey to the Mediterranean the same volume of water which it carried to
+that sea in ancient times, before the period when the countries near its
+source were stripped of their woods, and when, probably, its mean depth
+was not subject to so great variations as in our days. If this were so,
+the forests would have this value--that of regulating, of economizing in
+a certain sort, the drainage of the rain water.
+
+"If running streams really become rarer in proportion as clearing is
+extended, it follows either that the rain is less abundant, or that
+evaporation is greatly favored by a surface which is no longer protected
+by trees against the rays of the sun and the wind. These two causes,
+acting in the same direction, must often be cumulative in their effects,
+and before we attempt to fix the value of each, it is proper 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 this effect is due. * * * I
+shall attach no value except to facts which have taken place under the
+eye of man, as it is the influence of his labors on the meteorological
+condition of the atmosphere which I propose to estimate. What I am about
+to detail has been observed particularly in America, but I shall
+endeavor to establish, that what I believe to be true of America would
+be equally so for any other continent.
+
+"One of the most interesting parts of Venezuela is, no doubt, the valley
+of Aragua. Situated at a short distance from the coast, and endowed,
+from its elevation, with various climates and a soil of unexampled
+fertility, its agriculture embraces at once the crops suited to tropical
+regions and to Europe. Wheat succeeds 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
+no outlet to the ocean, form, by their union, the beautiful Lake of
+Tacarigua or Valencia. This lake, according to Humboldt, is larger than
+that of Neufch�tel; it is at an elevation of 439 m�tres [= 1,460 English
+feet] above the sea, and its greatest length does not exceed two leagues
+and a half [= seven English miles].
+
+"At the time of Humboldt's visit to the valley of Aragua, the
+inhabitants were struck by the gradual diminution which the lake had
+been undergoing for thirty years. In fact, by comparing the descriptions
+given by historians 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, had often traversed the
+valley of Aragua, says positively that New Valencia was founded, in
+1555, at half a league from the Lake of Tacarigua; in 1800, Humboldt
+found this city 5,260 m�tres [= 3-1/3 English miles] from the shore.
+
+"The aspect of the soil furnished new proofs. Many hillocks on the plain
+retain the name of islands, which they more justly bore when they were
+surrounded by water. The ground laid bare by the retreat of the lake was
+converted into 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 built in 1740 on the island of Cabrera, was
+now on a peninsula; and, finally, on two granitic islands, those of Cura
+and Cabo Blanco, Humboldt observed among the shrubs, some m�tres above
+the water, fine sand filled with helicites.
+
+"These clear and positive facts suggested numerous explanations, all
+assuming a subterranean outlet, which permitted the discharge of the
+water to the ocean. Humboldt disposed of these hypotheses, and, after a
+careful examination of the locality, the distinguished traveller did not
+hesitate to ascribe the diminution of the waters of the lake to the
+numerous clearings which had been made in the valley of Aragua within
+half a century. * * *
+
+"In 1800, the valley of Aragua possessed a population as dense as that
+of any of the best-peopled parts of France. * * * Such was the
+prosperous condition of this fine country when Humboldt occupied the
+Hacienda de Cura.
+
+"Twenty-two years later, I explored the valley of Aragua, fixing my
+residence in the little town of Maracay. For some years previous, the
+inhabitants had observed that the waters of the lake were no longer
+retiring, but, on the contrary, were sensibly rising. Grounds, not long
+before occupied by plantations, 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 to flood the
+road between Maracay and New Valencia. The fears which the inhabitants
+of the shores had so long entertained were reversed. * * * Those who had
+explained the diminution of the lake by the supposition of subterranean
+channels were suspected of blocking them up, to prove themselves in the
+right.
+
+"During the twenty-two years which had elapsed, important political
+events had occurred. Venezuela no longer belonged to Spain. The peaceful
+valley of Aragua had been the theatre of bloody struggles, and a war of
+extermination 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 plantations were abandoned, and the forest, which in the
+tropics so rapidly encroaches, had soon recovered a large proportion of
+the soil which man had wrested from it by more than a century of
+constant and painful labor.
+
+"At the time of the growing prosperity of the valley of Aragua, the
+principal affluents of the lake were diverted, to serve for irrigation,
+and the rivers were dry for more than six months of the year. At the
+period of my visit, their waters, no longer employed, flowed freely."
+
+Boussingault proceeds to state that two lakes near Ubate in New Granada,
+at an elevation of 2,562 m�tres (= 8,500 English feet), where there is a
+constant temperature 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 extending over the abandoned
+bed; that, by inquiry of old hunters and by examination of parish
+records, he found that extensive clearings had been made and were still
+going on.
+
+He found, also, that the length of the Lake of Fuquen�, in the same
+valley, had, within two centuries, been reduced from ten leagues to one
+and a half, its breadth from three leagues to one. At the former period,
+timber was abundant, and the neighboring mountains were 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, similar to those already
+detailed, might be cited, and he proceeds to show, by several examples,
+that the waters of other lakes in the same regions, where the valleys
+had always been bare of wood, or where the forests had not been
+disturbed, had undergone no change of level.
+
+Boussingault further maintains that the lakes of Switzerland have
+sustained a depression of level since the too prevalent destruction of
+the woods, and arrives at the general conclusion, that, "in countries
+where great clearings have been made, there has most probably been a
+diminution in the living waters which flow upon the surface of the
+ground." This conclusion he further supports by two examples: one, where
+a fine spring, 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 rain gauges, established as soon as the
+decrease of water began to excite alarm, showed a greater fall of rain
+for the second year of observation than the first, yet there was no
+appreciable increase in the flow of the mill streams. From these cases,
+the distinguished physicist infers that very restricted local clearings
+may diminish and even suppress springs and brooks, without any reduction
+in the total quantity of rain.
+
+It will have been noticed that these observations, with the exception of
+the last two cases, do not bear directly upon the question of the
+diminution of springs by clearings, but they logically infer it from the
+subsidence of the natural reservoirs which springs once filled. There
+is, however, no want of positive evidence on this subject.
+
+Marschand cites the following instances: "Before the felling of the
+woods, within the last few years, in the valley of the Soulce, the
+Combe-�s-Mounin and the Little Valley, the Sorne furnished a regular
+and sufficient supply 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 that it has been necessary to change
+the water wheels, because those of the old construction are no longer
+able to drive the machinery, and at last to introduce a steam engine to
+prevent the stoppage of the works for want of water.
+
+"When the factory of St. Ursanne was established, the river that
+furnished its power was abundant, long known and tried, and had, from
+time immemorial, sufficed for the machinery of a previous factory.
+Afterward, the woods near its sources were cut. The supply of water fell
+off in consequence, the factory wanted water for half the year, and was
+at last obliged to stop altogether.
+
+"The spring of Combefoulat, in the commune of Seleate, was well known as
+one of the best in the country; it was remarkably abundant and
+sufficient, in spite of the severest droughts, to supply all the
+fountains of the town; but, as soon as considerable forests were felled
+in Combe-de-pr� Martin and in the valley of Combefoulat, the famous
+spring which lies below these woods has become a mere thread of water,
+and disappears altogether in times of drought.
+
+"The spring of Varieux, which formerly supplied the castle of Pruntrut,
+lost more than half its water after the clearing of Varieux and
+Rongeoles. These woods have been replanted, the young trees are growing
+well, and with the woods, the waters of the spring are increasing.
+
+"The Dog Spring between Pruntrut and Bressancourt has entirely vanished
+since the surrounding forests grounds were brought under cultivation.
+
+"The Wolf Spring, in the commune of Soubey, furnishes a remarkable
+example of the influence of the woods upon fountains. A few years ago
+this spring did not exist. At the place where it now rises, a small
+thread of water was observed after very long rains, but the stream
+disappeared with the rain. The spot is in the 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
+occasional rill, and furnished abundant water in the longest droughts.
+For forty or fifty years, this spring was considered the best in the
+Clos du Doubs. A few years since, the grove was felled, and the ground
+turned again to a pasture. The spring disappeared with the wood, and is
+now as dry as it was ninety years ago."[197]
+
+"The influence of the forest on springs," says Hummel, "is strikingly
+shown by an instance at Heilbronn. The woods on the hills surrounding
+the town are cut in regular succession every twentieth year. As the
+annual cuttings approach a certain point, the springs yield less water,
+some of them none at all; but as the young growth shoots up, they now
+more and more freely, and at length bubble up again in all their
+original abundance."[198]
+
+Piper states the following case: "Within about half a mile of my
+residence there is a pond upon which mills have been standing for a long
+time, dating back, I believe, to the first settlement of the town. These
+have been kept in constant operation until within some twenty or thirty
+years, when the supply of water began to fail. The 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 season of freshets; and, what was never
+heard of before, the stream itself has been entirely dry. Within the
+last ten years a new growth of wood has sprung up on most of the land
+formerly occupied by the old forest; and now the water runs through the
+year, notwithstanding the great droughts of the last few years, going
+back from 1856."
+
+Dr. Piper quotes from a letter of William C. Bryant the following
+remarks: "It is a common observation that our summers are become drier,
+and our streams smaller. Take the Cuyahoga as an illustration. Fifty
+years ago large barges loaded with goods went up and down that river,
+and one of the vessels engaged in the 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, at New
+Portage, and sailed to New Orleans without breaking bulk. Now, the river
+hardly affords a supply of water at New Portage for the canal. The same
+may be said of other streams--they are drying up. And from the same
+cause--the destruction of our forests--our summers are growing drier,
+and our winters colder."[199]
+
+No observer has more carefully studied the influence of the forest upon
+the flow of the waters, or reasoned more ably on the ascertained
+phenomena than Cantegril. The facts presented in the following case,
+communicated by him to the _Ami des Sciences_ for December, 1859, are as
+nearly conclusive as any single instance well can be:
+
+"In the territory of the commune of Labrugui�re, there is a forest of
+1,834 hectares [4,530 acres], known by the name of the Forest of
+Montaut, and belonging to that commune. It extends along the northern
+slope of the Black Mountains. The soil is granitic, the maximum altitude
+1,243 m�tres [4,140 feet], and the inclination ranges between 15 and 60
+to 100.
+
+"A small current of water, the brook of Caunan, takes its rise in this
+forest, and receives the waters of two thirds of its surface. At the
+lower extremity of the wood and on the stream are several fulleries,
+each requiring a force of eight horse-power to drive the water wheels
+which work the stampers. The commune of Labrugui�re had been for a long
+time famous for its opposition to forest laws. Trespasses and abuses 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 the current of
+the Caunan. The violence of the floods was sometimes such that they were
+obliged to stop the machinery for some time. During the summer another
+inconvenience was felt. If the dry weather continued a little longer
+than usual, the delivery of water became insignificant. Each fullery
+could for the most part only employ a single set of stampers, and it was
+not unusual to see the work entirely suspended.
+
+"After 1840, the municipal authority succeeded in enlightening the
+population as to their true interests. Protected by a more watchful
+supervision, aided by well-managed replantation, the forest has
+continued to improve to the present day. In proportion to the
+restoration of the forest, the condition of 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 rain;
+the floods follow a regular progression till they reach their maximum,
+and decrease in the same manner. Finally, the fulleries are no longer
+forced to suspend work in summer; the water is always sufficiently
+abundant to allow the employment of two sets of stampers at least, and
+often even of three.
+
+"This example is remarkable in this respect, that, all other
+circumstances having remained the same, the changes in the action of the
+stream can be attributed only to the restoration of the forest--changes
+which may be thus summed up: diminution of flood water during
+rains--increase of delivery at other seasons."
+
+
+_The Forest in Winter._
+
+To estimate rightly the importance of the forest as a natural apparatus
+for accumulating the water that falls upon the surface and transmitting
+it to the subjacent strata, we must compare the condition and properties
+of its soil with those of cleared and cultivated earth, and examine the
+consequently different action of these soils at different seasons of the
+year. The disparity between them is greatest in climates where, as in
+the Northern American States and 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 or
+near the tropics, but they are not wanting in higher latitudes; for a
+large part of Asiatic and even of European Turkey is almost wholly
+deprived of summer rains. In the principal regions occupied by European
+cultivation, and where alone the questions discussed in this volume are
+recognized as having, at present, any practical importance, rain falls
+at all seasons, and it is to these regions that, on this point as well
+as others, I chiefly confine my attention.
+
+The influence of the forest upon the waters of the earth has been more
+studied in France than in any other part of the civilized world, because
+that country has, in recent times, suffered most severely from the
+destruction of the woods. But in the southern provinces of that empire,
+where the evils resulting from this cause are 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 are gone. For these reasons, the specific
+character of the forest, as a winter reservoir of moisture in countries
+with a cold and dry atmosphere, has not attracted so much attention in
+France and Northern Europe as it deserves in the United States, where an
+excessive climate renders that function of the woods more important.
+
+In New England, irregular as the climate is, the first autumnal snows
+usually fall before the ground is frozen at all, or when the frost
+extends at most to the depth of only a few inches. In the woods,
+especially those situated upon the elevated ridges which supply the
+natural irrigation of the soil and feed 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 unfavorable
+for radiation, but, even when it is of considerable thickness, it is not
+wholly impervious to the rays of the sun, and for this reason, as well
+as from the warmth of lower strata, the frozen crust, if one has been
+formed, is soon thawed, and does not again fall below the freezing point
+during the winter.
+
+The snow in contact with the earth now begins to melt, with greater or
+less rapidity, according to the relative temperature of the earth and
+the air, while the water resulting from its dissolution is imbibed by
+the vegetable mould, and carried off by infiltration so fast that both
+the 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
+partially protected from the action of the sun, and as very little water
+runs off in the winter by superficial watercourses, except in rare cases
+of sudden thaw, there can be no question that much the greater part of
+the snow deposited in the forest is slowly melted and absorbed by the
+earth.
+
+The quantity of snow that falls in extensive forests, far from the open
+country, has seldom been ascertained by direct observation, because
+there are few meteorological stations in such situations. In the
+Northeastern border States of the American Union, the ground in the deep
+woods is covered with snow four or five months, and the proportion of
+water which falls in 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 unevaporated in the forest, for many days
+after snow let fall at the same time in the cleared field has
+disappeared without either a thaw to melt it or a wind powerful enough
+to drift it away. Even when bared of their leaves, the trees of a wood
+obstruct, in an important degree, both the direct action of the sun's
+rays on the snow, and the movement of drying and thawing winds.
+
+Dr. Piper records the following observations: "A body of snow, one foot
+in depth, and sixteen feet square, was protected from the wind by a
+tight board fence about five feet high, 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
+on, which lasted about a fortnight, the larger body of snow was entirely
+dissolved in less than a week, while the smaller body was not wholly
+gone at the end of the second week.
+
+"Equal quantities of snow were placed in vessels of the same kind and
+capacity, the temperature of the air being seventy degrees. In the 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 first was
+dissolved in sixteen minutes, while the latter had a small unthawed
+proportion remaining at the end of eighty-five minutes."[201]
+
+The snow in the woods is protected in the same way, though not literally
+to the same extent as by the fence in one of these cases and the cover
+in the other. Little of the winter precipitation, therefore, is lost by
+evaporation, and as it slowly melts at bottom it is absorbed by the
+earth, and but a very small quantity of water runs off from the surface.
+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 sinking deep enough
+to reach wells and springs, which, of course, depend very much on winter
+rains and snows for their entire supply. This observation, though
+specially true of cleared and cultivated grounds, is not wholly
+inapplicable to the forest, particularly when, as is too often the case
+in Europe, the underwood and the decaying leaves are removed.
+
+The general effect of the forest in cold climates is to assimilate the
+winter state of the ground to that of wooded regions under softer skies;
+and it is a circumstance well worth noting, that in 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 umbrella pines, ilexes, cork oaks, and
+other trees of persistent foliage, whose evergreen leaves afford to the
+soil a protection analogous to that which it derives from snow in more
+northern climates.
+
+The water imbibed by the soil in winter sinks until it meets a more or
+less impermeable, or a saturated stratum, and then, by unseen conduits,
+slowly finds its way to the channels 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
+percolating through the vegetable and mineral layers, acquires their
+temperature, and is chemically affected by their action, but it carries
+very little matter in mechanical suspension.
+
+The process I have described is a slow one, and the supply of moisture
+derived from the snow, augmented by the rains of the following seasons,
+keeps the forest ground, where the surface is level or but moderately
+inclined, in a state of saturation through almost the whole 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 highlands. Their channels
+are subject only to slow and gradual changes, and they carry down to the
+lakes and the sea no accumulation of sand or silt to fill up their
+outlets, and, by raising their beds, to force them to spread over the
+low grounds near their mouth.[202]
+
+In this state of things, destructive tendencies of all sorts are
+arrested or compensated, and tree, bird, beast, and fish, alike, find a
+constant uniformity of condition most favorable to the regular and
+harmonious coexistence of them all.
+
+
+_General Consequences of the Destruction of the Forest._
+
+With the disappearance of the forest, all is changed. At one season, the
+earth parts with its warmth by radiation to an open sky--receives, at
+another, an immoderate heat from the unobstructed rays of the sun. Hence
+the climate becomes excessive, and the soil is alternately parched by
+the fervors of summer, and seared by the rigors of winter. Bleak winds
+sweep unresisted over its surface, drift away the snow that sheltered it
+from the frost, and dry up its scanty moisture. The precipitation
+becomes as regular as the temperature; the melting snows and vernal
+rains, no longer absorbed by a loose and bibulous vegetable mould, rush
+over the frozen surface, and pour down the valleys seaward, instead of
+filling a retentive bed of absorbent earth, and storing up a supply of
+moisture to feed perennial springs. The soil is bared of its covering of
+leaves, broken and loosened by the plough, deprived of the fibrous
+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 by the
+deposition of the mineral and vegetable matter carried down by the
+waters. The channels of great rivers become unnavigable, their estuaries
+are choked up, and harbors which once sheltered large navies are shoaled
+by dangerous sandbars. The earth, stripped of its vegetable glebe, grows
+less and less productive, and, consequently, less able to protect itself
+by weaving a new network of roots to bind its particles together, a new
+carpeting of turf to shield it from wind and sun and scouring rain.
+Gradually it becomes altogether barren. The washing of the soil from the
+mountains leaves bare ridges of sterile rock, and the rich organic mould
+which covered them, now swept down into the dank low grounds, promotes a
+luxuriance of aquatic vegetation that breeds fever, and more insidious
+forms of mortal disease, by its decay, and thus the earth is rendered no
+longer fit for the habitation of man.[203]
+
+To the general truth of this sad picture there are many exceptions, even
+in countries of excessive climates. Some of these are due to favorable
+conditions of surface, of geological structure, and of the distribution
+of rain; in many 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 the violation of her
+harmonies, though slow, is sure, and the gradual deterioration of soil
+and climate in such exceptional regions is as certain to result from the
+destruction of the woods as is any natural effect to follow its cause.
+
+In the vast farrago of crudities which the elder Pliny's ambition of
+encyclop�dic attainment and his ready credulity have gathered together,
+we meet some judicious observations. Among these we must reckon the
+remark with which 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 are stripped of the trees which formerly
+confined and absorbed the rains." The absorption here referred to is not
+that of the soil, but of the roots, which, Pliny supposed, drank up the
+water to feed the growth of the trees.
+
+Although this particular evil effect of too extensive clearing was so
+early noticed, the lesson seems to have been soon forgotten. The
+legislation of the Middle Ages in Europe is full of absurd provisions
+concerning the forests, which sovereigns sometimes destroyed because
+they 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 later
+ages to appreciate their geographical importance, and it is only in very
+recent times, only in a few European countries, that the too general
+felling of the woods has been recognized as the most destructive among
+the many causes of the physical deterioration of the earth.
+
+
+_Condition of the Forest, and its Literature in different Countries._
+
+The literature of the forest, which in England and America has not yet
+become sufficiently extensive to be known as a special branch of
+authorship, counts its thousands of volumes in Germany, Italy, and
+France. It is in 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 investigated. On the other hand, the purely
+economical aspects of sylviculture have been most satisfactorily
+expounded, and that art has been most philosophically discussed, and
+most skilfully and successfully practised, in Germany.
+
+The eminence of Italian theoretical hydrographers and the great ability
+of Italian hydraulic engineers are well known, but the specific
+geographical importance of the woods has not been so clearly recognized
+in Italy as in the states bordering it on the north and west. It is true
+that the face of nature has been as completely revolutionized by man,
+and that the action of torrents has created as wide and as hopeless
+devastation in that country as in France; but in the French Empire the
+desolation produced by clearing the forests is more recent,[205] has
+been more suddenly effected, and, therefore, excites a livelier and more
+general interest than in Italy, where public opinion does not so readily
+connect the effect with its true cause. Italy, too, from ancient habit,
+employs little wood in architectural 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 administration of this
+great public interest might have been understood. The woods which
+controlled and regulated the flow of the river sources were very often
+in one jurisdiction, the plains to be irrigated, or to be inundated by
+floods and desolated by torrents, in another. Concert of action on such
+a subject between a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties was
+obviously impossible, and nothing but the union of all the Italian
+states under a single government can render practicable the
+establishment of such arrangements for the conservation and restoration
+of the forests and the regulation of the flow of the waters as are
+necessary for the full development of the yet unexhausted resources of
+that fairest of lands, and even for the permanent maintenance of the
+present condition of its physical geography.
+
+The denudation of the Central and Southern Apennines and of the Italian
+declivity of the Western Alps began at a period of unknown antiquity,
+but it does not seem to have been carried to a very dangerous length
+until the foreign conquests and extended commerce of Rome created a
+greatly increased demand for wood for the construction of ships and for
+military material. The Eastern Alps, the Western Apennines, and the
+Maritime Alps retained their forests much later; but even here the want
+of wood, and the injury to the plains and the navigation of the rivers
+by sediment brought down by the torrents, led to some legislation for
+the protection of the forests, by the Republic of Venice in the
+fifteenth century, by that of 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 property in some of
+them were so burdensome that rural municipalities sometimes proposed to
+cede their common woods to the Government, without any other
+compensation than the remission of the taxes imposed on forest
+lands.[208] Under such circumstances, woodlands would soon become
+disafforested, and where facilities of transportation and a good demand
+for timber have increased the inducements to fell it, as upon the
+borders of the Mediterranean, the destruction of the forest and all the
+evils which attend it have gone on at a seriously alarming rate. It has
+even been calculated that four tenths of the area of the Ligurian
+provinces have been washed away or rendered incapable of cultivation by
+the felling of the woods.[209]
+
+The damp and cold climate of England requires the maintenance of
+household fires through a large part of the year. Contrivances for
+economizing fuel were of later introduction in that country than on the
+Continent. The soil, like the sky, was, in general, charged with
+humidity; its natural condition was unfavorable for common roads, and
+the transportation of so heavy a material as coal, by land, from the
+remote counties where alone it was mined in the Middle Ages, was costly
+and difficult. For all these reasons, the consumption of wood was large,
+and apprehensions of the exhaustion of the forests were excited at an
+early period. Legislation there, as elsewhere, proved ineffectual to
+protect them, and many authors of the sixteenth century express fears of
+serious evils from the wasteful economy of the people in this respect.
+Harrison, in his curious chapter "Of Woods and Marishes" in Holinshed's
+compilation, complains of the rapid decrease of the forests, and adds:
+"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, r�ed, 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 s�e
+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,
+and vpwards, after that rate, either by fr�e deed, copie hold, or fee
+farme, might plant one acre of wood, or sowe the same with oke mast,
+hasell, b�ech, and sufficient prouision be made that it may be cherished
+and kept. But I feare me that I should then liue too long, and so long,
+that I should either be wearie of the world, or the world of me."[210]
+Evelyn's "Silva," the first edition of which appeared in 1664, rendered
+an extremely important service to the cause of the woods, and there is
+no doubt that the ornamental plantations in which England far surpasses
+all other countries, are, in some measure, the fruit of Evelyn's
+enthusiasm. In England, however, arboriculture, the planting and nursing
+of single trees, has, until recently, been better understood than
+sylviculture, the sowing and training of the forest. But this latter
+branch of rural improvement is now pursued on a very considerable scale,
+though, so far as I know, not by the National Government.
+
+
+_The Influence of the Forest on Inundations._
+
+Besides the climatic question, which I have already sufficiently
+discussed, and the obvious inconveniences of a scanty supply of
+charcoal, of fuel, and of timber for architectural and naval
+construction and for the thousand other uses to which wood is applied in
+rural and domestic economy, and in the various industrial 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 transportation of earth, gravel, pebbles, and even of
+considerable masses of rock, from higher to lower levels, by torrents.
+There are, however, connected with this general subject, several other
+topics of minor or strictly local interest, or of more uncertain
+character, which I shall have occasion more fully to speak of hereafter.
+
+The first of these three principal subjects--the influence of the woods
+on springs and other living waters--has been already considered; and if
+the facts stated in that discussion are well established, and the
+conclusions I have drawn from them are logically sound, it would seem to
+follow, as a necessary corollary, that the action of the forest is as
+important in diminishing the frequency and violence 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 of rivers, and, consequently, the overflow of their
+banks, which constitutes what is called inundation. The mechanical
+resistance, too, offered by the trunks of trees and of undergrowth to
+the flow of water over the surface, tends sensibly to retard the
+rapidity of its descent down declivities, and to divert and divide
+streams which may have already accumulated from smaller threads of
+water.[211]
+
+Inundations are produced by the insufficiency of the natural channels of
+rivers to carry off the waters of their basins as fast as those waters
+flow into them. In accordance with the usual economy of nature, we
+should presume that she had everywhere provided the means of
+discharging, without disturbance of her general arrangements or abnormal
+destruction of her products, the precipitation which she sheds upon the
+face of the earth. Observation confirms this presumption, at least in
+the countries to which I confine my 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
+the currents. Even now the trees come down almost to the water's edge
+along the rivers, in the larger forests of the United States, and the
+surface of the streams seems liable to no great change in level or in
+rapidity of current. A circumstance almost conclusive as to the
+regularity of flow in forest rivers, is that they do not form large
+sedimentary deposits, at their points of discharge into lakes or larger
+streams, such accumulations beginning, or at least advancing far more
+rapidly, after the valleys are cleared.
+
+In the Northern United States, although inundations are sometimes
+produced in the height of summer by heavy rains, it will be found
+generally true that the most rapid rise of the waters, and, of course,
+the most destructive "freshets," as they are called in America, are
+produced by the sudden dissolution of the snow before the open ground is
+thawed in the spring. It frequently happens that a powerful thaw sets in
+after a long period of frost, and the snow which had been months in
+accumulating is dissolved and carried off in a few hours. When the snow
+is deep, it, to use a popular expression, "takes the frost out of the
+ground" in the woods, and, if it lies long enough, in the fields 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 often filled with drifts to the height
+of many feet. The knolls become frozen to a great depth; succeeding
+partial thaws melt the surface snow, and the water runs down into the
+furrows of ploughed fields, and other artificial and natural hollows,
+and then often freezes to solid ice. In this state of things, almost the
+entire surface of the cleared land is impervious to water, and from the
+absence of trees and the general smoothness of the ground, it offers
+little mechanical resistance to superficial currents. If, under these
+circumstances, warm weather accompanied by rain occurs, the rain and
+melted snow are swiftly hurried to the bottom of the valleys and
+gathered to raging torrents.
+
+It ought further to be considered that, though the lighter ploughed
+soils readily imbibe a great deal of water, yet the grass lands, and all
+the heavy and tenacious earths, absorb it in much smaller quantities,
+and less rapidly than the vegetable mould of the forest. Pasture,
+meadow, and clayey soils, taken together, greatly predominate over the
+sandy ploughed fields, in all large agricultural districts, and hence,
+even if, in the case we are supposing, the open ground chance to have
+been thawed before 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 bursts, from the hydrostatic
+pressure from below, or is violently torn up by the current, and is
+swept by the impetuous stream, in large masses and with resistless fury,
+against banks, bridges, dams, and mills erected near them. The bark of
+the trees along the rivers is often abraded, at a height of many feet
+above the ordinary water level, by cakes of floating ice, which are at
+last stranded by the receding flood on meadow or ploughland, to delay,
+by their chilling influence, the advent of the tardy spring.
+
+The surface of a forest, in its natural condition, can never pour forth
+such deluges of water as flow from cultivated soil. Humus, or vegetable
+mould, is capable of absorbing almost twice its own weight of water. The
+soil in a forest of deciduous foliage is composed of humus, 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 saturated, for it then
+gives off a portion of its moisture to the mineral earth below, and thus
+is ready to receive a new supply; and, besides, the bed of leaves not
+yet converted to mould takes up and retains a very considerable
+proportion of snow water, as well as of rain.
+
+In the warm climates of Southern Europe, as I have already said, the
+functions of the forest, so far as the disposal of the water of
+precipitation is concerned, are essentially 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 not
+the characteristics which mark them in the latter, nor is the
+conservative influence of the woods in winter relatively so important,
+though it is equally unquestionable.
+
+If the summer floods in the United States are attended with less
+pecuniary damage than those of the Loire and other rivers of France, the
+Po and its tributaries in Italy, the Emme and her sister torrents which
+devastate the valleys of Switzerland, it is partly because the banks of
+American rivers are not yet lined with towns, their shores and 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 the Old World, is,
+in a still greater degree, to be ascribed to the fact that, with all our
+thoughtless improvidence, we have not yet bared all the sources of our
+streams, not yet overthrown all the barriers which nature has erected to
+restrain her own destructive energies. Let us be wise in time, and
+profit by the errors of our older brethren!
+
+The influence of the forest in preventing inundations has been very
+generally recognized, both as a theoretical inference and as a fact of
+observation; but Belgrand and his commentator Vall�s have deduced an
+opposite result from various facts of experience and from scientific
+considerations. They contend that the superficial drainage is more
+regular from cleared than from 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 latter
+are, first, that the fallen leaves in the forest constitute an
+impermeable covering of the soil over, not through, which the water of
+rains and of melting snows flows off, and secondly, that the roots of
+trees penetrate and choke up the fissures in the rocks, so as to impede
+the passage of water through channels which nature has provided for its
+descent to lower strata.
+
+As to the first of these, we may appeal to familiar facts within the
+personal knowledge of every man acquainted with the operations of sylvan
+nature. I have before me a letter from an acute and experienced
+observer, containing this paragraph: "I think that rain water does not
+ever, except in very trifling quantities, flow over the leaves in the
+woods in summer or 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 winter after the snow has principally
+disappeared, the water in and between the layers of leaves sometimes
+freezes into a solid crust, which allows the flow of water over it. But
+this occurs only in depressions and on a very small scale; and the ice
+thus formed is so soon dissolved that no sensible effect is produced on
+the escape of water from the general surface.
+
+As to the influence of roots upon drainage, I believe there is no doubt
+that they, independently of their action as absorbents, mechanically
+promote it. Not only does the water of the soil follow them
+downward,[212] but their 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 of roots within them increases the area of the
+crevice in proportion to its length. Consequently, the widening of a
+fissure to the extent of one inch might give an additional drainage
+equal to a square foot of open tubing.
+
+The observations and reasonings of Belgrand and Vall�s, though their
+conclusions have not been accepted by many, are very important in one
+point of view. These writers insist much on the necessity of taking into
+account, in estimating the relations 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 often reasoned as if the surface earth were either
+impermeable to water, or already saturated with it; whereas, in fact, it
+is a sponge, always imbibing humidity and always giving it off, not by
+evaporation only, but by infiltration and percolation.
+
+The destructive effects of inundations considered simply as a mechanical
+power by which life is endangered, crops destroyed, and the artificial
+constructions of man overthrown, are very terrible. Thus far, however,
+the flood is a temporary and by no means an irreparable evil, for if its
+ravages end here, the prolific powers of nature and the industry of man
+soon restore what had been lost, and the face of the earth no 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
+occasioned no other evil than to produce, once in ten years upon the
+average, an inundation which should destroy the harvest of the low
+grounds along the rivers, the damage would be too inconsiderable, and of
+too transitory a character, to warrant the inconveniences and the
+expense involved in the measures which the most competent judges in many
+parts of Europe believe the respective governments ought to take to
+obviate it.
+
+
+_Destructive Action of Torrents._
+
+But the great, the irreparable, the appalling mischiefs which have
+already resulted, and threaten to ensue on a still more extensive scale
+hereafter, from too rapid superficial drainage, are of a properly
+geographical character, and consist primarily in erosion, displacement,
+and transportation of the superficial strata, vegetable and mineral--of
+the integuments, so to speak, with which nature has clothed the skeleton
+framework of the globe. It is difficult to convey by description an idea
+of the desolation of the regions most exposed to the ravages of torrent
+and of flood; and the thousands, who, in these days of travel, are
+whirled by steam near or even through the theatres of these calamities,
+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
+the impression that nature pronounced the curse of perpetual sterility
+and desolation upon these sublime but fearful wastes, difficult to
+believe that they were once, and but for the folly of man might still
+be, blessed with all the natural advantages which Providence has
+bestowed upon the most favored climes. But the historical evidence is
+conclusive as to the destructive changes occasioned by the agency of man
+upon the flanks of the Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and other
+mountain ranges in Central and Southern Europe, and the progress of
+physical deterioration has been so rapid that, in some localities, a
+single generation has witnessed the beginning and the end of the
+melancholy revolution.
+
+It is certain that a desolation, like that which has overwhelmed many
+once beautiful and fertile regions of Europe, awaits an important part
+of the territory of the United States, and of other comparatively new
+countries over which European civilization is now extending its sway,
+unless prompt measures are taken to check the action of destructive
+causes already in operation. It is vain to expect that legislation can
+do anything effectual to arrest the progress of the evil in those
+countries, except so far as the state is still the proprietor of
+extensive forests. Woodlands which have passed into private hands will
+everywhere be managed, in spite of legal restrictions, upon the same
+economical principles as other possessions, and every proprietor will,
+as a general 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 the most serious fears are entertained, not only of the
+depopulation of those districts, but of enormous mischiefs to the
+provinces contiguous to them.[214] The only legal provisions from which
+anything is to be hoped, are such as shall make it a matter of private
+advantage to the landholder to spare the trees upon his grounds, and
+promote the growth of the young wood. Something may be done by exempting
+standing forests from taxation, and by imposing taxes on wood felled for
+fuel or for timber, something by premiums or honorary distinctions for
+judicious management of the woods. It would be difficult to induce
+governments, general or local, to make the necessary appropriations for
+such purposes, but there can be no doubt that it would be sound economy
+in the end.
+
+In countries where there exist municipalities endowed with an
+intelligent public spirit, the purchase and control of forests by such
+corporations would often prove advantageous; and in some of the
+provinces of Northern Lombardy, experience has shown that such
+operations may be conducted with great benefit to all the interests
+connected with the proper management of the woods. 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
+value, that there is, too often, nothing left that is worth protecting.
+In the canton of Ticino, the peasants have very frequently voted to sell
+the town woods and divide the proceeds among the corporators. The
+sometimes considerable sums thus received are squandered in wild
+revelry, and the sacrifice of the forests brings not even a momentary
+benefit to the proprietors.[215]
+
+It is evidently a matter of the utmost importance that the public, and
+especially land owners, be roused to a sense of the dangers to which the
+indiscriminate clearing of the woods may expose not only future
+generations, but the very soil itself. Fortunately, some of the American
+States, as well as the governments of many European colonies, still
+retain the ownership of great tracts of primitive woodland. The State of
+New York, for example, has, in its northeastern counties, a vast extent
+of territory in which the lumberman has only here and there established
+his camp, and where the forest, though interspersed with permanent
+settlements, robbed of some of its finest pine groves, and often ravaged
+by devastating fires, still covers 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 remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a
+museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation
+of the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous tree, and humble
+plant that loves the shade, and fish and fowl and four-footed beast, may
+dwell and perpetuate their kind, in the enjoyment of such imperfect
+protection as the laws of a people jealous of restraint can afford them.
+The immediate loss to the public treasury from the adoption of this
+policy would be inconsiderable, for these lands are sold at low rates.
+The forest alone, economically managed, would, without injury, and even
+with benefit to its permanence and growth, soon yield a regular income
+larger than the present value of the fee.
+
+The collateral advantages of the preservation of these forests would be
+far greater. Nature threw up those mountains and clothed them with lofty
+woods, that they might serve as a reservoir to supply with perennial
+waters the thousand rivers and rills that are fed by the rains and snows
+of the Adirondacks, and as a screen for the fertile plains of the
+central counties against 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 influence that tends to
+maintain an equilibrium of temperature and humidity is of cardinal
+importance. The felling of the Adirondack woods would ultimately involve
+for Northern and Central New York consequences similar to those which
+have resulted from the laying bare of the southern and western
+declivities of the French Alps and the spurs, ridges, and detached peaks
+in front of them.
+
+It is true that the evils to be apprehended from the clearing of the
+mountains of New York may be less in degree than those which a similar
+cause has produced in Southern France, where the intensity of its action
+has been increased by the inclination of the mountain declivities, and
+by the peculiar geological constitution of the earth. The degradation of
+the soil is, perhaps, not equally promoted by a combination of the same
+circumstances, in any of the American 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
+larger quantities of sediment, and the increasing obstructions to the
+navigation of the Hudson, which are extending themselves down the
+channel in proportion as the fields are encroaching upon the forest,
+give good grounds for the fear of serious injury to the commerce of the
+important towns on the upper waters of that river, unless measures are
+taken to prevent the expansion of "improvements" which have already been
+carried beyond the demands of a wise economy.
+
+I have stated, in a general way, the nature of the evils in question,
+and of the processes by which they are produced; but I shall make their
+precise character and magnitude better understood by presenting some
+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 because
+its deterioration is comparatively recent, and has been watched and
+described by very competent and trustworthy observers, whose reports are
+more easily accessible than those published in other countries.[216]
+
+The provinces of Dauphiny, Avignon, and Provence comprise a territory of
+fourteen or fifteen thousand square miles, bounded northwest by the
+Isere, northeast and east by the Alps, south by the Mediterranean, west
+by the Rhone, and extending from 42� to about 45� of north latitude. The
+surface is generally hilly and even mountainous, and several 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 districts, the vine
+and the fig everywhere flourish, the olive thrives as far north as
+43��, and upon the coast, grow the orange, the lemon, and the date
+palm. The forest trees, too, are of southern type, umbrella pines,
+various species of evergreen oaks, and many other trees and shrubs of
+persistent broad-leaved foliage, characterizing the landscape.
+
+The rapid slope of the mountains naturally exposed these provinces to
+damage by torrents, and the Romans diminished their injurious effects by
+erecting, in the beds of ravines, barriers of rocks loosely piled up,
+which permitted a slow escape of the water, but compelled it to deposit
+above the dikes the earth and gravel with 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 process of clearing the soil went on so slowly that, for
+centuries, neither the want of timber and fuel, nor the other evils
+about to be depicted, were seriously felt. Indeed, throughout the Middle
+Ages, these provinces were well wooded, and famous for the fertility and
+abundance, not only of the low grounds, but of the hills.
+
+Such was the state of things at the close of the fifteenth century. The
+statistics of the seventeenth show that while there had been an increase
+of prosperity and population in Lower Provence, as well as in the
+correspondingly situated parts of the other two provinces I have
+mentioned, there was an alarming decrease both in the wealth and in the
+population of Upper Provence and Dauphiny, although, by the clearing of
+the forests, a great extent of 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 towns on and near the Rhone
+and the coast, their advance in commerce and industry, and the
+consequently enlarged demand for agricultural products, ought naturally
+to have increased the rural population and the value of their lands; but
+the physical decay of the uplands was such that considerable tracts were
+deserted altogether, and in Upper Provence, the fires which in 1471
+counted 897, were reduced to 747 in 1699, to 728 in 1733, and to 635 in
+1776.
+
+These facts I take from the _La Provence au point de vue des Bois, des
+Torrents et des Inondations_, of Charles de Ribbe, one of the highest
+authorities, and I add further details from the same source.
+
+"Commune of Barles, 1707: Two hills have become connected by land
+slides, and have formed a lake which covers the best part of the soil.
+1746: New slides buried twenty houses composing a village, no trace of
+which is left; more than one third of the land had disappeared.
+
+"Monans, 1724: Deserted by its inhabitants and no longer cultivated.
+
+"Gueydan, 1760: It appears by records that the best grounds have been
+swept off since 1756, and that ravines occupy their place.
+
+"Digne, 1762: The river Bl�one has destroyed the most valuable part of
+the territory.
+
+"Malmaison, 1768: The inhabitants have emigrated, all their fields
+having been lost."
+
+In the case of the commune of St. Laurent du Var, it appears that, after
+clearings in the Alps, succeeded by others in the common woods of the
+town, the floods 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 away in 1761. In 1762, after another destructive
+inundation, many of the inhabitants emigrated, and in 1765, one half of
+the territory had been laid waste.
+
+"In 1766, the assessor Serraire said to the Assembly: 'As to the damage
+caused by brooks and torrents, it is impossible to deny its extent.
+Upper Provence 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. Villages have been almost submerged by torrents which
+formerly had not even names, and large towns are on the point of
+destruction from the same cause.'"
+
+In 1776, Viscount Puget thus reported: "The mere aspect of Upper
+Provence is calculated to appal the patriotic magistrate. One sees only
+lofty mountains, deep valleys with precipitous sides, rivers with broad
+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 consequences of
+indiscriminate clearing; villages whose inhabitants, finding no longer
+the means of subsistence, are emigrating day by day; houses dilapidated
+to huts, and but a miserable remnant of population."
+
+"In a document of the year 1771, the ravages of the torrents were
+compared to the effects of an earthquake, half the soil in many communes
+seeming to have been swallowed up.
+
+"Our mountains," said the administrators of the province of the Lower
+Alps in 1792, "present nothing but a surface of stony tufa; clearing is
+still going on, and the little rivulets are becoming torrents. Many
+communes have lost their harvests, their flocks, and their houses by
+floods. The washing down of the mountains is to be ascribed to the
+clearings and the practice of burning them over."
+
+These complaints, it will be seen, all date before the Revolution, but
+the desolation they describe has since advanced with still swifter
+steps.
+
+Surell--whose valuable work, _�tude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes_,
+published in 1841, presents the most appalling picture of the
+desolations of the torrent, and, at the same time, the most careful
+studies of the history and essential character of this great evil--in
+speaking of the valley of D�voluy, 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 district. Many localities, now completely bare, still
+retain the name of 'wood,' and one of them is called, in old deeds,
+_Comba nigra_ [Black forest or dell], on account of its dense woods.
+These and many other proofs confirm the local traditions which are
+unanimous on this point.
+
+"There, as everywhere in the Upper Alps, the clearings began on the
+flanks of the mountains, and were gradually extended into the valleys
+and then to the highest accessible peaks. Then followed the Revolution,
+and caused the destruction of the remainder of the trees which had thus
+far escaped the woodman's axe."
+
+In a note to this passage, the writer says: "Several persons have told
+me that they had lost flocks of sheep, by straying, in the forests of
+Mont Auroux, which covered the flanks of the mountain from La Cluse to
+Agn�res. These declivities are now as bare as the palm of the hand."
+
+The ground upon the steep mountains being once bared of trees, and the
+underwood killed by the grazing of horned cattle, sheep, and goats,
+every depression becomes a watercourse. "Every storm," says Surell, 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 being swept into
+ravines formed in the course of a few hours. Sometimes the flood pours
+in a sheet over the surface, without ravine or even bed, and ruins
+extensive grounds, which are abandoned forever."
+
+I cannot follow Surell in his description and classification of
+torrents, and I must refer the reader to his instructive work for a full
+exposition of the theory of the subject. In order, however, to show what
+a concentration of destructive energies may be effected by felling the
+woods that clothe and support the 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," says
+he, "is frightful. Within a distance of less than three kilom�tres
+[= one mile and seven eighths English], more than sixty torrents hurl
+into the depths of the gorge the debris torn from its two flanks. The
+smallest of these secondary torrents, if transferred to a fertile
+valley, would be enough to ruin it."
+
+The eminent political economist Blanqui, in a memoir read before the
+Academy of Moral and Political Science on the 25th of November, 1843,
+thus expresses himself: "Important as are the causes of impoverishment
+already described, they are not to be compared to the consequences which
+have followed from the two inveterate evils of the Alpine provinces of
+France, the extension of clearing and the ravages of torrents. * * The
+most important result 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 once the springs and the fuel.
+Between Grenoble and Brian�on in the valley of the Romanche, many
+villages are so destitute of wood that they are reduced to the necessity
+of baking their bread with sun-dried cowdung, and even this they can
+afford to do but once a year. This bread becomes so hard that it can be
+cut only with an axe, and I have myself seen a loaf of bread in
+September, at the kneading of which I was present the January previous.
+
+"Whoever has visited the valley of Barcelonette, those of Embrun, and of
+Verdun, and that Arabia Petr�a of the department of the Upper Alps,
+called D�voluy, knows that there is no time to lose, that in fifty years
+from this date France will be separated from Savoy, as Egypt from
+Syria, by a desert."[218]
+
+It deserves to be specially noticed that the district here referred to,
+though now among the most hopelessly waste in France, was very
+productive even down to so late a period as the commencement of the
+French Revolution. Arthur Young, writing in 1789, says: "About
+Barcelonette and in the highest parts of the mountains, the hill
+pastures feed a million of sheep, besides large herds of other cattle;"
+and he adds: "With such a soil, 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 course of the Loire are the only streams
+he mentions as inflicting serious injury by their floods. The ravages of
+the torrents had, indeed, as we have seen, commenced earlier in some
+other localities, but we are authorized to infer that they were, in
+Young's time, too limited in range, and relatively too insignificant, to
+require notice in a general view of the provinces where they have now
+ruined so large a proportion of the soil.
+
+But I resume my citations.
+
+"I do not exaggerate," says Blanqui. "When I shall have finished my
+excursion and designated localities by their names, there will rise, I
+am sure, more than one voice 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 province of
+Constantine; for there you can travel on horseback, and you find grass
+in the spring, whereas in more than fifty communes in the Alps there is
+absolutely nothing.
+
+"The clear, brilliant, Alpine sky of Embrun, of Gap, of Barcelonette,
+and of Digne, which for months is without a cloud, produces droughts
+interrupted only by diluvial rains like those of the tropics. The abuse
+of the right of pasturage and the felling of the woods have stripped the
+soil of all its grass and all its trees, and the scorching sun bakes it
+to the consistence of porphyry. When moistened by the rain, as it has
+neither support nor cohesion, it rolls down to the valleys, sometimes in
+floods resembling black, yellow, or reddish lava, sometimes in streams
+of pebbles, and even huge blocks of stone, which pour down with a
+frightful roar, and in 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 shivers to fragments the very
+rocks, and of the rain which sweeps them down, penetrate deeper and
+deeper into the heart of the mountain, while the beds of the torrents
+issuing from them are sometimes raised several feet, in a single year,
+by the debris, so that they reach the level of the bridges, which, of
+course, are then carried off. The torrent beds are recognized at a great
+distance, as they issue from the mountains, and they spread themselves
+over the low grounds, in fan-shaped expansions, like a mantle of stone,
+sometimes ten thousand feet wide, rising high at the centre, and curving
+toward the circumference till their lower edges meet the plain.
+
+"Such is their aspect in dry weather. But no tongue can give an adequate
+description of their devastations in one of those sudden floods which
+resemble, in almost none of their phenomena, the action of ordinary
+river water. They are now no longer overflowing brooks, but real seas,
+tumbling down in cataracts, 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 accompanied with a roar louder than the
+crash of thunder. A furious wind precedes the rushing water and
+announces its approach. Then comes a violent eruption, followed by a
+flow of muddy waves, and after a few hours all returns to the dreary
+silence which at periods of rest marks these abodes of desolation.
+
+"This is but an imperfect sketch of this scourge of the Alps. Its
+devastations are increasing with the progress of clearing, and are every
+day turning a portion of our frontier departments into barren wastes.
+
+"The unfortunate passion for clearing manifested itself at the beginning
+of the French Revolution, and has much increased under the pressure of
+immediate want. It has now reached an extreme point, and must be
+speedily checked, or the last inhabitant will be compelled to retreat
+when the last tree falls.
+
+"The elements of destruction are increasing in violence. Rivers might be
+mentioned whose beds have been raised ten feet in a single year. The
+devastation advances in geometrical progression as the higher slopes are
+bared of their wood, and 'the ruin from above,' to use the words of a
+peasant, 'helps to hasten the desolation below.'
+
+"The Alps of Provence present a terrible aspect. In the more equable
+climate of Northern France, one can form no conception of those parched
+mountain gorges where not even a bush can be found to shelter a bird,
+where, at most, the wanderer sees in summer here and there a withered
+lavender, 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 the soil they overflow in their swift descent, and leave it
+even more seared than it was from want of moisture. Man at last retires
+from the fearful desert, and I have, the present season, found not a
+living soul in districts where I remember to have enjoyed hospitality
+thirty years ago."
+
+In 1853, ten years after the date of Blanqui's memoir, M. de Bonville,
+prefect of the Lower Alps, addressed to the Government a report in which
+the following passages occur:
+
+"It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept off by the
+increasing violence of that curse of the mountains, the torrents, is
+daily diminishing with fearful rapidity. 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 the grass they require for their sustenance, scratch the ground
+in search of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed and
+carried off by melting snows and summer storms.
+
+"I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty years they
+have been too often depicted to require to be further discussed, but it
+is important to show that their ravages are daily extending the range of
+devastation. The bed of the Durance, which now in some places exceeds
+2,000 m�tres [about 6,600 feet, or a mile and a quarter] in width, and,
+at ordinary times, has a current of water less than 10 m�tres [about 33
+feet] wide, shows something of the extent of the damage.[220] Where, ten
+years ago, there were still woods and cultivated grounds to be seen,
+there is now but a vast torrent: there is not one of our mountains which
+has not at least one torrent, and new ones are daily forming.
+
+"An indirect proof of the diminution of the soil is to be found in the
+depopulation of the country. In 1852, I reported to the General Council
+that, according to the census of that year, the population of the
+department of the Lower Alps had fallen off no less than 5,000 souls in
+the five years between 1846 and 1851.
+
+"Unless prompt and energetic measures are taken, it is easy to fix the
+epoch when the French Alps will be but a desert. The interval between
+1851 and 1856 will show a further decrease of population. In 1862, the
+ministry will announce a continued and progressive reduction in the
+number of acres devoted to agriculture; every year will aggravate the
+evil, and, in a half century, France will count more ruins, and a
+department the less."
+
+Time has verified the predictions of De Bonville. The later census
+returns show a progressive diminution in the population of the
+departments of the Lower Alps, the Is�re, the Drome, Ari�ge, the Upper
+and the Lower Pyrenees, the Loz�re, the Ardennes, the Doubs, the Vosges,
+and, in short, in all 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 rendered uninhabitable, by ruthlessly
+depriving them of their natural advantages and securities, to provinces
+where the face of the earth was so formed by nature as to need no such
+safeguards, and where, consequently, she preserves her outlines in spite
+of the wasteful improvidence of man.[221]
+
+Highly colored as these pictures seem, they are not exaggerated,
+although the hasty tourist through Southern France and Northern Italy,
+finding little in his high road experiences to justify them, might
+suppose them so. The lines of communication by locomotive train and
+diligence lead generally over safer ground, 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,
+is producing analogous effects upon the lower ridges of the Alps and the
+plains which skirt them; and even now one needs but an hour's departure
+from some great thoroughfares to reach sites where the genius of
+destruction revels as wildly as in the most frightful of the abysses
+which Blanqui has painted.[222]
+
+There is one effect of the action of torrents which few travellers on
+the Continent are heedless enough to pass without notice. I refer to the
+elevation of the beds of mountain streams in consequence of the deposit
+of the 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 as the bed of the torrent is raised,
+so that, to reach a river, you ascend from the fields beside it; and
+sometimes the ordinary level of the stream is above the streets and even
+the roofs of the towns through which it passes.[223]
+
+The traveller who visits the depths of an Alpine ravine, observes the
+length and width of the gorge and the great height and apparent solidity
+of the precipitous walls which bound it, and calculates the mass of rock
+required to fill the vacancy, can hardly believe that the humble
+brooklet which purls at his feet has been the principal agent in
+accomplishing this tremendous erosion. Closer observation will often
+teach him, 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 mighty enough to sweep down the largest masses of gravel
+and of rock.[224] The simple measurement of the cubical contents of the
+semi-circular hillock which he climbed before he entered the gorge, the
+structure and composition of which conclusively show that it must have
+been washed out of this latter by torrential action, will often account
+satisfactorily for the disposal of most of the matter which once filled
+the ravine.
+
+It must further be remembered, that every inch of the violent movement
+of the rocks is accompanied with crushing concussion, or, at least, with
+great abrasion, and, as you follow the deposit along the course of the
+waters which transport it, you find the stones gradually rounding off in
+form, and diminishing in size until they pass successively into gravel,
+sand, impalpable slime.
+
+I do not mean to assert that all the rocky valleys of the Alps have been
+produced by the action of torrents resulting from the destruction of the
+forests. All the greater, and many of 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 convulsion, widened and scarped, and often even polished, so
+to speak, by the action of glaciers during the ice period, and but
+little changed in form by running water in later eras.[225]
+
+In these valleys of ancient formation, which extend into the very heart
+of the mountains, the streams, though rapid, have lost the true
+torrential character, if, indeed, they ever possessed it. Their beds
+have become approximately constant, and their walls no longer crumble
+and fall into 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 central ridge, and accumulated thickly between
+their solid buttresses. But it is on this crust that the mountaineer
+dwells. Here are his forests, here his pastures, and the ravages of the
+torrent both destroy his world, and convert it into a source of
+overwhelming desolation to the plains below.
+
+
+_Transporting Power of Rivers._
+
+An instance that fell under my own observation in 1857, will serve to
+show something of the eroding and transporting power of streams which,
+in these respects, fall incalculably below the torrents of the Alps. In
+a flood of the Ottaquechee, a small river which flows through Woodstock,
+Vermont, a milldam on that stream burst, and the sediment with which the
+pond was filled, estimated after careful measurement at 13,000 cubic
+yards, was carried down by the current. Between this dam and the slack
+water of another, four miles below, the bed of the stream, which is
+composed of pebbles interspersed in a few places with larger stones, is
+about sixty-five feet wide, though, at low water, the breadth of the
+current is considerably less. The sand and fine gravel were smoothly and
+evenly distributed over the bed to a width of fifty-five or sixty feet,
+and for a distance of about two miles, except at two or three
+intervening rapids, filled up all the interstices between the stones,
+covering them to the depth 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 breakage of the dam, had
+then been undisturbed for about twenty-five years, and its contents
+consisted almost entirely of sand, the rapidity of the current in floods
+being such that it would let fall little lighter sediment, even above an
+obstruction like a dam. The quantity I have mentioned evidently bears a
+very inconsiderable proportion to the total erosion of the stream
+during that period, because the wash of the banks consists chiefly of
+fine earth rather than of sand, and after the pond was once filled, or
+nearly so, even this material could no longer be deposited in it. The
+fact of the complete removal of the deposit I have described between the
+two dams in a single freshet, shows that, in spite of considerable
+obstruction from roughness of bed, large quantities of sand may be taken
+up and carried off by streams of no great rapidity of inclination; for
+the whole descent of the bed of the river between the two dams--a
+distance of four miles--is but sixty feet, or fifteen feet to the mile.
+
+
+_The Po and its Deposits._
+
+The current of the river Po, for a considerable distance after its
+volume of water is otherwise sufficient for continuous navigation, is
+too rapid for that purpose until near Piacenza, where its velocity
+becomes too much reduced to transport great quantities of mineral
+matter, except in a state of minute division. Its southern affluents
+bring down from the Apennines a large quantity of fine earth from
+various geological formations, while its Alpine tributaries west of the
+Ticino are charged 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 remained unconfined. But, as the surface of
+the water in floods is from six to fifteen feet above the general level
+of its banks, the Po can, at that period, receive no contributions of
+earth from the washing of the fields of Lombardy, and there is no doubt
+that a large proportion of the sediment it now deposits at its mouth
+descended from the Alps in the form of rock, though reduced by the
+grinding action of the waters, in its passage seaward, to the condition
+of fine sand, and often of silt.[227]
+
+We know little of the history of the Po, or of the geography of the
+coast near the point where it enters the Adriatic, at any period more
+than twenty centuries before our own. Still less can we say how much of
+the plains of Lombardy had been formed by its action, combined with
+other causes, before man accelerated its levelling operations by felling
+the first woods on the mountains whence its waters are derived. But we
+know that since the Roman conquest of Northern Italy, its deposits have
+amounted to a quantity which, if recemented into rock, recombined into
+gravel, 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 the Po has filled up the lagoon, and Ravenna is now four
+miles from the sea. The town of Adria, which lies between the Po and the
+Adige, at the distance of some four or five miles from each, was once a
+harbor famous enough to have given its name to the Adriatic sea, and it
+was still a seaport in the time of Augustus. The combined action of the
+two rivers has so advanced the coast line that Adria is now about
+fourteen miles inland, and, in other places, the deposits made within
+the same period by these and other neighboring streams have a width of
+twenty miles.
+
+What proportion of the earth with which they are charged these rivers
+have borne out into deep water, during the last two thousand years, we
+do not know, but as they still transport enormous quantities, as the
+North Adriatic appears to have shoaled rapidly, and as long islands,
+composed in great part of fluviatile deposits, have formed opposite
+their mouths, it must evidently have been very great. The floods of the
+Po occur but once, or sometimes twice in a year.[228] At other times,
+its waters are comparatively limpid and seem to hold no great amount of
+mud or fine sand in mechanical suspension; but at high water it contains
+a large proportion of solid matter, and according to Lombardini, it
+annually transports to the shores of the Adriatic not less than
+42,760,000 cubic m�tres, 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 centim�tres, 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 the northern declivity of
+the Apennines by torrents. Nearly the whole of the debris thus removed
+from the southern face of the Alps between Monte Rosa and the sources of
+the Adda--a length of watershed not less than one hundred and fifty
+miles--is arrested by the still waters of the Lakes Maggiore and Como,
+and some smaller lacustrine reservoirs, and never reaches the sea. The
+Po is not continuously embanked except for the lower half of its course.
+Above Piacenza, therefore, it spreads and deposits sediment over a wide
+surface, and the water withdrawn from it for irrigation at lower points,
+as well as its inundations in the occasional ruptures of its banks,
+carry over the adjacent soil a large amount of slime.
+
+If we add to the estimated annual deposits of the Po at its mouth, the
+earth and sand transported to the sea by the Adige, the Brenta, and
+other less important streams, the prodigious mass of detritus swept into
+Lago Maggiore by the Tosa, the Maggia, and the Ticino, into the lake of
+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 assume that we have an aggregate of not less than four times the
+quantity carried to the Adriatic by the Po, or 220,000,000 cubic yards
+of solid matter, abstracted every year from the Italian Alps and the
+Apennines, and removed out of their domain by the force of running
+water.[230]
+
+The present rate of deposit at the mouth of the Po has continued since
+the year 1600, the previous advance of the coast, after the year 1200,
+having been only one third as rapid. The great increase of erosion and
+transport is ascribed by Lombardini chiefly to the destruction of the
+forests in the basin of that river and the valleys, of its tributaries,
+since the beginning of the seventeenth century.[231] We have no data to
+show the rate of deposit in any given century before the year 1200, and
+it doubtless varied according 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 their mechanical force is then
+greatest, and because the loose earth and stones of freshly cleared
+forest ground are most easily removed. Many of the Alpine valleys west
+of the Ticino--that of the Dora Baltea for instance--were nearly
+stripped of their forests in the days of the Roman empire, others in the
+Middle Ages, and, of course, there must have been, at different periods
+before the year 1200, epochs when the erosion and transportation of
+solid matter from the Alps and the Apennines were as great as since the
+year 1600.
+
+Upon the whole, we shall not greatly err if we assume that, for a period
+of not less than two thousand years, the walls of the basin of the
+Po--the Italian slope of the Alps, and the northern and northeastern
+declivities of the Apennines--have annually sent down into the Adriatic,
+the lakes, and the plains, not less than 150,000,000 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, where, as we know from ancient
+remains--roads, bridges, and the like--from other direct testimony, and
+from geological considerations, very little degradation has taken place
+within twenty centuries, and hence the quantity to be assigned to
+localities where the destructive causes have been most active is
+increased in proportion.
+
+If this vast mass of pulverized rock and earth were restored to the
+localities from which it was derived, it certainly would not obliterate
+valleys and gorges hollowed out 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 many bare
+mountain ridges, essentially change the line of junction between plain
+and mountain, and carry back a long reach of the Adriatic coast many
+miles to the west.[233]
+
+It is, indeed, not to be supposed that all the degradation of the
+mountains is due to the destruction of the forests--that the flanks of
+every Alpine valley in Central Europe below the snow line were once
+covered with earth and green with woods, but there are not many
+particular cases, in which we can, with certainty, or even with strong
+probability, affirm the contrary.
+
+We cannot measure the share which human action has had in augmenting the
+intensity of causes of mountain degradation, but we know that the
+clearing of the woods has, in some cases, produced within two or three
+generations, effects as blasting as those generally ascribed to
+geological convulsions, 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 now desolate valleys in those mountains is
+to be ascribed to the same cause, and authentic descriptions of the
+irresistible force of the torrent show that, aided by frost and heat, it
+is adequate to level Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa themselves, unless new
+upheavals shall maintain their elevation.
+
+It has been contended that all rivers which take their rise in mountains
+originated in torrents. These, it is said, have lowered the summits by
+gradual erosion, and, with the material thus derived, have formed shoals
+in the sea which once beat against the cliffs; then, by successive
+deposits, gradually 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 lower the ridges of the Alps and the
+Apennines, raising still higher the plains of Lombardy and Provence,
+extending the coast still farther into the Adriatic and the
+Mediterranean, reducing the inclination of their own beds and the
+rapidity of their flow, and thus tending to become river-like in
+character.
+
+There are cases where torrents cease their ravages of themselves, in
+consequence of some change in the condition of the basin where they
+originate, or of the face of the mountain at a higher level, while the
+plain or the sea below remains in substantially the same state as
+before. If a torrent rises in a small valley containing no great amount
+of earth and of disintegrated or loose rock, it may, in the course of a
+certain period, wash out all the transportable material, and if the
+valley is then left with solid walls, it will cease to furnish debris 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 requires long
+and careful study to detect the primitive form, masked as it is by
+groves of trees, by cultivated fields, and often by houses, but, when
+examined closely, and from different points of view, its characteristic
+figure manifestly appears, and its true history cannot be mistaken.
+Along the hillock flows a streamlet, issuing from the ravine, and
+quietly watering the fields. This was originally a torrent, and in the
+background may be discovered its mountain basin. Such _extinguished_
+torrents, if I may use the expression, are numerous."[234]
+
+But for the intervention of man and domestic animals, these latter
+beneficent revolutions would occur more frequently, proceed more
+rapidly. The new scarped mountains, the hillocks of debris, the plains
+elevated by sand and gravel spread over them, the shores freshly 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, generations, but
+centuries;[235] and man, who even now finds scarce breathing room on
+this vast globe, cannot retire from the Old World to some yet
+undiscovered continent, and wait for the slow action of such causes to
+replace, by a new creation, the Eden he has wasted.
+
+
+_Mountain Slides._
+
+I have said that the mountainous regions of the Atlantic States of the
+American Union are exposed to similar ravages, and I may add that there
+is, in some cases, reason to apprehend from the same cause even more
+appalling calamities than those which 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 was
+produced by the denudation of the surface. It may have been occasioned
+by this cause, or by the construction of the road through the Notch, the
+excavations for which, perhaps, cut through the buttresses that
+supported the sloping strata above.
+
+Not to speak of the fall of earth when the roots which held it together,
+and the bed of leaves and mould which sheltered it both from
+disintegrating frost and from sudden drenching and dissolution by heavy
+showers, are gone, it is easy to see that, in a climate with severe
+winters, the removal of the forest, and, consequently, of the soil it
+had contributed to form, might cause the displacement and descent of
+great masses of rock. The woods, the vegetable mould, and the soil
+beneath, protect the rocks they cover from the direct action of heat and
+cold, and from the expansion and contraction which accompany them. Most
+rocks, while covered with earth, contain a considerable quantity of
+water.[236] A fragment of rock pervaded with moisture cracks and splits,
+if thrown into a furnace, and sometimes with a loud detonation; 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 strata from freezing in the hardest
+winters, and the moisture descends, in a liquid form, until it escapes
+in springs, or passes off by deep subterranean channels. But when the
+ridges are laid bare, the water of the autumnal rains fills the minutest
+pores and veins and fissures and lines of separation of the rocks, then
+suddenly freezes, and bursts asunder huge, and apparently solid blocks
+of adamantine stone.[237] Where the strata are inclined at a
+considerable angle, the freezing of a thin film of water over a large
+interstratal area might occasion a slide that should cover miles with
+its ruins; and similar results might be produced by the simple
+hydrostatic pressure of a column of water, admitted by the removal of
+the covering of earth to flow into a crevice faster than it could escape
+through orifices below.
+
+Earth or rather mountain slides, compared to which the catastrophe that
+buried the Willey family in New Hampshire was but a pinch of dust, have
+often occurred in the Swiss Italian, and French Alps. The land slip,
+which overwhelmed and covered to the depth of seventy feet, the town of
+Plurs in the valley of the Maira, on the night of the 4th of September,
+1618, sparing not a soul of a 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 of the
+Cordevole, a tributary of the Piave, destroying in its fall three
+hamlets and sixty lives. The rubbish filled the valley for a distance of
+nearly two miles, and, by damming up the waters of the Cordevole, formed
+a lake about three miles long, and a hundred and fifty feet deep, which
+still subsists, though reduced to half its original length by the
+wearing down of its outlet.[238]
+
+On the 14th of February, 1855, the hill of Belmonte, a little below the
+parish of San Stefano, in Tuscany, slid into the valley of the Tiber,
+which consequently flooded the village to the depth of fifty feet, and
+was finally drained off by a tunnel. The mass of debris is stated to
+have been about 3,500 feet long, 1,000 wide, and not less than 600
+high.[239]
+
+Such displacements of earth and rocky strata rise to the magnitude of
+geological convulsions, but they are of so rare occurrence in countries
+still covered by the primitive forest, so common where the mountains
+have 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 of vegetation would have prevented--that we are justified in
+ascribing them for the most part to the same cause as that to which the
+destructive effects of mountain torrents are chiefly due--the felling of
+the woods.
+
+In nearly every case of this sort the circumstances of which are known,
+the immediate cause of the slip has been, either an earthquake, the
+imbibition of water in large quantities by bare earth, or its
+introduction between or beneath solid strata. If water insinuates 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 afforded by inequalities
+of face and by friction; if it finds its way beneath hard earth or rock
+reposing on clay or other bedding of similar properties, it converts the
+supporting layer into a semi-fluid mud, which opposes no obstacle to the
+sliding of the strata above.
+
+The upper part of the mountain which buried Goldau was composed of a
+hard but brittle conglomerate, called _nagelflue_, resting on an
+unctuous clay, and inclining rapidly toward the village. Much earth
+remained upon the rock, in irregular masses, but the woods had been
+felled, and the water had free access to the surface, and to the
+crevices which sun and frost had already produced in the rock, and of
+course, to the slimy stratum 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 into a viscous paste. The mass that fell
+measured between two and a half and three miles in length by one
+thousand feet in width, and its average thickness is thought to have
+been about a hundred feet. The highest portion of the mountain was more
+than three thousand feet above the village, and the momentum acquired by
+the rocks and earth in their descent carried huge blocks of stone far up
+the opposite slope of the Rigi.
+
+The Piz, which fell into the Cordevole, rested on a steeply inclined
+stratum of limestone, with a thin layer of calcareous marl intervening,
+which, by long exposure to frost and the infiltration of water, had lost
+its original consistence, and become a loose and slippery mass instead
+of a cohesive and tenacious bed.
+
+
+_Protection against fall of Rocks and Avalanches by Trees._
+
+Forests often subserve a valuable purpose in preventing the fall of
+rocks, by mere mechanical resistance. Trees, as well as herbaceous
+vegetation, grow in the Alps upon declivities of surprising steepness of
+inclination, and the traveller sees both luxuriant grass and flourishing
+woods on slopes at which the soil, in the 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 has stopped its progress just as it was beginning to slide
+down to a lower level. When a forest in such a position is cut, these
+blocks lose their support, and a single wet season is enough not only to
+bare the face of a considerable extent of rock, but to cover with earth
+and stone many acres of fertile soil below.[240]
+
+In Switzerland and other snowy and mountainous countries, forests render
+a most important service by preventing the formation and fall of
+destructive avalanches, and in many parts of the Alps exposed to this
+catastrophe, the woods are protected, though too often ineffectually, by
+law. No forest, indeed, could arrest a large avalanche once in motion,
+but the mechanical resistance afforded by the trees prevents their
+formation, both by obstructing the wind, which gives to the dry snow of
+the _Staub-Lawine_, or dust avalanche, its first impulse, and by
+checking the disposition of moist 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 earth
+from the face of the rock, or, if the soil is left, fresh slides every
+winter destroy the young plantations, and the restoration of the wood
+becomes impossible. The track widens with every new avalanche. Dwellings
+and their occupants are buried in the snow, or swept away by the rushing
+mass, or by the furious blasts it occasions through the displacement of
+the air; roads and bridges are destroyed; rivers blocked up, which swell
+till they overflow the valley above, and then, bursting their snowy
+barrier, flood the fields below with all the horrors of a winter
+inundation.[242]
+
+
+_Principal Causes of the Destruction of the Forest._
+
+The needs of agriculture are the most familiar cause of the destruction
+of the forest in new countries; for not only does an increasing
+population demand additional acres to grow the vegetables which feed it
+and its domestic animals, but the slovenly husbandry of the border
+settler soon exhausts the luxuriance of his first fields, and compels
+him to remove his household gods to a fresher 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 fairest ornaments. The value of timber increases with its
+dimensions in almost geometrical proportion, and the tallest, most
+vigorous, and most symmetrical trees fall the first sacrifice. This is a
+fortunate circumstance for the remainder of the wood; for the impatient
+lumberman contents himself with felling a few of the best trees, and
+then hurries on to take his tithe of still virgin groves.
+
+The unparalleled facilities for internal navigation, afforded by the
+numerous rivers of the present and former British colonial possessions
+in North America, have proved very fatal to the forests of that
+continent. Quebec has become a centre for a lumber trade, which, in the
+bulk of its material, and, consequently, in the tonnage required for its
+transportation, rivals 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 Europe, and during the summer months
+the St. Lawrence is almost as crowded with vessels as the Thames.[244]
+Of late, Chicago, in Illinois, has been one of the greatest lumber as
+well as grain depots of the United States, and it receives and
+distributes contributions from all the forests in the States washed by
+Lake Michigan, as well as from some more distant points.
+
+The operations of the lumberman involve other dangers to the woods
+besides the loss of the trees felled by him. The narrow clearings around
+his _shanties_[245] form openings which let in the wind, and thus
+sometimes occasion the overthrow of thousands of trees, the fall of
+which dams up small streams, and creates bogs by the spreading of the
+waters, while the decaying trunks facilitate the multiplication 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, indiscriminately, every age
+and every species of tree.[246] While, then, without much injury to the
+younger growths, the native forest will bear several "cuttings over" in
+a generation--for the increasing value of lumber brings into use, every
+four or five years, a quality of timber which had been before rejected
+as unmarketable--a fire may render the declivity of a mountain
+unproductive for a century.[247]
+
+
+_American Forest Trees._
+
+The remaining forests of the Northern States and of Canada no longer
+boast the mighty pines which almost rivalled the gigantic Sequoia of
+California; and the growth of the larger forest trees is so slow, after
+they have attained to a certain size, that if every pine and oak 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 esteemed large
+ones of their kind in that part of America" [Vermont], qualifying his
+account with the remark that his measurements "do not denote the
+greatest which nature has produced of their particular species, but the
+greatest which are to be found in most of our towns."
+
+                Diameter.                     Height.
+
+  Pine,         6 feet,                      247 feet.
+  Maple,        5  "    9 inches, }
+  Buttonwood,   5  "    6    "    }
+  Elm,          5  "              }
+  Hemlock,      4  "    9    "    }
+  Oak,          4  "              }   From 100 to 200 feet.
+  Basswood,     4  "              }
+  Ash,          4  "              }
+  Birch,        4  "              }
+
+He adds a note saying that a white pine was cut in Dunstable, New
+Hampshire, in the year 1736, the diameter of which was seven feet and
+eight inches. Dr. Dwight says that a fallen pine in Connecticut was
+found to measure two hundred and forty-seven feet in height, and adds:
+"A few years since, such trees were in great numbers 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: "Fifty years ago, several trees growing on rather dry land in
+Blandford, Massachusetts, measured, after they were felled, two hundred
+and twenty-three feet. All these trees are surpassed by a pine felled at
+Hanover, New Hampshire, about a hundred years ago, and described as
+measuring two hundred and seventy-four feet.[249]
+
+These descriptions, it will be noticed, apply to trees cut from sixty to
+one hundred years since. Persons, whom observation has rendered familiar
+with the present character of the American forest, will be struck with
+the smallness of the diameter which Dr. Williams and Dr. Dwight ascribe
+to trees of such extraordinary height. Individuals of the several
+species mentioned in Dr. Williams's table, are now hardly to be found in
+the same climate, exceeding one half or at most two thirds of the height
+which he assigns to them; but, except in the case of the oak and 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
+caused the destruction of all the best--that is, the tallest and
+straightest--specimens of both; the other, that the thinning of the
+woods by the axe of the lumberman has allowed the access of light and
+heat and air to trees of humbler worth and lower stature, which have
+survived their more towering brethren. These, consequently, have been
+able to expand their crowns and swell their stems to a degree not
+possible so long as they were overshadowed and stifled by the lordly oak
+and pine. While, therefore, the New England forester must search long
+before he finds a pine
+
+    fit to be the mast
+  Of some great ammiral,
+
+beeches and elms and birches, as sturdy as the mightiest of their
+progenitors, are still no rarity.[250]
+
+Another evil, sometimes of serious magnitude, which attends the
+operations of the lumberman, is the injury to the banks of rivers from
+the practice of floating. I do not here allude to rafts, which, being
+under the control of those who navigate them, may be so guided as to
+avoid damage to the shore, but to masts, logs, and other pieces of
+timber singly intrusted to the streams, to be conveyed by their currents
+to sawmill ponds, or to convenient places for collecting them 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 opened, or the dam is blown up or
+otherwise suddenly broken, and the whole mass of lumber above it is
+hurried down with the rolling flood. Both of these modes of proceeding
+expose the banks of the rivers employed as channels of flotation to
+abrasion,[251] and in some of the American States it has been found
+necessary to protect, by special legislation, the lands through which
+they flow from the serious injury sometimes received through the
+practices I have described.[252]
+
+
+_Special Causes of the Destruction of European Woods._
+
+The causes of forest waste thus far enumerated are more or less common
+to both continents; but in Europe extensive woods have, at different
+periods, been deliberately destroyed by fire or the axe, because they
+afforded a retreat to enemies, robbers, and outlaws, and this practice
+is said to have been resorted to 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. The
+laws of almost every European state more or less adequately secure the
+permanence of the forest; and I believe Spain is the only European land
+which has not made some public provision for the protection and
+restoration of the woods--the only country whose people systematically
+war upon the garden of God.[254]
+
+
+_Royal Forests and Game Laws._
+
+The French authors I have quoted, as well as many other writers of the
+same nation, refer to the French Revolution as having given a new
+impulse to destructive causes which were already threatening the total
+extermination of the woods.[255] The general crusade against the
+forests, which accompanied that important event, is to be ascribed, in a
+considerable degree, to political resentments. The forest codes of the
+medi�val kings, and the local "coutumes" of feudalism contained many
+severe and even inhuman provisions, 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 des Rois
+d'Angleterre_, p. 67, "was hunting one day in a new forest, which he had
+caused to be made out of eighteen parishes that he had destroyed, when,
+by mischance, he was killed by an arrow wherewith Tyreus de Rois [Sir
+Walter Tyrell] thought to slay a beast, but missed the beast, and slew
+the king, who was beyond it. And in this very same forest, his brother
+Richard ran so hard against a tree that he died of it. And men commonly
+said that these things were because they had so laid waste and taken the
+said parishes."
+
+These barbarous acts, as Bonnem�re observes,[257] were simply the
+transfer of the customs of the French kings, of their vassals, and even
+of inferior gentlemen, to conquered England. "The death of a hare," says
+our author, "was a hanging matter, the murder of a plover a capital
+crime. Death was inflicted on those who spread nets for pigeons;
+wretches who had drawn a bow upon a stag were to be tied to the animal
+alive; and among the seigniors it was a standing excuse for having
+killed game on forbidden ground, that they aimed at a serf." The feudal
+lords enforced these codes with unrelenting rigor, and not unfrequently
+took the law into their own hands. In the time of Louis IX, according to
+William of Nangis, "three noble children, born in Flanders, who were
+sojourning at the abbey of St. Nicholas in 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 criminal than themselves, the king was much inclined to inflict
+the punishment of death on the proud baron. "If he believed," said he,
+"that our Lord would be as well content with hanging as with pardoning,
+he would hang Sir Enguerrand in spite of all his barons;" but noble and
+clerical interests unfortunately prevailed. The king was persuaded to
+inflict a milder retribution, and the murderer was condemned to pay ten
+thousand livres in coin, and to "build for the souls of the three
+children two chapels wherein mass should be said every day."[259] The
+hope of shortening the purgatorial term of the young persons, by the
+religious rites to be celebrated in the chapels, was doubtless the
+consideration which operated most powerfully on the mind of the king;
+and Europe lost a great example for the sake of a mass.
+
+The desolation and depopulation, resulting from the extension of the
+forest and the enforcement of the game laws, induced several of the
+French kings to consent to some relaxation of the severity of these
+latter. Francis I, however, revived their barbarous provisions, and,
+according to Bonnem�re, 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, "was imposed on every one shooting at
+pigeons, which, at that time, swooped down by thousands upon the
+new-sown fields and devoured the seed. But let us count even this a
+progress, for we have seen that the murder of a pigeon had been a
+capital crime."[260]
+
+Not only were the slightest trespasses on the forest domain--the cutting
+of an oxgoad, for instance--severely punished, but game animals were
+still sacred when they had wandered from their native precincts and were
+ravaging the fields of the peasantry. A herd of deer or of wild boars
+often consumed 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," says Paul Louis Courier, speaking in the name of the
+peasants of Chambord, in the "Simple Discours," "the game has made war
+upon us. Paris was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its
+environs, now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to support
+the gamekeepers."[261]
+
+In the popular mind, the forest was associated with all the abuses of
+feudalism, and the evils the peasantry had suffered from the legislation
+which protected both it and the game it sheltered, blinded them to the
+still greater physical mischiefs which its destruction was to entail
+upon them. No longer protected by law, the crown forests and those of
+the great lords were attacked 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,
+facility of internal communication, and the like. Thus resentful memory
+of the wrongs associated with the forest, popular ignorance, and the
+cupidity of speculators cunning enough to turn these circumstances to
+profitable account, combined to hasten the sacrifice of the remaining
+woods, and a waste was produced which hundreds of years and millions of
+treasure will hardly repair.
+
+
+_Small Forest Plants, and Vitality of Seed._
+
+Another function of the woods to which I have barely alluded deserves a
+fuller notice than can be bestowed upon it in a treatise the scope of
+which is purely economical. The forest is the native habitat of a large
+number of humbler plants, to the growth and perpetuation of which its
+shade, 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 not naturally propagating themselves in the open
+ground, may perhaps germinate and grow under artificial stimulation and
+protection, and finally become hardy enough to maintain an independent
+existence in very different circumstances from those which at present
+seem essential to their life.
+
+Besides this, although the accounts of the growth of seeds, which have
+lain for ages in the ashy dryness of Egyptian catacombs, are to be
+received with great caution, or, more probably, to be rejected
+altogether, yet their vitality seems almost imperishable while they
+remain in the situations in which nature deposits them. When a forest
+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, sprout up, and in
+due time, if not choked by other trees belonging to a later stage in the
+order of natural succession, restore again the original wood. In these
+cases, the seeds of the new crop may often have been brought by the
+wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other causes; but, in many
+instances, this explanation is not probable.
+
+When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United States, the ashes
+are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of fire weed, a tall
+herbaceous plant, very seldom seen growing under other circumstances,
+and often not to be found for a distance 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 buried, or a special pabulum furnished only by the combustion of the
+vegetable remains that cover the ground in the woods. Earth brought up
+from wells or other excavations soon produces a harvest of plants often
+very unlike those of the local flora.
+
+Moritz Wagner, as quoted by Wittwer,[264] remarks in his description of
+Mount Ararat: "A singular phenomenon to which my guide drew my attention
+is the appearance of several plants on the earth-heaps left by the last
+catastrophe [an earthquake], which grow nowhere else on the mountain,
+and had never been observed in this region before. The seeds of these
+plants were probably 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 sylvan plants, too deeply buried
+by successive layers of forest foliage and the mould resulting from its
+decomposition to be reached by the plough when the trees are gone and
+the ground brought under cultivation, may, if a wiser posterity replants
+the wood which sheltered their parent stems, germinate and grow, after
+lying for generations in a state of suspended animation.
+
+Darwin says: "In Staffordshire, on the estate of a relation, where I had
+ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren
+heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man, but several
+hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five
+years previously and planted with Scotch fir. The change in the native
+vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more
+than is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to
+another; not only the proportional 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
+seeds had been deposited when an ancient forest protected the growth of
+the plants which bore them, and that they sprang up to new life when a
+return of favorable conditions awaked them from a sleep of centuries.
+Darwin indeed says that the heath "had never been touched by the hand
+of man." Perhaps not, after it became a heath; but what evidence is
+there to control the general presumption that this heath was preceded by
+a forest, in whose shade the vegetables which dropped the seeds in
+question might have grown?[266]
+
+Although, therefore, the destruction of a wood and the reclaiming of the
+soil to agricultural uses suppose the death of its smaller dependent
+flora, these revolutions do not exclude the possibility of its
+resurrection. In a practical view of the subject, however, we must admit
+that when the woodman fells a tree he sacrifices the colony of humbler
+growths which had vegetated under its protection. Some wood plants are
+known to possess valuable medicinal properties, and experiment may show
+that the number of these is greater than we now suppose. Few of them,
+however, have any other economical value than that of furnishing a
+slender pasturage to cattle allowed to roam in the woods; and even this
+small advantage is far more than compensated by the mischief 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 than the brandy cask whose staves
+are split out from its heart wood; a bed of anemones, hepaticas, or wood
+violets than the leeks and onions which he may grow on the soil they
+have enriched and in the air they made fragrant--he who has enjoyed that
+special training of the heart and intellect which can be acquired only
+in the unviolated sanctuaries of nature, "where man is distant, but God
+is near"--will not rashly assert his right to extirpate a tribe of
+harmless vegetables, barely because their products neither tickle his
+palate nor fill his pocket; and his regret at the dwindling area of the
+forest solitude will be augmented by the reflection that the nurselings
+of the woodland perish with the pines, the oaks, and the beeches that
+sheltered them.[267]
+
+Although, as I have said, birds do not frequent the deeper recesses of
+the wood,[268] yet a very large proportion of them build their nests in
+trees, and find in their foliage and branches a secure retreat from the
+inclemencies of the seasons 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 wood
+legions of their winged enemies, which swoop down upon the fields to
+save man's harvests by devouring the destroying worm, and surprising the
+lagging beetle in his tardy retreat to the dark cover where he lurks
+through the hours of daylight.
+
+The insects most injurious to rural industry do not multiply in or near
+the woods. The locust, which ravages the East with its voracious armies,
+is bred in vast open plains which admit the full heat of the sun to
+hasten the hatching 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 those countries; and the grasshopper, which now
+threatens to be almost as great a pest to the agriculture of some North
+American soils, breeds in seriously injurious numbers only where a wide
+extent of surface is bare of woods.
+
+
+_Utility of the Forest._
+
+In most parts of Europe, the woods are already so nearly extirpated that
+the mere protection of those which now exist is by no means an adequate
+remedy for the evils resulting from the want of them; and besides, as I
+have already 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] and France has now set herself
+energetically at work to restore the woods in the southern provinces,
+and thereby to prevent the utter depopulation and waste with which that
+once fertile soil and delicious climate are threatened.
+
+The objects of the restoration of the forest are as multifarious as the
+motives that have led to its destruction, and as the evils which that
+destruction has occasioned. It is hoped that the planting of the
+mountains will diminish the frequency and violence of 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, prevent the spread of miasmatic effluvia, and,
+finally, furnish an inexhaustible and self-renewing supply of a material
+indispensable to so many purposes of domestic comfort, to the successful
+exercise of every art of peace, every destructive energy of war.[271]
+
+But our enumeration of the uses of trees is not yet complete. Besides
+the influence of the forest, in mountain ranges, as a means of
+preventing the scooping out of ravines and the accumulations of water
+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 considered in
+the chapter on the waters; and another very important use of trees, that
+of fixing movable sand-dunes, and reclaiming them to profitable
+cultivation, will be pointed out in the chapter on the sands.
+
+The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures and the mechanical
+arts, of military armaments, and especially of the commercial fleets and
+navies of Christendom within the present century, has greatly augmented
+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 her only
+remaining trees fit for such uses.[273] The walnut trees alone felled in
+Europe within two years to furnish the armies of America with
+gunstocks, would form a forest of no inconsiderable extent.[274]
+
+
+_The Forests of Europe._
+
+Mirabeau estimated the forests of France in 1750 at seventeen millions
+of hectares [42,000,000 acres]; in 1860 they were reduced to eight
+millions [19,769,000 acres]. This would be at the rate of 82,000
+hectares [202,600 acres] per year. Troy, from whose valuable pamphlet,
+_�tude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes_, I take these statistical
+details, supposes that Mirabeau's statement may have been an extravagant
+one, but it still remains certain that the waste has been enormous; for
+it is known that, in some departments, that of Ari�ge, for instance,
+clearing has gone on during the last half century at the rate of three
+thousand acres a year,[275] and in all parts of the empire trees have
+been felled faster than they 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 any agricultural use. Hence it is
+evident that the proportion of forest in 1750, taking even Mirabeau's
+large estimate, was not very much too great for permanent maintenance,
+though doubtless the distribution was so unequal that it would have been
+sound policy to fell the woods and clear land in some provinces, while
+large forests should have been planted in others.[277] During the
+period in question, France neither exported manufactured wood or rough
+timber, nor derived important collateral advantages of any sort from the
+destruction of her forests. She is consequently impoverished and
+crippled to the extent of the difference between what she actually
+possesses of wooded surface and what she ought to have retained.
+
+Italy and Spain are bared of trees in a greater degree than France, and
+even Russia, which we habitually consider as substantially a forest
+country, is beginning to suffer seriously for want of wood. Jourdier, as
+quoted by Clav�, observes: "Instead of a vast territory with immense
+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 man or of
+fire, those two great enemies of Muscovite sylviculture. This is so
+true, that clear-sighted men already foresee a crisis which will become
+terrible, unless the discovery of great deposits of some new
+combustible, as pit coal or anthracite, shall diminish its evils."[278]
+
+Germany, from character of surface and climate, and from the attention
+which has long been paid in all the German States to sylviculture, is,
+taken as a whole, in a far better condition in this respect than its
+more southern neighbors; but in the Alpine 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 parts of the territory of Bavaria, where, not long since, wood
+abounded, I may mention the fact that the water of salt springs is, in
+some instances, conveyed to the distance of sixty miles, in iron pipes,
+to reach a supply of fuel for boiling it down.[279]
+
+
+_Forests of the United States and Canada._
+
+The vast forests of the United States and Canada cannot long resist the
+improvident habits of the backwoodsman and the increased demand for
+lumber. According to the census of the former country for 1860, which
+gives returns of the "sawed and planed lumber" alone, timber for
+framing and for a vast variety of mechanical purposes being omitted
+altogether, the value of the former material prepared for market in the
+United States was, in 1850, $58,521,976; in 1860, $95,912,286. The
+quantity of unsawed lumber is not likely to have increased 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 value. Perhaps this rise of prices may even be
+sufficient to make the entire difference between the value of "sawed and
+planed lumber" produced in the ten years in question by the six New
+England States (21 per cent.), and the six Middle States (15 per cent.);
+but the amount produced by the Western and by the Southern States had
+doubled, and that returned from the Pacific States and Territories had
+trebled in value in the same interval, so that there was certainly, in
+those States, a large increase in the actual quantity prepared for sale.
+
+I greatly doubt whether any one of the American States, except, perhaps,
+Oregon, has, at this moment, more woodland than it ought permanently to
+preserve, though, no doubt, a different distribution of the forests in
+all of them might be highly advantageous. It is a great misfortune to
+the American Union that the State Governments have so generally disposed
+of their original domain to private citizens. It is true that public
+property is not sufficiently respected in the United States; and it is
+also true that, within the memory of almost every man of mature age,
+timber was of so little value in that country, that the owners of
+private woodlands submitted, almost without complaint, to what would be
+regarded elsewhere 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, not to the action of their local or general
+legislatures. Even in France, government has moved with too slow and
+hesitating a pace, and preventive measures do not yet compensate
+destructive causes. The judicious remarks of Troy on this point may well
+be applied to other countries than France, other measures of public
+policy than the preservation of the woods. "To move softly," says he,
+"is to commit the most dangerous, the most unpardonable of imprudences;
+it diminishes the prestige of authority; it furnishes a triumph to the
+sneerer and the incredulous; it strengthens opposition and encourages
+resistance; it ruins the administration in the opinion of the people,
+weakens its power and depresses its courage."[281]
+
+
+_The Economy of the Forest._
+
+The legislation of European states upon sylviculture, and the practice
+of that art, divide themselves into two great branches--the preservation
+of existing forests, and the creation of new. From the long operation of
+causes already set forth, what is understood in America and other new
+countries by the "primitive forest," no longer exists in the territories
+which were the seats 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 man and by domestic animals,
+and they always present more or less of an artificial character and
+arrangement. Both they and planted forests, which, though certainly not
+few, are of recent date in Europe, demand, as well for protection as for
+promotion of growth, a treatment different in some respects from that
+which would be suited to the character and wants of the virgin wood.
+
+On this latter branch of the subject, experience and observation have
+not yet collected a sufficient stock of facts to serve for the
+construction of a complete system of sylviculture; but the management of
+the forest as it exists in France--the different zones and climates of
+which country present many points of analogy with those of the United
+States and some of the British colonies--has been carefully studied, and
+several manuals of practice have been prepared for the foresters of that
+empire. I believe the best of these is the _Cours �l�mentaire de Culture
+des Bois cr�� � l'�cole Foresti�re de Nancy, par M. Lorentz, compl�t�,
+et publi� par A. Parade_, with a supplement under the title of _Cours
+d'Am�nagement des For�ts, par Henri Nanquette_. The _�tudes sur
+l'�conomie Foresti�re, par Jules Clav�_, 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 sufficiently specific in its details to serve that
+purpose. Notwithstanding the difference of conditions between the
+aboriginal and the trained forest, the judicious observer who aims at
+the preservation of the former will reap much instruction from the
+treatises I have cited, and I believe he will be convinced that the
+sooner a natural wood is brought into the state of an artificially
+regulated one, the better it is for all the multiplied interests which
+depend on the wise administration of this branch of public
+economy.[282]
+
+One consideration bearing on this subject has received less attention
+than it merits, because most persons interested in such questions have
+not opportunities for the comparison I refer to. I mean the great
+general superiority of cultivated timber to that of strictly spontaneous
+growth. I say _general_ superiority, because there are exceptions to the
+rule. The white pine, _Pinus strobus_, for instance, and other trees 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 wholly free from
+knots, is regular in annular structure, soft and uniform in texture,
+and, consequently, superior to almost all other timber for joinery. If,
+while a large pine is spared, the broad-leaved or other smaller trees
+around it are felled, the swaying of the tree from the action of the
+wind mechanically produces separations between the layers of annual
+growth, and greatly diminishes the value of the timber.
+
+The same defect is often observed in pines which, from some accident of
+growth, have much overtopped their fellows in the virgin forest. The
+white pine, growing in the fields, or in open glades in the woods, is
+totally different from the true forest tree, both in general aspect and
+in quality of wood. Its stem is much shorter, its top less tapering, its
+foliage denser and more inclined to gather into tufts, its branches more
+numerous and of larger diameter, its wood shows 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 with trees grown in the open grounds
+from known white-pine seedlings, I believe their peculiar character is
+due to unfavorable circumstances in their early growth. The pine, then,
+is an exception to the general rule as to the inferiority of the forest
+to the open-ground tree. The pasture oak and pasture beech, on the
+contrary, are well known to produce far better timber than those grown
+in the woods, and there are few trees to which the remark is not equally
+applicable.[283]
+
+Another advantage of the artificially regulated forest is, that it
+admits of such grading of the ground as to favor the retention or
+discharge of water at will, while the facilities it affords for
+selecting and duly proportioning, as well as properly spacing, the trees
+which compose it, are too obvious to require to be more than hinted at.
+In conducting these operations, 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 Clav�, "is not, as is often
+supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each other in long
+perspective, without bond of union, and capable of isolation from each
+other; it is, on the contrary, a whole, the different parts of which are
+interdependent upon each other, and it constitutes, so to speak, a true
+individuality. Every forest has a special character, determined by the
+form of the surface it grows upon, the kinds of trees that compose it,
+and the manner in which they are grouped."[284]
+
+
+_European and American Trees compared._
+
+The woods of North America are strikingly distinguished from those of
+Europe by the vastly greater variety of species they contain. According
+to Clav�, there are in "France and in most parts of Europe" only about
+twenty forest trees, five or six of which are spike-leaved and resinous,
+the remainder broad-leaved."[285] Our author, however, doubtless means
+genera, though he uses the word _esp�ces_. 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 strobus_--and the cedar of Lebanon from Asia, though
+it is indigenous in Algeria also. We may then safely say that Europe
+does not possess above forty or fifty trees of such economical value as
+to be worth the special care of the forester, while the oak alone
+numbers not less than thirty species in the United States,[286] and some
+other North American genera are almost equally diversified.[287]
+
+Few European trees, except those bearing edible fruit, have been
+naturalized in the United States, while the American forest flora has
+made large contributions to that of Europe. It is a very poor taste
+which has led to the substitution of the less picturesque European for
+the graceful and majestic American elm, in some public grounds in the
+United States. On the other hand, the European mountain ash--which in
+beauty and healthfulness of growth is superior to our own--the horse
+chestnut, and the abele, or silver poplar, are valuable additions to the
+ornamental trees of North America. The Swiss arve or zirbelkiefer,
+_Pinus cembra_, which yields a well-flavored edible seed and furnishes
+excellent wood for carving, the umbrella pine which also bears a seed
+agreeable to the taste, and which, 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 in strength and elasticity of
+fibre, is valuable for its timber and its oil.[288] The maritime pine,
+which has proved of such immense use in fixing drifting sands in France,
+may perhaps be better adapted to this purpose than any of the pines of
+the New World, and it is of great importance for its turpentine, resin,
+and tar. The �pic�a, or common fir, _Abies picea_, _Abies excelsa_,
+_Picea excelsa_, abundant in the mountains of France and the contiguous
+country, is known for its product, Burgundy pitch, and, as it flourishes
+in a greater variety of soil and climate than almost any other
+spike-leaved tree, it might be well worth transplantation.[289] The cork
+oak has been introduced into the United States, I believe, and would
+undoubtedly thrive in the Southern section of the Union.[290]
+
+In the walnut, the chestnut, the cork oak, the mulberry, the olive, the
+orange, the lemon, the fig, and the multitude of other trees which, by
+their fruit, or by other products, yield an annual revenue, nature has
+provided Southern Europe with a partial compensation for the loss of
+the native forest. It is true that these trees, planted as most of them
+are at such distances as to admit of cultivation, or of the growth of
+grass among them, are but an 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 wanting, certainly,
+north of the Alps. The apple, the pear, and the prune are important in
+the economy both of man and of nature, but they are far less numerous in
+Switzerland and Northern France than are the trees I have mentioned in
+Southern Europe, both because they are in general less remunerative, and
+because the climate, in higher latitudes, does not permit the free
+introduction of shade trees into grounds occupied for agricultural
+purposes.[291]
+
+The multitude of species, intermixed as they are in their spontaneous
+growth, gives the American forest landscape a variety of aspect not
+often seen in the woods of Europe, and the gorgeous tints, which nature
+repeats from the dying dolphin to paint the falling leaf of the American
+maples, oaks, and ash trees, clothe the hillsides 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 most American travellers in Europe are willing
+to allow; and, besides, the small deciduous shrubs which often carpet
+the forest glades of these mountains are dyed with a ruddy and orange
+glow, which, in the distant landscape, is no mean substitute for the
+scarlet and crimson and gold and amber of the transatlantic woodland.
+
+No American evergreen known to me resembles the umbrella pine
+sufficiently to be a fair object of comparison with it.[292] A cedar,
+very common above the Highlands on the Hudson, is extremely like the
+cypress, straight, slender, with erect, compressed ramification, and
+feathered to the ground, but its foliage is neither so dark nor so
+dense, the tree does not attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor
+has it the lithe flexibility 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, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its
+foliage, gropes around with its feeble branches, and hisses as in
+impotent passion. The cypress gathers its limbs still more closely to
+its stem, bows a gracious salute rather than an humble obeisance to the
+tempest, bends to the wind with an elasticity that assures you of its
+prompt return to its regal attitude, and sends from its thick leaflets a
+murmur like the roar of the far-off ocean.
+
+The cypress and the umbrella pine are not merely conventional types of
+the Italian landscape. They are essential elements in a field of rural
+beauty which can be seen in perfection only in the basin of the
+Mediterranean, and they are as characteristic of this class of scenery
+as the date palm is of the oases of the desert. There is, however, this
+difference: a single cypress or pine is often enough to shed beauty over
+a wide area; the palm is a social 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 wheel
+carriages and high roads can acquire any notion of the face of the
+earth, and form any proper geographical image of that country. At other
+seasons, not high walls only, but equally impervious hedges, and now,
+unhappily, acacias thickly planted along the railway routes, confine the
+view so completely, that the arch of a tunnel, or a night cap over the
+traveller's eyes, is scarcely a more effectual obstacle to the
+gratification of his curiosity.[293]
+
+
+_Sylviculture._
+
+The art, or, as the Continental foresters call it, the science of
+sylviculture has been so little pursued in England and America, that its
+nomenclature has not been introduced into the English vocabulary, and I
+shall not be able to describe 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 like the present,
+but the almost total want of conveniently accessible means of
+information on the subject, in English-speaking countries, will justify
+me in presenting it with somewhat more of detail than would otherwise be
+pertinent.
+
+The two best known methods are those distinguished as the _taillis_,
+copse or coppice treatment,[294] and the _futaie_, for which I find no
+English equivalent, but which may not inappropriately be called the
+_full-growth_ system. A _taillis_, copse, or coppice, is a wood composed
+of shoots from the roots of trees previously cut for fuel and timber.
+The shoots are thinned out from time to time, and finally cut, either
+after a fixed number of years, or after the young trees have attained to
+certain dimensions, their roots being then left to send out a new
+progeny as before. This is the cheapest method of management, and
+therefore the best wherever the price of labor and of capital bears a
+high proportion to that of 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 mixed character of the
+forest--in many respects an important advantage, if not an indispensable
+condition of growth--is lost;[296] and besides this, large wood of any
+species cannot be grown in this method, because trees which shoot from
+decaying stumps and their dying roots, become hollow or otherwise
+unsound before they acquire their full dimensions. A more fatal
+objection still, is, that the roots of trees will not bear more than two
+or three, or at most four cuttings of their shoots before their vitality
+is exhausted, and the wood can then be restored only by replanting
+entirely. The period of cutting coppices varies in Europe from fifteen
+to forty years, according to soil, species, and rapidity of growth.
+
+In the _futaie_, or full-growth system, the trees are allowed to stand
+as long as they continue in healthy and vigorous growth. This is a
+shorter period than would be at first supposed, when we consider the
+advanced age and great dimensions to which, under favorable
+circumstances, many forest trees attain in temperate climates. But, as
+every observing person familiar with the natural forest is aware, these
+are exceptional cases, just as are instances of great longevity or of
+gigantic stature among men. Able vegetable physiologists have maintained
+that the tree, like most reptiles, has no natural limit of life or of
+growth, and that the only reason why our oaks and our pines do not reach
+the age of twenty centuries 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
+sequoia, it may not be able to carry it beyond one hundred and fifty in
+the oak. The limit may be different, too, in different trees of the same
+species, not from defective organization in those of inferior growth,
+but from more or less favorable conditions of soil, nourishment, and
+exposure. Whenever a tree attains to the limit beyond which its
+circulating fluids cannot rise, we may suppose that decay begins, and
+death follows, from the same causes which bring about the same results
+in animals of limited size--such, for example, as the interruption of
+functions essential to life, in consequence of the clogging up of ducts
+by matter assimilable in the stage of growth, but no longer so when
+increment has ceased.
+
+In the natural woods, we observe that, though, among the myriads of
+trees which grow upon a square mile, there are several vegetable giants,
+yet the great majority of them begin to decay long before they have
+attained their maximum of stature, and this seems to be still more
+emphatically true of the artificial forest. In France, according to
+Clav�, "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 woods [_bois blancs_], in wet
+soils, languish and die before reaching the fiftieth year."[297] These
+ages are certainly below the average of those of American forest trees,
+and are greatly exceeded in very numerous well-attested instances of
+isolated trees in Europe.
+
+The former mode of treating the futaie, called the garden system, was to
+cut the trees individually as they arrived at maturity, but, in the best
+regulated forests, this practice has been abandoned for the German
+method, which embraces not only the securing of the largest immediate
+profit, but the replanting of the forest, and the care of the young
+growth. This is effected in the case of a forest, whether natural or
+artificial, which is to be subjected to regular management, by three
+operations. The first of these consists in felling about one third of
+the wood, in such way as to leave convenient spaces for the growth of
+young trees. The remaining two-thirds are 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
+mutually give to each other, the remainder of the original forest is
+felled, and the wood now consists wholly of young and vigorous trees.
+This result is obtained after about twenty years. At convenient periods
+afterward, the unhealthy stocks and those injured by wind or other
+accidents are removed, and in some instances the growth of the remainder
+is promoted by irrigation or by fertilizing applications.[298] When the
+forest is approaching to maturity, the original processes already
+described are repeated; and as, in different parts of an extensive
+forest, they would take place in different zones, it would afford
+indefinitely an annual crop of firewood and timber.
+
+The duties of the forester do not end here. It sometimes happens that
+the glades left by felling the older trees are not sufficiently seeded,
+or that the species, or _essences_, as the French oddly call them, are
+not duly proportioned in the new crop. In this case, seed must be
+artificially sown, or young trees planted in the vacancies.
+
+One of the most important rules in the administration of the forest is
+the absolute exclusion of domestic quadrupeds from every wood which is
+not destined to be cleared. No growth of young trees is possible where
+cattle are admitted to pasture at any season of the year, though they
+are undoubtedly most destructive while trees are in leaf.[299]
+
+It is often necessary to take measures for the protection of young trees
+against the rabbit, the mole, and other rodent quadrupeds, and of older
+ones against the damage done by the larv� of insects hatched upon the
+surface or in the tissues of the bark, or even in the wood itself. The
+much greater liability of the artificial 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
+regulated forest are abundant compensations for the loss thus
+occasioned, and the progress of entomological science will, perhaps,
+suggest new methods of preventing the ravages of insects. Thus far,
+however, the collection and destruction of the eggs, by simple but
+expensive means, has proved the only effectual remedy.[300]
+
+It is common in Europe to permit the removal of the fallen leaves and
+fragments of bark and branches with which the forest soil is covered,
+and sometimes the cutting of the lower twigs of evergreens. The leaves
+and twigs are principally used as litter for cattle, and finally as
+manure, the bark and wind-fallen branches as fuel. By long usage,
+sometimes by express grant, this privilege has become a vested right of
+the population in the neighborhood of many public, and even large
+private forests; but it is generally regarded as a serious evil. To
+remove the leaves and fallen twigs 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 ploughing. The carbonic acid
+given out by decaying leaves, when taken up by water, serves to
+dissolve the mineral constituents of the soil, and is particularly
+active in disintegrating feldspar and the clay derived from its
+decomposition. * * * The leaves belong to the soil. Without them it
+cannot preserve its fertility, and cannot furnish nutriment to the
+beech. The trees languish, produce seed incapable of germination, and
+the spontaneous self-sowing, which is an indispensable element in the
+best systems of sylviculture, fails altogether in the bared and
+impoverished soil."[301]
+
+Besides these evils, the removal of the leaves deprives the soil of that
+spongy character which gives it such immense value as a reservoir of
+moisture and a regulator of the flow of springs; and, finally, it
+exposes the surface roots to the drying influence of sun and wind, to
+accidental mechanical injury from the tread of animals or men, and, in
+cold climates, to the destructive effects of frost.
+
+The annual lopping and trimming of trees for fuel, so common in Europe,
+is fatal to the higher uses of the forest, but where small groves are
+made, or rows of trees planted, for no other purpose than to secure a
+supply of firewood, 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 use an old English word, a
+doddered tree, is in general a melancholy object, yet it must be
+admitted that the aspect of some species--the American locust, _Robinia
+pseudacacia_, for instance--when young, is improved by this
+process.[302]
+
+I have spoken of the needs of agriculture as a principal cause of the
+destruction of the forest, and of domestic cattle as particularly
+injurious to the growth of young trees. But these animals affect the
+forest, indirectly, in a still more important way, because the extent of
+cleared ground required for agricultural use depends very much on the
+number and kinds of the cattle bred. We have seen, in a former chapter,
+that, in the United States, the domestic quadrupeds amount to more than
+a hundred millions, or three times the number of the human population of
+the Union. In many of the Western States, the swine subsist more or less
+on acorns, nuts, and other products of the woods, and the prairies, or
+natural meadows of the Mississippi valley, yield a large amount 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 this, the ground
+required to produce the grass and grain consumed in rearing and
+fattening a grazing quadruped, would yield a far larger amount of
+nutriment, if devoted to the growing of breadstuffs, than is furnished
+by his flesh; and, upon the whole, whatever advantages may be reaped
+from the breeding of domestic cattle, it is plain that the cleared land
+devoted to their sustenance in the originally wooded part of the United
+States, after deducting a quantity sufficient to produce an amount of
+aliment equal to their flesh, still greatly exceeds that cultivated for
+vegetables, directly consumed by the people of the same regions; or, to
+express a nearly equivalent idea in other words, the meadow and the
+pasture, taken together, much exceed the plough land.[303]
+
+In fertile countries, like the United States, the foreign demand for
+animal and vegetable aliment, for cotton, and for tobacco, much enlarges
+the sphere of agricultural operations, and, of course, prompts 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 of the Old World
+that derive the raw material of their mechanical industry from distant
+lands, and import many articles of vegetable food or luxury which their
+own climates cannot advantageously produce.
+
+The growth of arboreal vegetation is so slow that, though he who buries
+an acorn may hope to see it shoot up to a miniature resemblance of the
+majestic tree which shall shade his remote descendants, yet the longest
+life hardly embraces the seedtime and the harvest of a forest. The
+planter of a wood must be actuated by higher motives than those of an
+investment the profits of which consist in direct pecuniary gain to
+himself or even to his posterity; for if, in rare cases, an artificial
+forest may, in two 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 to those that are to come after it.
+Especially is this obligation incumbent upon Americans. No civilized
+people profits so largely from the toils and sacrifices of its immediate
+predecessors as they; no generations have ever sown so liberally, and,
+in their own persons, reaped so scanty a return, as the pioneers of
+Anglo-American social life. We can repay our debt to our noble
+forefathers only by a like magnanimity, by a like self-forgetting care
+for the moral and material interests of our own posterity.
+
+
+_Instability of American Life._
+
+All human institutions, associate arrangements, modes of life, have
+their characteristic imperfections. The natural, perhaps the necessary
+defect of ours, is their instability, their want of fixedness, not in
+form only, but even in spirit. The face of physical nature in the United
+States shares this incessant fluctuation, and the landscape is as
+variable as the habits of the population. It is time for some abatement
+in the restless love of change which characterizes us, and makes us
+almost a nomade rather than 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 and plough
+land--would involve a certain persistence of character in all the
+branches of industry, all the occupations and habits of life, which
+depend upon or are immediately connected with either, without implying a
+rigidity that should exclude flexibility of accommodation to the many
+changes of external circumstance which human wisdom can neither prevent
+nor foresee, and would thus help us to become, more emphatically, a
+well-ordered and stable commonwealth, and, not less conspicuously, a
+people of progress.
+
+     NOTE on word _watershed_, omitted on p. 257.--Sir John F. W.
+     Herschel (_Physical Geography_, 137, and elsewhere) spells this
+     word _water-sched_, because he considers it a translation, or
+     rather an adoption of the German "Wasser-scheide, separation of
+     the waters, not water-_shed_, 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 because _sch_ is a
+     combination of letters wholly unknown to modern English
+     orthography and properly representing no sound recognized in
+     English orthoepy, and for the still better reason that
+     _watershed_, in the sense of _division-of-the-waters_, has a
+     legitimate English etymology.
+
+     The Anglo-Saxon _sceadan_ meant both to separate or divide, and
+     to shade or shelter. It is the root of the English verbs _to
+     shed_ and _to shade_, and in the former meaning is the A. S.
+     equivalent of the German verb _scheiden_.
+
+     _Shed_ in Old English had the meaning _to separate_ or
+     _distinguish_. It is so used in the _Owl and the Nightingale_, v.
+     197. Palsgrave (_Lesclarcissement, etc._, p. 717) defines _I
+     shede_, I departe thinges asonder; and the word still means _to
+     divide_ in several English local dialects. Hence, _watershed_,
+     the division or separation of the waters, is good English both in
+     sense and spelling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WATERS.
+
+LAND ARTIFICIALLY WON FROM THE WATERS: _a_, EXCLUSION OF THE SEA BY
+DIKING; _b_, DRAINING OF LAKES AND MARSHES; _c_, GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCE
+OF SUCH OPERATIONS--LOWERING OF LAKES--MOUNTAIN LAKES--CLIMATIC EFFECTS
+OF DRAINING LAKES AND MARSHES--GEOGRAPHICAL AND CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF
+AQUEDUCTS, RESERVOIRS, AND CANALS--SURFACE AND UNDERDRAINING, AND THEIR
+CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHICAL EFFECTS--IRRIGATION AND ITS CLIMATIC AND
+GEOGRAPHICAL EFFECTS.
+
+INUNDATIONS AND TORRENTS: _a_, RIVER EMBANKMENTS; _b_, FLOODS OF THE
+ARD�CHE; _c_, CRUSHING FORCE OF TORRENTS; _d_, INUNDATIONS OF 1856 IN
+FRANCE; _e_, REMEDIES AGAINST INUNDATIONS--CONSEQUENCES IF THE NILE HAD
+BEEN CONFINED BY LATERAL DIKES.
+
+IMPROVEMENTS IN THE VAL DI CHIANA--IMPROVEMENTS IN THE TUSCAN
+MAREMME--OBSTRUCTION OF RIVER MOUTHS--SUBTERRANEAN WATERS--ARTESIAN
+WELLS--ARTIFICIAL SPRINGS--ECONOMIZING PRECIPITATION.
+
+
+_Land artificially won from the Waters._
+
+Man, as we have seen, has done much to revolutionize the solid surface
+of the globe, and to change the distribution and proportions, if not the
+essential character, of the organisms which inhabit the land and even
+the waters. Besides the influence thus exerted upon the life which
+peoples the sea, his action upon the land has involved a certain amount
+of indirect encroachment upon the territorial jurisdiction of the ocean.
+So far as he has increased the erosion of running waters by the
+destruction of the forest, he has promoted the deposit of solid matter
+in the sea, thus reducing its depth, advancing the coast line, and
+diminishing the area covered by the waters. He has gone beyond this, and
+invaded the realm of the ocean by constructing within its borders
+wharves, piers, lighthouses, breakwaters, fortresses, and other
+facilities for his commercial and military operations; and in some
+countries he has permanently rescued from tidal overflow, and even from
+the very bed of the deep, tracts of ground extensive enough to
+constitute valuable additions to his agricultural domain. The quantity
+of soil gained from the sea by these different modes of acquisition is,
+indeed, too inconsiderable to form an appreciable element in the
+comparison of the general proportion between the two great forms of
+terrestrial surface, land and water; but the results of such operations,
+considered in their physical and their moral bearings, are sufficiently
+important to entitle them to special notice in every comprehensive view
+of the relations between man and nature.
+
+There are cases, as on the western shores of the Baltic, where, in
+consequence of the secular elevation of the coast, the sea appears to be
+retiring; others, where, from the slow sinking of the land, it seems to
+be advancing. These movements depend upon geological causes wholly out
+of our reach, and man can neither advance nor retard them. There are
+also cases where similar apparent effects are produced by local oceanic
+currents, by river deposit or erosion, by tidal action, or by the
+influence of the wind upon the waves and the sands of the sea beach. A
+regular current may drift suspended earth and seaweed along a coast
+until they are caught by an eddy and finally deposited out of the reach
+of further disturbance, or it may scoop out the bed of the sea and
+undermine promontories and headlands; a powerful river, as the wind
+changes the direction of its flow at its outlet, may wash away shores
+and sandbanks at one point to deposit their material at another; the
+tide or waves, stirred to unusual depths by the wind, may gradually wear
+down the line of coast, or they may form shoals and coast dunes by
+depositing the sand they have rolled up from the bottom of the ocean.
+These latter modes of action are slow in producing effects sufficiently
+important to be noticed in general geography, or even to be visible in
+the representations of coast line laid down in ordinary maps; but they
+nevertheless form conspicuous features in local topography, and they are
+attended with consequences of great moment to the material and the moral
+interests of men.
+
+The forces which produce these results are all in a considerable degree
+subject to control, or rather to direction and resistance, by human
+power, and it is in guiding and combating them that man has achieved
+some of his most remarkable and honorable conquests over nature. The
+triumphs in question, or what we generally call harbor and coast
+improvements, whether we estimate their value by the money and labor
+expended upon them, or by their bearing upon the interests of commerce
+and the arts of civilization, must take a very high rank among the great
+works of man, and they are fast assuming a magnitude greatly exceeding
+their former relative importance. The extension of commerce and of the
+military marine, and especially the introduction of vessels of increased
+burden and deeper draught of water, have imposed upon engineers tasks of
+a character which a century ago would have been pronounced, and, in
+fact, would have been impracticable; but necessity has stimulated an
+ingenuity which has contrived means of executing them, and which gives
+promise of yet greater performance in time to come.
+
+Men have ceased to admire the power which heaped up the great pyramid to
+gratify the pride of a despot with a giant sepulchre; for many great
+harbors, many important lines of internal communication, in the
+civilized world, now exhibit works which surpass the vastest remains of
+ancient architectural art in mass and weight of matter, demand the
+exercise of far greater constructive skill, and involve a much heavier
+pecuniary expenditure than would now be required for the building of the
+tomb of Cheops. It is computed that the great pyramid, the solid
+contents of which when complete were about 3,000,000 cubic yards, could
+be erected for a million of pounds sterling. The breakwater at
+Cherbourg, founded in rough water sixty feet, deep, at an average
+distance of more than two miles from the shore, contains double the mass
+of the pyramid, and many a comparatively unimportant railroad has been
+constructed at twice the cost which would now build that stupendous
+monument. Indeed, although man, detached from the solid earth, is almost
+powerless to struggle against the sea, he is fast becoming invincible by
+it so long as his foot is planted on the shore, or even on the bottom of
+the rolling ocean; and though on some battle fields between the waters
+and the land, he is obliged slowly to yield his ground, yet he retreats
+still facing the foe, and will finally be able to say to the sea: "Thus
+far shalt thou come and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be
+stayed!"
+
+The description of works of harbor and coast improvement which have only
+an economical value, not a true geographical importance, does not come
+within the plan of the present volume, and in treating this branch of my
+subject, I shall confine myself to such as are designed either to gain
+new soil by excluding the waters from grounds which they had permanently
+or occasionally covered, or to resist new encroachments of the sea upon
+the land.
+
+
+a. _Exclusion of the Sea by Diking._
+
+The draining of the Lincolnshire fens in England, which converted about
+400,000 acres of marsh, pool, and tide-washed flat into plough land and
+pasturage, is a work, or rather series of works, of great magnitude, and
+it possesses much economical, and, indeed, no trifling geographical
+importance. Its plans and methods were, at least in part, borrowed from
+the example of like improvements in Holland, and it is, in difficulty
+and extent, inferior to works executed for the same purpose on the
+opposite coast of the North Sea, by Dutch, Frisic, and Low German
+engineers. The space I can devote to such operations will be better
+employed in describing the latter, and I content myself with the simple
+statement I have already made of the quantity of worthless and even
+pestilential land which has been rendered both productive and salubrious
+in Lincolnshire, by diking out the sea, and the rivers which traverse
+the fens of that country.
+
+The almost continued prevalence of west winds upon both coasts of the
+German Ocean occasions a constant set of the currents of that sea to the
+east, and both for this reason and on account of the greater violence of
+storms from the former quarter, the English shores are much less exposed
+to invasion by the waves than those of the Netherlands and the provinces
+contiguous to them on the north. The old Netherlandish chronicles are
+filled with the most startling accounts of the damage done by the
+irruptions of the ocean, from west winds or extraordinarily high tides,
+at times long before any considerable extent of seacoast was diked.
+Several hundreds of these terrible inundations are recorded, and in very
+many of them the loss of human lives is estimated as high as one hundred
+thousand. It is impossible to doubt that there must be enormous
+exaggeration in these numbers; for, with all the reckless hardihood
+shown by men in braving the dangers and privations attached by nature to
+their birthplace, it is inconceivable that so dense a population as such
+wholesale destruction of life supposes could find the means of
+subsistence, or content itself to dwell, on a territory liable, a dozen
+times in a century, to such fearful devastation. There can be no doubt,
+however, that the low continental shores of the German Ocean very
+frequently suffered immense injury from inundation by the sea, and it is
+natural, therefore, that the various arts of resistance to the
+encroachments of the ocean, and, finally, of aggressive warfare upon its
+domain, and of permanent conquest of its territory, should have been
+earlier studied and carried to higher perfection in the latter
+countries, than in England, which had much less to lose or to gain by
+the incursions or the retreat of the waters.
+
+Indeed, although the confinement of swelling rivers by artificial
+embankments is of great antiquity, I do not know that the defence or
+acquisition of land from the sea by diking was ever practised on a large
+scale until systematically undertaken by the Netherlanders, a few
+centuries after the commencement of the Christian era. The silence of
+the Roman historians affords a strong presumption that this art was
+unknown to the inhabitants of the Netherlands at the time of the Roman
+invasion, and the elder Pliny's description of the mode of life along
+the coast which has now been long diked in, applies precisely to the
+habits of the people who live on the low islands and mainland flats
+lying outside of the chain of dikes, and wholly unprotected by
+embankments of any sort.
+
+It has been conjectured, and not without probability, that the causeways
+built by the Romans across the marshes of the Low Countries, in their
+campaigns against the Germanic tribes, gave the natives the first hint
+of the utility which might be derived from similar constructions applied
+to a different purpose.[306] If this is so, it is one of the most
+interesting among the many instances in which the arts and enginery of
+war have been so modified as to be eminently promotive of the blessings
+of peace, thereby in some measure compensating the wrongs and sufferings
+they have inflicted on humanity.[307] The Lowlanders are believed to
+have secured some coast and bay islands by ring dikes, and to have
+embanked some fresh water channels, as early as the eighth or ninth
+century; but it does not appear that sea dikes, important enough to be
+noticed in historical records, were constructed on the mainland before
+the thirteenth century. The practice of draining inland accumulation of
+water, whether fresh or salt, for the purpose of bringing under
+cultivation the ground they cover, is of later origin, and is said not
+to have been adopted until after the middle of the fifteenth
+century.[308]
+
+The total amount of surface gained to the agriculture of the Netherlands
+by diking out the sea and by draining shallow bays and lakes, is
+estimated by Staring at three hundred and fifty-five thousand _bunder_
+or hectares, equal to eight hundred and seventy-seven thousand two
+hundred and forty acres, which is one tenth of the area of the
+kingdom.[309] In very many instances, the dikes have been partially, in
+some particularly exposed localities totally destroyed by the violence
+of the sea, and the drained lands again flooded. In some cases, the soil
+thus painfully won from the ocean has been entirely lost; in others it
+has been recovered by repairing or rebuilding the dikes and pumping out
+the water. Besides this, the weight of the dikes gradually sinks them
+into the soft soil beneath, and this loss of elevation must be
+compensated by raising the surface, while the increased burden thus
+added tends to sink them still lower. "Tetens declares," says Kohl,
+"that in some places the dikes have gradually sunk to the depth of sixty
+or even a hundred feet."[310] For these reasons, the processes of dike
+building have been almost everywhere again and again repeated, and thus
+the total expenditure of money and of labor upon the works in question
+is much greater than would appear from an estimate of the actual cost of
+diking-in a given extent of coast land and draining a given area of
+water surface.[311]
+
+On the other hand, by erosion of the coast line, the drifting of sand
+dunes into the interior, and the drowning of fens and morasses by
+incursions of the sea--all caused, or at least greatly aggravated, by
+human improvidence--the Netherlands have lost a far larger area of land
+since the commencement of the Christian era than they have gained by
+diking and draining. Staring despairs of the possibility of calculating
+the loss from the first-mentioned two causes of destruction, but he
+estimates that not less than six hundred and forty thousand bunder, or
+one million five hundred and eighty-one thousand acres, of fen and marsh
+have been washed away, or rather deprived of their vegetable surface and
+covered by water, and thirty-seven thousand bunder, or ninety-one
+thousand four hundred acres of recovered land, have been lost by the
+destruction of the dikes which protected them.[312] The average value of
+land gained from the sea is estimated at about nineteen pounds sterling,
+or ninety dollars, per acre; while the lost fen and morass was not worth
+more than one twenty-fifth part of the same price. The ground buried by
+the drifting of the dunes appears to have been almost entirely of this
+latter character, and, upon the whole, there is no doubt that the soil
+added by human industry to the territory of the Netherlands, within the
+historical period, greatly exceeds in pecuniary value that which has
+fallen a prey to the waves during the same era.
+
+Upon most low and shelving coasts, like those of the Netherlands, the
+maritime currents are constantly changing, in consequence of the
+variability of the winds, and the shifting of the sandbanks, which the
+currents themselves now form and now displace. While, therefore, at one
+point the sea is advancing landward, and requiring great effort to
+prevent the undermining and washing away of the dikes, it is shoaling at
+another by its own deposits, and exposing, at low water, a gradually
+widening belt of sands and ooze. The coast lands selected for diking-in
+are always at points where the sea is depositing productive soil. The
+Eider, the Elbe, the Weser, the Ems, the Rhine, the Maas, and the
+Schelde bring down large quantities of fine earth. The prevalence of
+west winds prevents the waters from carrying this material far out from
+the coast, and it is at last deposited northward or southward from the
+mouth of the rivers which contribute it, according to the varying drift
+of the currents.
+
+The process of natural deposit which prepares the coast for diking-in is
+thus described by Staring: "All sea-deposited soil is composed of the
+same constituents. First comes a stratum of sand, with marine shells, or
+the shells of mollusks living in brackish water. If there be tides, and,
+of course, flowing and ebbing currents, mud is let fall upon the sand
+only after the latter has been raised above low-water mark; for then
+only, at the change from flood to ebb, is the water still enough to form
+a deposit of so light a material. Where mud is found at greater depths,
+as, for example, in a large proportion of the Ij, it is a proof that
+at this point there was never any considerable tidal flow or other
+current. * * * The powerful tidal currents, flowing and ebbing twice a
+day, drift sand with them. They scoop out the bottom at one point, raise
+it at another, and the sandbanks in the current are continually
+shifting. As soon as a bank raises itself above low-water mark, flags
+and reeds establish themselves upon it. The mechanical resistance of
+these plants checks the retreat of the high water and favors the deposit
+of the earth suspended in it, and the formation of land goes on with
+surprising rapidity. When it has risen to high-water level, it is soon
+covered with grasses, and becomes what is called _schor_ in Zeeland,
+_kwelder_ in Friesland. Such grounds are the foundation or starting
+point of the process of diking. When they are once elevated to the
+flood-tide level, no more mud is deposited upon them except by
+extraordinary high tides. Their further rise is, accordingly, very slow,
+and it is seldom advantageous to delay longer the operation of
+diking."[313]
+
+The formation of new banks by the sea is constantly going on at points
+favorable for the deposit of sand and earth, and hence opportunity is
+continually afforded for enclosure of new land outside of that already
+diked in, the coast is fast advancing seaward, and every new embankment
+increases the security of former enclosures. The province of Zeeland
+consists of islands washed by the sea on their western coasts, and
+separated by the many channels through which the Schelde and some other
+rivers find their way to the ocean. In the twelfth century these
+islands were much smaller and more numerous than at present. They have
+been gradually enlarged, and, in several instances, at last connected by
+the extension of their system of dikes. Walcheren is formed of ten
+islets united into one about the end of the fourteenth century. At the
+middle of the fifteenth century, Goeree and Overflakkee consisted of
+separate islands, containing altogether about ten thousand acres; by
+means of above sixty successive advances of the dikes, they have been
+brought to compose a single island, whose area is not less than sixty
+thousand acres.[314]
+
+In the Netherlands--which the first Napoleon characterized as a deposit
+of the Rhine, and as, therefore, by natural law, rightfully the property
+of him who controlled the sources of that great river--and on the
+adjacent Frisic, Low German and Danish shores and islands, sea and river
+dikes have been constructed on a grander and more imposing scale than in
+any other country. The whole economy of the art has been there most
+thoroughly studied, and the literature of the subject is very extensive.
+For my present aim, which is concerned with results rather than with
+processes, it is not worth while to refer to professional treatises, and
+I shall content myself with presenting such information as can be
+gathered from works of a more popular character.[315]
+
+The superior strata of the lowlands upon and near the coast are, as we
+have seen, principally composed of soil brought down by the great
+rivers I have mentioned, and either directly deposited by them upon the
+sands of the bottom, or carried out to sea by their currents, and then,
+after a shorter or longer exposure to the chemical and mechanical action
+of salt water and marine currents, restored again to the land by tidal
+overflow and subsidence from the waters in which it was suspended. At a
+very remote period, the coast flats were, at many points, raised so high
+by successive alluvious or tidal deposits as to be above ordinary high
+water level, but they were still liable to occasional inundation from
+river floods, and from the sea water also, when heavy or long-continued
+west winds drove it landward. The extraordinary fertility of this soil
+and its security as a retreat from hostile violence attracted to it a
+considerable population, while its want of protection against inundation
+exposed it to the devastations of which the chroniclers of the Middle
+Ages have left such highly colored pictures. The first permanent
+dwellings on the coast flats were erected upon artificial mounds, and
+many similar precarious habitations still exist on the unwalled islands
+and shores beyond the chain of dikes. River embankments, which, as is
+familiarly known, have from the earliest antiquity been employed in many
+countries where sea dikes are unknown, were probably the first works of
+this character constructed in the Low Countries, and when two
+neighboring streams of fresh water had been embanked, the next step in
+the process would naturally be to connect the river walls together by a
+transverse dike or raised causeway, which would serve to secure the
+intermediate ground both against the backwater of river floods and
+against overflow by the sea. The oldest true sea dikes described in
+historical records, however, are those enclosing islands in the
+estuaries of the great rivers, and it is not impossible that the double
+character they possess as a security against maritime floods and as a
+military rampart, led to their adoption upon those islands before
+similar constructions had been attempted upon the mainland.
+
+At some points of the coast, various contrivances, such as piers, piles,
+and, in fact, obstructions of all sorts to the ebb of the current, are
+employed to facilitate the deposit of slime, before a regular enclosure
+is commenced. Usually, however, the first step is to build low and cheap
+embankments, extending from an older dike, or from high ground, around
+the parcel of flat intended to be secured. These are called summer dikes
+(_sommer-deich_, pl. _sommer-deiche_, German; _zomerkaai_, _zomerkade_,
+pl. _zomerkaaie_, _zomerkaden_, Dutch). They are erected when a
+sufficient extent of ground to repay the cost has been elevated enough
+to be covered with coarse vegetation fit for pasturage. They serve both
+to secure the ground from overflow by the ordinary flood tides of mild
+weather, and to retain the slime deposited by very high water, which
+would otherwise be partly carried off by the retreating ebb. The
+elevation of the soil goes on slowly after this; but when it has at last
+been sufficiently enriched, and raised high enough to justify the
+necessary outlay, permanent dikes are constructed by which the water is
+excluded at all seasons. These embankments are constructed of sand from
+the coast dunes or from sandbanks, and of earth from the mainland or
+from flats outside the dikes, bound and strengthened by fascines, and
+provided with sluices, which are generally founded on piles and of very
+expensive construction, for drainage at low water. The outward slope of
+the sea dikes is gentle, experience having shown that this form is least
+exposed to injury both from the waves and from floating ice, and the
+most modern dikes are even more moderate in the inclination of the
+seaward scarp than the older ones.[316] The crown of the dike, however,
+for the last three or four feet of its height, is much steeper, being
+intended rather as a protection against the spray than against the
+waves, and the inner slope is always comparatively abrupt.
+
+The height and thickness of dikes varies according to the elevation of
+the ground they enclose, the rise of the tides, the direction of the
+prevailing winds, and other special causes of exposure, but it may be
+said that they are, in general, raised from fifteen to twenty feet above
+ordinary high-water mark. The water slopes of river dikes are protected
+by plantations of willows or strong semi-aquatic shrubs or grasses, but
+as these will not grow upon banks exposed to salt water, sea dikes must
+be faced with stone, fascines, or some other _rev�tement_.[317] Upon the
+coast of Schleswig and Holstein, where the people have less capital at
+their command, they defend their embankments against ice and the waves
+by a coating of twisted straw or reeds, which must be renewed as often
+as once, sometimes twice a year. The inhabitants of these coasts call
+the chain of dikes "the golden border," a name it well deserves, whether
+we suppose it to refer to its enormous cost, or, as is more probable, to
+its immense value as a protection to their fields and their firesides.
+
+When outlying flats are enclosed by building new embankments, the old
+interior dikes are suffered to remain, both as an additional security
+against the waves, and because the removal of them would be expensive.
+They serve, also, as roads or causeways, a purpose for which the
+embankments nearest the sea are seldom employed, because the whole
+structure might be endangered from the breaking of the turf by wheels
+and the hoofs of horses. Where successive rows of dikes have been thus
+constructed, it is observed that the ground defended by the more ancient
+embankments is lower than that embraced within the newer enclosures, and
+this depression of level has been ascribed to a general subsidence of
+the coast from geological causes; but the better opinion seems to be
+that it is, in most cases, due merely to the consolidation and settling
+of the earth from being more effectually dried, from the weight of the
+dikes, from the tread of men and cattle, and from the movement of the
+heavy wagons which carry off the crops.[318] Notwithstanding this slow
+sinking, most of the land enclosed by dikes is still above low-water
+mark, and can, therefore, be wholly or partially freed from rain water,
+and from that received by infiltration from higher ground, by sluices
+opened at the ebb of the tide. For this purpose, the land is carefully
+ditched, and advantage is taken of every favorable occasion for
+discharging the water through the sluices. But the ground cannot be
+effectually drained by this means, unless it is elevated four or five
+feet, at least, above the level of the ebb tide, because the ditches
+would not otherwise have a sufficient descent to carry the water off in
+the short interval between ebb and flow, and because the moisture of the
+saturated subsoil is always rising by capillary attraction. Whenever,
+therefore, the soil has sunk below the level I have mentioned, and in
+cases where its surface has never been raised above it, pumps, worked by
+wind or some other mechanical power, must be very frequently employed to
+keep the land dry enough for pasturage and cultivation.[319]
+
+
+b. _Draining of Lakes and Marshes._
+
+The substitution of steam engines for the feeble and uncertain action of
+windmills, in driving pumps, has much facilitated the removal of water
+from the polders and the draining of lakes, marshes, and shallow bays,
+and thus given such an impulse to these enterprises, that not less than
+one hundred and ten thousand acres were reclaimed from the waters, and
+added to the agricultural domain of the Netherlands, between 1815 and
+1858. The most important of these undertakings was the draining of the
+Lake of Haarlem, and for this purpose some of the most powerful
+hydraulic engines ever constructed were designed and executed.[320] The
+origin of this lake is unknown. It is supposed by some geographers to be
+a part of an ancient bed of the Rhine, the channel of which, as there is
+good reason to believe, has undergone great changes since the Roman
+invasion of the Netherlands; by others it is thought to have once formed
+an inland marine channel, separated from the sea by a chain of low
+islands, which the sand washed up by the tides has since connected with
+the mainland and converted into a continuous line of coast. The best
+authorities, however, find geological evidence that the surface occupied
+by the lake was originally a marshy tract containing within its limits
+little solid ground, but many ponds and inlets, and much floating as
+well as fixed fen.
+
+In consequence of the cutting of turf for fuel, and the destruction of
+the few trees and shrubs which held the loose soil together with their
+roots, the ponds are supposed to have gradually extended themselves,
+until the action of the wind upon their enlarged surface gave their
+waves sufficient force to overcome the resistance of the feeble barriers
+which separated them, and to unite them all into a single lake. Popular
+tradition, it is true, ascribes the formation of the Lake of Haarlem to
+a single irruption of the sea, at a remote period, and connects it with
+one or another of the destructive inundations of which the Netherland
+chronicles describe so many; but on a map of the year 1531, a chain of
+four smaller waters occupies nearly the ground afterward covered by the
+Lake of Haarlem, and they have more probably been united by gradual
+encroachments resulting from the improvident practices above referred
+to, though no doubt the consummation may have been hastened by floods,
+and by the neglect to maintain dikes, or the intentional destruction of
+them, in the long wars of the sixteenth century.
+
+The Lake of Haarlem was a body of water not far from fifteen miles in
+length, by seven in greatest width, lying between the cities of
+Amsterdam and Leyden, running parallel with the coast of Holland at the
+distance of about five miles from the sea, and covering an area of about
+45,000 acres. By means of the Ij, it communicated with the Zuiderzee,
+the Mediterranean of the Netherlands, and its surface was little above
+the mean elevation of that of the sea. Whenever, therefore, the waters
+of the Zuiderzee were acted upon by strong northwest winds, those of the
+Lake of Haarlem were raised proportionally and driven southward, while
+winds from the south tended to create a flow in the opposite direction.
+The shores of the lake were everywhere low, and though in the course of
+the eighty years between 1767 and 1848 more than �350,000 or $1,700,000
+had been expended in checking its encroachments, it often burst its
+barriers, and produced destructive inundations. On the 29th of November,
+1836, a south wind brought its waters to the very gates of Amsterdam,
+and on the 26th of December of the same year, in a northwest gale, they
+overflowed twenty thousand acres of land at the southern extremity of
+the lake, and flooded a part of the city of Leyden. The depth of water
+did not, in general, exceed fourteen feet, but the bottom was a
+semi-fluid ooze or slime, which partook of the agitation of the waves,
+and added considerably to their mechanical force. Serious fears were
+entertained that the lake would form a junction with the inland waters
+of the Legmeer and Mijdrecht, swallow up a vast extent of valuable soil,
+and finally endanger the security of a large proportion of the land
+which the industry of Holland had gained in the course of centuries from
+the ocean.
+
+For this reason, and for the sake of the large addition the bottom of
+the lake would make to the cultivable soil of the state, it was resolved
+to drain it, and the preliminary steps for that purpose were commenced
+in the year 1840. The first operation was to surround the entire lake
+with a ring canal and dike, in order to cut off the communication with
+the Ij, and to exclude the water of the streams and morasses which
+discharged themselves into it from the land side. The dike was composed
+of different materials, according to the means of supply at different
+points, such as sand from the coast dunes, earth and turf excavated from
+the line of the ring canal, and floating turf,[321] fascines being
+everywhere used to bind and compact the mass together. This operation
+was completed in 1848, and three steam pumps were then employed for five
+years in discharging the water. The whole enterprise was conducted at
+the expense of the state, and in 1853 the recovered lands were offered
+for sale for its benefit. Up to 1858, forty-two thousand acres had been
+sold at not far from sixteen pounds sterling or seventy-seven dollars an
+acre, amounting altogether to �661,000 sterling or $3,200,000. The
+unsold lands were valued at more than �6,000 or nearly $30,000, and as
+the total cost was �764,500 or about $3,700,000, the direct loss to the
+state, exclusive of interest on the capital expended, may be stated at
+�100,000 or something less than $500,000.
+
+In a country like the United States, of almost boundless extent of
+sparsely inhabited territory, such an expenditure for such an object
+would be poor economy. But Holland has a narrow domain, great pecuniary
+resources, an excessively crowded population, and a consequent need of
+enlarged room and opportunity for the exercise of industry. Under such
+circumstances, and especially with an exposure to dangers so formidable,
+there is no question of the wisdom of the measure. It has already
+provided homes and occupation for more than five thousand citizens, and
+furnished a profitable investment for a capital of not less than
+�400,000 sterling or $2,000,000, which has been expended in improvements
+over and above the purchase money of the soil; and the greater part of
+this sum, as well as of the cost of drainage, has been paid as a
+compensation for labor. The excess of governmental expenditure over the
+receipts, if employed in constructing ships of war or fortifications,
+would have added little to the military strength of the kingdom; but the
+increase of territory, the multiplication of homes and firesides which
+the people have an interest in defending, and the augmentation of
+agricultural resources, constitute a stronger bulwark against foreign
+invasion than a ship of the line or a fortress armed with a hundred
+cannon.
+
+The bearing of the works I have noticed, and of others similar in
+character, upon the social and moral, as well as the purely economical
+interests of the people of the Netherlands, has induced me to describe
+them more in detail than the general purpose of this volume may be
+thought to justify; but if we consider them simply from a geographical
+point of view, we shall find that they are possessed of no small
+importance as modifications of the natural condition of terrestrial
+surface. There is good reason to believe that before the establishment
+of a partially civilized race upon the territory now occupied by Dutch,
+Frisic, and Low German communities, the grounds not exposed to
+inundation were overgrown with dense woods, that the lowlands between
+these forests and the sea coasts were marshes, covered and partially
+solidified by a thick matting of peat plants and shrubs interspersed
+with trees, and that even the sand dunes of the shore were protected by
+a vegetable growth which, in a great measure, prevented the drifting and
+translocation of them.
+
+The present causes of river and coast erosion existed, indeed, at the
+period in question; but some of them must have acted with less
+intensity, there were strong natural safeguards against the influence of
+marine and fresh-water currents, and the conflicting tendencies had
+arrived at a condition of approximate equilibrium, which permitted but
+slow and gradual changes in the face of nature. The destruction of the
+forests around the sources and along the valleys of the rivers by man
+gave them a more torrential character. The felling of the trees, and the
+extirpation of the shrubbery upon the fens by domestic cattle, deprived
+the surface of cohesion and consistence, and the cutting of peat for
+fuel opened cavities in it, which, filling at once with water, rapidly
+extended themselves by abrasion of their borders, and finally enlarged
+to pools, lakes, and gulfs, like the Lake of Haarlem and the northern
+part of the Zuiderzee. The cutting of the wood and the depasturing of
+the grasses upon the sand dunes converted them from solid bulwarks
+against the ocean to loose accumulations of dust, which every sea breeze
+drove farther landward, burying, perhaps, fertile soil and choking up
+watercourses on one side, and exposing the coast to erosion by the sea
+upon the other.
+
+
+c. _Geographical Influence of such Operations._
+
+The changes which human action has produced within twenty centuries in
+the Netherlands and the neighboring provinces, are certainly of no small
+geographical importance, considered simply as a direct question of loss
+and gain of territory. They have also undoubtedly been attended with
+some climatic consequences, they have exercised a great influence on the
+spontaneous animal and vegetable life of this region, and they cannot
+have failed to produce effects upon tidal and other oceanic currents,
+the range of which may be very extensive. The force of the tidal wave,
+the height to which it rises, the direction of its currents, and, in
+fact, all the phenomena which characterize it, as well as all the
+effects it produces, depend as much upon the configuration of the coast
+it washes, and the depth of water, and form of bottom near the shore, as
+upon the attraction which occasions it. Every one of the terrestrial
+conditions which affect the character of tidal and other marine currents
+has been very sensibly modified by the operations I have described, and
+on this coast, at least, man has acted almost as powerfully on the
+physical geography of the sea as on that of the land.
+
+
+_Lowering of Lakes._
+
+The hydraulic works of the Netherlands and of the neighboring states are
+of such magnitude, that they quite throw into the shade all other known
+artificial arrangements for defending the land against the encroachments
+of the rivers and the sea, and for reclaiming to the domain of
+agriculture and civilization soil long covered by the waters. But
+although the recovery and protection of lands flooded by the sea seems
+to be an art wholly of Netherlandish origin, we have abundant evidence,
+that in ancient as well as in comparatively modern times, great
+enterprises more or less analogous in character have been successfully
+undertaken, both in inland Europe and in the less familiar countries of
+the East.
+
+One of the best known of these is the tunnel which serves to discharge
+the surplus waters of the Lake of Albano, about fourteen miles from
+Rome. This lake, about six miles in circuit, occupies one of the craters
+of an extinct volcanic range, and the surface of its waters is about
+nine hundred feet above the sea. It is fed by rivulets and subterranean
+springs originating in the Alban Mount, or Monte Cavo, the most elevated
+peak of the volcanic group just mentioned, which rises to the height of
+about three thousand feet. At present the lake has no discoverable
+natural outlet, but it is not known that the water ever stood at such a
+height as to flow regularly over the lip of the crater. It seems that at
+the earliest period of which we have any authentic memorials, its level
+was usually kept by evaporation, or by discharge through subterranean
+channels, considerably below the rim of the basin which encompassed it,
+but in the year 397 B. C., the water, either from the obstruction of
+such channels, or in consequence of increased supplies from unknown
+sources, rose to such a height as to flow over the edge of the crater,
+and threaten inundation to the country below by bursting through its
+walls. To obviate this danger, a tunnel for carrying off the water was
+pierced at a level much below the height to which it had risen. This
+gallery, cut entirely with the chisel through the rock for a distance
+of six thousand feet, or nearly a mile and one seventh, is still in so
+good condition as to serve its original purpose. The fact that this work
+was contemporaneous with the siege of Veii, has given to ancient
+annalists occasion to connect the two events, but modern critics are
+inclined to reject Livy's account of the matter, as one of the many
+improbable fables which disfigure the pages of that historian. It is,
+however, repeated by Cicero and by Dionysins of Halicarnassus, and it is
+by no means impossible that, in an age when priests and soothsayers
+monopolized both the arts of natural magic and the little which yet
+existed of physical science, the Government of Rome, by their aid,
+availed itself at once of the superstition and of the military ardor of
+its citizens to obtain their sanction to an enterprise which sounder
+arguments might not have induced them to approve.
+
+Still more remarkable is the tunnel cut by the Emperor Claudius to drain
+the Lake Fucinus, now Lago di Celano, in the Neapolitan territory, about
+fifty miles eastward of Rome. This lake, as far as its history is known,
+has varied very considerably in its dimensions at different periods,
+according to the character of the seasons. It has no visible outlet, but
+was originally either drained by natural subterranean conduits, or kept
+within certain extreme limits by evaporation. In years of uncommon
+moisture, it spread over the adjacent soil and destroyed the crops; in
+dry seasons, it retreated, and produced epidemic disease by poisonous
+exhalations from the decay of vegetable and animal matter upon its
+exposed bed. Julius C�sar had proposed the construction of a tunnel to
+drain the lake, but the enterprise was not actually undertaken until the
+reign of Claudius, when--after a temporary failure, from errors in
+levelling by the engineers, as was pretended at the time, or, as now
+appears certain, in consequence of frauds by the contractors in the
+execution of the work--it was at least partially completed. From this
+imperfect construction, it soon got out of repair, but was restored by
+Hadrian, and seems to have answered its design for some centuries. In
+the barbarism which followed the downfall of the empire, it again fell
+into decay, and though numerous attempts were made to repair it during
+the Middle Ages, no tolerable success seems to have attended any of
+these efforts, until the present generation.
+
+Works have now been some years in progress for restoring, or rather
+enlarging and rebuilding this ancient tunnel, upon a scale of grandeur
+which does infinite honor to the liberality and public spirit of the
+projectors, and with an ingenuity of design and a constructive skill
+which reflect the highest credit upon the professional ability of the
+engineers who have planned the works and directed their execution. The
+length of this tunnel is 18,634 feet, or rather more than three miles
+and a half. Of course, it is one of the longest subterranean galleries
+yet executed in Europe, and it offers many curious particulars in its
+original design which cannot here be described. The difference between
+the highest and the lowest known levels of the surface of the lake
+amounts to at least forty feet, and the difference of area covered at
+these respective stages is not much less than eight thousand acres. The
+tunnel will reduce the water to a much lower point, and it is computed
+that, including the lands occasionally overflowed, not less than forty
+thousand acres of as fertile soil as any in Italy will be recovered from
+the lake and permanently secured from inundation by its waters.
+
+Many similar enterprises have been conceived and executed in modern
+times, both for the purpose of reclaiming land covered by water and for
+sanitary reasons.[322] They are sometimes attended with wholly
+unexpected evils, as, for example, in the case of Barton Pond, in
+Vermont, and in that of the Lake Storsj�, in Sweden, already mentioned
+on a former page. Another still less obvious consequence of the
+withdrawal of the waters has occasionally been observed in these
+operations. The hydrostatic force with which the water, in virtue of its
+specific gravity, presses against the banks that confine it, has a
+tendency to sustain them whenever their composition and texture are not
+such as to expose them to softening and dissolution by the infiltration
+of the water. If then, the slope of the banks is considerable, or if the
+earth of which they are composed rests on a smooth and slippery stratum
+inclining toward the bed of the lake, they are liable to fall or slide
+forward when the mechanical support of the water is removed, and this
+sometimes happens on a considerable scale. A few years ago, the surface
+of the Lake of Lungern, in the Canton of Unterwalden, in Switzerland,
+was lowered by driving a tunnel about a quarter of a mile long through
+the narrow ridge, called the Kaiserstuhl, which forms a barrier at the
+north end of the basin. When the water was drawn off, the banks, which
+are steep, cracked and burst, several acres of ground slid down as low
+as the water receded, and even the whole village of Lungern was thought
+to be in no small danger.
+
+Other inconveniences of a very serious character have often resulted
+from the natural wearing down, or, much more frequently, the imprudent
+destruction, of the barriers which confine mountain lakes. In their
+natural condition, such basins serve both to receive and retain the
+rocks and other detritus brought down by the torrents which empty into
+them, and to check the impetus of the rushing waters by bringing them to
+a temporary pause; but if the outlets are lowered so as to drain the
+reservoirs, the torrents continue their rapid flow through the ancient
+bed of the basins, and carry down with them the sand and gravel with
+which they are charged, instead of depositing their burden as before in
+the still waters of the lakes.
+
+
+_Mountain Lakes._
+
+It is a common opinion in America that the river meadows, bottoms, or
+_intervales_, as they are popularly called, are generally the beds of
+ancient lakes which have burst their barriers and left running currents
+in their place. It was shown by Dr. Dwight, many years ago, that this is
+very far from being universally true; but there is no doubt that
+mountain lakes were of much more frequent occurrence in primitive than
+in modern geography, and there are many chains of such still existing in
+regions where man has yet little disturbed the original features of the
+earth. In the long valleys of the Adirondack range in Northern New York,
+and in the mountainous parts of Maine, eight, ten, and even more lakes
+and lakelets are sometimes found in succession, each emptying into the
+next lower pool, and so all at last into some considerable river. When
+the mountain slopes which supply these basins shall be stripped of their
+woods, the augmented swelling of the lakes will break down their
+barriers, their waters will run off, and the valleys will present
+successions of flats with rivers running through them, instead of chains
+of lakes connected by natural canals.
+
+A similar state of things seems to have existed in the ancient geography
+of France. "Nature," says Lavergne, "has not excavated on the flanks of
+our Alps reservoirs as magnificent as those of Lombardy; she had,
+however, constructed smaller, but more numerous lakes, which the
+negligence of man has permitted to disappear. Auguste de Gasparin,
+brother of the illustrious agriculturist, demonstrated more than thirty
+years ago, in an original paper, that many natural dikes formerly
+existed in the mountain valleys, which have been swept away by the
+waters. He proposed to rebuild and to multiply them. This interesting
+suggestion has reappeared several times since, but has met with strong
+opposition from skilful engineers. It would, nevertheless, be well to
+try the experiment of creating artificial lakes which should fill
+themselves with the water of melting snows and deluging rains, to be
+drawn out in times of drought. If this plan has able opposers, it has
+also warm advocates. Experience alone can decide the question."[323]
+
+
+_Climatic Effects of Draining Lakes and Marshes._
+
+The draining of lakes, marshes, and other superficial accumulations of
+moisture, reduces the water surface of a country, and, of course, the
+evaporation from it. Lakes, too, in elevated positions, lose a part of
+their water by infiltration, and thereby supply other lakes, springs,
+and rivulets at lower levels. Hence, it is evident that the draining of
+such waters, if carried on upon a large scale, must affect both the
+humidity and the temperature of the atmosphere, and the permanent supply
+of water for extensive districts.[324]
+
+
+_Geographical and Climatic Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs, and
+Canals._
+
+Many processes of internal improvement, such as aqueducts for the supply
+of great cities, railroad cuts and embankments, and the like, divert
+water from its natural channels, and affect its distribution and
+ultimate discharge. The collecting of the waters of a considerable
+district into reservoirs, to be thence carried off by means of
+aqueducts, as, for example, in the forest of Belgrade, near
+Constantinople, deprives the grounds originally watered by the springs
+and rivulets of the necessary moisture, and reduces them to barrenness.
+Similar effects must have followed from the construction of the numerous
+aqueducts which supplied ancient Rome with such a profuse abundance of
+water. On the other hand, the filtration of water through the banks or
+walls of an aqueduct carried upon a high level across low ground, often
+injures the adjacent soil, and is prejudicial to the health of the
+neighboring population; and it has been observed in Switzerland, that
+fevers have been produced by the stagnation of the water in excavations
+from which earth had been taken to form embankments for railways.
+
+If we consider only the influence of physical improvements on civilized
+life, we shall perhaps ascribe to navigable canals a higher importance,
+or at least a more diversified influence, than to any other works of man
+designed to control the waters of the earth, and to affect their
+distribution, They bind distant regions together by social ties, through
+the agency of the commerce they promote; they facilitate the
+transportation of military stores and engines, and of other heavy
+material connected with the discharge of the functions of government;
+they encourage industry by giving marketable value to raw material and
+to objects of artificial elaboration which would otherwise be worthless
+on account of the cost of conveyance; they supply from their surplus
+waters means of irrigation and of mechanical power; and, in many other
+ways, they contribute much to advance the prosperity and civilization of
+nations. Nor are they wholly without geographical importance. They
+sometimes drain lands by conveying off water which would otherwise
+stagnate on the surface, and, on the other hand, like aqueducts, they
+render the neighboring soil cold and moist by the percolation of water
+through their embankments;[325] they dam up, check, and divert the
+course of natural currents, and deliver them at points opposite to, or
+distant from, their original outlets; they often require extensive
+reservoirs to feed them, thus retaining through the year accumulations
+of water--which would otherwise run off, or evaporate in the dry
+season--and thereby enlarging the evaporable surface of the country; and
+we have already seen that they interchange the flora and the fauna of
+provinces widely separated by nature. All these modes of action
+certainly influence climate and the character of terrestrial surface,
+though our means of observation are not yet perfected enough to enable
+us to appreciate and measure their effects.
+
+
+_Climatic and Geographical Effects of Surface and Underground Draining._
+
+I have commenced this chapter with a description of the dikes and other
+hydraulic works of the Netherland engineers, because the geographical
+results of such operations are more obvious and more easily measured,
+though certainly not more important, than those of the older and more
+widely diffused modes of resisting or directing the flow of waters,
+which have been practised from remote antiquity in the interior of all
+civilized countries. Draining and irrigation are habitually regarded as
+purely agricultural processes, having little or no relation to technical
+geography; but we shall find that they exert a powerful influence on
+soil, climate, and animal and vegetable life, and may, therefore, justly
+claim to be regarded as geographical elements.
+
+
+_Surface and Under-draining and their Effects._
+
+Superficial draining is a necessity in all lands newly reclaimed from
+the forest. The face of the ground in the woods is never so regularly
+inclined as to permit water to flow freely over it. There are, even on
+the hillsides, many small ridges and depressions, partly belonging to
+the original distribution of the soil, and partly occasioned by
+irregularities in the growth and deposit of vegetable matter. These, in
+the husbandry of nature, serve as dams and reservoirs to collect a
+larger supply of moisture than the spongy earth can at once imbibe.
+Besides this, the vegetable mould is, even under the most favorable
+circumstances, slow in parting with the humidity it has accumulated
+under the protection of the woods, and the infiltration from neighboring
+forests contributes to keep the soil of small clearings too wet for the
+advantageous cultivation of artificial crops. For these reasons, surface
+draining must have commenced with agriculture itself, and there is
+probably no cultivated district, one may almost say no single field,
+which is not provided with artificial arrangements for facilitating the
+escape of superficial water, and thus carrying off moisture which, in
+the natural condition of the earth, would have been imbibed by the soil.
+
+The beneficial effects of surface drainage, the necessity of extending
+the fields as population increased, and the inconveniences resulting
+from the presence of marshes in otherwise improved regions, must have
+suggested at a very early period of human industry the expediency of
+converting bogs and swamps into dry land by drawing off their waters;
+and it would not be long after the introduction of this practice before
+further acquisition of agricultural territory would be made by lowering
+the outlet of small ponds and lakes, and adding the ground they covered
+to the domain of the husbandman.
+
+All these processes belong to the incipient civilization of the
+ante-historical periods, but the construction of subterranean channels
+for the removal of infiltrated water marks ages and countries
+distinguished by a great advance in agricultural theory and practice, a
+great accumulation of pecuniary capital, and a density of population
+which creates a ready demand and a high price for all products of rural
+industry. Under-draining, too, would be most advantageous in damp and
+cool climates, where evaporation is slow, and upon soils where the
+natural inclination of surface does not promote a very rapid flow of the
+surface waters. All the conditions required to make this mode of rural
+improvement, if not absolutely necessary, at least apparently
+profitable, exist in Great Britain, and it is, therefore, very natural
+that the wealthy and intelligent farmers of England should have carried
+this practice farther, and reaped a more abundant pecuniary return from
+it, than those of any other country.
+
+Besides superficial and subsoil drains, there is another method of
+disposing of superfluous surface water, which, however, can rarely be
+practised, because the necessary conditions for its employment are not
+of frequent occurrence. Whenever a tenacious water-holding stratum rests
+on a loose, gravelly bed, so situated as to admit of a free discharge of
+water from or through it by means of the outcropping of the bed at a
+lower level, or of deep-lying conduits leading to distant points of
+discharge, superficial waters may be carried off by opening a passage
+for them through the impervious into the permeable stratum. Thus,
+according to Bischof, as early as the time of King R�n�, in the first
+half of the fifteenth century, the plain of Paluns, near Marseilles, was
+laid dry by boring, and Wittwer informs us that drainage is effected at
+Munich by conducting the superfluous water into large excavations, from
+which it filters through into a lower stratum of pebble and gravel lying
+a little above the level of the river Isar.[326] So at Washington, in
+the western part of the city, which lies high above the rivers Potomac
+and Rock Creek, many houses are provided with dry wells for draining
+their cellars and foundations. These extend through hard tenacious earth
+to the depth of thirty or forty feet, when they strike a stratum of
+gravel, through which the water readily passes off.
+
+This practice has been extensively employed at Paris, not merely for
+carrying off ordinary surface water, but for the discharge of offensive
+and deleterious fluids from chemical and manufacturing establishments. A
+well of this sort received, in the winter of 1832-'33, twenty thousand
+gallons per day of the foul water from a starch factory, and the same
+process was largely used in other factories. The apprehension of injury
+to common and artesian wells and springs led to an investigation on this
+subject, in behalf of the municipal authorities, by Girard and Parent
+Duchatelet, in the latter year. The report of these gentlemen, published
+in the _Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_ for 1833, second half year, is
+full of curious and instructive facts respecting the position and
+distribution of the subterranean waters under and near Paris; but it
+must suffice to say that the report came to the conclusion that, in
+consequence of the absolute immobility of these waters, and the
+relatively small quantity of noxious fluid to be conveyed to them, there
+was no danger of the diffusion of this latter, if discharged into them.
+This result will not surprise those who know that, in another work,
+Duchatelet maintains analogous opinions as to the effect of the
+discharge of the city sewers into the Seine upon the waters of that
+river. The quantity of matter delivered by them he holds to be so nearly
+infinitesimal, as compared with the volume of water of the Seine, that
+it cannot possibly affect it to a sensible degree. I would, however,
+advise determined water drinkers living at Paris to adopt his
+conclusions, without studying his facts and his arguments; for it is
+quite possible that he may convert his readers to a faith opposite to
+his own, and that they will finally agree with the poet who held water
+an "ignoble beverage."
+
+
+_Climatic and Geographical Effects of Surface Draining._
+
+When we remove water from the surface, we diminish the evaporation from
+it, and, of course, the refrigeration which accompanies all evaporation
+is diminished in proportion. Hence superficial draining ought to be
+attended with an elevation of atmospheric temperature, and, in cold
+countries, it might be expected to lessen the frequency of frosts.
+Accordingly, it is a fact of experience that, other things being equal,
+dry soils, and the air in contact with them, are perceptibly warmer
+during the season of vegetation, when evaporation is most rapid, than
+moist lands and the atmospheric stratum resting upon them. Instrumental
+observation on this special point has not yet been undertaken on a very
+large scale, but still we have thermometric data sufficient to warrant
+the general conclusion, and the influence of drainage in diminishing the
+frequency of frost appears to be even better established than a direct
+increase of atmospheric temperature. The steep and dry uplands of the
+Green Mountain range in New England often escape frosts when the Indian
+corn harvest on moister grounds, five hundred or even a thousand feet
+lower, is destroyed or greatly injured by them. The neighborhood of a
+marsh is sure to be exposed to late spring and early autumnal frosts,
+but they cease to be feared after it is drained, and this is
+particularly observable in very cold climates, as, for example, in
+Lapland.[327]
+
+In England, under-drains are not generally laid below the reach of daily
+variations of temperature, or below a point from which moisture might be
+brought to the surface by capillary attraction and evaporated by the
+heat of the sun. They, therefore, like surface drains, withdraw from
+local solar action much moisture which would otherwise be vaporized by
+it, and, at the same time, by drying the soil above them, they increase
+its effective hygroscopicity, and it consequently absorbs from the
+atmosphere a greater quantity of water than it did when, for want of
+under-drainage, the subsoil was always humid, if not saturated.
+Under-drains, then, contribute to the dryness as well as to the warmth
+of the atmosphere, and, as dry ground is more readily heated by the rays
+of the sun than wet, they tend also to raise the mean, and especially
+the summer temperature of the soil.
+
+So far as respects the immediate improvement of soil and climate, and
+the increased abundance of the harvests, the English system of surface
+and subsoil drainage has fully justified the eulogiums of its advocates;
+but its extensive adoption appears to have been attended with some
+altogether unforeseen and undesirable consequences, very analogous to
+those which I have described as resulting from the clearing of the
+forests. The under-drains carry off very rapidly the water imbibed by
+the soil from precipitation, and through infiltration from neighboring
+springs or other sources of supply. Consequently, in wet seasons, or
+after heavy rains, a river bordered by artificially drained lands
+receives in a few hours, from superficial and from subterranean
+conduits, an accession of water which, in the natural state of the
+earth, would have reached it only by small instalments after percolating
+through hidden paths for weeks or even months, and would have furnished
+perennial and comparatively regular contributions, instead of swelling
+deluges, to its channel. Thus, when human impatience rashly substitutes
+swiftly acting artificial contrivances for the slow methods by which
+nature drains the surface and superficial strata of a river basin, the
+original equilibrium is disturbed, the waters of the heavens are no
+longer stored up in the earth to be gradually given out again, but are
+hurried out of man's domain with wasteful haste; and while the
+inundations of the river are sudden and disastrous, its current, when
+the drains have run dry, is reduced to a rivulet, it ceases to supply
+the power to drive the machinery for which it was once amply sufficient,
+and scarcely even waters the herds that pasture upon its margin.[328]
+
+
+_Irrigation and its Climatic and Geographical Effects._
+
+We know little of the history of the extinct civilizations which
+preceded the culture of the classic ages, and no nation has, in modern
+times, spontaneously emerged from barbarism, and created for itself the
+arts of social life.[329] The improvements of the savage races whose
+history we can distinctly trace are borrowed and imitative, and our
+theories as to the origin and natural development of industrial art are
+conjectural. Of course, the relative antiquity of particular branches of
+human industry depends much upon the natural character of soil, climate,
+and spontaneous vegetable and animal life in different countries; and
+while the geographical influence of man would, under given
+circumstances, be exerted in one direction, it would, under different
+conditions, act in an opposite or a diverging line. I have given some
+reasons for thinking that in the climates to which our attention has
+been chiefly directed, man's first interference with the natural
+arrangement and disposal of the waters was in the way of drainage of
+surface. But if we are to judge from existing remains alone, we should
+probably conclude that irrigation is older than drainage; for, in the
+regions regarded by general tradition as the cradle of the human race,
+we find traces of canals evidently constructed for the former purpose at
+a period long preceding the ages of which we have any written memorials.
+There are, in ancient Armenia, extensive districts which were already
+abandoned to desolation at the earliest historical epoch, but which, in
+a yet remoter antiquity, had been irrigated by a complicated and highly
+artificial system of canals, the lines of which can still be followed;
+and there are, in all the highlands where the sources of the Euphrates
+rise, in Persia, in Egypt, in India, and in China, works of this sort
+which must have been in existence before man had begun to record his own
+annals.
+
+In warm countries, such as most of those just mentioned, the effects I
+have described as usually resulting from the clearing of the forests
+would very soon follow. In such climates, the rains are inclined to be
+periodical; they are also violent, and for these reasons the soil would
+be parched in summer and liable to wash in winter. In these countries,
+therefore, the necessity for irrigation must soon have been felt, and
+its introduction into mountainous regions like Armenia must have been
+immediately followed by a system of terracing, or at least scarping the
+hillsides. Pasture and meadow, indeed, may be irrigated even when the
+surface is both steep and irregular, as may be observed abundantly on
+the Swiss as well as on the Piedmontese slope of the Alps; but in dry
+climates, plough land and gardens on hilly grounds require terracing,
+both for supporting the soil and for administering water by irrigation,
+and it should be remembered that terracing, of itself, even without
+special arrangements for controlling the distribution of water, prevents
+or at least checks the flow of rain water, and gives it time to sink
+into the ground instead of running off over the surface.
+
+There are few things in Continental husbandry which surprise English or
+American observers so much as the extent to which irrigation is employed
+in agriculture, and that, too, on soils, and with a temperature, where
+their own experience would have led them to suppose it would be
+injurious to vegetation rather than beneficial to it. The summers in
+Northern Italy, though longer, are very often not warmer than in New
+England; and in ordinary years, the summer rains are as frequent and as
+abundant in the former country as in the latter. Yet in Piedmont and
+Lombardy, irrigation is bestowed upon almost every crop, while in New
+England it is never employed at all in farming husbandry, or indeed for
+any purpose except in kitchen gardens, and possibly, in rare cases, in
+some other small branch of agricultural industry.[330]
+
+The summers in Egypt, in Syria, and in Asia Minor and even Rumelia, are
+almost rainless. In such climates, the necessity of irrigation is
+obvious, and the loss of the ancient means of furnishing it readily
+explains the diminished fertility of most of the countries in
+question.[331] The surface of Palestine, for example, is composed, in a
+great measure, of rounded limestone hills, once, no doubt, covered with
+forests. These were partially removed before the Jewish conquest.[332]
+When the soil began to suffer from drought, reservoirs to retain the
+waters of winter were hewn in the rock near the tops of the hills, and
+the declivities were terraced. So long as the cisterns were in good
+order, and the terraces kept up, the fertility of Palestine was
+unsurpassed, but when misgovernment and foreign and intestine war
+occasioned the neglect or destruction of these works--traces of which
+still meet the traveller's eye at every step,--when the reservoirs were
+broken and the terrace walls had fallen down, there was no longer water
+for irrigation in summer, the rains of winter soon washed away most of
+the thin layer of earth upon the rocks, and Palestine was reduced almost
+to the condition of a desert.
+
+The course of events has been the same in Idum�a. The observing
+traveller discovers everywhere about Petra, particularly if he enters
+the city by the route of Wadi Ksheibeh, very extensive traces of ancient
+cultivation, and upon the neighboring ridges are the ruins of numerous
+cisterns evidently constructed to furnish a supply of water for
+irrigation.[333] In primitive ages, the precipitation of winter in
+these hilly countries was, in great part, retained for a time in the
+superficial soil, first by the vegetable mould of the forests, and then
+by the artificial arrangements I have described. The water imbibed by
+the earth was partly taken up by direct evaporation, partly absorbed by
+vegetation, and partly carried down by infiltration to subjacent strata
+which gave it out in springs at lower levels, and thus a fertility of
+soil and a condition of the atmosphere were maintained sufficient to
+admit of the dense population that once inhabited those now arid wastes.
+At present, the rain water runs immediately off from the surface and is
+carried down to the sea, or is drunk up by the sands of the wadis, and
+the hillsides which once teemed with plenty are bare of vegetation, and
+seared by the scorching winds of the desert.
+
+In Southern Europe, in the Turkish Empire, and in many other countries,
+a very large proportion of the surface is, if not absolutely flooded, at
+least thoroughly moistened by irrigation, a great number of times in the
+course of every season, and this, especially, at periods when it would
+otherwise be quite dry, and when, too, the power of the sun and the
+capacity of the air for absorbing moisture are greatest. Hence it is
+obvious that the amount of evaporation from the earth in these
+countries, and, of course, the humidity and the temperature of both the
+soil and the atmosphere in contact with it, must be much affected by the
+practice of irrigation. The cultivable area of Egypt, or the space
+accessible to cultivation, between desert and desert, is more than seven
+thousand square statute miles. Much of the surface, though not out of
+the reach of irrigation, lies too high to be economically watered, and
+irrigation and cultivation are therefore confined to an area of five or
+six thousand square miles, nearly the whole of which is regularly and
+constantly watered when not covered by the inundation, except in the
+short interval between the harvest and the rise of the waters. For
+nearly half of the year, then, irrigation adds five or six thousand
+square miles, or more than a square equatorial degree, to the evaporable
+surface of the Nile valley, or, in other words, more than decuples the
+area from which an appreciable quantity of moisture would otherwise be
+evaporated; for after the Nile has retired within its banks, its waters
+by no means cover one tenth of the space just mentioned.[334] The
+fresh-water canals now constructing, in connection with the works for
+the Suez canal, will not only restore the long abandoned fields east of
+the Nile, but add to the arable soil of Egypt hundreds of square miles
+of newly reclaimed desert, and thus still further increase the climatic
+effects of irrigation.[335]
+
+The Nile receives not a single tributary in its course through Egypt;
+there is not so much as one living spring in the whole land,[336] and,
+with the exception of a narrow strip of coast, where the annual
+precipitation is said to amount to six inches, the fall of rain in the
+territory of the Pharaohs is not two inches in the year. The subsoil of
+the whole valley is pervaded with moisture by infiltration from the
+Nile, and water can everywhere be found at the depth of a few feet. Were
+irrigation suspended, and Egypt abandoned, as in that case it must be,
+to the operations of nature, there is no doubt that trees, the roots of
+which penetrate deeply, would in time establish themselves on the
+deserted soil, fill the valley with verdure, and perhaps at last temper
+the climate, and even call down abundant rain from the heavens.[337] But
+the immediate effect of discontinuing irrigation would be, first, an
+immense reduction of the evaporation from the valley in the dry season,
+and then a greatly augmented dryness and heat of the atmosphere. Even
+the almost constant north wind--the strength of which would be increased
+in consequence of these changes--would little reduce the temperature of
+the narrow cleft between the burning mountains which hem in the channel
+of the Nile, so that a single year would transform the most fertile of
+soils to the most barren of deserts, and render uninhabitable a
+territory that irrigation makes capable of sustaining as dense a
+population as has ever existed in any part of the world.[338] Whether
+man found the valley of the Nile a forest, or such a waste as I have
+just described, we do not historically know. In either case, he has not
+simply converted a wilderness into a garden, but has unquestionably
+produced extensive climatic change.[339]
+
+The fields of Egypt are more regularly watered than those of any other
+country bordering on the Mediterranean, except the rice grounds in
+Italy, and perhaps the _marcite_ or winter meadows of Lombardy; but
+irrigation is more or less employed throughout almost the entire basin
+of that sea, and is everywhere attended with effects which, if less in
+degree, are analogous in character to those resulting from it in Egypt.
+In general, it may be said that the soil is nowhere artificially watered
+except when it is so dry that little moisture would be evaporated from
+it, and, consequently, every acre of irrigated ground is so much added
+to the evaporable surface of the country. When the supply of water is
+unlimited, it is allowed, after serving its purpose on one field, to run
+into drains, canals, or rivers. But in most regions where irrigation is
+regularly employed, it is necessary to economize the water; after
+passing over or through one parcel of ground, it is conducted to
+another; no more is withdrawn from the canals at any one point than is
+absorbed by the soil it irrigates, or evaporated from it, and,
+consequently, it is not restored to liquid circulation, except by
+infiltration or precipitation. We are safe, then, in saying that the
+humidity evaporated from any artificially watered soil is increased by a
+quantity bearing a large proportion to the whole amount distributed over
+it; for most even of that which is absorbed by the earth is immediately
+given out again either by vegetables or by evaporation.
+
+It is not easy to ascertain precisely either the extent of surface thus
+watered, or the amount of water supplied, in any given country, because
+these quantities vary with the character of the season; but there are
+not many districts in Southern Europe where the management of the
+arrangements for irrigation is not one of the most important branches of
+agricultural labor. The eminent engineer Lombardini describes the system
+of irrigation in Lombardy as, "every day in summer, diffusing over
+550,000 hectares of land 45,000,000 cubic m�tres of water, which is
+equal to the entire volume of the Seine, at an ordinary flood, or a rise
+of three m�tres above the hydrometer at the bridge of La Tournelle at
+Paris."[340] Niel states the quantity of land irrigated in the former
+kingdom of Sardinia, including Savoy, in 1856, at 240,000 hectares, or
+not much less than 600,000 acres. This is about four thirteenths of the
+cultivable soil of the kingdom. According to the same author, the
+irrigated lands in France did not exceed 100,000 hectares, or 247,000
+acres, while those in Lombardy amounted to 450,000 hectares, more than
+1,100,000 acres.[341] In these three states alone, then, there were more
+than three thousand square miles of artificially watered land, and if we
+add the irrigated soils of the rest of Italy, of the Mediterranean
+islands, of the Spanish peninsula, of Turkey in Europe and in Asia
+Minor, of Syria, of Egypt and the remainder of Northern Africa, we shall
+see that irrigation increases the evaporable surface of the
+Mediterranean basin by a quantity bearing no inconsiderable proportion
+to the area naturally covered by water within it. As near as can be
+ascertained, the amount of water applied to irrigated lands is scarcely
+anywhere less than the total precipitation during the season of
+vegetable growth, and in general it much exceeds that quantity. In grass
+grounds and in field culture it ranges from 27 or 28 to 60 inches, while
+in smaller crops, tilled by hand labor, it is sometimes carried as high
+as 300 inches.[342] The rice grounds and the _marcite_ of Lombardy are
+not included in these estimates of the amount of water applied.
+Arrangements are concluded, and new plans proposed, for an immense
+increase of the lands fertilized by irrigation in France and Italy, and
+there is every reason to believe that the artificially watered soil of
+the latter country will be doubled, that of France quadrupled, before
+the end of this century. There can be no doubt that by these operations
+man is exercising a powerful influence on soil, on vegetable and animal
+life, and on climate, and hence that in this, as in many other fields of
+industry, he is truly a geographical agency.[343] The quantity of water
+artificially withdrawn from running streams for the purpose of
+irrigation is such as very sensibly to affect their volume, and it is,
+therefore, an important element in the geography of rivers. Brooks of no
+trifling current are often wholly diverted from their natural channels
+to supply the canals, and their entire mass of water completely
+absorbed, so that it does not reach the river which it naturally feeds,
+except in such proportion as it is conveyed to it by infiltration.
+Irrigation, therefore, diminishes great rivers in warm countries by
+cutting off their sources of supply as well as by direct abstraction of
+water from their channels. We have just seen that the system of
+irrigation in Lombardy deprives the Po of a quantity of water equal to
+the total delivery of the Seine at ordinary flood, or, in other words,
+of the equivalent of a tributary navigable for hundreds of miles by
+vessels of considerable burden. The new canals commenced and projected
+will greatly increase the loss. The water required for irrigation in
+Egypt is less than would be supposed from the exceeding rapidity of
+evaporation in that arid climate; for the soil is thoroughly saturated
+during the inundation, and infiltration from the Nile continues to
+supply a considerable amount of humidity in the dryest season. Linant
+Bey computed that twenty-nine cubic m�tres per day sufficed to irrigate
+a hectare in the Delta.[344] This is equivalent to a fall of rain of two
+millim�tres and nine tenths per day, or, if we suppose water to be
+applied for one hundred and fifty days during the dry season, to a total
+precipitation of 435 millim�tres, about seventeen inches and one third.
+Taking the area of actually cultivated soil in Egypt at the low estimate
+of 3,600,000 acres, and the average amount of water daily applied in
+both Upper and Lower Egypt at twelve hundredths of an inch in depth, we
+have an abstraction of 61,000,000 cubic yards, which--the mean daily
+delivery of the Nile being in round numbers 320,000,000 cubic yards--is
+nearly one fifth of the average quantity of water contributed to the
+Mediterranean by that river.
+
+Irrigation, as employed for certain special purposes in Europe and
+America, is productive of very prejudicial climatic effects. I refer
+particularly to the cultivation of rice in the Slave States of the
+American Union and in Italy. The climate of the Southern States is not
+necessarily unhealthy for the white man, but he can scarcely sleep a
+single night in the vicinity of the rice grounds without being attacked
+by a dangerous fever.[345] The neighborhood of the rice fields is less
+pestilential in Lombardy and Piedmont than in South Carolina and
+Georgia, but still very insalubrious to both man and beast. "Not only
+does the population decrease where rice is grown," says Escourrou
+Milliago, "but even the flocks are attacked by typhus. In the rice
+grounds, the soil is divided into compartments rising in gradual
+succession to the level of the irrigating canal, in order that the
+water, after having flowed one field, may be drawn off to another, and
+thus a single current serve for several compartments, the lowest field,
+of course, still being higher than the ditch which at last drains both
+it and the adjacent soil. This arrangement gives a certain force of
+hydrostatic pressure to the water with which the rice is irrigated, and
+the infiltration from these fields is said to extend through neighboring
+grounds, sometimes to the distance of not less than a myriam�tre, or six
+English miles, and to be destructive to crops and even trees reached by
+it. Land thus affected can no longer be employed for any purpose but
+growing rice, and when prepared for that crop, it propagates still
+further the evils under which it had itself suffered, and, of course,
+the mischief is a growing one."[346]
+
+The attentive traveller in Egypt and Nubia cannot fail to notice many
+localities, generally of small extent, where the soil is rendered
+infertile by an excess of saline matter in its composition. In many
+cases, perhaps in all, these barren spots lie rather above the level
+usually flooded by the inundations of the Nile, and yet they exhibit
+traces of former cultivation. Recent observations in India, a notice of
+which I find in an account of a meeting of the Asiatic Society in the
+Athen�um of December 20, 1862, No. 1834, suggest a possible explanation
+of this fact. At this meeting, Professor Medlicott read an essay on "the
+saline efflorescence called 'Reh' and 'Kuller,'" which is gradually
+invading many of the most fertile districts of Northern and Western
+India, and changing them into sterile deserts. It consists principally
+of sulphate of soda (Glauber's salts), with varying proportions of
+common salt. Mr. Medlicott pronounces "these salts (which, in small
+quantities are favorable to fertility of soil) to be the gradual result
+of concentration by evaporation of river and canal waters, which contain
+them in very minute quantities, and with which the lands are either
+irrigated or occasionally overflowed." The river inundations in hot
+countries usually take place but once in a year, and, though the banks
+remain submerged for days or even weeks, the water at that period, being
+derived principally from rains and snows, must be less highly charged
+with mineral matter than at lower stages, and besides, it is always in
+motion. The water of irrigation, on the other hand, is applied for many
+months in succession, it is drawn from rivers at the seasons when their
+proportion of salts is greatest, and it either sinks into the
+superficial soil, carrying with it the saline substances it holds in
+solution, or is evaporated from the surface, leaving them upon it. Hence
+irrigation must impart to the soil more salts than natural inundation.
+The sterilized grounds in Egypt and Nubia lying above the reach of the
+floods, as I have said, we may suppose them to have been first
+cultivated in that remote antiquity when the Nile valley received its
+earliest inhabitants. They must have been artificially irrigated from
+the beginning; they may have been under cultivation many centuries
+before the soil at a lower level was invaded by man, and hence it is
+natural that they should be more strongly impregnated with saline matter
+than fields which are exposed every year, for some weeks, to the action
+of running water so nearly pure that it would be more likely to dissolve
+salts than to deposit them.
+
+
+INUNDATIONS AND TORRENTS.
+
+In pointing out in a former chapter the evils which have resulted from
+the too extensive destruction of the forests, I dwelt at some length on
+the increased violence of river inundations, and especially on the
+devastations of torrents, in countries improvidently deprived of their
+woods, and I spoke of the replanting of the forests as the only
+effectual method of preventing the frequent recurrence of disastrous
+floods. There are many regions where, from the loss of the superficial
+soil, from financial considerations, and from other causes, the
+restoration of the woods is not, under present circumstances, to be
+hoped for. Even where that measure is feasible and in actual process of
+execution, a great number of years must elapse before the action of the
+destructive causes in question can be arrested or perhaps even sensibly
+mitigated by it. Besides this, leaving out of view the objections urged
+by Belgrand and his followers to the generally received opinions
+concerning the beneficial influence of the forest as respects river
+inundations--for no one disputes its importance in preventing the
+formation and limiting the ravages of mountain torrents--floods will
+always occur in years of excessive precipitation, whether the surface of
+the soil be generally cleared or generally wooded.
+
+Physical improvement in this respect, then, cannot he confined to
+preventive measures, but, in countries subject to damage by inundation,
+means must he contrived to obviate dangers and diminish injuries to
+which human life and all the works of human industry will occasionally
+be exposed, in spite of every effort to lessen the frequency of their
+recurrence by acting directly on the causes that produce them. As every
+civilized country is, in some degree, subject to inundation by the
+overflow of rivers, the evil is a familiar one, and needs no general
+description. In discussing this branch of the subject, therefore, I may
+confine myself chiefly to the means that have been or may be employed to
+resist the force and limit the ravages of floods, which, left wholly
+unrestrained, would not only inflict immense injury upon the material
+interests of man, but produce geographical revolutions of no little
+magnitude.
+
+
+a. _River Embankments._
+
+The most obvious and doubtless earliest method of preventing the escape
+of river waters from their natural channels, and the overflow of fields
+and towns by their spread, is that of raised embankments along their
+course. The necessity of such embankments usually arises from the
+gradual elevation of the bed of running streams in consequence of the
+deposit of the earth and gravel they are charged with in high water;
+and, as we have seen, this elevation is rapidly accelerated when the
+highlands around the headwaters of rivers are cleared of their forests.
+When a river is embanked at a given point, and, consequently, the water
+of its floods, which would otherwise spread over a wide surface, is
+confined within narrow limits, the velocity of the current and its
+transporting power are augmented, and its burden of sand and gravel is
+deposited at some lower point, where the rapidity of its flow is
+checked by a diminution in the inclination of the bed, by a wider
+channel, or finally by a lacustrine or marine basin which receives its
+waters. Wherever it lets fall solid material, its channel is raised in
+consequence, and the declivity of the whole bed between the head of the
+embankment and the slack of the stream is reduced. Hence the current, at
+first accelerated by confinement, is afterward checked by the mechanical
+resistance of the matter deposited, and by the diminished inclination of
+its channel, and then begins again to let fall the earth it holds in
+suspension, and to raise its bed at the point where its overflow had
+been before prevented by embankment. The bank must now be raised in
+proportion, and these processes would be repeated and repeated
+indefinitely, had not nature provided a remedy in floods, which sweep
+out recent deposits, burst the bonds of the river and overwhelm the
+adjacent country with final desolation, or divert the current into a new
+channel, destined to become, in its turn, the scene of a similar
+struggle between man and the waters.
+
+Few rivers, like the Nile, more than compensate by the fertilizing
+properties of their water and their slime for the damage they may do in
+inundations, and, consequently, there are few whose floods are not an
+object of dread, few whose encroachments upon their banks are not a
+source of constant anxiety and expense to the proprietors of the lands
+through which they flow. River dikes, for confining the spread of
+currents at high water, are of great antiquity in the East, and those of
+the Po and its tributaries were begun before we have any trustworthy
+physical or political annals of the provinces upon their borders. From
+the earliest ages, the Italian hydraulic engineers have stood in the
+front rank of their profession, and the Italian literature of this
+branch of material improvement is exceedingly voluminous. But the
+countries for which I write have no rivers like the Po, no plains like
+those of Lombardy, and the dangers to which the inhabitants of English
+and American river banks are exposed are more nearly analogous to those
+that threaten the soil and population in the valleys and plains of
+France, than to the perils and losses of the Lombard. The writings of
+the Italian hydrographers, too, though rich in professional instruction,
+are less accessible to foreigners and less adapted to popular use than
+those of French engineers.[347] For these reasons I shall take my
+citations principally from French authorities, though I shall
+occasionally allude to Italian writers on the floods of the Tiber, of
+the Arno, and some other Italian streams which much resemble those of
+the rivers of England and the United States.
+
+
+b. _Floods of the Ard�che._
+
+The floods of mountain streams are attended with greater immediate
+danger to life and property than those of rivers of less rapid flow,
+because their currents are more impetuous, and they rise more suddenly
+and with less previous warning. At the same time, their ravages are
+confined within narrower limits, the waters retire sooner to their
+accustomed channel, and the danger is more quickly over, than in the
+case of inundations of larger rivers. The Ard�che, which has given its
+name to a department in France, drains a basin of 600,238 acres, or a
+little less than nine hundred and thirty-eight square miles. Its
+remotest source is about seventy-five miles, in a straight line, from
+its junction with the Rhone, and springs at an elevation of four
+thousand feet above that point. At the lowest stage of the river, the
+bed of the Chassezac, its largest and longest tributary, is in many
+places completely dry on the surface--the water being sufficient only
+to supply the subterranean channels of infiltration--and the Ard�che
+itself is almost everywhere fordable, even below the mouth of the
+Chassezac. But in floods, the river has sometimes risen more than sixty
+feet at the Pont d'Arc, a natural arch of two hundred feet chord, which
+spans the stream below its junction with all its important affluents. At
+the height of the inundation of 1827, the quantity of water passing this
+point--after deducting thirty per cent. for material transported with
+the current and for irregularity of flow--was estimated at 8,845 cubic
+yards to the second, and between twelve at noon on the 10th of September
+of that year and ten o'clock the next morning, the water discharged
+through the passage in question amounted to more than 450,000,000 cubic
+yards. This quantity, distributed equally through the basin of the
+river, would cover its entire area to a depth of more than five inches.
+
+The Ard�che rises so suddenly that, in the inundation of 1846, the women
+who were washing in the bed of the river had not time to save their
+linen, and barely escaped with their lives, though they instantly fled
+upon hearing the roar of the approaching flood. Its waters and those of
+its affluents fall almost as rapidly, for in less than twenty-four hours
+after the rain has ceased in the C�vennes, where it rises, the Ard�che
+returns within its ordinary channel, even at its junction with the
+Rhone. In the flood of 1772, the water at La Beaume de Ruoms, on the
+Beaume, a tributary of the Ard�che, rose thirty-five feet above low
+water, but the stream was again fordable on the evening of the same day.
+The inundation of 1827 was, in this respect, exceptional, for it
+continued three days, during which period the Ard�che poured into the
+Rhone 1,305,000,000 cubic yards of water.
+
+The Nile delivers into the sea 101,000 cubic feet or 3,741 cubic yards
+per second, on an average of the whole year.[348] This is equal to
+323,222,400 cubic yards per day. In a single day of flood, then, the
+Ard�che, a river too insignificant to be known except in the local
+topography of France, contributed to the Rhone once and a half, and for
+three consecutive days once and one third, as much as the average
+delivery of the Nile during the same periods, though the basin of the
+latter river contains 500,000 square miles of surface, or more than five
+hundred times as much as that of the former.
+
+The average annual precipitation in the basin of the Ard�che is not
+greater than in many other parts of Europe, but excessive quantities of
+rain frequently fall in that valley in the autumn. On the 9th of
+October, 1827, there fell at Joyeuse, on the Beaume, no less than
+thirty-one inches between three o'clock in the morning and midnight.
+Such facts as this explain the extraordinary suddenness and violence of
+the floods of the Ard�che, and the basins of many other tributaries of
+the Rhone exhibit meteorological phenomena not less remarkable.[349] The
+inundation of the 10th September, 1857, was accompanied with a terrific
+hurricane, which passed along the eastern slope of the high grounds
+where the Ard�che and several other western affluents of the Rhone take
+their rise. The wind tore up all the trees in its path, and the rushing
+torrents bore their trunks down to the larger streams, which again
+transported them to the Rhone in such rafts that one might almost have
+crossed that river by stepping from trunk to trunk.[350] The Rhone,
+therefore, is naturally subject to great and sudden inundations, and the
+same remark may be applied to most of the principal rivers of France,
+because the geographical character of all of them is approximately the
+same.
+
+The height and violence of the inundations of most great rivers are
+determined by the degree in which the floods of the different
+tributaries are coincident in time. Were all the affluents of the Rhone
+to pour their highest annual floods into its channel at once, were a
+dozen Niles to empty themselves into its bed at the same moment, its
+water would rise to a height and rush with an impetus that would sweep
+into the Mediterranean the entire population of its banks, and all the
+works that man has erected upon the plains which border it. But such a
+coincidence can never happen. The tributaries of this river run in very
+different directions, and some of them are swollen principally by the
+melting of the snows about their sources, others almost exclusively by
+heavy rains. When a damp southeast wind blows up the valley of the
+Ard�che, its moisture is condensed, and precipitated in a deluge upon
+the mountains which embosom the headwaters of that stream, thus
+producing a flood, while a neighboring basin, the axis of which lies
+transversely or obliquely to that of the Ard�che, is not at all
+affected.[351]
+
+It is easy to see that the damage occasioned by such floods as I have
+described must be almost incalculable, and it is by no means confined to
+the effects produced by overflow and the mechanical force of the
+superficial currents. In treating of the devastations of torrents in a
+former chapter, I confined myself principally to the erosion of surface
+and the transportation of mineral matter to lower grounds by them. The
+general action of torrents, as there shown, tends to the ultimate
+elevation of their beds by the deposit of the earth, gravel, and stone
+conveyed by them; but until they have thus raised their outlets so as
+sensibly to diminish the inclination of their channels--and sometimes
+when extraordinary floods give the torrents momentum enough to sweep
+away the accumulations which they have themselves heaped up--the swift
+flow of their currents, aided by the abrasion of the rolling rocks and
+gravel, scoops their beds constantly deeper, and they consequently not
+only undermine their banks, but frequently sap the most solid
+foundations which the art of man can build for the support of bridges
+and hydraulic structures.[352]
+
+In the inundation of 1857, the Ard�che destroyed a stone bridge near La
+Beaume, which had been built about eighty years before. The resistance
+of the piers, which were erected on piles, the channel at that point
+being of gravel, produced an eddying current that washed away the bed of
+the river above them, and the foundation, thus deprived of lateral
+support, yielded to the weight of the bridge, and the piles and piers
+fell up stream.
+
+By a curious law of compensation, the stream which, at flood, scoops out
+cavities in its bed, often fills them up again as soon as the diminished
+velocity of the current allows it to let fall the sand and gravel with
+which it is charged, so that when the waters return to their usual
+channel, the bottom shows no sign of having been disturbed. In a flood
+of the Escontay, a tributary of the Rhone, in 1846, piles driven sixteen
+feet into its gravelly bed for the foundation of a pier were torn up and
+carried off, and yet, when the river had fallen to low-water mark, the
+bottom at that point appeared to have been raised higher than it was
+before the flood, by new deposits of sand and gravel, while the cut
+stones of the half-built pier were found buried to a great depth, in the
+excavation which the water had first washed out. The gravel with which
+rivers thus restore the level of their beds is principally derived from
+the crushing of the rocks brought down by the mountain torrents, and the
+destructive effects of inundations are immensely diminished by this
+reduction of large stones to minute fragments. If the blocks hurled down
+from the cliffs were transported unbroken to the channels of large
+rivers, the mechanical force of their movement would be irresistible.
+They would overthrow the strongest barriers, spread themselves over a
+surface as wide as the flow of the waters, and convert the most smiling
+valleys into scenes of the wildest desolation.
+
+
+c. _Crushing Force of Torrents._
+
+There are few operations of nature where the effect seems more
+disproportioned to the cause than in the comminution of rock in the
+channel of swift waters. Igneous rocks are generally so hard as to be
+wrought with great difficulty, and they bear the weight of enormous
+superstructures without yielding to the pressure; but to the torrent
+they are as wheat to the millstone. The streams which pour down the
+southern scarp of the Mediterranean Alps along the Riviera di Ponente,
+near Genoa, have short courses, and a brisk walk of a couple of hours or
+even less takes you from the sea beach to the headspring of many of
+them. In their heaviest floods, they bring rounded masses of serpentine
+quite down to the sea, but at ordinary high water their lower course is
+charged only with finely divided particles of that rock. Hence, while,
+near their sources, their channels are filled with pebbles and angular
+fragments, intermixed with a little gravel, the proportions are reversed
+near their mouths, and, just above the points where their outlets are
+partially choked by the rolling shingle of the beach, their beds are
+composed of sand and gravel to the almost total exclusion of pebbles.
+The greatest depth of the basin of the Ard�che is seventy-five miles,
+but most of its tributaries have a much shorter course. "These
+affluents," says Mardigny, "hurl into the bed of the Ard�che enormous
+blocks of rock, which this river, in its turn, bears onward, and grinds
+down, at high water, so that its current rolls only gravel at its
+confluence with the Rhone."[353]
+
+Guglielmini argued that the gravel and sand of the beds of running
+streams were derived from the trituration of rocks by the action of the
+currents, and inferred that this action was generally sufficient to
+reduce hard rock to sand in its passage from the source to the outlet of
+rivers. Frisi controverted this opinion, and maintained that river sand
+was of more ancient origin, and he inferred from experiments in
+artificially grinding stones that the concussion, friction, and
+attrition of rock in the channel of running waters were inadequate to
+its comminution, though he admitted that these same causes might reduce
+silicious sand to a fine powder capable of transportation to the sea by
+the currents.[354] Frisi's experiments were tried upon rounded and
+polished river pebbles, and prove nothing with regard to the action of
+torrents upon the irregular, more or less weathered, and often cracked
+and shattered rocks which lie loose in the ground at the head of
+mountain valleys. The fury of the waters and of the wind which
+accompanies them in the floods of the French Alpine torrents is such,
+that large blocks of stone are hurled out of the bed of the stream to
+the height of twelve or thirteen feet. The impulse of masses driven with
+such force overthrows the most solid masonry, and their concussion
+cannot fail to be attended with the crushing of the rocks
+themselves.[355]
+
+
+d. _Inundations of 1856 in France._
+
+The month of May, 1856, was remarkable for violent and almost
+uninterrupted rains, and most of the river basins of France were
+inundated to an extraordinary height. In the valleys of the Loire and
+its affluents, about a million of acres, including many towns and
+villages, were laid under water, and the amount of pecuniary damage was
+almost incalculable.[356] The flood was not less destructive in the
+valley of the Rhone, and in fact an invasion by a hostile army could
+hardly have been more disastrous to the inhabitants of the plains than
+was this terrible deluge. There had been a flood of this latter river in
+the year 1840, which, for height and quantity of water, was almost as
+remarkable as that of 1856, but it took place in the month of November,
+when the crops had all been harvested, and the injury inflicted by it
+upon agriculturists was, therefore, of a character to be less severely
+and less immediately felt than the consequences of the inundation of
+1856.[357]
+
+In the fifteen years between these two great floods, the population and
+the rural improvements of the river valleys had much increased, common
+roads, bridges, and railways had been multiplied and extended, telegraph
+lines had been constructed, all of which shared in the general ruin, and
+hence greater and more diversified interests were affected by the
+catastrophe of 1856 than by any former like calamity. The great flood of
+1840 had excited the attention and roused the sympathies of the French
+people, and the subject was invested with new interest by the still more
+formidable character of the inundations of 1856. It was felt that these
+scourges had ceased to be a matter of merely local concern, for,
+although they bore most heavily on those whose homes and fields were
+situated within the immediate reach of the swelling waters, yet they
+frequently destroyed harvests valuable enough to be a matter of national
+interest, endangered the personal security of the population of
+important political centres, interrupted communication for days and even
+weeks together on great lines of traffic and travel--thus severing as
+it were all Southwestern France from the rest of the empire--and finally
+threatened to produce great and permanent geographical changes. The
+well-being of the whole commonwealth was seen to be involved in
+preventing the recurrence, and in limiting the range of such
+devastations. The Government encouraged scientific investigation of the
+phenomena and their laws. Their causes, their history, their immediate
+and remote consequences, and the possible safeguards to be employed
+against them, have been carefully studied by the most eminent
+physicists, as well as by the ablest theoretical and practical engineers
+of France. Many hitherto unobserved facts have been collected, many new
+hypotheses suggested, and many plans, more or less original in
+character, have been devised for combating the evil; but thus far, the
+most competent judges are not well agreed as to the mode, or even the
+possibility, of applying a remedy.
+
+
+e. _Remedies against Inundations._
+
+Perhaps no one point has been more prominent in the discussions than the
+influence of the forest in equalizing and regulating the flow of the
+water of precipitation. As we have already seen, opinion is still
+somewhat divided on this subject, but the conservative action of the
+woods in this respect has been generally recognized by the public of
+France, and the Government of the empire has made this principle the
+basis of important legislation for the protection of existing forests,
+and for the formation of new. The clearing of woodland, and the
+organization and functions of a police for its protection, are regulated
+by a law bearing date June 18th, 1859, and provision was made for
+promoting the restoration of private woods by a statute adopted on the
+28th of July, 1860. The former of these laws passed the legislative body
+by a vote of 246 against 4, the latter with but a single negative voice.
+The influence of the government, in a country where the throne is so
+potent as in France, would account for a large majority, but when it is
+considered that both laws, the former especially, interfere very
+materially with the rights of private domain, the almost entire
+unanimity with which they were adopted is proof of a very general
+popular conviction, that the protection and extension of the forests is
+a measure more likely than any other to check the violence, if not to
+prevent the recurrence, of destructive inundations. The law of July
+28th, 1860, appropriated 10,000,000 francs, to be expended, at the rate
+of 1,000,000 francs per year, in executing or aiding the replanting of
+woods. It is computed that this appropriation will secure the creation
+of new forest to the extent of about 250,000 acres, or one eleventh part
+of the soil where the restoration of the forest is thought feasible and,
+at the same time, specially important as a security against the evils
+ascribed in a great measure to its destruction.
+
+The provisions of the laws in question are preventive rather than
+remedial; but some immediate effect may be expected to result from them,
+particularly if they are accompanied with certain other measures, the
+suggestion of which has been favorably received. The strong repugnance
+of the mountaineers to the application of a system which deprives them
+of a part of their pasturage--for the absolute exclusion of domestic
+animals is indispensable to the maintenance of an existing forest and to
+the formation of a new--is the most formidable obstacle to the execution
+of the laws of 1859-'60. It is proposed to compensate this loss by a
+cheap system of irrigation of lower pasture grounds, consisting in
+little more than in running horizontal furrows along the hillsides, thus
+converting the scarp of the hills into a succession of small terraces
+which, when once turfed over, are very permanent. Experience is said to
+have demonstrated that this simple process suffices to retain the water
+of rains, of snows, and of small springs and rivulets, long enough for
+the irrigation of the soil, thus increasing its product of herbage in a
+fivefold proportion, and that it partially checks the too rapid flow of
+surface water into the valleys, and, consequently, in some measure
+obviates one of the most prominent causes of inundations.[358] It is
+evident that, if such results are produced by this method, its
+introduction upon an extensive scale must also have the same climatic
+effects as other systems of irrigation.
+
+Whatever may be the ultimate advantages of reclothing a large extent of
+the territory of France with wood, or of so shaping its surface as to
+prevent the too rapid flow of water over it, the results to be obtained
+by such processes can be realized in an adequate measure only after a
+long succession of years. Other steps must be taken, both for the
+immediate security of the lives and property of the present generation,
+and for the prevention of yet greater and remoter evils which are
+inevitable unless means to obviate them are found before it is forever
+too late. The frequent recurrence of inundations like those of 1856, for
+a single score of years, in the basins of the Rhone and the Loire, with
+only the present securities against them, would almost depopulate the
+valleys of those rivers, and produce physical revolutions in them,
+which, like revolutions in the political world, could never be made to
+"go backward."
+
+Destructive inundations are seldom, if ever, produced by precipitation
+within the limits of the principal valley, but almost uniformly by
+sudden thaws or excessive rains on the mountain ranges where the
+tributaries take their rise. It is therefore plain that any measures
+which shall check the flow of surface waters into the channels of the
+affluents, or which shall retard the delivery of such waters into the
+principal stream by its tributaries, will diminish in the same
+proportion the dangers and the evils of inundation by great rivers. The
+retention of the surface waters upon or in the soil can hardly be
+accomplished except by the methods already mentioned, replanting of
+forests, and furrowing or terracing. The current of mountain streams can
+be checked by various methods, among which the most familiar and obvious
+is the erection of barriers or dams across their channels, at points
+convenient for forming reservoirs large enough to retain the superfluous
+waters of great rains and thaws. Besides the utility of such basins in
+preventing floods, the construction of them is recommended by very
+strong considerations, such as the meteorological effects of increased
+evaporable surface, the furnishing of a constant supply of water for
+agricultural and mechanical purposes, and, finally, their value as ponds
+for breeding and rearing fish, and, perhaps, for cultivating aquatic
+vegetables.
+
+The objections to the general adoption of the system of reservoirs are
+these: the expense of their construction and maintenance; the reduction
+of cultivable area by the amount of surface they must cover; the
+interruption they would occasion to free communication; the probability
+that they would soon be filled up with sediment, and the obvious fact
+that when full of earth or even water, they would no longer serve their
+principal purpose; the great danger to which they would expose the
+country below them in case of the bursting of their barriers;[359] the
+evil consequences they would occasion by prolonging the flow of
+inundations in proportion as they diminished their height; the injurious
+effects it is supposed they would produce upon the salubrity of the
+neighboring districts; and, lastly, the alleged impossibility of
+constructing artificial basins sufficient in capacity to prevent, or in
+any considerable measure to mitigate, the evils they are intended to
+guard against.
+
+The last argument is more easily reduced to a numerical question than
+the others. The mean and extreme annual precipitation of all the basins
+where the construction of such works would be seriously proposed is
+already approximately known by meteorological tables, and the quantity
+of water, delivered by the greatest floods which have occurred within
+the memory of man, may be roughly estimated from their visible traces.
+From these elements, or from recorded observations, the capacity of the
+necessary reservoirs can be calculated. Let us take the case of the
+Ard�che. In the inundation of 1857, that river poured into the Rhone
+1,305,000,000 cubic yards of water in three days. If we suppose that
+half this quantity might have been suffered to flow down its channel
+without inconvenience, we shall have about 650,000,000 cubic yards to
+provide for by reservoirs. The Ard�che and its principal affluent, the
+Chassezac, have, together, about twelve considerable tributaries rising
+near the crest of the mountains which bound the basin. If reservoirs of
+equal capacity were constructed upon all of them, each reservoir must be
+able to contain 54,000,000 cubic yards, or, in other words, must be
+equal to a lake 3,000 yards long, 1,000 yards wide, and 18 yards deep,
+and besides, in order to render any effectual service, the reservoirs
+must all have been empty at the commencement of the rains which produced
+the inundation.
+
+Thus far, I have supposed the swelling of the waters to be uniform
+throughout the whole basin; but such was by no means the fact in the
+inundation of 1857, for the rise of the Chassezac, which is as large as
+the Ard�che proper, did not exceed the limits of ordinary floods, and
+the dangerous excess came solely from the headwaters of the latter
+stream. Hence reservoirs of double the capacity I have supposed would
+have been necessary upon the tributaries of that river, to prevent the
+injurious effects of the inundation. It is evident that the construction
+of reservoirs of such magnitude for such a purpose is financially, if
+not physically, impracticable, and when we take into account a point I
+have just suggested, namely, that the reservoirs must be empty at all
+times of apprehended flood, and, of course, their utility limited almost
+solely to the single object of preventing inundations, the total
+inapplicability of such a measure in this particular case becomes still
+more glaringly manifest.
+
+Another not less conclusive fact is that the valleys of all the upland
+tributaries of the Ard�che descend so rapidly, and have so little
+lateral expansion, as to render the construction of capacious reservoirs
+in them quite impracticable. Indeed, engineers have found but two points
+in the whole basin suitable for that purpose, and the reservoirs
+admissible at these would have only a joint capacity of about 70,000,000
+cubic yards, or less than one ninth part of what I suppose to be
+required. The case of the Ard�che is no doubt an extreme one, both in
+the topographical character of its basin and in its exposure to
+excessive rains; but all destructive inundations are, in a certain
+sense, extreme cases also, and this of the Ard�che serves to show that
+the construction of reservoirs is not by any means to be regarded as a
+universal panacea against floods.
+
+Nor, on the other hand, is this measure to be summarily rejected. Nature
+has adopted it on a great scale, on both flanks of the Alps, and on a
+smaller, on those of the Adirondacks and lower chains, and in this as in
+many other instances, her processes may often be imitated with
+advantage. The validity of the remaining objections to the system under
+discussion depends on the topography, geology, and special climate of
+the regions where it is proposed to establish such reservoirs. Many
+upland streams present numerous points where none of these objections,
+except those of expense and of danger from the breaking of dams, could
+have any application. Reservoirs may be so constructed as to retain the
+entire precipitation of the heaviest thaws and rains, leaving only the
+ordinary quantity to flow along the channel; they may be raised to such
+a height as only partially to obstruct the surface drainage; or they may
+be provided with sluices by means of which their whole contents can be
+discharged in the dry season and a summer crop be grown upon the ground
+they cover at high water. The expediency of employing them and the mode
+of construction depend on local conditions, and no rules of universal
+applicability can be laid down on the subject.
+
+It is remarkable that nations which we, in the false pride of our modern
+civilization, so generally regard as little less than barbarian, should
+have long preceded Christian Europe in the systematic employment of
+great artificial basins for the various purposes they are calculated to
+subserve. The ancient Peruvians built strong walls, of excellent
+workmanship, across the channels of the mountain sources of important
+streams, and the Arabs executed immense works of similar description,
+both in the great Arabian peninsula and in all the provinces of Spain
+which had the good fortune to fall under their sway. The Spaniards of
+the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who, in many points of true
+civilization and culture, were far inferior to the races they subdued,
+wantonly destroyed these noble monuments of social and political wisdom,
+or suffered them to perish, because they were too ignorant to appreciate
+their value, or too unskilful as practical engineers to be able to
+maintain them, and some of their most important territories were soon
+reduced to sterility and poverty in consequence.
+
+Another method of preventing or diminishing the evils of inundation by
+torrents and mountain rivers, analogous to that employed for the
+drainage of lakes, consists in the permanent or occasional diversion of
+their surplus waters, or of their entire currents, from their natural
+courses, by tunnels or open channels cut through their banks. Nature, in
+many cases, resorts to a similar process. Most great rivers divide
+themselves into several arms in their lower course, and enter the sea by
+different mouths. There are also cases where rivers send off lateral
+branches to convey a part of their waters into the channel of other
+streams.[360] The most remarkable of these is the junction between the
+Amazon and the Orinoco by the natural canal of the Cassiquiare and the
+Rio Negro. In India, the Cambodja and the Menam are connected by the
+Anam; the Saluen and the Irawaddi by the Panlaun. There are similar
+examples, though on a much smaller scale, in Europe. The Torne� and the
+Calix rivers in Lapland communicate by the Tarando, and in Westphalia,
+the Else, an arm of the Haase, falls into the Weser.
+
+The change of bed in rivers by gradual erosion of their banks is
+familiar to all, but instances of the sudden abandonment of a primitive
+channel are by no means wanting. At a period of unknown antiquity, the
+Ard�che pierced a tunnel 200 feet wide and 100 high, through a rock, and
+sent its whole current through it, deserting its former bed, which
+gradually filled up, though its course remained traceable. In the great
+inundation of 1827, the tunnel proved insufficient for the discharge of
+the water, and the river burst through the obstructions which had now
+choked up its ancient channel, and resumed its original course.[361]
+
+It was probably such facts as these that suggested to ancient engineers
+the possibility of like artificial operations, and there are numerous
+instances of the execution of works for this purpose in very remote
+ages. The Bahr Jusef, the great stream which supplies the Fayoum with
+water from the Nile, has been supposed, by some writers, to be a natural
+channel; but both it and the Bahr el Wady are almost certainly
+artificial canals constructed to water that basin, to regulate the level
+of Lake Moeris, and possibly, also, to diminish the dangers resulting
+from excessive inundations of the Nile, by serving as waste-weirs to
+discharge a part of its surplus waters. Several of the seven ancient
+mouths of the Nile are believed to be artificial channels, and Herodotus
+even asserts that King Menes diverted the entire course of that river
+from the Libyan to the Arabian side of the valley. There are traces of
+an ancient river bed along the western mountains, which give some
+countenance to this statement. But it is much more probable that the
+works of Menes were designed rather to prevent a natural, than to
+produce an artificial, change in the channel of the river.
+
+Two of the most celebrated cascades in Europe, those of the Teverone at
+Tivoli and of the Velino at Terni, owe, if not their existence, at least
+their position and character, to the diversion of their waters from
+their natural beds into new channels, in order to obviate the evils
+produced by their frequent floods. Remarkable works of the same sort
+have been executed in Switzerland, in very recent times. Until the year
+1714, the Kander, which drains several large Alpine valleys, ran, for a
+considerable distance, parallel with the Lake of Thun, and a few miles
+below the city of that name emptied into the river Aar. It frequently
+flooded the flats along the lower part of its course, and it was
+determined to divert it into the Lake of Thun. For this purpose, two
+parallel tunnels were cut through the intervening rock, and the river
+turned into them. The violence of the current burst up the roof of the
+tunnels, and, in a very short time, wore the new channel down not less
+than one hundred feet, and even deepened the former bed at least fifty
+feet, for a distance of two or three miles above the tunnel. The lake
+was two hundred feet deep at the point where the river was conducted
+into it, but the gravel and sand carried down by the Kander has formed
+at its mouth a delta containing more than a hundred acres, which is
+still advancing at the rate of several yards a year. The Linth, which
+formerly sent its waters directly to the Lake of Zurich, and often
+produced very destructive inundations, was turned into the Wallensee
+about forty years ago, and in both these cases a great quantity of
+valuable land was rescued both from flood and from insalubrity.
+
+In Switzerland, the most terrible inundations often result from the
+damming up of deep valleys by ice slips or by the gradual advance of
+glaciers, and the accumulation of great masses of water above the
+obstructions. The ice is finally dissolved by the heat of summer or the
+flow of warm waters, and when it bursts, the lake formed above is
+discharged almost in an instant, and all below is swept down to certain
+destruction. In 1595, about a hundred and fifty lives and a great amount
+of property were lost by the eruption of a lake formed by the descent of
+a glacier into the valley of the Drance, and a similar calamity laid
+waste a considerable extent of soil in the year 1818. On this latter
+occasion, the barrier of ice and snow was 3,000 feet long, 600 thick,
+and 400 high, and the lake which had formed above it contained not less
+than 800,000,000 cubic feet. A tunnel was driven through the ice, and
+about 300,000,000 cubic feet of water safely drawn off by it, but the
+thawing of the walls of the tunnel rapidly enlarged it, and before the
+lake was half drained, the barrier gave way and the remaining
+500,000,000 cubic feet of water were discharged in half an hour. The
+recurrence of these floods has since been prevented by directing streams
+of water, warmed by the sun, upon the ice in the bed of the valley, and
+thus thawing it before it accumulates in sufficient mass to threaten
+serious danger.
+
+In the cases of diversion of streams above mentioned, important
+geographical changes have been directly produced by those operations. By
+the rarer process of draining glacier lakes, natural eruptions of water,
+which would have occasioned not less important changes in the face of
+the earth, have been prevented by human agency.
+
+The principal means hitherto relied upon for defence against river
+inundations has been the construction of dikes along the banks of the
+streams, parallel to the channel and generally separated from each other
+by a distance not much greater than the natural width of the bed.[362]
+If such walls are high enough to confine the water and strong enough to
+resist its pressure, they secure the lands behind them from all the
+evils of inundation except those resulting from infiltration; but such
+ramparts are enormously costly in original construction and maintenance,
+and, as we have already seen, the filling up of the bed of the river in
+its lower course, by sand and gravel, involves the necessity of
+occasionally incurring new expenditures in increasing the height of the
+banks.[363] They are attended, too, with some collateral disadvantages.
+They deprive the earth of the fertilizing deposits of the waters, which
+are powerful natural restoratives of soils exhausted by cultivation;
+they accelerate the rapidity and transporting power of the current at
+high water by confining it to a narrower channel, and it consequently
+conveys to the sea the earthy matter it holds in suspension, and chokes
+up harbors with a deposit which it would otherwise have spread over a
+wide surface; they interfere with roads and the convenience of river
+navigation, and no amount of cost or care can secure them from
+occasional rupture, in case of which the rush of the waters through the
+breach is more destructive than the natural flow of the highest
+inundation.[364]
+
+For these reasons, many experienced engineers are of opinion that the
+system of longitudinal dikes ought to be abandoned, or, where that
+cannot be done without involving too great a sacrifice of existing
+constructions, their elevation should be much reduced, so as to present
+no obstruction to the lateral spread of extraordinary floods, and they
+should be provided with sluices to admit the water without violence
+whenever they are likely to be overflowed. Where dikes have not been
+erected, and where they have been reduced in height, it is proposed to
+construct, at convenient intervals, transverse embankments of moderate
+height running from the banks of the river across the plains to the
+hills which bound them. These measures, it is argued, will diminish the
+violence of inundations by permitting the waters to extend themselves
+over a greater surface and thus retarding the flow of the river
+currents, and will, at the same time, secure the deposit of fertilizing
+slime upon all the soil covered by the flood.
+
+Rozet, an eminent French engineer, has proposed a method of diminishing
+the ravages of inundations, which aims to combine the advantages of all
+other systems, and at the same time to obviate the objections to which
+they are all more or less liable.[365] The plan of Rozet is recommended
+by its simplicity and cheapness as well as its facility and rapidity of
+execution, and is looked upon with favor by many persons very competent
+to judge in such matters. He proposes to commence with the amphitheatres
+in which mountain torrents so often rise, by covering their slopes and
+filling their beds with loose blocks of rock, and by constructing at
+their outlets, and at other narrow points in the channels of the
+torrents, permeable barriers of the same material promiscuously heaped
+up, much according to the method employed by the ancient Romans in their
+northern provinces for a similar purpose. By this means, he supposes,
+the rapidity of the current would be checked, and the quantity of
+transported pebbles and gravel much diminished.
+
+When the stream has reached that part of its course where it is bordered
+by soil capable of cultivation, and worth the expense of protection, he
+proposes to place along one or both sides of the stream, according to
+circumstances, a line of cubical blocks of stone or pillars of masonry
+three or four feet high and wide, and at the distance of about eleven
+yards from each other. The space between the two lines, or between a
+line and the opposite high bank, would, of course, be determined by
+observation of the width of the swift-water current at high floods. As
+an auxiliary measure, small ditches and banks, or low walls of pebbles,
+should be constructed from the line of blocks across the grounds to be
+protected, nearly at right angles to the current, but slightly inclining
+downward, and at convenient distances from each other. Rozet thinks the
+proper interval would be 300 yards, and it is evident that, if he is
+right in his main principle, hedges, rows of trees, or even common
+fences, would in many cases answer as good a purpose as banks and
+trenches or low walls. The blocks or pillars of stone would, he
+contends, check the lateral currents so as to compel them to let fall
+all their pebbles and gravel in the main channel--where they would be
+rolled along until ground down to sand or silt--and the transverse
+obstructions would detain the water upon the soil long enough to secure
+the deposit of its fertilizing slime. Numerous facts are cited in
+support of the author's views, and I imagine there are few residents of
+rural districts whose own observation will not furnish testimony
+confirmatory of their soundness.[366]
+
+The deposit of slime by rivers upon the flats along their banks not only
+contributes greatly to the fertility of the soil thus flowed, but it
+subserves a still more important purpose in the general economy of
+nature. All running streams begin with excavating channels for
+themselves, or deepening the natural depressions in which they
+flow;[367] but in proportion as their outlets are raised by the solid
+material transported by their currents, their velocity is diminished,
+they deposit gravel and sand at constantly higher and higher points, and
+so at last elevate, in the middle and lower part of their course, the
+beds they had previously scooped out.[368] The raising of the channels
+is compensated in part by the simultaneous elevation of their banks and
+the flats adjoining them, from the deposit of the finer particles of
+earth and vegetable mould brought down from the mountains, without which
+elevation the low grounds bordering all rivers would be, as in many
+cases they in fact are, mere morasses.
+
+All arrangements which tend to obstruct this process of raising the
+flats adjacent to the channel, whether consisting in dikes which confine
+the waters, and, at the same time, augment the velocity of the current,
+or in other means of producing the last-mentioned effect, interfere with
+the restorative economy of nature, and at last occasion the formation of
+marshes where, if left to herself, she would have accumulated
+inexhaustible stores of the richest soil, and spread them out in plains
+above the reach of ordinary floods.[369]
+
+
+_Consequences if the Nile had been Diked._
+
+If a system of continuous lateral dikes, like those of the Po, had been
+adopted in Egypt in the early dynasties, when the power and the will to
+undertake the most stupendous material enterprises were so eminently
+characteristic of the government of that country, and the waters of the
+annual inundation consequently prevented from flooding the land, it is
+conceivable that the productiveness of the small area of cultivable soil
+in the Nile valley might have been long kept up by artificial irrigation
+and the application of manures. But nature would have rebelled at last,
+and centuries before our time the mighty river would have burst the
+fetters by which impotent man had vainly striven to bind his swelling
+floods, the fertile fields of Egypt would have been converted into dank
+morasses, and then, perhaps, in some distant future, when the expulsion
+of man should have allowed the gradual restoration of the primitive
+equilibrium, would be again transformed into luxuriant garden and plough
+land. Fortunately, the "wisdom of Egypt" taught her children better
+things. They invited and welcomed, not repulsed, the slimy embraces of
+Nilus, and his favors have been, from the hoariest antiquity, the
+greatest material blessing ever bestowed upon a people.[370]
+
+The valley of the Po has probably not been cultivated or inhabited so
+long as that of the Nile, but embankments have been employed on its
+lower course for at least two thousand years, and for many centuries
+they have been connected in a continuous chain. I have pointed out in a
+former chapter the effects produced on the geography of the Adriatic by
+the deposit of river sediment in the sea at the mouths of the Po, the
+Adige, and the Brenta. If these rivers had been left unconfined, like
+the Nile, and allowed to spread their muddy waters at will, according to
+the laws of nature, the slime they have carried to the coast would have
+been chiefly distributed over the plains of Lombardy. Their banks would
+have risen as fast as their beds, the coast line would not have been
+extended so far into the Adriatic, and, the current of the streams being
+consequently shorter, the inclination of their channel and the rapidity
+of their flow would not have been so greatly diminished. Had man spared
+a reasonable proportion of the forests of the Alps, and not attempted to
+control the natural drainage of the surface, the Po would resemble the
+Nile in all its essential characteristics, and, in spite of the
+difference of climate, perhaps be regarded as the friend and ally, not
+the enemy and the invader, of the population which dwells upon its
+banks.[371]
+
+The Nile is larger than all the rivers of Lombardy together,[372] it
+drains a basin twenty times as extensive, its banks have been occupied
+by man probably twice as long. But its geographical character has not
+been much changed in the whole period of recorded history, and, though
+its outlets have somewhat fluctuated in number and position, its
+historically known encroachments upon the sea are trifling compared with
+those of the Po and the neighboring streams. The deposits of the Nile
+are naturally greater in Upper than in Lower Egypt. They are found to
+have raised the soil at Thebes about seven feet within the last
+seventeen hundred years, and in the Delta the rise has been certainly
+more than half as great.
+
+We shall, therefore, not exceed the truth if we suppose the annually
+inundated surface of Egypt to have been elevated, upon an average, ten
+feet, within the last 5,000 years, or twice and a half the period during
+which the history of the Po is known to us.[373]
+
+We may estimate the present actually cultivated area of Egypt at about
+5,500 square statute miles. As I have computed in a note on page 372,
+that area is not more than half as extensive as under the dynasties of
+the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies; for--though, in consequence of the
+elevation of the river bed, the inundations now have a wider _natural_
+spread--the industry of the ancient Egyptians conducted the Nile water
+over a great extent of soil it does not now reach. We may, then, adopt a
+mean between the two quantities, and we shall probably come near the
+truth if we assume the convenient number of 7,920 square statute miles
+as the average measure of the inundated land during the historical
+period. Taking the deposit on this surface at ten feet, the river
+sediment let fall on the soil of Egypt within the last fifty centuries
+would amount to fifteen cubic miles.
+
+Had the Nile been banked in, like the Po, all this deposit, except that
+contained in the water diverted by canals or otherwise drawn from the
+river for irrigation and other purposes, would have been carried out to
+sea.[374] This would have been a considerable quantity; for the Nile
+holds earth in suspension even at low water, a much larger proportion
+during the flood, and irrigation must have been carried on during the
+whole year. The precise amount which would have been thus distributed
+over the soil is matter of conjecture, but three cubic miles is
+certainly a liberal estimate. This would leave twelve cubic miles as the
+quantity which embankments would have compelled the Nile to transport to
+the Mediterranean over and above what it has actually deposited in that
+sea. The Mediterranean is shoal for some miles out to sea along the
+whole coast of the Delta, and the large bays or lagoons within the coast
+line, which communicate both with the river and the sea, have little
+depth of water. These lagoons the river deposits would have filled up,
+and there would still have been surplus earth enough to extend the Delta
+far into the Mediterranean.[375]
+
+
+_Deposits of the Tuscan Rivers._
+
+The Arno, and all the rivers rising on the western slopes and spurs of
+the Apennines, carry down immense quantities of mud to the
+Mediterranean. There can be no doubt that the volume of earth so
+transported is very much greater than it would have been had the soil
+about the headwaters of those rivers continued to be protected from wash
+by forests; and there is as little question that the quantity borne out
+to sea by the rivers of Western Italy is much increased by artificial
+embankments, because they are thereby prevented from spreading over the
+surface the sedimentary matter with which they are charged. The western
+coast of Tuscany has advanced some miles seaward within a very few
+centuries. The bed of the sea, for a long distance, has been raised, and
+of course the relative elevation of the land above it lessened; harbors
+have been filled up and destroyed; long lines of coast dunes have been
+formed, and the diminished inclination of the beds of the rivers near
+their outlets has caused their waters to overflow their banks and
+convert them into pestilential marshes. The territorial extent of
+Western Italy has thus been considerably increased, but the amount of
+soil habitable and cultivable by man has been, in a still higher
+proportion, diminished. The coast of ancient Etruria was filled with
+great commercial towns, and their rural environs were occupied by a
+large and prosperous population. But maritime Tuscany has long been one
+of the most unhealthy districts in Christendom; the famous mart of
+Populonia has not an inhabitant; the coast is almost absolutely
+depopulated, and the malarious fevers have extended their ravages far
+into the interior.
+
+These results are certainly not to be ascribed wholly to human action.
+They are, in a large proportion, due to geological causes over which man
+has no control. The soil of much of Tuscany becomes pasty, almost fluid
+even, as soon as it is moistened, and when thoroughly saturated with
+water, it flows like a river. Such a soil as this would not be
+completely protected by woods, and, indeed, it would now be difficult to
+confine it long enough to allow it to cover itself with forest
+vegetation. Nevertheless, it certainly was once chiefly wooded, and the
+rivers which flow through it must then have been much less charged with
+earthy matter than at present, and they must have carried into the sea a
+smaller proportion of their sediment when they were free to deposit it
+on their banks than since they have been confined by dikes.[376]
+
+It is, in general, true, that the intervention of man has hitherto
+seemed to insure the final exhaustion, ruin, and desolation of every
+province of nature which he has reduced to his dominion. Attila was only
+giving an energetic and picturesque expression to the tendencies of
+human action, as personified in himself, when he said that "no grass
+grew where his horse's hoofs had trod." The instances are few, where a
+second civilization has flourished upon the ruins of an ancient culture,
+and lands once rendered uninhabitable by human acts or neglect have
+generally been forever abandoned as hopelessly irreclaimable. It is, as
+I have before remarked, a question of vast importance, how far it is
+practicable to restore the garden we have wasted, and it is a problem on
+which experience throws little light, because few deliberate attempts
+have yet been made at the work of physical regeneration, on a scale
+large enough to warrant general conclusions in any one class of cases.
+
+The valleys and shores of Tuscany form, however, a striking exception to
+this remark. The success with which human guidance has made the
+operations of nature herself available for the restoration of her
+disturbed harmonies, in the Val di Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, is
+among the noblest, if not the most brilliant achievements of modern
+engineering, and, regarded in all its bearings on the great question of
+which I have just spoken, it is, as an example, of more importance to
+the general interests of humanity than the proudest work of internal
+improvement that mechanical means have yet constructed. The operations
+in the Val di Chiana have consisted chiefly in so regulating the flow of
+the surface waters into and through it, as to compel them to deposit
+their sedimentary matter at the will of the engineers, and thereby to
+raise grounds rendered insalubrious and unfit for agricultural use by
+stagnating water; the improvements in the Maremma have embraced both
+this method of elevating the level of the soil, and the prevention of
+the mixture of salt water with fresh in the coast marshes and shallow
+bays, which is a very active cause of the development of malarious
+influences.[377]
+
+
+_Improvements in the Val di Chiana._
+
+For twenty miles or more after the remotest headwaters of the Arno have
+united to form a considerable stream, this river flows southeastward to
+the vicinity of Arezzo. It here sweeps round to the northwest, and
+follows that course to near its junction with the Sieve, a few miles
+above Florence, from which point its general direction is westward to
+the sea. From the bend at Arezzo, a depression called the Val di Chiana
+runs southeastward until it strikes into the valley of the Paglia, a
+tributary of the Tiber, and thus connects the basin of the latter river
+with that of the Arno. In the Middle Ages, and down to the eighteenth
+century, the Val di Chiana was often overflowed and devastated by the
+torrents which poured down from the highlands, transporting great
+quantities of slime with their currents, stagnating upon its surface,
+and gradually converting it into a marshy and unhealthy district, which
+was at last very greatly reduced in population and productiveness. It
+had, in fact, become so desolate that even the swallow had deserted
+it.[378]
+
+The bed of the Arno near Arezzo and that of the Paglia at the southern
+extremity of the Val di Chiana did not differ much in level. The
+general inclination of the valley was therefore small; it does not
+appear to have ever been divided into opposite slopes by a true
+watershed, and the position of the summit seems to have shifted
+according to the varying amount and place of deposit of the sediment
+brought down by the lateral streams which emptied into it. The length of
+its principal channel of drainage, and even the direction of its flow at
+any given point, were therefore fluctuating. Hence, much difference of
+opinion was entertained at different times with regard to the normal
+course of this stream, and, consequently, to the question whether it was
+to be regarded as properly an affluent of the Tiber or of the Arno.
+
+The bed of the latter river at the bend has been eroded to the depth of
+thirty or forty feet, and that, apparently, at no very remote period. If
+it were elevated to what was evidently its original height, the current
+of the Arno would be so much above that of the Paglia as to allow of a
+regular flow from its channel to the latter stream, through the Val di
+Chiana, provided the bed of the valley had remained at the level which
+excavations prove it to have had a few centuries ago, before it was
+raised by the deposits I have mentioned. These facts, together with the
+testimony of ancient geographers which scarcely admits of any other
+explanation, are thought to prove that all the waters of the Upper Arno
+were originally discharged through the Val di Chiana into the Tiber, and
+that a part of them still continued to flow, at least occasionally, in
+that direction down to the days of the Roman empire, and perhaps for
+some time later. The depression of the bed of the Arno, and the raising
+of that of the valley by the deposits of the lateral torrents and of the
+Arno itself, finally cut off the branch of the river which had flowed to
+the Tiber, and all its waters were turned into its present channel,
+though the principal drainage of the Val di Chiana appears to have been
+in a southeastwardly direction until within a comparatively recent
+period.
+
+In the sixteenth century, the elevation of the bed of the valley had
+become so considerable, that in 1551, at a point about ten miles south
+of the Arno, it was found to be not less than one hundred and thirty
+feet above that river; then followed a level of ten miles, and then a
+continuous descent to the Paglia. Along the level portion of the valley
+was a boatable channel, and lakes, sometimes a mile or even two miles in
+breadth, had formed at various points farther south. At this period, the
+drainage of the summit level might easily have been determined in either
+direction, and the opposite descents of the valley made to culminate at
+the north or at the south end of the level. In the former case, the
+watershed would have been ten miles south of the Arno; in the latter,
+twenty miles, and the division would have been not very unequal.
+
+Various schemes were suggested at this time for drawing off the stagnant
+waters, as well as for the future regular drainage of the valley, and
+small operations for those purposes were undertaken with partial
+success; but it was feared that the discharge of the accumulated waters
+into the Tiber would produce a dangerous inundation, while the diversion
+of the drainage into the Arno would increase the violence of the floods
+to which that river was very subject, and no decisive steps were taken.
+In 1606, an engineer whose name has not been preserved proposed, as the
+only possible method of improvement, the piercing of a tunnel through
+the hills bounding the valley on the west to convey its waters to the
+Ombrone, but the expense and other objections prevented the adoption of
+this project.[379] The fears of the Roman Government for the security of
+the valley of the Tiber had induced it to construct barriers across that
+part of the channel which lay within its territory, and these
+obstructions, though not specifically intended for that purpose,
+naturally promoted the deposit of sediment and the elevation of the bed
+of the valley in their neighborhood. The effect of this measure and of
+the continued spontaneous action of the torrents was, that the northern
+slope, which in 1551 had commenced at the distance of ten miles from the
+Arno, was found in 1605 to begin, nearly thirty miles south of that
+river, and in 1645 it had been removed about six miles farther in the
+same direction.[380]
+
+In the seventeenth century, the Tuscan and Papal Governments consulted
+Galileo, Torricelli, Castelli, Cassini, Viviani, and other distinguished
+philosophers and engineers, on the possibility of reclaiming the valley
+by a regular artificial drainage. Most of these eminent physicists were
+of opinion that the measure was impracticable, though not altogether for
+the same reasons; but they seem to have agreed in thinking that the
+opening of such channels, in either direction, as would give the current
+a flow sufficiently rapid to drain the lands properly, would dangerously
+augment the inundations of the river--whether the Tiber or the
+Arno--into which the waters should be turned. The general improvement of
+the valley was now for a long time abandoned, and the waters were
+allowed to spread and stagnate until carried off by partial drainage,
+infiltration, and evaporation. Torricelli had contended that the slope
+of a large part of the valley was too small to allow it to be drained by
+ordinary methods, and that no practicable depth and width of canal would
+suffice for that purpose. It could be laid dry, he thought, only by
+converting its surface into an inclined plane, and he suggested that
+this might be accomplished by controlling the flow of the numerous
+torrents which pour into it, so as to force them to deposit their
+sediment at the pleasure of the engineer, and, consequently, to elevate
+the level of the area over which it should be spread.[381] This plan
+did not meet with immediate general acceptance, but it was soon adopted
+for local purposes at some points in the southern part of the valley,
+and it gradually grew in public favor and was extended in application
+until its final triumph a hundred years later.
+
+In spite of these encouraging successes, however, the fear of danger to
+the valley of the Arno and the Tiber, and the difficulty of an agreement
+between Tuscany and Rome--the boundary between which states crossed the
+Val di Chiana not far from the halfway point between the two rivers--and
+of reconciling other conflicting interests, prevented the resumption of
+the projects for the general drainage of the valley until after the
+middle of the eighteenth century. In the mean time the science of
+hydraulics had become better understood, and the establishment of the
+natural law according to which the velocity of a current of water, and
+of course the proportional quantity discharged by it in a given time,
+are increased by increasing its mass, had diminished if not dissipated
+the fear of exposing the banks of the Arno to greater danger from
+inundations by draining the Val di Chiana into it.
+
+The suggestion of Torricelli was finally adopted as the basis of a
+comprehensive system of improvement, and it was decided to continue and
+extend the inversion of the original flow of the waters, and to turn
+them into the Arno from a point as far to the south as should be found
+practicable. The conduct of the works was committed to a succession of
+able engineers who, for a long series of years, were under the general
+direction of the celebrated philosopher and statesman Fossombroni, and
+the success has fully justified the expectations of the most sanguine
+advocates of the scheme. The plan of improvement embraced two branches:
+the one, the removal of certain obstructions in the bed of the Arno,
+and, consequently, the further depression of the channel of that river,
+in certain places, with the view of increasing the rapidity of its
+current; the other, the gradual filling up of the ponds and swamps, and
+raising of the lower grounds of the Val di Chiana, by directing to
+convenient points the flow of the streams which pour down into it, and
+there confining their waters by temporary dams until the sediment was
+deposited where it was needed. The economical result of these operations
+has been, that in 1835 an area of more than four hundred and fifty
+square miles of pond, marsh, and damp, sickly low grounds had been
+converted into fertile, healthy and well-drained soil, and,
+consequently, that so much territory has been added to the agricultural
+domain of Tuscany.
+
+But in our present view of the subject, the geographical revolution
+which has been accomplished is still more interesting. The climatic
+influence of the elevation and draining of the soil must have been
+considerable, though I do not know that an increase or a diminution of
+the mean temperature or precipitation in the valley has been established
+by meteorological observation. There is, however, in the improvement of
+the sanitary condition of the Val di Chiana, which was formerly
+extremely unhealthy, satisfactory proof of a beneficial climatic change.
+The fevers, which not only decimated the population of the low grounds
+but infested the adjacent hills, have ceased their ravages, and are now
+not more frequent than in other parts of Tuscany. The strictly
+topographical effect of the operations in question, besides the
+conversion of marsh into dry surface, has been the inversion of the
+inclination of the valley for a distance of thirty-five miles, so that
+this great plain which, within a comparatively short period, sloped and
+drained its waters to the south, now inclines and sends its drainage to
+the north. The reversal of the currents of the valley has added to the
+Arno a new tributary equal to the largest of its former affluents, and a
+most important circumstance connected with this latter fact is, that the
+increase of the volume of its waters has accelerated their velocity in a
+still greater proportion, and, instead of augmenting the danger from its
+inundations, has almost wholly obviated that source of apprehension.
+Between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the year 1761,
+thirty-one destructive floods of the Arno are recorded; between 1761,
+when the principal streams of the Val di Chiana were diverted into that
+river, and 1835, not one.[382]
+
+
+_Improvements in the Tuscan Maremme._
+
+In the improvements of the Tuscan Maremma, more formidable difficulties
+have been encountered. The territory to be reclaimed was more extensive;
+the salubrious places of retreat for laborers and inspectors were more
+remote; the courses of the rivers to be controlled were longer and their
+natural inclination less rapid; some of them, rising in wooded regions,
+transported comparatively little earthy matter,[383] and above all,
+
+A like example is observed in the Anapus near Syracuse, which, below the
+junction of its two branches, is narrower, though swifter than either of
+them, and such cases are by no means unfrequent. The immediate effect of
+the confluence of two rivers upon the current below depends upon local
+circumstances, and especially upon the angle of incidence. If the two
+nearly coincide in direction, so as to include a small angle, the joint
+current will have a greater velocity than the slower confluent, perhaps
+even than either of them. If the two rivers run in transverse, still
+more if they flow in more or less opposite directions, the velocity of
+the principal branch will be retarded both above and below the junction,
+and at high water it may even set back the current of the affluent.
+
+On the other hand, the diversion of a considerable branch from a river
+retards its velocity below the point of separation, and here a deposit
+of earth in its channel immediately begins, which has a tendency to turn
+the whole stream into the new bed. "Theory and the authority of all
+hydrographical writers combine to show that the channels of rivers
+undergo an elevation of bed below a canal of diversion."--Letter of
+FOSSOMBRONI, in SALVAGNOLI, _Raccolta di Documenti_, p. 32. See the
+early authorities and discussions on the principle stated in the text,
+in FRISI, _Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti_, libro iii, capit.
+i. the coast, which is a recent deposit of the waters, is little
+elevated above the sea, and admits into its lagoons and the mouths of
+its rivers floods of salt water with every western wind, every rising
+tide.[384]
+
+The western coast of Tuscany is not supposed to have been an unhealthy
+region before the conquest of Etruria by the Romans, but it certainly
+became so within a few centuries after that event. This was a natural
+consequence of the neglect or wanton destruction of the public
+improvements, and especially the hydraulic works in which the Etruscans
+were so skilful, and of the felling of the upland forests, to satisfy
+the demand for wood at Rome for domestic, industrial, and military
+purposes. After the downfall of the Roman empire, the incursions of the
+barbarians, and then feudalism, foreign domination, intestine wars, and
+temporal and spiritual tyrannies, aggravated still more cruelly the
+moral and physical evils which Tuscany and the other Italian States were
+doomed to suffer, and from which they have enjoyed but brief respites
+during the whole period of modern history. The Maremma was already
+proverbially unhealthy in the time of Dante, who refers to the fact in
+several familiar passages, and the petty tyrants upon its borders often
+sent criminals to places of confinement in its territory, as a slow but
+certain mode of execution. Ignorance of the causes of the insalubrity,
+and often the interference of private rights,[385] prevented the
+adoption of measures to remove it, and the growing political and
+commercial importance of the large towns in more healthful localities
+absorbed the attention of Government, and deprived the Maremma of its
+just share in the systems of physical improvement which were
+successfully adopted in interior and Northern Italy.
+
+Before any serious attempts were made to drain or fill up the marshes of
+the Maremme, various other sanitary experiments were tried. It was
+generally believed that the insalubrity of the province was the
+consequence, not the cause, of its depopulation, and that, if it were
+once densely inhabited, the ordinary operations of agriculture, and
+especially the maintenance of numerous domestic fires, would restore it
+to its ancient healthfulness.[386] In accordance with these views,
+settlers were invited from various parts of Italy, from Greece, and,
+after the accession of the Lorraine princes, from that country also, and
+colonized in the Maremme. To strangers coming from soils and skies so
+unlike those of the Tuscan marshes, the climate was more fatal than to
+the inhabitants of the neighboring districts, whose constitutions had
+become in some degree inured to the local influences, or who at least
+knew better how to guard against them. The consequence very naturally
+was that the experiment totally failed to produce the desired effects,
+and was attended with a great sacrifice of life and a heavy loss to the
+treasury of the state.
+
+The territory known as the Tuscan Maremma, _ora maritima_, or
+Maremme--for the plural form is most generally used--lies upon and near
+the western coast of Tuscany, and comprises about 1,900 square miles
+English, of which 500 square miles, or 320,000 acres, are plain and
+marsh including 45,500 acres of water surface, and about 290,000 acres
+are forest. One of the mountain peaks, that of Mount Amiata, rises to
+the height of 6,280 feet. The mountains of the Maremma are healthy, the
+lower hills much less so, as the malaria is felt at some points at the
+height of 1,000 feet, and the plains, with the exception of a few
+localities favorably situated on the seacoast, are in a high degree
+pestilential. The fixed population is about 80,000, of whom one sixth
+live on the plains in the winter and about one tenth in the summer. Nine
+or ten thousand laborers come down from the mountains of the Maremma and
+the neighboring provinces into the plain, during the latter season, to
+cultivate and gather the crops.
+
+Out of this small number of inhabitants and strangers, 35,619 were ill
+enough to require medical treatment between the 1st of June, 1840, and
+the 1st of June, 1841, and more than one half the cases were of
+intermittent, malignant, gastric, or catarrhal fever. Very few
+agricultural laborers escaped fever, though the disease did not always
+manifest itself until they had returned to the mountains. In the
+province of Grosseto, which embraces nearly the whole of the Maremma,
+the annual mortality was 3.92 per cent. the average duration of life but
+23.18 years, and 75 per cent. of the deaths were among persons engaged
+in agriculture.
+
+The filling up of the low grounds and the partial separation of the
+waters of the sea and the land, which had been in progress since the
+year 1827, now began to show very decided effects upon the sanitary
+condition of the population. In the year ending June 1st, 1842, the
+number of the sick was reduced by more than 2,000, and the cases of
+fever by more than 4,000. The next year, the cases of fever fell to
+10,500, and in that ending June 1st, 1844, to 9,200. The political
+events of 1848 and the preceding and following years, occasioned the
+suspension of the works of improvement in the Maremma, but they were
+resumed after the revolution of 1859, and are now in successful
+progress.
+
+I have spoken, with some detail, of the improvements in the Val di
+Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, because of their great relative
+importance, and because their history is well known; but like operations
+have been executed in the territory of Pisa and upon the coast of the
+duchy of Lucca. In the latter case, they were confined principally to
+prevention of the intermixing of fresh water with that of the sea. In
+1741, sluices or lock gates were constructed for this purpose, and the
+following year, the fevers, which had been destructive to the coast
+population for a long time previous, disappeared altogether. In 1768 and
+1769, the works having fallen to decay, the fevers returned in a very
+malignant form, but the rebuilding of the gates again restored the
+healthfulness of the shore. Similar facts recurred in 1784 and 1785, and
+again from 1804 to 1821. This long and repeated experience has at last
+impressed upon the people the necessity of vigilant attention to the
+sluices, which are now kept in constant repair. The health of the coast
+is uninterrupted, and Viareggio, the capital town of the district, is
+now much frequented for its sea baths and its general salubrity, at a
+season when formerly it was justly shunned as the abode of disease and
+death.[387]
+
+It is now a hundred years since the commencement of the improvements in
+the Val di Chiana, and those of the Maremma have been in more or less
+continued operation for above a generation. They have, as we have seen,
+produced important geographical changes in the surface of the earth and
+in the flow of considerable rivers, and their effects have been not less
+conspicuous in preventing other changes, of a deleterious character,
+which would infallibly have taken place if they had not been arrested by
+the improvements in question. It has been already stated that, in order
+to prevent the overflow of the valley of the Tiber by freely draining
+the Val di Chiana into it, the Papal authorities, long before the
+commencement of the Tuscan works, constructed strong barriers near the
+southern end of the valley, which detained the waters of the wet season
+until they could be gradually drawn off into the Paglia. They
+consequently deposited most of their sediment in the Val di Chiana and
+carried down comparatively little earth to the Tiber. The lateral
+streams contributing the largest quantities of sedimentary matter to the
+Val di Chiana originally flowed into that valley near its northern end;
+and the change of their channels and outlets in a southern direction, so
+as to raise that part of the valley by their deposits and thereby
+reverse its drainage, was one of the principal steps in the process of
+improvement.
+
+We have seen that the north end of the Val di Chiana near the Arno had
+been raised by spontaneous deposit of sediment to such a height as to
+interpose a sufficient obstacle to all flow in that direction. If, then,
+the Roman dam had not been erected, or the works of the Tuscan
+Government undertaken, the whole of the earth, which has been arrested
+by those works and employed to raise the bed and reverse the declivity
+of the valley, would have been carried down to the Tiber and thence into
+the sea. The deposit thus created, would, of course, have contributed to
+increase the advance of the shore at the mouth of that river, which has
+long been going on at the rate of three m�tres and nine tenths (twelve
+feet and nine inches) per annum.[388] It is evident that a quantity of
+earth, sufficient to effect the immense changes I have described in a
+wide valley more than thirty miles long, if deposited at the outlet of
+the Tiber, would have very considerably modified the outline of the
+coast, and have exerted no unimportant influence on the flow of that
+river, by raising its point of discharge and lengthening its channel.
+
+The sediment washed into the marshes of the Maremme is not less than
+12,000,000 cubic yards per annum. The escape of this quantity into the
+sea, which is now almost wholly prevented, would be sufficient to
+advance the coast line fourteen yards per year, for a distance of forty
+miles, computing the mean depth of the sea near the shore at twelve
+yards. It is true that in this case, as well as in that of other rivers,
+the sedimentary matter would not be distributed equally along the shore,
+and much of it would be carried out into deep water, or perhaps
+transported by the currents to distant coasts. The immediate effects of
+the deposit, therefore, would not be so palpable as they appear in this
+numerical form, but they would be equally certain, and would infallibly
+manifest themselves, first, perhaps, at some remote point, and afterward
+at or near the outlets of the rivers which produced them.
+
+
+_Obstruction of River Mouths._
+
+The mouths of a large proportion of the streams known to ancient
+internal navigation are already blocked up by sandbars or fluviatile
+deposits, and the maritime approaches to river harbors frequented by the
+ships of Phenicia and Carthage and Greece and Rome are shoaled to a
+considerable distance out to sea. The inclination of almost every known
+river bed has been considerably reduced within the historical period,
+and nothing but great volume of water, or exceptional rapidity of flow,
+now enables a few large streams like the Amazon, the La Plata, the
+Ganges, and, in a less degree, the Mississippi, to carry their own
+deposits far enough out into deep water to prevent the formation of
+serious obstructions to navigation. But the degradation of their banks,
+and the transportation of earthy matter to the sea by their currents,
+are gradually filling up the estuaries even of these mighty floods, and
+unless the threatened evil shall be averted by the action of geological
+forces, or by artificial contrivances more efficient than dredging
+machines, the destruction of every harbor in the world which receives a
+considerable river must inevitably take place at no very distant date.
+
+This result would, perhaps, have followed in some incalculably distant
+future, if man had not come to inhabit the earth as soon as the natural
+forces which had formed its surface had arrived at such an approximate
+equilibrium that his existence on the globe was possible; but the
+general effect of his industrial operations has been to accelerate it
+immensely. Rivers, in countries planted by nature with forests and never
+inhabited by man, employ the little earth and gravel they transport
+chiefly to raise their own beds and to form plains in their basins.[389]
+In their upper course, where the current is swiftest, they are most
+heavily charged with coarse rolled or suspended matter, and this, in
+floods, they deposit on their shores in the mountain valleys where they
+rise; in their middle course, a lighter earth is spread over the bottom
+of their widening basins, and forms plains of moderate extent; the fine
+silt which floats farther is deposited over a still broader area, or, if
+carried out to sea, is, in great part quickly swept far off by marine
+currents and dropped at last in deep water. Man's "improvement" of the
+soil increases the erosion from its surface; his arrangements for
+confining the lateral spread of the water in floods compel the rivers to
+transport to their mouths the earth derived from that erosion even in
+their upper course; and, consequently, the sediment they deposit at
+their outlets is not only much larger in quantity, but composed of
+heavier materials, which sink more readily to the bottom of the sea and
+are less easily removed by marine currents.
+
+The tidal movement of the ocean, deep sea currents, and the agitation of
+inland waters by the wind, lift up the sands strewn over the bottom by
+diluvial streams or sent down by mountain torrents, and throw them up on
+dry land, or deposit them in sheltered bays and nooks of the coast--for
+the flowing is stronger than the ebbing tide, the affluent than the
+refluent wave. This cause of injury to harbors it is not in man's power
+to resist by any means at present available; but, as we have seen,
+something can be done to prevent the degradation of high grounds, and to
+diminish the quantity of earth which is annually abstracted from the
+mountains, from table lands, and from river banks, to raise the bottom
+of the sea.
+
+This latter cause of harbor obstruction, though an active agent, is,
+nevertheless, in many cases, the less powerful of the two. The earth
+suspended in the lower course of fluviatile currents is lighter than sea
+sand, river water lighter than sea water, and hence, if a land stream
+enters the sea with a considerable volume, its water flows over that of
+the sea, and bears its slime with it until it lets it fall far from
+shore, or, as is more frequently the case, mingles with some marine
+current and transports its sediment to a remote point of deposit. The
+earth borne out of the mouths of the Nile is in part carried over the
+waves which throw up sea sand on the beach, and deposited in deep water,
+in part drifted by the current, which sweeps east and north along the
+coasts of Egypt and Syria, until it finds a resting place in the
+northeastern angle of the Mediterranean.[390] Thus the earth loosened by
+the rude Abyssinian ploughshare, and washed down by the rain from the
+hills of Ethiopia which man has stripped of their protecting forests,
+contributes to raise the plains of Egypt, to shoal the maritime channels
+which lead to the city built by Alexander near the mouth of the Nile,
+and to fill up the harbors made famous by Phenician commerce.
+
+
+_Subterranean Waters._
+
+I have frequently alluded to a branch of geography, the importance of
+which is but recently adequately recognized--the subterranean waters of
+the earth considered as stationary reservoirs, as flowing currents, and
+as filtrating fluids. The earth drinks in moisture by direct absorption
+from the atmosphere, by the deposition of dew, by rain and snow, by
+percolation from rivers and other superficial bodies of water, and
+sometimes by currents flowing into caves or smaller visible
+apertures.[391] Some of this humidity is exhaled again by the soil,
+some is taken up by organic growths and by inorganic compounds, some
+poured out upon the surface by springs and either immediately evaporated
+or carried down to larger streams and to the sea, some flows by
+subterranean courses into the bed of fresh-water rivers[392] or of the
+ocean, and some remains, though even here not in forever motionless
+repose, to fill deep cavities and underground channels.[393] In every
+case the aqueous vapors of the air are the ultimate source of supply,
+and all these hidden stores are again returned to the atmosphere by
+evaporation.
+
+The proportion of the water of precipitation taken up by direct
+evaporation from the surface of the ground seems to have been generally
+exaggerated, sufficient allowance not being made for moisture carried
+downward, or in a lateral direction, by infiltration or by crevices in
+the superior rocky or earthy strata. According to Wittwer, Mariotte
+found that but one sixth of the precipitation in the basin of the Seine
+was delivered into the sea by that river, "so that five sixths remained
+for evaporation and consumption by the organic world."[394]
+
+Lieutenant Maury--whose scientific reputation, though fallen, has not
+quite sunk to the level of his patriotism--estimates the annual amount
+of precipitation in the valley of the Mississippi at 620 cubic miles,
+the discharge of that river into the sea at 107 cubic miles, and
+concludes that "this would leave 513 cubic miles of water to be
+evaporated from this river basin annually."[395] In these and other like
+computations, the water carried down into the earth by capillary and
+larger conduits is wholly lost sight of, and no thought is bestowed upon
+the supply for springs, for common and artesian wells, and for
+underground rivers, like those in the great caves of Kentucky, which may
+gush up in fresh-water currents at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, or
+rise to the light of day in the far-off peninsula of Florida.
+
+The progress of the emphatically modern science of geology has corrected
+these erroneous views, because the observations on which it depends have
+demonstrated not only the existence, but the movement, of water in
+nearly all geological formations, have collected evidence of the
+presence of large reservoirs at greater or less depths beneath surfaces
+of almost every character, and have investigated the rationale of the
+attendant phenomena. The distribution of these waters has been minutely
+studied with reference to a great number of localities, and though the
+actual mode of their vertical and horizontal transmission is still
+involved in much doubt, the laws which determine their aggregation are
+so well understood, that, when the geology of a given district is known,
+it is not difficult to determine at what depth water will be reached by
+the borer, and to what height it will rise.
+
+The same principles have been successfully applied to the discovery of
+small subterranean collections or currents of water, and some persons
+have acquired, by a moderate knowledge of the superficial structure of
+the earth combined with long practice, a skill in the selection of
+favorable places for digging wells which seems to common observers
+little less than miraculous. The Abb� Paramelle--a French ecclesiastic
+who devoted himself for some years to this subject and was extensively
+employed as a well-finder--states, in his work on Fountains, that in the
+course of thirty-four years he had pointed out more than ten thousand
+subterranean springs, and though his geological speculations were often
+erroneous, the highest scientific authorities in Europe have testified
+to the great practical value of his methods, and the almost infallible
+certainty of his predictions.[396]
+
+Babinet quotes a French proverb, "Summer rain wets nothing," and
+explains it as meaning that the water of such rains is "almost totally
+taken up by evaporation." "The rains of summer," he adds, "however
+abundant they may be, do not penetrate the soil to a greater depth than
+15 or 20 centim�tres. In summer the evaporating power of the heat is
+five or six times as great as in winter, and this power is exerted by an
+atmosphere capable of containing five times as much vapor as in winter."
+"A stratum of snow which prevents evaporation [from the soil] causes
+almost all the water that composes it to filter down into the earth, and
+form a reserve for springs, wells, and rivers which could not be
+supplied by any amount of summer rain." "This latter--useful, indeed
+like dew, to vegetation--does not penetrate the soil and accumulate a
+store to feed springs and to be brought up by them to the open
+air."[397] This conclusion, however applicable it may be to the climate
+and soil of France, is too broadly stated to be accepted as a general
+truth, and in countries where the precipitation is small in the winter
+months, familiar observation shows that the quantity of water yielded by
+deep wells and natural springs depends not less on the rains of summer
+than on those of the rest of the year, and, consequently, that much of
+the precipitation of that season must find its way to strata too deep to
+lose water by evaporation.
+
+The supply of subterranean reservoirs and currents, as well as of
+springs, is undoubtedly derived chiefly from infiltration, and hence it
+must be affected by all changes of the natural surface that accelerate
+or retard the drainage of the soil, or that either promote or obstruct
+evaporation from it. It has sufficiently appeared from what has gone
+before, that the spontaneous drainage of cleared ground is more rapid
+than that of the forest, and consequently, that the felling of the
+woods, as well as the draining of swamps, deprives the subterranean
+waters of accessions which would otherwise be conveyed to them by
+infiltration. The same effect is produced by artificial contrivances for
+drying the soil either by open ditches or by underground pipes or
+channels, and in proportion as the sphere of these operations is
+extended, the effect of them cannot fail to make itself more and more
+sensibly felt in the diminished supply of water furnished by wells and
+running springs.[398]
+
+It is undoubtedly true that loose soils, stripped of vegetation and
+broken up by the plough or other processes of cultivation, may, until
+again carpeted by grasses or other plants, absorb more rain and snow
+water than when they were covered by a natural growth; but it is also
+true that the evaporation from such soils is augmented in a still
+greater proportion. Rain scarcely penetrates beneath the sod of grass
+ground, but runs off over the surface; and after the heaviest showers a
+ploughed field will often be dried by evaporation before the water can
+be carried off by infiltration, while the soil of a neighboring grove
+will remain half saturated for weeks together. Sandy soils frequently
+rest on a tenacious subsoil, at a moderate depth, as is usually seen in
+the pine plains of the United States, where pools of rain water collect
+in slight depressions on the surface of earth, the upper stratum of
+which is as porous as a sponge. In the open grounds such pools are very
+soon dried up by the sun and wind; in the woods they remain unevaporated
+long enough for the water to diffuse itself laterally until it finds, in
+the subsoil, crevices through which it may escape, or slopes which it
+may follow to their outcrop or descend along them to lower strata.
+
+The readiness with which water not obstructed by impermeable strata
+diffuses itself through the earth in all directions--and, consequently,
+the importance of keeping up the supply of subterranean reservoirs--find
+a familiar illustration in the effect of paving the ground about the
+stems of vines and trees. The surface earth around the trunk of a tree
+may be made perfectly impervious to water, by flag stones and cement,
+for a distance greater than the spread of the roots; and yet the tree
+will not suffer for want of moisture, except in droughts severe enough
+sensibly to affect the supply in deep wells and springs. Both forest and
+fruit trees grow well in cities where the streets and courts are closely
+paved, and where even the lateral access of water to the roots is more
+or less obstructed by deep cellars and foundation walls. The deep-lying
+veins and sheets of water, supplied by infiltration from above, send up
+moisture by capillary attraction, and the pavement prevents the soil
+beneath it from losing its humidity by evaporation. Hence, city-grown
+trees find moisture enough for their roots, and though plagued with
+smoke and dust, often retain their freshness while those planted in the
+open fields, where sun and wind dry up the soil faster than the
+subterranean fountains can water it, are withering from drought. Without
+the help of artificial conduit or of water carrier, the Thames and the
+Seine refresh the ornamental trees that shade the thoroughfares of
+London and of Paris, and beneath the hot and reeking mould of Egypt, the
+Nile sends currents to the extremest border of its valley.[399]
+
+
+_Artesian Wells._
+
+The existence of artesian wells depends upon that of subterranean
+reservoirs and rivers, and the supply yielded by borings is regulated by
+the abundance of such sources. The waters of the earth are, in many
+cases, derived from superficial currents which are seen to pour into
+chasms opened, as it were, expressly for their reception; and in others
+where no apertures in the crust of the earth have been detected, their
+existence is proved by the fact that artesian wells sometimes bring up
+from great depths seeds, leaves, and even living fish, which must have
+been carried down through channels large enough to admit a considerable
+stream. But in general, the sheets and currents of water reached by deep
+boring appear to be primarily due to infiltration from highlands where
+the water is first collected in superficial or subterranean reservoirs.
+By means of channels conforming to the dip of the strata, these
+reservoirs communicate with the lower basins, and exert upon them a
+fluid pressure sufficient to raise a column to the surface, whenever an
+orifice is opened.[400] The water delivered by an artesian well is,
+therefore, often derived from distant sources, and may be wholly
+unaffected by geographical or meteorological changes in its immediate
+neighborhood, while the same changes may quite dry up common wells and
+springs which are fed only by the local infiltration of their own narrow
+basins.
+
+In most cases, artesian wells have been bored for purely economical or
+industrial purposes, such as to obtain good water for domestic use or
+for driving light machinery, to reach saline or other mineral springs,
+and recently, in America, to open fountains of petroleum or rock oil.
+The geographical and geological effects of such abstraction of fluids
+from the bowels of the earth are too remote and uncertain to be here
+noticed;[401] but artesian wells have lately been employed in Algeria
+for a purpose which has even now a substantial, and may hereafter
+acquire a very great geographical importance. It was observed by many
+earlier as well as recent travellers in the East, among whom Shaw
+deserves special mention, that the Libyan desert, bordering upon the
+cultivated shores of the Mediterranean, appeared in many places to rest
+upon a subterranean lake at an accessible distance below the surface.
+The Moors are vaguely said to have _bored_ artesian wells down to this
+reservoir, to obtain water for domestic use and irrigation, but I do
+not find such wells described by any trustworthy traveller, and the
+universal astonishment and incredulity with which the native tribes
+viewed the operations of the French engineers sent into the desert for
+that purpose, are a sufficient proof that this mode of reaching the
+subterranean waters was new to them. They were, however, aware of the
+existence of water below the sands, and were dexterous in digging
+wells--square shafts lined with a framework of palm-tree stems--to the
+level of the sheet. The wells so constructed, though not technically
+artesian wells, answer the same purpose; for the water rises to the
+surface and flows over it as from a spring.[402]
+
+These wells, however, are too few and too scanty in supply to serve any
+other purposes than the domestic wells of other countries, and it is but
+recently that the transformation of desert into cultivable land by this
+means has been seriously attempted. The French Government has bored a
+large number of artesian wells in the Algerian desert within a few
+years, and the native sheikhs are beginning to avail themselves of the
+process. Every well becomes the nucleus of a settlement proportioned to
+the supply of water, and before the end of the year 1860, several nomade
+tribes had abandoned their wandering life, established themselves around
+the wells, and planted more than 30,000 palm trees, besides other
+perennial vegetables.[403] The water is found at a small depth,
+generally from 100 to 200 feet, and though containing too large a
+proportion of mineral matter to be acceptable to a European palate, it
+answers well for irrigation, and does not prove unwholesome to the
+natives.
+
+The most obvious use of artesian wells in the desert at present is that
+of creating stations for the establishment of military posts and halting
+places for the desert traveller; but if the supply of water shall prove
+adequate for the indefinite extension of the system, it is probably
+destined to produce a greater geographical transformation than has ever
+been effected by any scheme of human improvement. The most striking
+contrast of landscape scenery that nature brings near together in time
+or place, is that between the greenery of the tropics, or of a northern
+summer, and the snowy pall of leafless winter. Next to this in startling
+novelty of effect, we must rank the sudden transition from the shady and
+verdant oasis of the desert to the bare and burning party-colored ocean
+of sand and rock which surrounds it.[404] The most sanguine believer in
+indefinite human progress hardly expects that man's cunning will
+accomplish the universal fufilment of the prophecy, "the desert shall
+blossom as the rose," in its literal sense; but sober geographers have
+thought the future conversion of the sand plains of Northern Africa into
+fruitful gardens, by means of artesian wells, not an improbable
+expectation. They have gone farther, and argued that, if the soil were
+covered with fields and forests, vegetation would call down moisture
+from the Libyan sky, and that the showers which are now wasted on the
+sea, or so often deluge Southern Europe with destructive inundation,
+would in part be condensed over the arid wastes of Africa, and thus,
+without further aid from man, bestow abundance on regions which nature
+seems to have condemned to perpetual desolation.
+
+An equally bold speculation, founded on the well-known fact, that the
+temperature of the earth and of its internal waters increases as we
+descend beneath the surface, has suggested that artesian wells might
+supply heat for industrial and domestic purposes, for hot-house
+cultivation, and even for the local amelioration of climate. The success
+with which Count Lardarello has employed natural hot springs for the
+evaporation of water charged with boracic acid, and other fortunate
+applications of the heat of thermal sources, lend some countenance to
+the latter project; but both must, for the present, be ranked among the
+vague possibilities of science, not regarded as probable future triumphs
+of man over nature.
+
+
+_Artificial Springs._
+
+A more plausible and inviting scheme is that of the creation of
+perennial springs by husbanding rain and snow water, storing it up in
+artificial reservoirs of earth, and filtering it through purifying
+strata, in analogy with the operations of nature. The sagacious
+Palissy--starting from the theory that all springs are primarily derived
+from precipitation, and reasoning justly on the accumulation and
+movement of water in the earth--proposed to reduce theory to practice,
+and to imitate the natural processes by which rain is absorbed by the
+earth and given out again in running fountains. "When I had long and
+diligently considered the cause of the springing of natural fountains
+and the places where they be wont to issue," says he, "I did plainly
+perceive, at last, that they do proceed and are engendered of nought but
+the rains. And it is this, look you, which hath moved me to enterprise
+the gathering together of rain water after the manner of nature, and the
+most closely according to her fashion that I am able; and I am well
+assured that by following the formulary of the Supreme Contriver of
+fountains, I can make springs, the water whereof shall be as good and
+pure and clear as of such which be natural."[405] Palissy discusses the
+subject of the origin of springs at length and with much ability,
+dwelling specially on infiltration, and, among other things, thus
+explains the frequency of springs in mountainous regions: "Having well
+considered the which, thou mayest plainly see the reason why there be
+more springs and rivulets proceeding from the mountains than from the
+rest of the earth; which is for no other cause but that the rocks and
+mountains do retain the water of the rains like vessels of brass. And
+the said waters falling upon the said mountains descend continually
+through the earth, and through crevices, and stop not till they find
+some place that is bottomed with stone or close and thick rocks; and
+they rest upon such bottom until they find some channel or other manner
+of issue, and then they flow out in springs or brooks or rivers,
+according to the greatness of the reservoirs and of the outlets
+thereof."[406]
+
+After a full exposition of his theory, Palissy proceeds to describe his
+method of creating springs, which is substantially the same as that
+lately proposed by Babinet in the following terms: "Choose a piece of
+ground containing four or five acres, with a sandy soil, and with a
+gentle slope to determine the flow of the water. Along its upper line,
+dig a trench five or six feet deep and six feet wide. Level the bottom
+of the trench, and make it impermeable by paving, by macadamizing, by
+bitumen, or, more simply and cheaply, by a layer of clay. By the side of
+this trench dig another, and throw the earth from it into the first, and
+so on until you have rendered the subsoil of the whole parcel
+impermeable to rain water. Build a wall along the lower line with an
+aperture in the middle for the water, and plant fruit or other low trees
+upon the whole, to shade the ground and check the currents of air which
+promote evaporation. This will infallibly give you a good spring which
+will flow without intermission and supply the wants of a whole hamlet or
+a large chateau."[407] Babinet states that the whole amount of
+precipitation on a reservoir of the proposed area, in the climate of
+Paris, would be about 13,000 cubic yards, not above one half of which,
+he thinks, would be lost, and, of course, the other half would remain
+available to supply the spring. I much doubt whether this expectation
+would be realized in practice, in its whole extent; for if Babinet is
+right in supposing that the summer rain is wholly evaporated, the winter
+rains, being much less in quantity, would hardly suffice to keep the
+earth saturated and give off so large a surplus.
+
+The method of Palissy, though, as I have said, similar in principle to
+that of Babinet, would be cheaper of execution, and, at the same time,
+more efficient. He proposes the construction of relatively small
+filtering receptacles, into which he would conduct the rain falling upon
+a large area of rocky hillside, or other sloping ground not readily
+absorbing water. This process would, in all probability, be a very
+successful, as well as an inexpensive, mode of economizing atmospheric
+precipitation, and compelling the rain and snow to form perennial
+fountains at will.
+
+
+_Economizing Precipitation._
+
+The methods suggested by Palissy and by Babinet are of limited
+application, and designed only to supply a sufficient quantity of water
+for the domestic use of small villages or large private establishments.
+Dumas has proposed a much more extensive system for collecting and
+retaining the whole precipitation in considerable valleys, and storing
+it in reservoirs, whence it is to be drawn for household and mechanical
+purposes, for irrigation, and, in short, for all the uses to which the
+water of natural springs and brooks is applicable. His plan consists in
+draining both surface and subsoil, by means of conduits differing in
+construction according to local circumstances, but in the main not
+unlike those employed in improved agriculture, collecting the water in a
+central channel, securing its proper filterage, checking its too rapid
+flow by barriers at convenient points, and finally receiving the whole
+in spacious covered reservoirs, from which it may be discharged in a
+constant flow or at intervals as convenience may dictate.[408]
+
+There is no reasonable doubt that a very wide employment of these
+various contrivances for economizing and supplying water is practicable,
+and the expediency of resorting to them is almost purely an economical
+question. There appears to be no serious reason to apprehend collateral
+evils from them, and in fact all of them, except artesian wells, are
+simply indirect methods of returning to the original arrangements of
+nature, or, in other words, of restoring the fluid circulation of the
+globe; for when the earth was covered with the forest, perennial springs
+gushed from the foot of every hill, brooks flowed down the bed of every
+valley. The partial recovery of the fountains and rivulets which once
+abundantly watered the face of the agricultural world seems practicable
+by such means, even without any general replanting of the forests; and
+the cost of one year's warfare, if judiciously expended in a combination
+of both methods of improvement, would secure, to almost every country
+that man has exhausted, an amelioration of climate, a renovated
+fertility of soil, and a general physical improvement, which might
+almost be characterized as a new creation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SANDS.
+
+ORIGIN OF SAND--SAND NOW CARRIED DOWN TO THE SEA--THE SANDS OF EGYPT AND
+THE ADJACENT DESERT----THE SUEZ CANAL----THE SANDS OF EGYPT--COAST DUNES
+AND SAND PLAINS--SAND BANKS--DUNES ON COAST OF AMERICA--DUNES OF WESTERN
+EUROPE--FORMATION OF DUNES--CHARACTER OF DUNE SAND--INTERIOR STRUCTURE
+OF DUNES--FORM OF DUNES--GEOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF DUNES--INLAND DUNES--
+AGE, CHARACTER, AND PERMANENCE OF DUNES--USE OF DUNES AS BARRIER AGAINST
+THE SEA--ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA--THE LIIMFJORD--ENCROACHMENTS OF THE
+SEA--DRIFTING OF DUNE SANDS--DUNES OF GASCONY--DUNES OF DENMARK--DUNES
+OF PRUSSIA--ARTIFICIAL FORMATION OF DUNES--TREES SUITABLE FOR DUNE
+PLANTATIONS--EXTENT OF DUNES IN EUROPE--DUNE VINEYARDS OF CAPE BRETON--
+REMOVAL OF DUNES--INLAND SAND PLAINS--THE LANDES OF GASCONY--THE BELGIAN
+CAMPINE--SANDS AND STEPPES OF EASTERN EUROPE--ADVANTAGES OF RECLAIMING
+DUNES--GOVERNMENT WORKS OF IMPROVEMENT.
+
+
+_Origin of Sand._
+
+Sand, which is found in beds or strata at the bottom of the sea or in
+the channels of rivers, as well as in extensive deposits upon or beneath
+the surface of the dry land, appears to consist essentially of the
+detritus of rocks. It is not always by any means clear through what
+agency the solid rock has been reduced to a granular condition; for
+there are beds of quartzose sand, where the sharp, angular shape of the
+particles renders it highly improbable that they have been formed by
+gradual abrasion and attrition, and where the supposition of a crushing
+mechanical force seems equally inadmissible. In common sand, the quartz
+grains are the most numerous; but this is not a proof that the rocks
+from which these particles were derived were wholly, or even chiefly,
+quartzose in character; for, in many composite rocks, as, for example,
+in the granitic group, the mica, felspar, and hornblende are more easily
+decomposed by chemical action, or disintegrated, comminuted, and reduced
+to an impalpable state by mechanical force, than the quartz. In the
+destruction of such rocks, therefore, the quartz would survive the other
+ingredients, and remain unmixed, when they had been decomposed and had
+entered into new chemical combinations, or been ground to slime and
+washed away by water currents.
+
+The greater or less specific gravity of the different constituents of
+rock doubtless aids in separating them into distinct masses when once
+disintegrated, though there are veined and stratified beds of sand where
+the difference between the upper and lower layers, in this respect, is
+too slight to be supposed capable of effecting a complete
+separation.[409] In cases where rock has been reduced to sandy fragments
+by heat, or by obscure chemical and other molecular forces, the sandbeds
+may remain undisturbed, and represent, in the series of geological
+strata, the solid formations from which they were derived. The large
+masses of sand not found in place have been transported and accumulated
+by water or by wind, the former being generally considered the most
+important of these agencies; for the extensive deposits of the Sahara,
+of the deserts of Persia, and of that of Gobi, are commonly supposed to
+have been swept together or distributed by marine currents, and to have
+been elevated above the ocean by the same means as other upheaved
+strata.
+
+Meteoric and mechanical influences are still active in the reduction of
+rocks to a fragmentary state; but the quantity of sand now transported
+to the sea seems to be comparatively inconsiderable, because--not to
+speak of the absence of diluvial action--the number of torrents emptying
+directly into the sea is much less than it was at earlier periods. The
+formation of alluvial plains in maritime bays, by the sedimentary matter
+brought down from the mountains, has lengthened the flow of such streams
+and converted them very generally into rivers, or rather affluents of
+rivers much younger than themselves. The filling up of the estuaries has
+so reduced the slope of all large and many small rivers, and,
+consequently, so checked the current of what the Germans call their
+_Unterlauf_, or lower course, that they are much less able to transport
+heavy material than at earlier epochs. The slime deposited by rivers at
+their junction with the sea, is usually found to be composed of material
+too finely ground and too light to be denominated sand, and it can be
+abundantly shown that the sandbanks at the outlet of large streams are
+of tidal, not of fluviatile origin, or, in lakes and tideless seas, a
+result of the concurrent action of waves and of wind.
+
+Large deposits of sand, therefore, must in general be considered as of
+ancient, not of recent formation, and many eminent geologists ascribe
+them to diluvial action. Staring has discussed this question very fully,
+with special reference to the sands of the North Sea, the Zuiderzee, and
+the bays and channels of the Dutch coast.[410] His general conclusion
+is, that the rivers of the Netherlands "move sand only by a very slow
+displacement of sandbanks, and do not carry it with them as a suspended
+or floating material." The sands of the German Ocean he holds to be a
+product of the "great North German drift," deposited where they now lie
+before the commencement of the present geological period, and he
+maintains similar opinions with regard to the sands thrown up by the
+Mediterranean at the mouths of the Nile and on the Barbary coast.[411]
+
+
+_Sand now carried to the Sea._
+
+There are, however, cases where mountain streams still bear to the sea
+perhaps relatively small, but certainly absolutely large, amounts of
+disintegrated rock.[412] The quantity of sand and gravel carried into
+the Mediterranean by the torrents of the Maritime Alps, the Ligurian
+Apennines, the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, and the
+mountains of Calabria, is apparently great. In mere mass, it is
+possible, if not probable, that as much rocky material, more or less
+comminuted, is contributed to the basin of the Mediterranean by Europe,
+even excluding the shores of the Adriatic and the Euxine, as is washed
+up from it upon the coasts of Africa and Syria. A great part of this
+material is thrown out again by the waves on the European shores of that
+sea. The harbors of Luni, Albenga, San Remo, and Savona west of Genoa,
+and of Porto Fino on the other side, are filling up, and the coast near
+Carrara and Massa is said to have advanced upon the sea to a distance
+of 475 feet in thirty-three years.[413] Besides this, we have no
+evidence of the existence of deep-water currents in the Mediterranean,
+extensive enough and strong enough to transport quartzose sand across
+the sea. It may be added that much of the rock from which the torrent
+sands of Southern Europe are derived contains little quartz, and hence
+the general character of these sands is such that they must be
+decomposed or ground down to an impalpable slime, long before they could
+be swept over to the African shore.
+
+The torrents of Europe, then, do not at present furnish the material
+which composes the beach sands of Northern Africa, and it is equally
+certain that those sands are not brought down by the rivers of the
+latter continent. They belong to a remote geological period, and have
+been accumulated by causes which we cannot at present assign. The wind
+does not stir water to great depths with sufficient force to disturb the
+bottom,[414] and the sand thrown upon the coast in question must be
+derived from a narrow belt of sea. It must hence, in time, become
+exhausted, and the formation of new sandbanks and dunes upon the
+southern shores of the Mediterranean will cease at last for want of
+material.[415]
+
+But even in the cases where the accumulations of sand in extensive
+deserts appear to be of marine formation, or rather aggregation, and to
+have been brought to their present position by upheaval, they are not
+wholly composed of material collected or distributed by the currents of
+the sea; for, in all such regions, they continue to receive some small
+contributions from the disintegration of the rocks which underlie, or
+crop out through, the superficial deposits. In some instances, too, as
+in Northern Africa, additions are constantly made to the mass by the
+prevalence of sea winds, which transport, or, to speak more precisely,
+roll the finer beach sand to considerable distances into the interior.
+But this is a very slow process, and the exaggerations of travellers
+have diffused a vast deal of popular error on the subject.
+
+
+_Sands of Egypt._
+
+In the narrow valley of the Nile--which, above its bifurcation near
+Cairo, is, throughout Egypt and Nubia, generally bounded by precipitous
+cliffs--wherever a ravine or other considerable depression occurs in the
+wall of rock, one sees what seems a stream of desert sand pouring down,
+and common observers have hence concluded that the whole valley is in
+danger of being buried under a stratum of infertile soil. The ancient
+Egyptians apprehended this, and erected walls, often of unburnt brick,
+across the outlet of gorges and lateral valleys, to check the flow of
+the sand streams. In later ages, these walls have mostly fallen into
+decay, and no preventive measures against such encroachments are now
+resorted to. But the extent of the mischief to the soil of Egypt, and
+the future danger from this source, have been much overrated. The sand
+on the borders of the Nile is neither elevated so high by the wind, nor
+transported by that agency in so great masses, as is popularly supposed;
+and of that which is actually lifted or rolled and finally deposited by
+air currents, a considerable proportion is either calcareous, and,
+therefore, readily decomposable, or in the state of a very fine dust,
+and so, in neither case, injurious to the soil. There are, indeed, both
+in Africa and in Arabia, considerable tracts of fine silicious sand,
+which may be carried far by high winds, but these are exceptional cases,
+and in general the progress of the desert sand is by a rolling motion
+along the surface.[416] So little is it lifted, and so inconsiderable
+is the quantity yet remaining on the borders of Egypt, that a wall four
+or five feet high suffices for centuries to check its encroachments.
+This is obvious to the eye of every observer who prefers the true to the
+marvellous; but the old-world fable of the overwhelming of caravans by
+the fearful simoom--which, even the Arabs no longer repeat, if indeed
+they are the authors of it--is so thoroughly rooted in the imagination
+of Christendom that most desert travellers, of the tourist class, think
+they shall disappoint the readers of their journals if they do not
+recount the particulars of their escape from being buried alive by a
+sand storm, and the popular demand for a "sensation" must be gratified
+accordingly.[417]
+
+Another circumstance is necessary to be considered in estimating the
+danger to which the arable lands of Egypt are exposed. The prevailing
+wind in the valley of the Nile and its borders is from the north, and it
+may be said without exaggeration that the north wind blows for three
+quarters of the year.[418] The effect of winds blowing up the valley is
+to drive the sands of the desert plateau which border it, in a direction
+parallel with the axis of the valley, not transversely to it; and if it
+ran in a straight line, the north wind would carry no desert sand into
+it. There are, however, both curves and angles in its course, and hence,
+wherever its direction deviates from that of the wind, it might receive
+sand drifts from the desert plain through which it runs. But, in the
+course of ages, the winds have, in a great measure, bared the projecting
+points of their ancient deposits, and no great accumulations remain in
+situations from which either a north or a south wind would carry them
+into the valley.[419]
+
+
+_The Suez Canal._
+
+These considerations apply, with equal force, to the supposed danger of
+the obstruction of the Suez Canal by the drifting of the desert sands.
+The winds across the isthmus are almost uniformly from the north, and
+they swept it clean of flying sands long ages since. The traces of the
+ancient canal between the Red Sea and the Nile are easily followed for a
+considerable distance from Suez. Had the drifts upon the isthmus been as
+formidable as some have feared and others have hoped, those traces would
+have been obliterated, and Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes filled up,
+many centuries ago. The few particles driven by the rare east and west
+winds toward the line of the canal, would easily be arrested by
+plantations or other simple methods, or removed by dredging. The real
+dangers and difficulties of this magnificent enterprise--and they are
+great--consist in the nature of the soil to be removed in order to form
+the line, and especially in the constantly increasing accumulation of
+sea sand at the southern terminus by the tides of the Red Sea, and at
+the northern, by the action of the winds. Both seas are shallow for
+miles from the shore, and the excavation and maintenance of deep
+channels, and of capacious harbors with easy and secure entrances, in
+such localities, is doubtless one of the hardest problems offered to
+modern engineers for practical solution.
+
+
+_Sands of Egypt._
+
+The sand let fall in Egypt by the north wind is derived, not from the
+desert, but from a very different source--the sea. Considerable
+quantities of sand are thrown up by the Mediterranean, at and between
+the mouths of the Nile, and indeed along almost the whole southern coast
+of that sea, and drifted into the interior to distances varying
+according to the force of the wind and the abundance and quality of the
+material. The sand so transported contributes to the gradual elevation
+of the Delta, and of the banks and bed of the river itself. But just in
+proportion as the bed of the stream is elevated, the height of the water
+in the annual inundations is increased also, and as the inclination of
+the channel is diminished, the rapidity of the current is checked, and
+the deposition of the slime it holds in suspension consequently
+promoted. Thus the winds and the water, moving in contrary directions,
+join in producing a common effect.
+
+The sand, blown over the Delta and the cultivated land higher up the
+stream during the inundation, is covered or mixed with the fertile earth
+brought down by the river, and no serious injury is sustained from it.
+That spread over the same ground after the water has subsided, and
+during the short period when the soil is not stirred by cultivation or
+covered by the flood, forms a thin pellicle over the surface as far as
+it extends, and serves to divide and distinguish the successive layers
+of slime deposited by the annual inundations. The particles taken up by
+the wind on the sea beach are borne onward, by a hopping motion, or
+rolled along the surface, until they are arrested by the temporary
+cessation of the wind, by vegetation, or by some other obstruction, and
+they may, in process of time, accumulate in large masses, under the lee
+of rocky projections, buildings, or other barriers which break the force
+of the wind.
+
+In these facts we find the true explanation of the sand drifts, which
+have half buried the Sphinx and so many other ancient monuments in that
+part of Egypt. These drifts, as I have said, are not primarily from the
+desert, but from the sea; and, as might be supposed from the distance
+they have travelled, they have been long in gathering. While Egypt was a
+great and flourishing kingdom, measures were taken to protect its
+territory against the encroachment of sand, whether from the desert or
+from the sea; but the foreign conquerors, who destroyed so many of its
+religious monuments, did not spare its public works, and the process of
+physical degradation undoubtedly began as early as the Persian invasion.
+The urgent necessity, which has compelled all the successive tyrannies
+of Egypt to keep up some of the canals and other arrangements for
+irrigation, was not felt with respect to the advancement of the sands;
+for their progress was so slow as hardly to be perceptible in the course
+of a single reign, and long experience has shown that, from the natural
+effect of the inundations, the cultivable soil of the valley is, on the
+whole, trenching upon the domain of the desert, not retreating before
+it.
+
+The oases of the Libyan, as well as of many Asiatic deserts, have no
+such safeguards. The sands are fast encroaching upon them, and threaten
+soon to engulf them, unless man shall resort to artesian wells and
+plantations, or to some other efficient means of checking the advance of
+this formidable enemy, in time to save these islands of the waste from
+final destruction.
+
+Accumulations of sand are, in certain cases, beneficial as a protection
+against the ravages of the sea; but, in general, the vicinity, and
+especially the shifting of bodies of this material, are destructive to
+human industry, and hence, in civilized countries, measures are taken to
+prevent its spread. This, however, can be done only where the population
+is large and enlightened, and the value of the soil, or of the
+artificial erections and improvements upon it, is considerable. Hence in
+the deserts of Africa and of Asia, and the inhabited lands which border
+on them, no pains are usually taken to check the drifts, and when once
+the fields, the houses, the springs, or the canals of irrigation are
+covered or choked, the district is abandoned without a struggle, and
+surrendered to perpetual desolation.[420]
+
+
+_Sand Dunes and Sand Plains._
+
+Two forms of sand deposit are specially important in European and
+American geography. The one is that of dune or shifting hillock upon the
+coast, the other that of barren plain in the interior. The coast dunes
+are composed of sand washed up from the depths of the sea by the waves,
+and heaped in knolls and ridges by the winds. The sand with which many
+plains are covered, appears sometimes to have been deposited upon them
+while they were yet submerged, sometimes to have been drifted from the
+sea coast, and scattered over them by wind currents, sometimes to have
+been washed upon them by running water. In these latter cases, the
+deposit, though in itself considerable, is comparatively narrow in
+extent and irregular in distribution, while, in the former, it is often
+evenly spread over a very wide surface. In all great bodies of either
+sort, the silicious grains are the principal constituent, though, when
+not resulting from the disintegration of silicious rock and still
+remaining in place, they are generally accompanied with a greater or
+less admixture of other mineral particles, and of animal and vegetable
+remains,[421] and they are, also, usually somewhat changed in
+consistence by the ever-varying conditions of temperature and moisture
+to which they have been exposed since their deposit. Unless the
+proportion of these latter ingredients is so large as to create a
+certain adhesiveness in the mass--in which case it can no longer
+properly be called sand--it is infertile, and, if not charged with
+water, partially agglutinated by iron, lime, or other cement, or
+confined by alluvion resting upon it, it is much inclined to drift,
+whenever, by any chance, the vegetable network which, in most cases,
+thinly clothes and at the same time confines it, is broken.
+
+Human industry has not only fixed the flying dunes, but, by mixing clay
+and other tenacious earths with the superficial stratum of extensive
+sand plains, and by the application of fertilizing substances, it has
+made them abundantly productive of vegetable life. These latter
+processes belong to agriculture and not to geography, and, therefore,
+are not embraced within the scope of the present subject. But the
+preliminary steps, whereby wastes of loose, drifting barren sands are
+transformed into wooded knolls and plains, and finally, through the
+accumulation of vegetable mould, into arable ground, constitute a
+conquest over nature which precedes agriculture--a geographical
+revolution--and, therefore, an account of the means by which the change
+has been effected belongs properly to the history of man's influence on
+the great features of physical geography. I proceed, then, to examine
+the structure of dunes, and to describe the warfare man wages with the
+sand hills, striving on the one hand to maintain and even extend them,
+as a natural barrier against encroachments of the sea, and, on the
+other, to check their moving and wandering propensities, and prevent
+them from trespassing upon the fields he has planted and the habitations
+in which he dwells.
+
+
+_Coast Dunes._
+
+Coast dunes are oblong ridges or round hillocks, formed by the action of
+the wind upon sands thrown up by the waves on the beach of seas, and
+sometimes of fresh-water lakes. On most coasts, the supply of sand for
+the formation of dunes is derived from tidal waves. The flow of the tide
+is more rapid, and consequently its transporting power greater, than
+that of the ebb; the momentum, acquired by the heavy particles in
+rolling in with the water, tends to carry them even beyond the flow of
+the waves; and at the turn of the tide, the water is in a state of
+repose long enough to allow it to let fall much of the solid matter it
+holds in suspension. Hence, on all low, tide-washed coasts of seas with
+sandy bottoms, there exist several conditions favorable to the formation
+of sand deposits along high-water mark.[422] If the land winds are of
+greater frequency, duration, or strength than the sea winds, the sands
+left by the retreating wave will be constantly blown back into the
+water; but if the prevailing air currents are in the opposite direction,
+the sands will soon be carried out of the reach of the highest waves,
+and transported continually farther and farther into the interior of the
+land, unless obstructed by high grounds, vegetation, or other obstacles.
+
+The tide, though a usual, is by no means a necessary condition for the
+accumulations of sand out of which dunes are formed. The Baltic and the
+Mediterranean are almost tideless seas, but there are dunes on the
+Russian and Prussian coasts of the Baltic, and at the mouths of the Nile
+and many other points on the shores of the Mediterranean. The vast
+shoals in the latter sea, known to the ancients as the Greater and
+Lesser Syrtis, are of marine origin. They are still filling up with
+sand, washed up from greater depths, or sometimes drifted from the coast
+in small quantities, and will probably be converted, at some future
+period, into dry land covered with sand hills. There are also extensive
+ranges of dunes upon the eastern shores of the Caspian, and at the
+southern, or rather southeastern extremity of Lake Michigan.[423] There
+is no doubt that this latter lake formerly extended much farther in that
+direction, but its southern portion has gradually shoaled and at last
+been converted into solid land, in consequence of the prevalence of the
+northwest winds. These blow over the lake a large part of the year, and
+create a southwardly set of the currents, which wash up sand from the
+bed of the lake and throw it on shore. Sand is taken up from the beach
+at Michigan City by every wind from that quarter, and, after a heavy
+blow of some hours' duration, sand ridges may be observed on the north
+side of the fences, like the snow wreaths deposited by a drifting wind
+in winter. Some of the particles are carried back by contrary winds, but
+most of them lodge on or behind the dunes, or in the moist soil near the
+lake, or are entangled by vegetables, and tend permanently to elevate
+the level. Like effects are produced by constant sea winds, and dunes
+will generally be formed on all low coasts where such prevail, whether
+in tideless or in tidal waters.
+
+Jobard thus describes the _modus operandi_, under ordinary
+circumstances, at the mouths of the Nile, where a tide can scarcely be
+detected: "When a wave breaks, it deposits an almost imperceptible line
+of fine sand. The next wave brings also its contribution, and shoves the
+preceding line a little higher. As soon as the particles are fairly out
+of the reach of the water they are dried by the heat of the burning sun,
+and immediately seized by the wind and rolled or borne farther inland.
+The gravel is not thrown out by the waves, but rolls backward and
+forward until it is worn down to the state of fine sand, when it, in its
+turn, is cast upon the land and taken up by the wind."[424] This
+description applies only to the common every-day action of wind and
+water; but just in proportion to the increasing force of the wind and
+the waves, there is an increase in the quantity of sand, and in the
+magnitude of the particles carried off from the beach by it, and, of
+course, every storm in a landward direction adds sensibly to the
+accumulation upon the shore.
+
+
+_Sand Banks._
+
+Although dunes, properly so called, are found only on dry land and above
+ordinary high-water mark, and owe their elevation and structure to the
+action of the wind, yet, upon many shelving coasts, accumulations of
+sand much resembling dunes are formed under water at some distance from
+the shore by the oscillations of the waves, and are well known by the
+name of sand banks. They are usually rather ridges than banks, of
+moderate inclination, and with the steepest slope seaward; and their
+form differs from that of dunes only in being lower and more continuous.
+Upon the western coast of the island of Amrum, for example, there are
+three rows of such banks, the summits of which are at a distance of
+perhaps a couple of miles from each other; so that, including the width
+of the banks themselves, the spaces between them, and the breadth of the
+zone of dunes upon the land, the belt of moving sands on that coast is
+probably not less than eight miles wide.
+
+Under ordinary circumstances, sand banks are always rolling landward,
+and they compose the magazine from which the material for the dunes is
+derived. The dunes, in fact, are but aquatic sand banks transferred to
+dry land. The laws of their formation are closely analogous, because the
+action of the two fluids, by which they are respectively accumulated and
+built up, is very similar when brought to bear upon loose particles of
+solid matter. It would, indeed, seem that the slow and comparatively
+regular movements of the heavy, unelastic water ought to affect such
+particles very differently from the sudden and fitful impulses of the
+light and elastic air. But the velocity of the wind currents gives them
+a mechanical force approximating to that of the slower waves, and,
+however difficult it may be to explain all the phenomena that
+characterize the structure of the dunes, observation has proved that it
+is nearly identical with that of submerged sand banks. The differences
+of form are generally ascribable to the greater number and variety of
+surface accidents of the ground on which the sand hills of the land are
+built up, and to the more frequent changes, and wider variety of
+direction, in the courses of the wind.
+
+
+_Dunes on the Coast of America._
+
+Upon the Atlantic coast of the United States, the prevalence of western
+or off-shore winds is unfavorable to the formation of dunes, and, though
+marine currents lodge vast quantities of sand, in the form of banks, on
+that coast, its shores are proportionally more free from sand hills than
+some others of lesser extent. There are, however, very important
+exceptions. The action of the tide throws much sand upon some points of
+the New England coast, as well as upon the beaches of Long Island and
+other more southern shores, and here dunes resembling those of Europe
+are formed. There are also extensive ranges of dunes on the Pacific
+coast of the United States, and at San Francisco they border some of the
+streets of the city.
+
+The dunes of America are far older than her civilization, and the soil
+they threaten or protect possesses, in general, too little value to
+justify any great expenditure in measures for arresting their progress
+or preventing their destruction. Hence, great as is their extent and
+their geographical importance, they have, at present, no such intimate
+relations to human life as to render them objects of special interest in
+the point of view I am taking, and I do not know that the laws of their
+formation and motion have been made a subject of original investigation
+by any American observer.
+
+
+_Dunes of Western Europe._
+
+Upon the western coast of Europe, on the contrary, the ravages
+occasioned by the movement of sand dunes, and the serious consequences
+often resulting from the destruction of them, have long engaged the
+earnest attention of governments and of scientific men, and for nearly a
+century persevering and systematic effort has been made to bring them
+under human control. The subject has been carefully studied in Denmark
+and the adjacent duchies, in Western Prussia, in the Netherlands, and in
+France; and the experiments in the way of arresting the drifting of the
+dunes, and of securing them, and the lands they shelter, from the
+encroachments of the sea, have resulted in the adoption of a system of
+coast improvement substantially the same in all these countries. The
+sands, like the forests, have now their special literature, and the
+volumes and memoirs, which describe them and the processes employed to
+subdue them, are full of scientific interest and of practical
+instruction.[425]
+
+
+_Formation of Dunes._
+
+The laws which govern the formation of dunes are substantially these. We
+have seen that, under certain conditions, sand is accumulated above
+high-water mark on low sea and lake shores. So long as the sand is kept
+wet by the spray or by capillary attraction, it is not disturbed by air
+currents, but as soon as the waves retire sufficiently to allow it to
+dry, it becomes the sport of the wind, and is driven up the gently
+sloping beach until it is arrested by stones, vegetables, or other
+obstructions, and thus an accumulation is formed which constitutes the
+foundation of a dune. However slight the elevation thus created, it
+serves to stop or retard the progress of the sand grains which are
+driven against its shoreward face, and to protect from the further
+influence of the wind the particles which are borne beyond it, or rolled
+over its crest, and fall down behind it. If the shore above the beach
+line were perfectly level and straight, the grass or bushes upon it of
+equal height, the sand thrown up by the waves uniform in size and weight
+of particles as well as in distribution, and if the action of the wind
+were steady and regular, a continuous bank would be formed, everywhere
+alike in height and cross section. But no such constant conditions
+anywhere exist. The banks are curved, broken, unequal in elevation; they
+are sometimes bare, sometimes clothed with vegetables of different
+structure and dimensions; the sand thrown up is variable in quantity and
+character; and the winds are shifting, gusty, vortical, and often
+blowing in very narrow currents. From all these causes, instead of
+uniform hills, there rise irregular rows of sand heaps, and these, as
+would naturally be expected, are of a pyramidal, or rather conical
+shape, and connected at bottom by more or less continuous ridges of the
+same material.
+
+On a receding coast, dunes will not attain so great a height as on more
+secure shores, because they are undermined and carried off before they
+have time to reach their greatest dimensions. Hence, while at sheltered
+points in Southwestern France, there are dunes three hundred feet or
+more in height, those on the Frisic Islands and the exposed parts of the
+coast of Schleswig-Holstein range only from twenty to one hundred feet.
+On the western shores of Africa, it is said that they sometimes attain
+an elevation of six hundred feet. This is one of the very few points
+known to geographers where desert sands are advancing seaward, and here
+they rise to the greatest altitude to which sand grains can be carried
+by the wind.
+
+The hillocks, once deposited, are held together and kept in shape,
+partly by mere gravity, and partly by the slight cohesion of the lime,
+clay, and organic matter mixed with the sand; and it is observed that,
+from capillary attraction, evaporation from lower strata, and retention
+of rain water, they are always moist a little below the surface.[426] By
+successive accumulations, they gradually rise to the height of thirty,
+fifty, sixty, or a hundred feet, and sometimes even much higher. Strong
+winds, instead of adding to their elevation, sweep off loose particles
+from their surface, and these, with others blown over or between them,
+build up a second row of dunes, and so on according to the character of
+the wind, the supply and consistence of the sand, and the face of the
+country. In this way is formed a belt of sand dunes, irregularly
+dispersed and varying much in height and dimensions, and some times many
+miles in breadth. On the Island of Sylt, in the German Sea, where there
+are several rows, the width of the belt is from half a mile to a mile.
+There are similar ranges on the coast of Holland, exceeding two miles in
+breadth, while at the mouths of the Nile they form a zone not less than
+ten miles wide. The base of some of the dunes in the Delta of the Nile
+is reached by the river during the annual inundation, and the
+infiltration of the water, which contains lime, has converted the lower
+strata into a silicious limestone, or rather a calcareous sandstone, and
+thus afforded an opportunity of studying the structure of that rock in a
+locality where its origin and mode of aggregation and solidification are
+known.
+
+
+_Character of Dune Sand._
+
+"Dune sand," says Staring, "consists of well-rounded grains of quartz,
+more or less colored by iron, and often mingled with fragments of
+shells, small indeed, but still visible to the naked eye.[427] These
+fragments are not constant constituents of dune sand. They are sometimes
+found at the very summits of the hillocks, as at Overveen; in the King's
+Dune, near Egmond, they form a coarse calcareous gravel very largely
+distributed through the sand, while the interior dunes between Haarlem
+and Warmond exhibit no trace of them. It is yet undecided whether the
+presence or absence of these fragments is determined by the period of
+the formation of the dunes, or whether it depends on a difference in the
+process by which different dunes have been accumulated. Land shells,
+such as snails, for example, are found on the surface of the dunes in
+abundance, and many of the shelly fragments in the interior of the
+hillocks may be derived from the same source."[428]
+
+J. G. Kohl has some poetical thoughts upon the origin and character of
+the dune sands, which are worth quoting:
+
+"The sand was composed of pure transparent quartz. I could not observe
+this sand without the greatest admiration. If it is the product of the
+waves, breaking and crushing flints and fragments of quartz against each
+other, it is a result which could be brought about only in the course of
+countless ages. We need not lift ourselves to the stars, to their
+incalculable magnitudes and distances and numbers, in order to feel the
+giddiness of astonishment. Here, upon earth, in the simple sand, we find
+miracle enough. Think of the number of sand grains contained in a single
+dune, then of all the dunes upon this widely extended coast--not to
+speak of the innumerable grains in the Arabian, African, and Prussian
+deserts--this, of itself, is sufficient to overwhelm a thoughtful fancy.
+How long, how many times must the waves have risen and sunk in order to
+reduce these vast heaps to powder!
+
+"During the whole time I spent on this coast, I had always some sand in
+my fingers, was rubbing and rolling it about, examining it on all sides,
+holding a little shining grain on the tip of my finger, and thinking to
+myself how, in its corners, its angles, its whole configuration, it
+might very probably have a history longer than that of the old German
+nation--possibly longer than that of the human race. Where was the
+original quartz crystal, of which this is a fragment, first formed? To
+what was it once fixed? What power broke it loose? How was it beaten
+smaller and ever smaller by the waves? They tossed it, for �ons, to and
+fro upon the beach, rolled it up and down, forced it to make thousands
+and thousands of daily voyages for millions and millions of days. Then
+the wind bore it away, and used it in building up a dune; there it lay
+for centuries, packed in with its fellows, protecting the marshes and
+cherished by the inhabitants, till, seized again by the pursuing sea, it
+fell once more into the water, there to begin the endless dance
+anew--and again to be swept away by the wind--and again to find rest in
+the dunes, a protection and a blessing to the coast. There is something
+mysterious about such a grain of sand, and at last I went so far as to
+fancy a little immortal spark linked with each one, presiding over its
+destiny, and sharing its vicissitudes. Could we arm our eyes with a
+microscope, and then dive, like a sparling, into one of these dunes, the
+pile, which is in fact only a heap of countless little crystal blocks,
+would strike us as the most marvellous building upon earth. The sunbeams
+would pass, with illuminating power, through all these little
+crystalline bodies. We should see how every sand grain is formed, by
+what multifarious little facets it is bounded, we should even discover
+that it is itself composed of many distinct particles."[429]
+
+Sand concretions form within the dunes and especially in the depressions
+between them. These are sometimes so extensive and impervious as to
+retain a sufficient supply of water to feed perennial springs, and to
+form small permanent ponds, and they are a great impediment to the
+penetration of roots, and consequently to the growth of trees planted,
+or germinating from self-sown seeds, upon the dunes.[430]
+
+
+_Interior Structure of Dunes._
+
+The interior structure of the dunes, the arrangement of their particles,
+is not, as might be expected, that of an unorganized, confused heap, but
+they show a strong tendency to stratification. This is a point of much
+geological interest, because it indicates that sandstone may owe its
+stratified character to the action of wind as well as of water. The
+origin and peculiar character of these layers are due to a variety of
+causes. A southwest wind and current may deposit upon a dune a stratum
+of a given color and mineral composition, and this may be succeeded by a
+northwest wind and current, bringing with them particles of a different
+hue, constitution, and origin.
+
+Again, if we suppose a violent tempest to strew the beach with sand
+grains very different in magnitude and specific gravity, and, after the
+sand is dry, to be succeeded by a gentle breeze, it is evident that only
+the lighter particles will be taken up and carried to the dunes. If,
+after some time, the wind freshens, heavier grains will be transported
+and deposited on the former, and a still stronger succeeding gale will
+roll up yet larger kernels. Each of these deposits will form a stratum.
+If we suppose the tempest to be followed, after the sand is dry, not by
+a gentle breeze, but by a wind powerful enough to lift at the same time
+particles of very various magnitudes and weights, the heaviest will
+often lodge on the dune while the lighter will be carried farther. This
+would produce a stratum of coarse sand, and the same effect might result
+from the blowing away of light particles out of a mixed layer, while the
+heavier remained undisturbed.[431] Still another cause of
+stratification may be found in the occasional interposition of a thin
+layer of leaves or other vegetable remains between successive deposits,
+and this I imagine to be more frequent than has been generally supposed.
+
+The eddies of strong winds between the hillocks must also occasion
+disturbances and re-arrangements of the sand layers, and it seems
+possible that the irregular thickness and the strange contortions of the
+strata of the sandstone at Petra may be due to some such cause. A
+curious observation of Professor Forchhammer suggests an explanation of
+another peculiarity in the structure of the sandstone of Mount Seir. He
+describes dunes in Jutland, composed of yellow quartzose sand intermixed
+with black titanian iron. When the wind blows over the surface of the
+dunes, it furrows the sand with alternate ridges and depressions,
+ripples, in short, like those of water. The swells, the dividing ridges
+of the system of sand ripples, are composed of the light grains of
+quartz, while the heavier iron rolls into the depressions between, and
+thus the whole surface of the dune appears as if covered with a fine
+black network.
+
+
+_Form of Dunes._
+
+The sea side of dunes, being more exposed to the caprices of the wind,
+is more irregular in form than the lee or land side, where the
+arrangement of the particles is affected by fewer disturbing and
+conflicting influences. Hence, the stratification of the windward slope
+is somewhat confused, while the sand on the lee side is found to be
+disposed in more regular beds, inclining landward, and with the largest
+particles lowest, where their greater weight would naturally carry them.
+The lee side of the dunes, being thus formed of sand deposited according
+to the laws of gravity, is very uniform in its slope, which, according
+to Forchhammer, varies little from an angle of 30� with the horizon,
+while the more exposed and irregular weather side lies at an inclination
+of from 5� to 10�. When, however, the outer tier of dunes is formed so
+near the waterline as to be exposed to the immediate action of the
+waves, it is undermined, and the face of the hill is very steep and
+sometimes nearly perpendicular.
+
+
+_Geological Importance of Dunes._
+
+These observations, and other facts which a more attentive study on the
+spot would detect, might furnish the means of determining interesting
+and important questions concerning geological formations in localities
+very unlike those where dunes are now thrown up. For example, Studer
+supposes that the drifting sand hills of the African desert were
+originally coast dunes, and that they have been transported to their
+present position far in the interior, by the rolling and shifting
+leeward movement to which all dunes not covered with vegetation are
+subject. The present general drift of the sands of that desert appears
+to be to the southwest and west, the prevailing winds blowing from the
+northeast and east; but it has been doubted whether the shoals of the
+western coast of Northern Africa, and the sands upon that shore, are
+derived from the bottom of the Atlantic, in the usual manner, or, by an
+inverse process, from those of the Sahara. The latter, as has been
+before remarked, is probably the truth, though observations are wanting
+to decide the question.[432] There is nothing violently improbable in
+the supposition that they may have been first thrown up by the
+Mediterranean on its Libyan coast, and thence blown south and west over
+the vast space they now cover. But whatever has been their source and
+movement, they can hardly fail to have left on their route some
+sandstone monuments to mark their progress, such, for example, as we
+have seen are formed from the dune sand at the mouth of the Nile; and it
+is conceivable that the character of the drifting sands themselves, and
+of the conglomerates and sandstones to whose formation they have
+contributed, might furnish satisfactory evidence as to their origin,
+their starting point, and the course by which they have wandered so far
+from the sea.[433]
+
+If the sand of coast dunes is, as Staring describes it, composed chiefly
+of well-rounded quartzose grains, fragments of shells, and other
+constant ingredients, it would often be recognizable as coast sand, in
+its agglutinate state of sandstone. The texture of this rock varies from
+an almost imperceptible fineness of grain to great coarseness, and
+affords good facilities for microscopic observation of its structure.
+There are sandstones, such, for example, as are used for grindstones,
+where the grit, as it is called, is of exceeding sharpness; others where
+the angles of the grains are so obtuse that they scarcely act at all on
+hard metals. The former may be composed of grains of rock, disintegrated
+indeed, and recemented together, but not, in the meanwhile, much rolled;
+the latter, of sands long washed by the sea, and drifted by land winds.
+There is, indeed, so much resemblance between the effects of driving
+winds and of rolling water upon light bodies, that there would be
+difficulty in distinguishing them;[434] but after all, it is not
+probable that sandstone, composed of grains thrown up from the salt sea,
+and long tossed by the winds, would be identical in its structure with
+that formed from fragments of rock crushed by mechanical force, or
+disintegrated by heat, and again agglutinated without much exposure to
+the action of moving water.[435]
+
+
+_Inland Dunes._
+
+I have met with some observations indicating a structural difference
+between interior and coast dunes, which might perhaps be recognized in
+the sandstones formed from these two species of sand hills respectively.
+In the great American desert between the Andes and the Pacific, Meyen
+found sand heaps of a perfect falciform shape.[436] They were from seven
+to fifteen feet high, the chord of their arc measuring from twenty to
+seventy paces. The slope of the convex face is described as very small,
+that of the concave as high as 70� or 80�, and their surfaces were
+rippled. No smaller dunes were observed, nor any in the process of
+formation. The concave side uniformly faced the northwest, except toward
+the centre of the desert, where, for a distance of one or two hundred
+paces, they gradually opened to the west, and then again gradually
+resumed the former position.
+
+P�ppig ascribes a falciform shape to the movable, a conical to the fixed
+dunes, or _medanos_, of the same desert. "The medanos," he observes,
+"are hillock-like elevations of sand, some having a firm, others a loose
+base. The former [latter], which are always crescent shaped, are from
+ten to twenty feet high, and have an acute crest. The inner side is
+perpendicular, and the outer or bow side forms an angle with a steep
+inclination downward. When driven by violent winds, the medanos pass
+rapidly over the plains. The smaller and lighter ones move quickly
+forward, before the larger; but the latter soon overtake and crush them,
+whilst they are themselves shivered by the collision. These medanos
+assume all sorts of extraordinary figures, and sometimes move along the
+plain in rows forming most intricate labyrinths. * * A plain often
+appears to be covered with a row of medanos, and some days afterward it
+is again restored to its level and uniform aspect. * * *
+
+"The medanos with immovable bases are formed on the blocks of rocks
+which are scattered about the plain. The sand is driven against them by
+the wind, and as soon as it reaches the top point, it descends on the
+other side until that is likewise covered; thus gradually arises a
+conical-formed hill. Entire hillock chains with acute crests are formed
+in a similar manner. * * * On their southern declivities are found vast
+masses of sand, drifted thither by the mid-day gales. The northern
+declivity, though not steeper than the southern, is only sparingly
+covered with sand. If a hillock chain somewhat distant from the sea
+extends in a line parallel with the Andes, namely, from S. S. E. to N.
+N. W., the western declivity is almost entirely free of sand, as it is
+driven to the plain below by the southeast wind, which constantly
+alternates with the wind from the south."[437]
+
+It is difficult to reconcile this description with that of Meyen, but if
+confidence is to be reposed in the accuracy of either observer, the
+formation of the sand hills in question must be governed by very
+different laws from those which determine the structure of coast dunes.
+Captain Gilliss, of the American navy, found the sand hills of the
+Peruvian desert to be in general crescent shaped, as described by Meyen,
+and a similar structure is said to characterize the inland dunes of the
+Llano Estacado and other plateaus of the North American desert, though
+these latter are of greater height and other dimensions than those
+described by Meyen. There is no very obvious explanation of this
+difference in form between maritime and inland sand hills, and the
+subject merits investigation.[438]
+
+
+_Age, Character, and Permanence of Dunes._
+
+The origin of most great lines of dunes goes back past all history.
+There are on many coasts, several distinct ranges of sand hills which
+seem to be of very different ages, and to have been formed under
+different relative conditions of land and water.[439] In some cases,
+there has been an upheaval of the coast line since the formation of the
+oldest hillocks, and these have become inland dunes, while younger rows
+have been thrown up on the new beach laid bare by elevation of the sea
+bed. Our knowledge of the mode of their first accumulation is derived
+from observation of the action of wind and water in the few instances
+where, with or without the aid of man, new coast dunes have been
+accumulated, and of the influence of wind alone in elevating new sand
+heaps inland of the coast tier, when the outer rows are destroyed by the
+sea, as also when the sodded surface of ancient sands has been broken,
+and the subjacent strata laid open to the air.
+
+It is a question of much interest, in what degree the naked condition of
+most dunes is to be ascribed to the improvidence and indiscretion of
+man. There are, in Western France, extensive ranges of dunes covered
+with ancient and dense forests, while the recently formed sand hills
+between them and the sea are bare of vegetation, and are rapidly
+advancing upon the wooded dunes, which they threaten to bury beneath
+their drifts. Between the old dunes and the new, there is no
+discoverable difference in material or in structure; but the modern sand
+hills are naked and shifting, the ancient, clothed with vegetation and
+fixed. It has been conjectured that artificial methods of confinement
+and plantation were employed by the primitive inhabitants of Gaul; and
+Laval, basing his calculations on the rate of annual movement of the
+shifting dunes, assigns the fifth century of the Christian era as the
+period when these processes were abandoned.[440]
+
+There is no historical evidence that the Gauls were acquainted with
+artificial methods of fixing the sands of the coast, and we have little
+reason to suppose that they were advanced enough in civilization to be
+likely to resort to such processes, especially at a period when land
+could have had but a moderate value.
+
+In other countries, dunes have spontaneously clothed themselves with
+forests, and the rapidity with which their surface is covered by various
+species of sand plants, and finally by trees, where man and cattle and
+burrowing animals are excluded from them, renders it highly probable
+that they would, as a general rule, protect themselves, if left to the
+undisturbed action of natural causes. The sand hills of the Frische
+Nehrung, on the coast of Prussia, were formerly wooded down to the
+water's edge, and it was only in the last century that, in consequence
+of the destruction of their forests, they became moving sands.[441]
+There is every reason to believe that the dunes of the Netherlands were
+clothed with trees until after the Roman invasion. The old geographers,
+in describing these countries, speak of vast forests extending to the
+very brink of the sea; but drifting coast dunes are first mentioned by
+the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and so far as we know they have
+assumed a destructive character in consequence of the improvidence of
+man.[442] The history of the dunes of Michigan, so far as I have been
+able to learn from my own observation, or that of others, is the same.
+Thirty years ago, when that region was scarcely inhabited, they were
+generally covered with a thick growth of trees, chiefly pines, and
+underwood, and there was little appearance of undermining and wash on
+the lake side, or of shifting of the sands, except where the trees had
+been cut or turned up by the roots.[443]
+
+Nature, as she builds up dunes for the protection of the sea shore,
+provides, with similar conservatism, for the preservation of the dunes
+themselves; so that, without the interference of man, these hillocks
+would be, not perhaps absolutely perpetual, but very lasting in
+duration, and very slowly altered in form or position. When once covered
+with the trees, shrubs, and herbaceous growths adapted to such
+localities, dunes undergo no apparent change, except the slow occasional
+undermining of the outer tier, and accidental destruction by the
+exposure of the interior, from the burrowing of animals, or the
+upturning of trees with their roots, and all these causes of
+displacement are very much less destructive when a vegetable covering
+exists in the immediate neighborhood of the breach.
+
+Before the occupation of the coasts by civilized and therefore
+destructive man, dunes, at all points where they have been observed,
+seem to have been protected in their rear by forests, which served to
+break the force of the winds in both directions,[444] and to have
+spontaneously clothed themselves with a dense growth of the various
+plants, grasses, shrubs, and trees, which nature has assigned to such
+soils. It is observed in Europe that dunes, though now without the
+shelter of a forest country behind them, begin to protect themselves as
+soon as human trespassers are excluded, and grazing animals denied
+access to them. Herbaceous and arborescent plants spring up almost at
+once, first in the depressions, and then upon the surface of the sand
+hills. Every seed that sprouts, binds together a certain amount of sand
+by its roots, shades a little ground with its leaves, and furnishes food
+and shelter for still younger or smaller growths. A succession of a very
+few favorable seasons suffices to bind the whole surface together with a
+vegetable network, and the power of resistance possessed by the dunes
+themselves, and the protection they afford to the fields behind them,
+are just in proportion to the abundance and density of the plants they
+support.
+
+The growth of the vegetable covering can, of course, be much accelerated
+by judicious planting and watchful care, and this species of improvement
+is now carried on upon a vast scale, wherever the value of land is
+considerable and the population dense. In the main, the dunes on the
+coast of the German Sea, notwithstanding the great quantity of often
+fertile land they cover, and the evils which result from their
+movement, are, upon the whole, a protective and beneficial agent, and
+their maintenance is an object of solicitude with the governments and
+people of the shores they protect.[445]
+
+
+_Use of Dunes as a Barrier against the Sea._
+
+Although the sea throws up large quantities of sand on flat lee-shores,
+there are, as we have seen, many cases where it continually encroaches
+on those same shores and washes them away. At all points of the shallow
+North Sea where the agitation of the waves extends to the bottom, banks
+are forming and rolling eastward. Hence the sea sand tends to accumulate
+upon the coast of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, and were there no
+conflicting influences, the shore would rapidly extend itself westward.
+But the same waves which wash the sand to the coast undermine the beach
+they cover, and still more rapidly degrade the shore at points where it
+is too high to receive partial protection by the formation of dunes upon
+it. The earth of the coast is generally composed of particles finer,
+lighter, and more transportable by water than the sea sand. While,
+therefore, the billows raised by a heavy west wind may roll up and
+deposit along the beach thousands of tons of sand, the same waves may
+swallow up even a larger quantity of fine shore earth. This earth, with
+a portion of the sand, is swept off by northwardly and southwardly
+currents, and let fall at other points of the coast, or carried off,
+altogether, out of the reach of causes which might bring it back to its
+former position.
+
+Although, then, the eastern shore of the German Ocean here and there
+advances into the sea, it in general retreats before it, and but for the
+protection afforded it by natural arrangements seconded by the art and
+industry of man, whole provinces would soon be engulfed by the waters.
+This protection consists in an almost unbroken chain of sand banks and
+dunes, extending from the northernmost point of Jutland to the Elbe, a
+distance of not much less than three hundred miles, and from the Elbe
+again, though with more frequent and wider interruptions, to the
+Atlantic borders of France and Spain.[446] So long as the dunes are
+maintained by nature or by human art, they serve, like any other
+embankment or dike, as a partial or a complete protection against the
+encroachments of the sea; and on the other hand, when their drifts are
+not checked by natural processes, or by the industry of man, they become
+a cause of as certain, if not of as sudden, destruction as the ocean
+itself whose advance they retard.
+
+
+_Encroachments of the Sea._
+
+The eastward progress of the sea on the Danish and Netherlandish coast,
+and on certain shores of the Atlantic, depends so much on local
+geological structure, on the force and direction of tidal and other
+marine currents, on the volume and rapidity of coast rivers, on the
+contingencies of the weather and on other varying circumstances, that no
+general rate can he assigned to it.
+
+At Agger, near the western end of the Liimfjord, in Jutland, the coast
+was washed away, between the years 1815 and 1839, at the rate of more
+than eighteen feet a year. The advance of the sea appears to have been
+something less rapid for a century before; but from 1840 to 1857, it
+gained upon the land no less than thirty feet a year. At other points of
+the shore of Jutland, the loss is smaller, but the sea is encroaching
+generally upon the whole line of the coast.[447]
+
+
+_The Liimfjord._
+
+The irruption of the sea into the fresh-water lagoon of Liimfjord in
+Jutland, in 1825--one of the most remarkable encroachments of the ocean
+in modern times--is expressly ascribed to "mismanagement of the dunes"
+on the narrow neck of land which separated the fjord from the North Sea.
+At earlier periods, the sea had swept across the isthmus, and even burst
+through it, but the channel had been filled up again, sometimes by
+artificial means, sometimes by the operation of natural causes, and on
+all these occasions effects were produced very similar to those
+resulting from the formation of the new channel in 1825, which still
+remains open.[448] Within comparatively recent historical ages, the
+Liimfjord has thus been several times alternately filled with fresh and
+with salt water, and man has produced, by neglecting the dunes, or at
+least might have prevented by maintaining them, changes identical with
+those which are usually ascribed to the action of great geological
+causes, and sometimes supposed to have required vast periods of time for
+their accomplishment.
+
+"This breach," says Forchhammer, "which converted the Liimfjord into a
+sound, and the northern part of Jutland into an island, occasioned
+remarkable changes. The first and most striking phenomenon was the
+sudden destruction of almost all the fresh-water fish previously
+inhabiting this lagoon, which was famous for its abundant fisheries.
+Millions of fresh-water fish were thrown on shore, partly dead and
+partly dying, and were carted off by the people. A few only survived,
+and still frequent the shores at the mouth of the brooks. The eel,
+however, has gradually accommodated itself to the change of
+circumstances, and is found in all parts of the fjord, while to all
+other fresh-water fish, the salt water of the ocean seems to have been
+fatal. It is more than probable that the sand washed in by the irruption
+covers, in many places, a layer of dead fish, and has thus prepared the
+way for a petrified stratum similar to those observed in so many older
+formations.
+
+"As it seems to be a law of nature that animals whose life is suddenly
+extinguished while yet in full vigor, are the most likely to be
+preserved by petrification, we find here one of the conditions favorable
+to the formation of such a petrified stratum. The bottom of the
+Liimfjord was covered with a vigorous growth of aquatic plants,
+belonging both to fresh and to salt water, especially _Zostera marina_.
+This vegetation totally disappeared after the irruption, and, in some
+instances, was buried by the sand; and here again we have a familiar
+phenomenon often observed in ancient strata--the indication of a given
+formation by a particular vegetable species--and when the strata
+deposited at the time of the breach shall be accessible by upheaval, the
+period of eruption will be marked by a stratum of _Zostera_, and
+probably by impressions of fresh-water fishes.
+
+"It is very remarkable that the _Zostera marina_, a sea plant, was
+destroyed even where no sand was deposited. This was probably in
+consequence of the sudden change from brackish to salt water. * * It is
+well established that the Liimfjord communicated with the German Ocean
+at some former period. To that era belong the deep beds of oyster shells
+and _Cardium edule_, which are still found at the bottom of the fjord.
+And now, after an interval of centuries, during which the lagoon
+contained no salt-water shell fish, it again produces great numbers of
+_Mytilus edulis_. Could we obtain a deep section of the bottom, we
+should find beds of _Ostrea edulis_ and _Cardium edule_, then a layer of
+_Zostera marina_ with fresh-water fish, and then a bed of _Mytilus
+edulis_. If, in course of time, the new channel should be closed, the
+brooks would fill the lagoon again with fresh water; fresh-water fish
+and shell fish would reappear, and thus we should have a repeated
+alternation of organic inhabitants of the sea and of the waters of the
+land.
+
+"These events have been accompanied with but a comparatively
+insignificant change of land surface, while the formations in the bed of
+this inland sea have been totally revolutionized in character."[449]
+
+
+_Coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, Holland, and France._
+
+On the islands on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein, the advance of the
+sea has been more unequivocal and more rapid. Near the beginning of the
+last century, the dunes which had protected the western coast of the
+island of Sylt began to roll to the east, and the sea followed closely
+as they retired. In 1757, the church of Rantum, a village upon that
+island, was obliged to be taken down in consequence of the advance of
+the sand hills; in 1791, these hills had passed beyond its site, the
+waves had swallowed up its foundations, and the sea gained so rapidly,
+that, fifty years later, the spot where they lay was seven hundred feet
+from the shore.[450]
+
+The most prominent geological landmark on the coast of Holland is the
+Huis te Britten, _Arx Britannica_, a fortress built by the Romans, in
+the time of Caligula, on the main land near the mouth of the Rhine. At
+the close of the seventeenth century, the sea had advanced sixteen
+hundred paces beyond it. The older Dutch annalists record, with much
+parade of numerical accuracy, frequent encroachments of the sea upon
+many parts of the Netherlandish coast. But though the general fact of an
+advance of the ocean upon the land is established beyond dispute, the
+precision of the measurements which have been given is open to question.
+Staring, however, who thinks the erosion of the coast much exaggerated
+by popular geographers, admits a loss of more than a million and a half
+acres, chiefly worthless morass;[451] and it is certain that but for the
+resistance of man, but for his erection of dikes and protection of
+dunes, there would now be left of Holland little but the name. It is, as
+has been already seen, still a debated question among geologists whether
+the coast of Holland now is, and for centuries has been, subsiding. I
+believe most investigators maintain the affirmative; and if the fact is
+so, the advance of the sea upon the land is, in part, due to this cause.
+But the rate of subsidence is at all events very small, and therefore
+the encroachments of the ocean upon the coast are mainly to be ascribed
+to the erosion and transportation of the soil by marine waves and
+currents.
+
+The sea is fast advancing at several points of the western coast of
+France, and unknown causes have given a new impulse to its ravages since
+the commencement of the present century. Between 1830 and 1842, the
+Point de Grave, on the north side of the Gironde, retreated one hundred
+and eighty m�tres, or about fifty feet per year; from the latter year to
+1846, the rate was increased to more than three times that quantity, and
+the loss in those four years was above six hundred feet. All the
+buildings at the extremity of the peninsula have been taken down and
+rebuilt farther landward, and the lighthouse of the Grave now occupies
+its third position. The sea attacked the base of the peninsula also, and
+the Point de Grave and the adjacent coasts have been for twenty years
+the scene of one of the most obstinately contested struggles between man
+and the ocean recorded in the annals of modern engineering.
+
+It cannot, indeed, be affirmed that human power is able to arrest
+altogether the incursions of the waves on sandy coasts, by planting the
+beach, and clothing the dunes with wood. On the contrary, both in
+Holland and on the French coast, it has been found necessary to protect
+the dunes themselves by piling and by piers and sea walls of heavy
+masonry. But experience has amply shown that the processes referred to
+are entirely successful in preventing the movement of the dunes, and the
+drifting of their sands over cultivated lands behind them; and that, at
+the same time, the plantations very much retard the landward progress of
+the waters.[452]
+
+
+_Drifting of Dune Sands._
+
+Besides their importance as a barrier against the inroads of the ocean,
+dunes are useful by sheltering the cultivated ground behind them from
+the violence of the sea wind, from salt spray, and from the drifts of
+beach sand which would otherwise overwhelm them. But the dunes
+themselves, unless their surface sands are kept moist, and confined by
+the growth of plants, or at least by a crust of vegetable earth, are
+constantly rolling inward; and thus, while, on one side, they lay bare
+the traces of ancient human habitations or other evidences of the social
+life of primitive man, they are, on the other, burying fields, houses,
+churches, and converting populous districts into barren and deserted
+wastes.
+
+Especially destructive are they when, by any accident, a cavity is
+opened into them to a considerable depth, thereby giving the wind access
+to the interior, where the sand is thus first dried, and then scooped
+out and scattered far over the neighboring soil. The dune is now a
+magazine of sand, no longer a rampart against it, and mischief from this
+source seems more difficult to resist than from almost any other drift,
+because the supply of material at the command of the wind, is more
+abundant and more concentrated than in its original thin and widespread
+deposits on the beach. The burrowing of conies in the dunes is, in this
+way, not unfrequently a cause of their destruction and of great injury
+to the fields behind them. Drifts, and even inland sand hills, sometimes
+result from breaking the surface of more level sand deposits, far within
+the range of the coast dunes. Thus we learn from Staring, that one of
+the highest inland dunes in Friesland owes its origin to the opening of
+the drift sand by the uprooting of a large oak.[453]
+
+Great as are the ravages produced by the encroachment of the sea upon
+the western shores of continental Europe, they have been in some degree
+compensated by spontaneous marine deposits at other points of the coast,
+and we have seen in a former chapter that the industry of man has
+reclaimed a large territory from the bosom of the ocean. These latter
+triumphs are not of recent origin, and the incipient victories which
+paved the way for them date back perhaps as far as ten centuries. In the
+mean time, the dunes had been left to the operation of the laws of
+nature, or rather freed, by human imprudence, from the fetters with
+which nature had bound them, and it is scarcely three generations since
+man first attempted to check their destructive movements. As they
+advanced, he unresistingly yielded and retreated before them, and they
+have buried under their sandy billows many hundreds of square miles of
+luxuriant cornfields and vineyards and forests.
+
+
+_Dunes of Gascony._
+
+On the west coast of France, a belt of dunes, varying in width from a
+quarter of a mile to five miles, extends from the Adour to the estuary
+of the Gironde, and covers an area of three hundred and seventy-five
+square miles. When not fixed by vegetable growths, they advance eastward
+at a mean rate of about one rod, or sixteen and a half feet, a year. We
+do not know historically when they began to drift, but if we suppose
+their motion to have been always the same as at present, they would have
+passed over the space between the sea coast and their eastern boundary,
+and covered the large area above mentioned, in fourteen hundred years.
+We know, from written records, that they have buried extensive fields
+and forests and thriving villages, and changed the courses of rivers,
+and that the lighter particles carried from them by the winds, even
+where not transported in sufficient quantities to form sand hills, have
+rendered sterile much land formerly fertile.[454] They have also
+injuriously obstructed the natural drainage of the maritime districts by
+choking up the beds of the streams, and forming lakes and pestilential
+swamps of no inconsiderable extent. In fact, so completely do they
+embank the coast, that between the Gironde and the village of Mimizan, a
+distance of one hundred miles, there are but two outlets for the
+discharge of all the waters which flow from the land to the sea; and the
+eastern front of the dunes is bordered by a succession of stagnant
+pools, some of which are more than six miles in length and breadth.[455]
+
+
+_The Dunes of Denmark and Prussia._
+
+In the small kingdom of Denmark, inclusive of the duchies of Schleswig
+and Holstein, the dunes cover an area of more than two hundred and sixty
+square miles. The breadth of the chain is very various, and in some
+places it consists only of a single row of sand hills, while in others,
+it is more than six miles wide. The general rate of eastward movement of
+the drifting dunes is from three to twenty-four feet per annum. If we
+adopt the mean of thirteen feet and a half for the annual motion, the
+dunes have traversed the widest part of the belt in about twenty-five
+hundred years. Historical data are wanting as to the period of the
+formation of these dunes and of the commencement of their drifting; but
+there is recorded evidence that they have buried a vast extent of
+valuable land within three or four centuries, and further proof is found
+in the fact that the movement of the sands is constantly uncovering
+ruins of ancient buildings, and other evidences of human occupation, at
+points far within the present limits of the uninhabitable desert.
+Andresen estimates the average depth of the sand deposited over this
+area at thirty feet, which would give a cubic mile and a half for the
+total quantity.[456]
+
+The drifting of the dunes on the coast of Prussia commenced not much
+more than a hundred years ago. The Frische Nehrung is separated from the
+mainland by the Frische Haff, and there is but a narrow strip of arable
+land along its eastern borders. Hence its rolling sands have covered a
+comparatively small extent of dry land, but fields and villages have
+been buried and valuable forests laid waste by them. The loose coast row
+has drifted over the inland ranges, which, as was noticed in the
+description of these dunes on a former page, were protected by a surface
+of different composition, and the sand has thus been raised to a height
+which it could not have reached upon level ground. This elevation has
+enabled it to advance upon and overwhelm woods, which, upon a plain,
+would have checked its progress, and, in one instance, a forest of many
+hundred acres of tall pines was destroyed by the drifts between 1804 and
+1827.
+
+
+_Control of Dunes by Man._
+
+There are three principal modes in which the industry of man is brought
+to bear upon the dunes. First, the creation of them, at points where,
+from changes in the currents or other causes, new encroachments of the
+sea are threatened; second, the maintenance and protection of them where
+they have been naturally formed; and third, the removal of the inner
+rows where the belt is so broad that no danger is to be apprehended from
+the loss of them.
+
+
+_Artificial Formation of Dunes._
+
+In describing the natural formation of dunes, it was said that they
+began with an accumulation of sand around some vegetable or other
+accidental obstruction to the drifting of the particles. A high,
+perpendicular cliff, which deadens the wind altogether, prevents all
+accumulation of sand; but, up to a certain point, the higher and broader
+the obstruction, the more sand will heap up in front of it, and the more
+will that which falls behind it be protected from drifting farther. This
+familiar observation has taught the inhabitants of the coast that an
+artificial wall or dike will, in many situations, give rise to a broad
+belt of dunes. Thus a sand dike or wall, of three or four miles in
+length, thrown in 1610 across the Koegras, a tide-washed flat between
+the Zuiderzee and the North Sea, has occasioned the formation of rows of
+dunes a mile in breadth, and thus excluded the sea altogether from the
+Koegras. A similar dike, called the Zijperzeedijk, has produced another
+scarcely less extensive belt in the course of two centuries.
+
+A few years since, the sea was threatening to cut through the island of
+Ameland, and, by encroachment on the southern side and the blowing off
+of the sand from a low flat which connected the two higher parts of the
+island, it had made such progress, that in heavy storms the waves
+sometimes rolled quite across the isthmus. The construction of a
+breakwater and a sand dike have already checked the advance of the sea,
+and a large number of sand hills has been formed, the rapid growth of
+which promises complete future security against both wind and wave.
+Similar effects have been produced by the erection of plank fences, and
+even of simple screens of wattling and reeds.[457]
+
+
+_Protection of Dunes._
+
+The dunes of Holland are sometimes protected from the dashing of the
+waves by a _rev�tement_ of stone, or by piles; and the lateral
+high-water currents, which wash away their base, are occasionally
+checked by transverse walls running from the foot of the dunes to
+low-water mark; but the great expense of such constructions has
+prevented their adoption on a large scale.[458] The principal means
+relied on for the protection of the sand hills are the planting of their
+surfaces and the exclusion of burrowing and grazing animals. There are
+grasses, creeping plants, and shrubs of spontaneous growth, which
+flourish in loose sand, and, if protected, spread over considerable
+tracts, and finally convert their face into a soil capable of
+cultivation, or, at least, of producing forest trees. Krause enumerates
+one hundred and seventy-one plants as native to the coast sands of
+Prussia, and the observations of Andresen in Jutland carry the number of
+these vegetables up to two hundred and thirty-four.
+
+Some of these plants, especially the _Arundo arenaria_ or _arenosa_, or
+_Psamma_ or _Psammophila arenaria_--Klittetag, or Hjelme in Danish, helm
+in Dutch, D�nenhalm, Sandschilf, or H�gelrohr in German, gourbet in
+French, and marram in English--are exclusively confined to sandy soils,
+and thrive well only in a saline atmosphere.[459] The arundo grows to
+the height of about twenty-four inches, but sends its strong roots with
+their many rootlets to a distance of forty or fifty feet. It has the
+peculiar property of nourishing best in the loosest soil, and a sand
+shower seems to refresh it as the rain revives the thirsty plants of the
+common earth. Its roots bind together the dunes, and its leaves protect
+their surface. When the sand ceases to drift, the arundo dies, its
+decaying roots fertilizing the sand, and the decomposition of its leaves
+forming a layer of vegetable earth over it. Then follows a succession of
+other plants which gradually fit the sand hills, by growth and decay,
+for forest planting, for pasturage, and sometimes for ordinary
+agricultural use.
+
+But the protection and gradual transformation of the dunes is not the
+only service rendered by this valuable plant. Its leaves are nutritious
+food for sheep and cattle, its seeds for poultry;[460] cordage and
+netting twine are manufactured from its fibres, it makes a good material
+for thatching, and its dried roots furnish excellent fuel. These useful
+qualities, unfortunately, are too often prejudicial to its growth. The
+peasants feed it down with their cattle, cut it for rope making, or dig
+it up for fuel, and it has been found necessary to resort to severe
+legislation to prevent them from bringing ruin upon themselves by thus
+improvidently sacrificing their most effectual safeguard against the
+drifting of the sands.[461]
+
+In 1539, a decree of Christian III, king of Denmark, imposed a fine upon
+persons convicted of destroying certain species of sand plants upon the
+west coast of Jutland. This ordinance was renewed and made more
+comprehensive in 1558, and in 1569 the inhabitants of several districts
+were required, by royal rescript, to do their best to check the sand
+drifts, though the specific measures to be adopted for that purpose are
+not indicated. Various laws against stripping the dunes of their
+vegetation were enacted in the following century, but no active measures
+were taken for the subjugation of the sand drifts until 1779, when a
+preliminary system of operation for that purpose was adopted. This
+consisted in little more than the planting of the _Arundo arenaria_ and
+other sand plants, and the exclusion of animals destructive to these
+vegetables.[462] Ten years later, plantations of forest trees, which
+have since proved so valuable a means of fixing the dunes and rendering
+them productive, were commenced, and have been continued ever
+since.[463] During this latter period, Br�montier, without any knowledge
+of what was doing in Denmark, experimented upon the cultivation of
+forest trees on the dunes of Gascony, and perfected a system, which,
+with some improvements in matters of detail, is still largely pursued
+on those shores. The example of Denmark was soon followed in the
+neighboring kingdom of Prussia, and in the Netherlands; and, as we shall
+see hereafter, these improvements have been everywhere crowned with most
+flattering success.
+
+Under the administration of Reventlov, a little before the close of the
+last century, the Danish Government organized a regular system of
+improvement in the economy of the dunes. They were planted with the
+arundo and other vegetables of similar habits, protected against
+trespassers, and at last partly covered with forest trees. By these
+means much waste soil has been converted into arable ground, a large
+growth of valuable timber obtained, and the further spread of the
+drifts, which threatened to lay waste the whole peninsula of Jutland, to
+a considerable extent arrested.
+
+In France, the operations for fixing and reclaiming the dunes--which
+began under the direction of Br�montier about the same time as in
+Denmark, and which are, in principle and in many of their details,
+similar to those employed in the latter kingdom--have been conducted on
+a far larger scale, and with greater success, than in any other country.
+This is partly owing to a climate more favorable to the growth of
+suitable forest trees than that of Northern Europe, and partly to the
+liberality of the Government, which, having more important landed
+interests to protect, has put larger means at the disposal of the
+engineers than Denmark and Prussia have found it convenient to
+appropriate to that purpose. The area of the dunes already secured from
+drifting, and planted by the processes invented by Br�montier and
+perfected by his successors, is about 100,000 acres.[464] This amount of
+productive soil, then, has been added to the resources of France, and a
+still greater quantity of valuable land has been thereby rescued from
+the otherwise certain destruction with which it was threatened by the
+advance of the rolling sand hills.
+
+The improvements of the dunes on the coast of West Prussia began in
+1795, under S�ren Bj�rn, a native of Denmark, and, with the exception of
+the ten years between 1807 and 1817, they have been prosecuted ever
+since. The methods do not differ essentially from those employed in
+Denmark and France, though they are modified by local circumstances,
+and, with respect to the trees selected for planting, by climate. In
+1850, between the mouth of the Vistula and Kahlberg, 6,300 acres,
+including about 1,900 acres planted with pines and birches, had been
+secured from drifting; between Kahlberg and the eastern boundary of
+West-Prussia, 8,000 acres; and important preliminary operations had been
+carried on for subduing the dunes on the west coast.[465]
+
+
+_Trees suited to Dune Plantations._
+
+The tree which has been found to thrive best upon the sand hills of the
+French coast, and at the same time to confine the sand most firmly and
+yield the largest pecuniary returns, is the maritime pine, _Pinus
+maritima_, a species valuable both for its timber and for its resinous
+products. It is always grown from seed, and the young shoots require to
+be protected for several seasons, by the branches of other trees,
+planted in rows, or spread over the surface and staked down, by the
+growth of the _Arundo arenaria_ and other small sand plants, or by
+wattled hedges. The beach, from which the sand is derived, has been
+generally planted with the arundo, because the pine does not thrive well
+so near the sea; but it is thought that a species of tamarisk is likely
+to succeed in that latitude even better than the arundo. The shade and
+the protection offered by the branching top of this pine are favorable
+to the growth of deciduous trees, and, while still young, of shrubs and
+smaller plants, which contribute more rapidly to the formation of
+vegetable mould, and thus, when the pine has once taken root, the
+redemption of the waste is considered as effectually secured.
+
+In France, the maritime pine is planted on the sands of the interior as
+well as on the dunes of the sea coast, and with equal advantage. This
+tree resembles the pitch pine of the Southern American States in its
+habits, and is applied to the same uses. The extraction of turpentine
+from it begins at the age of about twenty years, or when it has attained
+a diameter of from nine to twelve inches. Incisions are made up and down
+the trunk, to the depth of about half an inch in the wood, and it is
+insisted that if not more than two such slits are cut, the tree is not
+sensibly injured by the process. The growth, indeed, is somewhat
+checked, but the wood becomes superior to that of trees from which the
+turpentine is not extracted. Thus treated, the pine continues to
+flourish to the age of one hundred or one hundred and twenty years, and
+up to this age the trees on a hectare yield annually 350 kilogrammes of
+essence of turpentine, and 280 kilogrammes of resin, worth together 110
+francs. The expense of extraction and distillation is calculated at 44
+francs, and a clear profit of 66 francs per hectare, or more than five
+dollars per acre, is left.[466] This is exclusive of the value of the
+timber, when finally cut, which, of course, amounts to a very
+considerable sum.
+
+In Denmark, where the climate is much colder, hardier conifers, as well
+as the birch and other northern trees, are found to answer a better
+purpose than the maritime pine, and it is doubtful whether this tree
+would be able to resist the winter on the dunes of Massachusetts.
+Probably the pitch pine of the Northern States, in conjunction with some
+of the American oaks, birches, and poplars, and especially the robinia
+or locust, would prove very suitable to be employed on the sand hills of
+Cape Cod and Long Island. The ailanthus, now coming into notice as a
+sand-loving tree, may, perhaps, serve a better purpose than any of them.
+
+
+_Extent of Dunes in Europe._
+
+The dunes of Denmark, as we have seen, cover an area of two hundred and
+sixty square miles, or one hundred and sixty-six thousand acres; those
+of the Prussian coast are vaguely estimated at from eighty-five to one
+hundred and ten thousand acres; those of Holland at one hundred and
+forty thousand acres;[467] those of Gascony at about three hundred
+thousand acres.[468] I do not find any estimate of their extent in other
+provinces of France, in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, or in the
+Baltic provinces of Russia, but it is probable that the entire quantity
+of dune land upon the eastern shores of the Atlantic and the Baltic does
+not fall much short of a million of acres.[469] This vast deposit of sea
+sand extends along the coast for a distance of several hundred miles,
+and from the time of the destruction of the forests which covered it, to
+the year 1789, the whole line was rolling inward and burying the soil
+beneath it, or rendering the fields unproductive by the sand which
+drifted from it. At the same time, as the sand hills moved eastward, the
+ocean was closely following their retreat and swallowing up the ground
+they had covered, as fast as their movement left it bare.
+
+Planting the dunes has completely prevented the surface sands from
+blowing over the soil to the leeward of the plantations, and though it
+has not, in all cases, arrested the encroachments of the sea, it has so
+greatly retarded the rapidity of their advance, that sandy coasts, when
+once covered with forests, may be considered as substantially secure, so
+long as proper measures are taken for the protection of the woods.
+
+
+_Dune Vineyards of Cap Breton._
+
+In the vicinity of Cap Breton in France, a peculiar process is
+successfully employed, both for preventing the drifting of dunes, and
+for rendering the sands themselves immediately productive; but this
+method is applicable only in exceptional cases of favorable climate and
+exposure. It consists in planting vineyards upon the dunes, and
+protecting them by hedges of broom, _Erica scoparia_, so disposed as to
+form rectangles about thirty feet by forty. The vines planted in these
+enclosures thrive admirably, and the grapes produced by them are among
+the best grown in France. The dunes are so far from being an unfavorable
+soil for the vine, that fresh sea-sand is regularly employed as a
+fertilizer for it, alternating every other season with ordinary manure.
+The quantity of sand thus applied every second year, raises the surface
+of the vineyard about four or five inches. The vines are cut down every
+year to three or four shoots, and the raising of the soil rapidly
+covers the old stocks. As fast as buried, they send out new roots near
+the surface, and thus the vineyard is constantly renewed, and has always
+a youthful appearance, though it may have been already planted a couple
+of generations. This practice is ascertained to have been followed for
+two centuries, and is among the oldest well-authenticated attempts of
+man to resist and vanquish the dunes.[470]
+
+
+_Removal of Dunes._
+
+The artificial removal of dunes, no longer necessary as a protection,
+does not appear to have been practised upon a large scale except in the
+Netherlands, where the numerous canals furnish an easy and economical
+means of transporting the sand, and where the construction and
+maintenance of sea and river dikes, and of causeways and other
+embankments and fillings, create a great demand for that material. Sand
+is also employed in Holland, in large quantities, for improving the
+consistence of the tough clay bordering upon or underlying diluvial
+deposits, and for forming an artificial soil for the growth of certain
+garden and ornamental vegetables. When the dunes are removed, the ground
+they covered is restored to the domain of industry; and the quantity of
+land, recovered in the Netherlands by the removal of the barren sands
+which encumbered it, amounts to hundreds and perhaps thousands of
+acres.[471]
+
+
+_Inland Sand Plains._
+
+The inland sand plains of Europe are either derived from the drifting of
+dunes or other beach sands, or consist of diluvial deposits. As we have
+seen, when once the interior of a dune is laid open to the wind, its
+contents are soon scattered far and wide over the adjacent country, and
+the beach sands, no longer checked by the rampart which nature had
+constrained them to build against their own encroachments, are also
+carried to considerable distances from the coast. Few regions have
+suffered so much from this cause in proportion to their extent, as the
+peninsula of Jutland. So long as the woods, with which nature had
+planted the Danish dunes, were spared, they seem to have been
+stationary, and we have no historical evidence, of an earlier date than
+the sixteenth century, that they had become in any way injurious. From
+that period, there are frequent notices of the invasions of cultivated
+grounds by the sands; and excavations are constantly bringing to light
+proof of human habitation and of agricultural industry, in former ages,
+on soils now buried beneath deep drifts from the dunes and beaches of
+the sea coast.[472]
+
+Extensive tracts of valuable plain land in the Netherlands and in France
+have been covered in the same way with a layer of sand deep enough to
+render them infertile, and they can be restored to cultivation only by
+processes analogous to those employed for fixing and improving the
+dunes.[473] Diluvial sand plains, also, have been reclaimed by these
+methods in the Duchy of Austria, between Vienna and the Semmering ridge,
+in Jutland, and in the great champaign country of Northern Germany,
+especially the Mark Brandenburg, where artificial forests can be
+propagated with great ease, and where, consequently, this branch of
+industry has been pursued on a great scale, and with highly beneficial
+results, both as respects the supply of forest products and the
+preparation of the soil for agricultural use.
+
+As a general rule, inland sands are looser, dryer, and more inclined to
+drift, than those of the sea coast, where the moist and saline
+atmosphere of the ocean keeps them always more or less humid and
+cohesive. No shore dunes are so movable as the medanos of Peru described
+in a passage quoted from P�ppig on a former page, or as the sand hills
+of Poland, both of which seem better entitled to the appellation of sand
+waves than those of the Sahara or of the Arabian desert. The sands of
+the valley of the Lower Euphrates--themselves probably of submarine
+origin, and not derived from dunes--are advancing to the northwest with
+a rapidity which seems fabulous when compared with the slow movement of
+the sand hills of Gascony and the Low German coasts. Loftus, speaking of
+Niliyya, an old Arab town a few miles east of the ruins of Babylon, says
+that, "in 1848, the sand began to accumulate around it, and in six
+years, the desert, within a radius of six miles, was covered with
+little, undulating domes, while the ruins of the city were so buried
+that it is now impossible to trace their original form or extent."[474]
+Loftus considers this sand flood as the "vanguard of those vast drifts
+which, advancing from the southeast, threaten eventually to overwhelm
+Babylon and Baghdad."
+
+An observation of Layard, cited by Loftus, appears to me to furnish a
+possible explanation of this irruption. He "passed two or three places
+where the sand, issuing from the earth like water, is called
+'Aioun-er-rummal,' sand springs." These "springs" are very probably
+merely the drifting of sand from the ancient subsoil, where the
+protecting crust of aquatic deposit and vegetable earth has been broken
+through, as in the case of the drift which arose from the upturning of
+an oak mentioned on a former page. When the valley of the Euphrates was
+regularly irrigated and cultivated, the underlying sands were bound by
+moisture, alluvial slime, and vegetation; but now, that all improvement
+is neglected, and the surface, no longer watered, has become parched,
+powdery, and naked, a mere accidental fissure in the superficial stratum
+may soon be enlarged to a wide opening, that will let loose sand enough
+to overwhelm a province.
+
+
+_The Landes of Gascony._
+
+The most remarkable sand plain of France lies at the southwestern
+extremity of the empire, and is generally known as the Landes, or
+heaths, of Gascony. Clav� thus describes it: "Composed of pure sand,
+resting on an impermeable stratum called _alios_, the soil of the Landes
+was, for centuries, considered incapable of cultivation. Parched in
+summer, drowned in winter, it produced only ferns, rushes, and heath,
+and scarcely furnished pasturage for a few half-starved flocks. To crown
+its miseries, this plain was continually threatened by the encroachments
+of the dunes. Vast ridges of sand, thrown up by the waves, for a
+distance of more than fifty leagues along the coast, and continually
+renewed, were driven inland by the west wind, and, as they rolled over
+the plain, they buried the soil and the hamlets, overcame all
+resistance, and advanced with fearful regularity. The whole province
+seemed devoted to certain destruction, when Br�montier invented his
+method of fixing the dunes by plantations of the maritime pine."[475]
+
+Although the Landes had been almost abandoned for ages, they show
+numerous traces of ancient cultivation and prosperity, and it is
+principally by means of the encroachments of the sands that they have
+become reduced to their present desolate condition. The destruction of
+the coast towns and harbors, which furnished markets for the products of
+the plains, the damming up of the rivers, and the obstruction of the
+smaller channels of natural drainage by the advance of the dunes, were
+no doubt very influential causes; and if we add the drifting of the sea
+sand over the soil, we have at least a partial explanation of the
+decayed agriculture and diminished population of this great waste. When
+the dunes were once arrested, and the soil to the east of them was felt
+to be secure against invasion by them, experiments, in the way of
+agricultural improvement, by drainage and plantation, were commenced,
+and they have been attended with such signal success, that the complete
+recovery of one of the dreariest and most extensive wastes in Europe may
+be considered as both a probable and a near event.[476]
+
+
+_The Belgian Campine._
+
+In the northern part of Belgium, and extending across the confines of
+Holland, is another very similar heath plain, called the Campine. This
+is a vast sand flat, interspersed with marshes and inland dunes, and,
+until recently, considered wholly incapable of cultivation. Enormous
+sums have been expended in reclaiming it by draining and other familiar
+agricultural processes, but without results at all proportional to the
+capital invested. In 1849, the unimproved portion of the Campine was
+estimated at little less than three hundred and fifty thousand acres.
+The example of France has prompted experiments in the planting of trees,
+especially the maritime pine, upon this barren waste, and the results
+have been such as to show that its sands may both be fixed and made
+productive, not only without loss, but with positive pecuniary
+advantage.[477]
+
+
+_Sands and Steppes of Eastern Europe._
+
+There are still unsubdued sand wastes in many parts of interior Europe
+not familiarly known to tourists or even geographers. "Olkuez and
+Schiewier in Poland," says Naumann, "lie in true sand deserts, and a
+boundless plain of sand stretches around Ozenstockau, on which there
+grows neither tree nor shrub. In heavy winds, this plain resembles a
+rolling sea, and the sand hills rise and disappear like the waves of the
+ocean. The heaps of waste from the Olkuez mines are covered with sand to
+the depth of four fathoms."[478] No attempts have yet been made to
+subdue the sands of Poland, but when peace and prosperity shall be
+restored to that unhappy country, there is no reasonable doubt that the
+measures, which have proved so successful on similar formations in
+Germany, may be employed with advantage in the Polish deserts.
+
+There are sand drifts in parts of the steppes of Russia, but in general
+the soil of those vast plains is of a different, though very varied,
+composition, and is covered with vegetation. The steppes, however, have
+many points of analogy with the sand plains of Northern Germany, and if
+they are ever fitted for civilized occupation, it must be by the same
+means, that is, by planting forests. It is disputed whether the steppes
+were ever wooded. They were certainly bare of forest growth at a very
+remote period; for Herodotus describes the country of the Scythians
+between the Ister and the Tanais as woodless, with the exception of the
+small province of Xyl�a between the Dnieper and the Gulf of Perekop.
+They are known to have been occupied by a large nomade and pastoral
+population down to the sixteenth century, though these tribes are now
+much reduced in numbers. The habits of such races are scarcely less
+destructive to the forest than those of civilized life. Pastoral tribes
+do not employ much wood for fuel or for construction, but they
+carelessly or recklessly burn down the forests, and their cattle
+effectually check the growth of young trees wherever their range
+extends.
+
+At present, the furious winds which sweep over the plains, the droughts
+of summer, and the rights and abuses of pasturage, constitute very
+formidable obstacles to the employment of measures which have been
+attended with so valuable results on the sand wastes of France and
+Germany. The Russian Government has, however, attempted the wooding of
+the steppes, and there are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of
+Odessa, where the soil is of a particularly loose and sandy
+character.[479] The trees best suited to this locality, and, as there is
+good reason to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the _Ailanthus
+glandulosa_, or Japan varnish tree.[480] The remarkable success which
+has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at Odessa, will, no
+doubt, stimulate to similar trials elsewhere, and it seems not
+improbable that the arundo and the maritime pine, which have fixed so
+many thousand acres of drifting sands in Western Europe, will be,
+partially at least, superseded by the tamarisk and the varnish tree.
+
+
+_Advantages of Reclaiming the Sands._
+
+If we consider the quantity of waste land which has been made productive
+by the planting of the sand hills and plains, and the extent of fertile
+soil, the number of villages and other human improvements, and the value
+of the harbors, which the same process has saved from being buried under
+the rolling dunes, and at last swallowed up forever by the invasions of
+the sea, we shall be inclined to rank Br�montier and Reventlov among the
+greatest benefactors of their race. With the exception of the dikes of
+the Netherlands, their labors are the first deliberate and direct
+attempts of man to make himself, on a great scale, a geographical power,
+to restore natural balances which earlier generations had disturbed, and
+to atone, by acts guided by foreseeing and settled purpose, for the
+waste which thoughtless improvidence had created.
+
+
+_Government Works._
+
+There is an important political difference between these latter works
+and the diking system of the Netherlandish and German coasts. The dikes
+originally were, and in modern times very generally have been, private
+enterprises, undertaken with no other aim than to add a certain quantity
+of cultivable soil to the former possessions of their proprietor, or
+sometimes of the state. In short, with few exceptions, they have been
+merely a pecuniary investment, a mode of acquiring land not economically
+different from purchase. The planting of the dunes, on the contrary, has
+always been a public work, executed, not with the expectation of reaping
+a regular direct percentage of income from the expenditure, but dictated
+by higher views of state economy--by the same governmental principles,
+in fact, which animate all commonwealths in repelling invasion by
+hostile armies, or in repairing the damages that invading forces may
+have inflicted on the general interests of the people. The restoration
+of the forests in the southern part of France, as now conducted by the
+Government of that empire, is a measure of the same elevated character
+as the fixing of the dunes. In former ages, forests were formed or
+protected simply for the sake of the shelter they afforded to game, or
+for the timber they yielded; but the recent legislation of France, and
+of some other Continental countries, on this subject, looks to more
+distant as well as nobler ends, and these are among the public acts
+which most strongly encourage the hope that the rulers of Christendom
+are coming better to understand the true duties and interests of
+civilized government.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PROJECTED OR POSSIBLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES BY MAN.
+
+CUTTING OF MARINE ISTHMUSES--THE SUEZ CANAL--CANAL ACROSS ISTHMUS OF
+DARIEN--CANALS TO THE DEAD SEA--MARITIME CANALS IN GREECE--CANAL OF
+SAROS--CAPE COD CANAL--DIVERSION OF THE NILE--CHANGES IN THE CASPIAN--
+IMPROVEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICAN HYDROGRAPHY--DIVERSION OF RHINE--
+DRAINING OF THE ZUIDERZEE--WATERS OF THE KARST--SUBTERRANEAN WATERS
+OF GREECE--SOIL BELOW ROCK--COVERING ROCKS WITH EARTH--WADIES OF ARABIA
+PETR�A--INCIDENTAL EFFECTS OF HUMAN ACTION--RESISTANCE TO GREAT NATURAL
+FORCES--EFFECTS OF MINING--ESPY'S THEORIES--RIVER SEDIMENT--NOTHING
+SMALL IN NATURE.
+
+
+_Cutting of Marine Isthmuses._
+
+Besides the great enterprises of physical transformation of which I have
+already spoken, other works of internal improvement or change have been
+projected in ancient and modern times, the execution of which would
+produce considerable, and, in some cases, extremely important,
+revolutions in the face of the earth. Some of the schemes to which I
+refer are evidently chimerical; others are difficult, indeed, but cannot
+be said to be impracticable, though discouraged by the apprehension of
+disastrous consequences from the disturbance of existing natural or
+artificial arrangements; and there are still others, the accomplishment
+of which is ultimately certain, though for the present forbidden by
+economical considerations.
+
+When we consider the number of narrow necks or isthmuses which separate
+gulfs and bays of the sea from each other, or from the main ocean, and
+take into account the time and cost, and risks of navigation which
+would be saved by executing channels to connect such waters, and thus
+avoiding the necessity of doubling long capes and promontories, or even
+continents, it seems strange that more of the enterprise and money which
+have been so lavishly expended in forming artificial rivers for internal
+navigation should not have been bestowed upon the construction of
+maritime canals. Many such have been projected in early and in recent
+ages, and some trifling cuts between marine waters have been actually
+made, but no work of this sort, possessing real geographical or even
+commercial importance, has yet been effected.
+
+These enterprises are attended with difficulties and open to objections,
+which are not, at first sight, obvious. Nature guards well the chains by
+which she connects promontories with mainlands, and binds continents
+together. Isthmuses are usually composed of adamantine rock or of
+shifting sands--the latter being much the more refractory material to
+deal with. In all such works there is a necessity for deep excavation
+below low-water mark--always a matter of great difficulty; the
+dimensions of channels for sea-going ships must be much greater than
+those of canals of inland navigation; the height of the masts or smoke
+pipes of that class of vessels would often render bridging impossible,
+and thus a ship canal might obstruct a communication more important than
+that which it was intended to promote; the securing of the entrances of
+marine canals and the construction of ports at their termini would in
+general be difficult and expensive, and the harbors and the channel
+which connected them would be extremely liable to fill up by deposits
+washed in from sea and shore. Besides all this, there is, in many cases,
+an alarming uncertainty as to the effects of joining together waters
+which nature has put asunder. A new channel may deflect strong currents
+from safe courses, and thus occasion destructive erosion of shores
+otherwise secure, or promote the transportation of sand or slime to
+block up important harbors, or it may furnish a powerful enemy with
+dangerous facilities for hostile operations along the coast.
+
+Nature sometimes mocks the cunning and the power of man by spontaneously
+performing, for his benefit, works which he shrinks from undertaking,
+and the execution of which by him she would resist with unconquerable
+obstinacy. A dangerous sand bank, that all the enginery of the world
+could not dredge out in a generation, may be carried off in a night by a
+strong river flood, or a current impelled by a violent wind from an
+unusual quarter, and a passage scarcely navigable by fishing boats may
+be thus converted into a commodious channel for the largest ship that
+floats upon the ocean. In the remarkable gulf of Liimfjord in Jutland,
+nature has given a singular example of a canal which she alternately
+opens as a marine strait, and, by shutting again, converts into a
+fresh-water lagoon. The Liimfjord was doubtless originally an open
+channel from the Atlantic to the Baltic between two islands, but the
+sand washed up by the sea blocked up the western entrance, and built a
+wall of dunes to close it more firmly. This natural dike, as we have
+seen, has been more than once broken through, and it is perhaps in the
+power of man, either permanently to maintain the barrier, or to remove
+it and keep a navigable channel constantly open. If the Liimfjord
+becomes an open strait, the washing of sea sand through it would perhaps
+block up some of the belts and small channels now important for the
+navigation of the Baltic, and the direct introduction of a tidal current
+might produce very perceptible effects on the hydrography of the
+Cattegat.
+
+
+_The Suez Canal._
+
+If the Suez Canal--the greatest and most truly cosmopolite physical
+improvement ever undertaken by man--shall prove successful, it will
+considerably affect the basins of the Mediterranean and of the Red Sea,
+though in a different manner, and probably in a less degree than the
+diversion of the current of the Nile from the one to the other--to which
+I shall presently refer--would do. It is, indeed, conceivable, that if a
+free channel be once cut from sea to sea, the coincidence of a high tide
+and a heavy south wind might produce a hydraulic force that would
+convert the narrow canal into an open strait. In such a case, it is
+impossible to estimate, or even to foresee, the consequences which might
+result from the unobstructed mingling of the flowing and ebbing currents
+of the Red Sea with the almost tideless waters of the Mediterranean.
+There can be no doubt, however, that they would be of a most important
+character as respects the simply geographical features and the organic
+life of both. But the shallowness of the two seas at the termini of the
+canal, the action of the tides of the one and the currents of the other,
+and the nature of the intervening isthmus, render the occurrence of such
+a cataclysm in the highest degree improbable. The obstruction of the
+canal by sea sand at both ends is a danger far more difficult to guard
+against and avert, than an irruption of the waters of either sea.
+
+There is, then, no reason to expect any change of coast lines or of
+natural navigable channels as a direct consequence of the opening of the
+Suez Canal, but it will, no doubt, produce very interesting revolutions
+in the animal and vegetable population of both basins. The
+Mediterranean, with some local exceptions--such as the bays of
+Calabria, and the coast of Sicily so picturesquely described by
+Quatrefages[481]--is comparatively poor in marine vegetation, and in
+shell as well as in fin fish. The scarcity of fish in some of its gulfs
+is proverbial, and you may scrutinize long stretches of beach on its
+northern shores, after every south wind for a whole winter, without
+finding a dozen shells to reward your search. But no one who has not
+looked down into tropical or subtropical seas can conceive the amazing
+wealth of the Red Sea in organic life. Its bottom is carpeted or paved
+with marine plants, with zoophytes and with shells, while its waters are
+teeming with infinitely varied forms of moving life. Most of its
+vegetables and its animals, no doubt, are confined by the laws of their
+organization to warmer temperatures than that of the Mediterranean, but
+among them there must be many, whose habitat is of a wider range, many
+whose powers of accommodation would enable them to acclimate themselves
+in a colder sea.
+
+We may suppose the less numerous aquatic fauna and flora of the
+Mediterranean to be equally capable of climatic adaptation, and hence,
+when the canal shall be opened, there will be an interchange of the
+organic population not already common to both seas. Destructive species,
+thus newly introduced, may diminish the numbers of their proper prey in
+either basin, and, on the other hand, the increased supply of
+appropriate food may greatly multiply the abundance of others, and at
+the same time add important contributions to the aliment of man in the
+countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
+
+A collateral feature of this great project deserves notice as possessing
+no inconsiderable geographical importance. I refer to the conduit or
+conduits constructed from the Nile to the isthmus, primarily to supply
+fresh water to the laborers on the great canal, and ultimately to serve
+as aqueducts for the city of Suez, and for the irrigation and
+reclamation of a large extent of desert soil. In the flourishing days of
+the Egyptian empire, the waters of the Nile were carried over important
+districts east of the river. In later ages, most of this territory
+relapsed into a desert, from the decay of the canals which once
+fertilized it. There is no difficulty in restoring the ancient channels,
+or in constructing new, and thus watering not only all the soil that the
+wisdom of the Pharaohs had improved, but much additional land. Hundreds
+of square miles of arid sand waste would thus be converted into fields
+of perennial verdure, and the geography of Lower Egypt would be thereby
+sensibly changed. If the canal succeeds, considerable towns will grow up
+at once at both ends of the channel, and at intermediate points, all
+depending on the maintenance of aqueducts from the Nile, both for water
+and for the irrigation of the neighboring fields which are to supply
+them with bread. Important interests will thus be created, which will
+secure the permanence of the hydraulic works and of the geographical
+changes produced by them, and Suez, or Port Said, or the city at Lake
+Timsah, may become the capital of the government which has been so long
+established at Cairo.
+
+
+_Canal across the Isthmus of Darien._
+
+The most colossal project of canalization ever suggested, whether we
+consider the physical difficulties of its execution, the magnitude and
+importance of the waters proposed to be united, or the distance which
+would be saved in navigation, is that of a channel between the Gulf of
+Mexico and the Pacific, across the Isthmus of Darien. I do not now speak
+of a lock canal, by way of the Lake of Nicaragua or any other route--for
+such a work would not differ essentially from other canals, and would
+scarcely possess a geographical character--but of an open cut between
+the two seas. It has been by no means shown that the construction of
+such a channel is possible, and, if it were opened, it is highly
+probable that sand bars would accumulate at both entrances, so as to
+obstruct any powerful current through it. But if we suppose the work to
+be actually accomplished, there would be, in the first place, such a
+mixture of the animal and vegetable life of the two great oceans as I
+have stated to be likely to result from the opening of the Suez Canal
+between two much smaller basins. In the next place, if the channel were
+not obstructed by sand bars, it might sooner or later be greatly widened
+and deepened by the mechanical action of the current through it, and
+consequences, not inferior in magnitude to any physical revolution which
+has taken place since man appeared upon the earth, might result from it.
+
+What those consequences would be is in a great degree matter of pure
+conjecture, and there is much room for the exercise of the imagination
+on the subject; but, as more than one geographer has suggested, there is
+one possible result which throws all other conceivable effects of such a
+work quite into the shade. I refer to changes in the course of the two
+great oceanic rivers, the Gulf Stream and the corresponding current on
+the Pacific side of the isthmus. The warm waters which the Gulf Stream
+transports to high latitudes and then spreads out, like an expanded
+hand, along the eastern shores of the Atlantic, give out, as they cool,
+heat enough to raise the mean temperature of Western Europe several
+degrees. In fact, the Gulf Stream is the principal cause of the
+superiority of the climate of Western Europe over those of Eastern
+America and Eastern Asia in the corresponding latitudes. All the
+meteorological conditions of the former region are in a great measure
+regulated by it, and hence it is the grandest and most beneficent of all
+purely geographical phenomena. We do not yet know enough of the laws
+which govern the movements of this mighty flood of warmth and life to be
+able to say whether its current would be perceptibly affected by the
+severance of the Isthmus of Darien; but as it enters and sweeps round
+the Gulf of Mexico, it is possible that the removal of the resistance of
+the land which forms the western shore of that sea, might allow the
+stream to maintain its original westward direction, and join itself to
+the tropical current of the Pacific.
+
+The effect of such a change would be an immediate depression of the mean
+temperature of Western Europe to the level of that of Eastern America,
+and perhaps the climate of the former continent might become as
+excessive as that of the latter, or even a new "ice period" be
+occasioned by the withdrawal of so important a source of warmth from the
+northern zones. Hence would result the extinction of vast multitudes of
+land and sea plants and animals, and a total revolution in the domestic
+and rural economy of human life in all those countries from which the
+New World has received its civilized population. Other scarcely less
+startling consequences may be imagined as possible; but the whole
+speculation is too dreary, distant, and improbable to deserve to be long
+indulged in.[482]
+
+
+_Canals to the Dead Sea._
+
+The project of Captain Allen for opening a new route to India by cuts
+between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, and between the Dead Sea and
+the Red Sea, presents many interesting considerations.[483] The
+hypsometrical observations of Bertou, Roth, and others, render it highly
+probable, if not certain, that the watershed in the Wadi-el-Araba
+between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea is not less than three hundred feet
+above the mean level of the latter, and if this is so, the execution of
+a canal from the one sea to the other is quite out of the question. But
+the summit level between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, near Jezreel,
+is believed to be little, if at all, more than one hundred feet above
+the sea, and the distance is so short that the cutting of a channel
+through the dividing ridge would probably be found by no means an
+impracticable undertaking. Although, therefore, we have no reason to
+believe it possible to open a navigable channel to the east by way of
+the Dead Sea, there is not much doubt that the basin of the latter might
+be made accessible from the Mediterranean.
+
+The level of the Dead Sea lies 1,316.7 feet below that of the ocean. It
+is bounded east and west by mountain ridges, rising to the height of
+from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the ocean. From its southern end, a
+depression called the Wadi-el-Araba extends to the Gulf of Akaba, the
+eastern arm of the Red Sea. The Jordan empties into its northern
+extremity, after having passed through the Lake of Tiberias at an
+elevation of 663.4 feet above the Dead Sea, or 653.3 below the
+Mediterranean, and drains a considerable valley north of the lake, as
+well as the plain of Jericho, which lies between the lake and the sea.
+If the waters of the Mediterranean were admitted freely into the basin
+of the Dead Sea, they would raise its surface to the general level of
+the ocean, and consequently flood all the dry land below that level
+within the basin.
+
+I do not know that accurate levels have been taken in the valley of the
+Jordan above the Lake of Tiberias, and our information is very vague as
+to the hypsometry of the northern part of the Wadi-el-Araba. As little
+do we know where a contour line, carried around the basin at the level
+of the Mediterranean, would strike its eastern and western borders. We
+cannot, therefore, accurately compute the extent of now dry land which
+would be covered by the admission of the waters of the Mediterranean, or
+the area of the inland sea which would be thus created. Its length,
+however, would certainly exceed one hundred and fifty miles, and its
+mean breadth, including its gulfs and bays, could scarcely be less than
+fifteen, perhaps even twenty. It would cover very little ground now
+occupied by civilized or even uncivilized man, though some of the soil
+which would be submerged--for instance, that watered by the Fountain of
+Elisha and other neighboring sources--is of great fertility, and, under
+a wiser government and better civil institutions, might rise to
+importance, because, from its depression, it possesses a very warm
+climate, and might supply Southeastern Europe with tropical products
+more readily than they can be obtained from any other source. Such a
+canal and sea would be of no present commercial importance, because they
+would give access to no new markets or sources of supply; but when the
+fertile valleys and the deserted plains east of the Jordan shall be
+reclaimed to agriculture and civilization, these waters would furnish a
+channel of communication which might become the medium of a very
+extensive trade.
+
+Whatever might be the economical results of the opening and filling of
+the Dead Sea basin, the creation of a new evaporable area, adding not
+less than 2,000 or perhaps 3,000 square miles to the present fluid
+surface of Syria, could not fail to produce important meteorological
+effects. The climate of Syria would be tempered, its precipitation and
+its fertility increased, the courses of its winds and the electrical
+condition of its atmosphere modified. The present organic life of the
+valley would be extinguished, and many tribes of plants and animals
+would emigrate from the Mediterranean to the new home which human art
+had prepared for them. It is possible, too, that the addition of 1,300
+feet, or forty atmospheres, of hydrostatic pressure upon the bottom of
+the basin might disturb the equilibrium between the internal and the
+external forces of the crust of the earth at this point of abnormal
+configuration, and thus produce geological convulsions the intensity of
+which cannot be even conjectured.
+
+
+_Maritime Canals in Greece._
+
+A maritime canal executed and another projected in ancient times, the
+latter of which is again beginning to excite attention, deserve some
+notice, though their importance is of a commercial rather than a
+geographical character. The first of these is the cut made by Xerxes
+through the rock which connects the promontory of Mount Athos with the
+mainland; the other, a navigable canal through the Isthmus of Corinth.
+In spite of the testimony of Herodotus and Thucydides, the Romans
+classed the canal of Xerxes among the fables of "mendacious Greece," and
+yet traces of it are perfectly distinct at the present day through its
+whole extent, except at a single point where, after it had become so
+choked as to be no longer navigable, it was probably filled up to
+facilitate communication by land between the promontory and the country
+in the rear of it.
+
+If the fancy kingdom of Greece shall ever become a sober reality, escape
+from its tutelage and acquire such a moral as well as political status
+that its own capitalists--who now prefer to establish themselves and
+employ their funds anywhere else rather than in their native land--have
+any confidence in the permanency of its institutions, a navigable
+channel will no doubt be opened between the gulfs of Lepanto and �gina.
+The annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece will make such a work
+almost a political necessity, and it would not only furnish valuable
+facilities for domestic intercourse, but become an important channel of
+communication between the Levant and the countries bordering on the
+Adriatic, or conducting their trade through that sea.
+
+As I have said, the importance of this latter canal and of a navigable
+channel between Mount Athos and the continent would be chiefly
+commercial, but both of them would be conspicuous instances of the
+control of man over nature in a field where he has thus far done little
+to interfere with her spontaneous arrangements. If they were constructed
+upon such a scale as to admit of the free passage of the water through
+them, in either direction, as the prevailing winds should impel it, they
+would exercise a certain influence on the coast currents, which are
+important as hydrographical elements, and also as producing abrasion of
+the coast and a drift at the bottom of seas, and hence would be entitled
+to a higher rank than simply as artificial means of transit.
+
+
+_Canal of Saros._
+
+It has been thought practicable to cut a canal across the peninsula of
+Gallipoli from the outlet of the Sea of Marmora into the Gulf of Saros.
+It may be doubted whether the mechanical difficulties of such a work
+would not be found insuperable; but when Constantinople shall recover
+the important political and commercial rank which naturally belongs to
+her, the execution of such a canal will be recommended by strong reasons
+of military expediency, as well as by the interests of trade. An open
+channel across the peninsula would divert a portion of the water which
+now flows through the Dardanelles, diminish the rapidity of that
+powerful current, and thus in part remove the difficulties which
+obstruct the navigation of the strait. It would considerably abridge the
+distance by water between Constantinople and the northern coast of the
+�gean, and it would have the important advantage of obliging an enemy to
+maintain two blockading fleets instead of one.
+
+
+_Cape Cod Canal._
+
+The opening of a navigable cut through the narrow neck which separates
+the southern part of Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts from the Atlantic,
+was long ago suggested, and there are few coast improvements on the
+Atlantic shores of the United States which are recommended by higher
+considerations of utility. It would save the most important coasting
+trade of the United States the long and dangerous navigation around Cape
+Cod, afford a new and safer entrance to Boston harbor for vessels from
+Southern ports, secure a choice of passages, thus permitting arrivals
+upon the coast and departures from it at periods when wind and weather
+might otherwise prevent them, and furnish a most valuable internal
+communication in case of coast blockade by a foreign power. The
+difficulties of the undertaking are no doubt formidable, but the expense
+of maintenance and the uncertainty of the effects of currents setting
+through the new strait are still more serious objections.
+
+
+_Diversion of the Nile._
+
+Perhaps the most remarkable project of great physical change, proposed
+or threatened in earlier ages, is that of the diversion of the Nile from
+its natural channel, and the turning of its current into either the
+Libyan desert or the Red Sea. The Ethiopian or Abyssinian princes more
+than once menaced the Memlouk sultans with the execution of this
+alarming project, and the fear of so serious an evil is said to have
+induced the Moslems to conciliate the Abyssinian kings by large
+presents, and by some concessions to the oppressed Christians of
+Egypt.[484] Indeed, Arabic historians affirm that in the tenth century
+the Ethiopians dammed the river, and, for a whole year, cut off its
+waters from Egypt. The probable explanation of this story is to be found
+in a season of extreme drought, such as have sometimes occurred in the
+valley of the Nile. About the beginning of the sixteenth century,
+Albuquerque the "Terrible" revived the scheme of turning the Nile into
+the Red Sea, with the hope of destroying the transit trade through Egypt
+by way of Kesseir. In 1525 the King of Portugal was requested by the
+Emperor of Abyssinia to send him engineers for that purpose; a successor
+of that prince threatened to attempt the project about the year 1700,
+and even as late as the French occupation of Egypt, the possibility of
+driving out the intruder by this means was suggested in England.
+
+It cannot be positively affirmed that the diversion of the waters of the
+Nile to the Red Sea is impossible. In the chain of mountains which
+separates the two valleys, Brown found a deep depression or wadi,
+extending from the one to the other, at no great elevation above the bed
+of the river. The Libyan desert is so much higher than the Nile below
+the junction of the two principal branches at Khartum, that there is no
+reason to believe a new channel for their united waters could be found
+in that direction; but the Bahr-el-Abiad flows through, if it does not
+rise in, a great table land, and some of its tributaries are supposed to
+communicate in the rainy season with branches of great rivers flowing in
+quite another direction. Hence it is probable that a portion at least of
+the waters of this great arm of the Nile--and perhaps a quantity the
+abstraction of which would be sensibly felt in Egypt--might be sent to
+the Atlantic by the Niger, lost in the inland lakes of Central Africa,
+or employed to fertilize the Libyan sand wastes.
+
+Admitting the possibility of turning the whole river into the Red Sea,
+let us consider the probable effect of the change. First and most
+obvious is the total destruction of the fertility of Middle and Lower
+Egypt, the conversion of that part of the valley into a desert, and the
+extinction of its imperfect civilization, if not the absolute
+extirpation of its inhabitants. This is the calamity threatened by the
+Abyssinian princes and the ferocious Portuguese warrior, and feared by
+the sultans of Egypt. Beyond these immediate and palpable consequences
+neither party then looked; but a far wider geographical area, and far
+more extensive and various human interests, would be affected by the
+measure. The spread of the Nile during the annual inundation covers, for
+many weeks, several thousand square miles with water, and at other
+seasons of the year pervades the same and even a larger area with
+moisture by infiltration. The abstraction of so large an evaporable
+surface from the southern shores of the Mediterranean could not but
+produce important effects on many meteorological phenomena, and the
+humidity, the temperature, the electrical condition and the atmospheric
+currents of Northeastern Africa might be modified to a degree that would
+sensibly affect the climate of Europe.
+
+The Mediterranean, deprived of the contributions of the Nile, would
+require a larger supply, and of course a stronger current, of water from
+the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar; the proportion of salt it
+contains would be increased, and the animal life of at least its
+southern borders would be consequently modified; the current which winds
+along its southern, eastern, and northeastern shores would be diminished
+in force and volume, if not destroyed altogether, and its basin and its
+harbors would be shoaled by no new deposits from the highlands of inner
+Africa.
+
+In the much smaller Red Sea, more immediately perceptible, if not
+greater, effects, would be produced. The deposits of slime would reduce
+its depth, and perhaps, in the course of ages, divide it into an inland
+and an open sea; its waters would be more or less freshened, and its
+immensely rich marine fauna and flora changed in character and
+proportion, and, near the mouth of the river, perhaps even destroyed
+altogether; its navigable channels would be altered in position and
+often quite obstructed; the flow of its tides would be modified by the
+new geographical conditions; the sediment of the river would form new
+coast lines and lowlands, which would be covered with vegetation, and
+probably thereby produce sensible climatic changes.
+
+
+_Changes in the Caspian._
+
+The Russian Government has contemplated the establishment of a nearly
+direct water communication between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azoff,
+partly by natural and partly by artificial channels, and there are now
+navigable canals between the Don and the Volga; but these works, though
+not wanting in commercial and political interest, do not possess any
+geographical importance. It is, however, very possible to produce
+appreciable geographical changes in the basin of the Caspian by the
+diversion of the great rivers which flow from Central Russia. The
+surface of the Caspian is eighty-three feet below the level of the Sea
+of Azoff, and its depression has been explained upon the hypothesis that
+the evaporation exceeds the supply derived, directly and indirectly,
+from precipitation, though able physicists now maintain that the sinking
+of this sea is due to a subsidence of its bottom from geological causes.
+At Tsaritsin, the Don, which empties into the Sea of Azoff, and the
+Volga, which pours into the Caspian, approach each other within ten
+miles. Near this point, by means of open or subterranean canals, the Don
+might be turned into the Volga, or the Volga into the Don. If we suppose
+the whole or a large proportion of the waters of the Don to be thus
+diverted from their natural outlet and sent down to the Caspian, the
+equilibrium between the evaporation from that sea and its supply of
+water might be restored, or its level even raised above its ancient
+limits. If the Volga were turned into the Sea of Azoff, the Caspian
+would be reduced in dimensions until the balance between loss and gain
+should be re�stablished, and it would occupy a much smaller area than at
+present. Such changes in the proportion of solid and fluid surface would
+have some climatic effects in the territory which drains into the
+Caspian, and on the other hand, the introduction of a greater quantity
+of fresh water into the Sea of Azoff would render that gulf less saline,
+affect the character and numbers of its fish, and perhaps be not wholly
+without sensible influence on the water of the Black Sea.
+
+
+_Improvements in North American Hydrography._
+
+We are not yet well enough acquainted with the geography of Central
+Africa, or of the interior of South America, to conjecture what
+hydrographical revolutions might there be wrought; but from the fact
+that many important rivers in both continents drain extensive table
+lands, of very moderate inclination, there is reason to suppose that
+important changes in the course of rivers might be accomplished. Our
+knowledge of the drainage of North America is much more complete, and it
+is certain that there are numerous points where the courses of great
+rivers, or the discharge of considerable lakes, might be completely
+diverted, or at least partially directed into different channels.
+
+The surface of Lake Erie is 565 feet above that of the Hudson at Albany,
+and it is so near the level of the great plain lying east of it, that it
+was found practicable to supply the western section of the canal, which
+unites it with the Hudson, with water from the lake, or rather from the
+Niagara which flows out of it. Hence a channel might be constructed,
+which would draw off into the valley of the Genesee any desirable
+proportion of the water naturally discharged by the Niagara. The
+greatest depth of water yet sounded in Lake Erie is but two hundred and
+seventy feet, the mean depth one hundred and twenty. Open canals
+parallel with the Niagara, or directly toward the Genesee, might be
+executed upon a scale which would exercise an important influence on the
+drainage of the lake, if there were any adequate motive for such an
+undertaking. Still easier would it be to create additional outlets for
+the waters of Lake Superior at the Saut St. Mary--where the river which
+drains the lake descends twenty-two feet in a single mile--and thus
+produce incalculable effects, both upon that lake and upon the great
+chain of inland waters which communicate with it.
+
+The summit level between Lake Michigan and the Des Plaines, a tributary
+of the Mississippi, is only twenty-seven feet above the lake, and the
+intervening distance is but a very few miles. It has often been proposed
+to cut an open channel across this ridge, and there is no doubt of the
+practicability of the project. Were this accomplished, although such a
+cut would not, of itself, form a navigable canal, a part of the waters
+of Lake Michigan would be contributed to the Gulf of Mexico, instead of
+to that of St. Lawrence, and the flow might be so regulated as to keep
+the Illinois and the Mississippi at flood at all seasons of the year.
+The increase in the volume of these rivers would augment their velocity
+and their transporting power, and consequently, the erosion of their
+banks and the deposit of slime in the Gulf of Mexico, while the
+introduction of a larger body of cold water into the beds of these
+rivers would very probably produce a considerable effect on the animal
+life that peoples them. The diversion of water from the common basin of
+the great lakes through a new channel, in a direction opposite to their
+natural discharge, would not be absolutely without influence on the St.
+Lawrence, though probably the effect would be too small to be in any way
+perceptible.
+
+
+_Diversion of the Rhine._
+
+The interference of physical improvements with vested rights and ancient
+arrangements, is a more formidable obstacle in old countries than in
+new, to enterprises involving anything approaching to a geographical
+revolution. Hence such projects meet with stronger opposition in Europe
+than in America, and the number of probable changes in the face of
+nature in the former continent is proportionally less. I have noticed
+some important hydraulic improvements as already executed or in progress
+in Europe, and I may refer to some others as contemplated or suggested.
+One of these is the diversion of the Rhine from its present channel
+below Ragatz, by a cut through the narrow ridge near Sargans, and the
+consequent turning of its current into the Lake of Wallenstadt. This
+would be an extremely easy undertaking, for the ridge is but twenty
+feet above the level of the Rhine, and hardly two hundred yards wide.
+There is no present adequate motive for this diversion, but it is easy
+to suppose that it may become advisable within no long period. The
+navigation of the Lake of Constance is rapidly increasing in importance,
+and the shoaling of the eastern end of that lake by the deposits of the
+Rhine may require a remedy which can be found by no other so ready means
+as the discharge of that river into the Lake of Wallenstadt. The
+navigation of this latter lake is not important, nor is it ever likely
+to become so, because the rocky and precipitous character of its shores
+renders their cultivation impossible. It is of great depth, and its
+basin is capacious enough to receive and retain all the sediment which
+the Rhine would carry into it for thousands of years.
+
+
+_Draining of the Zuiderzee._
+
+I have referred to the draining of the Lake of Haarlem as an operation
+of great geographical as well as economical and mechanical interest. A
+much more gigantic project, of a similar character, is now engaging the
+attention of the Netherlandish engineers. It is proposed to drain the
+great salt-water basin called the Zuiderzee. This inland sea covers an
+area of not less than two thousand square miles, or about one million
+three hundred thousand acres. The seaward half, or that portion lying
+northwest of a line drawn from Enkhuizen to Stavoren, is believed to
+have been converted from a marsh to an open bay since the fifth century
+after Christ, and this change is ascribed, partly if not wholly, to the
+interference of man with the order of nature. The Zuiderzee communicates
+with the sea by at least six considerable channels, separated from each
+other by low islands, and the tide rises within the basin to the height
+of three feet. To drain the Zuiderzee, these channels must first be
+closed and the passage of the tidal flood through them cut off. If this
+be done, the coast currents will be restored approximately to the lines
+they followed fourteen or fifteen centuries ago, and there can be little
+doubt that an appreciable effect will thus be produced upon all the
+tidal phenomena of that coast, and, of course, upon the maritime
+geography of Holland.
+
+A ring dike and canal must then be constructed around the landward side
+of the basin, to exclude and carry off the fresh-water streams which now
+empty into it. One of these, the Ijssel, a considerable river, has a
+course of eighty miles, and is, in fact, one of the outlets of the
+Rhine, though augmented by the waters of several independent
+tributaries. These preparations being made, and perhaps transverse dikes
+erected at convenient points for dividing the gulf into smaller
+portions, the water must be pumped out by machinery, in substantially
+the same way as in the case of the Lake of Haarlem. No safe calculations
+can be made as to the expenditure of time and money required for the
+execution of this stupendous enterprise, but I believe its
+practicability is not denied by competent judges, though doubts are
+entertained as to its financial expediency. The geographical results of
+this improvement would be analogous to those of the draining of the Lake
+of Haarlem, but many times multiplied in extent, and its meteorological
+effects, though perhaps not perceptible on the coast, could hardly fail
+to be appreciable in the interior of Holland.
+
+
+_Waters of the Karst._
+
+The singular structure of the Karst, the great limestone plateau lying
+to the north of Trieste, has suggested some engineering operations which
+might be attended with sensible effects upon the geography of the
+province. I have described this table land as, though now bare of
+forests, and almost of vegetation, having once been covered with woods,
+and as being completely honeycombed by caves through which the drainage
+of that region is conducted. Schmidl has spent years in studying the
+subterranean geography and hydrography of this singular district, and
+his discoveries, and those of earlier cave-hunters, have led to various
+proposals of physical improvement of a novel character. Many of the
+underground water courses of the Karst are without visible outlet, and,
+in some instances at least, they, no doubt, send their waters, by deep
+channels, to the Adriatic.[485] The city of Trieste is very
+insufficiently provided with fresh water. It has been thought
+practicable to supply this want by tunnelling through the wall of the
+plateau, which rises abruptly in the rear of the town, until some
+subterranean stream is encountered, the current of which can be
+conducted to the city. More visionary projectors have gone further, and
+imagined that advantage might be taken of the natural tunnels under the
+Karst for the passage of roads, railways, and even navigable canals. But
+however chimerical these latter schemes may seem, there is every reason
+to believe that art might avail itself of these galleries for improving
+the imperfect drainage of the champaign country bounded by the Karst,
+and that stopping or opening the natural channels might very much modify
+the hydrography of an extensive region.
+
+
+_Subterranean Waters of Greece._
+
+There are parts of continental Greece which resemble the Karst and the
+adjacent plains in being provided with a natural subterranean drainage.
+The superfluous waters run off into limestone caves called _catavothra_
+([Greek: katabothra]). In ancient times, the entrances to the catavothra
+were enlarged or partially closed as the convenience of drainage or
+irrigation required, and there is no doubt that similar measures might
+be adopted at the present day with great advantage both to the salubrity
+and the productiveness of the regions so drained.
+
+
+_Soil below Rock._
+
+One of the most singular changes of natural surface effected by man is
+that observed by Beechey and by Barth at L�n Tefla, and near Gebel
+Gen�nes, in the district of Ben G�si, in Northern Africa. In this region
+the superficial stratum originally consisted of a thin sheet of rock
+covering a layer of fertile earth. This rock has been broken up, and,
+when not practicable to find use for it in fences, fortresses, or
+dwellings, heaped together in high piles, and the soil, thus bared of
+its stony shell, has been employed for agricultural purposes.[486] If we
+remember that gunpowder was unknown at the period when these remarkable
+improvements were executed, and of course that the rock could have been
+broken only with the chisel and wedge, we must infer that land had at
+that time a very great pecuniary value, and, of course, that the
+province, though now exhausted, and almost entirely deserted by man, had
+once a dense population.
+
+
+_Covering Rock with Earth._
+
+If man has, in some cases, broken up rock to reach productive ground
+beneath, he has, in many other instances, covered bare ledges, and
+sometimes extensive surfaces of solid stone, with fruitful earth,
+brought from no inconsiderable distance. Not to speak of the Campo Santo
+at Pisa, filled, or at least coated, with earth from the Holy Land, for
+quite a different purpose, it is affirmed that the garden of the
+monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai is composed of Nile mud,
+transported on the backs of camels from the banks of that river. Parthey
+and older authors state that all the productive soil of the Island of
+Malta was brought over from Sicily.[487] The accuracy of the
+information may be questioned in both cases, but similar practices, on a
+smaller scale, are matter of daily observation in many parts of Southern
+Europe. Much of the wine of the Moselle is derived from grapes grown on
+earth carried high up the cliffs on the shoulders of men. In China, too,
+rock has been artificially covered with earth to an extent which gives
+such operations a real geographical importance, and the accounts of the
+importation of earth at Malta, and the fertilization of the rocks on
+Mount Sinai with slime from the Nile, may be not wholly without
+foundation.
+
+
+_Wadies of Arabia, Petr�a._
+
+In the latter case, indeed, river sediment might be very useful as a
+manure, but it could hardly be needed as a soil; for the growth of
+vegetation in the wadies of the Sinaitic Peninsula shows that the
+disintegrated rock of its mountains requires only water to stimulate it
+to considerable productiveness. The wadies present, not unfrequently,
+narrow gorges, which might easily be closed, and thus accumulations of
+earth, and reservoirs of water to irrigate it, might be formed which
+would convert many a square mile of desert into flourishing date gardens
+and cornfields. Not far from Wadi Feiran, on the most direct route to
+Wadi Esh-Sheikh, is a very narrow pass called by the Arabs El Bueb (El
+Bab) or, The Gate, which might be securely closed to a very considerable
+height, with little labor or expense. Above this pass is a wide and
+nearly level expanse, containing a hundred acres, perhaps much more.
+This is filled up to a certain regular level with deposits brought down
+by torrents before the Gate, or Bueb, was broken through, and they have
+now worn down a channel in the deposits to the bed of the wadi. If a dam
+were constructed at the pass, and reservoirs built to retain the winter
+rains, a great extent of valley might be rendered cultivable.
+
+
+_Incidental Effects of Human Action._
+
+I have more than once alluded to the collateral and unsought
+consequences of human action as being often more momentous than the
+direct and desired results. There are cases where such incidental, or,
+in popular speech, accidental, consequences, though of minor importance
+in themselves, serve to illustrate natural processes; others, where, by
+the magnitude and character of the material traces they leave behind
+them, they prove that man, in primary or in more advanced stages of
+social life, must have occupied particular districts for a longer period
+than has been supposed by popular chronology. "On the coast of Jutland,"
+says Forchhammer, "wherever a bolt from a wreck or any other fragment of
+iron is deposited in the beach sand, the particles are cemented
+together, and form a very solid mass around the iron. A remarkable
+formation of this sort was observed a few years ago in constructing the
+sea wall of the harbor of Elsineur. This stratum, which seldom exceeded
+a foot in thickness, rested upon common beach sand, and was found at
+various depths, less near the shore, greater at some distance from it.
+It was composed of pebbles and sand, and contained a great quantity of
+pins, and some coins of the reign of Christian IV, between the beginning
+and the middle of the seventeenth century. Here and there, a coating of
+metallic copper had been deposited by galvanic action, and the presence
+of completely oxydized metallic iron was often detected. An
+investigation undertaken by Councillor Reinhard and myself, at the
+instance of the Society of Science, made it in the highest degree
+probable that this formation owed its origin to the street sweepings of
+the town, which had been thrown upon the beach, and carried off and
+distributed by the waves over the bottom of the harbor."[488] These and
+other familiar observations of the like sort show that a sandstone reef,
+of no inconsiderable magnitude, might originate from the stranding of a
+ship with a cargo of iron,[489] or from throwing the waste of an
+establishment for working metals into running water which might carry it
+to the sea.
+
+Parthey records a singular instance of unforeseen mischief from an
+interference with the arrangements of nature. A landowner at Malta
+possessed a rocky plateau sloping gradually toward the sea, and
+terminating in a precipice forty or fifty feet high, through natural
+openings in which the sea water flowed into a large cave under the rock.
+The proprietor attempted to establish salt works on the surface, and cut
+shallow pools in the rock for the evaporation of the water. In order to
+fill the salt pans more readily, he sank a well down to the cave
+beneath, through which he drew up water by a windlass and buckets. The
+speculation proved a failure, because the water filtered through the
+porous bottom of the pans, leaving little salt behind. But this was a
+small evil, compared with other destructive consequences that followed.
+When the sea was driven into the cave by violent west or northwest
+winds, it shot a _jet d'eau_ through the well to the height of sixty
+feet, the spray of which was scattered far and wide over the neighboring
+gardens and blasted the crops. The well was now closed with stones, but
+the next winter's storms hurled them out again, and spread the salt
+spray over the grounds in the vicinity as before. Repeated attempts were
+made to stop the orifice, but at the time of Parthey's visit the sea had
+thrice burst through, and it was feared that the evil was without
+remedy.[490]
+
+I have mentioned the great extent of the heaps of oyster and other
+shells left by the American Indians on the Atlantic coast of the United
+States. Some of the Danish kitchen-middens, which closely resemble them,
+are a thousand feet long, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred
+wide, and from six to ten high. These piles have an importance as
+geological witnesses, independent of their bearing upon human history.
+Wherever the coast line appears, from other evidence, to have remained
+unchanged in outline and elevation since they were accumulated, they are
+found near the sea, and not more than about ten feet above its level. In
+some cases they are at a considerable distance from the beach, and in
+these instances, so far as yet examined, there are proofs that the coast
+has advanced in consequence of upheaval or of fluviatile or marine
+deposit. Where they are altogether wanting, the coast seems to have sunk
+or been washed away by the sea. The constancy of these observations
+justifies geologists in arguing, where other evidence is wanting, the
+advance of land or sea respectively, or the elevation or depression of
+the former, from the position or the absence of these heaps alone.
+
+Every traveller in Italy is familiar with Monte Testaccio, the mountain
+of potsherds, at Rome; but this deposit, large as it is, shrinks into
+insignificance when compared with masses of similar origin in the
+neighborhood of older cities. The castaway pottery of ancient towns in
+Magna Gr�cia composes strata of such extent and thickness that they have
+been dignified with the appellation of the ceramic formation. The Nile,
+as it slowly changes its bed, exposes in its banks masses of the same
+material, so vast that the population of the world during the whole
+historical period would seem to have chosen this valley as a general
+deposit for its broken vessels.
+
+The fertility imparted to the banks of the Nile by the water and the
+slime of the inundations, is such that manures are little employed.
+Hence much domestic waste, which would elsewhere be employed to enrich
+the soil, is thrown out into vacant places near the town. Hills of
+rubbish are thus piled up which astonish the traveller almost as much as
+the solid pyramids themselves. The heaps of ashes and other household
+refuse collected on the borders and within the limits of Cairo were so
+large, that the removal of them by Ibrahim Pacha has been looked upon as
+one of the great works of the age.
+
+The soil near cities, the street sweepings of which are spread upon the
+ground as manure, is perceptibly raised by them and by other effects of
+human industry, and in spite of all efforts to remove the waste, the
+level of the ground on which large towns stand is constantly elevated.
+The present streets of Rome are twenty feet above those of the ancient
+city. The Appian way between Rome and Albano, when cleared out a few
+years ago, was found buried four or five feet deep, and the fields along
+the road were elevated nearly or quite as much. The floors of many
+churches in Italy, not more than six or seven centuries old, are now
+three or four feet below the adjacent streets, though it is proved by
+excavations that they were built as many feet above them.
+
+
+_Resistance to Great Natural Forces._
+
+I have often spoken of the greater and more subtile natural forces, and
+especially of geological agencies, as powers beyond human guidance or
+resistance. This is no doubt at present true in the main, but man has
+shown that he is not altogether impotent to struggle with even these
+mighty servants of nature, and his unconscious as well as his deliberate
+action may in some cases have increased or diminished the intensity of
+their energies. It is a very ancient belief that earthquakes are more
+destructive in districts where the crust of the earth is solid and
+homogeneous, than where it is of a looser and more interrupted
+structure. Aristotle, Pliny the elder, and Seneca believed that not only
+natural ravines and caves, but quarries, wells, and other human
+excavations, which break the continuity of the terrestrial strata and
+facilitate the escape of elastic vapors, have a sensible influence in
+diminishing the violence and preventing the propagation of the earth
+waves. In all countries subject to earthquakes this opinion is still
+maintained, and it is asserted that, both in ancient and in modern
+times, buildings protected by deep wells under or near them have
+suffered less from earthquakes than those the architects of which have
+neglected this precaution.[491]
+
+If the commonly received theory of the cause of earthquakes is
+true--that, namely, which ascribes them to the elastic force of gases
+accumulated or generated in subterranean reservoirs--it is evident that
+open channels of communication between such reservoirs and the
+atmosphere might serve as a harmless discharge of gases that would
+otherwise acquire destructive energy. The doubt is whether artificial
+excavations can be carried deep enough to reach the laboratory where the
+elastic fluids are distilled. There are, in many places, small natural
+crevices through which such fluids escape, and the source of them
+sometimes lies at so moderate a depth that they pervade the superficial
+soil and, as it were, transpire from it, over a considerable area. When
+the borer of an ordinary artesian well strikes into a cavity in the
+earth, imprisoned air often rushes out with great violence, and this has
+been still more frequently observed in sinking mineral-oil wells. In
+this latter case, the discharge of a vehement current of inflammable
+fluid sometimes continues for hours and even longer periods. These facts
+seem to render it not wholly improbable that the popular belief of the
+efficacy of deep wells in mitigating the violence of earthquakes is well
+founded.
+
+In general, light, wooden buildings are less injured by earthquakes than
+more solid structures of stone or brick, and it is commonly supposed
+that the power put forth by the earth wave is too great to be resisted
+by any amount of weight or solidity of mass that man can pile up upon
+the surface. But the fact that in countries subject to earthquakes many
+very large and strongly constructed palaces, temples, and other
+monuments have stood for centuries, comparatively uninjured, suggests a
+doubt whether this opinion is sound. The earthquake of the first of
+November, 1755, which was felt over a twelfth part of the earth's
+surface, was probably the most violent of which we have any clear and
+distinct account, and it seems to have exerted its most destructive
+force at Lisbon. It has often been noticed as a remarkable fact, that
+the mint, a building of great solidity, was almost wholly unaffected by
+the shock which shattered every house and church in the city, and its
+escape from the common ruin can hardly be accounted for except upon the
+supposition that its weight, compactness, and strength of material
+enabled it to resist an agitation of the earth which overthrew all
+weaker structures. On the other hand, a stone pier in the harbor of
+Lisbon, on which thousands of people had taken refuge, sank with its
+foundations to a great depth during the same earthquake; and it is plain
+that where subterranean cavities exist, at moderate depths, the erection
+of heavy masses upon them would tend to promote the breaking down of the
+strata which roof them over.
+
+No physicist, I believe, has supposed that man can avert the eruption of
+a volcano or diminish the quantity of melted rock which it pours out of
+the bowels of the earth; but it is not always impossible to divert the
+course of even a large current of lava. "The smaller streams of lava
+near Catania," says Ferrara, in describing the great eruption of 1669,
+"were turned from their course by building dry walls of stone as a
+barrier against them. * * * It was proposed to divert the main current
+from Catania, and fifty men, protected by hides, were sent with hooks
+and iron bars to break the flank of the stream near Belpasso.[492] When
+the opening was made, fluid lava poured forth and flowed rapidly toward
+Paterno; but the inhabitants of that place, not caring to sacrifice
+their own town to save Catania, rushed out in arms and put a stop to the
+operation."[493] In the eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, the viceroy saved
+from impending destruction the town of Portici, and the valuable
+collection of antiquities then deposited there but since removed to
+Naples, by employing several thousand men to dig a ditch above the town,
+by which the lava current was carried off in another direction.[494]
+
+
+_Effects of Mining._
+
+The excavations made by man, for mining and other purposes, may
+sometimes occasion disturbance of the surface by the subsidence of the
+strata above them, as in the case of the mine of Fahlun, but such
+accidents must always be too inconsiderable in extent to deserve notice
+in a geographical point of view. Such excavations, however, may
+interfere materially with the course of subterranean waters, and it has
+even been conjectured that the removal of large bodies of metallic ore
+from their original deposits might, at least locally, affect the
+magnetic and electrical condition of the earth's crust to a sensible
+degree.
+
+Accidental fires in mines of coal or lignite sometimes lead to
+consequences not only destructive to large quantities of valuable
+material, but may, directly or indirectly, produce results important in
+geography. The coal occasionally takes fire from the miners' lights or
+other fires used by them, and, if long exposed to air in deserted
+galleries, may be spontaneously kindled. Under favorable circumstances,
+a stratum of coal will burn till it is exhausted, and a cavity may be
+burnt out in a few months which human labor could not excavate in many
+years. Wittwer informs us that a coal mine at St. Etienne in Dauphiny
+has been burning ever since the fourteenth century, and that a mine near
+Duttweiler, another near Epterode, and a third at Zwickau, have been on
+fire for two hundred years. Such conflagrations not only produce
+cavities in the earth, but communicate a perceptible degree of heat to
+the surface, and the author just quoted cites cases where this heat has
+been advantageously employed in forcing vegetation.[495]
+
+
+_Espy's Theories._
+
+Espy's well known suggestion of the possibility of causing rain
+artificially, by kindling great fires, is not likely to be turned to
+practical account, but the speculations of this able meteorologist are
+not, for that reason, to be rejected as worthless. His labors exhibit
+great industry in the collection of facts, much ingenuity in dealing
+with them, remarkable insight into the laws of nature, and a ready
+perception of analogies and relations not obvious to minds less
+philosophically constituted. They have unquestionably contributed very
+essentially to the advancement of meteorological science. The
+possibility that the distribution and action of electricity may be
+considerably modified by long lines of iron railways and telegraph
+wires, is a kindred thought, and in fact rests much on the same
+foundation as the belief in the utility of lightning rods, but such
+influence is too obscure and too small to have been yet detected.
+
+
+_River Sediment._
+
+The manifestation of the internal heat of the earth at any given point
+is conditioned by the thickness of the crust at such point. The deposits
+of rivers tend to augment that thickness at their estuaries. The
+sediment of slowly flowing rivers emptying into shallow seas is spread
+over so great a surface that we can hardly imagine the foot or two of
+slime they let fall over a wide area in a century to form an element
+among even the infinitesimal quantities which compose the terms of the
+equations of nature. But some swift rivers, rolling mountains of fine
+earth, discharge themselves into deeply scooped gulfs or bays, and in
+such cases the deposit amounts, in the course of a few years, to a mass
+the transfer of which from the surface of a large basin, and its
+accumulation at a single point, may be supposed to produce other
+effects than those measurable by the sounding line. Now, almost all the
+operations of rural life, as I have abundantly shown, increase the
+liability of the soil to erosion by water. Hence, the clearing of the
+valley of the Ganges by man must have much augmented the quantity of
+earth transported by that river to the sea, and of course have
+strengthened the effects, whatever they may be, of thickening the crust
+of the earth in the Bay of Bengal. In such cases, then, human action
+must rank among geological influences.
+
+
+_Nothing Small in Nature._
+
+It is a legal maxim that "the law concerneth not itself with trifles,"
+_de minimus non curat lex_; but in the vocabulary of nature, little and
+great are terms of comparison only; she knows no trifles, and her laws
+are as inflexible in dealing with an atom as with a continent or a
+planet.[496] The human operations mentioned in the last few paragraphs,
+therefore, do act in the ways ascribed to them, though our limited
+faculties are at present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their
+immediate, still more their ultimate consequences. But our inability to
+assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance of natural
+arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the existence of such causes
+in any general view of the relations between man and nature, and we are
+never justified in assuming a force to be insignificant because its
+measure is unknown, or even because no physical effect can now be traced
+to it as its origin. The collection of phenomena must precede the
+analysis of them, and every new fact, illustrative of the action and
+reaction between humanity and the material world around it, is another
+step toward the determination of the great question, whether man is of
+nature or above her.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+[1] In the Middle Ages, feudalism, and a nominal Christianity whose
+corruptions had converted the most beneficent of religions into the most
+baneful of superstitions, perpetuated every abuse of Roman tyranny, and
+added new oppressions and new methods of extortion to those invented by
+older despotisms. The burdens in question fell most heavily on the
+provinces that had been longest colonized by the Latin race, and these
+are the portions of Europe which have suffered the greatest physical
+degradation. "Feudalism," says Blanqui, "was a concentration of
+scourges. The peasant, stripped of the inheritance of his fathers,
+became the property of inflexible, ignorant, indolent masters; he was
+obliged to travel fifty leagues with their carts whenever they required
+it; he labored for them three days in the week, and surrendered to them
+half the product of his earnings during the other three; without their
+consent he could not change his residence, or marry. And why, indeed,
+should he wish to marry, when he could scarcely save enough to maintain
+himself? The Abbot Alcuin had twenty thousand slaves, called _serfs_,
+who were forever attached to the soil. This is the great cause of the
+rapid depopulation observed in the Middle Ages, and of the prodigious
+multitude of monasteries which sprang up on every side. It was doubtless
+a relief to such miserable men to find in the cloisters a retreat from
+oppression; but the human race never suffered a more cruel outrage,
+industry never received a wound better calculated to plunge the world
+again into the darkness of the rudest antiquity. It suffices to say that
+the prediction of the approaching end of the world, industriously spread
+by the rapacious monks at this time, was received without
+terror."--_R�sum� de l'Histoire du Commerce_, p. 156.
+
+The abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s, which, in the time of Charlemagne,
+had possessed a million of acres, was, down to the Revolution,
+still so wealthy, that the personal income of the abbot was 300,000
+livres. The abbey of Saint-Denis was nearly as rich as that of
+Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s.--LAVERGNE, _�conomie Rurale de la France_,
+p. 104.
+
+Paul Louis Courier quotes from La Bruy�re the following striking picture
+of the condition of the French peasantry in his time: "One sees certain
+dark, livid, naked, sunburnt, wild animals, male and female, scattered
+over the country and attached to the soil, which they root and turn over
+with indomitable perseverance. They have, as it were, an articulate
+voice, and when they rise to their feet, they show a human face. They
+are, in fact, men; they creep at night into dens, where they live on
+black bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the labor of
+ploughing, sowing, and harvesting, and therefore deserve some small
+share of the bread they have grown." "These are his own words," adds
+Courier; "he is speaking of the fortunate peasants, of those who had
+work and bread, and they were then the few."--_P�tition � la Chambre des
+D�put�s pour les Villageois que l'on emp�che de danser._
+
+Arthur Young, who travelled in France from 1787 to 1789, gives, in the
+twenty-first chapter of his Travels, a frightful account of the burdens
+of the rural population even at that late period. Besides the regular
+governmental taxes, and a multitude of heavy fines imposed for trifling
+offences, he enumerates about thirty seignorial rights, the very origin
+and nature of some of which are now unknown, while those of some others,
+claimed and enforced by ecclesiastical as well as by temporal lords, are
+as repulsive to humanity and morality, as the worst abuses ever
+practised by heathen despotism. Most of these, indeed, had been commuted
+for money payments, and were levied on the peasantry as pecuniary
+imposts for the benefit of prelates and lay lords, who, by virtue of
+their nobility, were exempt from taxation. Who can wonder at the
+hostility of the French plebeian classes toward the aristocracy in the
+days of the Revolution?
+
+[2] The temporary depopulation of an exhausted soil may be, in some
+cases, a physical, though, like fallows in agriculture, a dear-bought
+advantage. Under favorable circumstances, the withdrawal of man and his
+flocks allows the earth to clothe itself again with forests, and in a
+few generations to recover its ancient productiveness. In the Middle
+Ages, worn-out fields were depopulated, in many parts of the Continent,
+by civil and ecclesiastical tyrannies, which insisted on the surrender
+of the half of a loaf already too small to sustain its producer. Thus
+abandoned, these lands often relapsed into the forest state, and, some
+centuries later, were again brought under cultivation with renovated
+fertility.
+
+[3] The subject of climatic change, with and without reference to human
+action as a cause, has been much discussed by Moreau de Jonnes, Dureau,
+de la Malle, Arago, Humboldt, Fuster, Gasparin, Becquerel, and many
+other writers in Europe, and by Noah Webster, Forry, Drake, and others
+in America. Fraas has endeavored to show, by the history of vegetation
+in Greece, not merely that clearing and cultivation have affected
+climate, but that change of climate has essentially modified the
+character of vegetable life. See his _Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der
+Zeit_.
+
+[4]
+
+  Gods Almagt wenkte van den troon,
+  En schiep elk volk een land ter woon:
+  Hier vestte Zij een grondgebied,
+  Dat Zij ons zelven scheppen liet.
+
+[5] The udometric measurements of Belgrand, reported in the _Annales
+Foresti�res_ for 1854, and discussed by Vall�s in chap. vi of his
+_�tudes sur les Inondations_, constitute the earliest, and, in some
+respects, the most remarkable series known to me, of persevering and
+systematic observations bearing directly and exclusively upon the
+influence of human action on climate, or, to speak more accurately,
+on precipitation and natural drainage. The conclusions of Belgrand,
+however, and of Vall�s, who adopts them, have not been generally
+accepted by the scientific world, and they seem to have been, in part
+at least, refuted by the arguments of H�ricourt and the observations
+of Cantegril, Jeandel, and Belland. See chapter iii: _The Woods_.
+
+[6] Verses addressed by G. C. to Sir Walter Raleigh.--HAKLUYT, i, p.
+668.
+
+[7]
+
+  ----I troer, at Synets Sands er lagt i �iet,
+  Mens dette kun er Redskab. Synet str�mmer
+  Fra Sj�lens Dyb, og �iets fine Nerver
+  Gaae ud fra Hjernens hemmelige V�rksted.
+                     HENRIK HERTZ, _Kong Ren�'s Datter_, sc. ii.
+
+  In the material eye, you think, sight lodgeth!
+  The _eye_ is but an organ. _Seeing_ streameth
+  From the soul's inmost depths. The fine perceptive
+  Nerve springeth from the brain's mysterious workshop.
+
+[8] Skill in marksmanship, whether with firearms or with other
+projectile weapons, depends more upon the training of the eye than is
+generally supposed, and I have often found particularly good shots to
+possess an almost telescopic vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle,
+the barrel serves as a guide to the eye, but there are sportsmen who
+fire with the but of the gun at the hip. In this case, as in the use of
+the sling, the lasso, and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see BABINET,
+_Lectures_, vii, p. 84), in throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a
+stone, and in the employment of the blow pipe and the bow, the movements
+of the hand and arm are guided by that mysterious sympathy which exists
+between the eye and the unseeing organs of the body.
+
+In shooting the tortoises of the Amazon and its tributaries, the Indians
+use an arrow with a long twine and a float attached to it. Av�-Lallemant
+(_Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom_, p. 32) thus describes
+their mode of aiming: "As the arrow, if aimed directly at the floating
+tortoise, would strike it at a small angle, and glance from its flat and
+wet shell, the archers have a peculiar method of shooting. They are able
+to calculate exactly their own muscular effort, the velocity of the
+stream, the distance and size of the tortoise, and they shoot the arrow
+directly up into the air, so that it falls almost vertically upon the
+shell of the tortoise, and sticks in it." Analogous calculations--if
+such physico-mental operations can properly be so called--are made in
+the use of other missiles; for no projectile flies in a right line to
+its mark. But the exact training of the eye lies at the bottom of all of
+them, and marksmanship depends almost wholly upon the power of that
+organ, whose directions the blind muscles implicitly follow. It is
+perhaps not out of place to observe here that our English word aim comes
+from the Latin �stimo, I calculate or estimate. See WEDGWOOD'S
+_Dictionary of English Etymology_, and the note to the American edition,
+under _Aim_.
+
+Another proof of the control of the limbs by the eye has been observed
+in deaf-and-dumb schools, and others where pupils are first taught to
+write on large slates or blackboards. The writing is in large
+characters, the small letters being an inch or more high. They are
+formed with chalk or a slate pencil firmly grasped in the fingers, and
+by appropriate motions of the wrist, elbow, and shoulder, not of the
+finger joints. Nevertheless, when a pen is put into the hand of a pupil
+thus taught, his handwriting, though produced by a totally different set
+of muscles and muscular movements, is identical in character with that
+which he has practised on the blackboard.
+
+It has been much doubted whether the artists of the classic ages
+possessed a more perfect sight than those of modern times, or whether,
+in executing their minute mosaics and gem engravings, they used
+magnifiers. Glasses ground convex have been found at Pompeii, but they
+are too rudely fashioned and too imperfectly polished to have been of
+any practical use for optical purposes. But though the ancient artists
+may have had a microscopic vision, their astronomers cannot have had a
+telescopic power of sight; for they did not discover the satellites of
+Jupiter, which are often seen with the naked eye at Oormeeah, in Persia,
+and sometimes, as I can testify by personal observation, at Cairo.
+
+For a very remarkable account of the restoration of vision impaired from
+age, by judicious training, see _Lessons in Life_, by TIMOTHY TITCOMB,
+lesson xi.
+
+[9] _Antiquity of Man_, p. 377.
+
+[10] "One of them [the Indians] seated himself near me, and made from a
+fragment of quartz, with a simple piece of round bone, one end of which
+was hemispherical, with a small crease in it (as if worn by a thread)
+the sixteenth of an inch deep, an arrow head which was very sharp and
+piercing, and such as they use on all their arrows. The skill and
+rapidity with which it was made, without a blow, but by simply breaking
+the sharp edges with the creased bone by the strength of his hands--for
+the crease merely served to prevent the instrument from slipping,
+affording no leverage--was remarkable."--_Reports of Explorations and
+Surveys for Pacific Railroad_, vol. ii, 1855, _Lieut._ BECKWITH'S
+_Report_, p. 43.
+
+It has been said that stone weapons are not found in Sicily, except in
+certain caves half filled with the skeletons of extinct animals. If they
+have not been found in that island in more easily accessible localities,
+I suspect it is because eyes familiar with such objects have not sought
+for them. In January, 1854, I picked up an arrow head of quartz in a
+little ravine or furrow just washed out by a heavy rain, in a field near
+the Simeto. It is rudely fashioned, but its artificial character and its
+special purpose are quite unequivocal.
+
+[11] Probably no cultivated vegetable affords so good an opportunity of
+studying the laws of acclimation of plants as maize or Indian corn.
+Maize is grown from the tropics to at least lat. 47� in Northeastern
+America, and farther north in Europe. Every two or three degrees of
+latitude brings you to a new variety, with new climatic adaptations, and
+the capacity of the plant to accommodate itself to new conditions of
+temperature and season seems almost unlimited. We may easily suppose a
+variety of this grain, which had become acclimated in still higher
+latitudes, to have been lost, and in such case the failure to raise a
+crop from seed brought from some distance to the south would not prove
+that the climate had become colder.
+
+Many persons now living remember that, when the common tomato was first
+introduced into Northern New England, it often failed to ripen; but, in
+the course of a very few years, it completely adapted itself to the
+climate, and now not only matures both its fruit and its seeds with as
+much certainty as any cultivated vegetable, but regularly propagates
+itself by self-sown seed. Meteorological observations, however, do not
+show any amelioration of the summer climate in those States within that
+period. See _Appendix_, No. 1.
+
+Maize and the tomato, if not new to human use, have not been long known
+to civilization, and were, very probably, reclaimed and domesticated at
+a much more recent period than the plants which form the great staples
+of agricultural husbandry in Europe and Asia. Is the great power of
+accomodation to climate possessed by them due to this circumstance?
+There is some reason to suppose that the character of maize has been
+sensibly changed by cultivation in South America; for, according to
+P�ppig, the ears of this grain found in old Peruvian tombs belong to
+varieties not now known in Peru.--_Travels in Peru_, chap. vii.
+
+[12] The cultivation of madder is said to have been introduced into
+Europe by an Oriental in the year 1765, and it was first planted in the
+neighborhood of Avignon. Of course, it has been grown in that district
+for less than a century; but upon soils where it has been a frequent
+crop, it is already losing much of its coloring properties.--LAVERGNE,
+_�conomie Rurale de la France_, pp. 259-291.
+
+I believe there is no doubt that the cultivation of madder in the
+vicinity of Avignon is of recent introduction; but it appears from
+Fuller and other evidence, that this plant was grown in Europe before
+the middle of the seventeenth century. The madder brought to France from
+Persia may be of a different species, or, at least, variety. "Some two
+years since," says Fuller, "madder was sown by Sir Nicholas Crispe at
+Debtford, and I hope will have good success; first because it groweth in
+Zeland in the same (if not a more _northern_) _latitude_. Secondly,
+because _wild madder_ grows here in abundance; and why may not _tame
+madder_ if _cicurated_ by art. Lastly, because as good as any grew some
+thirty years since at Barn-Elms, in Surrey, though it quit not cost
+through some error in the first planter thereof, which now we hope will
+be rectified."--FULLER, _Worthies of England_, ii, pp. 57, 58.
+
+Perhaps the recent diseases of the olive, the vine, and the
+silkworm--the prevailing malady of which insect is supposed by some to
+be the effect of an incipient decay of the mulberry tree--may be, in
+part, due to changes produced in the character of the soil by exhaustion
+through long cultivation.
+
+[13] In many parts of New England there are tracts, miles in extent, and
+presenting all varieties of surface and exposure, which were partially
+cleared sixty or seventy years ago, and where little or no change in the
+proportion of cultivated ground, pasturage, and woodland has taken place
+since. In some cases, these tracts compose basins apparently scarcely at
+all exposed to any local influence in the way of percolation or
+infiltration of water toward or from neighboring valleys. But in such
+situations, apart from accidental disturbances, the ground is growing
+drier and drier, from year to year, springs are still disappearing, and
+rivulets still diminishing in their summer supply of water. A probable
+explanation of this is to be found in the rapid drainage of the surface
+of cleared ground, which prevents the subterranean natural reservoirs,
+whether cavities or merely strata of bibulous earth, from filling up.
+How long this process is to last before an equilibrium is reached, none
+can say. It may be, for years; it may be, for centuries.
+
+Livingstone states facts which favor the supposition that a secular
+desiccation is still going on in central Africa. When the regions where
+the earth is growing drier were cleared of wood, or, indeed, whether
+forests ever grew there, we are unable to say, but the change appears to
+have been long in progress. There is reason to suspect a similar
+revolution in Arabia Petr�a. In many of the wadis, and particularly in
+the gorges between Wadi Feiran and Wadi Esh Sheikh, there are water-worn
+banks showing that, at no very remote period, the winter floods must
+have risen fifty feet in channels where the growth of acacias and
+tamarisks and the testimony of the Arabs concur to prove that they have
+not risen six feet within the memory or tradition of the present
+inhabitants. There is little probability that any considerable part of
+the Sinaitic peninsula has been wooded since its first occupation by
+man, and we must seek the cause of its increasing dryness elsewhere than
+in the removal of the forest.
+
+[14] The soil of newly subdued countries is generally in a high degree
+favorable to the growth of the fruits of the garden and the orchard, but
+usually becomes much less so in a very few years. Plums, of many
+varieties, were formerly grown, in great perfection and abundance, in
+many parts of New England where at present they can scarcely be reared
+at all; and the peach, which, a generation or two ago, succeeded
+admirably in the southern portion of the same States, has almost ceased
+to be cultivated there. The disappearance of these fruits is partly due
+to the ravages of insects, which have in later years attacked them; but
+this is evidently by no means the sole, or even the principal cause of
+their decay. In these cases, it is not to the exhaustion of the
+particular acres on which the fruit trees have grown that we are to
+ascribe their degeneracy, but to a general change in the condition of
+the soil or the air; for it is equally impossible to rear them
+successfully on absolutely new land in the neighborhood of grounds
+where, not long since, they bore the finest fruit.
+
+I remember being told, many years ago, by one of the earliest settlers
+of the State of Ohio, a very intelligent and observing person, that the
+apple trees raised there from seed sown soon after the land was cleared,
+bore fruit in less than half the time required to bring to bearing those
+reared from seed sown when the ground had been twenty years under
+cultivation.
+
+In the peat mosses of Denmark, Scotch firs and other trees not now
+growing in the same localities, are found in abundance. Every generation
+of trees leaves the soil in a different state from that in which it
+found it; every tree that springs up in a group of trees of another
+species than its own, grows under different influences of light and
+shade and atmosphere from its predecessors. Hence the succession of
+crops, which occurs in all natural forests, seems to be due rather to
+changes of condition than of climate. See chapter iii, _post_.
+
+[15] The nomenclature of meteorology is vague and sometimes equivocal.
+Not long since, it was suspected that the observers reporting to a
+scientific institution did not agree in their understanding of the mode
+of expressing the direction of the wind prescribed by their
+instructions. It was found, upon inquiry, that very many of them used
+the names of the compass-points to indicate the quarter _from_ which the
+wind blew, while others employed them to signify the quarter _toward_
+which the atmospheric currents were moving. In some instances, the
+observers were no longer within the reach of inquiry, and of course
+their tables of the wind were of no value.
+
+"Winds," says Mrs. Somerville, "are named from the points whence they
+blow, currents exactly the reverse. An easterly wind comes from the
+east; whereas an easterly current comes from the west, and flows toward
+the east."--_Physical Geography_, p. 229.
+
+There is no philological ground for this distinction, and it probably
+originated in a confusion of the terminations _-wardly_ and _-erly_,
+both of which are modern. The root of the former ending implies the
+direction _to_ or _to-ward_ which motion is supposed. It corresponds to,
+and is probably allied with, the Latin _versus_. The termination _-erly_
+is a corruption or softening of _-ernly_, easterly for easternly, and
+many authors of the seventeenth century so write it. In Hakluyt (i, p.
+2), _easterly_ is applied to place, "_easterly_ bounds," and means
+_eastern_. In a passage in Drayton, "_easterly_ winds" must mean winds
+_from_ the east; but the same author, in speaking of nations, uses
+_northerly_ for _northern_. Hakewell says: "The sonne cannot goe more
+_southernely_ from vs, nor come more _northernely_ towards vs." Holland,
+in his translation of Pliny, referring to the moon has: "When shee is
+_northerly_," and "shee is gone _southerly_." Richardson, to whom I am
+indebted for the above citations, quotes a passage from Dampier where
+_westerly_ is applied to the wind, but the context does not determine
+the direction. The only example of the termination in _-wardly_ given by
+this lexicographer is from Donne, where it means _toward_ the west.
+
+Shakspeare, in _Hamlet_ (v. ii), uses _northerly_ wind for wind _from_
+the north. Milton does not employ either of these terminations, nor were
+they known to the Anglo-Saxons, who, however, had adjectives of
+direction in _-an_ or _-en_, _-ern_ and _-weard_, the last always
+meaning the point _toward_ which motion is supposed, the others that
+_from_ which it proceeds.
+
+We use an _east_ wind, an _eastern_ wind, and an _easterly_ wind, to
+signify the same thing. The two former expressions are old, and constant
+in meaning; the last is recent, superfluous, and equivocal. See
+_Appendix_, No. 2.
+
+[16] I do not here speak of the vast prairie region of the Mississippi
+valley, which cannot properly be said ever to have been a field of
+British colonization; but of the original colonies, and their
+dependencies in the territory of the present United States, and in
+Canada. It is, however, equally true of the Western prairies as of the
+Eastern forest land, that they had arrived at a state of equilibrium,
+though under very different conditions.
+
+[17] The great fire of Miramichi in 1825, probably the most extensive
+and terrific conflagration recorded in authentic history, spread its
+ravages over nearly six thousand square miles, chiefly of woodland, and
+was of such intensity that it seemed to consume the very soil itself.
+But so great are the recuperative powers of nature, that, in twenty-five
+years, the ground was thickly covered again with trees of fair
+dimensions, except where cultivation and pasturage kept down the forest
+growth.
+
+[18] The English nomenclature of this geographical feature does not seem
+well settled. We have _bog_, _swamp_, _marsh_, _morass_,_ moor_, _fen_,
+_turf moss_, _peat moss_, _quagmire_, all of which, though sometimes
+more or less accurately discriminated, are often used interchangeably,
+or are perhaps employed, each exclusively, in a particular district. In
+Sweden, where, especially in the Lappish provinces, this terr-aqueous
+formation is very extensive and important, the names of its different
+kinds are more specific in their application. The general designation of
+all soils permanently pervaded with water is _K�rr_. The elder L�stadius
+divides the _K�rr_ into two genera: _Myror_ (sing. _myra_), and _Mossar_
+(sing. _mosse_). "The former," he observes, "are grass-grown, and
+overflowed with water through almost the whole summer; the latter are
+covered with mosses and always moist, but very seldom overflowed." He
+enumerates the following species of _Myra_, the character of which will
+perhaps be sufficiently understood by the Latin terms into which he
+translates the vernacular names, for the benefit of strangers not
+altogether familiar with the language and the subject: 1. _H�myror_,
+paludes graminos�. 2. _Dy_, paludes profund�. 3. _Flarkmyror_, or proper
+_k�rr_, paludes limos�. 4. _Fj�llmyror_, paludes uliginos�. 5.
+_Tufmyror_, paludes c�spitos�. 6. _Rismyror_, paludes virgat�. 7.
+_Starr�ngar_, prata irrigata, with their subdivisions, dry _starr�ngar_
+or _ris�ngar_, wet _starr�ngar_ and _fr�kengropar_. 8. _P�lar_, laeun�.
+9. _G�lar_, foss� inundat�. The _Mossar_, paludes turfos�, which are of
+great extent, have but two species: 1. _Torfmossar_, called also
+_Mossmyror_ and _Snottermyror_, and, 2. _Bj�rnmossar_.
+
+The accumulations of stagnant or stagnating water originating in bogs
+are distinguished into _Tr[=a]sk_, stagna, and _Tjernar_ or _Tj�rnar_
+(sing. _Tjern_ or _Tj�rn_), stagnatiles. _Tr[=a]sk_ are pools fed by
+bogs, or water emanating from them, and their bottoms are slimy;
+_Tjernar_ are small _Tr�sk_ situated within the limits of _Mossar_.--L.
+L. L�STADIUS, _om M�jligheten af Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, pp. 23, 24.
+
+[19] Although the quantity of bog land in New England is less than in
+many other regions of equal area, yet there is a considerable extent of
+this formation in some of the Northeastern States. Dana (_Manual of
+Geology_, p. 614) states that the quantity of peat in Massachusetts is
+estimated at 120,000,000 cords, or nearly 569,000,000 cubic yards, but
+he does not give either the area or the depth of the deposits. In any
+event, however, bogs cover but a small percentage of the territory in
+any of the Northern States, while it is said that one tenth of the whole
+surface of Ireland is composed of bogs, and there are still extensive
+tracts of undrained marsh in England.
+
+Bogs, independently of their importance in geology as explaining the
+origin of some kinds of mineral coal, have a present value as
+repositories of fuel. Peat beds have sometimes a thickness of ten or
+twelve yards, or even more. A depth of ten yards would give 48,000 cubic
+yards to the acre. The greatest quantity of firewood yielded by the
+forests of New England to the acre is 100 cords solid measure, or 474
+cubic yards; but this comprises only the trunks and larger branches. If
+we add the small branches and twigs, it is possible that 600 cubic yards
+might, in some cases, be cut on an acre. This is only one eightieth part
+of the quantity of peat sometimes found on the same area. It is true
+that a yard of peat and a yard of wood are not the equivalents of each
+other, but the fuel on an acre of deep peat is worth much more than that
+on an acre of the best woodland. Besides this, wood is perishable, and
+the quantity on an acre cannot be increased beyond the amount just
+stated; peat is indestructible, and the beds are always growing.
+
+[20] "Aquatic plants have a utility in raising the level of marshy
+grounds, which renders them very valuable, and may well be called a
+geological function. * * *
+
+"The engineer drains ponds at a great expense by lowering the surface of
+the water; nature attains the same end, gratuitously, by raising the
+level of the soil without depressing that of the water; but she proceeds
+more slowly. There are, in the Landes, marshes where this natural
+filling has a thickness of four m�tres, and some of them, at first lower
+than the sea, have been thus raised and drained so as to grow summer
+crops, such, for example, as maize."--BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des Terres
+pauvres_, p. 227.
+
+The bogs of Denmark--the examination of which by Steenstrup and Vaupell
+has presented such curious results with respect to the natural
+succession of forest trees--appear to have gone through this gradual
+process of drying, and the birch, which grows freely in very wet soils,
+has contributed very effectually by its annual deposits to raise the
+surface above the water level, and thus to prepare the ground for the
+oak.--VAUPELL, _B�gens Indvandring_, pp. 39, 40.
+
+[21] Careful examination of the peat mosses in North Sj�lland--which are
+so abundant in fossil wood that, within thirty years, they have yielded
+above a million of trees--shows that the trees have generally fallen
+from age and not from wind. They are found in depressions on the
+declivities of which they grew, and they lie with the top lowest, always
+falling toward the bottom of the valley.--VAUPELL, _B�gens Indvandring i
+de Danske Skove_, pp. 10, 14.
+
+[22] The locust insect, _Clitus pictus_, which deposits its eggs in the
+American locust, _Robinia pseudacacia_, is one of these, and its ravages
+have been and still are most destructive to that very valuable tree, so
+remarkable for combining rapidity of growth with strength and durability
+of wood. This insect, I believe, has not yet appeared in Europe, where,
+since the so general employment of the _Robinia_ to clothe and protect
+embankments and the scarps of deep cuts on railroads, it would do
+incalculable mischief. As a traveller, however, I should find some
+compensation for this evil in the destruction of these acacia hedges,
+which as completely obstruct the view on hundreds of miles of French and
+Italian railways, as the garden walls of the same countries do on the
+ordinary roads. See _Appendix_, No. 4.
+
+[23] In the artificial woods of Europe, insects are far more numerous
+and destructive to trees than in the primitive forests of America, and
+the same remark may be made of the smaller rodents, such as moles, mice,
+and squirrels. In the dense native wood, the ground and the air are too
+humid, the depth of shade too great for many tribes of these creatures,
+while near the natural meadows and other open grounds, where
+circumstances are otherwise more favorable for their existence and
+multiplication, their numbers are kept down by birds, serpents, foxes,
+and smaller predacious quadrupeds. In civilized countries, these natural
+enemies of the worm, the beetle and the mole, are persecuted, sometimes
+almost exterminated, by man, who also removes from his plantations the
+decayed or wind-fallen trees, the shrubs and underwood, which, in a
+state of nature, furnished food and shelter to the borer and the rodent,
+and often also to the animals that preyed upon them. Hence the insect
+and the gnawing quadruped are allowed to increase, from the expulsion of
+the police which, in the natural wood, prevent their excessive
+multiplication, and they become destructive to the forest because they
+are driven to the living tree for nutriment and cover. The forest of
+Fontainebleau is almost wholly without birds, and their absence is
+ascribed by some writers to the want of water, which, in the thirsty
+sands of that wood, does not gather into running brooks; but the want of
+undergrowth is perhaps an equally good reason for their scarcity. In a
+wood of spontaneous growth, ordered and governed by nature, the squirrel
+does not attack trees, or at least the injury he may do is too trifling
+to be perceptible, but he is a formidable enemy to the plantation. "The
+squirrels bite the cones of the pine and consume the seed which might
+serve to restock the wood; they do still more mischief by gnawing off,
+near the leading shoot, a strip of bark, and thus often completely
+girdling the tree. Trees so injured must be felled, as they would never
+acquire a vigorous growth. The squirrel is especially destructive to the
+pine in Sologne, where he gnaws the bark of tress twenty or twenty-five
+years old." But even here, nature sometimes provides a compensation, by
+making the appetite of this quadruped serve to prevent an excessive
+production of seed cones, which tends to obstruct the due growth of the
+leading shoot. "In some of the pineries of Brittany which produce cones
+so abundantly as to strangle the development of the leading shoot of the
+maritime pine, it has been observed that the pines are most vigorous
+where the squirrels are most numerous, a result attributed to the
+repression of the cones by this rodent."--BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des
+Terres pauvres_, p. 50. See _Appendix_, No. 5.
+
+[24] The terrible destructiveness of man is remarkably exemplified in
+the chase of large mammalia and birds for single products, attended with
+the entire waste of enormous quantities of flesh, and of other parts of
+the animal, which are capable of valuable uses. The wild cattle of South
+America are slaughtered by millions for their hides and horns; the
+buffalo of North America for his skin or his tongue; the elephant, the
+walrus, and the narwhal for their tusks; the cetacea, and some other
+marine animals, for their oil and whalebone; the ostrich and other large
+birds, for their plumage. Within a few years, sheep have been killed in
+New England by whole flocks, for their pelts and suet alone, the flesh
+being thrown away; and it is even said that the bodies of the same
+quadrupeds have been used in Australia as fuel for limekilns. What a
+vast amount of human nutriment, of bone, and of other animal products
+valuable in the arts, is thus recklessly squandered! In nearly all these
+cases, the part which constitutes the motive for this wholesale
+destruction, and is alone saved, is essentially of insignificant value
+as compared with what is thrown away. The horns and hide of an ox are
+not economically worth a tenth part as much as the entire carcass.
+
+One of the greatest benefits to be expected from the improvements of
+civilization is, that increased facilities of communication will render
+it possible to transport to places of consumption much valuable material
+that is now wasted because the price at the nearest market will not pay
+freight. The cattle slaughtered in South America for their hides would
+feed millions of the starving population of the Old World, if their
+flesh could be economically preserved and transported across the ocean.
+
+We are beginning to learn a better economy in dealing with the inorganic
+world. The utilization--or, as the Germans more happily call it, the
+Verwerthung, the _beworthing_--of waste from metallurgical, chemical,
+and manufacturing establishments, is among the most important results of
+the application of science to industrial purposes. The incidental
+products from the laboratories of manufacturing chemists often become
+more valuable than those for the preparation of which they were erected.
+The slags from silver refineries, and even from smelting houses of the
+coarser metals, have not unfrequently yielded to a second operator a
+better return than the first had derived from dealing with the natural
+ore; and the saving of lead carried off in the smoke of furnaces has, of
+itself, given a large profit on the capital invested in the works. A few
+years ago, an officer of an American mint was charged with embezzling
+gold committed to him for coinage. He insisted, in his defence, that
+much of the metal was volatilized and lost in refining and melting, and
+upon scraping the chimneys of the melting furnaces and the roofs of the
+adjacent houses, gold enough was found in the soot to account for no
+small part of the deficiency.
+
+[25] It is an interesting and not hitherto sufficiently noticed fact,
+that the domestication of the organic world, so far as it has yet been
+achieved, belongs, not indeed to the savage state, but to the earliest
+dawn of civilization, the conquest of inorganic nature almost as
+exclusively to the most advanced stages of artificial culture. It is
+familiarly known to all who have occupied themselves with the psychology
+and habits of the ruder races, and of persons with imperfectly developed
+intellects in civilized life, that although these humble tribes and
+individuals sacrifice, without scruple, the lives of the lower animals
+to the gratification of their appetites and the supply of their other
+physical wants, yet they nevertheless seem to cherish with brutes, and
+even with vegetable life, sympathies which are much more feebly felt by
+civilized men. The popular traditions of the simpler peoples recognize a
+certain community of nature between man, brute animals, and even plants;
+and this serves to explain why the apologue or fable, which ascribes the
+power of speech and the faculty of reason to birds, quadrupeds, insects,
+flowers, and trees, is one of the earliest forms of literary
+composition.
+
+In almost every wild tribe, some particular quadruped or bird, though
+persecuted as a destroyer of more domestic beasts, or hunted for food,
+is regarded with peculiar respect, one might almost say, affection. Some
+of the North American aboriginal nations celebrate a propitiatory feast
+to the manes of the intended victim before they commence a bear hunt;
+and the Norwegian peasantry have not only retained an old proverb which
+ascribes to the same animal "_ti M[oe]nds Styrke og tolv M[oe]nds Vid_,"
+ten men's strength and twelve men's cunning, but they still pay to him
+something of the reverence with which ancient superstition invested him.
+The student of Icelandic literature will find in the saga of _Finnbogi
+hinn rami_ a curious illustration of this feeling, in an account of a
+dialogue between a Norwegian bear and an Icelandic champion--dumb show
+on the part of Bruin, and chivalric words on that of Finnbogi--followed
+by a duel, in which the latter, who had thrown away his arms and armor
+in order that the combatants might meet on equal terms, was victorious.
+Drummond Hay's very interesting work on Morocco contains many amusing
+notices of a similar feeling entertained by the Moors toward the
+redoubtable enemy of their flocks--the lion.
+
+This sympathy helps us to understand how it is that most if not all the
+domestic animals--if indeed they ever existed in a wild state--were
+appropriated, reclaimed and trained before men had been gathered into
+organized and fixed communities, that almost every known esculent plant
+had acquired substantially its present artificial character, and that
+the properties of nearly all vegetable drugs and poisons were known at
+the remotest period to which historical records reach. Did nature bestow
+upon primitive man some instinct akin to that by which she teaches the
+brute to select the nutritious and to reject the noxious vegetables
+indiscriminately mixed in forest and pasture?
+
+This instinct, it must be admitted, is far from infallible, and, as has
+been hundreds of times remarked by naturalists, it is in many cases not
+an original faculty but an acquired and transmitted habit. It is a fact
+familiar to persons engaged in sheep husbandry in New England--and I
+have seen it confirmed by personal observation--that sheep bred where
+the common laurel, as it is called, _Kalmia angustifolia_, abounds,
+almost always avoid browsing upon the leaves of that plant, while those
+brought from districts where laurel is unknown, and turned into pastures
+where it grows, very often feed upon it and are poisoned by it. A
+curious acquired and hereditary instinct, of a different character, may
+not improperly be noticed here. I refer to that by which horses bred in
+provinces where quicksands are common avoid their dangers or extricate
+themselves from them. See BR�MONTIER, _M�moire sur les Dunes, Annales
+des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1833: _premier s�mestre_, pp. 155-157.
+
+It is commonly said in New England, and I believe with reason, that the
+crows of this generation are wiser than their ancestors. Scarecrows
+which were effectual fifty years ago are no longer respected by the
+plunderers of the cornfield, and new terrors must from time to time be
+invented for its protection. See _Appendix_, No. 6.
+
+Civilization has added little to the number of vegetable or animal
+species grown in our fields or bred in our folds, while, on the
+contrary, the subjugation of the inorganic forces, and the consequent
+extension of man's sway over, not the annual products of the earth only,
+but her substance and her springs of action, is almost entirely the work
+of highly refined and cultivated ages. The employment of the elasticity
+of wood and of horn, as a projectile power in the bow, is nearly
+universal among the rudest savages. The application of compressed air to
+the same purpose, in the blowpipe, is more restricted, and the use of
+the mechanical powers, the inclined plane, the wheel and axle, and even
+the wedge and lever, seems almost unknown except to civilized man. I
+have myself seen European peasants to whom one of the simplest
+applications of this latter power was a revelation.
+
+[26] The difference between the relations of savage life, and of
+incipient civilization, to nature, is well seen in that part of the
+valley of the Mississippi which was once occupied by the mound builders
+and afterward by the far less developed Indian tribes. When the tillers
+of the fields, which must have been cultivated to sustain the large
+population that once inhabited those regions perished, or were driven
+out, the soil fell back to the normal forest state, and the savages who
+succeeded the more advanced race interfered very little, if at all, with
+the ordinary course of spontaneous nature.
+
+[27] There is a possible--but only a possible--exception in the case of
+the American bison. See note on that subject in chap. iii, _post_.
+
+[28] Whatever may be thought of the modification of organic species by
+natural selection, there is certainly no evidence that animals have
+exerted upon any form of life an influence analogous to that of
+domestication upon plants, quadrupeds, and birds reared artificially by
+man; and this is as true of unforeseen as of purposely effected
+improvements accomplished by voluntary selection of breeding animals.
+
+[29] ----"And it may be remarked that, as the world has passed through
+these several stages of strife to produce a Christendom, so by relaxing
+in the enterprises it has learnt, does it tend downwards, through
+inverted steps, to wildness and the waste again. Let a people give up
+their contest with moral evil; disregard the injustice, the ignorance,
+the greediness, that may prevail among them, and part more and more with
+the Christian element of their civilization; and in declining this
+battle with sin, they will inevitably get embroiled with men. Threats of
+war and revolution punish their unfaithfulness; and if then, instead of
+retracing their steps, they yield again, and are driven before the
+storm, the very arts they had created, the structures they had raised,
+the usages they had established, are swept away; 'in that very day their
+thoughts perish.' The portion they had reclaimed from the young earth's
+ruggedness is lost; and failing to stand fast against man, they finally
+get embroiled with nature, and are thrust down beneath her ever-living
+hand."--MARTINEAU'S _Sermon_, "_The Good Soldier of Jesus Christ_."
+
+[30] The dependence of man upon the aid of spontaneous nature, in his
+most arduous material works, is curiously illustrated by the fact that
+one of the most serious difficulties to be encountered in executing the
+proposed gigantic scheme of draining the Zuiderzee in Holland, is that
+of procuring brushwood for the fascines to be employed in the
+embankments. See DIGGELEN'S pamphlet, "_Groote Werken in Nederland_."
+
+[31] In heavy storms, the force of the waves as they strike against a
+sea wall is from one and a half to two tons to the square foot, and
+Stevenson, in one instance at Skerryvore, found this force equal to
+three tons per foot.
+
+The seaward front of the breakwater at Cherbourg exposes a surface of
+about 2,500,000 square feet. In rough weather the waves beat against
+this whole face, though at the depth of twenty-two yards, which is the
+height of the breakwater, they exert a very much less violent motive
+force than at and near the surface of the sea, because this force
+diminishes in geometrical, as the distance below the surface increases
+in arithmetical proportion. The shock of the waves is received several
+thousand times in the course of twenty-four hours, and hence the sum of
+impulse which the breakwater resists in one stormy day amounts to many
+thousands of millions of tons. The breakwater is entirely an artificial
+construction. If then man could accumulate and control the forces which
+he is able effectually to resist, he might be said to be, physically
+speaking, omnipotent.
+
+[32] Some well known experiments show that it is quite possible to
+accumulate the solar heat by a simple apparatus, and thus to obtain a
+temperature which might be economically important even in the climate of
+Switzerland. Saussure, by receiving the sun's rays in a nest of boxes
+blackened within and covered with glass, raised a thermometer enclosed
+in the inner box to the boiling point; and under the more powerful sun
+of the cape of Good Hope, Sir John Herschel cooked the materials for a
+family dinner by a similar process, using, however, but a single box,
+surrounded with dry sand and covered with two glasses. Why should not so
+easy a method of economizing fuel be resorted to in Italy, and even in
+more northerly climates?
+
+The unfortunate John Davidson records in his journal that he saved fuel
+in Morocco by exposing his teakettle to the sun on the roof of his
+house, where the water rose to the temperature of one hundred and forty
+degrees, and, of course, needed little fire to bring it to boil. But
+this was the direct and simple, not the accumulated heat of the sun.
+
+[33] In the successive stages of social progress, the most destructive
+periods of human action upon nature are the pastoral condition, and that
+of incipient stationary civilization, or, in the newly discovered
+countries of modern geography, the colonial, which corresponds to the
+era of early civilization in older lands. In more advanced states of
+culture, conservative influences make themselves felt; and if highly
+civilized communities do not always restore the works of nature, they at
+least use a less wasteful expenditure than their predecessors in
+consuming them.
+
+[34] The character of geological formation is an element of very great
+importance in determining the amount of erosion produced by running
+water, and, of course, in measuring the consequences of clearing off the
+forests. The soil of the French Alps yields very readily to the force of
+currents, and the declivities of the northern Apennines are covered with
+earth which becomes itself a fluid when saturated with water. Hence the
+erosion of such surfaces is vastly greater than on many other mountains
+of equal steepness of inclination. This point is fully considered by the
+authors referred to in chap. iii, _post_.
+
+[35] The Travels of Dr. Dwight, president of Yale College, which embody
+the results of his personal observations, and of his inquiries among the
+early settlers, in his vacation excursions in the Northern States of the
+American Union, though presenting few instrumental measurements or
+tabulated results, are of value for the powers of observation they
+exhibit, and for the sound common sense with which many natural
+phenomena, such for instance as the formation of the river meadows,
+called "intervales," in New England, are explained. They present a true
+and interesting picture of physical conditions, many of which have long
+ceased to exist in the theatre of his researches, and of which few other
+records are extant.
+
+[36] The general law of temperature is that it decreases as we ascend.
+But, in hilly regions, the law is reversed in cold, still weather, the
+cold air descending, by reason of its greater gravity, into the valleys.
+If there be wind enough, however, to produce a disturbance and
+intermixture of higher and lower atmospheric strata, this exception to
+the general law does not take place. These facts have long been familiar
+to the common people of Switzerland and of New England, but their
+importance has not been sufficiently taken into account in the
+discussion of meteorological observations. The descent of the cold air
+and the rise of the warm affect the relative temperatures of hills and
+valleys to a much greater extent than has been usually supposed. A
+gentleman well known to me kept a thermometrical record for nearly half
+a century, in a New England country town, at an elevation of at least
+1,500 feet above the sea. During these years his thermometer never fell
+lower than 26� Fahrenheit, while at the shire town of the county,
+situated in a basin one thousand feet lower, and ten miles distant, as
+well as at other points in similar positions, the mercury froze several
+times in the same period.
+
+[37] Railroad surveys must be received with great caution where any
+motive exists for _cooking_ them. Capitalists are shy of investments in
+roads with steep grades, and of course it is important to make a fair
+show of facilities in obtaining funds for new routes. Joint-stock
+companies have no souls; their managers, in general, no consciences.
+Cases can be cited where engineers and directors of railroads, with long
+grades above one hundred feet to the mile, have regularly sworn in their
+annual reports, for years in succession, that there were no grades upon
+their routes exceeding half that elevation. In fact, every person
+conversant with the history of these enterprises knows that in their
+public statements falsehood is the rule, truth the exception.
+
+What I am about to remark is not exactly relevant to my subject; but it
+is hard to "get the floor" in the world's great debating society, and
+when a speaker who has anything to say once finds access to the public
+ear, he must make the most of his opportunity, without inquiring too
+nicely whether his observations are "in order." I shall harm no honest
+man by endeavoring, as I have often done elsewhere, to excite the
+attention of thinking and conscientious men to the dangers which
+threaten the great moral and even political interests of Christendom,
+from the unscrupulousness of the private associations that now control
+the monetary affairs, and regulate the transit of persons and property,
+in almost every civilized country. More than one American State is
+literally governed by unprincipled corporations, which not only defy the
+legislative power, but have, too often, corrupted even the
+administration of justice. Similar evils have become almost equally rife
+in England, and on the Continent; and I believe the decay of commercial
+morality, and indeed of the sense of all higher obligations than those
+of a pecuniary nature, on both sides of the Atlantic, is to be ascribed
+more to the influence of joint-stock banks and manufacturing and railway
+companies, to the workings, in short, of what is called the principle of
+"associate action," than to any other one cause of demoralization.
+
+The apophthegm, "the world is governed too much," though unhappily too
+truly spoken of many countries--and perhaps, in some aspects, true of
+all--has done much mischief whenever it has been too unconditionally
+accepted as a political axiom. The popular apprehension of being
+over-governed, and, I am afraid, more emphatically the fear of being
+over-taxed, has had much to do with the general abandonment of certain
+governmental duties by the ruling powers of most modern states. It is
+theoretically the duty of government to provide all those public
+facilities of intercommunication and commerce, which are essential to
+the prosperity of civilized commonwealths, but which individual means
+are inadequate to furnish, and for the due administration of which
+individual guaranties are insufficient. Hence public roads, canals,
+railroads, postal communications, the circulating medium of exchange,
+whether metallic or representative, armies, navies, being all matters in
+which the nation at large has a vastly deeper interest than any private
+association can have, ought legitimately to be constructed and provided
+only by that which is the visible personification and embodiment of the
+nation, namely, its legislative head. No doubt the organization and
+management of these institutions by government are liable, as are all
+things human, to great abuses. The multiplication of public
+placeholders, which they imply, is a serious evil. But the corruption
+thus engendered, foul as it is, does not strike so deep as the
+rottenness of private corporations; and official rank, position, and
+duty have, in practice, proved better securities for fidelity and
+pecuniary integrity in the conduct of the interests in question, than
+the suretyships of private corporate agents, whose bondsmen so often
+fail or abscond before their principal is detected.
+
+Many theoretical statesmen have thought that voluntary associations for
+strictly pecuniary and industrial purposes, and for the construction and
+control of public works, might furnish, in democratic countries, a
+compensation for the small and doubtful advantages, and at the same time
+secure an exemption from the great and certain evils, of aristocratic
+institutions. The example of the American States shows that private
+corporations--whose rule of action is the interest of the association,
+not the conscience of the individual--though composed of
+ultra-democratic elements, may become most dangerous enemies to rational
+liberty, to the moral interests of the commonwealth, to the purity of
+legislation and of judicial action, and to the sacredness of private
+rights.
+
+[38] It is impossible to say how far the abstraction of water from the
+earth by broad-leaved field and garden plants--such as maize, the gourd
+family, the cabbage, &c.--is compensated by the condensation of dew,
+which sometimes pours from them in a stream, by the exhalation of
+aqueous vapor from their leaves, which is directly absorbed by the
+ground, and by the shelter they afford the soil from sun and wind, thus
+preventing evaporation. American farmers often say that after the leaves
+of Indian corn are large enough to "shade the ground," there is little
+danger that the plants will suffer from drought; but it is probable that
+the comparative security of the fields from this evil is in part due to
+the fact that, at this period of growth, the roots penetrate down to a
+permanently humid stratum of soil, and draw from it the moisture they
+require. Stirring the ground between the rows of maize with a light
+harrow or cultivator, in very dry seasons, is often recommended as a
+preventive of injury by drought. It would seem, indeed, that loosening
+and turning over the surface earth might aggravate the evil by promoting
+the evaporation of the little remaining moisture; but the practice is
+founded partly on the belief that the hygroscopicity of the soil is
+increased by it to such a degree that it gains more by absorption than
+it loses by evaporation, and partly on the doctrine that to admit air to
+the rootlets, or at least to the earth near them, is to supply directly
+elements of vegetable growth.
+
+[39] The vine-wood planks of the ancient great door of the cathedral at
+Ravenna, which measured thirteen feet in length by a foot and a quarter
+in width, are traditionally said to have been brought from the Black
+Sea, by way of Constantinople, about the eleventh or twelfth century. No
+vines of such dimensions are now found in any other part of the East,
+and, though I have taken some pains on the subject, I never found in
+Syria or in Turkey a vine stock exceeding six inches in diameter, bark
+excluded.
+
+[40] The Northmen who--as I think it has been indisputably established
+by Professor Rafn of Copenhagen--visited the coast of Massachusetts
+about the year 1000, found grapes growing there in profusion, and the
+vine still flourishes in great variety and abundance in the southeastern
+counties of that State. The townships in the vicinity of the Dighton
+rock, supposed by many--with whom, however, I am sorry I cannot
+agree--to bear a Scandinavian inscription, abound in wild vines, and I
+have never seen a region which produced them so freely. I have no doubt
+that the cultivation of the grape will become, at no distant day, one of
+the most important branches of rural industry in that district.
+
+[41] _Les �tats Unis d'Am�rique en 1863_, p. 360. By "improved" land, in
+the reports on the census of the United States, is meant "cleared land
+used for grazing, grass, or tillage, or which is now fallow, connected
+with or belonging to a farm."--_Instructions to Marshals and Assistants,
+Census of 1850_, schedule 4, �� 2, 3.
+
+[42] Cotton, though cultivated in Asia and Africa from the remotest
+antiquity, and known as a rare and costly product to the Latins and the
+Greeks, was not used by them to any considerable extent, nor did it
+enter into their commerce as a regular article of importation. The early
+voyagers found it in common use in the West Indies and in the provinces
+first colonized by the Spaniards; but it was introduced into the
+territory of the United States by European settlers, and did not become
+of any importance until after the Revolution. Cotton seed was sown in
+Virginia as early as 1621, but was not cultivated with a view to profit
+for more than a century afterward. Sea-island cotton was first grown on
+the coast of Georgia in 1786, the seed having been brought from the
+Bahamas, where it had been introduced from Anguilla.--BIGELOW, _Les
+�tats Unis en 1863_, p. 370.
+
+[43] The sugar cane was introduced by the Arabs into Sicily and Spain as
+early as the ninth century, and though it is now scarcely grown in those
+localities, I am not aware of any reason to doubt that its cultivation
+might be revived with advantage. From Spain it was carried to the West
+Indies, though different varieties have since been introduced into those
+islands from other sources. Tea is now cultivated with a certain success
+in Brazil, and promises to become an important crop in the Southern
+States of the American Union. The lemon is, I think, readily
+recognizable, by Pliny's description, as known to the ancients, but it
+does not satisfactorily appear that they were acquainted with the
+orange.
+
+[44] John Smith mentions, in his _Historie of Virginia_, 1624, pease and
+beans as having been cultivated by the natives before the arrival of the
+whites, and there is no doubt, I believe, that the pumpkin and several
+other cucurbitaceous plants are of American origin; but most, if not all
+the varieties of pease, beans, and other pod fruits now grown in
+American gardens, are from European and other foreign seed. See
+_Appendix_, No, 8.
+
+[45] There are some usages of polite society which are inherently low in
+themselves, and debasing in their influence and tendency, and which no
+custom or fashion can make respectable or fit to be followed by
+self-respecting persons. It is essentially vulgar to smoke or chew
+tobacco, and especially to take snuff; it is unbecoming a gentleman, to
+perform the duties of his coachman; it is indelicate in a lady to wear
+in the street skirts so long that she cannot walk without grossly
+soiling them. Not that all these things are not practised by persons
+justly regarded as gentlemen and ladies; but the same individuals would
+be, and feel themselves to be, much more emphatically gentlemen and
+ladies, if they abstained from them.
+
+[46] The name _portogallo_, so generally applied to the orange in Italy,
+seems to favor this claim. The orange, however, was known in Europe
+before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and, therefore, before
+the establishment of direct relations between Portugal and the East.
+
+A correspondent of the _Athen�um_, in describing the newly excavated
+villa, which has been named Livia's Villa, near the Porta del Popolo at
+Rome, states that: "The walls of one of the rooms are, singularly
+enough, decorated with landscape paintings, a grove of palm and _orange_
+trees, with fruits and birds on the branches--the colors all as fresh
+and lively as if painted yesterday." The writer remarks on the character
+of this decoration as something very unusual in Roman architecture; and
+if the trees in question are really orange, and not lemon trees, this
+circumstance may throw some doubt on the antiquity of the painting. If,
+on the other hand, it proves really ancient, it shows that the orange
+was known to the Roman painters, if not gardeners. The landscape may
+perhaps represent Oriental, not European scenery. The accessories of the
+picture would probably determine that question.--_Athen�um_, No. 1859,
+June 13, 1863.
+
+M�LLER, _Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt_, p. 86, asserts that in 1802 the
+ancestor of all the mulberries in France, planted in 1500, was still
+standing in a garden in the village of Allan-Mont�limart.
+
+[47] The vegetables which, so far as we know their history, seem to have
+been longest the objects of human care, can, by painstaking industry, be
+made to grow under a great variety of circumstances, and some of
+them--the vine for instance--prosper nearly equally well, when planted
+and tended, on soils of almost any geological character; but their seeds
+vegetate only in artificially prepared ground, they have little
+self-sustaining power, and they soon perish when the nursing hand of man
+is withdrawn from them. In range of climate, wild plants are much more
+limited than domestic, but much less so with regard to the state of the
+soil in which they germinate and grow. See _Appendix_, No. 9.
+
+Dr. Dwight remarks that the seeds of American forest trees will not
+vegetate when dropped on grassland. This is one of the very few errors
+of personal observation to be found in that author's writings. There are
+seasons, indeed, when few tree seeds germinate in the meadows and the
+pastures, and years favorable to one species are not always propitious
+to another; but there is no American forest tree known to me which does
+not readily propagate itself by seed in the thickest greensward, if its
+germs are not disturbed by man or animals.
+
+[48] Some years ago I made a collection of weeds in the wheatfields of
+Upper Egypt, and another in the gardens on the Bosphorus. Nearly all the
+plants were identical with those which grow under the same conditions in
+New England. I do not remember to have seen in America the scarlet wild
+poppy so common in European grainfields. I have heard, however, that it
+has lately crossed the Atlantic, and I am not sorry for it. With our
+abundant harvests of wheat, we can well afford to pay now and then a
+loaf of bread for the cheerful radiance of this brilliant flower.
+
+[49] Josselyn, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of the
+first British colony in New England, says that the settlers at Plymouth
+had observed more than twenty English plants springing up spontaneously
+near their improvements.
+
+Every country has many plants not now, if ever, made use of by man, and
+therefore not designedly propagated by him, but which cluster around his
+dwelling, and continue to grow luxuriantly on the ruins of his rural
+habitation after he has abandoned it. The site of a cottage, the very
+foundation stones of which have been carried off, may often be
+recognized, years afterward, by the rank weeds which cover it, though no
+others of the same species are found for miles.
+
+"Medi�val Catholicism," says Vaupell, "brought us the red
+horsehoof--whose reddish-brown flower buds shoot up from the ground when
+the snow melts, and are followed by the large leaves--_l�gekulsukker_
+and snake-root, which grow only where there were convents and other
+dwellings in the Middle Ages."--_B�gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_,
+pp. 1, 2.
+
+[50] VAUPELL, _B�gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, p. 2.
+
+[51] It is, I believe, nearly certain that the Turks inflicted tobacco
+upon Hungary, and probable that they in some measure compensated the
+injury by introducing maize also, which, as well as tobacco, has been
+claimed as Hungarian by patriotic Magyars.
+
+[52] Accidents sometimes limit, as well as promote, the propagation of
+foreign vegetables in countries new to them. The Lombardy poplar is a
+di[oe]cious tree, and is very easily grown from cuttings. In most of the
+countries into which it has been introduced the cuttings have been taken
+from the male, and as, consequently, males only have grown from them,
+the poplar does not produce seed in those regions. This is a fortunate
+circumstance, for otherwise this most worthless and least ornamental of
+trees would spread with a rapidity that would make it an annoyance to
+the agriculturist. See _Appendix_, No. 10.
+
+[53] Tempests, violent enough to destroy all cultivated plants, often
+spare those of spontaneous growth. During the present summer, I have
+seen in Northern Italy, vineyards, maize fields, mulberry and fruit
+trees completely stripped of their foliage by hail, while the forest
+trees scattered through the meadows, and the shrubs and brambles which
+sprang up by the wayside, passed through the ordeal with scarcely the
+loss of a leaflet.
+
+[54] The boar spear is provided with a short crossbar, to enable the
+hunter to keep the infuriated animal at bay after he has transfixed him.
+
+[55] Some botanists think that a species of water lily represented in
+many Egyptian tombs has become extinct, and the papyrus, which must have
+once been abundant in Egypt, is now found only in a very few localities
+near the mouth of the Nile. It grows very well and ripens its seeds in
+the waters of the Anapus near Syracuse, and I have seen it in garden
+ponds at Messina and in Malta. There is no apparent reason for believing
+that it could not be easily cultivated in Egypt, to any extent, if there
+were any special motive for encouraging its growth.
+
+[56] Although it is not known that man has extirpated any vegetable, the
+mysterious diseases which have, for the last twenty years, so
+injuriously affected the potato, the vine, the orange, the olive, and
+silk husbandry--whether in this case the malady resides in the mulberry
+or in the insect--are ascribed by some to a climatic deterioration
+produced by excessive destruction of the woods. As will be seen in the
+next chapter, a retardation in the period of spring has been observed in
+numerous localities in Southern Europe, as well as in the United States.
+This change has been thought to favor the multiplication of the obscure
+parasites which cause the injury to the vegetables just mentioned.
+
+Babinet supposes the parasites which attack the grape and the potato to
+be animal, not vegetable, and he ascribes their multiplication to
+excessive manuring and stimulation of the growth of the plants on which
+they live. They are now generally, if not universally, regarded as
+vegetable, and if they are so, Babinet's theory would be even more
+plausible than on his own supposition.--_�tudes et Lectures_, ii, p.
+269.
+
+It is a fact of some interest in agricultural economy, that the oidium,
+which is so destructive to the grape, has produced no pecuniary loss to
+the proprietors of the vineyards in France. "The price of wine," says
+Lavergne, "has quintupled, and as the product of the vintage has not
+diminished in the same proportion, the crisis has been, on the whole,
+rather advantageous than detrimental to the country."--_�conomie Rurale
+de la France_, pp. 263, 264.
+
+France produces a considerable surplus of wines for exportation, and the
+sales to foreign consumers are the principal source of profit to French
+vinegrowers. In Northern Italy, on the contrary, which exports little
+wine, there has been no such increase in the price of wine as to
+compensate the great diminution in the yield of the vines, and the loss
+of this harvest is severely felt. In Sicily, however, which exports much
+wine, prices have risen as rapidly as in France. Waltershausen informs
+us that in the years 1838-'42, the red wine of Mount Etna sold at the
+rate of one kreuzer and a half, or one cent the bottle, and sometimes
+even at but two thirds that price, but that at present it commands five
+or six times as much.
+
+The grape disease has operated severely on small cultivators whose
+vineyards only furnished a supply for domestic use, but Sicily has
+received a compensation in the immense increase which it has occasioned
+in both the product and the profits of the sulphur mines. Flour of
+sulphur is applied to the vine as a remedy against the disease, and the
+operation is repeated from two to three or four--and even, it is said,
+eight or ten times--in a season. Hence there is a great demand for
+sulphur in all the vine-growing countries of Europe, and Waltershausen
+estimates the annual consumption of that mineral for this single purpose
+at 850,000 _centner_, or more than forty thousand tons. The price of
+sulphur has risen in about the same proportion as that of
+wine.--WALTERSHAUSEN, _Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau_, pp. 19, 20.
+
+[57] Some recent observations of the learned traveller Wetzstein are
+worthy of special notice. "The soil of the Haur�n," he remarks,
+"produces, in its primitive condition, much wild rye, which is not known
+as a cultivated plant in Syria, and much wild barley and oats. These
+cereals precisely resemble the corresponding cultivated plants in leaf,
+ear, size, and height of straw, but their grains are sensibly flatter
+and poorer in flour."--_Reisebericht �ber Haur�n und die Trachonen_, p.
+40.
+
+[58] This remark is much less applicable to fruit trees than to garden
+vegetables and the cerealia. The wild orange of Florida, though once
+considered indigenous, is now generally thought by botanists to be
+descended from the European orange introduced by the early colonists.
+The fig and the olive are found growing wild in every country where
+those trees are cultivated. The wild fig differs from the domesticated
+in its habits, its season of fructification, and its insect population,
+but is, I believe, not specifically distinguishable from the garden fig,
+though I do not know that it is reclaimable by cultivation. The wild
+olive, which is so abundant in the Tuscan Maremma, produces good fruit
+without further care, when thinned out and freed from the shade of other
+trees, and is particularly suited for grafting. See SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie
+sulle Maremme_, pp. 63-73. See _Appendix_, No. 12.
+
+FRAAS, _Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit_, pp. 35-38, gives, upon the
+authority of Link and other botanical writers, a list of the native
+habitats of most cereals and of many fruits, or at least of localities
+where these plants are said to be now found wild; but the data do not
+appear to rest, in general, upon very trustworthy evidence.
+Theoretically, there can be little doubt that all our cultivated plants
+are modified forms of spontaneous vegetation, but the connection is not
+historically shown, nor are we able to say that the originals of some
+domesticated vegetables may not be now extinct and unrepresented in the
+existing wild flora. See, on this subject, HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der
+Natur_, i, pp. 208, 209. The following are interesting incidents: "A
+negro slave of the great Cortez was the first who sowed wheat in New
+Spain. He found three grains of it among the rice which had been brought
+from Spain as food for the soldiers. In the Franciscan monastery at
+Quito, I saw the earthen pot which contained the first wheat sown there
+by Friar Jodoco Rixi, of Ghent. It was preserved as a relic."
+
+The Adams of modern botany and zoology have been put to hard shifts in
+finding names for the multiplied organisms which the Creator has brought
+before them, "to see what they would call them;" and naturalists and
+philosophers have shown much moral courage in setting at naught the laws
+of philology in the coinage of uncouth words to express scientific
+ideas. It is much to be wished that some bold neologist would devise
+English technical equivalents for the German _verwildert_, run-wild, and
+_veredelt_, improved by cultivation.
+
+[59] Could the bones and other relics of the domestic quadrupeds
+destroyed by disease or slaughtered for human use in civilized countries
+be collected into large deposits, as obscure causes have gathered
+together those of extinct animals, they would soon form aggregations
+which might almost be called mountains. There were in the United States,
+in 1860, as we shall see hereafter, nearly one hundred and two millions
+of horses, black cattle, sheep, and swine. There are great numbers of
+all the same animals in the British American Provinces, and in Mexico,
+and there are large herds of wild horses on the plains, and of tamed
+among the independent Indian tribes of North America. It would perhaps
+not be extravagant to suppose that all those cattle may amount to two
+thirds as many as those of the United States, and thus we have in North
+America a total of 170,000,000 domestic quadrupeds belonging to species
+introduced by European colonization, besides dogs, cats, and other
+four-footed household pets and pests, also of foreign origin.
+
+If we allow half a solid foot to the skeleton and other slowly
+destructible parts of each animal, the remains of these herds would form
+a cubical mass measuring not much short of four hundred and fifty feet
+to the side, or a pyramid equal in dimensions to that of Cheops, and as
+the average life of these animals does not exceed six or seven years,
+the accumulations of their bones, horns, hoofs, and other durable
+remains would amount to at least fifteen times as great a volume in a
+single century. It is true that the actual mass of solid matter, left by
+the decay of dead domestic quadrupeds and permanently added to the crust
+of the earth, is not so great as this calculation makes it. The greatest
+proportion of the soft parts of domestic animals, and even of the bones,
+is soon decomposed, through direct consumption by man and other
+carnivora, industrial use, and employment as manure, and enters into new
+combinations in which its animal origin is scarcely traceable; there is,
+nevertheless, a large annual residuum, which, like decayed vegetable
+matter, becomes a part of the superficial mould; and in any event, brute
+life immensely changes the form and character of the superficial strata,
+if it does not sensibly augment the quantity of the matter composing
+them.
+
+The remains of man, too, add to the earthy coating that covers the face
+of the globe. The human bodies deposited in the catacombs during the
+long, long ages of Egyptian history, would perhaps build as large a pile
+as one generation of the quadrupeds of the United States. In the
+barbarous days of old Moslem warfare, the conquerors erected large
+pyramids of human skulls. The soil of cemeteries in the great cities of
+Europe has sometimes been raised several feet by the deposit of the dead
+during a few generations. In the East, Turks and Christians alike bury
+bodies but a couple of feet beneath the surface. The grave is respected
+as long as the tombstone remains, but the sepultures of the ignoble
+poor, and of those whose monuments time or accident has removed, are
+opened again and again to receive fresh occupants. Hence the ground in
+Oriental cemeteries is pervaded with relics of humanity, if not wholly
+composed of them; and an examination of the soil of the lower part of
+the _Petit Champ des Morts_ at Pera, by the naked eye alone, shows the
+observer that it consists almost exclusively of the comminuted bones of
+his fellow man.
+
+[60] It is asserted that the bones of mammoths and mastodons, in many
+instances, appear to have been grazed or cut by flint arrow-heads or
+other stone weapons. These accounts have often been discredited, because
+it has been assumed that the extinction of these animals was more
+ancient than the existence of man. Recent discoveries render it highly
+probable, if not certain, that this conclusion has been too hastily
+adopted. Lyell observes: "These stories * * must in future be more
+carefully inquired into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon in
+North America lived down to a period when the mammoth coexisted with man
+in Europe."--_Antiquity of Man_, p. 354.
+
+On page 143 of the volume just quoted, the same very distinguished
+writer remarks that man "no doubt played his part in hastening the era
+of the extinction" of the large pachyderms and beasts of prey; but, as
+contemporaneous species of other animals, which man cannot be supposed,
+to have extirpated, have also become extinct, he argues that the
+disappearance of the quadrupeds in question cannot be ascribed to human
+action alone.
+
+On this point it may be observed that, as we cannot know what precise
+physical conditions were necessary to the existence of a given extinct
+organism, we cannot say how far such conditions may have been modified
+by the action of man, and he may therefore have influenced the life of
+such organisms in ways, and to an extent, of which we can form no just
+idea.
+
+[61] Evelyn thought the depasturing of grass by cattle serviceable to
+its growth. "The biting of cattle," he remarks, "gives a gentle
+loosening to the roots of the herbage, and makes it to grow fine and
+sweet, and their very breath and treading as well as soil, and the
+comfort of their warm bodies, is wholesome and marvellously
+cherishing."--_Terra, or Philosophical Discourse of Earth_, p. 36.
+
+In a note upon this passage, Hunter observes: "Nice farmers consider the
+lying of a beast upon the ground, for one night only, as a sufficient
+tilth for the year. The breath of graminivorous quadrupeds does
+certainly enrich the roots of grass; a circumstance worthy of the
+attention of the philosophical farmer."--_Terra_, same page.
+
+The "philosophical farmer" of the present day will not adopt these
+opinions without some qualification.
+
+[62] The rat and the mouse, though not voluntarily transported, are
+passengers by every ship that sails from Europe to a foreign port, and
+several species of these quadrupeds have, consequently, much extended
+their range and increased their numbers in modern times. From a story of
+Heliogabalus related by Lampridius, _Hist. Aug. Scriptores_, ed.
+Casaubon, 1690, p. 110, it would seem that mice at least were not very
+common in ancient Rome. Among the capricious freaks of that emperor, it
+is said that he undertook to investigate the statistics of the arachnoid
+population of the capital, and that 10,000 pounds of spiders (or
+spiders' webs--for aranea is equivocal) were readily collected; but when
+he got up a mouse show, he thought ten thousand mice a very fair number.
+I believe as many might almost be found in a single palace in modern
+Rome. Rats are not less numerous in all great cities, and in Paris,
+where their skins are used for gloves, and their flesh, it is whispered,
+in some very complex and equivocal dishes, they are caught by legions. I
+have read of a manufacturer who contracted to buy of the rat catchers,
+at a high price, all the rat skins they could furnish before a certain
+date, and failed, within a week, for want of capital, when the stock of
+peltry had run up to 600,000.
+
+[63] BIGELOW, _Les �tats Unis en_ 1863, pp. 379, 380. In the same
+paragraph this volume states the number of animals slaughtered in the
+United States by butchers, in 1859, at 212,871,653. This is an error of
+the press. Number is confounded with value. A reference to the tables of
+the census shows that the animals slaughtered that year were estimated
+at 212,871,653 _dollars_; the number of head is not given. The wild
+horses and horned cattle of the prairies and the horses of the Indians
+are not included in the returns.
+
+[64] Of this total number, 2,240,000, or nearly nine per cent., are
+reported as working oxen. This would strike European, and especially
+English agriculturists, as a large proportion; but it is explained by
+the difference between a new country and an old, in the conditions which
+determine the employment of animal labor. Oxen are very generally used
+in the United States and Canada for hauling timber and firewood through
+and from the forests; for ploughing in ground still full of rocks,
+stumps, and roots; for breaking up the new soil of the prairies with its
+strong matting of native grasses, and for the transportation of heavy
+loads over the rough roads of the interior. In all these cases, the
+frequent obstructions to the passage of the timber, the plough, and the
+sled or cart, are a source of constant danger to the animals, the
+vehicles, and the harness, and the slow and steady step of the ox is
+attended with much less risk than the swift and sudden movements of the
+impatient horse. It is surprising to see the sagacity with which the
+dull and clumsy ox--hampered as he is by the rigid yoke, the most absurd
+implement of draught ever contrived by man--picks his way, when once
+trained to forest work, among rocks and roots, and even climbs over
+fallen trees, not only moving safely, but drawing timber over ground
+wholly impracticable for the light and agile horse.
+
+Cows, so constantly employed for draught in Italy, are never yoked or
+otherwise used for labor in America, except in the Slave States.
+
+[65] "About five miles from camp we ascended to the top of a high hill,
+and for a great distance ahead every square mile seemed to have a herd
+of buffalo upon it. Their number was variously estimated by the members
+of the party; by some as high as half a million. I do not think it any
+exaggeration to set it down at 200,000."--STEVENS'S _Narrative and Final
+Report. Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Railroad to Pacific_,
+vol. xii, book i, 1860.
+
+The next day, the party fell in with a "buffalo trail," where at least
+100,000 were thought to have crossed a slough.
+
+[66] The most zealous and successful New England hunter of whom I have
+any personal knowledge, and who continued to indulge his favorite
+passion much beyond the age which generally terminates exploits in
+woodcraft, lamented on his deathbed that he had not lived long enough to
+carry up the record of his slaughtered deer to the number of one
+thousand, which he had fixed as the limit of his ambition. He was able
+to handle the rifle, for sixty years, at a period when the game was
+still nearly as abundant as ever, but had killed only nine hundred and
+sixty of these quadrupeds, of all species. The exploits of this Nimrod
+have been far exceeded by prairie hunters, but I doubt whether, in the
+originally wooded territory of the Union, any single marksman has
+brought down a larger number.
+
+[67] _Erdkunde_, viii. _Asien, 1ste Abtheilung_, pp. 660, 758.
+
+[68] See chapter iii, _post_; also HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_, i,
+p. 71. From the anatomical character of the bones of the urus, or
+auerochs, found among the relics of the lacustrine population of ancient
+Switzerland, and from other circumstances, it is inferred that this
+animal had been domesticated by that people; and it is stated, I know
+not upon what authority, in _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, that it had
+been tamed by the Veneti also. See LYELL, _Antiquity of Man_, pp. 24,
+25, and the last-named work, p. 489. This is a fact of much interest,
+because it is, I believe, the only known instance of the extinction of a
+domestic quadruped, and the extreme improbability of such an event gives
+some countenance to the theory of the identity of the domestic ox with,
+and its descent from, the urus.
+
+[69] In maintaining the recent existence of the lion in the countries
+named in the text, naturalists have, perhaps, laid too much weight on
+the frequent occurrence of representations of this animal in sculptures
+apparently of a historical character. It will not do to argue, twenty
+centuries hence, that the lion and the unicorn were common in Great
+Britain in Queen Victoria's time, because they are often seen "fighting
+for the crown" in the carvings and paintings of that period.
+
+[70]
+
+  Dar nach sloger schiere, einen wisent bat elch.
+  Starcher bore biere. but einen grimmen schelch.
+                                                _XVI Auentiure._
+
+The testimony of the _Nibelungen-Lied_ is not conclusive evidence that
+these quadrupeds existed in Germany at the time of the composition of
+that poem. It proves too much; for, a few lines above those just quoted,
+Sigfrid is said to have killed a lion, an animal which the most
+patriotic Teuton will hardly claim as a denizen of medi�val Germany.
+
+[71] The wild turkey takes readily to the water, and is able to cross
+rivers of very considerable width by swimming. By way of giving me an
+idea of the former abundance of this bird, an old and highly respectable
+gentleman who was among the early white settlers of the West, told me
+that he once counted, in walking down the northern bank of the Ohio
+River, within a distance of four miles, eighty-four turkeys as they
+landed singly, or at most in pairs, after swimming over from the
+Kentucky side.
+
+[72] The wood pigeon has been observed to increase in numbers in Europe
+also, when pains have been taken to exterminate the hawk. The pigeons,
+which migrated in flocks so numerous that they were whole days in
+passing a given point, were no doubt injurious to the grain, but
+probably less so than is generally supposed; for they did not confine
+themselves exclusively to the harvests for their nourishment.
+
+[73] Pigeons were shot near Albany, in New York, a few years ago, with
+green rice in their crops, which it was thought must have been growing,
+a very few hours before, at the distance of seven or eight hundred
+miles.
+
+[74] Professor Treadwell, of Massachusetts, found that a half-grown
+American robin in confinement ate in one day sixty-eight earthworms,
+weighing together nearly once and a half as much as the bird himself,
+and another had previously starved upon a daily allowance of eight or
+ten worms, or about twenty per cent. of his own weight. The largest of
+these numbers appeared, so far as could be judged by watching parent
+birds of the same species, as they brought food to their young, to be
+much greater than that supplied to them when fed in the nest; for the
+old birds did not return with worms or insects oftener than once in ten
+minutes on an average. If we suppose the parents to hunt for food twelve
+hours in a day, and a nest to contain four young, we should have
+seventy-two worms, or eighteen each, as the daily supply of the brood.
+It is probable enough that some of the food collected by the parents may
+be more nutritious than the earthworms, and consequently that a smaller
+quantity sufficed for the young in the nest than when reared under
+artificial conditions.
+
+The supply required by growing birds is not the measure of their wants
+after they have arrived at maturity, and it is not by any means certain
+that great muscular exertion always increases the demand for
+nourishment, either in the lower animals or in man. The members of the
+English Alpine Club are not distinguished for appetites which would make
+them unwelcome guests to Swiss landlords, and I think every man who has
+had the personal charge of field or railway hands, must have observed
+that laborers who spare their strength the least are not the most
+valiant trencher champions. During the period when imprisonment for debt
+was permitted in New England, persons confined in country jails had no
+specific allowance, and they were commonly fed without stint. I have
+often inquired concerning their diet, and been assured by the jailers
+that their prisoners, who were not provided with work or other means of
+exercise, consumed a considerably larger supply of food than common
+out-door laborers.
+
+[75] I hope Michelet has good authority for this statement, but I am
+unable to confirm it.
+
+[76] Apropos of the sparrow--a single pair of which, according to
+Michelet, p. 315, carries to the nest four thousand and three hundred
+caterpillars or coleoptera in a week--I take from the _Record_, an
+English religious newspaper, of December 15, 1862, the following article
+communicated to a country paper by a person who signs himself "A real
+friend to the farmer:"
+
+"_Crawley Sparrow Club._--The annual dinner took place at the George Inn
+on Wednesday last. The first prize was awarded to Mr. I. Redford, Worth,
+having destroyed within the last year 1,467. Mr. Heayman took the second
+with 1,448 destroyed. Mr. Stone, third, with 982 affixed. Total
+destroyed, 11,944. Old birds, 8,663; young ditto, 722; eggs, 2,556."
+
+This trio of valiant fowlers, and their less fortunate--or rather less
+unfortunate, but not therefore less guilty--associates, have rescued by
+their prowess, it may be, a score of pecks of grain from being devoured
+by the voracious sparrow, but every one of the twelve thousand hatched
+and unhatched birds, thus sacrificed to puerile vanity and ignorant
+prejudice, would have saved his bushel of wheat by preying upon insects
+that destroy the grain. Mr. Redford, Mr. Heayman, and Mr. Stone ought to
+contribute the value of the bread they have wasted to the fund for the
+benefit of the Lancashire weavers; and it is to be hoped that the next
+Byron will satirize the sparrowcide as severely as the first did the
+prince of anglers, Walton, in the well known lines:
+
+  "The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb in his gullet
+  Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it."
+
+[77] SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane_, p. 143. The country
+about Naples is filled with slender towers fifteen or twenty feet high,
+which are a standing puzzle to strangers. They are the stations of the
+fowlers who watch from them the flocks of small birds and drive them
+down in to the nets by throwing stones over them. See _Appendix_, No.
+14.
+
+Tschudi has collected in his little work, _Ueber die
+Landwirthschaftliche Bedeutung der V�gel_, many interesting facts
+respecting the utility of birds, and the wanton destruction of them in
+Italy and elsewhere. Not only the owl, but many other birds more
+familiarly known as predacious in their habits, are useful by destroying
+great numbers of mice and moles. The importance of this last service
+becomes strikingly apparent when it is known that the burrows of the
+mole are among the most frequent causes of rupture in the dikes of the
+Po, and, consequently, of inundations which lay many square miles under
+water.--_Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1847, 1re s�mestre, p. 150.
+See also VOGT, _N�tzliche u. sch�dliche Thiere_.
+
+[78] Wild birds are very tenacious in their habits. The extension of
+particular branches of agriculture introduces new birds; but unless in
+the case of such changes in physical conditions, particular species seem
+indissolubly attached to particular localities. The migrating tribes
+follow almost undeviatingly the same precise line of flight in their
+annual journeys, and establish themselves in the same breeding places
+from year to year. The stork is a strong-winged bird and roves far for
+food, but very rarely establishes new colonies. He is common in Holland,
+but unknown in England. Not above five or six pairs of storks commonly
+breed in the suburbs of Constantinople along the European shore of the
+narrow Bosphorus, while--much to the satisfaction of the Moslems, who
+are justly proud of the marked partiality of so orthodox a bird--dozens
+of chimneys of the true believers on the Asiatic side are crowned with
+his nests. See _App._ No. 15.
+
+[79] It is not the unfledged and the nursing bird alone that are exposed
+to destruction by severe weather. Whole flocks of adult and
+strong-winged tribes are killed by hail. Severe winters are usually
+followed by a sensible diminution in the numbers of the non-migrating
+birds, and a cold storm in summer often proves fatal to the more
+delicate species. On the 10th of June, 184-, five or six inches of snow
+fell in Northern Vermont. The next morning I found a humming bird killed
+by the cold, and hanging by its claws just below a loose clapboard on
+the wall of a small wooden building where it had sought shelter.
+
+[80] LYELL, _Antiquity of Man_, p. 409, observes: "Of birds it is
+estimated that the number of those which die every year equals the
+aggregate number by which the species to which they respectively belong
+is, on the average, permanently represented."
+
+A remarkable instance of the influence of new circumstances upon birds
+was observed upon the establishment of a lighthouse on Cape Cod some
+years since. The morning after the lamps were lighted for the first
+time, more than a hundred dead birds of several different species,
+chiefly water fowl, were found at the foot of the tower. They had been
+killed in the course of the night by flying against the thick glass or
+grating of the lantern. See _Appendix_, No. 16.
+
+Migrating birds, whether for greater security from eagles, hawks, and
+other enemies, or for some unknown reason, perform a great part of their
+annual journeys by night; and it is observed in the Alps that they
+follow the high roads in their passage across the mountains. This is
+partly because the food in search of which they must sometimes descend
+is principally found near the roads. It is, however, not altogether for
+the sake of consorting with man, or of profiting by his labors, that
+their line of flight conforms to the paths he has traced, but rather
+because the great roads are carried through the natural depressions in
+the chain, and hence the birds can cross the summit by these routes
+without rising to a height where at the seasons of migration the cold
+would be excessive.
+
+The instinct which guides migratory birds in their course is not in all
+cases infallible, and it seems to be confounded by changes in the
+condition of the surface. I am familiar with a village in New England,
+at the junction of two valleys, each drained by a mill stream, where the
+flocks of wild geese which formerly passed, every spring and autumn,
+were very frequently lost, as it was popularly phrased, and I have often
+heard their screams in the night as they flew wildly about in perplexity
+as to the proper course. Perhaps the village lights embarrassed them, or
+perhaps the constant changes in the face of the country, from the
+clearings then going on, introduced into the landscape features not
+according with the ideal map handed down in the anserine family, and
+thus deranged its traditional geography.
+
+[81] The cappercailzie, or tj�der, as he is called in Sweden, is a bird
+of singular habits, and seems to want some of the protective instincts
+which secure most other wild birds from destruction. The younger
+L�stadius frequently notices the tj�der, in his very remarkable account
+of the Swedish Laplanders--a work wholly unsurpassed as a genial picture
+of semi-barbarian life, and not inferior in minuteness of detail to
+Schlatter's description of the manners of the Nogai Tartars, or even to
+Lane's admirable and exhaustive work on the Modern Egyptians. The
+tj�der, though not a bird of passage, is migratory, or rather wandering
+in domicile, and appears to undertake very purposeless and absurd
+journeys. "When he flits," says L�stadius, "he follows a straight
+course, and sometimes pursues it quite out of the country. It is said
+that, in foggy weather, he sometimes flies out to sea, and, when tired,
+falls into the water and is drowned. It is accordingly observed that,
+when he flies westwardly, toward the mountains, he soon comes back
+again; but when he takes an eastwardly course, he returns no more, and
+for a long time is very scarce in Lapland. From this it would seem that
+he turns back from the bald mountains, when he discovers that he has
+strayed from his proper home, the wood; but when he finds himself over
+the Baltic, where he cannot alight to rest and collect himself, he flies
+on until he is exhausted and falls into the sea."--PETRUS L�STADIUS,
+_Journal af f�rsta �ret, etc._, p. 325.
+
+[82] _Die Herzogth�mer Schleswig und Holstein_, i, p. 203.
+
+[83] Gulls hover about ships in port, and often far out at sea,
+diligently watching for the waste of the caboose. "While the four great
+fleets, English, French, Turkish, and Egyptian, were lying in the
+Bosphorus, in the summer and autumn of 1853, a young lady of my family
+called my attention to the fact that the gulls were far more numerous
+about the ships of one of the fleets than about the others. This was
+verified by repeated observation, and the difference was owing no doubt
+to the greater abundance of the refuse from the cookrooms of the naval
+squadron most frequented by the birds. Persons acquainted with the
+economy of the navies of the states in question, will be able to
+conjecture which fleet was most favored with these delicate attentions.
+
+[84] Birds do not often voluntarily take passage on board ships bound
+for foreign countries, but I can testify to one such case. A stork,
+which had nested near one of the palaces on the Bosphorus, had, by some
+accident, injured a wing, and was unable to join his follows when they
+commenced their winter migration to the banks of the Nile. Before he was
+able to fly again, he was caught, and the flag of the nation to which
+the palace belonged was tied to his leg, so that he was easily
+identified at a considerable distance. As his wing grow stronger, he
+made several unsatisfactory experiments at flight, and at last, by a
+vigorous effort, succeeded in reaching a passing ship bound southward,
+and perched himself on a topsail yard. I happened to witness this
+movement, and observed him quietly maintaining his position as long as I
+could discern him with a spyglass. I suppose he finished the voyage, for
+he certainly did not return to the palace.
+
+[85] The enthusiasm of naturalists is not always proportioned to the
+magnitude or importance of the organisms they concern themselves with.
+It is not recorded that Adams, who found the colossal antediluvian
+pachyderm in a thick-ribbed mountain of Siberian ice, ran wild over his
+_trouvaille_; but Schmidl, in describing the natural history of the
+caves of the Karst, speaks of an eminent entomologist as "_der
+gl�ckliche Entdecker_," the _happy_ discoverer of a new coleopteron, in
+one of those dim caverns. How various are the sources of happiness!
+Think of a learned German professor, the bare enumeration of whose
+Rath-ships and scientific Mitglied-ships fills a page, made famous in
+the annals of science, immortal, happy, by the discovery of a beetle!
+Had that imperial _ennuy�_, who offered a premium for the invention of a
+new pleasure, but read Schmidl's _H�hlen des Karstes_, what splendid
+rewards would he not have heaped upon Kirby and Spence!
+
+[86] I believe there is no foundation for the supposition that
+earthworms attack the tuber of the potato. Some of them, especially one
+or two species employed by anglers as bait, if natives of the woods, are
+at least rare in shaded grounds, but multiply very rapidly after the
+soil is brought under cultivation. Forty or fifty years ago they were so
+scarce in the newer parts of New England, that the rustic fishermen of
+every village kept secret the few places where they were to be found in
+their neighborhood, as a professional mystery, but at present one can
+hardly turn over a shovelful of rich moist soil anywhere, without
+unearthing several of them. A very intelligent lady, born in the woods
+of Northern New England, told me that, in her childhood, these worms
+were almost unknown in that region, though anxiously sought for by the
+anglers, but that they increased as the country was cleared, and at last
+became so numerous in some places, that the water of springs, and even
+of shallow wells, which had formerly been excellent, was rendered
+undrinkable by the quantity of dead worms that fell into them. The
+increase of the robin and other small birds which follow the settler
+when he has prepared a suitable home for them, at last checked the
+excessive multiplication of the worms, and abated the nuisance.
+
+[87] I have already remarked that the remains of extant animals are
+rarely, if ever, gathered in sufficient quantities to possess any
+geographical importance by their mere mass; but the decayed exuvi� of
+even the smaller and humbler forms of life are sometimes abundant enough
+to exercise a perceptible influence on soil and atmosphere. "The plain
+of Cumana," says Humboldt, "presents a remarkable phenomenon, after
+heavy rains. The moistened earth, when heated by the rays of the sun,
+diffuses the musky odor common in the torrid zone to animals of very
+different classes, to the jaguar, the small species of tiger cat, the
+cabia�, the gallinazo vulture, the crocodile, the viper, and the
+rattlesnake. The gaseous emanations, the vehicles of this aroma, appear
+to be disengaged in proportion as the soil, which contains the remains
+of an innumerable multitude of reptiles, worms, and insects, begins to
+be impregnated with water. Wherever we stir the earth, we are struck
+with the mass of organic substances which in turn are developed and
+become transformed or decomposed. Nature in these climes seems more
+active, more prolific, and so to speak, more prodigal of life."
+
+[88] It is remarkable that Palissy, to whose great merits as an acute
+observer I am happy to have frequent occasion to bear testimony, had
+noticed that vegetation was necessary to maintain the purity of water in
+artificial reservoirs, though he mistook the rationale of its influence,
+which he ascribed to the elemental "salt" supposed by him to play an
+important part in all the operations of nature. In his treatise upon
+Waters and Fountains, p. 174, of the reprint of 1844, he says: "And in
+special, thou shalt note one point, the which is understood of few: that
+is to say, that the leaves of the trees which fall upon the parterre,
+and the herbs growing beneath, and singularly the fruits, if any there
+be upon the trees, being decayed, the waters of the parterre shall draw
+unto them the salt of the said fruits, leaves, and herbs, the which
+shall greatly better the water of thy fountains, and hinder the
+putrefaction thereof."
+
+[89] Between the years 1851 and 1853, both inclusive, the United States
+exported 2,665,857 pounds of beeswax, besides a considerable quantity
+employed in the manufacture of candles for exportation. This is an
+average of more than 330,000 pounds per year. The census of 1850 gave
+the total production of wax and honey for that year at 14,853,128
+pounds. In 1860, it amounted to 26,370,813 pounds, the increase being
+partly due to the introduction of improved races of bees from Italy and
+Switzerland.--BIGELOW, _Les �tats Unis en 1863_, p. 376.
+
+[90] A few years ago, a laborer, employed at a North American port in
+discharging a cargo of hides from the opposite extremity of the
+continent, was fatally poisoned by the bite or the sting of an unknown
+insect, which ran out from a hide he was handling.
+
+[91] In many insects, some of the stages of life regularly continue for
+several years, and they may, under peculiar circumstances, be almost
+indefinitely prolonged. Dr. Dwight mentions the following remarkable
+case of this sort, which may be new to many readers: "While I was here
+[at Williamstown, Mass.], Dr. Fitch showed me an insect, about an inch
+in length, of a brown color tinged with orange, with two antenn�, not
+unlike a rosebug. This insect came out of a tea table, made of the
+boards of an apple tree." Dr. Dwight examined the table, and found the
+"cavity whence the insect had emerged into the light," to be "about two
+inches in length, nearly horizontal, and inclining upward very little,
+except at the mouth. Between the hole, and the outside of the leaf of
+the table, there were forty grains of the wood." It was supposed that
+the sawyer and the cabinet maker must have removed at least thirteen
+grains more, and the table had been in the possession of its proprietor
+for twenty years.
+
+[92] It does not appear to be quite settled whether the termites of
+France are indigenous or imported. See QUATREFAGES, _Souvenirs d'un
+Naturaliste_, ii, pp. 400, 542, 543.
+
+[93] I have seen the larva of the dragon fly in an aquarium, bite off
+the head of a young fish as long as itself.
+
+[94] Insects and fish--which prey upon and feed each other--are the only
+forms of animal life that are numerous in the native woods, and their
+range is, of course, limited by the extent of the waters. The great
+abundance of the trout, and of other more or less allied genera in the
+lakes of Lapland, seems to be due to the supply of food provided for
+them by the swarms of insects which in the larva state inhabit the
+waters, or, in other stages of their life, are accidentally swept into
+them. All travellers in the north of Europe speak of the gnat and the
+mosquito as very serious drawbacks upon the enjoyments of the summer
+tourist, who visits the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to see the midnight
+sun, and the brothers L�stadius regard them as one of the great plagues
+of sub-Arctic life. "The persecutions of these insects," says Lars Levi
+L�stadius [_Culex pipiens_, _Culex reptans_, and _Culex pulicaris_],
+"leave not a moment's peace, by day or night, to any living creature.
+Not only man, but cattle, and even birds and wild beasts, suffer
+intolerably from their bite." He adds in a note, "I will not affirm that
+they have ever devoured a living man, but many young cattle, such as
+lambs and calves, have been worried out of their lives by them. All the
+people of Lapland declare that young birds are killed by them, and this
+is not improbable, for birds are scarce after seasons when the midge,
+the gnat, and the mosquito are numerous."--_Om Uppodlingar i
+Lappmarken_, p. 50.
+
+Petrus L�stadius makes similar statements in his _Journal f�r f�rsta
+�ret_, p. 285.
+
+[95] It is very questionable whether there is any foundation for the
+popular belief in the hostility of swine and of deer to the rattlesnake,
+and careful experiments as to the former quadruped seem to show that the
+supposed enmity is wholly imaginary. Observing that the starlings,
+_stornelli_, which bred in an old tower in Piedmont, carried something
+from their nests and dropped it upon the ground, about as often as they
+brought food to their young, I watched their proceedings, and found
+every day lying near the tower numbers of dead or dying slowworms, and,
+in a few cases, small lizards, which had, in every instance, lost about
+two inches of the tail. This part I believe the starlings gave to their
+nestlings, and threw away the remainder.
+
+[96] Russell denies the existence of poisonous snakes in Northern Syria,
+and states that the last instance of death known to have occurred from
+the bite of a serpent near Aleppo took place a hundred years before his
+time. In Palestine, the climate, the thinness of population, the
+multitude of insects and of lizards, all circumstances, in fact, seem
+very favorable to the multiplication of serpents, but the venomous
+species, at least, are extremely rare, if at all known, in that country.
+I have, however, been assured by persons very familiar with Mount
+Lebanon, that cases of poisoning from the bite of snakes had occurred
+within a few years, near Hasbeiyeh, and at other places on the southern
+declivities of Lebanon and Hermon. In Egypt, on the other hand, the
+cobra, the asp, and the cerastes are as numerous as ever, and are much
+dreaded by all the natives, except the professional snake charmers. See
+_Appendix_, No. 18.
+
+[97] I use _whale_ not in a technical sense, but as a generic term for
+all the large inhabitants of the sea popularly grouped under that name.
+
+[98] From the narrative of Ohther, introduced by King Alfred into his
+translation of Orosius, it is clear that the Northmen pursued the whale
+fishery in the ninth century, and it appears, both from the poem called
+The Whale, in the Codex Exoniensis, and from the dialogue with the
+fisherman in the Colloquies of Aelfric, that the Anglo-Saxons followed
+this dangerous chase at a period not much later. I am not aware of any
+evidence to show that any of the Latin nations engaged in this fishery
+until a century or two afterward, though it may not be easy to disprove
+their earlier participation in it. In medi�val literature, Latin and
+Romance, very frequent mention is made of a species of vessel called in
+Latin, _baleneria_, _balenerium_, _balenerius_, _balaneria_, etc.; in
+Catalan, _balener_; in French, _balenier_; all of which words occur in
+many other forms. The most obvious etymology of these words would
+suggest the meaning, _whaler_, _baleinier_; but some have supposed that
+the name was descriptive of the great size of the ships, and others have
+referred it to a different root. From the fourteenth century, the word
+occurs oftener, perhaps, in old Catalan, than in any other language; but
+Capmany does not notice the whale fishery as one of the maritime
+pursuits of the very enterprising Catalan people, nor do I find any of
+the products of the whale mentioned in the old Catalan tariffs. The
+_whalebone_ of the medi�val writers, which is described as very white,
+is doubtless the ivory of the walrus or of the narwhale.
+
+[99] In consequence of the great scarcity of the whale, the use of coal
+gas for illumination, the substitution of other fatty and oleaginous
+substances, such as lard, palm oil, and petroleum, for right-whale oil
+and spermaceti, the whale fishery has rapidly fallen off within a few
+years. The great supply of petroleum, which is much used for lubricating
+machinery as well as for numerous other purposes, has produced a more
+perceptible effect on the whale fishery than any other single
+circumstance. According to Bigelow, _Les �tats Unis en 1863_, p. 346,
+the American whaling fleet was diminished by 29 in 1858, 57 in 1860, 94
+in 1861, and 65 in 1862. The present number of American ships employed
+in that fishery is 353.
+
+[100] The Origin and History of the English Language, &c., pp. 423, 424.
+
+[101] Among the unexpected results of human action, the destruction or
+multiplication of fish, as well as of other animals, is a not unfrequent
+occurrence. I shall have occasion to mention on a following page the
+extermination of the fish in a Swedish river by a flood occasioned by
+the sudden discharge of the waters of a pond. Williams, in his _History
+of Vermont_, i, p. 149, quoted in Thompson's _Natural History of
+Vermont_, p. 142, records a case of the increase of trout from an
+opposite cause. In a pond formed by damming a small stream to obtain
+water power for a sawmill, and covering one thousand acres of primitive
+forest, the increased supply of food brought within reach of the fish
+multiplied them to that degree, that, at the head of the pond, where, in
+the spring, they crowded together in the brook which supplied it, they
+were taken by the hands at pleasure, and swine caught them without
+difficulty. A single sweep of a small scoopnet would bring up half a
+bushel, carts were filled with them as fast as if picked up on dry land,
+and in the fishing season they were commonly sold at a shilling
+(eightpence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) a bushel. The increase
+in the size of the trout was as remarkable as the multiplication of
+their numbers.
+
+[102] BABINET, _�tudes et Lectures_, ii, pp. 108, 110.
+
+[103] THOMPSON, _Natural History of Vermont_, p. 38, and Appendix,
+p. 13. There is no reason to believe that the seal breeds in Lake
+Champlain, but the individual last taken there must have been some
+weeks, at least, in its waters. It was killed on the ice in the widest
+part of the lake, on the 23d of February, thirteen days after the
+surface was entirely frozen, except the usual small cracks, and a month
+or two after the ice closed at all points north of the place where the
+seal was found.
+
+[104] See page 89, note, _ante_.
+
+[105] According to Hartwig, the United Provinces of Holland had, in
+1618, three thousand herring busses and nine thousand vessels engaged in
+the transport of these fish to market. The whole number of persons
+employed in the Dutch herring fishery was computed at 200,000.
+
+In the latter part of the eighteenth century, this fishery was most
+successfully prosecuted by the Swedes, and in 1781, the town of
+Gottenburg alone exported 136,649 barrels, each containing 1,200
+herrings, making a total of about 164,000,000; but so rapid was the
+exhaustion of the fish, from this keen pursuit, that in 1799 it was
+found necessary to prohibit the exportation of them altogether.--_Das
+Leben des Meeres_, p. 182.
+
+In 1855, the British fisheries produced 900,000 barrels, or enough to
+supply a fish to every human inhabitant of the globe.
+
+On the shores of Long Island Sound, the white fish, a species of herring
+too bony to be easily eaten, is used as manure in very great quantities.
+Ten thousand are employed as a dressing for an acre, and a single net
+has sometimes taken 200,000 in a day.--DWIGHT's _Travels_, ii, pp. 512,
+515.
+
+[106] The indiscriminate hostility of man to inferior forms of animated
+life is little creditable to modern civilization, and it is painful to
+reflect that it becomes keener and more unsparing in proportion to the
+refinement of the race. The savage slays no animal, not even the
+rattlesnake, wantonly; and the Turk, whom we call a barbarian, treats
+the dumb beast as gently as a child. One cannot live many weeks in
+Turkey without witnessing touching instances of the kindness of the
+people to the lower animals, and I have found it very difficult to
+induce even the boys to catch lizards and other reptiles for
+preservation as specimens. See _Appendix_, No. 19.
+
+The fearless confidence in man, so generally manifested by wild animals
+in newly discovered islands, ought to have inspired a gentler treatment
+of them; but a very few years of the relentless pursuit, to which they
+are immediately subjected, suffice to make them as timid as the wildest
+inhabitants of the European forest. This timidity, however, may easily
+be overcome. The squirrels introduced by Mayor Smith into the public
+parks of Boston are so tame as to feed from the hands of passengers, and
+they not unfrequently enter the neighboring houses.
+
+[107] A fact mentioned by Schubert--and which in its causes and many of
+its results corresponds almost precisely with those connected with the
+escape of Barton Pond in Vermont, so well known to geological
+students--is important, as showing that the diminution of the fish in
+rivers exposed to inundations is chiefly to be ascribed to the
+mechanical action of the current, and not mainly, as some have supposed,
+to changes of temperature occasioned by clearing. Our author states
+that, in 1796, a terrible inundation was produced in the Indalself,
+which rises in the Storsj� in Jemtland, by drawing off into it the
+waters of another lake near Ragunda. The flood destroyed houses and
+fields; much earth was swept into the channel, and the water made turbid
+and muddy; the salmon and the smaller fish forsook the river altogether,
+and never returned. The banks of the river have never regained their
+former solidity, and portions of their soil are still continually
+falling into the water.--_Resa genom Sverge_, ii, p. 51.
+
+[108] WITTWER, _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 142.
+
+[109] To vary the phrase, I make occasional use of _animalcule_, which,
+as a popular designation, embraces all microscopic organisms. The name
+is founded on the now exploded supposition that all of them are
+animated, which was the general belief of naturalists when attention was
+first drawn to them. It was soon discovered that many of them were
+unquestionably vegetable, and there are numerous genera the true
+classification of which is matter of dispute among the ablest observers.
+There are cases in which objects formerly taken for living animalcules
+turn out to be products of the decomposition of matter once animated,
+and it is admitted that neither spontaneous motion nor even apparent
+irritability are sure signs of animal life.
+
+[110] See an interesting report on the coral fishery, by Sant' Agabio,
+Italian Consul-General at Algiers, in the _Bollettino Consolare_,
+published by the Department of Foreign Affairs, 1862, pp. 139, 151, and
+in the _Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio_, No. ii, pp. 360,
+373.
+
+[111] The fermentation of liquids, and in many cases the decomposition
+of semi-solids, formerly supposed to be owing purely to chemical action,
+are now ascertained to be due to vital processes of living minute
+organisms both vegetable and animal, and consequently to physiological,
+as well as to chemical forces. Even alcohol is stated to be an animal
+product. See an interesting article by Auguste Laugel on the recent
+researches of Pasteur, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for September
+15th, 1863.
+
+[112] The recorded evidence in support of the proposition in the text
+has been collected by L. F. Alfred Maury, in his _Histoire des grandes
+For�ts de la Gaule et de l'ancienne France_, and by Becquerel, in his
+important work, _Des climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols
+bois�s et non bois�s_, livre ii, chap. i to iv.
+
+We may rank among historical evidences on this point, if not technically
+among historical records, old geographical names and terminations
+etymologically indicating forest or grove, which are so common in many
+parts of the Eastern Continent now entirely stripped of woods--such as,
+in Southern Europe, Breuil, Broglio, Brolio, Brolo; in Northern, Br�hl,
+-wald, -wold, -wood, -shaw, -skeg, and -skov.
+
+[113] The island of Madeira, whose noble forests were devastated by fire
+not long after its colonization by European settlers, derives its name
+from the Portuguese word for wood.
+
+[114] Browsing animals, and most of all the goat, are considered by
+foresters as more injurious to the growth of young trees, and,
+therefore, to the reproduction of the forest, than almost any other
+destructive cause. "According to Beatson's _Saint Helena_, introductory
+chapter, and Darwin's _Journal of Researches in Geology and Natural
+History_, pp. 582, 583," says Emsmann, in the notes to his translation
+of Foissac, p. 654, "it was the goats which destroyed the beautiful
+forests that, three hundred and fifty years ago, covered a continuous
+surface of not less than two thousand acres in the interior of the
+island [of St. Helena], not to mention scattered groups of trees. Darwin
+observes: 'During our stay at Valparaiso, I was most positively assured
+that sandal wood formerly grew in abundance on the island of Juan
+Fernandez, but that this tree had now become entirely extinct there,
+having been extirpated by the goats which early navigators had
+introduced. The neighboring islands, to which goats have not been
+carried, still abound in sandal wood.'"
+
+In the winter, the deer tribe, especially the great American moose deer,
+subsists much on the buds and young sprouts of trees; yet--though from
+the destruction of the wolves or from some not easily explained cause,
+these latter animals have recently multiplied so rapidly in some parts
+of North America, that, not long since, four hundred of them are said to
+have been killed, in one season, on a territory in Maine not comprising
+more than one hundred and fifty square miles--the wild browsing
+quadrupeds are rarely, if ever, numerous enough in regions uninhabited
+by man to produce any sensible effect on the condition of the forest. A
+reason why they are less injurious than the goat to young trees may be
+that they resort to this nutriment only in the winter, when the grasses
+and shrubs are leafless or covered with snow, whereas the goat feeds
+upon buds and young shoots principally in the season of growth. However
+this may be, the natural law of consumption and supply keeps the forest
+growth, and the wild animals which live on its products, in such a state
+of equilibrium as to insure the indefinite continuance of both, and the
+perpetuity of neither is endangered until man, who is above natural law,
+interferes and destroys the balance.
+
+When, however, deer are bred and protected in parks, they multiply like
+domestic cattle, and become equally injurious to trees. "A few years
+ago," says Clav�, "there were not less than two thousand deer of
+different ages in the forest of Fontainebleau. For want of grass, they
+are driven to the trees, and they do not spare them. * * It is
+calculated that the browsing of these animals, and the consequent
+retardation of the growth of the wood, diminishes the annual product
+of the forest to the amount of two hundred thousand cubic feet per
+year, * * and besides this, the trees thus mutilated are soon exhausted
+and die. The deer attack the pines, too, tearing off the bark in long
+strips, or rubbing their heads against them when shedding their horns;
+and sometimes, in groves of more than a hundred hectares, not one pine
+is found uninjured by them."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, p.
+157. See also _Appendix_, No. 21.
+
+Beckstein computes that a park of 2,500 acres, containing 250 acres of
+marsh, 250 of fields and meadows, and the remaining 2,000 of wood, may
+keep 364 deer of different species, 47 wild boars, 200 hares, 100
+rabbits, and an indefinite number of pheasants. These animals would
+require, in winter, 123,000 pounds of hay, and 22,000 pounds of
+potatoes, besides what they would pick up themselves. The natural forest
+most thickly peopled with wild animals would not, in temperate climates,
+contain, upon the average, one tenth of these numbers to the same extent
+of surface.
+
+[115] Even the volcanic dust of Etna remains very long unproductive.
+Near Nicolosi is a great extent of coarse black sand, thrown out in
+1669, which, for almost two centuries, lay entirely bare, and can be
+made to grow plants only by artificial mixtures and much labor.
+
+The increase in the price of wines, in consequence of the diminution of
+the product from the grape disease, however, has brought even these
+ashes under cultivation. "I found," says Waltershausen, referring to the
+years 1861-'62, "plains of volcanic sand and half-subdued lava streams,
+which twenty years ago lay utterly waste, now covered with fine
+vineyards. The ashfield of ten square miles above Nicolosi, created by
+the eruption of 1669, which was entirely barren in 1835, is now planted
+with vines almost to the summits of Monte Rosso, at a height of three
+thousand feet."--_Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau_, p. 19.
+
+[116] _A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom._ 1610, lib. 4, p. 260,
+edition of 1627. The testimony of Sandys on this point is confirmed by
+that of Pighio, Braccini, Magliocco, Salimbeni, and Nicola di Rubeo, all
+cited by Roth, _Der Vesuv._, p. 9. There is some uncertainty about the
+date of the last eruption previous to the great one of 1631. Ashes,
+though not lava, appear to have been thrown out about the year 1500, and
+some chroniclers have recorded an eruption in the year 1306; but this
+seems to be an error for 1036, when a great quantity of lava was
+ejected. In 1139, ashes were thrown out for many days. I take those
+dates from the work of Roth just cited.
+
+[117] Except upon the banks of rivers or of lakes, the woods of the
+interior of North America, far from the habitations of man, are almost
+destitute of animal life. Dr. Newberry, describing the vast forests of
+the yellow pine of the West, _Pinus ponderosa_, remarks: "In the arid
+and desert regions of the interior basin, we made whole days' marches in
+forests of yellow pine, of which neither the monotony was broken by
+other forms of vegetation, nor its stillness by the flutter of a bird or
+the hum of an insect."--_Pacific Railroad Report_, vol. vi, 1857. Dr.
+NEWBERRY's _Report on Botany_, p. 37.
+
+The wild fruit and nut trees, the Canada plum, the cherries, the many
+species of walnut, the butternut, the hazel, yield very little,
+frequently nothing, so long as they grow in the woods; and it is only
+when the trees around them are cut down, or when they grow in pastures,
+that they become productive. The berries, too--the strawberry, the
+blackberry, the raspberry, the whortleberry, scarcely bear fruit at all
+except in cleared ground.
+
+The North American Indians did not inhabit the interior of the forests.
+Their settlements were upon the shores of rivers and lakes, and their
+weapons and other relics are found only in the narrow open grounds which
+they had burned over and cultivated, or in the margin of the woods
+around their villages.
+
+The rank forests of the tropics are as unproductive of human aliment as
+the less luxuriant woods of the temperate zone. In Strain's unfortunate
+expedition across the great American isthmus, where the journey lay
+principally through thick woods, several of the party died of
+starvation, and for many days the survivors were forced to subsist on
+the scantiest supplies of unnutritious vegetables perhaps never before
+employed for food by man. See the interesting account of that expedition
+in _Harper's Magazine_ for March, April, and May, 1855.
+
+Clav�, as well as many earlier writers, supposes that primitive man
+derived his nutriment from the spontaneous productions of the wood. "It
+is to the forests," says he, "that man was first indebted for the means
+of subsistence. Exposed alone, without defence, to the rigor of the
+seasons, as well as to the attacks of animals stronger and swifter than
+himself, he found in them his first shelter, drew from them his first
+weapons. In the first period of humanity, they provided for all his
+wants: they furnished him wood for warmth, fruits for food, garments to
+cover his nakedness, arms for his defence."--_�tudes sur l'�conomie
+Foresti�re_, p. 13.
+
+But the history of savage life, as far as it is known to us, presents
+man in that condition as inhabiting only the borders of the forest and
+the open grounds that skirt the waters and the woods, and as finding
+only there the aliments which make up his daily bread.
+
+[118] The origin of the great natural meadows, or prairies as they are
+called, of the valley of the Mississippi, is obscure. There is, of
+course, no historical evidence on the subject, and I believe that
+remains of forest vegetation are seldom or never found beneath the
+surface, even in the _sloughs_, where the perpetual moisture would
+preserve such remains indefinitely. The want of trees upon them has been
+ascribed to the occasional long-continued droughts of summer, and the
+excessive humidity of the soil in winter; but it is, in very many
+instances, certain that, by whatever means the growth of forests upon
+them was first prevented or destroyed, the trees have been since kept
+out of them only by the annual burning of the grass, by grazing animals,
+or by cultivation. The groves and belts of trees which are found upon
+the prairies, though their seedlings are occasionally killed by drought,
+or by excess of moisture, extend themselves rapidly over them when the
+seeds and shoots are protected against fire, cattle, and the plough. The
+prairies, though of vast extent, must be considered as a local, and, so
+far as our present knowledge extends, abnormal exception to the law
+which clothes all suitable surfaces with forest; for there are many
+parts of the United States--Ohio, for example--where the physical
+conditions appear to be nearly identical with those of the States lying
+farther west, but where there were comparatively few natural meadows.
+The prairies were the proper feeding grounds of the bison, and the vast
+number of those animals is connected, as cause or consequence, with the
+existence of those vast pastures. The bison, indeed, could not convert
+the forest into a pasture, but he would do much to prevent the pasture
+from becoming a forest.
+
+There is positive evidence that some of the American tribes possessed
+large herds of domesticated bisons. See HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_,
+i, pp. 71-73. What authorizes us to affirm that this was simply the wild
+bison reclaimed, and why may we not, with equal probability, believe
+that the migratory prairie buffalo is the progeny of the domestic animal
+run wild?
+
+There are, both on the prairies, as in Wisconsin, and in deep forests,
+as in Ohio, extensive remains of a primitive people, who must have been
+more numerous and more advanced in art than the present Indian tribes.
+There can be no doubt that the woods where such earthworks are found in
+Ohio were cleared by them, and that the vicinity of these fortresses or
+temples was inhabited by a large population. Nothing forbids the
+supposition that the prairies were cleared by the same or a similar
+people, and that the growth of trees upon them has been prevented by
+fires and grazing, while the restoration of the woods in Ohio may be due
+to the abandonment of that region by its original inhabitants. The
+climatic conditions unfavorable to the spontaneous growth of trees on
+the prairies may be an effect of too extensive clearings, rather than a
+cause of the want of woods. See _Appendix_, No. 22.
+
+[119] In many parts of the North American States, the first white
+settlers found extensive tracts of thin woods, of a very park-like
+character, called "oak openings," from the predominance of different
+species of that tree upon them. These were the semi-artificial pasture
+grounds of the Indians, brought into that state, and so kept, by partial
+clearing, and by the annual burning of the grass. The object of this
+operation was to attract the deer to the fresh herbage which sprang up
+after the fire. The oaks bore the annual scorching, at least for a
+certain time; but if it had been indefinitely continued, they would very
+probably have been destroyed at last. The soil would have then been much
+in the prairie condition, and would have needed nothing but grazing for
+a long succession of years to make the resemblance perfect. That the
+annual fires alone occasioned the peculiar character of the oak
+openings, is proved by the fact, that as soon as the Indians had left
+the country, young trees of many species sprang up and grew luxuriantly
+upon them. See a very interesting account of the oak openings in
+DWIGHT's _Travels_, iv, pp. 58-63.
+
+[120] The practice of burning over woodland, at once to clear and manure
+the ground, is called in Swedish _svedjande_, a participial noun from
+the verb _att svedja_, to burn over. Though used in Sweden as a
+preparation for crops of rye or other grain, it is employed in Lapland
+more frequently to secure an abundant growth of pasturage, which follows
+in two or three years after the fire; and it is sometimes resorted to as
+a mode of driving the Laplanders and their reindeer from the vicinity of
+the Swedish backwoodsman's grass grounds and haystacks, to which they
+are dangerous neighbors. The forest, indeed, rapidly recovers itself,
+but it is a generation or more before the reindeer moss grows again.
+When the forest consists of pine, _tall_, the ground, instead of being
+rendered fertile by this process, becomes hopelessly barren, and for a
+long time afterward produces nothing but weeds and briers.--L�STADIUS,
+_Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, p. 15. See also SCHUBERT, _Resa i
+Sverge_, ii, p. 375.
+
+In some parts of France this practice is so general that Clav� says: "In
+the department of Ardennes it (_le sartage_) is the basis of
+agriculture. The northern part of the department, comprising the
+arrondissements of Rocroi and M�zi�res, is covered by steep wooded
+mountains with an argillaceous, compact, moist and cold soil; it is
+furrowed by three valleys, or rather three deep ravines, at the bottom
+of which roll the waters of the Meuse, the Semoy, and the Sormonne, and
+villages show themselves wherever the walls of the valleys retreat
+sufficiently from the rivers to give room to establish them. Deprived of
+arable soil, since the nature of the ground permits neither regular
+clearing nor cultivation, the peasant of the Ardennes, by means of
+burning, obtains from the forest a subsistence which, without this
+resource, would fail him. After the removal of the disposable wood, he
+spreads over the soil the branches, twigs, briars, and heath, sets fire
+to them in the dry weather of July and August, and sows in September a
+crop of rye, which he covers by a light ploughing. Thus prepared, the
+ground yields from seventeen to twenty bushels an acre, besides a ton
+and a half or two tons of straw of the best quality for the manufacture
+of straw hats."--CLAV�, _�tudes sur l'�conomie Foresti�re_, p. 21.
+
+Clav� does not expressly condemn the _sartage_, which indeed seems the
+only practicable method of obtaining crops from the soil he describes,
+but, as we shall see hereafter, it is regarded by most writers as a
+highly pernicious practice.
+
+[121] The remarkable mounds and other earthworks constructed in the
+valley of the Ohio and elsewhere in the territory of the United States,
+by a people apparently more advanced in culture than the modern Indian,
+were overgrown with a dense clothing of forest when first discovered by
+the whites. But though the ground where they were erected must have been
+occupied by a large population for a considerable length of time, and
+therefore entirely cleared, the trees which grew upon the ancient
+fortresses and the adjacent lands were not distinguishable in species,
+or even in dimensions and character of growth, from the neighboring
+forests, where the soil seemed never to have been disturbed. This
+apparent exception to the law of change of crop in natural forest growth
+was ingeniously explained by General Harrison's suggestion, that the
+lapse of time since the era of the mound builders was so great as to
+have embraced several successive generations of trees, and occasioned,
+by their rotation, a return to the original vegetation.
+
+The successive changes in the spontaneous growth of the forest, as
+proved by the character of the wood found in bogs, is not unfrequently
+such as to suggest the theory of a considerable change of climate during
+the human period. But the laws which govern the germination and growth
+of forest trees must be further studied, and the primitive local
+conditions of the sites where ancient woods lie buried must be better
+ascertained, before this theory can be admitted upon the evidence in
+question. In fact, the order of succession--for a rotation or
+alternation is not yet proved--may move in opposite directions in
+different countries with the same climate and at the same time. Thus in
+Denmark and in Holland the spike-leaved firs have given place to the
+broad-leaved beech, while in Northern Germany the process has been
+reversed, and evergreens have supplanted the oaks and birches of
+deciduous foliage. The principal determining cause seems to be the
+influence of light upon the germination of the seeds and the growth of
+the young tree. In a forest of firs, for instance, the distribution of
+the light and shade, to the influence of which seeds and shoots are
+exposed, is by no means the same as in a wood of beeches or of oaks, and
+hence the growth of different species will be stimulated in the two
+forests. See BERG, _Das Verdr�ngen der Laubw�lder im N�rdlichen
+Deutschland_, 1844. HEYER, _Das Verhalten der Waldb�ume gegen Licht und
+Schatten_, 1852. STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, 1856, i, pp.
+120-200. VAUPELL, _Om B�gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, 1857.
+KNORR, _Studien �ber die Buchen-Wirthschaft_, 1863.
+
+[122] There are, in Northern Italy and in Switzerland, joint-stock
+companies which insure against damage by hail, as well as by fire and
+lightning. Between the years 1854 and 1861, a single one of these
+companies, La Riunione Adriatica, paid, for damage by hail in Piedmont,
+Venetian Lombardy, and the Duchy of Parma, above 6,500,000 francs, or
+nearly $200,000 per year.
+
+[123] The _paragrandine_, or, as it is called in French, the
+_paragr�le_, is a species of conductor by which it has been hoped to
+protect the harvests in countries particularly exposed to damage by
+hail. It was at first proposed to employ for this purpose poles
+supporting sheaves of straw connected with the ground by the same
+material; but the experiment was afterward tried in Lombardy on a large
+scale, with more perfect electrical conductors, consisting of poles
+secured to the top of tall trees and provided with a pointed wire
+entering the ground and reaching above the top of the pole. It was at
+first thought that this apparatus, erected at numerous points over an
+extent of several miles, was of some service as a protection against
+hail, but this opinion was soon disputed, and does not appear to be
+supported by well-ascertained facts. The question of a repetition of the
+experiment over a wide area has been again agitated within a very few
+years in Lombardy; but the doubts expressed by very able physicists as
+to its efficacy, and as to the point whether hail is an electrical
+phenomenon, have discouraged its advocates from attempting it.
+
+[124] _Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_, p. 6.
+
+[125] _Memoria sui Boschi, etc._, p. 44.
+
+[126] _Travels in Italy_, chap. iii.
+
+[127] _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, i, p. 377.
+
+[128] "Long before the appearance of man, * * * they [the forests] had
+robbed the atmosphere of the enormous quantity of carbonic acid it
+contained, and thereby transformed it into respirable air. Trees heaped
+upon trees had already filled up the ponds and marshes, and buried with
+them in the bowels of the earth--to restore it to us after thousands of
+ages in the form of bituminous coal and of anthracite--the carbon which
+was destined to become, by this wonderful condensation, a precious store
+of future wealth."--CLAV�, _�tudes sur l'�conomie Foresti�re_, p. 13.
+
+This opinion of the modification of the atmosphere by vegetation is
+contested.
+
+[129] Schacht ascribes to the forest a specific, if not a measurable,
+influence upon the constitution of the atmosphere. "Plants imbibe from
+the air carbonic acid and other gaseous or volatile products exhaled by
+animals or developed by the natural phenomena of decomposition. On the
+other hand, the vegetable pours into the atmosphere oxygen, which is
+taken up by animals and appropriated by them. The tree, by means of its
+leaves and its young herbaceous twigs, presents a considerable surface
+for absorption and evaporation; it abstracts the carbon of carbonic
+acid, and solidifies it in wood, fecula, and a multitude of other
+compounds. The result is that a forest withdraws from the air, by its
+great absorbent surface, much more gas than meadows or cultivated
+fields, and exhales proportionally a considerably greater quantity of
+oxygen. The influence of the forests on the chemical composition of the
+atmosphere is, in a word, of the highest importance."--_Les Arbres_, p.
+111. See _Appendix_, No. 23.
+
+[130] Composition, texture and color of soil are important elements to
+be considered in estimating the effects of the removal of the forest
+upon its thermoscopic action. "Experience has proved," says Becquerel,
+"that when the soil is bared, it becomes more or less heated [by the
+rays of the sun] according to the nature and the color of the particles
+which compose it, and according to its humidity, and that, in the
+refrigeration resulting from radiation, we must take into the account
+the conducting power of those particles also. Other things being equal,
+silicious and calcareous sands, compared in equal volumes with different
+argillaceous earths, with calcareous powder or dust, with humus, with
+arable and with garden earth, are the soils which least conduct heat. It
+is for this reason that sandy ground, in summer, maintains a high
+temperature even during the night. We may hence conclude that when a
+sandy soil is stripped of wood, the local temperature will be raised.
+After the sands follow successively argillaceous, arable, and garden
+ground, then humus, which occupies the lowest rank. If we represent the
+power of calcareous sand to retain heat by 100, we have, according to
+Schubler,
+
+  For [silicious?] sand          95.6
+   "  arable calcareous soil     74.8
+   "  argillaceous earth         68.4
+   "  garden earth               64.8
+   "  humus                      49.0
+
+"The retentive power of humus, then, is but half as great as that of
+calcareous sand. We will add that the power of retaining heat is
+proportional to the density. It has also a relation to the magnitude of
+the particles. It is for this reason that ground covered with silicious
+pebbles cools more slowly than silicious sand, and that pebbly soils are
+best suited to the cultivation of the vine, because they advance the
+ripening of the grape more rapidly than chalky and clayey earths, which
+cool quickly. Hence we see that in examining the calorific effects of
+clearing forests, it is important to take into account the properties of
+the soil laid bare."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats et des Sols bois�s_, p.
+137.
+
+[131] "The Washington elm at Cambridge--a tree of no extraordinary
+size--was some years ago estimated to produce a crop of seven millions
+of leaves, exposing a surface of two hundred thousand square feet, or
+about five acres of foliage."--GRAY, _First Lessons in Botany and
+Vegetable Physiology_, as quoted by COULTAS, _What may be learned from a
+Tree_, p. 34.
+
+[132] See, on this particular point, and on the general influence of the
+forest on temperature, HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_, i, 158.
+
+[133] The radiating and refrigerating power of objects by no means
+depends on their form alone. Melloni cut sheets of metal into the shape
+of leaves and grasses, and found that they produced little cooling
+effect, and were not moistened under atmospheric conditions which
+determined a plentiful deposit of dew on the leaves of vegetables.
+
+[134] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc., Discours Pr�lim._ vi.
+
+[135] _Travels_, i, p. 61.
+
+[136] _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, pp. 370, 371.
+
+[137] BERGS�E, _Reventlovs Virksomhed_, ii, p. 125.
+
+[138] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 179.
+
+[139] Ibid., p. 116.
+
+[140] The following well-attested instance of a local change of climate
+is probably to be referred to the influence of the forest as a shelter
+against cold winds. To supply the extraordinary demand for Italian iron
+occasioned by the exclusion of English iron in the time of Napoleon I,
+the furnaces of the valleys of Bergamo were stimulated to great
+activity. "The ordinary production of charcoal not sufficing to feed the
+furnaces and the forges, the woods were felled, the copses cut before
+their time, and the whole economy of the forest was deranged. At
+Piazzatorre there was such a devastation of the woods, and consequently
+such an increased severity of climate, that maize no longer ripened.
+An association, formed for the purpose, effected the restoration
+of the forest, and maize flourishes again in the fields of
+Piazzatorre."--Report by G. ROSA, in _Il Politecnico_, Dicembre, 1861,
+p. 614.
+
+Similar ameliorations have been produced by plantations in Belgium. In
+an interesting series of articles by Baude, entitled "Les Cotes de la
+Manche," in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, I find this statement: "A
+spectator placed on the famous bell tower of the cathedral of Antwerp,
+saw, not long since, on the opposite side of the Schelde only a vast
+desert plain; now he sees a forest, the limits of which are confounded
+with the horizon. Let him enter within its shade. The supposed forest is
+but a system of regular rows of trees, the oldest of which is not forty
+years of age. These plantations have ameliorated the climate which had
+doomed to sterility the soil where they are planted. While the tempest
+is violently agitating their tops, the air a little below is still, and
+sands far more barren than the plateau of La Hague have been
+transformed, under their protection, into fertile fields."--_Revue des
+Deux Mondes_, January, 1859, p. 277.
+
+[141] _Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_, p. 31.
+
+[142] _La Provence au point de vue des Torrents et des Inondations_, p.
+19.
+
+[143] _Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge_, p. 28.
+
+[144] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 9.
+
+[145] SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane_,
+pp. xli, 124.
+
+[146] _Il Politecnico, Milano, Aprile e Maggio_, 1863, p. 35.
+
+[147] SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane_, pp. 213, 214.
+
+[148] Except in the seething marshes of the tropics, where vegetable
+decay is extremely rapid, the uniformity of temperature and of
+atmospheric humidity renders all forests eminently healthful. See
+HOHENSTEIN's observations on this subject, _Der Wald_, p. 41.
+
+There is no question that open squares and parks conduce to the
+salubrity of cities, and many observers are of opinion that the trees
+and other vegetables with which such grounds are planted contribute
+essentially to their beneficial influence. See an article in _Aus der
+Natur_, xxii, p. 813.
+
+[149] _Memoria sui Boschi di Lombardia_, p. 45.
+
+[150] _�conomie Rurale_, i, p. 22.
+
+[151] ROSSM�SSLER, _Der Wald_, p. 158.
+
+[152] Ibid., p. 160.
+
+[153] The low temperature of air and soil at which, in the frigid zone,
+as well as in warmer latitudes under special circumstances, the
+processes of vegetation go on, seems to necessitate the supposition that
+all the manifestations of vegetable life are attended with an evolution
+of heat. In the United States, it is common to protect ice, in
+icehouses, by a covering of straw, which naturally sometimes contains
+kernels of grain. These often sprout, and even throw out roots and
+leaves to a considerable length, in a temperature very little above the
+freezing point. Three or four years since, I saw a lump of very clear
+and apparently solid ice, about eight inches long by six thick, on which
+a kernel of grain had sprouted in an icehouse, and sent half a dozen or
+more very slender roots into the pores of the ice and through the whole
+length of the lump. The young plant must have thrown out a considerable
+quantity of heat; for though the ice was, as I have said, otherwise
+solid, the pores through which the roots passed were enlarged to perhaps
+double the diameter of the fibres, but still not so much as to prevent
+the retention of water in them by capillary attraction. See _App._ 24.
+
+[154] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, pp. 139-141.
+
+[155] Dr. Williams made some observations on this subject in 1789, and
+in 1791, but they generally belonged to the warmer months, and I do not
+know that any extensive series of comparisons between the temperature of
+the ground in the woods and the fields has been attempted in America.
+Dr. Williams's thermometer was sunk to the depth of ten inches, and gave
+the following results:
+
+  +-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
+  |             | Temperature  | Temperature  |             |
+  |  TIME.      | of ground in | of ground in | Difference. |
+  |             |   pasture.   |    woods.    |             |
+  +-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
+  | May   23    |      52      |      46      |     6       |
+  |  "    28    |      57      |      48      |     9       |
+  | June  15    |      64      |      51      |     13      |
+  |  "    27    |      62      |      51      |     11      |
+  | July  16    |      62      |      51      |     11      |
+  |  "    30    |      65�     |      55�     |     10      |
+  | Aug.  15    |      68      |      58      |     10      |
+  |  "    31    |      59�     |      55      |      4�     |
+  | Sept. 15    |      59�     |      55      |      4�     |
+  | Oct.   1    |      59�     |      55      |      4�     |
+  |  "    15    |      49      |      49      |      0      |
+  | Nov.   1    |      43      |      43      |      0      |
+  |  "    16    |      43�     |      43�     |      0      |
+  +-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
+
+On the 14th of January, 1791, in a winter remarkable for its extreme
+severity, he found the ground, on a plain open field where the snow had
+been blown away, frozen to the depth of three feet and five inches; in
+the woods where the snow was three feet deep, and where the soil had
+frozen to the depth of six inches before the snow fell, the thermometer,
+at six inches below the surface of the ground, stood at 39�. In
+consequence of the covering of the snow, therefore, the previously
+frozen ground had been thawed and raised to seven degrees above the
+freezing point.--WILLIAMS'S _Vermont_, i, p. 74.
+
+Bodies of fresh water, so large as not to be sensibly affected by local
+influences of narrow reach or short duration, would afford climatic
+indications well worthy of special observation. Lake Champlain, which
+forms the boundary between the States of New York and Vermont, presents
+very favorable conditions for this purpose. This lake, which drains a
+basin of about 6,000 square miles, covers an area, excluding its
+islands, of about 500 square miles. It extends from lat. 43� 30' to 45�
+20', in very nearly a meridian line, has a mean width of four and a half
+miles, with an extreme breadth, excluding bays almost land-locked, of
+thirteen miles. Its mean depth is not well known. It is, however, 400
+feet deep in some places, and from 100 to 200 in many, and has few
+shoals or flats. The climate is of such severity that it rarely fails to
+freeze completely over, and to be safely crossed upon the ice, with
+heavy teams, for several weeks every winter. THOMPSON (_Vermont_, p. 14,
+and Appendix, p. 9) gives the following table of the times of the
+complete closing and opening of the ice, opposite Burlington, about the
+centre of the lake, and where it is ten miles wide.
+
+  +------+-------------+------------+-------+
+  | Year.|  Closing.   | Opening.   | Days  |
+  |      |             |            |closed.|
+  +------+-------------+------------+-------+
+  | 1816 | February 9  |            |       |
+  | 1817 | January 29  | April 16   |   78  |
+  | 1818 | February 2  | April 15   |   72  |
+  | 1819 | March 4     | April 17   |   44  |
+  | 1820 |{February 3  | February   |  } 4  |
+  |      |{March 8     | March 12   |  }    |
+  | 1821 | January 15  | April 21   |   95  |
+  | 1822 | January 24  | March 30   |   75  |
+  | 1823 | February 7  | April 5    |   57  |
+  | 1824 | January 22  | February 11|   20  |
+  | 1825 | February 9  |            |       |
+  | 1826 | February 1  | March 24   |   51  |
+  | 1827 | January 21  | March 31   |   68  |
+  | 1828 | not closed  |            |       |
+  | 1829 | January 31  | April      |       |
+  | 1832 | February 6  | April 17   |   70  |
+  | 1833 | February 2  | April 6    |   63  |
+  | 1834 | February 13 | February 20|    7  |
+  | 1835 |{January 10  | January 23 |   18  |
+  |      |{February 7  | April 12   |   64  |
+  | 1836 | January 27  | April 21   |   85  |
+  | 1837 | January 15  | April 26   |  101  |
+  | 1838 | February 2  | April 13   |   70  |
+  | 1839 | January 25  | April 6    |   71  |
+  | 1840 | January 25  | February 20|   26  |
+  | 1841 | February 18 | April 19   |   61  |
+  | 1842 | not closed  |            |       |
+  | 1843 | February 16 | April 22   |   65  |
+  | 1844 | January 25  | April 11   |   77  |
+  | 1845 | February 3  | March 26   |   51  |
+  | 1846 | February 10 | March 26   |   44  |
+  | 1847 | February 15 | April 23   |   68  |
+  | 1848 | February 13 | February 26|   13  |
+  | 1849 | February 7  | March 23   |   44  |
+  | 1850 | not closed  |            |       |
+  | 1851 | February 1  | March 12   |   89  |
+  | 1852 | January 18  | April 10   |   92  |
+  +------+-------------+------------+-------+
+
+In 1847, although, at the point indicated, the ice broke up on the 23d
+of April, it remained frozen much later at the North, and steamers were
+not able to traverse the whole length of the lake until May 6th.
+
+[156] We are not, indeed, to suppose that condensation of vapor and
+evaporation of water are going on in the same stratum of air at the same
+time, or, in other words, that vapor is condensed into raindrops, and
+raindrops evaporated, under the same conditions; but rain formed in one
+stratum, may fall through another, where vapor would not be condensed.
+Two saturated strata of different temperatures may be brought into
+contact in the higher regions, and discharge large raindrops, which, if
+not divided by some obstruction, will reach the ground, though passing
+all the time through strata which would vaporize them if they were in a
+state of more minute division.
+
+[157] It is perhaps too much to say that the influence of trees upon the
+wind is strictly limited to the mechanical resistance of their trunks,
+branches, and foliage. So far as the forest, by dead or by living
+action, raises or lowers the temperature of the air within it, so far it
+creates upward or downward currents in the atmosphere above it, and,
+consequently, a flow of air toward or from itself. These air streams
+have a certain, though doubtless a very small influence on the force and
+direction of greater atmospheric movements.
+
+[158] As a familiar illustration of the influence of the forest in
+checking the movement of winds, I may mention the well-known fact, that
+the sensible cold is never extreme in thick woods, where the motion of
+the air is little felt. The lumbermen in Canada and the Northern United
+States labor in the woods, without inconvenience, when the mercury
+stands many degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit, while in the open
+grounds, with only a moderate breeze, the same temperature is almost
+insupportable. The engineers and firemen of locomotives, employed on
+railways running through forests of any considerable extent, observe
+that, in very cold weather, it is much easier to keep up the steam while
+the engine is passing through the woods than in the open ground. As soon
+as the train emerges from the shelter of the trees the steam gauge
+falls, and the stoker is obliged to throw in a liberal supply of fuel to
+bring it up again.
+
+Another less frequently noticed fact, due, no doubt, in a great measure
+to the immobility of the air, is, that sounds are transmitted to
+incredible distances in the unbroken forest. Many instances of this have
+fallen under my own observation, and others, yet more striking, have
+been related to me by credible and competent witnesses familiar with a
+more primitive condition of the Anglo-American world. An acute observer
+of natural phenomena, whose childhood and youth were spent in the
+interior of one of the newer New England States, has often told me that
+when he established his home in the forest, he always distinctly heard,
+in still weather, the plash of horses' feet, when they forded a small
+brook nearly seven-eighths of a mile from his house, though a portion of
+the wood that intervened consisted of a ridge seventy or eighty feet
+higher than either the house or the ford.
+
+I have no doubt that, in such cases, the stillness of the air is the
+most important element in the extraordinary transmissibility of sound;
+but it must be admitted that the absence of the multiplied and confused
+noises, which accompany human industry in countries thickly peopled by
+man, contributes to the same result. We become, by habit, almost
+insensible to the familiar and never-resting voices of civilization in
+cities and towns; but the indistinguishable drone, which sometimes
+escapes even the ear of him who listens for it, deadens and often quite
+obstructs the transmission of sounds which would otherwise be clearly
+audible. An observer, who wishes to appreciate that hum of civic life
+which he cannot analyze, will find an excellent opportunity by placing
+himself on the hill of Capo di Monte at Naples, in the line of
+prolongation of the street called Spaccanapoli.
+
+It is probably to the stillness of which I have spoken, that we are to
+ascribe the transmission of sound to great distances at sea in calm
+weather. In June, 1853, I and my family were passengers on board a ship
+of war bound up the �gean. On the evening of the 27th of that month, as
+we were discussing, at the tea table, some observations of Humboldt on
+this subject, the captain of the ship told us that he had once heard a
+single gun at sea at the distance of ninety nautical miles. The nest
+morning, though a light breeze had sprung up from the north, the sea was
+of glassy smoothness when we went on deck. As we came up, an officer
+told us that he had heard a gun at sunrise, and the conversation of the
+previous evening suggested the inquiry whether it could have been fired
+from the combined French and English fleet then lying at Beshika Bay.
+Upon examination of our position we were found to have been, at sunrise,
+ninety sea miles from that point. We continued beating up northward, and
+between sunrise and twelve o'clock meridian of the 28th, we had made
+twelve miles northing, reducing our distance from Beshika Bay to
+seventy-eight sea miles. At noon we heard several guns so distinctly
+that we were able to count the number. On the 29th we came up with the
+fleet, and learned from an officer who came on board that a royal salute
+had been fired at noon on the 28th, in honor of the day as the
+anniversary of the Queen of England's coronation. The report at sunrise
+was evidently the morning gun, those at noon the salute.
+
+Such cases are rare, because the sea is seldom still, and the
+[Greek: kymat�n an�rithmon gelasma] rarely silent, over so great a space
+as ninety or even seventy-eight nautical miles. I apply the epithet
+_silent_ to [Greek: gelasma] advisedly. I am convinced that �schylus
+meant the audible laugh of the waves, which is indeed of _countless_
+multiplicity, not the visible smile of the sea, which, belonging to the
+great expanse as one impersonation, is single, though, like the human
+smile, made up of the play of many features.
+
+[159] "The presence of watery vapor in the air is general. * * *
+Vegetable surfaces are endowed with the power of absorbing gases,
+vapors, and also, no doubt, the various soluble bodies which are
+presented to them. The inhalation of humidity is carried on by the
+leaves upon a large scale; the dew of a cold summer night revives the
+groves and the meadows, and a single shower of rain suffices to refresh
+the verdure of a forest which a long drought had parched."--SCHACHT,
+_Les Arbres_, ix, p. 340.
+
+The absorption of the vapor of water by leaves is disputed. "The
+absorption of watery vapor by the leaves of plants is, according to
+Unger's experiments, inadmissible."--WILHELM, _Der Boden und das
+Wasser_, p. 19. If this latter view is correct, the apparently
+refreshing effects of atmospheric humidity upon vegetation must be
+ascribed to moisture absorbed by the ground from the air and supplied to
+the roots. In some recent experiments by Dr. Sachs, a porous flower-pot,
+with a plant growing in it, was left unwatered until the earth was dry,
+and the plant began to languish. The pot was then placed in a glass case
+containing air, which was kept always saturated with humidity, but no
+water was supplied, and the leaves of the plant were exposed to the open
+atmosphere. The soil in the flower pot absorbed from the air moisture
+enough to revive the foliage, and keep it a long time green, but not
+enough to promote development of new leaves.--Id., ibid., p. 18.
+
+[160] The experiments of Hales and others, on the absorption and
+exhalation of water by vegetables, are of the highest physiological
+interest; but observations on sunflowers, cabbages, hops, and single
+branches of isolated trees, growing in artificially prepared soils and
+under artificial conditions, furnish no trustworthy data for computing
+the quantity of water received and given off by the natural wood.
+
+[161] In the primitive forest, except where the soil is too wet for the
+dense growth of trees, the ground is generally too thickly covered with
+leaves to allow much room for ground mosses. In the more open woods of
+Europe, this form of vegetation is more frequent--as, indeed, are many
+other small plants of a more inviting character--than in the native
+American forest. See, on the cryptogams and wood plants, ROSSM�SSLER,
+_Der Wald_, pp. 33 _et seqq._
+
+[162] Emerson (_Trees of Massachusetts_, p. 493) mentions a maple six
+feet in diameter, as having yielded a barrel, or thirty-one and a half
+gallons of sap in twenty-four hours, and another, the dimensions of
+which are not stated, as having yielded one hundred and seventy-five
+gallons in the course of the season. The _Cultivator_, an American
+agricultural journal, for June, 1842, states that twenty gallons of sap
+were drawn in eighteen hours from a single maple, two and a half feet in
+diameter, in the town of Warner, New Hampshire, and the truth of this
+account has been verified by personal inquiry made in my behalf. This
+tree was of the original forest growth, and had been left standing when
+the ground around it was cleared. It was tapped only every other year,
+and then with six or eight incisions. Dr. Williams (_History of
+Vermont_, i, p. 91) says: "A man much employed in making maple sugar,
+found that, for twenty-one days together, a maple tree discharged seven
+and a half gallons per day."
+
+An intelligent correspondent, of much experience in the manufacture of
+maple sugar, writes me that a second-growth maple, of about two feet in
+diameter, standing in open ground, tapped with four incisions, has, for
+several seasons, generally run eight gallons per day in fair weather. He
+speaks of a very large tree, from which sixty gallons were drawn in the
+course of a season, and of another, something more than three feet
+through, which made forty-two pounds of wet sugar, and must have yielded
+not less than one hundred and fifty gallons.
+
+[163] "The buds of the maple," says the same correspondent, "do not
+start till toward the close of the sugar season. As soon as they begin
+to swell, the sap seems less sweet, and the sugar made from it is of a
+darker color, and with less of the distinctive maple flavor."
+
+[164] "In this region, maples are usually tapped with a three-quarter
+inch bit, boring to the depth of one and a half or two inches. In the
+smaller trees, one incision only is made, two in those of eighteen
+inches in diameter, and four in trees of larger size. Two 3/4-inch holes
+in a tree twenty-two inches in diameter = 1/46 of the circumference, and
+1/169 of the area of section."
+
+"Tapping does not check the growth, but does injure the quality of the
+wood of maples. The wood of trees often tapped is lighter and less dense
+than that of trees which have not been tapped, and gives less heat in
+burning. No difference has been observed in the starting of the buds of
+tapped and untapped trees."--_Same correspondent._
+
+[165] Dr. Rush, in a letter to Jefferson, states the number of maples
+fit for tapping on an acre at from thirty to fifty. "This," observes my
+correspondent, "is correct with regard to the original growth, which is
+always more or less intermixed with other trees; but in second growth,
+composed of maples alone, the number greatly exceeds this. I have had
+the maples on a quarter of an acre, which I thought about an average of
+second-growth 'maple orchards,' counted. The number was found to be
+fifty-two, of which thirty-two were ten inches or more in diameter, and,
+of course, large enough to tap. This gives two hundred and eight trees
+to the acre, one hundred and twenty-eight of which were of proper size
+for tapping."
+
+According to the census returns, the quantity of maple sugar made
+in the United States in 1850 was 34,253,436 pounds; in 1860, it was
+38,863,884 pounds, besides 1,944,594 gallons of molasses. The cane
+sugar made in 1850 amounted to 237,133,000 pounds; in 1859, to
+302,205,000.--_Preliminary Report on the Eighth Census_, p. 88.
+
+According to Bigelow, _Les �tats Unis d'Am�rique en 1863_, chap. iv, the
+sugar product of Louisiana alone for 1862 is estimated at 528,321,500
+pounds.
+
+[166] The correspondent already referred to informs me that a black
+birch, tapped about noon with two incisions, was found the next morning
+to have yielded sixteen gallons. Dr. Williams (_History of Vermont_, i,
+p. 91) says: "A large birch, tapped in the spring, ran at the rate of
+five gallons an hour when first tapped. Eight or nine days after, it was
+found to run at the rate of about two and a half gallons an hour, and at
+the end of fifteen days the discharge continued in nearly the same
+quantity. The sap continued to flow for four or five weeks, and it was
+the opinion of the observers that it must have yielded as much as sixty
+barrels [1,890 gallons]."
+
+[167] "The best state of weather for a good run," says my correspondent,
+"is clear days, thawing fast in the daytime and freezing well at night,
+with a gentle west or northwest wind; though we sometimes have clear,
+fine, thawing days followed by frosty nights, without a good run of sap,
+I have thought it probable that the irregular flow of sap on different
+days in the same season is connected with the variation in atmospheric
+pressure; for the atmospheric conditions above mentioned as those most
+favorable to a free flow of sap are also those in which the barometer
+usually indicates pressure considerably above the mean. With a south or
+southeast wind, and in lowering weather, which causes a fall in the
+barometer, the flow generally ceases, though the sap sometimes runs till
+after the beginning of the storm. With a _gentle_ wind, south of west,
+maples sometimes run all night. When this occurs, it is oftenest shortly
+before a storm. Last spring, the sap of a sugar orchard in a neighboring
+town flowed the greater part of the time for two days and two nights
+successively, and did not cease till after the commencement of a rain
+storm."
+
+The cessation of the flow of sap at night is perhaps in part to be
+ascribed to the nocturnal frost, which checks the melting of the snow,
+of course diminishing the supply of moisture in the ground, and
+sometimes congeals the strata from which the rootlets suck in water.
+From the facts already mentioned, however, and from other well-known
+circumstances--such, for example, as the more liberal flow of sap from
+incisions on the south side of the trunk--it is evident that the
+withdrawal of the stimulating influences of the sun's light and heat is
+the principal cause of the suspension of the circulation in the night.
+
+[168] "The flow ceases altogether soon after the buds begin to
+swell."--_Letter before quoted._
+
+[169] We might obtain a contribution to an approximate estimate of the
+quantity of moisture abstracted by forest vegetation from the earth and
+the air, by ascertaining, as nearly as possible, the quantity of wood on
+a given area, the proportion of assimilable matter contained in the
+fluids of the tree at different seasons of the year, the ages of the
+trees respectively, and the quantity of leaf and seed annually shed by
+them. The results would, indeed, be very vague, but they might serve to
+check or confirm estimates arrived at by other processes. The following
+facts are items too loose perhaps to be employed as elements in such a
+computation.
+
+Dr. Williams, who wrote when the woods of Northern New England were
+generally in their primitive condition, states the number of trees
+growing on an acre at from one hundred and fifty to six hundred and
+fifty, according to their size and the quality of the soil; the quantity
+of wood, at from fifty to two hundred cords, or from 238 to 952 cubic
+yards, but adds that on land covered with pines, the quantity of wood
+would be much greater. Whether he means to give the entire solid
+contents of the tree, or, as is usual in ordinary estimates in New
+England, the marketable wood only, the trunks and larger branches, does
+not appear. Next to the pine, the maple would probably yield a larger
+amount to a given area than any of the other trees mentioned by Dr.
+Williams, but mixed wood, in general, measures most. In a good deal of
+observation on this subject, the largest quantity of marketable wood I
+have ever known cut on an acre of virgin forest was one hundred and four
+cords, or 493 cubic yards, and half that amount is considered a very
+fair yield. The smaller trees, branches, and twigs would not increase
+the quantity more than twenty-five per cent., and if we add as much more
+for the roots, we should have a total of about 750 cubic yards. I think
+Dr. Williams's estimate too large, though it would fall much below the
+product of the great trees of the Mississippi Valley, of Oregon, and of
+California. It should be observed that these measurements are those of
+the wood as it lies when 'corded' or piled up for market, and exceed the
+real solid contents by not less than fifteen per cent.
+
+"In a soil of medium quality," says Clav�, quoting the estimates of
+Pfeil, for the climate of Prussia, "the volume of a hectare of pines
+twenty years old, would exceed 80 cubic m�tres [42� cubic yards to
+the acre]; it would amount to but 24 in a meagre soil. This tree attains
+its maximum of mean growth at the age of seventy-five years. At that
+age, in the sandy earth of Prussia, it produces annually about 5 cubic
+m�tres, with a total volume of 311 cubic m�tres per hectare [166 cubic
+yards per acre]. After this age the volume increases, but the mean rate
+of growth diminishes. At eighty years, for instance, the volume is 335
+cubic m�tres, the annual production 4 only. The beech reaches its
+maximum of annual growth at one hundred and twenty years. It then has a
+total volume of 633 cubic m�tres to the hectare [335 cubic yards to the
+acre], and produces 5 cubic m�tres per year."--CLAV�, _�tudes_, p. 151.
+
+These measures, I believe, include the entire ligneous product of the
+tree, exclusive of the roots, and express the actual solid contents. The
+specific gravity of maple wood is stated to be 75. Maple sap yields
+sugar at the rate of about one pound _wet_ sugar to three gallons of
+sap, and wet sugar is to dry sugar in about the proportion of nineteen
+to sixteen. Besides the sugar, there is a small residuum of "sand,"
+composed of phosphate of lime, with a little silex, and it is certain
+that by the ordinary hasty process of manufacture, a good deal of sugar
+is lost; for the drops, condensed from the vapor of the boilers on the
+rafters of the rude sheds where the sap is boiled, have a decidedly
+sweet taste.
+
+[170] "The elaborated sap, passing out of the leaves, is received into
+the inner bark, * * * and a part of what descends finds its way even to
+the ends of the roots, and is all along diffused laterally into the
+stem, where it meets and mingles with the ascending crude sap or raw
+material. So there is no separate circulation of the two kinds of sap;
+and no crude sap exists separately in any part of the plant. Even in the
+root, where it enters, this mingles at once with some elaborated sap
+already there."--GRAY, _How Plants Grow_, � 273.
+
+[171] Ward's tight glazed cases for raising, and especially for
+transporting plants, go far to prove that water only circulates through
+vegetables, and is again and again absorbed and transpired by organs
+appropriated to these functions. Seeds, growing grasses, shrubs, or
+trees planted in proper earth, moderately watered and covered with a
+glass bell or close frame of glass, live for months and even years, with
+only the original store of air and water. In one of Ward's early
+experiments, a spire of grass and a fern, which sprang up in a corked
+bottle containing a little moist earth introduced as a bed for a snail,
+lived and flourished for eighteen years without a new supply of either
+fluid. In these boxes the plants grow till the enclosed air is exhausted
+of the gaseous constituents of vegetation, and till the water has
+yielded up the assimilable matter it held in solution, and dissolved and
+supplied to the roots the nutriment contained in the earth in which they
+are planted. After this, they continue for a long time in a state of
+vegetable sleep, but if fresh air and water be introduced into the
+cases, or the plants be transplanted into open ground, they rouse
+themselves to renewed life, and grow vigorously, without appearing to
+have suffered from their long imprisonment. The water transpired by the
+leaves is partly absorbed by the earth directly from the air, partly
+condensed on the glass, along which it trickles down to the earth,
+enters the roots again, and thus continually repeats the circuit. See
+_Aus der Natur_, 21, B. S. 537.
+
+[172] WILHELM, _Der Boden und das Wasser_, p. 18. It is not ascertained
+in what proportions the dew is evaporated, and in what it is absorbed by
+the earth, in actual nature, but there can be no doubt that the amount
+of water taken up by the ground, both from vapor suspended in the air
+and from dew, is large. The annual fall of dew in England is estimated
+at five inches, but this quantity is much exceeded in many countries
+with a clearer sky. "In many of our Algerian campaigns," says Babinet,
+"when it was wished to punish the brigandage of the unsubdued tribes, it
+was impossible to set their grain fields on fire until a late hour of
+the day; for the plants were so wet with the night dew that it was
+necessary to wait until the sun had dried them."--_�tudes et Lectures_,
+ii, p. 212.
+
+[173] "It has been concluded that the dry land occupies about 49,800,000
+square statute miles. This does not include the recently discovered
+tracts of land in the vicinity of the poles, and allowing for yet
+undiscovered land (which, however, can only exist in small quantity), if
+we assign 51,000,000 to the land, there will remain about 146,000,000 of
+square miles for the extent of surface occupied by the ocean."--Sir J.
+F. W. HERSCHEL, _Physical Geography_, 1861, p. 19.
+
+It does not appear to which category Herschel assigns the inland seas
+and the fresh-water lakes and rivers of the earth; and Mrs. Somerville,
+who states that the "dry land occupies an area of 38,000,000 of square
+miles," and that "the ocean covers nearly three fourths of the surface
+of the globe," is equally silent on this point.--_Physical Geography_,
+fifth edition, p. 30. On the following page, Mrs. Somerville, in a note,
+cites Mr. Gardner as her authority, and says that, "according to his
+computation, the extent of land is about 37,673,000 square British
+miles, independently of Victoria Continent; and the sea occupies
+110,849,000. Hence the land is to the sea as 1 to 4 nearly." Sir John F.
+W. Herschel makes the area of dry land and ocean together 197,000,000
+square miles; Mrs. Somerville, or rather Mr. Gardner, 148,522,000. I
+suppose Sir John Herschel includes the islands in his aggregate of the
+"dry land," and the inland waters under the general designation of the
+"ocean," and that Mrs. Somerville excludes both.
+
+[174] It has been observed in Sweden that the spring, in many districts
+where the forests have been cleared off, now comes on a fortnight later
+than in the last century.--ASBJ�RNSEN, _Om Skovene i Norge_, p. 101.
+
+The conclusion arrived at by Noah Webster, in his very learned and able
+paper on the supposed change in the temperature of winter, read before
+the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799, was as follows:
+"From a careful comparison of these facts, it appears that the weather,
+in modern winters, in the United States, is more inconstant than when
+the earth was covered with woods, at the first settlement of Europeans
+in the country; that the warm weather of autumn extends further into the
+winter months, and the cold weather of winter and spring encroaches upon
+the summer; that, the wind being more variable, snow is less permanent,
+and perhaps the same remark may be applicable to the ice of the rivers.
+These effects seem to result necessarily from the greater quantity of
+heat accumulated in the earth in summer since the ground has been
+cleared of wood and exposed to the rays of the sun, and to the greater
+depth of frost in the earth in winter by the exposure of its uncovered
+surface to the cold atmosphere."--_Collection of Papers by_ NOAH
+WEBSTER, p. 162.
+
+[175] I have seen, in Northern New England, the surface of the open
+ground frozen to the depth of twenty-two inches, in the month of
+November, when in the forest earth no frost was discoverable; and later
+in the winter, I have known an exposed sand knoll to remain frozen six
+feet deep, after the ground in the woods was completely thawed.
+
+[176]
+
+        ----Det golde Str�g i Afrika,
+  Der Intet voxe kan, da ei det regner,
+  Og, omvendt, ingen Regn kan falde, da
+  Der Intet voxer.
+                           PALUDAN-M�LLER, _Adam Homo_, ii, 408.
+
+[177]
+
+  Und St�rme brausen um die Wette
+  Vom Meer aufs Land, vom Land aufs Meer.
+                        GOETHE, _Faust, Song of the Archangels_.
+
+[178] _�tudes sur l'�conomie Foresti�re_, pp. 45, 46.
+
+[179] I am not aware of any evidence to show that Malta had any woods of
+importance at any time since the cultivation of cotton was introduced
+there; and if it is true, as has been often asserted, that its present
+soil was imported from Sicily, it can certainly have possessed no
+forests since a very remote period. In Sandys's time, 1611, there were
+no woods in the island, and it produced little cotton. He describes it
+as "a country altogether champion, being no other than a rocke couered
+ouer with earth, but two feete deepe where the deepest; hauing but few
+trees but such as beare fruite. * * * So that their wood they haue from
+Sicilia." They have "an indifferent quantity of cotton wooll, but that
+the best of all other."--SANDYS, _Travels_, p. 228.
+
+[180] SCHACHT, _Les Arbres_, p. 412.
+
+[181] _What may be learned from a Tree_, p. 117.
+
+[182] _Der Wald_, p. 13.
+
+[183] _Om Skovene og deres Forhold til National[oe]conomien_, pp.
+131-133.
+
+[184] _Om Skovene og om et ordnet Skovbrug i Norge_, p. 106.
+
+[185] _�tudes et Lectures_, iv. p. 114.
+
+[186] The supposed increase in the frequency and quantity of rain in
+Lower Egypt is by no means established. I have heard it disputed on the
+spot by intelligent Franks, whose residence in that country began before
+the plantations of Mehemet Aali and Ibrahim Pacha, and I have been
+assured by them that meteorological observations, made at Alexandria
+about the beginning of this century, show an annual fall of rain as
+great as is usual at this day. The mere fact, that it did not rain
+during the French occupation, is not conclusive. Having experienced a
+gentle shower of nearly twenty-four hours' duration in Upper Egypt, I
+inquired of the local governor in relation to the frequency of this
+phenomenon, and was told by him that not a drop of rain had fallen at
+that point for more than two years previous.
+
+The belief in the increase of rain in Egypt rests almost entirely on the
+observations of Marshal Marmont, and the evidence collected by him in
+1836. His conclusions have been disputed, if not confuted, by Jomard and
+others, and are probably erroneous. See, FOISSAC, _M�t�orologie_, German
+translation, pp. 634-639.
+
+It certainly sometimes rains briskly at Cairo, but evaporation is
+exceedingly rapid in Egypt--as any one, who ever saw a Fellah woman wash
+a napkin in the Nile, and dry it by shaking it a few moments in the air,
+can testify; and a heap of grain, wet a few inches below the surface,
+would probably dry again without injury. At any rate, the Egyptian
+Government often has vast quantities of wheat stored at Boulak, in
+uncovered yards through the winter, though it must be admitted that the
+slovenliness and want of foresight in Oriental life, public and private,
+are such that we cannot infer the safety of any practice followed in the
+East, merely from its long continuance.
+
+Grain, however, may be long kept in the open air in climates much less
+dry than that of Egypt, without injury, except to the superficial
+layers; for moisture does not penetrate to a great depth in a heap of
+grain once well dried, and kept well aired. When Louis IX was making his
+preparations for his campaign in the East, he had large quantities of
+wine and grain purchased in the Island of Cyprus, and stored up, for two
+years, to await his arrival. "When we were come to Cyprus," says
+Joinville, _Histoire de Saint Louis_, �� 72, 73, "we found there greate
+foison of the Kynge's purveyance. * * The wheate and the barley they had
+piled up in greate heapes in the feeldes, and to looke vpon, they were
+like vnto mountaynes; for the raine, the whyche hadde beaten vpon the
+wheate now a longe whyle, had made it to sproute on the toppe, so that
+it seemed as greene grasse. And whanne they were mynded to carrie it to
+Egypte, they brake that sod of greene herbe, and dyd finde under the
+same the wheate and the barley, as freshe as yf menne hadde but nowe
+thrashed it."
+
+[187] _�tude sur les Eaux au point de vue des Inondations_, p. 91.
+
+[188] _�conomie Rurale_, ii, chap. xx, � 4, pp. 756-759. See also p.
+733.
+
+[189] Jacini, speaking of the great Italian lakes, says: "A large
+proportion of the water of the lakes, instead of discharging itself by
+the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, the Mincio, filters through the
+silicious strata which underlie the hills, and follows subterranean
+channels to the plain, where it collects in the _fontanili_, and being
+thence conducted into the canals of irrigation, becomes a source of
+great fertility."--_La Propriet� Fondiaria, etc._, p. 144.
+
+[190] _M�t�orologie_, German translation by EMSMANN, p. 605.
+
+[191] _Handbuch der Physischen Geographie_, p. 658.
+
+[192] _Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1854, 1st s�mestre, pp. 21 _et
+seqq._ See the comments of VALL�S on these observations, in his _�tudes
+sur les Inondations_, pp. 441 _et seqq._
+
+[193] The passage in Pliny is as follows: "Nascuntur fontes, decisis
+plerumque silvis, quos arborum alimenta consumebant, sicut in H�mo,
+obsidente Gallos Cassandro, quum valli gratia cecidissent. Plerumque
+vero damnosi torrentes corrivantur, detracta collibus silva continere
+nimbos ac digerere consueta."--_Nat. Hist._, xxxi, 30.
+
+Seneca cites this case, and another similar one said to have been
+observed at Magnesia, from a passage in Theophrastus, not to be found in
+the extant works of that author; but he adds that the stories are
+incredible, because shaded grounds abound most in water: fer�
+aquosissima sunt qu�cumque umbrosissima.--_Qu�st. Nat._, iii, 11. _See
+Appendix_, No. 26.
+
+[194] "Why go so far for the proof of a phenomenon that is repeated
+every day under our own eyes, and of which every Parisian may convince
+himself, without venturing beyond the Bois de Boulogne or the forest of
+Meudon? Let him, after a few rainy days, pass along the Chevreuse road,
+which is bordered on the right by the wood, on the left by cultivated
+fields. The fall of water and the continuance of the rain have been the
+same on both sides; but the ditch on the side of the forest will remain
+filled with water proceeding from the infiltration through the wooded
+soil, long after the other, contiguous to the open ground, has performed
+its office of drainage and become dry. The ditch on the left will have
+discharged in a few hours a quantity of water, which the ditch on the
+right requires several days to receive and carry down to the
+valley."--CLAV�, _�tudes, etc._, pp. 53, 54.
+
+[195] VALL�S, _�tudes sur les Inondations_, p. 472.
+
+[196] _�conomie Rurale_, p. 730.
+
+[197] _Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge_, pp. 20 _et seqq._
+
+[198] _Physische Geographie_, p. 32.
+
+[199] _The Trees of America_, pp. 50, 51.
+
+[200] THOMPSON's _Vermont_, appendix, p. 8.
+
+[201] _Trees of America_, p. 48.
+
+[202] Dumont, following Dansse, gives an interesting extract from the
+Misopogon of the Emperor Julian, showing that, in the fourth century,
+the Seine--the level of which now varies to the extent of thirty feet
+between extreme high and extreme low water mark--was almost wholly
+exempt from inundations, and flowed with a uniform current through the
+whole year. "Ego olim eram in hibernis apud caram Lutetiam, [sic] enim
+Galli Parisiorum oppidum appellant, qu� insula est non magna, in fluvio
+sita, qui eam omni ex parte eingit. Pontes sublicii utrinque ad eam
+ferunt, rar�que fluvius minuitur ae crescit; sed qualis �state, talis
+esse solet hyeme."--_Des Travaux Publics dans leur Rapports avec
+l'Agriculture_, p. 361, note.
+
+As Julian was six years in Gaul, and his principal residence was at
+Paris, his testimony as to the habitual condition of the Seine, at a
+period when the provinces where its sources originate were well wooded,
+is very valuable.
+
+[203] Almost every narrative of travel in those countries which were the
+earliest seats of civilization, contains evidence of the truth of these
+general statements, and this evidence is presented with more or less
+detail in most of the special works on the forest which I have occasion
+to cite. I may refer particularly to HOHENSTEIN, _Der Wald_, 1860, as
+full of important facts on this subject. See also CAIMI, _Cenni sulla
+Importanza dei Boschi_, for some statistics not readily found elsewhere,
+on this and other topics connected with the forest.
+
+[204] Stanley, citing SELDEN, _De Jure Naturali_, book vi, and
+FABRICIUS, _Cod. Pseudap._ V. T., i, 874, mentions a remarkable Jewish
+tradition of uncertain but unquestionably ancient date, which is among
+the oldest evidences of public respect for the woods, and of enlightened
+views of their importance and proper treatment:
+
+"To Joshua a fixed Jewish tradition ascribed ten decrees, laying down
+precise rules, which were instituted to protect the property of each
+tribe and of each householder from lawless depredation. Cattle, of a
+smaller kind, were to be allowed to graze in thick woods, not in thin
+woods; in woods, no kind of cattle without the owner's consent. Sticks
+and branches might be gathered by any Hebrew, but not cut. * * * Woods
+might be pruned, provided they were not olives or fruit trees, and that
+there was sufficient shade in the place."--_Lectures on the History of
+the Jewish Church_, part i, p. 271.
+
+[205] There seems to have been a tendency to excessive clearing in
+Central and Western, earlier than in Southeastern France. Wise and good
+Bernard Palissy--one of those persecuted Protestants of the sixteenth
+century, whose heroism, virtue, refinement, and taste shine out in such
+splendid contrast to the brutality, corruption, grossness, and barbarism
+of their oppressors--in the _Recepte V�ritable_, first printed in 1563,
+thus complains: "When I consider the value of the least clump of trees,
+or even of thorns, I much marvel at the great ignorance of men, who, as
+it seemeth, do nowadays study only to break down, fell, and waste the
+fair forests which their forefathers did guard so choicely. I would
+think no evil of them for cutting down the woods, did they but replant
+again some part of them; but they care nought for the time to come,
+neither reck they of the great damage they do to their children which
+shall come after them."--_[OE]uvres Compl�tes de Bernard Palissy_, 1844,
+p. 88.
+
+[206] The great naval and commercial marines of Venice and of Genoa must
+have occasioned an immense consumption of lumber in the Middle Ages, and
+the centuries immediately succeeding those commonly embraced in that
+designation. The marine construction of that period employed larger
+timbers than the modern naval architecture of most commercial countries,
+but apparently without a proportional increase of strength. The old
+modes of ship building have been, to a considerable extent, handed down
+to the present day in the Mediterranean, and an American or an
+Englishman looks with astonishment at the huge beams and thick planks so
+often employed in the construction of very small vessels navigating that
+sea. According to Hummel, the desolation of the Karst, the high plateau
+lying north of Trieste, now one of the most parched and barren districts
+in Europe, is owing to the felling of its woods to build the navies of
+Venice. "Where the miserable peasant of the Karst now sees nothing but
+bare rock swept and scoured by the raging Bora, the fury of this wind
+was once subdued by mighty firs, which Venice recklessly cut down to
+build her fleets."--_Physische Geographie_, p. 32. See _Appendix_, No.
+27.
+
+[207] _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, i, p. 367.
+
+[208] See the periodical _Politecnico_, published at Milan, for the
+month of May, 1862, p. 234.
+
+[209] _Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio_, vol. i, p. 77.
+
+[210] HOLINSHED, reprint of 1807, i, pp. 357, 358. It is evident from
+this passage, and from another on page 397 of the same volume, that,
+though sea coal was largely exported to the Continent, it had not yet
+come into general use in England. It is a question of much interest,
+when coal was first employed in England for fuel. I can find no evidence
+that it was used as a combustible until more than a century after the
+Norman conquest. It has been said that it was known to the Anglo-Saxon
+population, but I am acquainted with no passage in the literature of
+that people which proves this. The dictionaries explain the Anglo-Saxon
+word _gr�fa_ by sea coal. I have met with this word in no Anglo-Saxon
+work, except in the _Chronicle_, A. D. 852, from a manuscript certainly
+not older than the twelfth century, and in that passage it may as
+probably mean peat as coal, and quite as probably something else as
+either. Coal is not mentioned in King Alfred's Bede, in Glanville, or in
+Robert of Gloucester, though all these writers speak of jet as found in
+England, and are full in their enumeration of the mineral products of
+the island.
+
+England was anciently remarkable for its forests, but C�sar says it
+wanted the _fagus_ and the _abies_. There can be no doubt that _fagus_
+means the beech, which, as the remains in the Danish peat mosses show,
+is a tree of late introduction into Denmark, where it succeeded the fir,
+a tree not now native to that country. The succession of forest crops
+seems to have been the same in England; for Harrison, p. 359, speaks of
+the "great store of firre" found lying "at their whole lengths" in the
+"fens and marises" of Lancashire and other counties, where not even
+bushes grew in his time. We cannot be sure what species of evergreen
+C�sar intended by _abies_. The popular designations of spike-leaved
+trees are always more vague and uncertain in their application than
+those of broad-leaved trees. _Pinus_, _pine_, has been very loosely
+employed even in botanical nomenclature, and _Kiefer_, _Fichte_, and
+_Tanne_ are often confounded in German.--ROSSM�SSLER, _Der Wald_, pp.
+256, 289, 324. If it were certain that the _abies_ of C�sar was the fir
+formerly and still found in peat mosses, and that he was right in
+denying the existence of the beech in England in his time, the
+observation would be very important, because it would fix a date at
+which the fir had become extinct, and the beech had not yet appeared in
+the island.
+
+The English oak, though strong and durable, was not considered generally
+suitable for finer work in the sixteenth century. There were, however,
+exceptions. "Of all in Essex," observes HARRISON, _Holinshed_, i, p.
+357, "that growing in Bardfield parke is the finest for ioiners craft:
+for oftentimes haue I seene of their workes made of that oke so fine and
+faire, as most of the wainescot that is brought hither out of Danske;
+for our wainescot is not made in England. Yet diuerse haue assaied to
+deale without [with our] okes to that end, but not with so good successe
+as they haue hoped, bicause the ab or iuice will not so soone be remoued
+and cleane drawne out, which some attribute to want of time in the salt
+water."
+
+This passage is also of interest as showing that soaking in salt water,
+as a mode of seasoning, was practised in Harrison's time.
+
+But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and
+otherwise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced three
+centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the _Liber
+Albus_--a book which could have been far more valuable if the editor had
+given us the texts, with his learned notes, instead of a
+translation--mention is made of "squared oak timber," brought in from
+the country by carts, and of course of domestic growth, as free of city
+duty or octroi, and of "planks of oak" coming in in the same way as
+paying one plank a cartload. But in the chapter on the "Customs of
+Billyngesgate," pp. 208, 209, relating to goods imported from foreign
+countries, a duty of one halfpenny is imposed on every hundred of boards
+called "weynscotte," and of one penny on every hundred of boards called
+"Rygholt." The editor explains "Rygholt" as "wood of Riga." This was
+doubtless pine or fir. The year in which these provisions were made does
+not appear, but they belong to the reign of Henry III.
+
+[211] In a letter addressed to the Minister of Public Works, after the
+terrible inundations of 1857, the Emperor thus happily expressed
+himself: "Before we seek the remedy for an evil, we inquire into its
+cause. Whence come the sudden floods of our rivers? From the water which
+falls on the mountains, not from that which falls on the plains. The
+waters which fall on our fields produce but few rivulets, but those
+which fall on our roofs and are collected in the gutters, form small
+streams at once. Now, the roofs are mountains--the gutters are valleys."
+
+"To continue the comparison," observes D'H�ricourt, "roofs are smooth
+and impermeable, and the rain water pours rapidly off from their
+surfaces; but this rapidity of flow would be greatly diminished if the
+roofs were carpeted with mosses and grasses; more still, if they were
+covered with dry leaves, little shrubs, strewn branches, and other
+impediments--in short, if they were wooded."--_Annales Foresti�res,
+D�c._, 1857, p. 311.
+
+[212] "The roots of vegetables," says D'H�ricourt, "perform the office
+of a perpendicular drainage analogous to that which has been practised
+with success in Holland and in some parts of the British Islands. This
+system consists in driving down three or four thousand stakes upon a
+hectare; the rain water filters down along the stakes, and, in certain
+cases, as favorable results are obtained by this method as by horizontal
+drains."--_Annales Foresti�res_, 1857, p. 312.
+
+[213] The productiveness of Egypt has been attributed too exclusively to
+the fertilizing effects of the slime deposited by the inundations of the
+Nile; for in that climate a liberal supply of water would produce good
+crops on almost any ordinary sand, while, without water, the richest
+soil would yield nothing. The sediment deposited annually is but a very
+small fraction of an inch in thickness. It is alleged that in quantity
+it would be hardly sufficient for a good top dressing, and that in
+quality it is not chemically distinguishable from the soil inches or
+feet below the surface. But to deny, as some writers have done, that the
+slime has any fertilizing properties at all, is as great an error as the
+opposite one of ascribing all the agricultural wealth of Egypt to that
+single cause of productiveness. Fine soils deposited by water are almost
+uniformly rich in all climates; those brought down by rivers, carried
+out into salt water, and then returned again by the tide, seem to be
+more permanently fertile than any others. The polders of the Netherland
+coast are of this character, and the meadows in Lincolnshire, which have
+been covered with slime by _warping_, as it is called, or admitting
+water over them at high tide, are remarkably productive. See _Appendix_,
+No. 28.
+
+[214] "The laws against clearing have never been able to prevent these
+operations when the proprietor found his advantage in them, and the long
+series of royal ordinances and decrees of parliaments, proclaimed from
+the days of Charlemagne to our own, with a view of securing forest
+property, have served only to show the impotence of legislative notion
+on this subject."--CLAV�, _�tudes sur l'�conomie Foresti�re_, p. 32.
+
+"A proprietor can always contrive to clear his woods, whatever may be
+done to prevent him; it is a mere question of time, and a few imprudent
+cuttings, a few abuses of the right of pasturage, suffice to destroy a
+forest in spite of all regulations to the contrary."--DUNOYER, _De la
+Libert� du Travail_, ii, p. 452, as quoted by Clav�, p. 353.
+
+Both authors agree that the preservation of the forests in France is
+practicable only by their transfer to the state, which alone can protect
+them and secure their proper treatment. It is much to be feared that
+even this measure would be inadequate to save the forests of the
+American Union. There is little respect for public property in America,
+and the Federal Government, certainly, would not be the proper agent of
+the nation for this purpose. It proved itself unable to protect the
+live-oak woods of Florida, which were intended to be preserved for the
+use of the navy, and it more than once paid contractors a high price for
+timber stolen from its own forests. The authorities of the individual
+States might be more efficient.
+
+[215] See the lively account of the sale of a communal wood in
+BERLEPSCH, _Die Alpen, Holzschl�ger und Fl�sser_.
+
+[216] Streffleur (_Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildb�che_, p.
+3) maintains that all the observations and speculations of French
+authors on the nature of torrents had been anticipated by Austrian
+writers. In proof of this assertion he refers to the works of Franz von
+Zallinger, 1778, Von Arretin, 1808, Franz Duile, 1826, all published at
+Innsbruck, and HAGEN's _Beschreibung neuerer Wasserbauwerke_,
+K�nigsberg, 1826, none of which works are known to me. It is evident,
+however, that the conclusions of Surell and other French writers whom I
+cite, are original results of personal investigation, and not borrowed
+opinions.
+
+[217] Whether Palissy was acquainted with this ancient practice, or
+whether it was one of those original suggestions of which his works are
+so full, I know not; but in his treatise, _Des Eaux et Fontaines_, he
+thus recommends it, by way of reply to the objections of "Th�orique,"
+who had expressed the fear that "the waters which rush violently down
+from the heights of the mountain would bring with them much earth, sand,
+and other things," and thus spoil the artificial fountain that
+"Practique" was teaching him to make: "And for hindrance of the
+mischiefs of great waters which may be gathered in few hours by great
+storms, when thou shalt have made ready thy parterre to receive the
+water, thou must lay great stones athwart the deep channels which
+lead to thy parterre. And so the force of the rushing currents
+shall be deadened, and thy water shall flow peacefully into his
+cisterns."--_[OE]uvres Compl�tes_, p. 173.
+
+[218] Ladoucette says the peasant of D�voluy "often goes a distance of
+five hours over rocks and precipices for a single [man's] load of wood;"
+and he remarks on another page, that "the justice of peace of that
+canton had, in the course of forty-three years, but once heard the voice
+of the nightingale."--_Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes_, pp. 220, 434.
+
+[219] The valley of Embrun, now almost completely devastated, was once
+remarkable for its fertility. In 1806, H�ricart de Thury said of it: "In
+this magnificent valley nature had been prodigal of her gifts. Its
+inhabitants have blindly revelled in her favors, and fallen asleep in
+the midst of her profusion."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 314.
+
+[220] In the days of the Roman empire the Durance was a navigable river,
+with a commerce so important that the boatmen upon it formed a distinct
+corporation.--LADOUCETTE, _Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes_, p. 354.
+
+Even as early as 1789, the Durance was computed to have already covered
+with gravel and pebbles not less than 130,000 acres, "which, but for its
+inundations, would have been the finest land in the province."--ARTHUR
+YOUNG, _Travels in France_, vol. i, ch. i.
+
+[221] Between 1851 and 1856 the population of Languedoc and Provence had
+increased by 101,000 souls. The augmentation, however, was wholly in the
+provinces of the plains, where all the principal cities are found. In
+these provinces the increase was 204,000, while in the mountain
+provinces there was a diminution of 103,000. The reduction of the area
+of arable land is perhaps even more striking. In 1842, the department of
+the Lower Alps possessed 99,000 hectares, or nearly 245,000 acres, of
+cultivated soil. In 1852, it had but 74,000 hectares. In other words, in
+ten years 25,000 hectares, or 61,000 acres, had been washed away or
+rendered worthless for cultivation, by torrents and the abuses of
+pasturage.--CLAV�, _�tudes_, pp. 66, 67.
+
+[222] The Skal�ra-Tobel, for instance, near Coire. See the description
+in BERLEPSCH, _Die Alpen_, pp. 169 _et seqq_, or in Stephen's English
+translation.
+
+The recent change in the character of the Mella--a river anciently so
+remarkable for the gentleness of its current that it was specially
+noticed by Catullus as flowing _molli flumine_--deserves more than a
+passing remark. This river rises in the mountain chain east of Lake
+Iseo, and traversing the district of Brescia, empties into the Oglio
+after a course of about seventy miles. The iron works in the upper
+valley of the Mella had long created a considerable demand for wood, but
+their operations were not so extensive as to occasion any very sudden or
+general destruction of the forests, and the only evil experienced from
+the clearings was the gradual diminution of the volume of the river.
+Within the last twenty years, the superior quality of the arms
+manufactured at Brescia has greatly enlarged the sale of them, and very
+naturally stimulated the activity of both the forges and of the colliers
+who supply them, and the hillsides have been rapidly stripped of their
+timber. Up to 1850, no destructive inundation of the Mella had been
+recorded. Buildings in great numbers had been erected upon its margin,
+and its valley was conspicuous for its rural beauty and its fertility.
+But when the denudation of the mountains had reached a certain point,
+avenging nature began the work of retribution. In the spring and summer
+of 1850 several new torrents were suddenly formed in the upper tributary
+valleys, and on the 14th and 15th of August in that year, a fall of
+rain, not heavier than had been often experienced, produced a flood
+which not only inundated much ground never before overflowed, but
+destroyed a great number of bridges, dams, factories, and other valuable
+structures, and, what was a far more serious evil, swept off from the
+rocks an incredible extent of soil, and converted one of the most
+beautiful valleys of the Italian Alps into a ravine almost as bare and
+as barren as the savagest gorge of Southern France. The pecuniary damage
+was estimated at many millions of francs, and the violence of the
+catastrophe was deemed so extraordinary, even in a country subject to
+similar visitations, that the sympathy excited for the sufferers
+produced, in five months, voluntary contributions for their relief to
+the amount of nearly $200,000--_Delle Inondazioni del Mella, etc., nella
+notte del 14 al 15 Agosto_, 1850.
+
+The author of this remarkable pamphlet has chosen as a motto a passage
+from the Vulgate translation of Job, which is interesting as showing
+accurate observation of the action of the torrent: "Mons cadens definit,
+et saxum transfertur de loco suo; lapides excavant aqu� et alluvione
+paullatim terra consumitur."--_Job_ xiv, 18, 19.
+
+The English version is much less striking, and gives a different sense.
+
+[223] Streffleur quotes from Duile the following observations: "The
+channel of the Tyrolese brooks is often raised much above the valleys
+through which they flow. The bed of the Fersina is elevated high above
+the city of Trient, which lies near it. The Villerbach flows at a much
+more elevated level than that of the market place of Neumarkt and Vill,
+and threatens to overwhelm both of them with its waters. The Talfer at
+Botzen is at least even with the roofs of the adjacent town, if not
+above them. The tower steeples of the villages of Schlanders, Kortsch,
+and Laas, are lower than the surface of the Gadribach. The Saldurbach at
+Schluderns menaces the far lower village with destruction, and the chief
+town, Schwaz, is in similar danger from the Lahnbach."--STREFFLEUR,
+_Ueber die Wildb�che, etc._, p. 7.
+
+[224] The snow drifts into the ravines and accumulates to incredible
+depths, and the water resulting from its dissolution and from the
+deluging rains which fall in spring, and sometimes in the summer, being
+confined by rocky walls on both sides, rises to a very great height, and
+of course acquires an immense velocity and transporting power in its
+rapid descent to its outlet from the mountain. In the winter of
+1842--'3, the valley of the Doveria, along which the Simplon road
+passes, was filled with solid snowdrifts to the depth of a hundred feet
+above the carriage road, and the sledge track by which passengers and
+the mails were carried ran at that height.
+
+Other things being equal, the transporting power of the water is
+greatest where its flow is most rapid. This is usually in the direction
+of the axis of the ravine. As the current pours out of the gorge and
+escapes from the lateral confinement of its walls, it spreads and
+divides itself into numerous smaller streams, which shoot out from the
+mouth of the valley, as from a centre, in different directions, like the
+ribs of a fan from the pivot, each carrying with it its quota of stones
+and gravel. The plain below the point of issue from the mountain is
+rapidly raised by newly formed torrents, the elevation depending on the
+inclination of the bed and the form and weight of the matter
+transported. Every flood both increases the height of this central point
+and extends the entire circumference of the deposit. The stream
+retaining most nearly the original direction moves with the greatest
+momentum, and consequently transports the solid matter with which it is
+charged to the greatest distance.
+
+The untravelled reader will comprehend this the better when he is
+informed that the southern slope of the Alps generally rises suddenly
+out of the plain, with no intervening hill to break the abruptness of
+the transition, except those consisting of comparatively small heaps of
+its own debris brought down by ancient glaciers or recent torrents. The
+torrents do not wind down valleys gradually widening to the rivers or
+the sea, but leap at once from the flanks of the mountains upon the
+plains below. This arrangement of surfaces naturally facilitates the
+formation of vast deposits at their points of emergence, and the centre
+of the accumulation in the case of very small torrents is not
+unfrequently a hundred feet high, and sometimes very much more.
+
+Torrents and the rivers that receive them transport mountain debris to
+almost incredible distances. Lorentz, in an official report on this
+subject, as quoted by Marschand from the Memoirs of the Agricultural
+Society of Lyons, says: "The felling of the woods produces torrents
+which cover the cultivated soil with pebbles and fragments of rock, and
+they do not confine their ravages to the vicinity of the mountains, but
+extend them into the fertile fields of Provence and other departments,
+to the distance of forty or fifty leagues."--_Entwaldung der Gebirge_,
+p. 17.
+
+[225] The precipitous walls of the Val de Lys, and more especially of
+the Val Doveria, though here and there shattered, show in many places a
+smoothness of face over a large vertical plane, at the height of
+hundreds of feet above the bottom of the valley, which no known agency
+but glacier ice is capable of producing, and of course they can have
+undergone no sensible change at those points for a vast length of time.
+The beds of the rivers which flow through those valleys suffer lateral
+displacement occasionally, where there is room for the shifting of the
+channel; but if any elevation or depression takes place in them, it is
+too slow to be perceptible except in case of some merely temporary
+obstruction.
+
+[226] Lombardini found, twenty years ago, that the mineral matter
+brought down to the Po by its tributaries was, in general, comminuted to
+about the same degree of fineness as the sands of its bed at their
+points of discharge. In the case of the Trebbia, which rises high in the
+Apennines and empties into the Po at Piacenza, it was otherwise, that
+river rolling pebbles and coarse gravel into the channel of the
+principal stream. The banks of the other affluents--excepting some of
+those which discharge their waters into the great lakes--then either
+retained their woods, or had been so long clear of them, that the
+torrents had removed most of the disintegrated and loose rock in their
+upper basins. The valley of the Trebbia had been recently cleared, and
+all the forces which tend to the degradation and transportation of rock
+were in full activity.--_Notice sur les Rivi�res de la Lombardie,
+Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1847, 1er s�mestre, p. 131.
+
+Since the date of Lombardini's observations, many Alpine valleys have
+been stripped of their woods. It would be interesting to know whether
+any sensible change has been produced in the character or quantity of
+the matter transported by them to the Po.
+
+[227] In proportion as the dikes are improved, and breaches and the
+escape of the water through them are less frequent, the height of the
+annual inundations is increased. Many towns on the banks of the river,
+and of course within the system of parallel embankments, were formerly
+secure from flood by the height of the artificial mounds on which they
+were built; but they have recently been obliged to construct ring dikes
+for their protection.--BAUMGARTEN, after LOMBARDINI, in the paper last
+quoted, pp. 141, 147.
+
+[228] Three centuries ago, when the declivities of the mountains still
+retained a much larger proportion of their woods, the moderate annual
+floods of the Po were occasioned by the melting of the snows, and, as
+appears by a passage of Tasso quoted by Castellani (_Dell' Influenza
+delle Selve_, i, p. 58, note), they took place in May. The much more
+violent inundations of the present century are due to rains, the waters
+of which are no longer retained by a forest soil, but conveyed at once
+to the rivers--and they occur almost uniformly in the autumn or late
+summer. Castellani, on the page just quoted, says that even so late as
+about 1780, the Po required a heavy rain of a week to overflow its
+banks, but that forty years later, it was sometimes raised to full flood
+in a single day.
+
+[229] This change of coast line cannot be ascribed to upheaval, for a
+comparison of the level of old buildings--as, for instance, the church
+of San Vitale and the tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna--with that of the
+sea, tends to prove a depression rather than an elevation of their
+foundations.
+
+A computation by a different method makes the deposits at the mouth of
+the Po 2,123,000 m�tres less; but as both of them omit the gravel and
+silt rolled, if not floated, down at ordinary and low water, we are safe
+in assuming the larger quantity.--_Article last quoted_, p. 174. (See
+note, p. 329)
+
+[230] Mengotti estimated the mass of solid matter annually "united to
+the waters of the Po" at 822,000,000 cubic m�tres, or nearly twenty
+times as much as, according to Lombardini, that river delivers into the
+Adriatic. Castellani supposes the computation of Mengotti to fall much
+below the truth, and there can be no doubt that a vastly larger quantity
+of earth and gravel is washed down from the Alps and the Apennines than
+is carried to the sea.--CASTELLANI, _Dell' Immediata Influenza delle
+Selve sul corso delle Acque_, i, pp. 42, 43.
+
+I have contented myself with assuming less than one fifth of Mengotti's
+estimate.
+
+[231] BAUMGARTEN, _An. des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1847, 1er s�mestre, p.
+175.
+
+[232] The total superficies of the basin of the Po, down to Ponte
+Lagoscuro [Ferrara]--a point where it has received all its affluents--is
+6,938,200 hectares, that is, 4,105,600 in mountain lands, 2,832,600 in
+plain lands.--DUMONT, _Travaux Publics, etc._, p. 272.
+
+These latter two quantities are equal respectively to 10,145,348, and
+6,999,638 acres, or 15,852 and 10,937 square miles.
+
+[233] I do not use the numbers I have borrowed or assumed as factors the
+value of which is precisely ascertained; nor, for the purposes of the
+present argument, is quantitative exactness important. I employ
+numerical statements simply as a means of aiding the imagination to form
+a general and certainly not extravagant idea of the extent of
+geographical revolutions which man has done much to accelerate, if not,
+strictly speaking, to produce.
+
+There is an old proverb, _Dolus latet in generalibus_, and Arthur Young
+is not the only public economist who has warned his readers against the
+deceitfulness of round numbers. I think, on the contrary, that vastly
+more error has been produced by the affectation of precision in cases
+where precision is impossible. In all the great operations of
+terrestrial nature, the elements are so numerous and so difficult of
+exact appreciation, that, until the means of scientific observation and
+measurement are much more perfected than they now are, we must content
+ourselves with general approximations. I say _terrestrial_ nature,
+because in cosmical movements we have fewer elements to deal with, and
+may therefore arrive at much more rigorous accuracy in determination of
+time and place than we can in fixing and predicting the quantities and
+the epochs of variable natural phenomena on the earth's surface.
+
+The value of a high standard of accuracy in scientific observation can
+hardly be overrated; but habits of rigorous exactness will never be
+formed by an investigator who allows himself to trust implicitly to the
+numerical precision of the results of a few experiments. The wonderful
+accuracy of geodetic measurements in modern times is, in general,
+attained by taking the mean of a great number of observations at every
+station, and this final precision is but the mutual balance and
+compensation of numerous errors.
+
+Travellers are often misled by local habits in the use of what may be
+called representative numbers, where a definite is put for an indefinite
+quantity. A Greek, who wished to express the notion of a great, but
+undetermined number, used "myriad, or ten thousand;" a Roman, "six
+hundred;" an Oriental, "forty," or, at present, very commonly, "fifteen
+thousand." Many a tourist has gravely repeated, as an ascertained fact,
+the vague statement of the Arabs and the monks of Mount Sinai, that the
+ascent from the convent of St. Catherine to the summit of Gebel Moosa
+counts "fifteen thousand" steps, though the difference of level is
+barely two thousand feet, and the "Forty" Thieves, the "forty" martyr
+monks of the convent of El Arbain--not to speak of a similar use of this
+numeral in more important cases--have often been understood as
+expressions of a known number, when in fact they mean simply _many_. The
+number "fifteen thousand" has found its way to Rome, and De Quincey
+seriously informs us, on the authority of a lady who had been at much
+pains to ascertain the _exact_ truth, that, including closets large
+enough for a bed, the Vatican contains fifteen thousand rooms. Any one
+who has observed the vast dimensions of most of the apartments of that
+structure will admit that we make a very small allowance of space when
+we assign a square rod, sixteen and a half feet square, to each room
+upon the average. On an acre, there might be one hundred and sixty such
+rooms, including partition walls; and, to contain fifteen thousand of
+them, a building must cover more than nine acres, and be ten stories
+high, or possess other equivalent dimensions, which, as every traveller
+knows, many times exceeds the truth.
+
+That most entertaining writer, About, reduces the number of rooms in the
+Vatican, but he compensates this reduction by increased dimensions, for
+he uses the word _salle_, which cannot be applied to closets barely
+large enough to contain a bed. According to him, there are in that
+"presbyt�re," as he irreverently calls it, twelve thousand large rooms
+[_salles_], thirty courts, and three hundred staircases.--_Rome
+Contemporaire_, p. 68.
+
+The pretended exactness of statistical tables is generally little better
+than an imposture; and those founded not on direct estimation by
+competent observers, but on the report of persons who have no particular
+interest in knowing, but often have a motive for distorting, the
+truth--such as census returns--are commonly to be regarded as but vague
+guesses at the actual fact.
+
+Fuller, who, for the combination of wit, wisdom, fancy, and personal
+goodness, stands first in English literature, thus remarks on the
+pretentious exactness of historical and statistical writers: "I approve
+the plain, country By-word, as containing much Innocent Simplicity
+therein,
+
+  _'Almost and very nigh
+  Have saved many a Lie.'_
+
+So have the Latines their _prope_, _fere_, _juxta_, _circiter_, _plus
+minus_, used in matters of fact by the most authentic Historians. Yea,
+we may observe that the Spirit of Truth itself, where _Numbers_ and
+_Measures_ are concerned, in Times, Places, and Persons, useth the
+aforesaid Modifications, save in such cases where some mystery contained
+in the number requireth a particular specification thereof:
+
+  In Times.      |  In Places.    |  In Person.
+                 |                |
+  Daniel, 5:33.  |  Luke, 24:13.  |  Exodus, 12:37.
+  Luke,   3:23.  |  John,  6:19.  |  Acts,    2:41.
+
+None therefore can justly find fault with me, if, on the like occasion,
+I have secured myself with the same Qualifications. Indeed, such
+Historians who grind their Intelligence to the _powder of fraction_,
+pretending to _cleave the pin_, do sometimes _misse the But_. Thus, one
+reporteth, how in the Persecution under _Dioeletian_, there were neither
+under nor over, but just _nine hundred ninety-nine_ martyrs. Yea,
+generally those that trade in such _Retail-ware_, and deal in such small
+parcells, may by the ignorant be commended for their _care_, but
+condemned by the judicious for their ridiculous _curiosity_."--_The
+History of the Worthies of England_, i, p. 59.
+
+[234] SURELL, _Les Torrents des Hautes Alpes_, chap. xxiv. In such
+cases, the clearing of the ground, which, in consequence of a temporary
+diversion of the waters, or from some other cause, has become rewooded,
+sometimes renews the ravages of the torrent. Thus, on the left bank of
+the Durance, a wooded declivity had been formed by the debris brought
+down by torrents, which had extinguished themselves after having swept
+off much of the superficial strata of the mountain of Morgon. "All this
+district was covered with woods, which have now been thinned out and are
+perishing from day to day; consequently, the torrents have recommenced
+their devastations, and if the clearings continue, this declivity, now
+fertile, will be ruined, like so many others."--Id., p. 155.
+
+[235] Where a torrent has not been long in operation, and earth still
+remains mixed with the rocks and gravel it heaps up at its point of
+eruption, vegetation soon starts up and prospers, if protected from
+encroachment. In Provence, "several communes determined, about ten years
+ago, to reserve the soils thus wasted, that is, to abandon them for a
+certain time, to spontaneous vegetation, which was not slow in making
+its appearance."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats_, p. 315.
+
+[236] Rock is permeable by water to a greater extent than is generally
+supposed. Freshly quarried marble, and even granite, as well as most
+other stones, are sensibly heavier, as well as softer and more easily
+wrought, than after they are dried and hardened by air-seasoning. Many
+sandstones are porous enough to serve as filters for liquids, and much
+of that of Upper Egypt and Nubia hisses audibly when thrown into water,
+from the escape of the air forced out of it by hydrostatic pressure and
+the capillary attraction of the pores for water. See _Appendix_, No. 29.
+
+[237] Palissy had observed the action of frost in disintegrating rock,
+and he thus describes it, in his essay on the formation of ice: "I know
+that the stones of the mountains of Ardennes be harder than marble.
+Nevertheless, the people of that country do not quarry the said stones
+in winter, for that they be subject to frost; and many times the rocks
+have been seen to fall without being cut, by means whereof many people
+have been killed, when the said rocks were thawing." Palissy was
+ignorant of the expansion of water in freezing--in fact he supposed that
+the mechanical force exerted by freezing water was due to compression,
+not dilatation--and therefore he ascribes to thawing alone effects
+resulting not less from congelation.
+
+Various forces combine to produce the stone avalanches of the higher
+Alps, the fall of which is one of the greatest dangers incurred by the
+adventurous explorers of those regions--the direct action of the sun
+upon the stone, the expansion of freezing water, and the loosening of
+masses of rock by the thawing of the ice which supported them or held
+them together.
+
+[238] WESSELY, _Die Oesterreichischen Alpenl�nder und ihre Forste_, pp.
+125, 126. Wessely records several other more or less similar occurrences
+in the Austrian Alps. Some of them, certainly, are not to be ascribed to
+the removal of the woods, but in most cases they are clearly traceable
+to that cause.
+
+[239] BIANCHI, Appendix to the Italian translation of Mrs. SOMERVILLE's
+_Physical Geography_, p. xxxvi.
+
+[240] See in KOHL, _Alpenreisen_, i, 120, an account of the ruin of
+fields and pastures, and even of the destruction of a broad belt of
+forest, by the fall of rocks in consequence of cutting a few large
+trees. Cattle are very often killed in Switzerland by rock avalanches,
+and their owners secure themselves from loss by insurance against this
+risk as against damage by fire or hail.
+
+[241] _Entwaldung der Gebirge_, p. 41.
+
+[242] The importance of the wood in preventing avalanches is well
+illustrated by the fact that, where the forest is wanting, the
+inhabitants of localities exposed to snow slides often supply the place
+of the trees by driving stakes through the snow into the ground, and
+thus checking its propensity to slip. The woods themselves are sometimes
+thus protected against avalanches originating on slopes above them, and
+as a further security, small trees are cut down along the upper line of
+the forest, and laid against the trunks of larger trees, transversely to
+the path of the slide, to serve as a fence or dam to the motion of an
+incipient avalanche, which may by this means be arrested before it
+acquires a destructive velocity and force.
+
+[243] The tide rises at Quebec to the height of twenty-five feet, and
+when it is aided by a northeast wind, it flows with almost irresistible
+violence. Rafts containing several hundred thousand cubic feet of timber
+are often caught by the flood tide, torn to pieces, and dispersed for
+miles along the shores.
+
+[244] One of these, the Baron of Renfrew--so named from one of the
+titles of the kings of England--built thirty or forty years ago,
+measured 5,000 tons. They were little else than rafts, being almost
+solid masses of timber designed to be taken to pieces and sold as lumber
+on arriving at their port of destination.
+
+The lumber trade at Quebec is still very large. According to a recent
+article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, that city exported, in 1860,
+30,000,000 cubic feet of squared timber, and 400,000,000 square feet of
+"planches." The thickness of the boards is not stated, but I believe
+they are generally cut an inch and a quarter thick for the Quebec trade,
+and as they shrink somewhat in drying, we may estimate ten square for
+one cubic foot of boards. This gives a total of 70,000,000 cubic feet.
+The specific gravity of white pine is .554, and the weight of this
+quantity of lumber, very little of which is thoroughly seasoned, would
+exceed a million of tons, even supposing it to consist wholly of wood as
+light as pine. New Brunswick, too, exports a large amount of lumber.
+
+[245] This name, from the French _chantier_, which has a wider meaning,
+is applied in America to temporary huts or habitations erected for the
+convenience of forest life, or in connection with works of material
+improvement.
+
+[246] Trees differ much in their power of resisting the action of forest
+fires. Different woods vary greatly in combustibility, and even when
+their bark is scarcely scorched, they are, partly in consequence of
+physiological character, and partly from the greater or less depth at
+which their roots habitually lie below the surface, very differently
+affected by running fires. The white pine, _Pinus strobus_, as it is the
+most valuable, is also perhaps the most delicate tree of the American
+forest, while its congener, the Northern pitch pine, _Pinus rigida_, is
+less injured by fire than any other tree of that country. I have heard
+experienced lumbermen maintain that the growth of this pine was even
+accelerated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all other trees, and I
+have myself seen it still flourishing after a conflagration which had
+left not a green leaf but its own in the wood, and actually throwing out
+fresh foliage, when the old had been quite burnt off and the bark almost
+converted into charcoal. The wood of the pitch pine is of comparatively
+little value for the joiner, but it is useful for very many purposes.
+Its rapidity of growth in even poor soils, its hardihood, and its
+abundant yield of resinous products, entitle it to much more
+consideration, as a plantation tree, than it has hitherto received in
+Europe or America.
+
+[247] Between fifty and sixty years ago, a steep mountain with which I
+am very familiar, composed of metamorphic rock, and at that time covered
+with a thick coating of soil and a dense primeval forest, was
+accidentally burnt over. The fire took place in a very dry season, the
+slope of the mountain was too rapid to retain much water, and the
+conflagration was of an extraordinarily fierce character, consuming the
+wood almost entirely, burning the leaves and combustible portion of the
+mould, and in many places cracking and disintegrating the rock beneath.
+The rains of the following autumn carried off much of the remaining
+soil, and the mountain side was nearly bare of wood for two or three
+years afterward. At length, a new crop of trees sprang up and grew
+vigorously, and the mountain is now thickly covered again. But the depth
+of mould and earth is too small to allow the trees to reach maturity.
+When they attain to the diameter of about six inches, they uniformly
+die, and this they will no doubt continue to do until the decay of
+leaves and wood on the surface, and the decomposition of the subjacent
+rock, shall have formed, perhaps hundreds of years hence, a stratum of
+soil thick enough to support a full-grown forest.
+
+[248] The growth of the white pine, on a good soil and in open ground,
+is rather rapid until it reaches the diameter of a couple of feet, after
+which it is much slower. The favorite habitat of this tree is light
+sandy earth. On this soil, and in a dense wood, it requires a century to
+attain the diameter of a yard. Emerson (_Trees of Massachusetts_, p.
+65), says that a pine of this species, near Paris, "thirty years
+planted, is eighty feet high, with a diameter of three feet." He also
+states that ten white pines planted at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809
+or 1810, exhibited, in the winter of 1841 and 1842, an average of twenty
+inches diameter at the ground, the two largest measuring, at the height
+of three feet, four feet eight inches in circumference; and he mentions
+another pine growing in a rocky swamp, which, at the age of thirty-two
+years, "gave seven feet in circumference at the but, with a height of
+sixty-two feet six inches." This latter I suppose to be a seedling, the
+others _transplanted_ trees, which might have been some years old when
+placed where they finally grew.
+
+The following case came under my own observation: In 1824, a pine tree,
+so small that a young lady, with the help of a lad, took it up from the
+ground and carried it a quarter of a mile, was planted near a house in a
+town in Vermont. It was occasionally watered, but received no other
+special treatment. I measured this tree in 1860, and found it, at four
+feet from the ground, and entirely above the spread of the roots, two
+feet and four inches in diameter. It could not have been more than three
+inches through when transplanted, and must have increased its diameter
+twenty-five inches in thirty-six years.
+
+[249] WILLIAMS, _History of Vermont_, ii, p. 53. DWIGHT's _Travels_, iv,
+p. 21, and iii, p. 36. EMERSON, _Trees of Massachusetts_, p. 61. PARISH,
+_Life of President Wheelock_, p. 56.
+
+[250] The forest trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme
+longevity in the dense woods. Dr. Williams found that none of the huge
+pines, the age of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty
+or four hundred years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had
+noticed trees considerably older. The oak lives longer than the pine,
+and the hemlock spruce is perhaps equally long lived. A tree of this
+latter species, cut within my knowledge in a thick wood, counted four
+hundred and eighty-six, or, according to another observer, five hundred
+annual circles.
+
+Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly
+accompanied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not
+found in the crowded city; and in the tropics, where life is prolific
+and precocious, it is also short. The most ancient forest trees of which
+we have accounts have not been those growing in thick woods, but
+isolated specimens, with no taller neighbor to intercept the light and
+heat and air, and no rival to share the nutriment afforded by the soil.
+
+The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near the
+boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. "Long
+experience has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may
+be cut at sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same
+species, reared in the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We
+have often remarked, in our Alps, that the trunk of trees upon the
+border of a grove is most developed or enlarged upon the outer or open
+side, where the branches extend themselves farthest, while the
+concentric circles of growth are most uniform in those entirely
+surrounded by other trees, or standing entirely alone."--A. and G.
+VILLA, _Necessit� dei Boschi_, pp. 17, 18.
+
+[251] Caimi states that "a single flotation in the Valtelline in 1839,
+caused damages alleged to amount to more than $800,000, and actually
+appraised at $250,000."--_Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_,
+p. 65.
+
+[252] Most physicists who have investigated the laws of natural
+hydraulics maintain that, in consequence of direct obstruction and
+frictional resistance to the flow of the water of rivers along their
+banks, there is both an increased rapidity of current and an elevation
+of the water in the middle of the channel, so that a river presents
+always a convex surface. The lumbermen deny this. They affirm that,
+while rivers are rising, the water is highest in the middle of the
+channel, and tends to throw floating objects shoreward; while they are
+falling, it is lowest in the middle, and floating objects incline toward
+the centre. Logs, they say, rolled into the water during the rise, are
+very apt to lodge on the banks, while those set afloat during the
+falling of the waters keep in the current, and are carried without
+hindrance to their destination.
+
+Foresters and lumbermen, like sailors and other persons whose daily
+occupations bring them into contact, and often, into conflict, with
+great natural forces, have many peculiar opinions, not to say
+superstitions. In one of these categories we must rank the universal
+belief of lumbermen, that with a given head of water, and in a given
+number of hours, a sawmill cuts more lumber by night than by day. Having
+been personally interested in several sawmills, I have frequently
+conversed with sawyers on this subject, and have always been assured by
+them that their uniform experience established the fact that, other
+things being equal, the action of the machinery of sawmills is more
+rapid by night than by day. I am sorry--perhaps I ought to be
+ashamed--to say that my scepticism has been too strong to allow me to
+avail myself of my opportunities of testing this question by passing a
+night, watch in hand, counting the strokes of a millsaw. More
+unprejudiced, and I must add, very intelligent and credible persons have
+informed me that they have done so, and found the report of the sawyers
+abundantly confirmed. A land surveyor, who was also an experienced
+lumberman, sawyer, and machinist, a good mathematician and an exact
+observer, has repeatedly told me, that he had very often "timed"
+sawmills, and found the difference in favor of night work above thirty
+per cent. _Sed qu�re._
+
+[253] For many instances of this sort, see BECQUEREL, _Des Climats,
+etc._, pp. 301-303. In 1664, the Swedes made an incursion into Jutland
+and felled a considerable extent of forest. After they retired, a survey
+of the damage was had, and the report is still extant. The number of
+trees cut was found to be 120,000, and as an account was kept of the
+numbers of each species of tree, the document is of interest in the
+history of the forest, as showing the relative proportions between the
+different trees which composed the wood. See VAUPELL. _B�gens
+Indvandring_, p. 35, and _Notes_, p. 55.
+
+[254] Since writing this paragraph, I have fallen upon--and that in a
+Spanish author--one of those odd coincidences of thought which every man
+of miscellaneous reading so often meets with. Antonio Ponz (_Viage de
+Espa�a_, i, pr�logo, p. lxiii), says: "Nor would this be so great an
+evil, were not some of them declaimers against _trees_, thereby
+proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the works of God, who
+gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even
+now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it."
+
+I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their woods,
+but the Spaniard's proverbial "hatred of a tree" is of long standing.
+Herrera vigorously combats this foolish prejudice; and Ponz, in the
+prologue to the ninth volume of his journey, says that many carried it
+so far as wantonly to destroy the shade and ornamental trees planted by
+the municipal authorities. "Trees," they contended, and still believe,
+"breed birds, and birds eat up the grain." Our author argues against the
+supposition of the "breeding of birds by trees," which, he says, is as
+absurd as to believe that an elm tree can yield pears; and he charitably
+suggests that the expression is, perhaps, a _mani�re de dire_, a popular
+phrase, signifying simply that trees harbor birds.
+
+[255] Religious intolerance had produced similar effects in France
+at an earlier period. "The revocation of the edict of Nantes and
+the dragonnades occasioned the sale of the forests of the unhappy
+Protestants, who fled to seek in foreign lands the liberty of
+conscience which was refused to them in France. The forests were
+soon felled by the purchasers, and the soil in part brought under
+cultivation."'--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 303.
+
+[256] The American reader must be reminded that, in the language of the
+chase and of the English law, a "forest" is not necessarily a wood. Any
+large extent of ground, withdrawn from cultivation, reserved for the
+pleasures of the chase, and allowed to clothe itself with a spontaneous
+growth, serving as what is technically called "cover" for wild animals,
+is, in the dialects I have mentioned, a forest. When, therefore, the
+Norman kings afforested the grounds referred to in the text, it is not
+to be supposed that they planted them with trees, though the protection
+afforded to them by the game laws would, if cattle had been kept out,
+soon have converted them into real woods.
+
+[257] _Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 190. The work of Bonnem�re is of
+great value to those who study the history of medi�val Europe from a
+desire to know its real character, and not in the hope of finding
+apparent facts to sustain a false and dangerous theory. Bonnem�re is one
+of the few writers who, like Michelet, have been honest enough and bold
+enough to speak the truth with regard to the relations between the
+church and the people in the Middle Ages.
+
+[258] It is painful to add that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very
+few years ago, in one of the European states, by a prince of a family
+now dethroned. In this case, however, the prince killed the trespasser
+with his own hand, his sergeants refusing to execute his mandate.
+
+[259] GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, as quoted in the notes to JOINVILLE,
+_Nouvelle Collection des M�moires, etc._, par Michaud et Poujoulat,
+premi�re s�rie, i, p. 335.
+
+Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the medi�val
+clergy will hardly need to be informed that the ten thousand livres
+never found their way to the royal exchequer. It was easy to prove to
+the simple-minded king that, as the profits of sin were a monopoly of
+the church, he ought not to derive advantage from the commission of a
+crime by one of his subjects; and the priests were cunning enough both
+to secure to themselves the amount of the fine, and to extort from Louis
+large additional grants to carry out the purposes to which they devoted
+the money. "And though the king did take the moneys," says the
+chronicler, "he put them not into his treasury, but turned them into
+good works; for he builded therewith the maison-Dieu of Pontoise, and
+endowed the same with rents and lands; also the schools and the
+dormitory of the friars preachers of Paris, and the monastery of the
+Minorite friars."
+
+[260] _Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 200.
+
+[261] The following details from Bonnem�re will serve to give a more
+complete idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of
+France. The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling
+up of thistles and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before
+St. John's day [24th June], in order that the nests of game birds might
+not be disturbed. It was unlawful to fence-in any grounds in the plains
+where royal residences were situated; thorns were ordered to be planted
+in all fields of wheat, barley, or oats, to prevent the use of ground
+nets for catching the birds which consumed, or were believed to consume,
+the grain, and it was forbidden to cut or pull stubble before the first
+of October, lest the partridge and the quail might be deprived of their
+cover. For destroying the eggs of the quail, a fine of one hundred
+livres was imposed for the first offence, double that amount for the
+second, and for the third the culprit was flogged and banished for five
+years to a distance of six leagues from the forest.--_Histoire des
+Paysans_, ii, p. 202, text and notes.
+
+Neither these severe penalties, nor any provisions devised by the
+ingenuity of modern legislation, have been able effectually to repress
+poaching. "The game laws," says Clav�, "have not delivered us from the
+poachers, who kill twenty times as much game as the sportsmen. In the
+forest of Fontainebleau, as in all those belonging to the state,
+poaching is a very common and a very profitable offence. It is in vain
+that the gamekeepers are on the alert night and day, they cannot prevent
+it. Those who follow the trade begin by carefully studying the habits of
+the game. They will lie motionless on the ground, by the roadside or in
+thickets, for whole days, watching the paths most frequented by the
+animals," &c.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, p. 160.
+
+The writer adds many details on this subject, and it appears that, as
+there are "beggars on horseback" in South America, there are poachers in
+carriages in France.
+
+[262] "Whole trees were sacrificed for the most insignificant purposes;
+the peasants would cut down two firs to make a single pair of wooden
+shoes."--MICHELET, as quoted by CLAV�, _�tudes_, p. 24.
+
+A similar wastefulness formerly prevailed in Russia, though not from the
+same cause. In St. Pierre's time, the planks brought to St. Petersburg
+were not sawn, but hewn with the axe, and a tree furnished but a single
+plank.
+
+[263] "A hundred and fifty paces from my house is a hill of drift sand,
+on which stood a few scattered pines. _Pinus sylvestris_, and
+_Sempervivum tectorum_ in abundance, _Statice armeria_, _Ammone
+vernalis_, _Dianthus carthusianorum_, with other sand plants, were
+growing there. I planted the hill with a few birches, and all the plants
+I have mentioned completely disappeared, though there were many naked
+spots of sand between the trees. It should be added, however, that the
+hillock is more thickly wooded than before. * * * It seems then that
+_Sempervivum tectorum_, &c., will not bear the neighborhood of the
+birch, though growing well near the _Pinus sylvestris_. I have found the
+large red variety of _Agaricus deliciosus_ only among the roots of the
+pine; the greenish-blue _Agaricus deliciosus_ among alder roots, but not
+near any other tree. Birds have their partialities among trees and
+shrubs. The _Silvi�_ prefer the _Pinus Larix_ to other trees. In my
+garden this _Pinus_ is never without them, but I never saw a bird perch
+on _Thuja occidenialis_ or _Juniperus sabina_, although the thick
+foliage of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the
+loose leafage of other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one
+of them. Perhaps the scent of the _Thuja_ and the _Juniperus_ is
+offensive to them. I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the
+bushes. It formerly bore grass four feet high, because many
+umbelliferous plants, such as _Heracleum spondylium_, _Spir�a ulmaria_,
+_Laserpitium latifolia_, &c., grew in it. Under the shelter of the
+bushes these plants ripened and bore seed, but they gradually
+disappeared as the shrubs were extirpated, and the grass now does not
+grow to the height of more than two feet, because it is no longer
+obliged to keep pace with the umbellifera which flourished among it."
+See a paper by J. G. B�TTNER, of Kurland, in BERGHAUS' _Geographisches
+Jahrbuch_, 1852, No. 4, pp. 14, 15.
+
+These facts are interesting as illustrating the multitude of often
+obscure conditions upon which the life or vigorous growth of smaller
+organisms depends. Particular species of truffles and of mushrooms are
+found associated with particular trees, without being, as is popularly
+supposed, parasites deriving their nutriment from the dying or dead
+roots of those trees. The success of Rousseau's experiments seem
+decisive on this point, for he obtains larger crops of truffles from
+ground covered with young seedling oaks than from that filled with roots
+of old trees. See an article on Mont Ventoux, by Charles Martins, in the
+_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Avril, 1863, p. 626.
+
+It ought to be much more generally known than it is that most, if not,
+all mushrooms, even of the species reputed poisonous, may be rendered
+harmless and healthful as food by soaking them for two hours in
+acidulated or salt water. The water requires two or three spoonfuls of
+vinegar or two spoonfuls of gray salt to the quart, and a quart of water
+is enough for a pound of sliced mushrooms. After thus soaking, they are
+well washed in fresh water, thrown into cold water, which is raised to
+the boiling point, and, after remaining half an hour, taken out and
+again washed. G�rard, to prove that "crumpets is wholesome," ate one
+hundred and seventy-five pounds of the most poisonous mushrooms thus
+prepared, in a single month, fed his family _ad libitum_ with the same,
+and finally administered them, in heroic doses, to the members of a
+committee appointed by the Council of Health of the city of Paris. See
+FIGUIER, _L'Ann�e Scientifique_, 1862, pp. 353, 384. See _Appendix_, No.
+31.
+
+It has long been known that the Russian peasantry eat, with impunity,
+mushrooms of species everywhere else regarded as very poisonous. Is it
+not probable that the secret of rendering them harmless--which was known
+to Pliny, though since forgotten in Italy--is possessed by the rustic
+Muscovites?
+
+[264] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 486.
+
+[265] _Origin of Species_, American edition, p. 69.
+
+[266] Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where
+seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases,
+mentioned by Dr. Dwight (_Travels_, ii, pp. 438, 439), may be new to
+many readers:
+
+"The lands [in Panton, Vermont], which have here been once cultivated,
+and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and
+fine growth of hickory [_Carya porcina_]. Of this wood there is not, I
+believe, a single tree in any original forest within fifty miles from
+this spot. The native growth was here white pine, of which I did not see
+a single stem in a whole grove of hickory."
+
+The hickory is a walnut, bearing a fruit too heavy to be likely to be
+carried fifty miles by birds, and besides, I believe it is not eaten by
+any bird indigenous to Vermont.
+
+"A field, about five miles from Northampton, on an eminence called Rail
+Hill, was cultivated about a century ago. The native growth here, and in
+all the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, &c. As the field
+belonged to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its
+history. It contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular
+parallelogram. As the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was
+given up. On this ground there sprang up a grove of white pines covering
+the field and retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there
+was not in it a single oak or chestnut tree. * * * There was not a
+single pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been,
+sufficiently near to have been planted on this spot. The fact that these
+white pines covered this field exactly, so as to preserve both its
+extent and its figure, and that there were none in the neighborhood, are
+decisive proofs that cultivation brought up the seeds of a former forest
+within the limits of vegetation, and gave them an opportunity to
+germinate."
+
+[267] Quaint old Valvasor had observed the subduing influence of
+nature's solitudes. In describing the lonely Canker-Thal, which, though
+rocky, was in his time well wooded with "fir, larches, beeches, and
+other trees," he says: "Gladsomeness and beauty, which dwell in many
+valleys, may not be looked for there. The journey through it is
+cheerless, melancholy, wearisome, and serveth to temper and mortify
+over-joyousness of thought. * * * In sum it is a very wild, wherein the
+wildness of human pride doth grow tame."--_Ehre der Crain_, i, p. 136,
+b.
+
+[268] Valvasor says, in the same paragraph from which I have just
+quoted, "In my many journeys through this valley, I did never have sight
+of so much as a single bird."
+
+[269] Smela, in the government of Kiew, has, for some years, not
+suffered at all from the locusts, which formerly came every year in vast
+swarms, and the curculio, so injurious to the turnip crops, is less
+destructive there than in other parts of the province. This improvement
+is owing partly to the more thorough cultivation of the soil, partly to
+the groves which are interspersed among the plough lands. * * * When in
+the midst of the plains woods shall be planted and filled with
+insectivorous birds, the locusts will cease to be a plague and a terror
+to the farmer.--RENTZSCH, _Der Wald_, pp. 45, 46.
+
+[270] England is, I believe, the only country where private enterprise
+has pursued sylviculture on a really great scale, though admirable
+examples have been set in many others on both sides of the Atlantic. In
+England the law of primogeniture, and other institutions and national
+customs which tend to keep large estates long undivided and in the same
+line of inheritance, the wealth of the landholders, and the difficulty
+of finding safe and profitable investments of capital, combine to afford
+encouragements for the plantation of forests, which nowhere else exist
+in the same degree. The climate of England, too, is very favorable to
+the growth of forest trees, though the character of surface secures a
+large part of the island from the evils which have resulted from the
+destruction of the woods elsewhere, and therefore their restoration is a
+matter of less geographical importance in England than on the Continent.
+
+[271] The preservation of the woods on the eastern frontier of France,
+as a kind of natural abattis, is also recognized by the Government of
+that country as an important measure of military defence, though there
+have been conflicting opinions on the subject.
+
+[272] Let us take the supply of timber for railroad ties. According to
+Clav� (p. 248), France has 9,000 kilom�tres of railway in operation,
+7,000 in construction, half of which is built with a double track.
+Adding turnouts and extra tracks at stations, the number of ties
+required for a single track is stated at 1,200 to the kilom�tre, or, as
+Clav� computes, for the entire network of France, 58,000,000. As the
+schoolboys say, "this sum does not prove;" for 16,000 + 8,000 for the
+double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 � 1,200 = 28,800,000.
+According to Bigelow (_Les �tats Unis en 1863_, p. 439), the United
+States had in operation or construction on the first of January, 1862,
+51,000 miles, or about 81,000 kilom�tres of railroad, and the military
+operations of the present civil war are rapidly extending the system.
+Allowing the same proportion as in France, the American railroads
+required 97,200,000 ties in 1862. The consumption of timber in Europe
+and America during the present generation, occasioned by this demand,
+has required the sacrifice of many hundred thousand acres of forest, and
+if we add the quantity employed for telegraph posts, we have an amount
+of destruction, for entirely new purposes, which is really appalling.
+
+The consumption of wood for lucifer matches is enormous, and I have
+heard of several instances where tracts of pine forest, hundreds and
+even thousands of acres in extent, have been purchased and felled,
+solely to supply timber for this purpose.
+
+The demand for wood for small carvings and for children's toys is
+incredibly large. Rentzsch states the export of such objects from the
+town of Sonneberg alone to have amounted, in 1853, to 60,000 centner, or
+three thousand tons' weight.--_Der Wald_, p. 68. See _Appendix_, No. 33.
+
+The importance of so managing the forest that it may continue
+indefinitely to furnish an adequate supply of material for naval
+architecture is well illustrated by some remarks of the same author in
+the valuable little work just cited. He suggests that the prosperity of
+modern England is due, in no small degree, to the supplies of wood and
+other material for building and equipping ships, received from the
+forests of her colonies and of other countries with which she has
+maintained close commercial relations, and he adds: "Spain, which by her
+position seemed destined for universal power, and once, in fact,
+possessed it, has lost her political rank, because during the unwise
+administration of the successors of Philip II, the empty exchequer could
+not furnish the means of building new fleets; for the destruction of the
+forests had raised the price of timber above the resources of the
+state."--_Der Wald_, p. 63.
+
+The market price of timber, like that of all other commodities, may be
+said, in a general way, to be regulated by the laws of demand and
+supply, but it is also controlled by those seemingly unrelated accidents
+which so often disappoint the calculations of political economists in
+other branches of commerce. A curious case of this sort is noticed by
+CERINI, _Dell' Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi_, p. 17: "In the
+mountains on the Lago Maggiore, in years when maize is cheap, the
+woodcutters can provide themselves with corn meal enough for a week by
+three days' labor, and they refuse to work the remaining four. Hence the
+dealers in wood, not being able to supply the demand, for want of
+laborers, are obliged to raise the price for the following season, both
+for timber and for firewood; so that a low price of grain occasions a
+high price of building lumber and of fuel. The consequence is, that
+though the poor have supplied themselves cheaply with food, they must
+pay dear for firewood, and they cannot get work, because the high price
+of lumber has discouraged repairs and building, the expense of which
+landed proprietors cannot undertake when their incomes have been reduced
+by sales of grain at low rates, and hence there is not demand enough for
+lumber to induce the timber merchants to furnish employment to the
+woodmen."
+
+[273] Besides the substitution of iron for wood, a great saving of
+consumption of this latter material has been effected by the revival of
+ancient methods of increasing its durability, and the invention of new
+processes for the same purpose. The most effectual preservative yet
+discovered for wood employed on land, is sulphate of copper, a solution
+of which is introduced into the pores of the wood while green, by
+soaking, by forcing-pumps, or, most economically, by the simple pressure
+of a column of the fluid in a small pipe connected with the end of the
+piece of timber subjected to the treatment. Clav� (_�tudes Foresti�res_,
+pp. 240-249) gives an interesting account of the various processes
+employed for rendering wood imperishable, and states that railroad ties
+injected with sulphate of copper in 1846, were found absolutely
+unaltered in 1855; and telegraphic posts prepared two years earlier, are
+now in a state of perfect preservation.
+
+For many purposes, the method of injection is too expensive, and some
+simpler process is much to be desired. The question of the proper time
+of felling timber is not settled, and the best modes of air, water, and
+steam seasoning are not yet fully ascertained. Experiments on these
+subjects would be well worth the patronage of governments in new
+countries, where they can be very easily made, without the necessity of
+much waste of valuable material, and without expensive arrangements for
+observation.
+
+The practice of stripping living trees of their bark some years before
+they are felled, is as old as the time of Vitruvius, but is much less
+followed than it deserves, partly because the timber of trees so treated
+inclines to crack and split, and partly because it becomes so hard as to
+be wrought with considerable difficulty.
+
+In America, economy in the consumption of fuel has been much promoted by
+the substitution of coal for wood, the general use of stoves both for
+wood and coal, and recently by the employment of anthracite in the
+furnaces of stationary and locomotive steam-engines. All the objections
+to the use of anthracite for this latter purpose appear to have been
+overcome, and the improvements in its combustion have been attended with
+a great pecuniary saving, and with much advantage to the preservation of
+the woods.
+
+The employment of coal has produced a great reduction in the consumption
+of fire wood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of fire wood for the city
+required 1,200,000 st�res, or cubic m�tres; in 1859, it had fallen to
+501,805, while, in the mean time, the consumption of coal had risen from
+600,000 to 432,000,000 metrical quintals. See CLAV�, _�tudes_, p. 212.
+
+I think there must be some error in this last sum, as 432 millions of
+metrical quintals would amount to 43 millions of tons, a quantity which
+it is difficult to suppose could be consumed in the city of Paris. The
+price of fire wood has scarcely advanced at all in Paris for half a
+century, though that of timber generally has risen enormously.
+
+[274] In the first two years of the present civil war in the United
+States, twenty-eight thousand walnut trees were felled to supply a
+single European manufactory of gunstocks for the American market.
+
+[275] Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of
+extensive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact, that wolves were
+abundant, not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are
+now neither wolves nor woods to shelter them. Arthur Young more than
+once speaks of the "innumerable multitudes" of these animals which
+infested France in 1789, and George Sand states, in the _Histoire de ma
+Vie_, that some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased
+travellers on horseback in the Southern provinces, and literally knocked
+at the doors of her father-in-law's country seat.
+
+[276] In the _Recepte V�ritable_, Palissy having expressed his
+indignation at the folly of men in destroying the woods, his
+interlocutor defends the policy of felling them, by citing the example
+of "divers bishops, cardinals, priors, abbots, monkeries, and chapters,
+which, by cutting their woods, have made three profits," the sale of the
+timber, the rent of the ground, and the "good portion" they received of
+the grain grown by the peasants upon it. To this argument, Palissy
+replies: "I cannot enough detest this thing, and I call it not an error,
+but a curse and a calamity to all France; for when forests shall be cut,
+all arts shall cease, and they which practise them shall be driven out
+to eat grass with Nebuchadnezzar and the beasts of the field. I have
+divers times thought to set down in writing the arts which shall perish
+when there shall be no more wood; but when I had written down a great
+number, I did perceive that there could be no end of my writing, and
+having diligently considered, I found there was not any which could be
+followed without wood." * * "And truly I could well allege to thee a
+thousand reasons, but 'tis so cheap a philosophy, that the very chamber
+wenches, if they do but think, may see that without wood, it is not
+possible to exercise any manner of human art or cunning."--_[OE]uvres
+de_ BERNARD PALISSY, p. 89.
+
+[277] Since writing the above paragraph, I have found the view I have
+taken of this point confirmed by the careful investigations of Rentzsch,
+who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire surface at
+twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes that
+near the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation
+from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See
+Rentzsch's very valuable prize essay, _Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur
+und der Volkswirthschaft_, cap. viii.
+
+The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the
+German States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any
+growth but that of wood, because the form and geological character of
+her mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents,
+and because at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited
+both by extreme drought and by deluging rains.
+
+[278] _�tudes sur l'�conomie Foresti�re_, p. 261. Clav� adds (p. 262):
+"The Russian forests are very unequally distributed through the
+territory of this vast empire. In the north they form immense masses,
+and cover whole provinces, while in the south they are so completely
+wanting that the inhabitants have no other fuel than straw, dung,
+rushes, and heath." * * * "At Moscow, firewood costs thirty per cent.
+more than at Paris, while, at the distance of a few leagues, it sells
+for a tenth of that price."
+
+This state of things is partly due to the want of facilities of
+transportation, and some parts of the United States are in a similar
+condition. During a severe winter, six or seven years ago, the sudden
+freezing of the canals and rivers, before a large American town had
+received its usual supply of fuel, occasioned an enormous rise in the
+price of wood and coal, and the poor suffered severely for want of it.
+Within a few hours of the city were large forests and an abundant stock
+of firewood felled and prepared for burning. This might easily have been
+carried to town by the railroads which passed through the woods; but the
+managers of the roads refused to receive it as freight, because the
+opening of a new market for wood might raise the price of the fuel they
+employed for their locomotives.
+
+Hohenstein, who was long professionally employed as a forester in
+Russia, describes the consequences of the general war upon the woods in
+that country as already most disastrous, and as threatening still more
+ruinous evils. The river Volga, the life artery of Russian internal
+commerce, is drying up from this cause, and the great Muscovite plains
+are fast advancing to a desolation like that of Persia.--_Der Wald_, p.
+223.
+
+The level of the Caspian Sea is eighty-three feet lower than that of the
+Sea of Azoff, and the surface of Lake Aral is fast sinking. Von Baer
+maintains that the depression of the Caspian was produced by a sudden
+subsidence, from geological causes, and not gradually by excess of
+evaporation over supply. See _Kaspische Studien_, p. 25. But this
+subsidence diminished the area and consequently the evaporation of that
+sea, and the rivers which once maintained its ancient equilibrium ought
+to raise it to its former level, if their own flow had not been
+diminished. It is, indeed, not proved that the laying bare of a wooded
+country diminishes the total annual precipitation upon it; but it is
+certain that the summer evaporation from the surface of a champaign
+region, like that through which the Volga, its tributaries, and the
+feeders of Lake Aral flow, is increased by the removal of its woods.
+Hence, though as much rain may still fall in the valleys of those rivers
+as when their whole surface was covered with forests, a less quantity of
+water may be delivered by them since their basins were cleared, and
+therefore the present condition of the inland waters in question may be
+due to the removal of the forests in their basins.
+
+[279] Rentzsch _(Der Wald, etc._, pp. 123, 124) states the proportions
+of woodland in different European countries as follows:
+
+  ---------------+----------+-----------
+                 |          |Acres per
+                 | Per cent.| head of
+                 |          |population.
+  ---------------+----------+-----------
+  Germany        |   26.58  |  0.6638
+  Great Britain  |    5.    |  0.1
+  France         |   16.79  |  0.3766
+  Russia         |   30.90  |  4.28
+  Sweden         |   60.    |  8.55
+  Norway         |   66.    | 24.61
+  Denmark        |    5.50  |  0.22
+  Switzerland    |   15.    |  0.396
+  Holland        |    7.10  |  0.12
+  Belgium        |   18.52  |  0.186
+  Spain          |    5.52  |  0.291
+  Portugal       |    4.40  |  0.182
+  Sardinia       |   12.29  |  0.223
+  Naples         |    9.43  |  0.138
+  ---------------+----------+-----------
+
+Probably no European countries can so well dispense with the forests, in
+their capacity of conservative influences, as England and Ireland. Their
+insular position and latitude secure an abundance of atmospheric
+moisture, and the general inclination of surface is not such as to
+expose it to special injury from torrents. The due proportion of
+woodland in England and Ireland is, therefore, almost purely an
+economical question, to be decided by the comparative direct pecuniary
+return from forest growth, pasturage, and plough land.
+
+In Scotland, where the country is for the most part more broken and
+mountainous, the general destruction of the forests has been attended
+with very serious evils, and it is in Scotland that many of the most
+extensive British forest plantations have now been formed. But although
+the inclination of surface in Scotland is rapid, the geological
+constitution of the soil is not of a character to promote such
+destructive degradation by running water as in Southern France, and it
+has not to contend with the parching droughts by which the devastations
+of the torrents are rendered more injurious in that part of the French
+empire.
+
+In giving the proportion of woodland to population, I compute Rentzsch's
+Morgen at .3882 of an English acre, because I find, by Alexander's most
+accurate and valuable Dictionary of Weights and Measures, that this is
+the value of the Dresden Morgen, and Rentzsch is a Saxon writer. In the
+different German States, there are more than twenty different land
+measures known by the name of Morgen, varying from about one third of an
+acre to more than three acres in value. When will the world be wise
+enough to unite in adopting the French metrical and monetary systems? As
+to the latter, never while Christendom continues to be ruled by money
+changers, who can compel you to part with your sovereigns in France at
+twenty-five francs, and in England to accept fifteen shillings for your
+napoleons. I speak as a sufferer. _Experto crede Roberto._
+
+[280] According to the maxims of English jurisprudence, the common law
+consists of general customs so long established that "the memory of man
+runneth not to the contrary." In other words, long custom makes law. In
+new countries, the change of circumstances creates new customs, and, in
+time, new law, without the aid of legislation. Had the American
+colonists observed a more sparing economy in the treatment of their
+woods, a new code of customary forest law would have sprung up and
+acquired the force of a statute. Popular habit was fast elaborating the
+fundamental principles of such a code, when the rapid increase in the
+value of timber, in consequence of the reckless devastation of the
+woodlands, made it the interest of the proprietors to interfere with
+this incipient system of forest jurisprudence, and appeal to the rules
+of English law for the protection of their woods. The courts have
+sustained these appeals, and forest property is now legally as
+inviolable as any other, though common opinion still combats the course
+of judicial decision on such questions.
+
+In the United States, swarms of honey bees, on leaving the parent hive,
+often take up their quarters in hollow trees in the neighboring woods.
+By the early customs of New England, the finder of a "bee tree" on the
+land of another owner was regarded as entitled to the honey by right of
+discovery; and as a necessary incident of that right, he might cut the
+tree, at the proper season, without asking permission of the proprietor
+of the soil. The quantity of "wild honey" in a tree was often large, and
+"bee hunting" was so profitable that it became almost a regular
+profession. The "bee hunter" sallied forth with a small box containing
+honey and a little vermilion. The bees which were attracted by the honey
+marked themselves with the vermilion, and hence were more readily
+followed in their homeward flight, and recognized when they returned a
+second time for booty. When loaded with spoil, this insect returns to
+his hive by the shortest route, and hence a straight line is popularly
+called in America a "bee line." By such a line, the hunter followed the
+bees to their sylvan hive, marked the tree with his initials, and
+returned to secure his prize in the autumn. When the right of the "bee
+hunter" was at last disputed by the land proprietors, it was with
+difficulty that judgments could be obtained, in inferior courts, in
+favor of the latter, and it was only after repeated decisions of the
+higher legal tribunals that the superior right of the owner of the soil
+was at last acquiesced in.
+
+[281] _�tude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes_, p. 5.
+
+[282] "In America," says Clav� (p. 124, 125), "where there is a vast
+extent of land almost without pecuniary value, but where labor is dear
+and the rate of interest high, it is profitable to till a large surface
+at the least possible cost; _extensive_ cultivation is there the most
+advantageous. In England, France, and Germany, where every corner of
+soil is occupied, and the least bit of ground is sold at a high price,
+but where labor and capital are comparatively cheap, it is wisest to
+employ _intensive_ cultivation. * * * All the efforts of the cultivator
+ought to be directed to the obtaining of a given result with the least
+sacrifice, and there is equally a loss to the commonwealth if the
+application of improved agricultural processes be neglected where
+they are advantageous, or if they be employed where they are not
+required. * * * In this point of view, sylviculture must follow the same
+laws as agriculture, and, like it, be modified according to the
+economical conditions of different states. In countries abounding in
+good forests, and thinly peopled, elementary and cheap methods must be
+pursued; in civilized regions, where a dense population requires that
+the soil shall be made to produce all it can yield, the regular
+artificial forest, with all the processes that science teaches, should
+be cultivated. It would be absurd to apply to the endless woods of
+Brazil and of Canada the method of the Spessart by "double stages," and
+not less so in our country, where every yard of ground has a high value,
+to leave to nature the task of propagating trees, and to content
+ourselves with cutting, every twenty or twenty-five years, the meagre
+growths that chance may have produced."
+
+[283] It is often laid down as a universal law, that the wood of trees
+of slow vegetation is superior to that of quick growth. This is one of
+those commonplaces by which men love to shield themselves from the labor
+of painstaking observation. It has, in fact, so many exceptions, that it
+may be doubted whether it is in any sense true. Most of the cedars are
+slow of growth; but while the timber of some of them is firm and
+durable, that of others is light, brittle, and perishable. The hemlock
+spruce is slower of growth than the pines, but its wood is of very
+little value. The pasture oak and beech show a breadth of grain--and, of
+course, an annual increment--twice as great as trees of the same species
+grown in the woods; and the American locust, _Robinia pseudacacia_, the
+wood of which is of extreme toughness and durability, is, of all trees
+indigenous to Northeastern America, by far the most rapid in growth.
+
+As an illustration of the mutual interdependence of the mechanic arts, I
+may mention that in Italy, where stone, brick, and plaster are almost
+the only materials used in architecture, and where the "hollow ware"
+kitchen implements are of copper or of clay, the ordinary tools for
+working wood are of a very inferior description, and the locust timber
+is found too hard for their temper. Southey informs us, in "Espriella's
+Letters," that when a small quantity of mahogany was brought to England,
+early in the last century, the cabinetmakers were unable to use it, from
+the defective temper of their tools, until the demand for furniture from
+the new wood compelled them to improve the quality of their implements.
+In America, the cheapness of wood long made it the preferable material
+for almost all purposes to which it could by any possibility be applied.
+The mechanical cutlery and artisans' tools of the United States are of
+admirable temper, finish, and convenience, and no wood is too hard, or
+otherwise too refractory, to be wrought with great facility, both by
+hand tools and by the multitude of ingenious machines which the
+Americans have invented for this purpose.
+
+[284] _�tudes Foresti�res_, p. 7.
+
+[285] _�tudes Foresti�res_, p. 7.
+
+[286] For very full catalogues of American forest trees, and remarks on
+their geographical distribution, consult papers on the subject by Dr. J.
+G. Cooper, in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1858, and
+the Report of the United States Patent Office, Agricultural Division,
+for 1860.
+
+[287] Although Spenser's catalogue of trees occurs in the first canto of
+the first book of the "Fa�ry Queene"--the only canto of that exquisite
+poem actually read by most students of English literature--it is not so
+generally familiar as to make the quotation of it altogether
+superfluous:
+
+VII.
+
+  Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand,
+  A shadie grove not farr away they spide,
+  That promist ayde the tempest to withstand;
+  Whose loftie trees, yelad with sommers pride,
+  Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide,
+  Not perceable with power of any starr:
+  And all within were pathes and alleies wide,
+  With footing worne, and leading inward farr;
+  Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entred ar.
+
+VIII.
+
+  And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led,
+  Joying to heare the birdes sweete harmony,
+  Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred,
+  Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky.
+  Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy,
+  The sayling pine; the cedar stout and tall;
+  The vine-propp elm; the poplar never dry;
+  The builder oake, sole king of forrests all;
+  The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall;
+
+IX.
+
+  The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours
+  And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still;
+  The willow, worne of forlorn paramours;
+  The eugh, obedient to the benders will;
+  The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill;
+  The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound;
+  The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill;
+  The fruitfull olive; and the platane round;
+  The carver holme; the maple seeldom inward sound.
+
+
+[288] The walnut is a more valuable tree than is generally supposed. It
+yields one third of the oil produced in France, and in this respect
+occupies an intermediate position between the olive of the south, and
+the oleaginous seeds of the north. A hectare (about two and a half
+acres), will produce nuts to the value of five hundred francs a year,
+which cost nothing but the gathering. Unfortunately, its maturity must
+be long waited for, and more nut-trees are felled than planted. The
+demand for its wood in cabinet work is the principal cause of its
+destruction. See LAVERGNE, _�conomie Rurale de la France_, p. 253.
+
+According to Cosimo Ridolfi (Lezioni Orali, ii. p. 424), France obtains
+three times as much oil from the walnut as from the olive, and nearly as
+much as from all oleaginous seeds together. He states that the walnut
+bears nuts at the age of twenty years, and yields its maximum product at
+seventy, and that a hectare of ground, with thirty trees, or twelve to
+the acre, is equal to a capital of twenty-five hundred francs.
+
+The nut of this tree is known in the United States as the "English
+walnut." The fruit and the wood much resemble those of the American
+black walnut, _Juglans nigra_, but for cabinet work the American is the
+more beautiful material, especially when the large knots are employed.
+The timber of the European species, when straight grained, and _clear_,
+or free from knots, is, for ordinary purposes, better than that of the
+American black walnut, but bears no comparison with the wood of the
+hickory, when strength combined with elasticity is required, and its nut
+is very inferior in taste to that of the shagbark, as well as to the
+butternut, which it somewhat resembles.
+
+"The chestnut is more valuable still, for it produces on a sterile soil,
+which, without it, would yield only ferns and heaths, an abundant
+nutriment for man."--LAVERGNE, _�conomie Rurale de la France_, p. 253.
+
+I believe the varieties developed by cultivation are less numerous in
+the walnut than in the chestnut, which latter tree is often grafted in
+Southern Europe.
+
+[289] This fir is remarkable for its tendency to cicatrize or heal over
+its stumps, a property which it possesses in common with some other
+firs, the maritime pine, and the European larch. When these trees grow
+in thick clumps, their roots are apt to unite by a species of natural
+grafting, and if one of them be felled, although its own proper rootlets
+die, the stump may continue, sometimes for a century, to receive
+nourishment from the radicles of the surrounding trees, and a dome of
+wood and bark of considerable thickness be formed over it. The
+cicatrization is, however, only apparent, for the entire stump, except
+the outside ring of annual growth, soon dies, and even decays within its
+covering, without sending out new shoots.
+
+[290] At the age of twelve or fifteen years, the cork tree is stripped
+of its outer bark for the first time. This first yield is of inferior
+quality, and is employed for floats for nets and buoys, or burnt for
+lampblack. After this, a new layer of cork, an inch or an inch and a
+quarter in thickness, is formed about once in ten years, and is removed
+in large sheets without injury to the tree, which lives a hundred and
+fifty years or more. According to Clav� (p. 252), the annual product of
+a forest of cork oaks is calculated at about 660 kilogrammes, worth 150
+francs, to the hectare, which, deducting expenses, leaves a profit of
+100 francs. This is about equal to 250 pound weight, and eight dollars
+profit to the acre. The cork oaks of the national domain in Algeria
+cover about 500,000 acres, and are let to individuals at rates which are
+expected, when the whole is rented, to yield to the state a revenue of
+about $2,000,000.
+
+George Sand, in the _Histoire de ma Vie_, speaks of the cork forests in
+Southern France as among the most profitable of rural possessions, and
+states, what I do not remember to have seen noticed elsewhere, that
+Russia is the best customer for cork. The large sheets taken from the
+trees are slit into thin plates, and used to line the walls of
+apartments in that cold climate.
+
+[291] The walnut, the chestnut, the apple, and the pear are common to
+the border between the countries I have mentioned, but the range of the
+other trees is bounded by the Alps, and by a well-defined and sharply
+drawn line to the west of those mountains. I cannot give statistical
+details as to the number of any of the trees in question, or as to the
+area they would cover if brought together in a given country. From some
+peculiarity in the sky of Europe, cultivated plants will thrive, in
+Northern Italy, in Southern France, and even in Switzerland, under a
+depth of shade where no crop, not even grass, worth harvesting, would
+grow in the United States with an equally high summer temperature. Hence
+the cultivation of all these trees is practicable in Europe to a greater
+extent than would be supposed reconcilable with the interests of
+agriculture. Some idea of the importance of the olive orchards may be
+formed from the fact that Sicily alone, an island scarcely exceeding
+10,000 square miles in area, of which one third at least is absolutely
+barren, has exported to the single port of Marseilles more than
+2,000,000 pounds weight of olive oil per year, for the last twenty
+years.
+
+[292] It is hard to say how far the peculiar form of the graceful crown
+of this pine is due to pruning. It is true that the extremities of the
+topmost branches are rarely lopped, but the lateral boughs are almost
+uniformly removed to a very considerable height, and it is not
+improbable that the shape of the top is thereby affected.
+
+[293] Besides this, in a country so diversified in surface--I wish we
+could with the French say _accidented_--as Italy with the exception of
+the champaign region drained by the Po, every new field of view requires
+either an extraordinary _coup d'[oe]il_ in the spectator, or a long
+study, in order to master its relief, its plans, its salient and
+retreating angles. In summer, the universal greenery confounds light and
+shade, distance and foreground; and though the impression upon a
+traveller, who journeys for the sake of "sensations," may be
+strengthened by the mysterious annihilation of all standards for the
+measurement of space, yet the superior intelligibility of the winter
+scenery of Italy is more profitable to those who see with a view to
+analyze.
+
+[294] Copse, or coppice, from the French _couper_, to cut, signifies
+properly a wood the trees of which are cut at certain periods of
+immature growth, and allowed to shoot up again from the roots; but it
+has come to signify, very commonly, a young wood, grove, or thicket,
+without reference to its origin, or to its character of a forest crop.
+
+[295] It has been recently stated, upon the evidence of the Government
+foresters of Greece, and of the queen's gardener, that a large wood has
+been discovered in Arcadia, consisting of a fir which has the property
+of sending up both vertical and lateral shoots from the stump of felled
+trees and forming a new crown. It was at first supposed that this forest
+grew only on the "mountains," of which the hero of About's most amusing
+story, _Le Roi des Montagnes_, was "king;" but it is now said that small
+stumps, with the shoots attached, have been sent to Germany, and
+recognized by able botanists as true natural products.
+
+[296] Natural forests are rarely, if ever, composed of trees of a single
+species, and experience has shown that oaks and other broad-leaved
+trees, planted as artificial woods, require to be mixed, or associated
+with others of different habits.
+
+In the forest of Fontainebleau, "oaks, mingled with beeches in due
+proportion," says Clav�, "may arrive at the age of five or six hundred
+years in full vigor, and attain dimensions which I have never seen
+surpassed; when, however, they are wholly unmixed with other trees, they
+begin to decay and die at the top, at the age of forty or fifty years,
+like men, old before their time, weary of the world, and longing only to
+quit it. This has been observed in most of the oak plantations of which
+I have spoken, and they have not been able to attain to full growth.
+When the vegetation was perceived to languish, they were cut, in the
+hope that this operation would restore their vigor, and that the new
+shoots would succeed better than the original trees; and, in fact, they
+seemed to be recovering for the first few years. But the shoots were
+soon attacked by the same decay, and the operation had to be renewed at
+shorter and shorter intervals, until at last it was found necessary to
+treat as coppices plantations originally designed for the full-growth
+system. Nor was this all: the soil, periodically bared by these
+cuttings, became impoverished, and less and less suited to the growth of
+the oak. * * * It was then proposed to introduce the pine and plant with
+it the vacancies and glades. * * * By this means, the forest was saved
+from the ruin which threatened it, and now more than 10,000 acres of
+pines, from fifteen to thirty years old, are disseminated at various
+points, sometimes intermixed with broad-leaved trees, sometimes forming
+groves by themselves."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, pp. 153,
+154.
+
+The forests of Denmark, which, in modern times, have been succeeded by
+the beech--a species more inclined to be exclusive than any other
+broad-leaved tree--were composed of birches, oaks, firs, aspens,
+willows, hazel, and maple, the first three being the leading species. At
+present, the beech greatly predominates.--VAUPELL, _B�gens Indvandring_,
+pp. 19, 20.
+
+[297] _�tudes Foresti�res_, p. 89.
+
+[298] The grounds which it is most important to clothe with wood as a
+conservative influence, and which, also, can best be spared from
+agricultural use, are steep hillsides. But the performance of all the
+offices of the forester to the tree--seeding, planting, thinning, and
+finally felling and removing for consumption--is more laborious upon a
+rapid declivity than on a level soil, and at the same time it is
+difficult to apply irrigation or manures to trees so situated.
+Experience has shown that there is great advantage in terracing the face
+of a hill before planting it, both as preventing the wash of the earth
+by checking the flow of water down its slope, and as presenting a
+surface favorable for irrigation, as well as for manuring and
+cultivating the tree. But even without so expensive a process, very
+important results have been obtained by simply ditching declivities. "In
+order to hasten the growth of wood on the flanks of a mountain, Mr.
+Eug�ne Chevandier divided the slope into zones forty or fifty feet wide,
+by horizontal ditches closed at both ends, and thereby obtained, from
+firs of different ages, shoots double the dimensions of those which grew
+on a dry soil of the same character, where the water was allowed to run
+off without obstruction."--DUMONT, _Des Travaux Publics, etc._, pp.
+94-96.
+
+The ditches were about two feet and a half deep, and three feet and a
+half wide, and they cost about forty francs the hectare, or three
+dollars the acre. This extraordinary growth was produced wholly by the
+retention of the rain water in the ditches, whence it filtered through
+the whole soil and supplied moisture to the roots of the trees. It may
+be doubted whether in a climate cold enough to freeze the entire
+contents of the ditches in winter, it would not be expedient to draw off
+the water in the autumn, as the presence of so large a quantity of ice
+in the soil might prove injurious to trees too young and small to
+shelter the ground effectually against frost.
+
+Chevandier computes that, if the annual growth of the pine in the marshy
+soil of the Vosges be represented by one, it will equal two in dry
+ground, four or five on slopes so ditched or graded as to retain the
+water flowing upon them from roads or steep declivities, and six where
+the earth is kept constantly moist by infiltration from running
+brooks.--_Comptes Rendus � l'Acad�mie des Sciences_--t. xix, Juillet,
+Dec., 1844, p. 167.
+
+The effect of accidental irrigation is well shown in the growth of the
+trees planted along the canals of irrigation which traverse the fields
+in many parts of Italy. They flourish most luxuriantly, in spite of
+continual lopping, and yield a very important contribution to the stock
+of fuel for domestic use; while trees, situated so far from canals as to
+be out of the reach of infiltration from them, are of much slower
+growth, under circumstances otherwise equally favorable.
+
+In other experiments of Chevandier, under better conditions, the yield
+of wood was increased, by judicious irrigation, in the ratio of seven to
+one, the profits in that of twelve to one. At the Exposition of 1855,
+Chambrelent exhibited young trees, which, in four years from the seed,
+had grown to the height of sixteen and twenty feet, and the diameter of
+ten and twelve inches. Chevandier experimented with various manures, and
+found that some of them might be profitably applied to young, but not to
+old trees, the quantity required in the latter case being too great.
+Wood ashes and the refuse of soda factories are particularly
+recommended. I have seen an extraordinary growth produced in fir trees
+by the application of soapsuds.
+
+[299] Although the economy of the forest has received little attention
+in the United States, no lover of American nature can have failed to
+observe a marked difference between a native wood from which cattle are
+excluded and one where they are permitted to browse. A few seasons
+suffice for the total extirpation of the "underbrush," including the
+young trees on which alone the reproduction of the forest depends, and
+all the branches of those of larger growth which hang within reach of
+the cattle are stripped of their buds and leaves, and soon wither and
+fall off. These effects are observable at a great distance, and a wood
+pasture is recognized, almost as far as it can be seen, by the
+regularity with which its lower foliage terminates at what Ruskin
+somewhere calls the "cattle line." This always runs parallel to the
+surface of the ground, and is determined by the height to which domestic
+quadrupeds can reach to feed upon the leaves. In describing a visit to
+the grand-ducal farm of San Rossore near Pisa, where a large herd of
+camels is kept, Chateauvieux says: "In passing through a wood of
+evergreen oaks, I observed that all the twigs and foliage of the trees
+were clipped up to the height of about twelve feet above the ground,
+without leaving a single spray below that level. I was informed that the
+browsing of the camels had trimmed the trees as high as they could
+reach."--LULLIN DE CHATEAUVIEUX, _Lettres sur l'Italie_, p. 113.
+
+The removal of the shelter afforded by the brushwood and the pendulous
+branches of trees permits drying and chilling winds to parch and cool
+the ground, and of course injuriously affects the growth of the wood.
+But this is not all. The tread of quadrupeds exposes and bruises the
+roots of the trees, which often die from this cause, as any one may
+observe by following the paths made by cattle through woodlands.
+
+[300] I have remarked elsewhere that most insects which deposit and
+hatch their eggs in the wood of the natural forest confine themselves to
+dead trees. Not only is this the fact, but it is also true that many of
+the borers attack only freshly cut timber. Their season of labor is a
+short one, and unless the tree is cut during this period, it is safe
+from them. In summer you may hear them plying their augers in the wood
+of a young pine with soft green bark, as you sit upon its trunk, within
+a week after it has been felled, but the windfalls of the winter lie
+uninjured by the worm and even undecayed for centuries. In the pine
+woods of New England, after the regular lumberman has removed the
+standing trees, these old trunks are hauled out from the mosses and
+leaves which half cover them, and often furnish excellent timber. The
+slow decay of such timber in the woods, it may be remarked, furnishes
+another proof of the uniformity of temperature and humidity in the
+forest, for the trunk of a tree lying on grass or plough land, and of
+course exposed to all the alternations of climate, hardly resists
+complete decomposition for a generation. The forests of Europe exhibit
+similar facts. Wessely, in a description of the primitive wood of
+Neuwald in Lower Austria, says that the windfalls required from 150 to
+200 years for entire decay.-_-Die Oesterreichischen Alpenl�nder und ihre
+Forste_, p. 312.
+
+[301] VAUPELL, _B�gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, pp. 29, 46.
+Vaupell further observes, on the page last quoted: "The removal of
+leaves is injurious to the forest, not only because it retards the
+growth of trees, but still more because it disqualifies the soil for the
+production of particular species. When the beech languishes, and the
+development of its branches is less vigorous and its crown less
+spreading, it becomes unable to resist the encroachments of the fir.
+This latter tree thrives in an inferior soil, and being no longer
+stifled by the thick foliage of the beech, it spreads gradually through
+the wood, while the beech retreats before it and finally perishes."
+
+The study of the natural order of succession in forest trees is of the
+utmost importance in sylviculture, because it guides us in the selection
+of the species to be employed in planting a new or restoring a decayed
+forest. When ground is laid bare both of trees and of vegetable mould,
+and left to the action of unaided and unobstructed nature, she first
+propagates trees which germinate and grow only under the influence of a
+full supply of light and air, and then, in succession, other species,
+according to their ability to bear the shade and their demand for more
+abundant nutriment. In Northern Europe, the larch, the white birch, the
+aspen, first appear; then follow the maple, the alder, the ash, the fir;
+then the oak and the linden; and then the beech. The trees called by
+these respective names in the United States are not specifically the
+same as their European namesakes, nor are they always even the
+equivalents of these latter, and therefore the order of succession in
+America would not be precisely as indicated by the foregoing list, but
+it nevertheless very nearly corresponds to it.
+
+It is thought important to encourage the growth of the beech in Denmark
+and Northern Germany, because it upon the whole yields better returns
+than other trees, and particularly because it appears not to exhaust,
+but on the contrary to enrich the soil; for by shedding its leaves it
+returns to it most of the nutriment it has drawn from it, and at the
+same time furnishes a solvent which aids materially in the decomposition
+of its mineral constituents.
+
+When the forest is left to itself, the order of succession is constant,
+and its occasional inversion is always explicable by some human
+interference. It is curious that the trees which require most light are
+content with the poorest soils, and _vice versa_. The trees which first
+appear are also those which propagate themselves farthest to the north.
+The birch, the larch, and the fir bear a severer climate than the oak,
+the oak than the beech. "These parallelisms," says Vaupell, "are very
+interesting, because they are entirely independent of each other," and
+each prescribes the same order of succession.--_B�gens Indvandring_, p.
+42.
+
+[302] When vigorous young locusts, of two or three inches in diameter,
+are polled, they throw out a great number of very thick-leaved shoots,
+which arrange themselves in a globular head, so unlike the natural crown
+of the acacia, that persons familiar only with the untrained tree often
+take them for a different species.
+
+[303] The two ideas expressed in the text are not exactly equivalent,
+because, though the consumption of animal food diminishes the amount of
+vegetable aliment required for human use, yet the animals themselves
+consume a great quantity of grain and roots grown on ground ploughed and
+cultivated as regularly and as laboriously as any other.
+
+The 170,000,000 bushels of oats raised in the United States in 1860, and
+fed to the 6,000,000 horses, the potatoes, the turnips, and the maize
+employed in fattening the oxen, the sheep, and the swine slaughtered the
+same year, occupied an extent of ground which, cultivated by hand labor
+and with Chinese industry and skill, would probably have produced a
+quantity of vegetable food equal in alimentary power to the flesh of the
+quadrupeds killed for domestic use. Hence, so far as the naked question
+of _amount_ of aliment is concerned, the meadows and the pastures might
+as well have remained in the forest condition.
+
+[304] According to Clav� (_�tudes_, p. 159), the net revenue from the
+forests of the state in France, making no allowance for interest on the
+capital represented by the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it
+is about the same, though the cost of administration is twice as much as
+in France; in W�rtemberg it is about a dollar an acre; and in Prussia,
+where half the income is consumed in the expenses of administration, it
+sinks to less than half a dollar. This low rate in Prussia is partly
+explained by the fact that a considerable proportion of the annual
+product of wood is either conceded to persons claiming prescriptive
+rights, or sold, at a very small price, to the poor. Taking into account
+the capital invested in forest land, and adding interest upon it,
+Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with a view to felling it
+when eighty years old, would yield only one eighth of one per cent.
+annual profit; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one sixth of one per
+cent.; a beech wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one fourth of one
+per cent. The same author (p. 335) gives the net income of the New
+forest in England, over and above expenses, interest not computed, at
+twenty-five cents per acre only. In America, where no expense is
+bestowed upon the woods, the annual growth would generally be estimated
+much higher.
+
+[305] It is rare that a middle-aged American dies in the house where he
+was born, or an old man even in that which he has built; and this is
+scarcely less true of the rural districts, where every man owns his
+habitation, than of the city, where the majority live in hired houses.
+This life of incessant flitting is unfavorable for the execution of
+permanent improvements of every sort, and especially of those which,
+like the forest, are slow in repaying any part of the capital expended
+in them. It requires a very generous spirit in a landholder to plant a
+wood on a farm he expects to sell, or which he knows will pass out of
+the hands of his descendants at his death. But the very fact of having
+begun a plantation would attach the proprietor more strongly to the soil
+for which he had made such a sacrifice; and the paternal acres would
+have a greater value in the eyes of a succeeding generation, if thus
+improved and beautified by the labors of those from whom they were
+inherited. Landed property, therefore, the transfer of which is happily
+free from every legal impediment or restriction in the United States,
+would find, in the feelings thus prompted, a moral check against a too
+frequent change of owners, and would tend to remain long enough in one
+proprietor or one family to admit of gradual improvements which would
+increase its value both to the possessor and to the state.
+
+[306] It has been often asserted by eminent writers that a part of the
+fens in Lincolnshire was reclaimed by sea dikes under the government of
+the Romans. I have found no ancient authority in support of this
+allegation, nor can I refer to any passage in Roman literature in which
+sea dikes are expressly mentioned otherwise than as walls or piers,
+except that in Pliny (_Hist. Nat._ xxxvi, 24), where it is said that the
+Tyrrhenian sea was excluded from the Lucrine lake by dikes.
+
+[307] A friend has recently suggested to me an interesting illustration
+of the applicability of military instrumentalities to pacific art. The
+sale of gunpowder in the United States, he informs me, is smaller since
+the commencement of the present rebellion than before, because the war
+has caused the suspension of many public and private improvements, in
+the execution of which great quantities of powder were used for
+blasting.
+
+It is alleged that the same observation was made in France during the
+Crimean war, and that, in general, not ten per cent. of the powder
+manufactured on either side of the Atlantic is employed for military
+purposes.
+
+It is a fact not creditable to the moral sense of modern civilization,
+that very many of the most important improvements in machinery and the
+working of metals have originated in the necessities of war, and that
+man's highest ingenuity has been shown, and many of his most remarkable
+triumphs over natural forces achieved, in the contrivance of engines for
+the destruction of his fellow man. The military material employed by the
+first Napoleon has become, in less than two generations, nearly as
+obsolete as the sling and stone of the shepherd, and attack and defence
+now begin at distances to which, half a century ago, military
+reconnoissances hardly extended. Upon a partial view of the subject, the
+human race seems destined to become its own executioner--on the one
+hand, exhausting the capacity of the earth to furnish sustenance to her
+taskmaster; on the other, compensating diminished production by
+inventing more efficient methods of exterminating the consumer.
+
+But war develops great civil virtues, and brings into action a degree
+and kind of physical energy which seldom fails to awaken a new
+intellectual life in a people that achieves great moral and political
+results through great heroism and endurance and perseverance. Domestic
+corruption has destroyed more nations than foreign invasion, and a
+people is rarely conquered till it has deserved subjugation.
+
+[308] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 150.
+
+[309] Idem, p. 163. Much the largest proportion of the lands so
+reclaimed, though for the most part lying above low-water tidemark, are
+at a lower level than the Lincolnshire fens, and more subject to
+inundation from the irruptions of the sea.
+
+[310] _Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogth�mer Schleswig und Holstein_,
+iii, p. 151.
+
+[311] The purely agricultural island of Pelworm, off the coast of
+Schleswig, containing about 10,000 acres, annually expends for the
+maintenance of its dikes not less than �6,000 sterling, or nearly
+$30,000.--J. G. KOHL, _Inseln und Marschen Schleswig's und Holstein's_,
+ii, p. 394.
+
+The original cost of the dikes of Pelworm is not stated.
+
+"The greatest part of the province of Zeeland is protected by dikes
+measuring 250 miles in length, the maintenance of which costs, in
+ordinary years, more than a million guilders [above $400,000]. * * * The
+annual expenditure for dikes and hydraulic works in Holland is from five
+to seven million guilders" [$2,000,000 to $2,800,000].--WILD, _Die
+Niederlande_, i, p. 62.
+
+One is not sorry to learn that the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands
+had some compensations. The great chain of ring dikes which surrounds a
+large part of Zeeland is due to the energy of Caspar de Robles, the
+Spanish governor of that province, who in 1570 ordered the construction
+of these works at the public expense, as a substitute for the private
+embankments which had previously partially served the same
+purpose.--WILD, _Die Niederlande_, i, p. 62.
+
+[312] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 163.
+
+[313] _Voormaals en Thans_, pp. 150, 151.
+
+[314] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 152. Kohl states that the
+peninsula of Diksand on the coast of Holstein consisted, at the close of
+the last century, of several islands measuring together less than five
+thousand acres. In 1837 they had been connected with the mainland, and
+had nearly doubled in area.--_Inseln u. Marschen Schlesw. Holst._, iii,
+p. 262.
+
+[315] The most instructive and entertaining of tourists, J. G. Kohl--so
+aptly characterized by Davies as the "Herodotus of modern
+Europe"--furnishes a great amount of interesting information on the
+dikes of the Low German seacoast, in his _Inseln und Marschen der
+Herzogth�mer Schleswig und Holstein_. I am acquainted with no popular
+work on this subject which the reader can consult with greater profit.
+See also STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, and _De Bodem van Nederland_, on
+the dikes of the Netherlands.
+
+[316] The inclination varies from one foot rise in four of base to one
+foot in fourteen.--KOHL, iii, p. 210.
+
+[317] The dikes are sometimes founded upon piles, and sometimes
+protected by one or more rows of piles driven deeply down into the bed
+of the sea in front of them. "Triple rows of piles of Scandinavian
+pine," says Wild, "have been driven down along the coast of Friesland,
+where there are no dunes, for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles.
+The piles are bound together by strong cross timbers and iron clamps,
+and the interstices filled with stones. The ground adjacent to the
+piling is secured with fascines, and at exposed points heavy blocks of
+stone are heaped up as an additional protection. The earth dike is built
+behind the mighty bulwark of this breakwater, and its foot also is
+fortified with stones." * * * "The great Helder dike is about five miles
+long and forty feet wide at the top, along which runs a good road. It
+slopes down two hundred feet into the sea, at an angle of forty degrees.
+The highest waves do not reach the summit, the lowest always cover its
+base. At certain distances, immense buttresses, of a height and width
+proportioned to those of the dike, and even more strongly built, run
+several hundred feet out into the rolling sea. This gigantic artificial
+coast is entirely composed of Norwegian granite."--WILD, _Die
+Niederlande_, i, pp. 61, 62.
+
+[318] The shaking of the ground, even when loaded with large buildings,
+by the passage of heavy carriages or artillery, or by the march of a
+body of cavalry or even infantry, shows that such causes may produce
+important mechanical effects on the condition of the soil. The bogs in
+the Netherlands, as in most other countries, contain large numbers of
+fallen trees, buried to a certain depth by earth and vegetable mould.
+When the bogs are dry enough to serve as pastures, it is observed that
+trunks of these ancient trees rise of themselves to the surface. Staring
+ascribes this singular phenomenon to the agitation of the ground by the
+tread of cattle. "When roadbeds," observes he, "are constructed of
+gravel and pebbles of different sizes, and these latter are placed at
+the bottom without being broken and rolled hard together, they are soon
+brought to the top by the effect of travel on the road. Lying loosely,
+they undergo some motion from the passage of every wagon wheel and the
+tread of every horse that passes over them. This motion is an
+oscillation or partial rolling, and as one side of a pebble is raised, a
+little fine sand or earth is forced under it, and the frequent
+repetition of this process by cattle or carriages moving in opposite
+directions brings it at last to the surface. We may suppose that a
+similar effect is produced on the stems of trees in the bogs by the
+tread of animals."--_De Bodem van Nederland_, i, pp. 75, 76.
+
+It is observed in the Northern United States, that when soils containing
+pebbles are cleared and cultivated, and the stones removed from the
+surface, new pebbles, and even bowlders of many pounds weight, continue
+to show themselves above the ground, every spring, for a long series of
+years. In clayey soils the fence posts are thrown up in a similar way,
+and it is not uncommon to see the lower rail of a fence thus gradually
+raised a foot or even two feet above the ground. This rising of stones
+and fences is popularly ascribed to the action of the severe frosts of
+that climate. The expansion of the ground, in freezing, it is said,
+raises its surface, and, with the surface, objects lying near or
+connected with it. When the soil thaws in the spring, it settles back
+again to its former level, while the pebbles and posts are prevented
+from sinking as low as before by loose earth which has fallen under
+them. The fact that the elevation spoken of is observed only in the
+spring, gives countenance to this theory, which is perhaps applicable
+also to the cases stated by Staring, and it is probable that the two
+causes above assigned concur in producing the effect.
+
+The question of the subsidence of the Netherlandish coast has been much
+discussed. Not to mention earlier geologists, Venema, in several essays,
+and particularly in _Het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons
+Land_, 1854, adduces many facts and arguments to prove a slow sinking of
+the northern provinces of Holland. Laveleye (_Affaissement du sol et
+envasement des fleuves survenus dans les temps historiques_, 1859), upon
+a still fuller investigation, arrives at the same conclusion. The
+eminent geologist Staring, however, who briefly refers to the subject in
+_De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 356 _et seqq._, does not consider the
+evidence sufficient to prove anything more than the sinking of the
+surface of the polders from drying and consolidation.
+
+[319] The elevation of the lands enclosed by dikes--or _polders_, as
+they are called in Holland--above low water mark, depends upon the
+height of the tides, or, in other words, upon, the difference between
+ebb and flood. The tide cannot deposit earth higher than it flows, and
+after the ground is once enclosed, the decay of the vegetables grown
+upon it and the addition of manures do not compensate the depression
+occasioned by drying and consolidation. On the coast of Zeeland and the
+islands of South Holland, the tides, and of course the surface of the
+lands deposited by them, are so high that the polders can be drained by
+ditching and sluices, but at other points, as in the enclosed grounds of
+North Holland on the Zuiderzee, where the tide rises but three feet or
+even less, pumping is necessary from the beginning.--STARING, _Voormaals
+en Thans_, p. 152.
+
+[320] The principal engine--called the Leeghwater, from the name of an
+engineer who had proposed the draining of the lake in 1641--was of 500
+horse power, and drove eleven pumps making six strokes per minute. Each
+pump raised six cubic m�tres, or nearly eight cubic yards of water to
+the stroke, amounting in all to 23,760 cubic m�tres, or above 31,000
+cubic yards, the hour.--WILD, _Die Niederlande_, i, p. 87.
+
+[321] In England and New England, where the marshes have been already
+drained or are of comparatively small extent, the existence of large
+floating islands seems incredible, and has sometimes been treated as a
+fable, but no geographical fact is better established. Kohl (_Inseln und
+Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins_, iii, p. 309) reminds us that Pliny
+mentions among the wonders of Germany the floating islands, covered with
+trees, which met the Roman fleets at the mouths of the Elbe and the
+Weser. Our author speaks also of having visited, in the territory of
+Bremen, floating moors, bearing not only houses but whole villages. At
+low stages of the water these moors rest upon a bed of sand, but are
+raised from six to ten feet by the high water of spring, and remain
+afloat until, in the course of the summer, the water beneath is
+exhausted by evaporation and drainage, when they sink down upon the sand
+again. See _Appendix_, No. 40.
+
+Staring explains, in an interesting way, the whole growth, formation,
+and functions of floating fens or bogs, in his very valuable work, _De
+Bodem van_ _Nederland_, i, pp. 36-43. The substance of his account is as
+follows: The first condition for the growth of the plants which compose
+the substance of turf and the surface of the fens, is stillness of the
+water. Hence they are not found in running streams, nor in pools so
+large as to be subject to frequent agitation by the wind. For example,
+not a single plant grew in the open part of the Lake of Haarlem, and
+fens cease to form in all pools as soon as, by the cutting of the turf
+for fuel or other purposes, their area is sufficiently enlarged to be
+much acted on by wind. When still water above a yard deep is left
+undisturbed, aquatic plants of various genera, such us Nuphar, Nymph�a,
+Limnanthemum, Stratiotes, Polygonum, and Potamogeton, fill the bottom
+with roots and cover the surface with leaves. Many of the plants die
+every year, and prepare at the bottom a soil fit for the growth of a
+higher order of vegetation, Phragmites, Acorus, Sparganium, Rumex,
+Lythrum, Pedicularis, Spir�a, Polystichum, Comarum, Caltha, &c., &c. In
+the course of twenty or thirty years the muddy bottom is filled with
+roots of aquatic and marsh plants, which are lighter than water, and if
+the depth is great enough to give room for detaching this vegetable
+network, a couple of yards for example, it rises to the surface, bearing
+with it, of course, the soil formed above it by decay of stems and
+leaves. New genera now appear upon the mass, such as Carex, Menyanthes,
+and others, and soon thickly cover it. The turf has now acquired a
+thickness of from two to four feet, and is called in Groningen _lad_; in
+Friesland, _til_, _tilland_, or _drijftil_; in Overijssel, _krag_; and
+in Holland, _rietzod_. It floats about as driven by the wind, gradually
+increasing in thickness by the decay of its annual crops of vegetation,
+and in about half a century reaches the bottom and becomes fixed. If it
+has not been invaded in the mean time by men or cattle, trees and
+arborescent plants, Alnus, Salix, Myrica, &c. appear, and these
+contribute to hasten the attachment of the turf to the bottom, both by
+their weight and by sending their roots quite through into the ground.
+
+This is the regular method employed by nature for the gradual filling up
+of shallow lakes and pools, and converting them first into morass and
+then into dry land. Whenever therefore man removes the peat or turf, he
+exerts an injurious geographical agency, and, as I have already said,
+there is no doubt that the immense extension of the inland seas of
+Holland in modern times is owing to this and other human imprudences.
+"Hundreds of hectares of floating pastures," says our author, "which
+have nothing in their appearance to distinguish them from grass lands
+resting on solid bog, are found in Overijssel, in North Holland and near
+Utrecht. In short, they occur in all deep bogs, and wherever deep water
+is left long undisturbed."
+
+In one case, a floating island, which had attached itself to the shore,
+continued to float about for a long time after it was torn off by a
+flood, and was solid enough to keep a pond of fresh water upon it sweet,
+though the water in which it was swimming had become brackish from the
+irruption of the sea. After the hay is cut, cattle are pastured upon
+those islands, and they sometimes have large trees growing upon them.
+
+When the turf or peat has been cut, leaving water less than a yard deep,
+Equisetum limosum grows at once, and is followed by the second class of
+marsh plants mentioned above. Their roots do not become detached from
+the bottom in such shallow water, but form ordinary turf or peat. These
+processes are so rapid that a thickness of from three to six feet of
+turf is formed in half a century, and many men have lived to mow grass
+where they had fished in their boyhood, and to cut turf twice in the
+same spot.
+
+Captain Gilliss says that before Lake Taguataga in Chili was drained,
+there were in it islands composed of dead plants matted together to a
+thickness of from four to six feet, and with trees of medium size
+growing upon them. These islands floated before the wind "with their
+trees and browsing cattle."--_United States Naval Astronomical
+Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere_, i, pp. 16, 17.
+
+[322] A considerable work of this character is mentioned by Captain
+Gilliss as having been executed in Chili, a country to which we should
+have hardly looked for an improvement of such a nature. The Lake
+Taguataga was partially drained by cutting through a narrow ridge of
+land, not at the natural outlet, but upon one side of the lake, and
+eight thousand acres of land covered by it were gained for
+cultivation.--_U. S. Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern
+Hemisphere_, i, pp. 16, 17.
+
+[323] _�conomie Rurale de la France_, p. 289.
+
+[324] In a note on a former page of this volume I noticed an observation
+of Jacini, to the effect that the great Italian lakes discharge
+themselves partly by infiltration beneath the hills which bound them.
+The amount of such infiltration must depend much upon the hydrostatic
+pressure on the walls of the lake basins, and, of course, the lowering
+of the surface of these lakes, by diminishing that pressure, would
+diminish also the infiltration. It is now proposed to lower the level of
+the Lake of Como some feet by deepening its outlet. It is possible that
+the effect of this may manifest itself in a diminution of the water in
+springs and _fontanili_ or artesian wells in Lombardy. See _Appendix_,
+No. 43.
+
+[325] Simonde, speaking of the Tuscan canals, observes: "But inundations
+are not the only damage caused by the waters to the plains of Tuscany.
+Raised, as the canals are, above the soil, the water percolates through
+their banks, penetrates every obstruction, and, in spite of all the
+efforts of industry, sterilizes and turns to morasses fields which
+nature and the richness of the soil seemed to have designed for the most
+abundant harvests. In ground thus pervaded with moisture, or rendered
+_cold_, as the Tuscans express it, by the filtration of the canal water,
+the vines and the mulberries, after having for a few years yielded fruit
+of a saltish taste, rot and perish. The wheat decays in the ground, or
+dies as soon as it sprouts. Winter crops are given up, and summer
+cultivation tried for a time; but the increasing humidity, and the
+saline matter communicated to the earth--which affects the taste of all
+its products, even to the grasses, which the cattle refuse to touch--at
+last compel the husbandman to abandon his fields, and leave uncultivated
+a soil that no longer repays his labor."--_Tableau de l'Agriculture
+Toscane._ pp. 11, 12.
+
+[326] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 288. Draining by driving down
+stakes, mentioned in a note in a chapter on the woods, _ante_, is a
+process of the same nature.
+
+[327] "The simplest backwoodsman knows by experience that all
+cultivation is impossible in the neighborhood of bogs and marshes. Why
+is a crop near the borders of a marsh cut off by frost, while a field
+upon a hillock, a few stone's throws from it, is spared?"--LARS LEVI
+L�STADIUS, _Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, pp. 69, 74.
+
+[328] Babinet condemns even the general draining of marshes. "Draining,"
+says he, "has been much in fashion for some years. It has been a special
+object to dry and fertilize marshy grounds. My opinion has always been
+that excessive dryness is thus produced, and that other soils in the
+neighborhood are sterilized in proportion."
+
+[329] I ought perhaps to except the Mexicans and the Peruvians, whose
+arts and institutions are not yet shown to be historically connected
+with those of any more ancient people. The lamentable destruction of so
+many memorials of these tribes, by the ignorance and bigotry of the
+so-called Christian barbarians who conquered them, has left us much in
+the dark as to many points of their civilization; but they seem to have
+reached that stage where continued progress in knowledge and in power
+over nature is secure, and a few more centuries of independence might
+have brought them to originate for themselves most of the great
+inventions which the last four centuries have bestowed upon man.
+
+[330] The necessity of irrigation in the great alluvial plain of
+Northern Italy is partly explained by the fact that the superficial
+stratum of fine earth and vegetable mould is very extensively underlaid
+by beds of pebbles and gravel brought down by mountain torrents at a
+remote epoch. The water of the surface soil drains rapidly down into
+these loose beds, and passes off by subterranean channels to some
+unknown point of discharge; but this circumstance alone is not a
+sufficient solution. Is it not possible that the habits of vegetables,
+grown in countries where irrigation has been immemorially employed, have
+been so changed that they require water under conditions of soil and
+climate where their congeners, which have not been thus indulgently
+treated, do not?
+
+There are some atmospheric phenomena in Northern Italy, which an
+American finds it hard to reconcile with what he has observed in the
+United States. To an American eye, for instance, the sky of Piedmont,
+Lombardy, and the northern coast of the Mediterranean, is always whitish
+and curdled, and it never has the intensity and fathomless depth of the
+blue of his native heavens. And yet the heat of the sun's rays, as
+measured by sensation, and, at the same time, the evaporation, are
+greater than they would be with the thermometer at the same point in
+America. I have frequently felt in Italy, with the mercury below 60�
+Fahrenheit, and with a mottled and almost opaque sky, a heat of solar
+irradiation which I can compare to nothing but the scorching sensation
+experienced in America at a temperature twenty degrees higher, during
+the intervals between showers, or before a rain, when the clear blue of
+the sky seems infinite in depth and transparency. Such circumstances may
+create a necessity for irrigation where it would otherwise be
+superfluous, if not absolutely injurious.
+
+In speaking of the superior apparent clearness of the _sky_ in America,
+I confine myself to the concave vault of the heavens, and do not mean to
+assert that terrestrial objects are generally visible at greater
+distances in the United States than in Italy. Indeed I am rather
+disposed to maintain the contrary; for though I know that the lower
+strata of the atmosphere in Europe never equal in transparency the air
+near the earth in New Mexico, Peru, and Chili, yet I think the accidents
+of the coast line of the Riviera, as, for example, between Nice and La
+Spezia, and those of the incomparable Alpine panorama seen from Turin,
+are distinguishable at greater distances than they would be in the
+United States.
+
+[331] In Egypt, evaporation and absorption by the earth are so rapid,
+that all annual crops require irrigation during the whole period of
+their growth. As fast as the water retires by the subsidence of the
+annual inundation, the seed is sown upon the still moist uncovered soil,
+and irrigation begins at once. Upon the Nile, you hear the creaking of
+the water wheels, and sometimes the movement of steam pumps, through the
+whole night, while the poorer cultivators unceasingly ply the simple
+_shadoof_, or bucket-and-sweep, laboriously raising the water from
+trough to trough by as many as six or seven stages when the river is
+low. The bucket is of flexible leather, with a stiff rim, and is emptied
+into the trough, not by inverting it like a wooden bucket, but by
+putting the hand beneath and pushing the bottom up till the water all
+runs out over the brim, or, in other words, by turning the vessel inside
+out.
+
+The quantity of water thus withdrawn from the Nile is enormous. Most of
+this is evaporated directly from the surface or the superficial strata,
+but some moisture percolates down and oozes through the banks into the
+river again, while a larger quantity sinks till it joins the slow
+current of infiltration by which the Nile water pervades the earth of
+the valley to the distance, at some points, of not less than fifty
+miles.
+
+[332] "Forests," "woods," and "groves," are very frequently mentioned in
+the Old Testament as existing at particular places, and they are often
+referred to by way of illustration, as familiar objects. "Wood" is twice
+spoken of as a material in the New Testament, but otherwise--at least
+according to Cruden--not one of the above words occurs in that volume.
+
+This interesting fact, were other evidence wanting, would go far to
+prove that a great change had taken place in this respect between the
+periods when the Old Testament and the New were respectively composed;
+for the scriptural writers, and the speakers introduced into their
+narratives, are remarkable for their frequent allusions to the natural
+objects and the social and industrial habits which characterized their
+ages and their country. See _Appendix_, No. 44.
+
+Solomon anticipated Chevandier in the irrigation of forest trees: "I
+made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth
+trees."--_Ecclesiastes_ ii, 6.
+
+[333] One of these, upon Mount Hor, two stories in height, is still in
+such preservation that I found not less than ten feet of water in it in
+the month of June, 1851.
+
+The brook Ain Musa, which runs through the city of Petra and finally
+disappears in the sands of Wadi el Araba, is a considerable river in
+winter, and the inhabitants of that town were obliged to excavate a
+tunnel through the rock near the right bank, just above the upper
+entrance of the Sik, to discharge a part of its swollen current. The
+sagacity of Dr. Robinson detected the necessity of this measure, though
+the tunnel, the mouth of which was hidden by brushwood, was not
+discovered till some time after his visit. I even noticed unequivocal
+remains of a sluice by which the water was diverted to the tunnel near
+the arch that crosses the Sik. Immense labor was also expended in
+widening the natural channel at several points below the town, to
+prevent the damming up and setting back of the water--a fact I believe
+not hitherto noticed by travellers.
+
+The Fellahheen above Petra still employ the waters of Ain Musa for
+irrigation, and in summer the superficial current is wholly diverted
+from its natural channel for that purpose. At this season, the bed of
+the brook, which is composed of pebbles, gravel, and sand, is dry in the
+Sik and through the town; but the infiltration is such that water is
+generally found by digging to a small depth in the channel. Observing
+these facts in a visit to Petra in the summer, I was curious to know
+whether the subterranean waters escaped again to daylight, and I
+followed the ravine below the town for a long distance. Not very far
+from the upper entrance of the ravine, arborescent vegetation appeared
+upon its bottom, and as soon as the ground was well shaded, a thread of
+water burst out. This was joined by others a little lower down, and, at
+the distance of a mile from the town, a strong current was formed and
+ran down toward Wadi el Araba.
+
+[334] The authorities differ as to the extent of the cultivable and the
+cultivated soil of Egypt. Lippincott's, or rather Thomas and Baldwin's,
+_Gazetteer_--a work of careful research--estimates "the whole area
+comprised in the valley [below the first cataract] and delta," at 11,000
+square miles. Smith's _Dictionary of the Bible_, article "Egypt," says:
+"Egypt has a superficies of about 9,582 square geographical miles of
+soil, which the Nile either does or can water and fertilize. This
+computation includes the river and lakes as well as sundry tracts which
+can be inundated, and the whole space either cultivated or fit for
+cultivation is no more than about 5,626 square miles." By geographical
+mile is here meant, I suppose, the nautical mile of sixty to an
+equatorial degree, or about 2,025 yards. The whole area, then, by this
+estimate, is 12,682 square statute or English miles, that of the space
+"cultivated or fit for cultivation," 7,447. Smith's _Dictionary of Greek
+and Roman Geography_, article "�gyptus," gives 2,255 square miles as the
+area of the valley between Syene and the bifurcation of the Nile,
+exclusive of the Fayoom, which is estimated at 340. The area of the
+Delta is stated at 1,976 square miles between the main branches of the
+river, and, including the irrigated lands east and west of those
+branches, at 4,500 square miles. This latter work does not inform us
+whether these are statute or nautical miles, but nautical miles must be
+intended.
+
+Other writers give estimates differing considerably from those just
+cited. The latest computations I have seen are those in the first volume
+of Kremer's _�gypten_, 1863. This author (pp. 6, 7) assigns to the Delta
+an area of 200 square German geographical miles (fifteen to the degree);
+to all Lower Egypt, including, of course, the Delta, 400 such miles.
+These numbers are equal, respectively, to 4,239 and 8,478 square statute
+miles, and the great lagoons are embraced in the areas computed. Upper
+Egypt (above Cairo) is said (p. 11) to contain 4,000,000 feddan of
+_culturfl�che_, or cultivable land. The feddan is stated (p. 37) to
+contain 7,333 square piks, the pik being 75 centim�tres, and it
+therefore corresponds almost exactly to the English acre. Hence,
+according to Kremer, the cultivable soil of Upper Egypt is 6,250 square
+statute miles, or twice as much as the whole area of the valley between
+Syene and the bifurcation of the Nile, according to Smith's _Dictionary
+of Greek and Roman Geography_. I suspect that 4,000,000 feddan is
+erroneously given as the cultivable area of Upper Egypt alone, when in
+fact it should be taken for the arable surface of both Lower and Upper
+Egypt; for from the statistical tables in the same volume, it appears
+that 3,317,125 feddan, or 5,253 square statute miles, were cultivated,
+in both geographical divisions, in the year referred to in the tables,
+the date of which is not stated.
+
+The area which the Nile would now cover at high water, if left to
+itself, is greater than in ancient times, because the bed of the river
+has been elevated, and consequently the lateral spread of the inundation
+increased. See SMITH'S _Dictionary of Geography_, article "�gyptus." But
+the industry of the Egyptians in the days of the Pharaohs and the
+Ptolomies carried the Nile-water to large provinces which have now been
+long abandoned and have relapsed into the condition of a desert.
+"Anciently," observes the writer of the article "Egypt" in Smith's
+_Dictionary of the Bible_, "2,735 square miles more [about 3,700 square
+statute miles] may have been cultivated. In the best days of Egypt,
+probably all the land was cultivated that could be made available for
+agricultural purposes, and hence we may estimate the ancient arable area
+of that country at not less than 11,000 square statute miles, or fully
+double its present extent."
+
+[335] A canal has been constructed, and new ones are in progress, to
+convey water from the Nile to the city of Suez, and to various points on
+the line of the ship canal, with the double purpose of supplying fresh
+water to the inhabitants and laborers, and of irrigating the adjacent
+soil. The area of land which may be thus reclaimed and fertilized is
+very large, but the actual quantity which it will be found economically
+expedient to bring under cultivation cannot now be determined.
+
+[336] The so-called spring at Heliopolis is only a thread of water
+infiltrated from the Nile or the canals.
+
+[337] The date and the doum palm, the _sont_ and many other acacias, the
+caroub, the sycamore, and other trees, grow well in Egypt without
+irrigation, and would doubtless spread through the entire valley in a
+few years.
+
+[338] Wilkinson has shown that the cultivable soil of Egypt has not been
+diminished by encroachment of the desert sands, or otherwise, but that,
+on the contrary, it must have been increased since the age of the
+Pharaohs. The Gotha _Almanac_ for 1862 states the population of Egypt in
+1859 at 5,125,000 souls; but this must be a great exaggeration, even
+supposing the estimate to include the inhabitants of Nubia, and of much
+other territory not geographically belonging to Egypt. In general, the
+population of that country has been estimated at something more than
+three millions, or about six hundred to the square mile; but with a
+better government and better social institutions, the soil would sustain
+a much greater number, and in fact it is believed that in ancient times
+its inhabitants were twice, perhaps even thrice, as numerous as at
+present.
+
+Wilkinson (_Handbook for Travellers in Egypt_, p. 10) observes that the
+total population, which two hundred years ago was estimated at
+4,000,000, amounted till lately only to about 1,800,000 souls, having
+been reduced since 1800 from 2,500,000 to that number.
+
+[339] Ritter supposes Egypt to have been a sandy desert when it was
+first occupied by man. "The first inhabitant of the sandy valley of the
+Nile was a desert dweller, as his neighbors right and left, the Libyan,
+the nomade Arab, still are. But the civilized people of Egypt
+transformed, by canals, the waste into the richest granary of the world;
+they liberated themselves from the shackles of the rock and sand desert,
+in the midst of which, by a wise distribution of the fluid through the
+solid geographical form, by irrigation in short, they created a region
+of culture most rich in historical monuments."--_Einleitung zur
+allgemeinen vergleichenden Geographie_, pp. 165, 166.
+
+This view seems to me highly improbable; for though, by canals and
+embankments, man has done much to modify the natural distribution of the
+waters of the Nile, and possibly has even transferred its channel from
+one side of the valley to the other, yet the annual inundation is not
+his work, and the river must have overflowed its banks and carried
+spontaneous vegetation with its waters, as well before as since Egypt
+was first occupied by the human family. There is, indeed, some reason to
+suppose that man lived upon the banks of the Nile when its channel was
+much lower, and the spread of its inundations much narrower than at
+present; but wherever its flood reached, there the forest would
+propagate itself, and its shores are much more likely to have been
+morasses than sands.
+
+[340] _Memorie sui progetti per l'estensione dell' Irrigazione, etc., il
+Politecnico_, for January, 1863, p. 6.
+
+[341] NIEL, _L'Agriculture des �tats Sardes_, p. 232.
+
+[342] NIEL, _Agriculture des �tats Sardes_, p. 237. Lombardini's
+computation just given allows eighty-one cubic m�tres per day to the
+hectare, which, supposing the season of irrigation to be one hundred
+days, is equal to a precipitation of thirty-two inches. But in Lombardy,
+water is applied to some crops during a longer period than one hundred
+days; and in the _marcite_ it flows over the ground even in winter.
+
+According to Boussingault (_�conomie Rurale_, ii, p. 246) grass grounds
+ought to receive, in Germany, twenty-one centim�tres of water per week,
+and with less than half that quantity it is not advisable to incur the
+expense of supplying it. The ground is irrigated twenty-five or thirty
+times, and if the full quantity of twenty-one centim�tres is applied, it
+receives about two hundred inches of water, or six times the total
+amount of precipitation. Puvis, quoted by Boussingault, after much
+research comes to the conclusion that a proper quantity is twenty
+centim�tres applied twenty-five or thirty times, which corresponds with
+the estimate just stated. Puvis adds--and, as our author thinks, with
+reason--that this amount might be doubled without disadvantage.
+
+Boussingault observes that rain water is vastly more fertilizing than
+the water of irrigating canals, and therefore the supply of the latter
+must be greater. This is explained partly by the different character of
+the substances held in solution or suspension by the waters of the earth
+and of the sky, partly by the higher temperature of the latter, and,
+possibly, partly also by the mode of application--the rain being finely
+divided in its fall or by striking plants on the ground, river water
+flowing in a continuous sheet.
+
+The temperature of the water is thought even more important than its
+composition. The sources which irrigate the _marcite_ of
+Lombardy--meadows so fertile that less than an acre furnishes grass for
+a cow the whole year--are very warm. The ground watered by them never
+freezes, and a first crop, for soiling, is cut from it in January or
+February. The Canal Cavour, just now commenced--which is to take its
+supply from the Po at Chivasso, fourteen or fifteen miles below
+Turin--will furnish water of much higher fertilizing power than that
+derived from the Dora Baltea and the Sesia, both because it is warmer,
+and because it transports a more abundant and a richer sediment than the
+latter streams, which are fed by Alpine icefields and melting snows, and
+which flow, for long distances, in channels ground smooth and bare by
+ancient glaciers, and not now contributing much vegetable mould or fine
+slime to their waters.
+
+[343] It belongs rather to agriculture than to geography to discuss the
+quality of the crops obtained by irrigation, or the permanent effects
+produced by it on the productiveness of the soil. There is no doubt,
+however, that all crops which can be raised without watering are
+superior in flavor and in nutritive power to those grown by the aid of
+irrigation. Garden vegetables, particularly, profusely watered, are so
+insipid as to be hardly eatable. Wherever irrigation is practised, there
+is an almost irresistible tendency, especially among ignorant
+cultivators, to carry it to excess; and in Piedmont and Lombardy, if the
+supply of water is abundant, it is so liberally applied as sometimes not
+only to injure the quality of the product, but to drown the plants and
+diminish the actual weight of the crop.
+
+Professor Liebig, in his _Modern Agriculture_, says: "There is not to be
+found in chemistry a more wonderful phenomenon, one which more confounds
+all human wisdom, than is presented by the soil of a garden or field. By
+the simplest experiment, any one may satisfy himself that rain water
+filtered through field or garden soil does not dissolve out a trace of
+potash, silicic acid, ammonia, or phosphoric acid. The soil does not
+give up to the water one particle of the food of plants which it
+contains. The most continuous rains cannot remove from the field, except
+mechanically, any of the essential constituents of its fertility."
+
+"The soil not only retains firmly all the food of plants which is
+actually in it, but its power to preserve all that may be useful to them
+extends much farther. If rain or other water holding in solution
+ammonia, potash, and phosphoric and silicic acids, be brought in contact
+with soil, these substances disappear almost immediately from the
+solution; the soil withdraws them from the water. Only such substances
+are completely withdrawn by the soil as are indispensable articles of
+food for plants; all others remain wholly or in part in solution."
+
+The first of the paragraphs just quoted is not in accordance with the
+alleged experience of agriculturists in those parts of Italy where
+irrigation is most successfully applied. They believe that the
+constituents of vegetable growth are washed out of the soil by excessive
+and long-continued watering. They consider it also established as a fact
+of observation, that water which has flowed through or over rich ground
+is far more valuable for irrigation than water from the same source,
+which has not been impregnated with fertilizing substances by passing
+through soils containing them; and, on the other hand, that water, rich
+in the elements of vegetation, parts with them in serving to irrigate a
+poor soil, and is therefore less valuable as a fertilizer of lower
+grounds to which it may afterward be conducted.
+
+The practice of irrigation--except in mountainous countries where
+springs and rivulets are numerous--is attended with very serious
+economical, social, and political evils. The construction of canals and
+their immensely ramified branches, and the grading and scarping of the
+ground to be watered, are always expensive operations, and they very
+often require an amount of capital which can be commanded only by the
+state, by moneyed corporations, or by very wealthy proprietors; the
+capacity of the canals must be calculated with reference to the area
+intended to be irrigated, and when they and their branches are once
+constructed, it is very difficult to extend them, or to accommodate any
+of their original arrangements to changes in the condition of the soil,
+or in the modes or objects of cultivation; the flow of the water being
+limited by the abundance of the source or the capacity of the canals,
+the individual proprietor cannot be allowed to withdraw water at will,
+according to his own private interest or convenience, but both the time
+and the quantity of supply must be regulated by a general system
+applicable, as far as may be, to the whole area irrigated by the same
+canal, and every cultivator must conform his industry to a plan which
+may be quite at variance with his special objects or with his views of
+good husbandry. The clashing interests and the jealousies of proprietors
+depending on the same means of supply are a source of incessant
+contention and litigation, and the caprices or partialities of the
+officers who control, or of contractors who farm the canals, lead not
+unfrequently to ruinous injustice toward individual landholders. These
+circumstances discourage the division of the soil into small properties,
+and there is a constant tendency to the accumulation of large estates of
+irrigated land in the hands of great capitalists, and consequently to
+the dispossession of the small cultivators, who pass from the condition
+of owners of the land to that of hireling tillers. The farmers are no
+longer yeomen, but peasants. Having no interest in the soil which
+composes their country, they are virtually expatriated, and the middle
+class, which ought to constitute the real physical and moral strength of
+the land, ceases to exist as a rural estate, and is found only among the
+professional, the mercantile, and the industrial population of the
+cities.
+
+[344] BOUSSINGAULT, _�conomie Rurale_, ii, pp. 248, 249.
+
+[345] The cultivation of rice is so prejudicial to health everywhere
+that nothing but the necessities of a dense population can justify the
+sacrifice of life it costs in countries where it is pursued.
+
+It has been demonstrated by actual experiment, that even in Mississippi,
+cotton can be advantageously raised by the white man without danger to
+health; and in fact, a great deal of the cotton brought to the Vicksburg
+market for some years past has been grown exclusively by white labor.
+There is no reason why the cultivation of cotton should be a more
+unhealthy occupation in America than it is in other countries where it
+was never dreamed of as dangerous, and no well-informed American, in the
+Slave States or out of them, believes that the abolition of slavery in
+the South would permanently diminish the cotton crop of those States.
+
+[346] _L'Italie � propos de l'Exposition de Paris_, p. 92.
+
+[347] The very valuable memoirs of Lombardini, _Cenni idrografi sulla
+Lombardia, Intorno al sistema idraulico del Po_, and other papers on
+similar subjects, were published in periodicals little known out of
+Italy; and the _Idraulica Pratica_ of Mari has not, I believe, been
+translated into French or English. These works, and other sources of
+information equally inaccessible out of Italy, have been freely used by
+Baumgarten, in a memoir entitled _Notice sur les Rivi�res de la
+Lombardie_, in the _Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1847, 1er s�mestre,
+pp. 129 _et seqq._, and by Dumont, _Des Travaux Publics dans leurs
+Rapports avec l'Agriculture_, note, viii, pp. 269 _et seqq._ For the
+convenience of my readers, I shall use these two articles instead of the
+original authorities on which they are founded.
+
+[348] Sir John F. W. Herschel, citing Talabot as his authority,
+_Physical Geography_ (24).
+
+In an elaborate paper on "Irrigation," printed in the _United States
+Patent Report_ for 1860, p. 169, it is stated that the volume of water
+poured into the Mediterranean by the Nile in twenty-four hours, at low
+water, is 150,566,392,368 cubic m�tres; at high water, 705,514,667,440
+cubic m�tres. Taking the mean of these two numbers, the average daily
+delivery of the Nile would be 428,081,059,808 cubic m�tres, or more than
+550,000,000,000 cubic yards. There is some enormous mistake, probably a
+typographical error, in this statement, which makes the delivery of the
+Nile seventeen hundred times as great as computed by Talabot, and many
+times more than any physical geographer has ever estimated the quantity
+supplied by all the rivers on the face of the globe.
+
+[349] The Drac, a torrent emptying into the Is�re a little below
+Grenoble, has discharged 5,200, the Is�re, which receives it,
+7,800 cubic yards, and the Durance an equal quantity, per
+second.--MONTLUISANT, _Note sur les Dess�chements, etc., Annales
+des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1833, 2me s�mestre, p. 288.
+
+The floods of some other French rivers scarcely fall behind those of the
+Rhone. The Loire, above Roanne, has a basin of 2,471 square miles, or
+about twice and a half the area of that of the Ard�che. In some of its
+inundations it has delivered above 9,500 cubic yards per
+second.--BELGRAND, _De l'Influence des For�ts, etc., Annales des Ponts
+et Chauss�es_, 1854, 1er s�mestre, p. 15, note.
+
+[350] The original forests in which the basin of the Ard�che was rich
+have been rapidly disappearing, for many years, and the terrific
+violence of the inundations which are now laying it waste is ascribed,
+by the ablest investigators, to that cause. In an article inserted in
+the _Annales Foresti�res_ for 1843, quoted by Hohenstein, _Der Wald_, p.
+177, it is said that about one third of the area of the department had
+already become absolutely barren, in consequence of clearing, and that
+the destruction of the woods was still going on with great rapidity. New
+torrents were constantly forming, and they were estimated to have
+covered more than 70,000 acres of good land, or one eighth of the
+surface of the department, with sand and gravel.
+
+[351] "There is no example of a coincidence between great floods of the
+Ard�che and of the Rhone, all the known inundations of the former having
+taken place when the latter was very low."--MARDIGNY, _M�moire sur les
+Inondations des Rivi�res de l'Ard�che_, p. 26.
+
+I take this occasion to acknowledge myself indebted to the interesting
+memoir just quoted for all the statements I make respecting the floods
+of the Ard�che, except the comparison of the volume of its waters with
+that of the Nile, and the computation with respect to the capacity
+required for reservoirs to be constructed in its basin.
+
+[352] In some cases where the bed of rapid Alpine streams is composed of
+very hard rock--as is the case in many of the valleys once filled by
+ancient glaciers--and especially where they are fed by glaciers not
+overhung by crumbling cliffs, the channel may remain almost unchanged
+for centuries. This is observable in many of the tributaries of the Dora
+Baltea, which drains the valley of the Aosta. Several of these small
+rivers are spanned by more or less perfect Roman bridges--one of which,
+that over the Lys at Pont St. Martin, is still in good repair and in
+constant use. An examination of the rocks on which the abutments of this
+and some other similar structures are founded, and of the channels of
+the rivers they cross, shows that the beds of the streams cannot have
+been much elevated or depressed since the bridges were built. In other
+cases, as at the outlet of the Val Tournanche at Chatillon, where a
+single rib of a Roman bridge still remains, there is nothing to forbid
+the supposition that the deep excavation of the channel may have been
+partly effected at a much later period. See _App._, No. 45.
+
+[353] _M�moire sur les Inondations des Rivi�res de l'Ard�che_, p. 16.
+"The terrific roar, the thunder of the raging torrents proceeds
+principally from the stones which are rolled along in the bed of the
+stream. This movement is attended with such powerful attrition that, in
+the Southern Alps, the atmosphere of valleys where the limestone
+contains bitumen, has, at the time of floods, the marked bituminous
+smell produced by rubbing pieces of such limestone together."--WESSELY,
+_Die Oesterreichischien Alpenl�nder_, i, p. 113. See _Appendix_, No. 48.
+
+[354] FRISI, _Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti_, pp. 4-19.
+
+[355] SURELL, _�tude sur les Torrents_, pp. 31-36.
+
+[356] CHAMPION, _Les Inondations en France_, iii, p. 156, note.
+
+[357] Notwithstanding this favorable circumstance, the damage done by
+the inundation of 1840 in the valley of the Rhone was estimated at
+seventy-two millions of francs.--CHAMPION, _Les Inondations en France_,
+iv, p. 124.
+
+Several smaller floods of the Rhone, experienced at a somewhat earlier
+season of the year in 1846, occasioned a loss of forty-five millions of
+francs. "What if," says Dumont, "instead of happening in October, that
+is between harvest and seedtime, they had occurred before the crops were
+secured? The damage would have been counted by hundreds of
+millions."--_Des Travaux Publics_, p. 99, note.
+
+[358] TROY, _�tude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes_, �� 6, 7, 21.
+
+[359] For accounts of damage from the bursting of reservoirs, see
+VALL�E, _M�moire sur les Reservoirs d'Alimentation des Canaux, Annales
+des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1833, 1er s�mestre, p. 261.
+
+[360] Some geographical writers apply the term _bifurcation_ exclusively
+to this intercommunication of rivers; others, with more etymological
+propriety, use it to express the division of great rivers into branches
+at the head of their deltas. A technical term is wanting to designate
+the phenomenon mentioned in the text.
+
+[361] MARDIGNY, _M�moire sur les Inondations de l'Ard�che_, p. 13.
+
+[362] In the case of rivers flowing through wide alluvial plains and
+much inclined to shift their beds, like the Po, the embankments often
+leave a very wide space between them. The dikes of the Po are sometimes
+three or four miles apart.--BAUMGARTEN, after LOMBARDINI, _Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1847, 1er s�mestre, p. 149.
+
+[363] It appears from the investigations of Lombardini that the rate of
+elevation of the bed of the Po has been much exaggerated by earlier
+writers, and in some parts of its course the change is so slow that its
+level may be regarded as nearly constant.--BAUMGARTEN, volume before
+cited, pp. 175, et seqq. See _Appendix_, No. 49.
+
+If the western coast of the Adriatic is undergoing a secular depression,
+as many circumstances concur to prove, the sinking of the plain near the
+coast may both tend to prevent the deposit of sediment in the river bed
+by increasing the velocity of its current, and compensate the elevation
+really produced by deposits, so that no sensible elevation would result,
+though much gravel and slime might be let fall.
+
+[364] To secure the city of Sacramento in California from the
+inundations to which it is subject, a dike or lev�e was built upon the
+bank of the river and raised to an elevation above that of the highest
+known floods, and it was connected, below the town, with grounds lying
+considerably above the river. On one occasion a breach in the dike
+occurred above the town at a very high stage of the flood. The water
+poured in behind it, and overflowed the lower part of the city, which
+remained submerged for some time after the river had retired to its
+ordinary level, because the dike, which had been built to keep the water
+_out_, now kept it _in_.
+
+According to Arthur Young, on the lower Po, where the surface of the
+river has been elevated much above the level of the adjacent fields by
+diking, the peasants in his time frequently endeavored to secure their
+grounds against threatened devastation through the bursting of the
+dikes, by crossing the river when the danger became imminent and opening
+a cut in the opposite bank, thus saving their own property by flooding
+their neighbors'. He adds, that at high water the navigation of the
+river was absolutely interdicted, except to mail and passenger boats,
+and that the guards fired upon all others; the object of the prohibition
+being to prevent the peasants from resorting to this measure of
+self-defence.--_Travels in Italy and Spain_, Nov. 7, 1789.
+
+In a flood of the Po in 1839, a breach of the embankment took place at
+Bonizzo. The water poured through and inundated 116,000 acres, or 181
+square miles, of the plain, to the depth of from twenty to twenty-three
+feet in its lower parts.--BAUMGARTEN, after LOMBARDINI, volume before
+cited, p. 152.
+
+[365] MOYENS _de forcer les Torrents de rendre une partie du sol qu'ils
+ravagent, et d'emp�cher les grandes Inondations_.
+
+[366] The effect of trees and other detached obstructions in checking
+the flow of water is particularly noticed by Palissy in his essay on
+_Waters and Fountains_, p. 173, edition of 1844. "There be," says he,
+"in divers parts of France, and specially at Nantes, wooden bridges,
+where, to break the force of the waters and of the floating ice, which
+might endamage the piers of the said bridges, they have driven upright
+timbers into the bed of the rivers above the said piers, without the
+which they should abide but little. And in like wise, the trees which be
+planted along the mountains do much deaden the violence of the waters
+that flow from them."
+
+[367] I do not mean to say that all rivers excavate their own valleys,
+for I have no doubt that in the majority of cases such depressions of
+the surface originate in higher geological causes, and hence the valley
+makes the river, not the river the valley. But even if we suppose a
+basin of the hardest rock to be elevated at once, completely formed,
+from the submarine abyss where it was fashioned, the first shower of
+rain that falls upon it after it rises to the air, while its waters will
+follow the lowest lines of the surface, will cut those lines deeper, and
+so on with every successive rain. The disintegrated rock from the upper
+part of the basin forms the lower by alluvial deposit, which is
+constantly transported farther and farther until the resistance of
+gravitation and cohesion balances the mechanical force of the running
+water. Thus plains, more or less steeply inclined, are formed, in which
+the river is constantly changing its bed, according to the perpetually
+varying force and direction of its currents, modified as they are by
+ever-fluctuating conditions. Thus the Po is said to have long inclined
+to move its channel southward in consequence of the superior mechanical
+force of its northern affluents. A diversion of these tributaries from
+their present beds, so that they should enter the main stream at other
+points and in different directions, might modify the whole course of
+that great river. But the mechanical force of the tributary is not the
+only element of its influence on the course of the principal stream. The
+deposits it lodges in the bed of the latter, acting as simple
+obstructions or causes of diversion, are not less important agents of
+change.
+
+[368] The distance to which a new obstruction to the flow of a river,
+whether by a dam or by a deposit in its channel, will retard its
+current, or, in popular phrase, "set back the water," is a problem of
+more difficult practical solution than almost any other in hydraulics.
+The elements--such as straightness or crookedness of channel, character
+of bottom and banks, volume and previous velocity of current, mass of
+water far above the obstruction, extraordinary drought or humidity of
+seasons, relative extent to which the river may be affected by the
+precipitation in its own basin, and by supplies received through
+subterranean channels from sources so distant as to be exposed to very
+different meteorological influences, effects of clearing and other
+improvements always going on in new countries--are all extremely
+difficult, and some of them impossible, to be known and measured. In the
+American States, very numerous watermills have been erected within a few
+years, and there is scarcely a stream in the settled portion of the
+country which has not several milldams upon it. When a dam is raised--a
+process which the gradual diminution of the summer currents renders
+frequently necessary--or when a new dam is built, it often happens that
+the meadows above are flowed, or that the retardation of the stream
+extends back to the dam next above. This leads to frequent lawsuits.
+From the great uncertainty of the facts, the testimony is more
+conflicting in these than in any other class of cases, and the obstinacy
+with which "water causes" are disputed has become proverbial.
+
+The subterranean courses of the waters form a subject very difficult of
+investigation, and it is only recently that its vast importance has been
+recognized. The interesting observations of Schmidt on the caves of the
+Karst and their rivers throw much light on the underground hydrography
+of limestone districts, and serve to explain how, in the low peninsula
+of Florida, rivers, which must have their sources in mountains a hundred
+or more miles distant, can pour out of the earth in currents large
+enough to admit of steamboat navigation to their very basins of
+eruption. Artesian wells are revealing to us the existence of
+subterranean lakes and rivers sometimes superposed one above another in
+successive sheets; but the still more important subject of the
+absorption of water by earth and its transmission by infiltration is yet
+wrapped in great obscurity.
+
+[369] The sediment of the Po has filled up some lagoons and swamps in
+its delta, and converted them into comparatively dry land; but, on the
+other hand, the retardation of the current from the lengthening of its
+course, and the diminution of its velocity by the deposits at its mouth,
+have forced its waters at some higher points to spread in spite of
+embankments, and thus fertile fields have been turned into unhealthy and
+unproductive marshes.--See BOTTER, _Sulla condizione dei Terreni
+Maremmani nel Ferrarese. Annali di Agricoltura, etc._, Fasc. v, 1863.
+
+[370] Deep borings have not detected any essential difference in the
+quantity or quality of the deposits of the Nile for forty or fifty, or,
+as some compute, for a hundred centuries. From what vast store of rich
+earth does this river derive the three or four inches of fertilizing
+material which it spreads over the soil of Egypt every hundred years?
+Not from the White Nile, for that river drops nearly all its suspended
+matter in the broad expansions and slow current of its channel south of
+the tenth degree of north latitude. Nor does it appear that much
+sediment is contributed by the Bahr-el-Azrek, which flows through
+forests for a great part of its course. I have been informed by an old
+European resident of Egypt who is very familiar with the Upper Nile,
+that almost the whole of the earth with which its waters are charged is
+brought down by the Takazz�.
+
+[371] It is very probably true that, as Lombardini supposes, the plain
+of Lombardy was anciently covered with forests and morasses (Baumgarten,
+l. c. p. 156); but, had the Po remained unconfined, its deposits would
+have raised its banks as fast as its bed, and there is no obvious reason
+why this plain should be more marshy than other alluvial flats traversed
+by great rivers. Its lower course would possibly have become more marshy
+than at present, but the banks of its middle and upper course would have
+been in a better condition for agricultural use than they now are.
+
+[372] From daily measurements during a period of fourteen years--1827 to
+1840--the mean delivery of the Po at Ponte Lagoscuro, below the entrance
+of its last tributary, is found to be 1,720 cubic m�tres, or 60,745
+cubic feet, per second. Its smallest delivery is 186 cubic m�tres, or
+6,569 cubic feet, its greatest 5,156 cubic m�tres, or 182,094 cubic
+feet.--BAUMGARTEN, following LOMBARDINI, volume before cited, p. 159.
+
+The average delivery of the Nile being 101,000 cubic feet per second, it
+follows that the Po contributes to the Adriatic six tenths as much water
+as the Nile to the Mediterranean--a result which will surprise most
+readers.
+
+[373] We are quite safe in supposing that the valley of the Nile has
+been occupied by man at least 5,000 years. The dates of Egyptian
+chronology are uncertain, but I believe no inquirer estimates the age of
+the great pyramids at less than forty centuries, and the construction of
+such works implies an already ancient civilization.
+
+[374] There are many dikes in Egypt, but they are employed in but a very
+few cases to exclude the waters of the inundation. Their office is to
+retain the water received at high Nile into the inclosures formed by
+them until it shall have deposited its sediment or been drawn out for
+irrigation; and they serve also as causeways for interior communication
+during the floods. The Egyptian dikes, therefore, instead of forcing the
+river, like those of the Po, to transport its sediment to the sea, help
+to retain the slime, which, if the flow of the current over the land
+were not obstructed, might be carried back into the channel, and at last
+to the Mediterranean.
+
+[375] The Mediterranean front of the Delta may be estimated at one
+hundred and fifty miles in length. Two cubic miles of earth would more
+than fill up the lagoons on the coast, and the remaining ten, even
+allowing the mean depth of the water to be twenty fathoms, which is
+beyond the truth, would have been sufficient to extend the coast line
+about three miles farther seaward, and thus, including the land gained
+by the filling up of the lagoons, to add more than five hundred square
+miles to the area of Egypt. Nor is this all; for the retardation of the
+current, by lengthening the course and consequently diminishing the
+inclination of the channel, would have increased the deposit of
+suspended matter, and proportionally augmented the total effect of the
+embankment.
+
+[376] For the convenience of navigation, and to lessen the danger of
+inundation by giving greater directness, and, of course, rapidity to the
+current, bends in rivers are sometimes cut off and winding channels made
+straight. This process has the same general effects as diking, and
+therefore cannot be employed without many of the same results.
+
+This practice has often been resorted to on the Mississippi with
+advantage to navigation, but it is quite another question whether that
+advantage has not been too dearly purchased by the injury to the banks
+at lower points. If we suppose a river to have a navigable course of
+1,600 miles as measured by its natural channel, with a descent of 800
+feet, we shall have a fall of six inches to the mile. If the length of
+channel be reduced to 1,200 miles by cutting off bends, the fall is
+increased to eight inches per mile. The augmentation of velocity
+consequent upon this increase of inclination is not computable without
+taking into account other elements, such as depth and volume of water,
+diminution of direct resistance, and the like, but in almost any
+supposable case, it would be sufficient to produce great effects on the
+height of floods, the deposit of sediment in the channel, on the shores,
+and at the outlet, the erosion of banks and other points of much
+geographical importance.
+
+The Po, in those parts of its course where the embankments leave a wide
+space between, often cuts off bends in its channel and straightens its
+course. These short cuts are called _salti_, or leaps, and sometimes
+reduce the distance between their termini by several miles. In 1777, the
+salto of Cottaro shortened a distance of 7,000 m�tres by 5,000, or, in
+other words, reduced the length of the channel more than three miles;
+and in 1807 and 1810 the two salti of Mezzanone effected a reduction of
+distance to the amount of between seven and eight miles.--BAUMGARTEN, l.
+c. p. 38.
+
+[377] The fact, that the mixing of salt and fresh water in coast marshes
+and lagoons is deleterious to the sanitary condition of the vicinity,
+seems almost universally admitted, though the precise reason why a
+mixture of both should be more injurious than either alone, is not
+altogether clear. It has been suggested that the admission of salt water
+to the lagoons and rivers kills many fresh water plants and animals,
+while the fresh water is equally fatal to many marine organisms, and
+that the decomposition of the remains originates poisonous miasmata.
+Other theories however have been proposed. The whole subject is fully
+and ably discussed by Dr. Salvagnoli Marchetti in the appendix to his
+valuable _Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane_. See also
+the _Memorie Economico-Statistiche sulle Maremme Toscane_, of the same
+author.
+
+[378] This curious fact is thus stated in the preface to Fossombroni
+(_Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana_, edition of 1835, p. xiii), from which
+also I borrow most of the data hereafter given with respect to that
+valley: "It is perhaps not universally known, that the swallows, which
+come from the north [south] to spend the summer in our climate, do not
+frequent marshy districts with a malarious atmosphere. A proof of the
+restoration of salubrity in the Val di Chiana is furnished by these
+aerial visitors, which had never before been seen in those low grounds,
+but which have appeared within a few years at Forano and other points
+similarly situated."
+
+Is the air of swamps destructive to the swallows, or is their absence in
+such localities merely due to the want of human habitations, near which
+this half-domestic bird loves to breed, perhaps because the house fly
+and other insects which follow man are found only in the vicinity of his
+dwellings?
+
+In almost all European countries, the swallow is protected, by popular
+opinion or superstition, from the persecution to which almost all other
+birds are subject. It is possible that this respect for the swallow is
+founded upon ancient observation of the fact just stated on the
+authority of Fossombroni. Ignorance mistakes the effect for the cause,
+and the absence of this bird may have been supposed to be the occasion,
+not the consequence, of the unhealthiness of particular localities. This
+opinion once adopted, the swallow would become a sacred bird, and in
+process of time fables and legends would be invented to give additional
+sanction to the prejudices which protected it. The Romans considered the
+swallow as consecrated to the Penates, or household gods, and according
+to Peretti (_Le Serate del Villaggio_, p. 168) the Lombard peasantry
+think it a sin to kill them, because they are _le gallinelle del
+Signore_, the chickens of the Lord.
+
+The following little Tuscan _rispetto_ from Gradi (_Racconti Popolari_,
+p. 33) well expresses the feeling of the peasantry toward this bird:
+
+  O rondinella che passi lo mare
+  Torna 'ndietro, vo' dirti du' parole;
+  Dammi 'na penna delle tue bell' ale,
+  Vo' scrivere 'na lettera al mi' amore;
+  E quando l' avr� scritta 'n carta bella,
+  Ti render� la penna, o rondinella;
+  E quando l' avr� scritta 'n carta bianca,
+  Ti render� la penna che ti manca;
+  E quando l' avr� scritta in carta d' oro,
+  Ti render� la penna al tuo bel volo.
+
+  O swallow, that fliest beyond the sea,
+  Turn back! I would fain have a word with thee.
+  A feather oh grant, from thy wing so bright!
+  For I to my sweetheart a letter would write;
+  And when it is written on paper fine
+  I'll give thee, O swallow, that feather of thine;
+  --On paper so white, and I'll give thee back,
+  O pretty swallow, the pen thou dost lack;
+  --On paper of gold, and then I'll restore
+  To thy beautiful pinion the feather once more.
+
+Popular traditions and superstitions are so closely connected with
+localities, that, though an emigrant people may carry them to a foreign
+land, they seldom survive a second generation. The swallow, however, is
+still protected in New England by prejudices of transatlantic origin;
+and I remember hearing, in my childhood, that if the swallows were
+killed, the cows would give bloody milk.
+
+[379] MOROZZI, _Dello stato antico e moderno del fiume Arno_, ii, p. 42.
+
+[380] MOROZZI, _Dello stato, etc., dell' Arno_, ii, pp. 39, 40.
+
+[381] Torricelli thus expressed himself on this point: "If we content
+ourselves with what nature has made practicable to human industry, we
+shall endeavor to control, as far as possible, the outlets of these
+streams, which, by raising the bed of the valley with their deposits,
+will realize the fable of the Tagus and the Pactolus, and truly roll
+golden sands for him that is wise enough to avail himself of
+them."--FOSSOMBRONI, _Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana_, p. 219.
+
+[382] Arrian observes that at the junction of the Hydaspes and the
+Acesines, both of which are described as wide streams, "one very narrow
+river is formed of two confluents, and its current is very
+swift."--ARRIAN, _Alex. Anab._, vi, 4.
+
+[383] This difficulty has been remedied as to one important river of the
+Maremma, the Pecora, by clearings recently executed along its upper
+course. "The condition of this marsh and of its affluents are now,
+November, 1859, much changed, and it is advisable to prosecute its
+improvement by deposits. In consequence of the extensive felling of the
+woods upon the plains, hills, and mountains of the territory of Massa
+and Scarlino, within the last ten years, the Pecora and other affluents
+of the marsh receive, during the rains, water abundantly charged with
+slime, so that the deposits within the first division of the marsh are
+already considerable, and we may now hope to see the whole marsh and
+pond filled up in a much shorter time than we had a right to expect
+before 1850. This circumstance totally changes the terms of the
+question, because the filling of the marsh and pond, which then seemed
+almost impossible on account of the small amount of sediment deposited
+by the Pecora, has now become practicable."--SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto sul
+Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane_, pp. li, lii.
+
+The annual amount of sediment brought down by the rivers of the Maremma
+is computed at more than 12,000,000 cubic yards, or enough to raise an
+area of four square miles one yard. Between 1830 and 1859 more than
+three times that quantity was deposited in the marsh and shoal water
+lake of Castiglione alone.--SALVAGNOLI, _Raccolta di Documenti_, pp. 74,
+75.
+
+[384] The tide rises ten inches on the coast of Tuscany. See Memoir by
+FANTONI, in the appendix to SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto_, p. 189.
+
+On the tides of the Mediterranean, see B�TTGER, _Das Mittelmeer_, p.
+190. Not having Admiral Smyth's Mediterranean--on which B�ttger's work
+is founded--at hand, I do not know how far credit is due to the former
+author for the matter contained in the chapter referred to.
+
+[385] In Catholic countries, the discipline of the church requires a
+_meagre_ diet at certain seasons, and as fish is not flesh, there is a
+great demand for that article of food at those periods. For the
+convenience of monasteries and their patrons, and as a source of
+pecuniary emolument to ecclesiastical establishments and sometimes to
+lay proprietors, great numbers of artificial fish ponds were created
+during the Middle Ages. They were generally shallow pools formed by
+damming up the outlet of marshes, and they were among the most fruitful
+sources of endemic disease, and of the peculiar malignity of the
+epidemics which so often ravaged Europe in those centuries. These ponds,
+in religious hands, were too sacred to be infringed upon for sanitary
+purposes, and when belonging to powerful lay lords they were almost as
+inviolable. The rights of fishery were a standing obstacle to every
+proposal of hydraulic improvement, and to this day large and fertile
+districts in Southern Europe remain sickly and almost unimproved and
+uninhabited, because the draining of the ponds upon them would reduce
+the income of proprietors who derive large profits by supplying the
+faithful, in Lent, with fish, and with various species of waterfowl
+which, though very fat, are, ecclesiastically speaking, meagre.
+
+[386] Macchiavelli advised the Government of Tuscany "to provide that
+men should restore the wholesomeness of the soil by cultivation, and
+purify the air by fires."--SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie_, p. 111.
+
+[387] GIORGINI, _Sur les causes de l'Insalubrit� de l'air dans le
+voisinage des marais, etc., lue � l'Acad�mie des Sciences � Paris_, le
+12 Juillet, 1825. Reprinted in SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto, etc._, appendice,
+p. 5, _et seqq._
+
+[388] See the careful estimates of ROSET, _Moyens de forcer les
+Torrents, etc._, pp. 42, 44.
+
+[389] Rivers which transport sand, gravel, pebbles, heavy mineral matter
+in short, tend to raise their own beds; those charged only with fine,
+light earth, to cut them deeper. The prairie rivers of the West have
+deep channels, because the mineral matter they carry down is not heavy
+enough to resist the impulse of even a moderate current, and those
+tributaries of the Po which deposit their sediment in the lakes--the
+Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, and the Mincio--flow, in deep cuts, for the
+same reason.--BAUMGARTEN, l. c., p. 132.
+
+[390] "The stream carries this mud, &c., at first farther to the east,
+and only lets it fall where the force of the current becomes weakened.
+This explains the continual advance of the land seaward along the Syrian
+coast, in consequence of which Tyre and Sidon no longer lie on the
+shore, but some distance inland. That the Nile contributes to this
+deposit may easily be seen, even by the unscientific observer, from the
+stained and turbid character of the water for many miles from its
+mouths. A somewhat alarming phenomenon was observed in this neighborhood
+in 1801, on board the English frigate Romulus, Captain Culverhouse, on a
+voyage from Acre to Abukir. Dr. E. D. Clarke, who was a passenger on
+board this ship, thus describes it:
+
+"'26th July.--To-day, Sunday, we accompanied the captain to the wardroom
+to dine, as usual, with his officers. While we were at table, we heard
+the sailors who were throwing the lead suddenly cry out: "Three and a
+half!" The captain sprang up, was on deck in an instant, and, almost at
+the same moment, the ship slackened her way, and veered about. Every
+sailor on board supposed she would ground at once. Meanwhile, however,
+as the ship came round, the whole surface of the water was seen to be
+covered with thick, black mud, which extended so far that it appeared
+like an island. At the same time, actual land was nowhere to be
+seen--not even from the masthead--nor was any notice of such a shoal to
+be found on any chart on board. The fact is, as we learned afterward,
+that a stratum of mud, stretching from the mouths of the Nile for many
+miles out into the open sea, forms a movable deposit along the Egyptian
+coast. If this deposit is driven forward by powerful currents, it
+sometimes rises to the surface, and disturbs the mariner by the sudden
+appearance of shoals where the charts lead him to expect a considerable
+depth of water. But these strata of mud are, in reality, not in the
+least dangerous. As soon as a ship strikes them they break up at once,
+and a frigate may hold her course in perfect safety where an
+inexperienced pilot, misled by his soundings, would every moment expect
+to be stranded.'"--B�TTGER, _Das Mittelmeer_, pp. 188, 189.
+
+[391] The caves of Carniola receive considerable rivers from the surface
+of the earth, which cannot, in all cases, be identified with streams
+flowing out of them at other points, and like phenomena are not uncommon
+in other limestone countries.
+
+The cases are certainly not numerous where marine currents are known to
+pour continuously into cavities beneath the surface of the earth, but
+there is at least one well-authenticated instance of this sort--that of
+the mill streams at Argostoli in the island of Cephalonia. It had been
+long observed that the sea water flowed into several rifts and cavities
+in the limestone rocks of the coast, but the phenomenon has excited
+little attention until very recently. In 1833, three of the entrances
+were closed, and a regular channel, sixteen feet long and three feet
+wide, with a fall of three feet, was cut into the mouth of a larger
+cavity. The sea water flowed into this canal, and could be followed
+eighteen or twenty feet beyond its inner terminus, when it disappeared
+in holes and clefts in the rock.
+
+In 1858, the canal had been enlarged to the width of five feet and a
+half, and a depth of a foot. The water pours rapidly through the canal
+into an irregular depression and forms a pool, the surface of which is
+three or four feet below the adjacent soil, and about two and a half or
+three feet below the level of the sea. From this pool it escapes through
+several holes and clefts in the rock, and has not yet been found to
+emerge elsewhere.
+
+There is a tide at Argostoli of about six inches in still weather, but
+it is considerably higher with a south wind. I do not find it stated
+whether water flows through the canal into the cavity at low tide, but
+it distinctly appears that there is no refluent current, as of course
+there could not be from a basin so much below the sea. Mousson found the
+delivery through the canal to be at the rate of 24.88 cubic feet to the
+second; at what stage of the tide does not appear. Other mills of the
+same sort have been erected, and there appear to be several points on
+the coast where the sea flows into the land.
+
+Various hypotheses have been suggested to explain this phenomenon, some
+of which assume that the water descends to a great depth beneath the
+crust of the earth, but the supposition of a difference of level in the
+surface of the sea on the opposite sides of the island, which seems
+confirmed by other circumstances, is the most obvious method of
+explaining these singular facts. If we suppose the level of the water on
+one side of the island to be raised by the action of currents three or
+four feet higher than on the other, the existence of cavities and
+channels in the rock would easily account for a subterranean current
+beneath the island, and the apertures of escape might be so deep or so
+small as to elude observation. See _Aus der Natur_, vol. 19, pp. 129,
+_et seqq._ See _Appendix_, No. 53.
+
+[392] "The affluents received by the Seine below Rouen are so
+inconsiderable, that the augmentation of the volume of that river must
+be ascribed principally to springs rising in its bed. This is a point of
+which engineers now take notice, and M. Belgrand, the able officer
+charged with the improvement of the navigation of the Seine between
+Paris and Rouen, has devoted much attention to it."--BABINET, _�tudes et
+Lectures_, iii, p. 185.
+
+On page 232 of the volume just quoted, the same author observes: "In the
+lower part of its course, from the falls of the Oise, the Seine receives
+so few important affluents, that evaporation alone would suffice to
+exhaust all the water which passes under the bridges of Paris."
+
+This supposes a much greater amount of evaporation than has been usually
+computed, but I believe it is well settled that the Seine conveys to the
+sea much more water than is discharged into it by all its superficial
+branches.
+
+[393] Girard and Duchatelet maintain that the subterranean waters of
+Paris are absolutely stagnant. See their report on drainage by artesian
+wells, _Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1833, 2me s�mestre, pp. 313,
+_et seqq._
+
+This opinion, if locally true, cannot be generally so, for it is
+inconsistent with the well-known fact that the very first eruption of
+water from a boring often brings up leaves and other objects which must
+have been carried into the underground reservoirs by currents.
+
+[394] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 286. It does not appear whether
+this inference is Mariotte's or Wittwer's. I suppose it is a conclusion
+of the latter.
+
+[395] _Physical Geography of the Sea._ Tenth edition. London, 1861, �
+274.
+
+[396] PARAMELLE, _Quellenkunde, mit einem Vorwort von_ B. COTTA, 1856.
+
+[397] _�tudes et Lectures_, vi, p. 118.
+
+[398] "The area of soil dried by draining is constantly increasing, and
+the water received by the surface from atmospheric precipitation is
+thereby partly conducted into new channels, and, in general, carried off
+more rapidly than before. Will not this fact exert an influence on the
+condition of many springs, whose basin of supply thus undergoes a
+partial or complete transformation? I am convinced that it will, and it
+is important to collect data for solving the question." BERNHARD COTTA,
+Preface to PARAMELLE, _Quellenkunde_ (German translation), pp. vii,
+viii. See _Appendix_, No. 54.
+
+[399] See the interesting observations of KRIEGK on this subject,
+_Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkunde_, cap. iii, � 6, and especially the
+passages in RITTER'S _Erdkunde_, vol. i, there referred to.
+
+Laurent, (_M�moires sur le Sahara Oriental_, pp. 8, 9), in speaking of a
+river at El-Faid, "which, like all those of the desert, is, most of the
+time, without water," observes, that many wells are dug in the bed of
+the river in the dry season, and that the subterranean current thus
+reached appears to extend itself laterally, at about the same level, at
+least a kilom�tre from the river, as water is found by digging to the
+depth of twelve or fifteen m�tres at a village situated at that distance
+from the bank.
+
+The most remarkable case of infiltration known to me by personal
+observation is the occurrence of fresh water in the beach sand on the
+eastern side of the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. If
+you dig a cavity in the beach near the sea level, it soon fills with
+water so fresh as not to be undrinkable, though the sea water two or
+three yards from it contains even more than the average quantity of
+salt. It cannot be maintained that this is sea water freshened by
+filtration through a few feet or inches of sand, for salt water cannot
+be deprived of its salt by that process. It can only come from the
+highlands of Arabia, and it would seem that there must exist some large
+reservoir in the interior to furnish a supply which, in spite of
+evaporation, holds out for months after the last rains of winter, and
+perhaps even through the year. I observed the fact in the month of June.
+
+The precipitation in the mountains that border the Red Sea is not known
+by pluviometric measurement, but the mass of debris brought down the
+ravines by the torrents proves that their volume must be large. The
+proportion of surface covered by sand and absorbent earth, in Arabia
+Petr�a and the neighboring countries, is small, and the mountains drain
+themselves rapidly into the wadies or ravines where the torrents are
+formed; but the beds of earth and disintegrated rock at the bottom of
+the valleys are of so loose and porous texture, that a great quantity of
+water is absorbed in saturating them before a visible current is formed
+on their surface. In a heavy thunder storm, accompanied by a deluging
+rain, which I witnessed at Mount Sinai in the month of May, a large
+stream of water poured, in an almost continuous cascade, down the steep
+ravine north of the convent, by which travellers sometimes descend from
+the plateau between the two peaks, but after reaching the foot of the
+mountain, it flowed but a few yards before it was swallowed up in the
+sands.
+
+[400] It is conceivable that in large and shallow subterranean basins
+the superincumbent earth may rest upon the water and be partly supported
+by it. In such case the weight of the earth would be an additional, if
+not the sole, cause of the ascent of the water through the tubes of
+artesian wells. The elasticity of gases in the cavities may also aid in
+forcing up water.
+
+A French engineer, M. Mullot, invented a simple method of bringing to
+the surface water from any one of several successive accumulations at
+different depths, or of raising it, unmixed, from two or more of them at
+once. It consists in employing concentric tubes, one within the other,
+leaving a space for the rise of water between them, and reaching each to
+the sheet from which it is intended to draw.
+
+[401] Many more or less probable conjectures have been made on this
+subject, but thus far I am not aware that any of the apprehended results
+have been actually shown to have happened. In an article in the _Annales
+des Ponts et Chauss�es_ for July and August, 1839, p. 131, it was
+suggested that the sinking of the piers of a bridge at Tours in France
+was occasioned by the abstraction of water from the earth by artesian
+wells, and the consequent withdrawal of the mechanical support it had
+previously given to the strata containing it. A reply to this article
+will be found in VIOLETT, _Th�orie des Puits Art�siens_, p. 217.
+
+In some instances the water has rushed up with a force which seemed to
+threaten the inundation of the neighborhood, and even the washing away
+of much soil; but in those cases the partial exhaustion of the supply,
+or the relief of hydrostatic or elastic pressure, has generally produced
+a diminution of the flow in a short time, and I do not know that any
+serious evil has ever been occasioned in this way.
+
+[402] See a very interesting account of these wells, and of the workmen
+who clean them out when obstructed by sand brought up with the water, in
+Laurent's memoir on the artesian wells recently bored by the French
+Government in the Algerian desert, _M�moire sur le Sahara Oriental,
+etc._, pp. 19, _et seqq._ Some of the men remained under water from two
+minutes to two minutes and forty seconds. Several officers are quoted as
+having observed immersions of three minutes' duration, and M. Berbrugger
+alleges that he witnessed one of five minutes and fifty-five seconds.
+The shortest of these periods is longer than the best pearl diver can
+remain below the surface of salt water. The wells of the Sahara are from
+twenty to eighty m�tres deep.
+
+It has often been asserted that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted
+with the art of boring artesian wells. Parthey, describing the Little
+Oasis, mentions ruins of a Roman aqueduct, and observes: "It appears
+from the recent researches of Aim, a French engineer, that these
+aqueducts are connected with old artesian wells, the restoration of
+which would render it practicable to extend cultivation much beyond its
+present limits. This agrees with ancient testimony. It is asserted that
+the inhabitants of the oases sunk wells to the depth of 200, 300, and
+even 500 ells, from which affluent streams of water poured out. See
+OLYMPIODORUS in _Photii Bibl._, cod. 80, p. 61, l. 17, ed.
+Bekk."--PARTHEY, _Wanderungen_, ii, p. 528.
+
+In a paper entitled, _Note relative � l'execution d'un Puits Art�sien en
+Egypte sous la XVIII dynastie_, presented to the Acad�mie des
+Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, on the 12th of November, 1852, M.
+Lenormant endeavors to show that a hieroglyphic inscription found at
+Contrapscelcis proves the execution of a work of this sort in the Nubian
+desert, at the period indicated in the title to his paper. The
+interpretation of the inscription is a question for Egyptologists; but
+if wells were actually bored through the rock by the Egyptians after the
+Chinese or the European fashion, it is singular that among the numerous
+and minute representations of their industrial operations, painted or
+carved on the walls of their tombs, no trace of the processes employed
+for so remarkable and important a purpose should have been discovered.
+See _Appendix_, No. 56.
+
+It is certain that artesian wells have been common in China from a very
+remote antiquity, and the simple method used by the Chinese--where the
+borer is raised and let fall by a rope, instead of a rigid rod--has been
+lately been employed in Europe with advantage. Some of the Chinese wells
+are said to be 3,000 feet deep; that of Neusalzwerk in Silesia--the
+deepest in Europe--is 2,300. A well was bored at St. Louis, in Missouri,
+a few years ago, to supply a sugar refinery, to the depth of 2,199 feet.
+This was executed by a private firm in three years, at the expense of
+only $10,000. Another has since been bored at the State capitol at
+Columbus, Ohio, 2,500 feet deep, but without obtaining the desired
+supply of water.
+
+[403] "In the anticipation of our success at Oum-Thiour, every thing had
+been prepared to take advantage of this new source of wealth without a
+moment's delay. A division of the tribe of the Selmia, and their sheikh,
+A�ssa ben Sh�, laid the foundation of a village as soon as the water
+flowed, and planted twelve hundred date palms, renouncing their
+wandering life to attach themselves to the soil. In this arid spot, life
+had taken the place of solitude, and presented itself, with its smiling
+images, to the astonished traveller. Young girls were drawing water at
+the fountain; the flocks, the great dromedaries with their slow pace,
+the horses led by the halter, were moving to the watering trough; the
+hounds and the falcons enlivened the group of party-colored tents, and
+living voices and animated movement had succeeded to silence and
+desolation."--LAURENT, _M�moires sur le Sahara_, p. 85.
+
+[404] The variety of hues and tones in the local color of the desert is,
+I think, one of the phenomena which most surprise and interest a
+stranger to those regions. In England and the United States, rock is so
+generally covered with moss or earth, and earth with vegetation, that
+untravelled Englishmen and Americans are not very familiar with naked
+rock as a conspicuous element of landscape. Hence, in their conception
+of a bare cliff or precipice, they hardly ascribe definite color to it,
+but depict it to their imagination as wearing a neutral tint not
+assimilable to any of the hues with which nature tinges her atmospheric
+or paints her organic creations. There are certainly extensive desert
+ranges, chiefly limestone formations, where the surface is either white,
+or has weathered down to a dull uniformity of tone which can hardly be
+called color at all; and there are sand plains and drifting hills of
+wearisome monotony of tint. But the chemistry of the air, though it may
+tame the glitter of the limestone to a dusky gray, brings out the green
+and brown and purple of the igneous rocks, and the white and red and
+blue and violet and yellow of the sandstone. Many a cliff in Arabia
+Petr�a is as manifold in color as the rainbow, and the veins are so
+variable in thickness and inclination, so contorted and involved in
+arrangement, as to bewilder the eye of the spectator like a disk of
+party-colored glass in rapid revolution.
+
+In the narrower wadies, the mirage is not common; but on broad expanses,
+as at many points between Cairo and Suez, and in Wadi el Araba, it mocks
+you with lakes and land-locked bays, studded with islands and fringed
+with trees, all painted with an illusory truth of representation
+absolutely indistinguishable from the reality. The checkered earth, too,
+is canopied with a heaven as variegated as itself. You see, high up in
+the sky, rosy clouds at noonday, colored probably by reflection from the
+ruddy mountains, while near the horizon float cumuli of a transparent
+ethereal blue, seemingly balled up out of the clear cerulean substance
+of the firmament, and detached from the heavenly vault, not by color or
+consistence, but solely by the light and shade of their prominences.
+
+[405] _[OE]uvres de Palissy, Des Eaux et Fontaines_, p. 157.
+
+[406] Id., p. 166. See _Appendix_, No. 57.
+
+[407] BABINET, _�tudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Observation_, ii,
+p. 225. Our author precedes his account of his method with a complaint
+which most men who indulge in thinking have occasion to repeat many
+times in the course of their lives. "I will explain to my readers the
+construction of artificial fountains according to the plan of the famous
+Bernard de Palissy, who, a hundred and fifty [three hundred] years ago,
+came and took away from me, a humble academician of the nineteenth
+century, this discovery which I had taken a great deal of pains to make.
+It is enough to discourage all invention when one finds plagiarists in
+the past as well as in the future!" (P. 224.)
+
+[408] M. G. DUMAS, _La Science des Fontaines_, 1857.
+
+[409] In the curiously variegated sandstone of Arabia Petr�a--which is
+certainly a reaggregation of loose sand derived from particles of older
+rocks--the contiguous veins frequently differ very widely in color, but
+not sensibly in specific gravity or in texture; and the singular way in
+which they are now alternated, now confusedly intermixed, must be
+explained otherwise than by the weight of the respective grains which
+compose them. They seem, in fact, to have been let fall by water in
+violent ebullition or tumultuous mechanical agitation, or by a
+succession of sudden aquatic or aerial currents flowing in different
+directions and charged with differently colored matter.
+
+[410] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, pp. 243, 246-377, _et seqq._ See also
+the arguments of Br�montier as to the origin of the dune sands of
+Gascony, _Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1833, 1er s�mestre, pp. 158,
+161. Br�montier estimates the sand annually thrown up on that coast at
+five cubic toises and two feet to the running toise (ubi supra, p. 162),
+or rather more than two hundred and twenty cubic feet to the running
+foot. Laval, upon observations continued through seven years, found the
+quantity to be twenty-five m�tres per running m�tre, which is equal to
+two hundred and sixty-eight cubic feet to the running foot.--_Annales
+des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1842, 2me s�mestre, p. 229. These computations
+make the proportion of sand deposited on the coast of Gascony three or
+four times as great as that observed by Andresen on the shores of
+Jutland. Laval estimates the total quantity of sand annually thrown up
+on the coast of Gascony at 6,000,000 cubic m�tres, or more than
+7,800,000 cubic yards.
+
+[411] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 339.
+
+[412] The conditions favorable to the production of sand from
+disintegrated rock, by causes now in action, are perhaps nowhere more
+perfectly realized than in the Sinaitic Peninsula. The mountains are
+steep and lofty, unprotected by vegetation or even by a coating of
+earth, and the rocks which compose them are in a shattered and
+fragmentary condition. They are furrowed by deep and precipitous
+ravines, with beds sufficiently inclined for the rapid flow of water,
+and generally without basins in which the larger blocks of stone rolled
+by the torrents can be dropped and left in repose; there are severe
+frosts and much snow on the higher summits and ridges, and the winter
+rains are abundant and heavy. The mountains are principally of igneous
+formation, but many of the less elevated peaks are capped with
+sandstone, and on the eastern slope of the peninsula you may sometimes
+see, at a single glance, several lofty pyramids of granite, separated by
+considerable intervals, and all surmounted by horizontally stratified
+deposits of sandstone often only a few yards square, which correspond to
+each other in height, are evidently contemporaneous in origin, and were
+once connected in continuous beds. The degradation of the rock on which
+this formation rests is constantly bringing down masses of it, and
+mingling them with the basaltic, porphyritic, granitic, and calcareous
+fragments which the torrents carry down to the valleys, and, through
+them, in a state of greater or less disintegration, to the sea. The
+quantity of sand annually washed into the Red Sea by the larger torrents
+of the Lesser Peninsula, is probably at least equal to that contributed
+to the ocean by any streams draining basins of no greater extent.
+Absolutely considered, then, the mass may be said to be large, but it is
+apparently very small as compared with the sand thrown up by the German
+Ocean and the Atlantic on the coasts of Denmark and of France. There
+are, indeed, in Arabia Petr�a, many torrents with very short courses,
+for the sea waves in many parts of the peninsular coast wash the base of
+the mountains. In these cases, the debris of the rocks do not reach the
+sea in a sufficiently comminuted condition to be entitled to the
+appellation of sand, or even in the form of well-rounded pebbles. The
+fragments retain their angular shape, and, at some points on the coast,
+they become cemented together by lime or other binding substances held
+in solution or mechanical suspension in the sea water, and are so
+rapidly converted into a singularly heterogeneous conglomerate, that one
+deposit seems to be consolidated into a breccia before the next winter's
+torrents cover it with another.
+
+In the northern part of the peninsula there are extensive deposits of
+sand intermingled with agate pebbles and petrified wood, but these are
+evidently neither derived from the Sinaitic group, nor products of local
+causes known to be now in action.
+
+I may here notice the often repeated but mistaken assertion, that the
+petrified wood of the Western Arabian desert consists wholly of the
+stems of palms, or at least of endogenous vegetables. This is an error.
+I have myself picked up in that desert, within the space of a very few
+square yards, fragments both of fossil palms, and of at least two
+petrified trees distinctly marked as of exogenous growth both by annular
+structure and by knots. In ligneous character, one of these almost
+precisely resembles the grain of the extant beech, and this specimen was
+wormeaten before it was converted into silex.
+
+[413] B�TTGER, _Das Mittelmeer_, p. 128.
+
+[414] The testimony of divers and of other observers on this point is
+conflicting, as might be expected from the infinite variety of
+conditions by which the movement of water is affected. It is generally
+believed that the action of the wind upon the water is not perceptible
+at greater depths than from fifteen feet in ordinary, to eighty or
+ninety in extreme cases; but these estimates are probably very
+considerably below the truth. Andresen quotes Br�montier as stating that
+the movement of the waves sometimes extends to the depth of five hundred
+feet, and he adds that others think it may reach to six or even seven
+hundred feet below the surface.--ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, p. 20.
+
+Many physicists now suppose that the undulations of great bodies of
+water reach even deeper. But a movement of undulation is not necessarily
+a movement of translation, and besides, there is very frequently an
+undertow, which tends to carry suspended bodies out to sea as powerfully
+as the superficial waves to throw them on shore. Sandbanks sometimes
+recede from the coast, instead of rolling toward it. Reclus informs us
+that the Mauvaise, a sandbank near the Point de Grave, on the Atlantic
+coast of France, has moved five miles to the west in less than a
+century.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, for December, 1862, p. 905.
+
+The action of currents may, in some cases, have been confounded with
+that of the waves. Sea currents, strong enough, possibly, to transport
+sand for some distance, flow far below the surface in parts of the open
+ocean, and in narrow straits they have great force and velocity. The
+divers employed at Constantinople in 1853 found in the Bosphorus, at the
+depth of twenty-five fathoms and at a point much exposed to the wash
+from Galata and Pera, a number of bronze guns supposed to have belonged
+to a ship of war blown up about a hundred and fifty years before. These
+guns were not covered by sand or slime, though a crust of earthy matter,
+an inch in thickness, adhered to their upper surfaces, and the bottom of
+the strait appeared to be wholly free from sediment. The current was so
+powerful at this depth that the divers were hardly able to stand, and a
+keg of nails, purposely dropped into the water, in order that its
+movements might serve as a guide in the search for a bag of coin
+accidentally lost overboard from a ship in the harbor, was rolled by the
+stream several hundred yards before it stopped.
+
+[415] Few seas have thrown up so much sand as the shallow German Ocean;
+but there is some reason to think that the amount of this material now
+cast upon its northern shores is less than at some former periods,
+though no extensive series of observations on this subject has been
+recorded. On the Spit of Agger, at the present outlet of the Liimfjord,
+Andresen found the quantity during ten years, on a beach about five
+hundred and seventy feet broad, equal to an annual deposit of an inch
+and a half over the whole surface.--_Om Klitformationen_, p. 56.
+
+This gives seventy-one and a quarter cubic feet to the running foot--a
+quantity certainly much smaller than that cast up by the same sea on the
+shores of the Dano-German duchies and of Holland, and, as we have seen,
+scarcely one fourth of that deposited by the Atlantic on the coast of
+Gascony. See _ante_, p. 453, note.
+
+[416] Sand heaps, three and even six hundred feet high, are indeed
+formed by the wind, but this is effected by driving the particles up an
+inclined plane, not by lifting them. Br�montier, speaking of the sand
+hills on the western coast of France, says: "The particles of sand
+composing them are not large enough to resist wind of a certain force,
+nor small enough to be taken up by it, like dust; they only roll along
+the surface from which they are detached, and, though moving with great
+velocity, they rarely rise to a greater height than three or four
+inches."--_M�moire sur les Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1833,
+1er s�mestre, p. 148.
+
+Andresen says that a wind, having a velocity of forty feet per second,
+is strong enough to raise particles of sand as high as the face and eyes
+of a man, but that, in general, it rolls along the ground, and is
+scarcely ever thrown more than to the height of a couple of yards from
+the surface. Even in these cases, it is carried forward by a hopping,
+not a continuous, motion; for a very narrow sheet or channel of water
+stops the drift entirely, all the sand dropping into it until it is
+filled up.
+
+The character of the motion of sand drifts is well illustrated by an
+interesting fact not much noticed hitherto by travellers in the East. In
+situations where the sand is driven through depressions in rock beds, or
+over deposits of silicious pebbles, the surface of the stone is worn and
+smoothed much more effectually than it could be by running water, and
+you may pick up, in such localities, rounded, irregularly broken
+fragments of agate, which have received from the attrition of the sand
+as fine a polish as could be given them by the wheel of the lapidary.
+
+Very interesting observations on the polishing of hard stones by
+drifting sand will be found in the Geological Report of William P.
+Blake: _Pacific Railroad Report_, vol. v, pp. 92, 230, 231. The same
+geologist observes, p. 242, that the sand of the Colorado desert does
+not rise high in the air, but bounds along on the surface or only a few
+inches above it.
+
+[417] Wilkinson says that, in much experience in the most sandy parts of
+the Libyan desert, and much inquiry of the best native sources, he never
+saw or heard of any instance of danger to man or beast from the mere
+accumulation of sand transported by the wind. Chesney's observations in
+Arabia, and the testimony of the Bedouins he consulted, are to the same
+purpose. The dangers of the simoom are of a different character, though
+they are certainly aggravated by the blinding effects of the light
+particles of dust and sand borne along by it, and by that of the
+inhalation of them upon the respiration.
+
+[418] In the narrow valley of the Nile, bounded as it is, above the
+Delta, by high cliffs, all air currents from the northern quarter become
+north winds, though, of course varying in partial direction, in
+conformity with the sinuosities of the valley. Upon the desert plateau
+they incline westward, and have already borne into the valley the sands
+of the eastern banks, and driven those of the western quite out of the
+Egyptian portion of the Nile basin.
+
+[419] "The North African desert falls into two divisions: the Sahel, or
+western, and the Sahar, or eastern. The sands of the Sahar were, at a
+remote period, drifted to the west. In the Sahel, the prevailing east
+winds drive the sand-ocean with a progressive westward motion. The
+eastern half of the desert is swept clean."--NAUMANN, _Geognosie_, ii,
+p. 1173.
+
+[420] In parts of the Algerian desert, some efforts are made to retard
+the advance of sand dunes which threaten to overwhelm villages. "At
+Debila," says Laurent, "the lower parts of the lofty dunes are planted
+with palms, * * * but they are constantly menaced with burial by the
+sands. The only remedy employed by the natives consists in little dry
+walls of crystallized gypsum, built on the crests of the dunes, together
+with hedges of dead palm leaves. These defensive measures are aided by
+incessant labor; for every day the people take up in baskets the sand
+blown over to them the night before and carry it back to the other side
+of the dune."--_M�moires sur le Sahara_, p. 14.
+
+[421] Organic constituents, such as comminuted shells, and silicious and
+calcareous exuvi� of infusorial animals and plants, are sometimes found
+mingled in considerable quantities with mineral sands. These are usually
+the remains of aquatic vegetables or animals, but not uniformly so, for
+the microscopic organisms, whose flinty cases enter so largely into the
+sandbeds of the Mark of Brandenburg, are still living and prolific in
+the dry earth. See WITTWER, _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 142.
+
+The desert on both sides of the Nile is inhabited by a land snail, and
+thousands of its shells are swept along and finally buried in the drifts
+by every wind. Every handful of the sand contains fragments of them.
+FORCHHAMMER, in LEONHARD Und BRONN's _Jahrbuch_, 1841, p. 8, says of the
+sand hills of the Danish coast: "It is not rare to find, high in the
+knolls, marine shells, and especially those of the oyster. They are due
+to the oyster eater [_H�malopus ostralegus_], which carries his prey to
+the top of the dunes to devour it." See also STARING, _De Bodem van_, N.
+I. p. 321.
+
+[422] There are various reasons why the formation of dunes is confined
+to low shores, and this law is so universal, that when bluffs are
+surmounted by them, there is always cause to suspect upheaval, or the
+removal of a sloping beach in front of the bluff, after the dunes were
+formed. Bold shores are usually without a sufficient beach for the
+accumulation of large deposits; they are commonly washed by a sea too
+deep to bring up sand from its bottom; their abrupt elevation, even if
+moderate in amount, would still be too great to allow ordinary winds to
+lift the sand above them; and their influence in deadening the wind
+which blows toward them would even more effectually prevent the raising
+of sand from the beach at their foot.
+
+Forchhammer, describing the coast of Jutland, says that, in high winds,
+"one can hardly stand upon the dunes, except when they are near the
+water line and have been cut down perpendicularly by the waves. Then the
+wind is little or not at all felt--a fact of experience very common on
+our coasts, observed on all the steep shore bluffs of two hundred feet
+in height, and, in the Faroe Islands, on precipices two thousand feet
+high. In heavy gales in those islands, the cattle fly to the very edge
+of the cliffs for shelter, and frequently fall over. The wind, impinging
+against the vertical wall, creates an ascending current which shoots
+somewhat past the crest of the rock, and thus the observer or the animal
+is protected against the tempest by a barrier of air."--LEONHARD und
+BRONN, _Jahrbuch_, 1841, p. 3.
+
+The calming, or rather diversion, of the wind by cliffs extends to a
+considerable distance in front of them, and no wind would have
+sufficient force to raise the sand vertically, parallel to the face of a
+bluff, even to the height of twenty feet.
+
+It is very commonly believed that it is impossible to grow forest trees
+on sea-shore bluffs, or points much exposed to strong winds. The
+observations just cited tend to show that it would not be difficult to
+protect trees from the mechanical effect of the wind, by screens much
+lower than the height to which they are expected to grow. Recent
+experiments confirm this, and it is found that, though the outer row or
+rows may suffer from the wind, every tree shelters a taller one behind
+it. Extensive groves have thus been formed in situations where an
+isolated tree would not grow at all.
+
+Piper, in his _Trees of America_, p. 19, gives an interesting account of
+Mr. Tudor's success in planting trees on the bleak and barren shore of
+Nahant. "Mr. Tudor," observes he, "has planted more than ten thousand
+trees at Nahant, and, by the results of his experiments, has fully
+demonstrated that trees, properly cared for in the beginning, may be
+made to grow up to the very bounds of the ocean, exposed to the biting
+of the wind and the spray of the sea. The only shelter they require is,
+at first, some interruption to break the current of the wind, such as
+fences, houses, or other trees."
+
+[423] The careful observations of Colonel J. D. Graham, of the United
+States Army, show a tide of about three inches in Lake Michigan. See "A
+Lunar Tidal Wave in the North American Lakes," demonstrated by
+Lieut.-Colonel J. D. Graham, in the fourteenth volume of the
+_Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of
+Science_.
+
+[424] STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 327, note.
+
+[425] The principal special works and essays on this subject known to me
+are:
+
+BR�MONTIER, _M�moire sur les Dunes, etc._, 1790, reprinted in _Annales
+des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1833, 1er s�mestre, pp. 145-186.
+
+_Rapport sur les differents M�moires de M. Br�montier_, par LAUMONT et
+autres, 1806, same volume, pp. 192, 224.
+
+LEFORT, _Notice sur les Travaux de Fixation des Dunes, Annales des Ponts
+et Chauss�es_, 1831, 2me s�mestre, pp. 320-332.
+
+FORCHHAMMER, _Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer_, in LEONHARD und
+BRONN, _Jahrbuch, etc._, 1841, pp. 1, 38.
+
+J. G. KOHL, _Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogth�mer Schleswig und
+Holstein_, 1846, vol. ii, pp. 112-162, 193-204.
+
+LAVAL, _M�moire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et
+Chauss�es_, 1847, 2me s�mestre, pp. 218-268.
+
+G. C. A. KRAUSE, _Der D�nenbau auf den Ostsee-K�sten West-Preussens_,
+1850, 1 vol. 8vo.
+
+W. C. H. STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, 1856, vol. i, pp. 310-341,
+and 424-431.
+
+Same author, _Voormaals en Thans_, 1858, pages cited.
+
+C. C. ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen og Klittens Behandling og
+Bestyrelse_, 1861, 1 vol. 8vo, x, 392 pp., much the most complete
+treatise on the subject.
+
+ANDRESEN cites, upon the origin of the dunes: HULL, _Over den Oorsprong
+en de Geschiedenis der Hollandsche Duinen_, 1838, and GROSS's
+_Veiledning ved Behandlingen af Sandflugtstr�kningerne_, 1847; and upon
+the improvement of sand plains by planting, PANNEWITZ, _Anleitung zum
+Anbau der Sandfl�chen_, 1832. I am not acquainted with either of the
+latter two works but I have consulted with advantage, on this subject,
+DELAMARRE, _Historique de la Cr�ation d'une Richesse millionaire par la
+culture des Pins_, 1827; BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des terres pauvres par
+le Pin maritime_, 1857; and BRINCKEN, _Ansichten �ber die Bewaldung der
+Steppen des Europ�ischen Russlands_, 1854.
+
+[426] "Dunes are always full of water, from the action of capillary
+attraction. Upon the summits, one seldom needs to dig more than a foot
+to find the sand moist, and in the depressions, fresh water is met with
+near the surface."--FORCHHAMMER, in LEONHARD und BRONN, for 1841, p. 5,
+note.
+
+On the other hand, Andresen, who has very carefully investigated this as
+well as all other dune phenomena, maintains that the humidity of the
+sand ridges cannot be derived from capillary attraction. He found by
+experiment that drift sand was not moistened to a greater height than
+eight and a half inches, after standing a whole night in water. He
+states the minimum of water contained by the sand of the dunes, one foot
+below the surface, after a long drought, at two per cent., the maximum,
+after a rainy month, at four per cent. At greater depths the quantity is
+larger. The hygroscopicity of the sand of the coast of Jutland he found
+to be thirty-three per cent. by measure, or 21.5 by weight. The annual
+precipitation on that coast is twenty-seven inches, and, as the
+evaporation is about the same, he argues that rain water does not
+penetrate far beneath the surface of the dunes, and concludes that their
+humidity can be explained only by evaporation from below.--_Om
+Klitformationen_, pp. 106-110.
+
+In the dunes of Algeria, water is so abundant that wells are constantly
+dug in them at high points on their surface. They are sunk to the depth
+of three or four m�tres only, and the water rises to the height of a
+m�tre in them.--LAURENT, _M�moire sur le Sahara_, pp. 11, 12, 13.
+
+The same writer observes (p. 14) that the hollows in the dunes are
+planted with palms which find moisture enough a little below the
+surface. It would hence seem that the proposal to fix the dunes which
+are supposed to threaten the Suez Canal, by planting the maritime pine
+and other trees upon them, is not altogether so absurd as it is thought
+to be by some of those disinterested philanthropists of other nations
+who are distressed with fears that French capitalists will lose the
+money they have invested in that great undertaking.
+
+Ponds of water are often found in the depressions between the sand hills
+of the dune chains in the North American desert.
+
+[427] According to the French authorities, the dunes of France are not
+always composed of quartzose sand. "The dune sands" of different
+characters, says Br�montier, "partake of the nature of the different
+materials which compose them. At certain points on the coast of Normandy
+they are found to be purely calcareous; they are of mixed composition on
+the shores of Brittany and Saintonge, and generally quartzose between
+the mouth of the Gironde and that of the Adour."--_M�moire sur les
+Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, t. vii, 1833, 1er s�mestre, p.
+146.
+
+In the dunes of Long Island and of Jutland, there are considerable veins
+composed almost wholly of garnet. For a very full examination of the
+mechanical and chemical composition of the dune sands of Jutland, see
+ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, p. 110.
+
+[428] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 323.
+
+[429] J. G. KOHL, _Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogth�mer Schleswig
+und Holstein_, ii, p. 200.
+
+[430] STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 317. See also, BERGS�E,
+_Reventov's Virksomhed_, ii, p. 11.
+
+"In the sand-hill ponds mentioned in the text, there is a vigorous
+growth of bog plants accompanied with the formation of peat, which goes
+on regularly as long as the dune sand does not drift. But if the surface
+of the dunes is broken, the sand blows into the ponds, covers the peat,
+and puts an end to its formation. When, in the course of time, marine
+currents cut away the coast, the dunes move landward and fill up the
+ponds, and thus are formed the remarkable strata of fossile peat called
+Mart�rv, which appears to be unknown to the geologists of other parts of
+Europe."--FORCHHAMMER, in LEONHARD und BRONN, 1841, p. 13.
+
+[431] The lower strata must be older than the superficial layers, and
+the particles which compose them may in time become more disintegrated,
+and therefore finer than those deposited later and above them.
+
+[432] "On the west coast of Africa the dunes are drifting seawards, and
+always receiving new accessions from the Sahara. They are constantly
+advancing out into the sea." See _ante_, p. 16, note.--NAUMANN,
+_Geognosie_, ii, p. 1172. See _Appendix_, No. 58.
+
+[433] Forchhammer, after pointing out the coincidence between the
+inclined stratification of dunes and the structure of ancient tilted
+rocks, says: "But I am not able to point out a sandstone formation
+corresponding to the dunes. Probably most ancient dunes have been
+destroyed by submersion before the loose sand became cemented to solid
+stone, but we may suppose that circumstances have existed somewhere
+which have preserved the characteristics of this formation."--LEONHARD
+und BRONN, 1841, p. 8, 9.
+
+Such formations, however, certainly exist. I find from Laurent (_M�moire
+sur le Sahara, etc._, p. 12), that in the Algerian desert there exist
+"sandstone formations" not only "corresponding to the dunes," but
+actually consolidated within them. "A place called El-Mouia-Tadjer
+presents a repetition of what we saw at El-Baya; one of the funnels
+formed in the middle of the dunes contains wells from two m�tres to two
+and a half in depth, dug in a sand which pressure, and probably the
+presence of certain salts, have cemented so as to form true sandstone,
+soft indeed, but which does not yield except to the pickaxe. These
+sandstones exhibit an inclination which seems to be the effect of wind;
+for they conform to the direction of the sands which roll down a scarp
+occasioned by the primitive obstacle." See _Appendix_, No. 59.
+
+The dunes near the mouth of the Nile, the lower sands of which have been
+cemented together by the infiltration of Nile water, would probably show
+a similar stratification in the sandstone which now forms their base.
+
+[434] Forchhammer ascribes the resemblance between the furrowing of the
+dune sands and the beach ripples, not to the similarity of the effect of
+wind and water upon sand, but wholly to the action of the former fluid;
+in the first instance, directly, in the latter, through the water. "The
+wind ripples on the surface of the dunes precisely resemble the water
+ripples of sand flats occasionally overflowed by the sea; and with the
+closest scrutiny, I have never been able to detect the slightest
+difference between them. This is easily explained by the fact, that the
+water ripples are produced by the action of light wind on the water
+which only transmits the air waves to the sand."--LEONHARD und BRONN,
+1841, pp. 7, 8.
+
+[435] American observers do not agree in their descriptions of the form
+and character of the sand grains which compose the interior dunes of the
+North American desert. C. C. Parry, geologist to the Mexican Boundary
+Commission, in describing the dunes near the station at a spring
+thirty-two miles west from the Rio Grande at El Paso, says: "The
+separate grains of the sand composing the sand hills are seen under a
+lens to be angular, and not rounded, as would be the case in regular
+beach deposits."--_U. S. Mexican Boundary Survey, Report of_, vol. i,
+_Geological Report of C. C. Parry_, p. 10.
+
+In the general description of the country traversed, same volume, p. 47,
+Colonel Emory says that on an "examination of the sand with a microscope
+of sufficient power," the grains are seen to be angular, not rounded by
+rolling in water.
+
+On the other hand, Blake, in _Geological Report, Pacific Railroad Rep._,
+vol. v, p. 119, observes that the grains of the dune sand, consisting of
+quartz, chalcedony, carnelian, agate, rose quartz, and probably
+chrysolite, were much rounded; and on page 241, he says that many of the
+sand grains of the Colorado desert are perfect spheres.
+
+On page 20 of a report in vol. ii of the _Pacific Railroad Report_, by
+the same observer, it is said that an examination of dune sands brought
+from the Llano Estacado by Captain Pope, showed the grains to be "much
+rounded by attrition."
+
+The sands described by Mr. Parry and Colonel Emory are not from the same
+localities as those examined by Mr. Blake, and the difference in their
+character may denote a difference of origin or of age.
+
+[436] LAURENT (_M�moire sur le Sahara_, pp. 11, 12, and elsewhere)
+speaks of a funnel-shaped depression at a high point in the dunes, as a
+characteristic feature of the sand hills of the Algerian desert. This
+seems to be an approximation to the crescent form noticed by Meyen and
+P�ppig in the inland dunes of Peru.
+
+[437] _Travels in Peru_, New York, 1848, chap. ix.
+
+[438] Notwithstanding the general tendency of isolated coast dunes and
+of the peaks of the sand ridges to assume a conical form, Andresen
+states that the hills of the inner or landward rows are sometimes
+_bow-shaped_, and sometimes undulating in outline.--_Om
+Klitformationen_, p. 84. He says further that: "Before an obstruction,
+two or three feet high and considerably longer, lying perpendicularly to
+the direction of the wind, the sand is deposited with a windward angle
+of from 6� to 12�, and the bank presents a concave face to the wind,
+while, behind the obstruction, the outline is convex;" and he lays it
+down as a general rule, that a slope, _from_ which sand is blown, is
+left with a concavity of about one inch of depth to four feet of
+distance; a slope, _upon_ which sand is dropped by the wind, is convex.
+It appears from Andresen's figures, however, that the concavity and
+convexity referred to, apply, not to the _horizontal longitudinal_
+section of the sand bank, as his language unexplained by the drawings
+might be supposed to mean, but to the _vertical cross-section_, and
+hence the dunes he describes, with the exception above noted, do not
+correspond to those of the American deserts.--_Om Klitformationen_, p.
+86.
+
+The dunes of Gascony, which sometimes exceed three hundred feet in
+height, present the same concavity and convexity of _vertical_
+cross-section. The slopes of these dunes are much steeper than those of
+the Netherlands and the Danish coast; for while all observers agree in
+assigning to the seaward and landward faces of those latter,
+respectively, angles of from 5� to 12�, and 30� with the horizon, the
+corresponding faces of the dunes of Gascony present angles of from 10�
+to 25�, and 50� to 60�.--LAVAL, _M�moire sur les Dunes de Gascogne,
+Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1847, 2me s�mestre.
+
+[439] Krause, speaking of the dunes on the coast of Prussia, says:
+"Their origin belongs to three different periods, in which important
+changes in the relative level of sea and land have unquestionably taken
+place. * * * Except in the deep depressions between them, the dunes are
+everywhere sprinkled, to a considerable height, with brown oxydulated
+iron, which has penetrated into the sand to the depth of from three to
+eighteen inches, and colored it red. * * * Above the iron is a stratum
+of sand differing in composition from ordinary sea sand, and on this,
+growing woods are always found. * * * The gradually accumulated forest
+soil occurs in beds of from one to three feet thick, and changes,
+proceeding upward, from gray sand to black humus." Even on the third or
+seaward range, the sand grasses appear and thrive luxuriantly, at least
+on the west coast, though. Krause doubts whether the dunes of the east
+coast were ever thus protected.--_Der D�nenbau_, pp. 8, 11.
+
+[440] LAVAL, _M�moire sur les Dunes de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et
+Chauss�es_, 1847, 2me s�mestre, p. 231. The same opinion had been
+expressed by BR�MONTIER, _Annales des Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1833, 1er
+s�mestre, p. 185.
+
+[441] "In the Middle Ages," says Willibald Alexis, as quoted by M�ller,
+_Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt_ i, p. 16, "the Nehrung was extending itself
+further, and the narrow opening near Lochstadt had filled itself up with
+sand. A great pine forest bound with its roots the dune sand and the
+heath uninterruptedly from Danzig to Pillau. King Frederick William I
+was once in want of money. A certain Herr von Korff promised to procure
+it for him, without loan or taxes, if he could be allowed to remove
+something quite useless. He thinned out the forests of Prussia, which
+then, indeed, possessed little pecuniary value; but he felled the entire
+woods of the Frische Nehrung, so far as they lay within the Prussian
+territory. The financial operation was a success. The king had money,
+but in the elementary operation which resulted from it, the state
+received irreparable injury. The sea winds rush over the bared hills;
+the Frische Haff is half-choked with sand; the channel between Elbing,
+the sea, and K�nigsberg is endangered, and the fisheries in the Haff
+injured. The operation of Herr von Korff brought the king 200,000
+thalers. The state would now willingly expend millions to restore the
+forests again."
+
+[442] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 231. Had the dunes of the
+Netherlandish and French coasts, at the period of the Roman invasion,
+resembled the moving sand hills of the present day, it is inconceivable
+that they could have escaped the notice of so acute a physical
+geographer as Strabo; and the absolute silence of C�sar, Ptolemy, and
+the encyclop�dic Pliny, respecting them, would be not less inexplicable.
+
+The Old Northern language, the ancient tongue of Denmark, though rich in
+terms descriptive of natural scenery, had no name for dune, nor do I
+think the sand hills of the coast are anywhere noticed in Icelandic
+literature. The modern Icelanders, in treating of the dunes of Jutland,
+call them _klettr_, hill, cliff, and the Danish _klit_ is from that
+source. The word D�ne is also of recent introduction into German. Had
+the dunes been distinguished from other hillocks, in ancient times, by
+so remarkable a feature as the propensity to drift, they would certainly
+have acquired a specific name in both Old Northern and German. So long
+as they were wooded knolls, they needed no peculiar name; when they
+became formidable, from the destruction of the woods which confined
+them, they acquired a designation.
+
+[443] The sands of Cape Cod were partially, if not completely, covered
+with vegetation by nature. Dr. Dwight, describing the dunes as they were
+in 1800, says: "Some of them are covered with beach grass; some fringed
+with whortleberry bushes; and some tufted with a small and singular
+growth of oaks. * * * The parts of this barrier, which are covered with
+whortleberry bushes and with oaks, have been either not at all, or very
+little blown. The oaks, particularly, appear to be the continuation of
+the forests originally formed on this spot. * * * They wore all the
+marks of extreme age; were, in some instances, already decayed, and in
+others decaying; were hoary with moss, and were deformed by branches,
+broken and wasted, not by violence, but by time."--_Travels_, iii, p.
+91.
+
+[444] Bergs�e (_Reventlovs Virksomhed_, ii, 3) states that the dunes on
+the west coast of Jutland were stationary before the destruction of the
+forests to the east of them. The felling of the tall trees removed the
+resistance to the lower currents of the westerly winds, and the sands
+have since buried a great extent of fertile soil. See also same work,
+ii, p. 124.
+
+[445] "We must, therefore, not be surprised to see the people here deal
+as gingerly with their dunes, as if treading among eggs. He who is lucky
+enough to own a molehill of dune pets it affectionately, and spends his
+substance in cherishing and fattening it. That fair, fertile, rich
+province, the peninsula of Eiderst�dt in the south of Friesland, has, on
+the point toward the sea, only a tiny row of dunes, some six miles long
+or so; but the people talk of their fringe of sand hills as if it were a
+border set with pearls. They look upon it as their best defence against
+Neptune. They have connected it with their system of dikes, and for
+years have kept sentries posted to protect it against wanton
+injury."--J. G. KOHL, _Die Inseln u. Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins_, ii,
+p. 115.
+
+[446] Sand banks sometimes connect themselves with the coast at both
+ends, and thus cut off a portion of the sea. In this case, as well as
+when salt water is enclosed by sea dikes, the water thus separated from
+the ocean gradually becomes fresh, or at least brackish. The Haffs, or
+large expanses of fresh water in Eastern Prussia--which are divided from
+the Baltic by narrow sand banks called Nehrungen, or, at sheltered
+points of the coast, by fluviatile deposits called Werders--all have one
+or more open passages, through which the water of the rivers that supply
+them at last finds its way to the sea.
+
+[447] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 68-72.
+
+[448] Id., pp. 231, 232. Andresen's work, though printed in 1861, was
+finished in 1859. Lyell (_Antiquity of Man_, 1863, p. 14) says: "Even in
+the course of the present century, the salt waters have made one
+eruption into the Baltic by the Liimfjord, although they have been now
+again excluded."
+
+[449] FORCHHAMMER, _Geognostische Studien am Meeres-Ufer_. LEONHARD und
+BRONN, _Jahrbuch_, 1841, pp. 11, 13.
+
+[450] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 68, 72.
+
+[451] _Voormaals en Thans_, pp. 126, 170.
+
+[452] See a very interesting article entitled "Le Littoral de la
+France," by �LIS�E RECLUS, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for December,
+1862, pp. 901, 936.
+
+[453] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 425. See _Appendix_, No. 60.
+
+[454] The movement of the dunes has been hardly less destructive on the
+north side of the Gironde. Sea the valuable article of �LIS�E RECLUS
+already referred to, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for December, 1862,
+entitled "Le Littoral de la France."
+
+[455] LAVAL, _M�moire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1847, p. 223. The author adds, as a curious and
+unexplained fact, that some of these pools, though evidently not
+original formations but mere accumulations of water dammed up by the
+dunes, have, along their western shore, near the base of the sand hills,
+a depth of more than one hundred and thirty feet, and hence their
+bottoms are not less than eighty feet below the level of the lowest
+tides. Their western banks descend steeply, conforming nearly to the
+slope of the dunes, while on the northeast and south the inclination of
+their beds is very gradual. The greatest depth of these pools
+corresponds to that of the sea ten miles from the shore. Is it possible
+that the weight of the sands has pressed together the soil on which they
+rest, and thus occasioned a subsidence of the surface extending beyond
+their base? See _Appendix_, No. 61.
+
+[456] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationem_, pp. 56, 79, 82.
+
+[457] STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, pp. 329-331. Id., _Voormaals
+en Thans_, p. 163. ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 280, 295.
+
+The creation of new dunes, by the processes mentioned in the text, seems
+to be much older in Europe than the adoption of measures for securing
+them by planting. Dr. Dwight mentions a case in Massachusetts, where a
+beach was restored, and new dunes formed, by planting beach grass.
+"Within the memory of my informant, the sea broke over the beach which
+connects Truro with Province Town, and swept the body of it away for
+some distance. The beach grass was immediately planted on the spot; in
+consequence of which the beach was again raised to a sufficient height,
+and in various places into hills."--_Dwight's Travels_, iii, p. 93.
+
+[458] STARING, i, pp. 310, 332.
+
+[459] There is some confusion in the popular use of these names, and in
+the scientific designations of sand plants, and they are possibly
+applied to different plants in different places. Some writers style the
+gourbet _Calamagrostis arenaria_, and distinguish it from the Danish
+Klittetag or Hjelme.
+
+[460] Bread, not indeed very palatable, has been made of the seeds of
+the arundo, but the quantity which can be gathered is not sufficient to
+form an important economical resource.----ANDRESEN, _Om
+Klitformationen_, p. 160.
+
+[461] BERGS�E, _Reventlovs Virksomhed_, ii, p. 4.
+
+[462] Measures were taken for the protection of the dunes of Cape Cod,
+in Massachusetts, during the colonial period, though I believe they are
+now substantially abandoned. A hundred years ago, before the valley of
+the Mississippi, or even the rich plains of Central and Western New
+York, were opened to the white settler, the value of land was relatively
+much greater in New England than it is at present, and consequently some
+rural improvements were then worth making, which would not now yield
+sufficient returns to tempt the investment of capital. The money and the
+time required to subdue and render productive twenty acres of sea sand
+on Cape Cod, would buy a "section" and rear a family in Illinois. The
+son of the Pilgrims, therefore, abandons the sand hills, and seeks a
+better fortune on the fertile prairies of the West.
+
+Dr. Dwight, who visited Cape Cod in the year 1800, after describing the
+"beach grass, a vegetable bearing a general resemblance to sedge, but of
+a light bluish-green, and of a coarse appearance," which "flourishes
+with a strong and rapid vegetation on the sands," observes that he
+received "from a Mr. Collins, formerly of Truro, the following
+information:" "When he lived at Truro, the inhabitants were, under the
+authority of law, regularly warned in the month of April, yearly, to
+plant beach grass, as, in other towns of New England, they are warned to
+repair highways. It was required by the laws of the State, and under the
+proper penalties for disobedience; being as regular a public tax as any
+other. The people, therefore, generally attended and performed the
+labor. The grass was dug in bunches, as it naturally grows; and each
+bunch divided into a number of smaller ones. These were set out in the
+sand at distances of three feet. After one row was set, others were
+placed behind it in such a manner as to shut up the interstices; or, as
+a carpenter would say, so as to break the joints. * * * When it is once
+set, it grows and spreads with rapidity. * * * The seeds are so heavy
+that they bend down the heads of the grass; and when ripe, drop directly
+down by its side, where they immediately vegetate. Thus in a short time
+the ground is covered.
+
+"Where this covering is found, none of the sand is blown. On the
+contrary, it is accumulated and raised continually as snow gathers and
+rises among bushes, or branches of trees cut and spread upon the earth.
+Nor does the grass merely defend the surface on which it is planted; but
+rises, as that rises by new accumulations; and always overtops the sand,
+however high that may be raised by the wind."--_Dwight's Travels in New
+England and New York_, ii, p. 92, 93.
+
+This information was received in 1800, and it relates to a former state
+of things, probably more than twenty years previous, and earlier than
+1779, when the Government of Denmark first seriously attempted the
+conquest of the dunes.
+
+The depasturing of the beach grass--a plant allied in habits, if not in
+botanical character, to the arundo--has been attended with very
+injurious effects in Massachusetts. Dr. Dwight, after referring to the
+laws for its propagation, already cited, says: "The benefit of this
+useful plant, and of these prudent regulations, is, however, in some
+measure lost. There are in Province Town, as I was informed, one hundred
+and forty cows. These animals, being stinted in their means of
+subsistence, are permitted to wander, at times, in search of food. In
+every such case, they make depredations on the beach grass, and prevent
+its seeds from being formed. In this manner the plant is ultimately
+destroyed."--_Travels_, iii, p. 94.
+
+On page 101 of the same volume, the author mentions an instance of great
+injury from this cause. "Here, about one thousand acres were entirely
+blown away to the depth, in many places, of ten feet. * * * Not a green
+thing was visible except the whortleberries, which tufted a few lonely
+hillocks rising to the height of the original surface and prevented by
+this defence from being blown away also. These, although they varied the
+prospect, added to the gloom by their strongly picturesque appearance,
+by marking exactly the original level of the plain, and by showing us in
+this manner the immensity of the mass which had been thus carried away
+by the wind. The beach grass had been planted here, and the ground had
+been formerly enclosed; but the gates had been left open, and the cattle
+had destroyed this invaluable plant."
+
+[463] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 237, 240.
+
+[464] "These plantations, perseveringly continued from the time of
+Br�montier now cover more than 40,000 hectares, and compose forests
+which are not only the salvation of the department, but constitute its
+wealth."--CLAV�, _�tudes Foresti�res_, p. 254.
+
+Other authors have stated the plantations of the French dunes to be much
+more extensive.
+
+[465] KRUSE, _D�nenbau_, pp. 34, 38, 40.
+
+[466] These processes are substantially similar to those employed in the
+pineries of the Carolinas, but they are better systematized and more
+economically conducted in France. In the latter country, all the
+products of the pine, even to the cones, find a remunerating market,
+while, in America, the price of resin is so low, that in the fierce
+steamboat races on the great rivers, large quantities of it are thrown
+into the furnaces to increase the intensity of the fires. In a carefully
+prepared article on the Southern pineries published in an American
+magazine--I think Harper's--a few years ago, it was stated that the
+resin from the turpentine distilleries was sometimes allowed to run to
+waste; and the writer, in one instance, observed a mass, thus rejected
+as rubbish, which was estimated to amount to two thousand barrels. See
+_Appendix_, No. 62.
+
+[467] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 78, 262, 275.
+
+[468] LAVAL, _M�moire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss�es_, 1847, 2me s�mestre, p. 261. See _Appendix_, No.
+63.
+
+[469] There are extensive ranges of dunes on various parts of the coasts
+of the British Islands, but I find no estimate of their area. Pannewitz
+(_Anleitung zam Anbau der Sandfl�chen_), as cited by Andresen (_Om
+Klitformationen_, p. 45), states that the drifting sands of Europe,
+including, of course, sand plains as well as dunes, cover an extent of
+21,000 square miles. This is, perhaps, an exaggeration, though there is,
+undoubtedly, much more desert land of this description on the European
+continent than has been generally supposed. There is no question that
+most of this waste is capable of reclamation by simple planting, and no
+mode of physical improvement is better worth the attention of civilized
+Governments than this.
+
+There are often serious objections to extensive forest planting on soils
+capable of being otherwise made productive, but they do not apply to
+sand wastes, which, until covered by woods, are not only a useless
+incumbrance, but a source of serious danger to all human improvements in
+the neighborhood of them.
+
+[470] BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres par le Pin maritime_,
+pp. 212, 218.
+
+[471] See _Appendix_, No. .
+
+[472] For details, consult ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 223, 236.
+
+[473] When the deposit is not very deep, and the adjacent land lying to
+the leeward of the prevailing winds is covered with water, or otherwise
+worthless, the surface is sometimes freed from the drifts by repeated
+harrowings, which loosen the sand, so that the wind takes it up and
+transports it to grounds where accumulations of it are less injurious.
+
+[474] _Travels and Researches in Chald�a_, chap. ix.
+
+[475] _�tudes Foresti�res_, p. 253.
+
+[476] LAVERGNE, _�conomie Rurale de la France_, p. 300, estimates the
+area of the Landes of Gascony at 700,000 hectares, or about 1,700,000
+acres. The same author states (p. 304), that when the Moors were driven
+from Spain by the blind cupidity and brutal intolerance of the age, they
+demanded permission to establish themselves in this desert; but
+political and religious prejudices prevented the granting of this
+liberty. At this period the Moors were a far more cultivated people than
+their Christian persecutors, and they had carried many arts, that of
+agriculture especially, to a higher pitch than any other European
+nation. But France was not wise enough to accept what Spain had cast
+out, and the Landes remained a waste for three centuries longer. See
+_Appendix_, No. 64.
+
+The forest of Fontainebleau, which contains above 40,000 acres, is not a
+plain, but its soil is composed almost wholly of sand, interspersed with
+ledges of rock. The sand forms not less than ninety-eight per cent. of
+the earth, and, as it is almost without water, it would be a drifting
+desert but for the artificial propagation of forest trees upon it.
+
+[477] _�conomie Rurale de la Belgique, par_ EMILE DE LAVELEYE, _Revue
+des Deux Mondes_, Juin, 1861, pp. 617-644.
+
+[478] _Geognosie_, ii, p. 1173.
+
+[479] According to HOHENSTEIN, _Der Wald_, pp. 228, 229, an extensive
+plantation of pines--a tree new to Southern Russia--was commenced in
+1842, on the barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisabethgrod,
+and has met with very flattering success. Other experiments in
+sylviculture at different points on the steppes promise valuable
+results.
+
+[480] "Sixteen years ago," says an Odessa landholder, "I attempted to
+fix the sand of the steppes, which covers the rocky ground to the depth
+of a foot, and forms moving hillocks with every change of wind. I tried
+acacias and pines in vain; nothing would grow in such a soil. At length
+I planted the varnish tree, or _ailanthus_, which succeeded completely
+in binding the sand." This result encouraged the proprietor to extend
+his plantations over both dunes and sand steppes, and in the course of
+sixteen years this rapidly growing tree had formed real forests. Other
+landowners have imitated his example with great advantage.--RENTSCH,
+_Der Wald_, p. 44, 45.
+
+[481] _Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste_, i, pp. 204 _et seqq._
+
+[482] "If we suppose the narrow isthmus of Central America to be sunk in
+the ocean, the warm equatorial current would no longer follow its
+circuitous route around the Gulf of Mexico, but pour itself through the
+new opening directly into the Pacific. We should then lose the warmth of
+the Gulf Stream, and cold polar currents flowing farther southward would
+take its place and be driven upon our coasts by the western winds. The
+North Sea would resemble Hudson's Bay, and its harbors be free from ice
+at best only in summer. The power and prosperity of its coasts would
+shrivel under the breath of winter, as a medusa thrown on shore shrinks
+to an insignificant film under the influence of the destructive
+atmosphere. Commerce, industry, fertility of soil, population, would
+disappear, and the vast waste--a new Labrador--would become a worthless
+appendage of some clime more favored by nature."--HARTWIG, _Das Leben
+des Meeres_, p. 70.
+
+[483] I know nothing of Captain Allen's work but its title and its
+subject. Very probably he may have anticipated many of the following
+speculations, and thrown light on points upon which I am ignorant.
+
+[484] "Some haue writt[=e], that by certain kings inhabiting aboue, the
+_Nilus_ should there be stopped; & at a time prefixt, let loose vpon a
+certaine tribute payd them by the _Aegyptians_. The error springing
+perhaps fr[=o] a truth (as all wandring reports for the most part doe)
+in that the _Sultan_ doth pay a certaine annuall summe to the _Abissin_
+Emperour for not diuerting the course of the Riuer, which (they say) he
+may, or impouerish it at the least."--GEORGE SANDYS, _A Relation of a
+Journey, etc._, p. 98.
+
+[485] The Recca, a river with a considerable current, has been
+satisfactorily identified with a stream flowing through the cave of
+Trebich, and with the Timavo--the Timavus of Virgil and the ancient
+geographers--which empties through several mouths into the Adriatic
+between Trieste and Aquileia. The distance from Trieste to a suitable
+point in the grotto of Trebich is thought to be less than three miles,
+and the difficulties in the way of constructing a tunnel do not seem
+formidable. The works of Schmidl, _Die H�hlen des Karstes_, and _Der
+unterirdische Lauf der Recca_, are not common out of Germany, but the
+reader will find many interesting facts derived from them in two
+articles entitled _Der unterirdische Lauf der Recca_, in _Aus der
+Natur_, xx, pp. 250-254, 263-266.
+
+[486] BARTH, _Wanderungen durch die K�sten des Mittelmeeres_, i, p. 353.
+In a note on page 380, of the same volume, Barth cites Strabo as
+asserting that a similar practice prevailed in Iapygia; but it may be
+questioned whether the epithet [Greek: tracheia], applied by Strabo to
+the original surface, necessarily implies that it was covered with a
+continuous stratum of rock.
+
+[487] PARTHEY, _Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante_, i, p. 404.
+
+[488] _Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer_, LEONHARD und BRONN,
+_Jahrbuch_, 1841, pp. 25, 26.
+
+[489] KOHL, _Schleswig-Holstein_, ii, p. 45.
+
+[490] _Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante_, i, p. 406.
+
+[491] LANDGREBE, _Naturgeschichte der Vulkane_, ii, pp. 19, 20.
+
+[492] Soon after the current issues from the volcano, it is covered
+above and at its sides, and finally in front, with scori�, formed by the
+cooling of the exposed surface, which bury and conceal the fluid mass.
+The stream rolls on under the coating, and between the walls of scori�,
+and it was the lateral crust which was broken through by the workmen
+mentioned in the text.
+
+The distance to which lava flows, before its surface begins to solidify,
+depends on its volume, its composition, its temperature and that of the
+air, the force with which it is ejected, and the inclination of the
+declivity over which it runs. In most cases it is difficult to approach
+the current at points where it is still entirely fluid, and hence
+opportunities of observing it in that condition are not very frequent.
+In the eruption of February, 1850, on the east side of Vesuvius, I went
+quite up to one of the outlets. The lava shot out of the orifice upward
+with great velocity, like the water from a spring, in a stream eight or
+ten feet in diameter, throwing up occasionally volcanic bombs, but it
+immediately spread out on the declivity down which it flowed, to the
+width of several yards. It continued red hot in broad daylight, and
+without a particle of scori� on its surface, for a course of at least
+one hundred yards. At this distance, the suffocating, sulphurous vapors
+became so dense that I could follow the current no farther. The
+undulations of the surface were like those of a brook swollen by rain. I
+estimated the height of the waves at five or six inches by a breadth of
+eighteen or twenty. To the eye, the fluidity of the lava seemed as
+perfect as that of water, but masses of cold lava weighing ten or
+fifteen pounds floated upon it like cork.
+
+The heat emitted by lava currents seems extremely small when we consider
+the temperature required to fuse such materials and the great length of
+time they take in cooling. I saw at Nicolosi ancient oil jars, holding a
+hundred gallons or more, which had been dug out from under a stream of
+old lava above that town. They had been very slightly covered with
+volcanic ashes before the lava flowed over them, but the lead with which
+holes in them had been plugged was not melted. The current that buried
+Mompiliere in 1669 was thirty-five feet thick, but marble statues, in a
+church over which the lava formed an arch, were found uncalcined and
+uninjured in 1704. See SCROPE, _Volcanoes_, chap. VI. � 6.
+
+[493] FERRARA, _Descrizione dell' Etna_, p. 108.
+
+[494] LANGREBE, _Naturgeschichte der Vulkane_, ii, p. 82.
+
+[495] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 168. Beds of peat, accidentally set
+on fire, sometimes continue to burn for months. I take the following
+account of a case of this sort from a recent American journal:
+
+"A CURIOUS PHENOMENON.--When the track of the railroad between Brunswick
+and Bath was being graded, in crossing a meadow near the populous
+portion of the latter city, the 'dump' suddenly took on a sinking
+symptom, and down went the twenty feet fill of gravel, clay, and broken
+rocks, out of sight, and it was a long, _long_ time before dirt trains
+could fill the capacious stomach that seemed ready to receive all the
+solid material that could be turned into it. The difficulty was at
+length overcome, but all along the side of the sinkage the earth was
+thrown up, broken into yawning chasms, and the surface was thus elevated
+above its old watery level. Since that time this ground, thus slightly
+elevated, has been cultivated, and has yielded enormously of whatever
+the owner seemed disposed to plant upon it. Some three months ago, by
+some means unknown to us, the underlying peat took fire, and for weeks,
+as we had occasion to pass it, we noticed the smoke arising from the
+smouldering combustion beneath the surface. Rains fell, but the fire
+burned, and the smoke continued to arise. Monday we had occasion to pass
+the spot, and though nearly a week's rain had been drenching the ground,
+and though the surface was whitened with snow, and though pools of water
+were standing upon the surface in the immediate neighborhood, still the
+everlasting subterranean fire was burning, and the smoke arising through
+the snow."
+
+[496] One of the sublimest, and at the same time most fearful
+suggestions that have been prompted by the researches of modern science,
+was made by Babbage in the ninth chapter of his _Ninth Bridgewater
+Treatise_. I have not the volume at hand, but the following explanation
+will recall to the reader, if it does not otherwise make intelligible,
+the suggestion I refer to.
+
+No atom can be disturbed in place, or undergo any change of temperature,
+of electrical state, or other material condition, without affecting, by
+attraction or repulsion or other communication, the surrounding atoms.
+These, again, by the same law, transmit the influence to other atoms,
+and the impulse thus given extends through the whole material universe.
+Every human movement, every organic act, every volition, passion, or
+emotion, every intellectual process, is accompanied with atomic
+disturbance, and hence every such movement, every such act or process
+affects all the atoms of universal matter. Though action and reaction
+are equal, yet reaction does not restore disturbed atoms to their former
+place and condition, and consequently the effects of the least material
+change are never cancelled, but in some way perpetuated, so that no
+action can take place in physical, moral, or intellectual nature,
+without leaving all matter in a different state from what it would have
+been if such action had not occurred. Hence, to use language which I
+have employed on another occasion: there exists, not alone in the human
+conscience or in the omniscience of the Creator, but in external
+material nature, an ineffaceable, imperishable record, possibly legible
+even to created intelligence, of every act done, every word uttered,
+nay, of every wish and purpose and thought conceived by mortal man, from
+the birth of our first parent to the final extinction of our race; so
+that the physical traces of our most secret sins shall last until time
+shall be merged in that eternity of which not science, but religion
+alone, assumes to take cognizance.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+No. 1 (page 19, _note_). It may be said that the cases referred to in
+the note on p. 19--and indeed all cases of a supposed acclimation
+consisting in physiological changes--are instances of the origination of
+new varieties by natural selection, the hardier maize, tomato, and other
+vegetables of the North, being the progeny of seeds of individuals
+endowed, exceptionally, with greater power of resisting cold than
+belongs in general to the species which produced them. But, so far as
+the evidence of change of climate, from a difference in vegetable
+growth, is concerned, it is immaterial whether we adopt this view or
+maintain the older and more familiar doctrine of a local modification of
+character in the plants in question.
+
+No. 2 (page 24, _note_). The adjectives of direction in _-erly_ are not
+unfrequently used to indicate, in a loose way, the course of winds
+blowing from unspecified points between N.E. and S.E.; S.E. and S.W.;
+S.W. and N.W. or N.W. and N.E. If the employment of these words were
+understood to be limited to thus expressing a direction nearer to the
+cardinal point from whose name the adjective is taken than to any other
+cardinal point, they would be valuable elements of English
+meteorological nomenclature.
+
+No. 3 (page 31). I find a confirmation of my observations on the habits
+of the beaver as a geographical agency, in a report of the proceedings
+of the British Association, in the London Athen�um of October 8, 1864,
+p. 469. It is there stated that Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle, in an
+expedition across the Rocky Mountains by the Yellow Head, or Leather
+Pass, observed that "a great portion of the country to the east of the
+mountains" had been "completely changed in character by the agency of
+the beaver, which formerly existed here in enormous numbers. The shallow
+valleys were formerly traversed by rivers and chains of lakes which,
+dammed up along their course at numerous points, by the work of those
+animals, have become a series of marshes in various stages of
+consolidation. So complete has this change been, that hardly a stream is
+found for a distance of two hundred miles, with the exception of the
+large rivers. The animals have thus destroyed, by their own labors, the
+waters necessary to their own existence."
+
+When the process of "consolidation" shall have been completed, and the
+forest re�stablished upon the marshes, the water now diffused through
+them will be collected in the lower or more yielding portions, cut new
+channels for their flow, become running brooks, and thus restore the
+ancient aspect of the surface.
+
+No. 4 (page 33, _note_). The lignivorous insects that attack living
+trees almost uniformly confine their ravages to trees already unsound or
+diseased in growth from the depredations of leaf-eaters, such as
+caterpillars and the like, or from other causes. The decay of the tree,
+therefore, is the cause not the consequence of the invasions of the
+borer. This subject has been discussed by Perris in the _Annales de la
+Soci�t� Entomologique de la France_, for 1851 (?), and his conclusions
+are confirmed by the observations of Samanos, who quotes, at some
+length, the views of Perris. "Having, for fifteen years," says the
+latter author, "incessantly studied the habits of lignivorous insects in
+one of the best wooded regions of France, I have observed facts enough
+to feel myself warranted in expressing my conclusions, which are: that
+insects in general--I am not speaking of those which confine their
+voracity to the leaf--do not attack trees in sound health, and they
+assail those only whose normal conditions and functions have been by
+some cause impaired."
+
+See, more fully, Samanos, _Trait� de la Culture du Pin Maritime_, Paris,
+1864, pp. 140-145.
+
+No. 5 (page 34, _note_). Very interesting observations, on the agency of
+the squirrel and other small animals in planting and in destroying nuts
+and other seeds of trees, may be found in a paper on the Succession of
+Forests in Thoreau's _Excursions_, pp. 135 _et seqq._
+
+I once saw several quarts of beech-nuts taken from the winter quarters
+of a family of flying squirrels in a hollow tree. The kernels were
+neatly stripped of their shells and carefully stored in a dry cavity.
+
+No. 6 (page 40, _note_). Schroeder van der Kolk, in _Het Verschil
+tusschen den Psychischen Aanleg van het Dier en van den Mensch_, cites
+from Burdach and other authorities many interesting facts respecting
+instincts lost, or newly developed and become hereditary, in the lower
+animals, and he quotes Aristotle and Pliny as evidence that the common
+quadrupeds and fowls of our fields and our poultry yards were much less
+perfectly domesticated in their times than long, long ages of servitude
+have now made them.
+
+Perhaps the half-wild character ascribed by P. L�stadius and other
+Swedish writers to the reindeer of Lapland, may be in some degree due to
+the comparative shortness of the period during which he has been
+partially tamed. The domestic swine bred in the woods of Hungary and
+the buffaloes of Southern Italy are so wild and savage as to be very
+dangerous to all but their keepers. The former have relapsed into their
+original condition, the latter have not yet been reclaimed from it.
+
+Among other instances of obliterated instincts, Schroeder van der Kolk
+states that in Holland, where, for centuries, the young of the cow has
+been usually taken from the dam at birth and fed by hand, calves, even
+if left with the mother, make no attempt to suck; while in England,
+where calves are not weaned until several weeks old, they resort to the
+udder as naturally as the young of wild quadrupeds.--_Ziel en Ligchaam_,
+p. 128, _n._
+
+No. 7 (page 60, _first note_). At Pi� di Mulera, at the outlet of the
+Val Anzasca, near the principal hotel, is a vine measuring thirty-one
+inches in circumference. The door of the chapter-hall in the cloister of
+the church of San Giovanni, at Saluzzo, is of vine wood, and the boards
+of which the panels were made could not have been less than ten inches
+wide. Statues and other objects of considerable dimensions, of vine
+wood, are mentioned by ancient writers.
+
+No. 8 (page 63, _second note_). Cartier, A. D. 1535-'6, mentions "vines,
+great melons, cucumbers, gourds [courges], pease, beans of various
+colors, but not like ours," as common among the Indians of the banks of
+the St. Lawrence.--_Bref Recit_, etc., reprint. Paris, 1863, pp. 13, a;
+14, b; 20, b; 31, a.
+
+No. 8 (page 65, _second paragraph_). It may be considered very highly
+probable, if not certain, that the undiscriminating herbalists of the
+sixteenth century must have overlooked many plants native to this
+island. An English botanist, in an hour's visit to Aden, discovered
+several species of plants on rocks always reported, even by scientific
+travellers, as absolutely barren. But after all, it appears to be well
+established that the original flora of St. Helena was extremely limited,
+though now counting hundreds of species.
+
+No. 9 (page 66, _first note_). Although the vine _genus_ is very
+catholic and cosmopolite in its habits, yet particular _varieties_ are
+extremely fastidious and exclusive in their requirements as to soil and
+climate. The stocks of many celebrated vineyards lose their peculiar
+qualities by transplantation, and the most famous wines are capable of
+production only in certain well-defined, and for the most part narrow
+districts. The Ionian vine which bears the little stoneless grape known
+in commerce as the Zante currant, has resisted almost all efforts to
+naturalize it elsewhere, and is scarcely grown except in two or three of
+the Ionian islands and in a narrow territory on the northern shores of
+the Morea.
+
+No. 10 (page 68, _first note_). In most of the countries of Southern
+Europe, sheep and beeves are wintered upon the plains, but driven in the
+summer to mountain pastures at many days' distance from the homesteads
+of their owners. They transport seeds in their coats in both directions,
+and hence Alpine plants often shoot up at the foot of the mountains, the
+grasses of the plain on the borders of the glaciers; but in both cases,
+they usually fail to propagate themselves by ripening their seed. This
+explains the scattered tufts of common clover, with pale and flaccid
+blossoms, which are sometimes seen at heights exceeding 7,000 feet above
+the sea.
+
+No. 11 (page 73, _last paragraph_). The poisonous wild parsnip, which is
+very common in New England, is popularly believed to be identical with
+the garden parsnip, and differenced only by conditions of growth, a
+richer soil depriving it, it is said, of its noxious properties. Many
+wild medicinal plants, such as pennyroyal for example, are so much less
+aromatic and powerful, when cultivated in gardens, than when self-sown
+on meagre soils, as to be hardly fit for use.
+
+No. 12 (page 74, _second note_). See in Thoreau's _Excursions_, an
+interesting description of the wild apple-trees of Massachusetts.
+
+No. 13 (page 86, _first paragraph_). It is said at Courmayeur that a
+very few ibexes of a larger variety than those of the Cogne mountains,
+still linger about the Grande Jorasse.
+
+No. 14 (page 92, _first note_). In Northern and Central Italy, one often
+sees hillocks crowned with grove-like plantations of small trees, much
+resembling large arbors. These serve to collect birds, which are
+entrapped in nets in great numbers. These plantations are called
+_ragnaje_, and the reader will find, in Bindi's edition of Davanzati, a
+very pleasant description of a ragnaja, though its authorship is not now
+ascribed to that eminent writer.
+
+No. 15 (page 93, _second note_). The appearance of the dove-like grouse,
+_Tetrao paradoxus_, or _Syrrhaptes Pallasii_, in various parts of
+Europe, in 1859 and the following years, is a noticeable exception to
+the law of regularity which seems to govern the movements and determine
+the habitat of birds. The proper home of this bird is the steppes of
+Tartary, and it is not recorded to have been observed in Europe, or at
+least west of Russia, until the year abovementioned, when many flocks of
+twenty or thirty, and even a hundred individuals, were seen in Bohemia,
+Germany, Holland, Denmark, England, Ireland, and France. A considerable
+flock frequented the Frisian island of Borkum for more than five months.
+It was hoped they would breed and remain permanently in the island, but
+this expectation has been disappointed, and the steppe-grouse seems to
+have disappeared again altogether.
+
+No. 16 (page 94, _note_). From an article by A. Esquiros, in the _Revue
+des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 1, 1864, entitled, _La vie Anglaise_, p. 119,
+it appears that such occurrences as that stated in the note are not
+unfrequent on the British coast.
+
+No. 17 (page 100, _first paragraph_). I cannot learn that caprification
+is now practised in Italy, but it is still in use in Greece.
+
+No. 18 (page 112, _first note_). The recent great multiplication of
+vipers in some parts of France, is a singular and startling fact.
+
+Toussenel, quoting from official documents, states, that upon the offer
+of a reward of fifty centimes, or ten cents, a head, _twelve thousand_
+vipers were brought to the prefect of a single department, and that in
+1859 fifteen hundred snakes and twenty quarts of snakes' eggs were found
+under a farm-house hearthstone. The granary, the stables, the roof, the
+very beds swarmed with serpents, and the family were obliged to abandon
+its habitation. Dr. Viaugrandmarais, of Nantes, reported to the prefect
+of his department more than two hundred recent cases of viper bites,
+twenty-four of which proved fatal.--_Tristia_, p. 176 _et seqq._
+
+No. 19 (page 121, _first note_). The Beduins are little given to the
+chase, and seldom make war on the game birds and quadrupeds of the
+desert. Hence the wild animals of Arabia are less timid than those of
+Europe. On one occasion, when I was encamped during a sand storm of some
+violence in Arabia Petr�a, a wild pigeon took refuge in one of our tents
+which had not been blown down, and remained quietly perched on a boy in
+the midst of four or five persons, until the storm was over, and then
+took his departure, _insalutato hospite_.
+
+No. 20 (page 122). It is possible that time may modify the habits of the
+fresh water fish of the North American States, and accommodate them to
+the now physical conditions of their native waters. Hence it may be
+hoped that nature, even unaided by art, will do something toward
+restoring the ancient plenty of our lakes and rivers. The decrease of
+our fresh water fish cannot be ascribed alone to exhaustion by fishing,
+for in the waters of the valleys and flanks of the Alps, which have been
+inhabited and fished ten times as long by a denser population, fish are
+still very abundant, and they thrive and multiply under circumstances
+where no American species could live at all. On the southern slope of
+those mountains, trout are caught in great numbers, in the swift streams
+which rush from the glaciers, and where the water is of icy coldness,
+and so turbid with particles of fine-ground rock, that you cannot see an
+inch below the surface. The glacier streams of Switzerland, however, are
+less abundant in fish.
+
+No. 21 (page 131, _note_). Vaupell, though agreeing with other writers
+as to the injury done to the forest by most domestic animals--which he
+illustrates in an interesting way in his posthumous work, _The Danish
+Woods_--thinks, nevertheless, that at the season when the mast is
+falling swine are rather useful than otherwise to forests of beech and
+oak, by treading into the ground and thus sowing beechnuts and acorns,
+and by destroying moles and mice.--_De Danske Skore_, p. 12.
+
+No. 22 (page 135, _note_). The able authors of Humphreys and Abbot's
+most valuable Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi,
+conclude that the delta of that river began its encroachments on the
+Gulf of Mexico not more than 4,400 years ago, before which period they
+suppose the Mississippi to have been "a comparatively clear stream,"
+conveying very little sediment to the sea. The present rate of advance
+of the delta is 262 feet a year, and there are reasons for thinking that
+the amount of deposit has long been approximately constant.--_Report_,
+pp. 435, 436.
+
+The change in the character of the river must, if this opinion is well
+founded, be due to some geological revolution, or at least convulsion,
+and the hypothesis of the former existence of one or more great lakes in
+its upper valley, whose bottoms are occupied by the present prairie
+region, has been suggested. The shores of these supposed lakes have not,
+I believe, been traced, or even detected, and we cannot admit the truth
+of this hypothesis without supposing changes much more extensive than
+the mere bursting of the barrier which confined the waters.
+
+No. 23 (page 143, _note_). See on this subject a paper by J. Jamin, in
+the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 15, 1864; and, on the effects of
+human industry on the atmosphere, an article in _Aus der Natur_, vol.
+29, 1864, pp. 443, 449, 465 _et seqq._
+
+No. 24 (page 159, _second paragraph_). All evergreens, even the
+broad-leaved trees, resist frosts of extraordinary severity better than
+the deciduous trees of the same climates. Is not this because the vital
+processes of trees of persistent foliage are less interrupted during
+winter than those of trees which annually shed their leaves, and
+therefore more organic heat is developed?
+
+No. 25 (page 191, _first paragraph_). In discussing the influence of
+mountains on precipitation, meteorologists have generally treated the
+popular belief, that mountains "attract" to them clouds floating within
+a certain distance from them, as an ignorant prejudice, and they ascribe
+the appearance of clouds about high peaks solely to the condensation of
+the humidity of the air carried by atmospheric currents up the slopes of
+the mountain to a colder temperature. But if mountains do not really
+draw clouds and invisible vapors to them, they are an exception to the
+universal law of attraction. The attraction of the small Mount
+Shehallien was found sufficient to deflect from the perpendicular, by a
+measurable quantity, a plummet weighing but a few ounces. Why, then,
+should not greater masses attract to them volumes of vapor weighing
+hundreds of tons, and floating freely in the atmosphere within moderate
+distances of the mountains?
+
+No. 26 (page 198, _note_). �lis�e Redus ascribes the diminution of the
+ponds which border the dunes of Gascony to the absorption of their water
+by the trees which have been planted upon the sands.--_Revue des Deux
+Mondes_, 1 Aug., 1863, p. 694.
+
+No. 27 (page 219, _note_). The waste of wood in European carpentry was
+formerly enormous, the beams of houses being both larger and more
+numerous than permanence or stability required. In examining the
+construction of the houses occupied by the eighty families which inhabit
+the village of Faucigny, in Savoy, in 1834, the forest inspector found
+that _fifty thousand_ trees had been employed in building them. The
+builders "seemed," says Hudry-Menos, "to have tried to solve the problem
+of piling upon the walls the largest quantity of timber possible without
+crushing them."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 June, 1864, p. 601.
+
+No. 28 (page 231, _note_). In a remarkable pamphlet, to which I shall
+have occasion to refer more than once hereafter, entitled _Avant-projet
+pour la cr�ation d'un sol fertile � la surface des Landes de Gascogne_,
+Duponchel argues with much force, that the fertilizing properties of
+river-slime are generally due much more to its mineral than to its
+vegetable constituents.
+
+No. 29 (page 265, _note_). Even the denser silicious stones are
+penetrable by fluids and the coloring matter they contain, to such an
+extent that agates and other forms of silex may be artificially stained
+through their substance. This art was known to and practised by the
+ancient lapidaries, and it has been revived in recent times.
+
+No. 30 (page 268). There is good reason for thinking that many of the
+earth and rock slides in the Alps occurred at an earlier period than the
+origin of the forest vegetation which, in later ages, covered the flanks
+of those mountains. See _Bericht �ber die Untersuchung der
+Schweizerischen Hochgebirgswaldungen_. 1862. P. 61.
+
+Where more recent slides have been again clothed with woods, the trees,
+shrubs, and smaller plants which spontaneously grow upon them are
+usually of different species from those observed upon soil displaced at
+remote periods. This difference is so marked that the site of a slide
+can often be recognized at a great distance by the general color of the
+foliage of its vegetation.
+
+No. 31 (page 286, _note_). It should have been observed that the
+venomous principle of poisonous mushrooms is not decomposed and rendered
+innocent by the process described in the _note_. It is merely extracted
+by the acidulated or saline water employed for soaking the plants, and
+care should be taken that this water be thrown away out of the reach of
+mischief.
+
+No. 32 (page 293, _note_). Gaudry estimates the ties employed in the
+railways of France at thirty millions, to supply which not less than two
+millions of large trees have been felled. These ties have been, upon the
+average, at least once renewed, and hence we must double the number of
+ties and of trees required to furnish them.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15
+July, 1863, p. 425.
+
+No. 33 (page 294, _second paragraph of note_). After all, the present
+consumption of wood and timber for fuel and other domestic and rural
+purposes, in many parts of Europe, seems incredibly small to an
+American. In rural Switzerland, the whole supply of firewood,
+fuel for small smitheries, dairies, breweries, brick and lime
+kilns, distilleries, fences, furniture, tools, and even house
+building--exclusive of the small quantity derived from the trimmings
+of fruit trees, grape vines and hedges, and from decayed fences and
+buildings--does not exceed an average of _two hundred and thirty cubic
+feet_, or less than two cords, a year per household. The average
+consumption of wood in New England for domestic fuel alone, is from five
+to ten times as much as Swiss families require for all the uses above
+enumerated. But the existing habitations of Switzerland are sufficient
+for a population which increases but slowly, and in the peasants' houses
+but a single room is usually heated. See _Bericht �ber die Untersuchung
+der Schweiz. Hochgebirgswaldungen_, pp. 85-89.
+
+No. 34 (page 304). Among more recent manuals may be mentioned: _Les
+�tudes de Maitre Pierre._ Paris, 1864. 12mo; BAZELAIRE, _Trait� de
+Reboisement_. 2d edition, Paris, 1864; and, in Italian, SIEMONI,
+_Manuale teorico-pratico d'arte Forestale_. Firenze, 1864. 8vo. A very
+important work has lately been published in France by Viscount de
+Courval, which is known to me only by a German translation published at
+Berlin, in 1864, under the title, _Das Auf�sten der Waldb�ume_. The
+principal feature of De Courval's very successful system of
+sylviculture, is a mode of trimming which compels the tree to develop
+the stem by reducing the lateral ramification. Beginning with young
+trees, the buds are rubbed off from the stems, and superfluous lateral
+shoots are pruned down to the trunk. When large trees are taken in hand,
+branches which can be spared, and whose removal is necessary to obtain a
+proper length of stem, are very smoothly cut off quite close to the
+trunk, and the exposed surface is _immediately_ brushed over with
+mineral-coal tar. When thus treated, it is said that the healing of the
+wound is perfect, and without any decay of the tree.
+
+No. 35 (page 313). The most gorgeous autumnal coloring I have observed
+in the vegetation of Europe, has been in the valleys of the Durance and
+its tributaries in Dauphiny. I must admit that neither in variety nor in
+purity and brilliancy of tint, does this coloring fall much, if at all,
+short of that of the New England woods. But there is this difference: in
+Dauphiny, it is only in small shrubs that this rich painting is seen,
+while in North America the foliage of large trees is dyed in full
+splendor. Hence the American woodland has fewer broken lights and more
+of what painters call breadth of coloring. Besides this, the arrangement
+of the leafage in large globular or conical masses, affords a wider
+scale of light and shade, thus aiding now the gradation, now the
+contrast of tints, and gives the American October landscape a softer and
+more harmonious tone than marks the humble shrubbery of the forest
+hill-sides of Dauphiny.
+
+Thoreau--who was not, like some very celebrated landscape critics of the
+present day, an outside spectator of the action and products of natural
+forces, but, in the old religious sense, an _observer_ of organic
+nature, living, more than almost any other descriptive writer, among and
+with her children--has a very eloquent paper on the "Autumnal Tints" of
+the New England landscape.--See his _Excursions_, pp. 215 _et seqq._
+
+Few men have personally noticed so many facts in natural history
+accessible to unscientific observation as Thoreau, and yet he had never
+seen that very common and striking spectacle, the phosphorescence of
+decaying wood, until, in the latter years of his life, it caught his
+attention in a bivouac in the forests of Maine. He seems to have been
+more excited by this phenomenon than by any other described in his
+works. It must be a capacious eye that takes in all the visible facts in
+the history of the most familiar natural object.--_The Maine Woods_, p.
+184.
+
+"The luminous appearance of bodies projected against the sky adjacent to
+the rising" or setting sun, so well described in Professor Necker's
+Letter to Sir David Brewster, is, as Tyndall observes, "hardly ever seen
+by either guides or travellers, though it would seem, _prima facie_,
+that it must be of frequent occurrence." See TYNDALL, _Glaciers of the
+Alps_. Part I. Second ascent of Mont Blanc.
+
+Judging from my own observation, however, I should much doubt whether
+this brilliant phenomenon can be so often seen in perfection as would be
+expected; for I have frequently sought it in vain at the foot of the
+Alps, under conditions apparently otherwise identical with those where,
+in the elevated Alpine valleys, it shows itself in the greatest
+splendor.
+
+No. 36 (page 314). European poets, whose knowledge of the date palm is
+not founded on personal observation, often describe its trunk as not
+only slender, but particularly _straight_. Nothing can be farther from
+the truth. When the Orientals compare the form of a beautiful girl to
+the stem of the palm, they do not represent it as rigidly straight, but
+on the contrary as made up of graceful curves, which seem less like
+permanent outlines than like flowing motion. In a palm grove, the
+trunks, so far from standing planted upright like the candles of a
+chandelier, bend in a vast variety of curves, now leaning towards, now
+diverging from, now crossing, each other, and among a hundred you will
+hardly see two whose axes are parallel.
+
+No. 37 (page 316, _first note_). Charles Martin ascribes the power of
+reproduction by shoots from the stump to the cedar of Mount Atlas, which
+appears to be identical with the cedar of Lebanon.--_Revue des Deux
+Mondes_, 15 July, 1864, p. 315.
+
+No. 38 (page 332). In an interesting article on recent internal
+improvements in England, in the London Quarterly Review for January,
+1858, it is related that in a single rock cutting on the Liverpool and
+Manchester railway, 480,000 cubic yards of stone were removed; that the
+earth excavated and removed in the construction of English railways up
+to that date, amounted to a hundred and fifty million cubic yards, and
+that at the Round Down Cliff, near Dover, a single blast of nineteen
+thousand pounds of powder blew down a thousand million tons of chalk,
+and covered fifteen acres of land with the fragments.
+
+No. 39 (page 339). According to Reventlov, whose work is one of the best
+sources of information on the subject of diking-in tide-washed flats,
+_Salicornia herbacea_ appears as soon as the flat is raised high enough
+to be dry for three hours at ordinary ebb tide, or, in other words,
+where the ordinary flood covers it to a depth of not more than two feet.
+At a flood depth of one foot, the _Salicornia_ dies and is succeeded by
+various sand plants. These are followed by _Poa distans_ and _Poa
+maritima_ as the ground is raised by further deposits, and these plants
+finally by common grasses. The _Salicornia_ is preceded by _conferv�_,
+growing in deeper water, which spread over the bottom, and when covered
+by a fresh deposit of slime reappear above it, and thus vegetable and
+alluvial strata alternate until the flat is raised sufficiently high for
+the growth of _Salicornia_.--_Om Marskdannelsen paa Vestkysten af
+Hertugd�mmet Slesvig_, pp. 7, 8.
+
+No. 40 (page 348, _note_). The drijftil employed for the ring dike of
+the Lake of Haarlem, was in part cut in sections fifty feet long by six
+or seven wide, and these were navigated like rafts to the spot where
+they were sunk to form the dike.--EMILE DE LAVELEYE, _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_, 15 Sept., 1863, p. 285.
+
+No. 41 (page 352, _last paragraph_). See on the influence of the
+improvements in question on tidal and other marine currents, Staring,
+_De Bodem van Nederland_, I. p. 279.
+
+Although the dikes of the Netherlands and the adjacent states have
+protected a considerable extent of coast from the encroachments of the
+sea, and have won a large tract of cultivable land from the dominion of
+the waters, it has been questioned whether a different method of
+accomplishing these objects might not have been adopted with advantage.
+It has been suggested that a system of inland dikes and canals, upon the
+principle of those which, as will be seen in a subsequent part of the
+chapter on the waters, have been so successfully employed in the Val di
+Chiana and in Egypt, might have elevated the low grounds above the ocean
+tides, by spreading over them the sediment brought down by the Rhine,
+the Maes, and the Scheld. If this process had been introduced in the
+Middle Ages and constantly pursued to our times, the superficial and
+coast geography, as well as the hydrography of the countries in
+question, would undoubtedly have presented an aspect very different from
+their present condition; and by combining the process with a system of
+maritime dikes, which would have been necessary, both to resist the
+advance of the sea and to retain the slime deposited by river overflows,
+it is possible that the territory of those states would have been as
+extensive as it now is, and, at the same time, more elevated by several
+feet. But it must be borne in mind that we do not know the proportions
+in which the marine deposits that form the polders have been derived
+from materials brought down by these rivers or from other more remote
+sources. Much of the river slime has no doubt been transported by marine
+currents quite beyond the reach of returning streams, and it is
+uncertain how far this loss has been balanced by earth washed by the sea
+from distant shores and let fall on the coasts of the Netherlands and
+other neighboring countries.
+
+We know little or nothing of the quantity of solid matter brought down
+by the rivers of Western Europe in early ages, but, as the banks of
+those rivers are now generally better secured against wash and abrasion
+than in former centuries, the sediment transported by them must be less
+than at periods nearer the removal of the primitive forests of their
+valleys. Kl�den states the quantity of sedimentary matter now annually
+brought down by the Rhine at Bonn to be sufficient only to cover a
+square English mile to the depth of a little more than a
+foot.--_Erdkunde_, I. p. 384.
+
+No. 42 (page 358, _first paragraph_). Meteorological observations have
+been regularly recorded at Zwanenburg, near the north end of the Lake of
+Haarlem, for more than a century, and since 1845 a similar register has
+been kept at the Helder, forty or fifty miles farther north. In
+comparing these two series of observations, it is found that about the
+end of the year 1852, when the drawing off of the waters of the Lake of
+Haarlem was completed, and the preceding summer had dried the grounds
+laid bare so as greatly to reduce the evaporable surface, a change took
+place in the relative temperature of the two stations. Taking the mean
+of every successive period of five days from 1845 to 1852, the
+temperature at Zwanenburg was thirty-three hundredths of a centigrade
+degree _lower_ than at the Helder. Since the end of 1852, the
+thermometer at Zwanenburg has stood, from the 11th of April to the 20th
+of September inclusive, twenty-two hundredths of a degree _higher_ than
+at the Helder, but from the 14th of October to the 17th of March, it has
+averaged one-tenth of a degree _lower_ than its mean between the same
+dates before 1853.
+
+There is no reasonable doubt that these differences are due to the
+draining of the lake. There has been less refrigeration from evaporation
+in summer, and the ground has absorbed more solar heat at the same
+period, while in the winter it has radiated more warmth then when it was
+covered with water. Doubtless the quantity of humidity contained in the
+atmosphere has also been affected by the same cause, but observations do
+not appear to have been made on that point. See KRECKE, _Het Klimaat van
+Nederland_, II. 64.
+
+No. 43 (page 358, _note_). In the course of the present year (1864),
+there have been several land slips on the borders of the Lake of Como,
+and in one instance the grounds of a villa lying upon the margin of the
+water suffered a considerable displacement. If the lake should be
+lowered to any considerable extent, in pursuance of the plan mentioned
+in the note on page 358, there is ground to fear that the steep shores
+of the lake might, at some points, be deprived of a lateral pressure
+requisite to their stability, and slide into the water as on the Lake of
+Lungern. See p. 356.
+
+No. 44 (page 369, _last paragraph but one of note_). In like manner,
+while the box, the cedar, the fir, the oak, the pine, "beams," and
+"timber," are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, not one of
+these words is found in the New, _except_ the case of the "beam in the
+eye," in the parable in Matthew and Luke.
+
+No. 45 (page 375, _note_). In all probability, the real change effected
+by human art in the superficial geography of Egypt, is the conversion of
+pools and marshes into dry land, by a system of transverse dikes, which
+compelled the flood water to deposit its sediment on the banks of the
+river instead of carrying it to the sea. The _colmate_ of modern Italy
+were thus anticipated in ancient Egypt.
+
+No. 46 (page 378). We have seen in _Appendix_, No. 42, _ante_, that the
+mean temperature of a station on the borders of the Lake of Haarlem--a
+sheet of water formerly covering sixty-two and a half square English
+miles--for the period between the 11th of April and the 20th of
+September, had been raised not less than a degree of Fahrenheit by the
+draining of that lake; or, to state the case more precisely, that the
+formation of the lake, which was a consequence of man's improvidence,
+had reduced the temperature one degree F. below the natural standard.
+The artificially irrigated lands of France, Piedmont, and Lombardy,
+taken together, are fifty times as extensive as the Lake of Haarlem, and
+they are situated in climates where evaporation is vastly more rapid
+than in the Netherlands. They must therefore, no doubt, affect the local
+climate to a far greater extent than has been observed in connection
+with the draining of the lake in question. I do not know that special
+observations have been made with a view to measure the climatic effects
+of irrigation, but in the summer I have often found the _morning_
+temperature, when the difference would naturally be least perceptible,
+on the watered plains of Piedmont, nine miles south of Turin, several
+degrees lower than that recorded at an observatory in the city.
+
+No. 47 (page 391, _note_). The Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard,
+near Nismes, was built, in all probability, nineteen centuries ago. The
+bed of the river Gardon, a rather swift stream, which flows beneath it,
+can have suffered but a slight depression since the piers of the
+aqueduct were founded.
+
+No. 48 (page 393, _first note_). Duponchel makes the following
+remarkable statement: "The river Herault rises in a granitic region, but
+soon reaches calcareous formations, which it traverses for more than
+sixty kilometres, rolling through deep and precipitous ravines, into
+which the torrents are constantly discharging enormous masses of pebbles
+belonging to the hardest rocks of the Jurassian period. These debris,
+continually renewed, compose, even below the exit of the gorge where the
+river enters into a regular channel cut in a tertiary deposit, broad
+beaches, prodigious accumulations of rolled pebbles, extending several
+kilometres down the stream, but they diminish in size and weight so
+rapidly that above the mouth of the river, which is at a distance of
+thirty or thirty-five kilometres from the gorge, every trace of
+calcareous matter has disappeared from the sands of the bottom, which
+are exclusively silicious."--_Avant-projet pour la cr�ation d'un sol
+fertile_, etc., p. 20.
+
+No. 49 (page 404, _first paragraph of second note_). The length of the
+lower course of the Po having been considerably increased by the filling
+up of the Adriatic with its deposits, the velocity of the current ought,
+_prima facie_, to have been diminished and its bed raised in proportion.
+There are grounds for believing that this has happened in the case of
+the Nile, and one reason why the same effect has not been more sensibly
+perceptible in the Po is, that the confinement of the current by
+continuous embankments gives it a high-water velocity sufficient to
+sweep out deposits let fall at lower stages and slower movements of the
+water. Torrential streams tend first to excavate, then to raise, their
+beds. No general law on this point can be stated in relation to the
+middle and lower course of rivers. The conditions which determine the
+question of the depression or elevation of a river bed are too
+multifarious, variable, and complex to be subjected to formul�, and they
+can scarcely even be enumerated. See, however, note on p. 431.
+
+No. 50 (page 406, _first paragraph_). The system proposed in the text is
+substantially the Egyptian method, the Nile dikes having been
+constructed rather to retain than to exclude the water. The waters of
+rivers which flow down planes of gentle inclination, deposit in their
+inundations the largest proportion of their sediment as soon as, by
+overflowing their banks, they escape from the swift current of the
+channel, and consequently the immediate banks of such rivers become
+higher than the grounds lying farther from the stream. In the
+"intervals," or "bottoms," of the great North American rivers, the
+alluvial banks are elevated and dry, the flats more remote from the
+river lower and swampy. This is generally observable in Egypt, though
+less so than in the valley of the Mississippi, where, below Cape
+Girardeau, the alluvial banks constitute natural glacis descending as
+you recede from the river, at an average of seven feet in the first
+mile.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S _Report_, pp. 96, 97.
+
+The Egyptian crossdikes, by retaining the water of the inundations,
+compel it to let fall its remaining slime, and hence the elevation of
+the remoter land goes on at a rate not very much slower than that of the
+immediate banks. Probably transverse embankments would produce the same
+effect in the Mississippi valley. In the great floods of this river, it
+is observed that, at a certain distance from the channel, the bottoms,
+though lower than the banks, are flooded to a less depth. See cross
+sections in Plate IV. of Humphreys and Abbot's Report. This apparently
+anomalous fact is due, I suppose, to the greater swiftness of the
+current of the overflowing water in the low grounds, which are often
+drained through the channels of rivers whose beds lie at a lower level
+than that of the Mississippi, or by the bayous which are so
+characteristic a feature of the geography of that valley. A judicious
+use of dikes would probably convert the swamps of the lower Mississippi
+valley into a region like Egypt.
+
+No. 51 (_second note_). The mean discharge of the Mississippi is 675,000
+cubic feet per second, and, accordingly, that river contributes to the
+sea about eleven times as much water as the Po, and more than sis and
+a half times as much as the Nile. The discharge of the Mississippi
+is estimated at one-fourth of the precipitation in its basin,
+certainly a very large proportion, when we consider the rapidity of
+evaporation in many parts of the basin, and the probable loss by
+infiltration.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S _Report_, p. 93.
+
+No. 52 (page 423, _first paragraph_). Artificially directed currents of
+water have been advantageously used in civil engineering for displacing
+and transporting large quantities of earth, and there is no doubt that
+this agency might be profitably employed to a far greater extent than
+has yet been attempted. Some of the hydraulic works in California for
+washing down masses of auriferous earth are on a scale stupenduous
+enough to produce really important topographical changes.
+
+No. 53 (page 435, _first note_). I have lately been informed by a
+resident of the Ionian Islands, who is familiar with this phenomenon,
+that the sea flows uninterruptedly into the sub-insular cavities, at all
+stages of the tide.
+
+No. 54 (page 438, _note_). It is observed in Cornwall that deep mines
+are freer from water in artificially well-drained, than in undrained
+agricultural districts.--ESQUIROS, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Nov. 15,
+1863, p. 430.
+
+No. 55 (page 441). See, on the Artesian wells of the Sahara, and
+especially on the throwing up of living fish by them, an article
+entitled, _Le Sahara_, etc., by Charles Martins, in the _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_ for August 1, 1864, pp. 618, 619.
+
+No. 56 (page 444, _first note_). From the article in the _Rev. des Deux
+Mondes_, referred to in the preceding note, it appears that the wells
+discovered by Ayme were truly artesian. They were bored in rock, and
+provided at the outlet with a pear-shaped valve of stone, by which the
+orifice could be closed or opened at pleasure.
+
+No. 57 (page 447, _second note_). Hull ingeniously suggests that,
+besides other changes, fine sand intermixed with or deposited above a
+coarser stratum, as well as the minute particles resulting from the
+disintegration of the latter, may be carried by rain in the case of
+dunes, or by the ordinary action of sea water in that of subaqueous
+sandbanks, down through the interstices in the coarser layer, and thus
+the relative position of fine sand and gravel may be more or less
+changed.--_Oorsprong der Hollandsche Duinen_, p. 103.
+
+No. 58 (page 479). It appears from Laurent, that marine shells, of
+extant species, are found in the sands of the Sahara, far from the sea,
+and even at considerable depths below the surface.--_M�moires sur le
+Sahara Oriental_, p. 62.
+
+This observation has been confirmed by late travellers, and is an
+important link in the chain of evidence which tends to prove that the
+upheaval of the Libyan desert is of comparatively recent date.
+
+No. 59 (p. 480). "At New Quay [in England] the dune sands are converted
+to stone by an oxyde of iron held in solution by the water which
+pervades them. This stone, which is formed, so to speak, under our eye,
+has been found solid enough to be employed for building."--ESQUIROS,
+_L'Angleterre et la vie Anglaise_, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 March,
+1864, pp. 44, 45.
+
+No. 60 (page 496, _first paragraph_). In Ditmarsh, the breaking of the
+surface by the man[oe]uvering of a corps of cavalry let loose a
+sand-drift which did serious injury before it was subdued.--KOHL,
+_Inseln u. Marschen._ etc., III. p. 282.
+
+Similar cases have occurred in Eastern Massachusetts, from equally
+slight causes.--See THOREAU, _A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
+Rivers_, pp. 151-208.
+
+No. 61 (page 497, _last note_). A more probable explanation of the fact
+stated in the note is suggested by �lis�e Reclus, in an article
+entitled, _Le Littoral de la France_, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for
+Sept. 1, 1864, pp. 193, 194. This able writer believes such pools to be
+the remains of ancient maritime bays, which have been cut off from the
+ocean by gradually accumulated sand banks raised by the waves and winds
+to the character of dunes.
+
+No. 62 (page 506, _note_). The statement in the note is confirmed by
+Olmsted: "There is not a sufficient demand for rosin, except of the
+first qualities, to make it worth transporting from the inland
+distilleries; it is ordinarily, therefore, conducted off to a little
+distance, in a wooden trough, and allowed to flow from it to waste upon
+the ground. At the first distillery I visited, which had been in
+operation but one year, there lay a congealed pool of rosin, estimated
+to contain over three thousand barrels."--_A Journey in the Seaboard
+Slave States_, 1863, p. 345.
+
+No. 63 (page 507). In an article on the dunes of Europe, in Vol. 29
+(1864) of _Aus der Natur_, p. 590, the dunes are estimated to cover, on
+the islands and coasts of Schleswig Holstein, in Northwest Germany,
+Denmark, Holland, and France, one hundred and eighty-one German, or
+nearly four thousand English square miles; in Scotland, about ten
+German, or two hundred and ten English miles; in Ireland, twenty German,
+or four hundred and twenty English miles; and in England, one hundred
+and twenty German, or more than twenty-five hundred English miles.
+
+No. 64 (page 512, _last paragraph_). For a brilliant account of the
+improvement of the Landes, see Edmond About, _Le Progr�s_, Chap, VII.
+
+In the memoir referred to in _Appendix_, No. 48, _ante_, Duponchel
+proposes the construction of artificial torrents to grind calcareous
+rock to slime by rolling and attrition in its bed, and, at the same
+time, the washing down of an argillaceous deposit which is to be mixed
+with the calcareous slime and distributed over the Landes by
+watercourses constructed for the purpose. By this means, he supposes
+that a highly fertile soil could be formed on the surface, which would
+also be so raised by the process as to admit of freer drainage. That
+nothing may be wanting to recommend this project, Duponchel suggests
+that, as some of the rivers of Western France are auriferous, it is
+probable that gold enough may be collected from the washings to reduce
+the cost of the operations materially.
+
+No. 65 (page 528, _first paragraph_). The opening of a channel across
+Cape Cod would have, though perhaps to a smaller extent, the same
+effects in interchanging the animal life of the southern and northern
+shores of the isthmus, as in the case of the Suez canal; for although
+the breadth of Cape Cod does not anywhere exceed twenty miles, and is in
+some places reduced to one, it appears from the official reports on the
+Natural History of Massachusetts, that the population of the opposite
+waters differs widely in species.
+
+Not having the original documents at hand, I quote an extract from the
+_Report on the Invertebrate Animals of Mass._, given by Thoreau,
+_Excursions_, p. 69: "The distribution of the marine shells is well
+worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the
+Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean some fifty or sixty miles. It
+is nowhere many miles wide; but this narrow point of land has hitherto
+proved a barrier to the migration of many species of mollusca. Several
+genera and numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of
+only a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the
+Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other * * * * Of the one
+hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to the
+south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the Cape."
+
+Probably the distribution of the species of mollusks is affected by
+unknown local conditions, and therefore an open canal across the Cape
+might not make every species that inhabits the waters on one side
+common to those of the other; but there can be no doubt that there would
+be a considerable migration in both directions.
+
+The fact stated in the report may suggest an important caution in
+drawing conclusions upon the relative age of formations from the
+character of their fossils. Had a geological movement or movements
+upheaved to different levels the bottoms of waters thus separated by a
+narrow isthmus, and dislocated the connection between those bottoms,
+naturalists, in after ages, reasoning from the character of the fossil
+faunas, might have assigned them to different, and perhaps very widely
+distant, periods.
+
+No. 66 (page 548, _first paragraph_). To the geological effects of the
+thickening of the earth's crust in the Bay of Bengal, are to be added
+those of thinning it on the highlands where the Ganges rises. The same
+action may, as a learned friend suggests to me, even have a cosmical
+influence. The great rivers of the earth, taken as a whole, transport
+sediment from the polar regions in an equatorial direction, and hence
+tend to increase the equatorial diameter, and at the same time, by their
+inequality of action, to a continual displacement of the centre of
+gravity, of the earth. The motion of the globe and of all bodies
+affected by its attraction, is modified by every change of its form, and
+in this case we are not authorized to say that such effects are in any
+way compensated.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbeys of St. Germain and St. Denis, revenues of, 6.
+
+  Adirondack forest, 235;
+    lakes of, 357.
+
+  Ailanthus glandulosa, 515.
+
+  Akaba, gulf of, infiltration of fresh water in, 440.
+
+  Albano, lake of, artificial lowering of, 353.
+
+  Algeria, deserts of, artesian wells in, 443;
+    sand dunes of, 463;
+    consolidated dunes, 480.
+
+  Alpaca, South American, 83.
+
+  Amazon, Indians of, 11.
+
+  Ameland, island of, 499.
+
+  America, North, primitive physical condition of, 27, 43;
+    forests of, 28;
+    possibility of noting its physical changes, 52;
+    by scientific observation, 53;
+    forest trees of, 274;
+    sand dunes of, 469;
+    proposed changes in hydrography of, 532.
+
+  Animal life, sympathy of ruder races with, 39;
+    instinct, fallibility of, 40;
+    hostility of civilized man to inferior forms of, 121.
+
+  Animals, wild, action of on vegetation, 78.
+
+  Aphis, the European, 104.
+
+  Apennines, effects of felling the woods on, 150, 152.
+
+  Appian way, the, 542.
+
+  Aqueducts, geographical and climatic effects of, 358.
+
+  Arabia Petr�a, surface drainage of, 440;
+    sandstone of, 452;
+    sands and petrified wood of, 455;
+    wadies of, 538.
+
+  Aragua, valley of, Venezuela, 202.
+
+  Ararat, Mt., phenomenon of vegetation on, 287.
+
+  Ard�che, l', department of, 152;
+    destruction of forests in, 389.
+
+  -- river and basin, floods of, 386;
+    supply of water to the Rhone, 388, 398;
+    violence of inundations of, 388;
+    damage done by, 390;
+    effect on river beds, 391;
+    force of its affluents, 392.
+
+  Argostoli, Cephalonia, millstreams of, 434.
+
+  Armenia, ancient irrigation of, 366.
+
+  Arno, the river, deposits of, 414;
+    upper course of in the Val di Chiana, 417, 420.
+
+  Artesian wells, their sources, 441;
+    usual objects, 442;
+    occasional effects, 442;
+    employment in the Algerian desert, 443;
+    by the French Government, 444;
+    success and probable results of, 445;
+    known to the ancients, 443;
+    depth of, 444.
+
+  Arundo arenaria, 501.
+
+  Ascension, island of, 205.
+
+  Auk, the wingless, extirpation of, 95.
+
+  Australia a field of physical observation, 51.
+
+  Avalanches, Alpine, various causes of, 266;
+    by felling trees, 270.
+
+  Azoff, sea of, proposed changes, 531.
+
+
+  Babinet, plan for artificial springs, by, 448.
+
+  Baikal Lake, the fish of, 117.
+
+  Baltic Sea, sand dunes of, 467.
+
+  Barcelonette, valley of, former fertility, 243;
+    present degradation of, 244.
+
+  Bavaria, scarcity of fuel in, 299.
+
+  Bear, the mythical character of, 40.
+
+  Beaver, the, agency in forming bogs, 31;
+    cause of its increased numbers, 84.
+
+  Bee, the honey, products of, 105;
+    introduction in United States, 106.
+
+  Belgium, effect of plantations in, 152;
+    Campine of, 513.
+
+  Ben G�si, district of, rock formation in, 537.
+
+  Bergamo, change of climate in the valley of, 151.
+
+  Bibliographical list of authorities, vii.
+
+  Birch tree (black and yellow), produce of, 171.
+
+  Birds, number of, in United States, 86;
+    the turkey, dove, pigeon, 87;
+    as sowers and consumers of seeds, 87;
+    as destroyers of insects, 89;
+    injurious extirpation of, 90;
+    wanton destruction of, 92;
+    weakness of, 93;
+    instinct of migratory, 94;
+    extinction of species, 95;
+    commercial value of, 97;
+    introduction of species, 98.
+
+  Bison, the American, 78;
+    number and migrations of, 81, 83;
+    domesticated, 135.
+
+  Blackbird, the proscription of, 91.
+
+  Bogs, formation and nomenclature of, 29-32;
+    of New England, 29;
+    repositories of fuel, 30.
+
+  Br�montier, system of dune plantations of, 503;
+    a benefactor to his race, 515.
+
+  Breton, Cap, dune vineyards of, 508.
+
+  Busbequius' letters, 64.
+
+
+  Camel, the, transfer and migrations of, 83;
+    injurious to vegetation, 132.
+
+  Campine of Belgium, 513.
+
+  Canada thistle, the, 68.
+
+  Canals, geographic and climatic effects of, 359;
+    injurious effects of Tuscan, 359;
+    projected, Suez, 519;
+    Isthmus of Darien, 522;
+    to the Dead Sea, 524;
+    maritime, in Greece, 526;
+    Saros, 527;
+    Cape Cod, 528;
+    the Don and the Volga, 531;
+    Lake Erie and the Genesee, 532;
+    Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, 533.
+
+  Cape Cod, sand dunes of, 487;
+    legislative protection of, 502;
+    vegetation of, 503;
+    projected canal through, 528.
+
+  Cappercailzie, the, extinction of, in Britain, 96.
+
+  Carniola, caves of, 434.
+
+  Caspian Sea, proposed changes in its basin, 531.
+
+  Catania, lava streams of, 544.
+
+  Catavothra of Greece, 536.
+
+  C�vennes, effects of clearing the, 153.
+
+  Champlain, lake, dates of its congelation, 163.
+
+  Cherbourg, breakwater of, 46, 332.
+
+  Chiana, Val di, description and character of, 417-420;
+    plans for its restoration, 420;
+    artificial drainage of, attempted, 421;
+    successfully executed, 423.
+
+  Clergy, medi�val, their character, 282.
+
+  Climatic change, discussions of, 9;
+    how tested, 20;
+    causes producing, in New England, Africa, Arabia Petr�a, 20-22;
+    man's action on, difficult to ascertain, 51;
+    deterioration, 71.
+
+  Coal mines, combustion of, 546.
+
+  Coal, sea, early use of, for fuel, 222;
+    increased use of, in Paris, 295.
+
+  Coast line, change of, from natural causes, 331;
+    subject to human guidance, 332.
+
+  Cochineal insect transferred to Spain, 105.
+
+  Cochituate Aqueduct, Boston, 103.
+
+  Col Isoard, valley of, devastated, 242.
+
+  Commerce, modern, on what dependent, 60.
+
+  Como, lake of, proposed lowering of, 358.
+
+  Constance, lake of, 534.
+
+  Cork-oak tree, yield of, 311.
+
+  Corporations, social and political, influence of, 54.
+
+  Cosmical influences, 13.
+
+  Cotton, early cultivation of, 61;
+    can be raised by white labor, 381.
+
+  Crawley Sparrow Club, 90.
+
+  Currents, sea, strength of, 456;
+    in the Bosphorus, 457.
+
+  Cuyahoga river, 208.
+
+  Cypress tree, its beauty, 314.
+
+
+  Darien, Isthmus of, proposed canal across, 522;
+    conjectural effects of, 523.
+
+  Dead Sea, projected canals to, 524;
+    possible results of, 525.
+
+  Deer, numbers of, in United States; 82;
+    tame, injurious to trees, 130.
+
+  Denmark, peat mosses of, 22;
+    dunes of, 497;
+    extent and movement of, 498;
+    legislative protection of, 501, 504.
+
+  Desert, the, richness of local color, 445;
+    mirage in, 446.
+
+  Des Plaines river, 533.
+
+  Despotism a cause of physical decay, 5.
+
+  Dikes, recovery of land by, in the Netherlands, 335;
+    early usage and immense extent of, 336;
+    encouraged by the Spaniards, 337;
+    details of their construction and effect on the land
+          gained, 340-345;
+    in Egypt, 413.
+
+  Dinornis, or moa, recent extirpation of, in New Zealand, 95.
+
+  Dodo, the, extirpation of, 95.
+
+  Domestic animals, action of, on vegetation, 79;
+    origin and transfer of, 82;
+    injurious to the forest growth, 130.
+
+  Don river, proposed diversion of, 531.
+
+  Draining a geographical element, 360;
+    superficial, its necessity in forest lands, 363;
+    effect on temperature, 364;
+    underground, _ib._;
+    extensive use of, in England, 362;
+    affects the atmosphere, 364;
+    disturbs the equilibrium of river supply, 365;
+    by boring, 362;
+    in France, &c., 362;
+    Paris, 363.
+
+  Drance, Switzerland, glacier lake of, 403.
+
+  Dry land and water, relative extent of, 178.
+
+  Dwight, Dr., Travels in the United States, characterized, 52.
+
+
+  Earth, fertile, below the rock, 537;
+    transported to cover rocky surfaces, 537.
+
+  Earthquakes, effects of, 542;
+    causes and possible prevention of, 543;
+    of Lisbon, 544.
+
+  Earthworm, utility of, in agriculture, 100;
+    multiplication of, in New England, 101.
+
+  Egypt, catacombs, 70;
+    papyrus or water lily, 70;
+    poisonous snakes of, 112;
+    supposed increase of rain in, 190;
+    productiveness of, 230;
+    necessity and extent of irrigation in, 368, 373;
+    cultivated soil of, 372, 374;
+    population of, 374;
+    amount of water used for irrigation, 380;
+    saline deposits, 382;
+    artificial river courses of, 402;
+    cultivated area of, 412;
+    sands of, 458;
+    their prevalence and extent, 459;
+    source of, 461;
+    action on the Delta and cultivated land, 462;
+    effect of the diversion of the Nile on, 529;
+    refuse heaps near Cairo, 541.
+
+  Eland, the, preserved in Prussia, 86.
+
+  Elm, the Washington, Cambridge, 146.
+
+  Elsineur, artificial formation in harbor of, 539.
+
+  England, forest economy of, 221;
+    large extent of ornamental plantations, 222;
+    Forests of, described by C�sar, 222;
+    private enterprise in sylviculture, 292;
+    sand dunes of, 507.
+
+  Enguerrand de Coucy, cruelty of, 281.
+
+  Erie Canal, the, influence on the fauna and flora of its region, 116;
+    lake, depth and level of, 532;
+    proposed canal from, 532.
+
+  Espy's theories of artificial rain, 547.
+
+  Etna, volcanic lava and dust, 131.
+
+  Euphrates, sand plains in the valley of, 511.
+
+  Eye, cultivation of the, 11;
+    control of the limbs by, 12;
+    trained by the study of physical geography, 12.
+
+
+  Feudalism, pernicious influence of, 6.
+
+  Fir tree, the, its products, 311.
+
+  Fire weed, in burnt forests of the United States, 287.
+
+  Fish, destruction of, by man, 112, 114, 120, 122;
+    voracity of, 114;
+    introduction and breeding of foreign, 116;
+    naturalization of, 117;
+    inferiority of the artificially fattened, 121.
+
+  Fish, shell, extensive remains of, in United States, 117;
+    of Indian origin, 128.
+
+  Fish ponds of Catholic countries, 426.
+
+  Fontainebleau, forest of, 34, 130;
+    poaching in, 284;
+    its renovation, 316;
+    soil of, 513.
+
+  Food, ancient arts of preservation of, 18.
+
+  Forest, the, influence of, on the humidity of air, 162;
+    do. of earth, 165;
+    as organic, 166;
+    balance of conflicting influences in, 176;
+    influence on temperature, 178;
+    on precipitation, 181, 196;
+    in South America, 184;
+    the Canary Islands and Asia Minor, 185;
+    Peru, 188;
+    Palestine, Southern France, Scotland and Egypt, 189;
+    influence of, on humidity of soil, 196;
+    on springs, 197;
+    in Venezuela, 202;
+    New Granada, 204;
+    Switzerland and France, 205, 208;
+    United States, 207;
+    in winter, 210;
+    general consequences of its destruction, 214;
+    on the earth, springs, rivers, 215;
+    literature of, in France, 217;
+    Germany, 218;
+    Italy, 218;
+    England, 221;
+    influence of, on inundations, 223;
+    in North America, 225;
+    disputed effects of, in Europe, 228;
+    principal causes of its destruction, 270;
+    in British America, 271;
+    in Europe, 279;
+    royal forests, 280;
+    effects of the Revolution on, in France, 284;
+    utility of, for the preservation of smaller plants, 286, 290;
+    do. of birds, 291;
+    economic utility of, and necessity for its restoration, 292;
+    extent of, in Europe, 296;
+    proportion in different countries of, 300;
+    of the United States and Canada, 300;
+    economy of, 303;
+    management of, in France, 304;
+    European forests, all of artificial growth, 305;
+    artificial and natural, their respective advantages, 307;
+    American do., their peculiar characteristics, 313;
+    economic action of cattle on, 325;
+    duty of preserving, 327;
+    average revenue from, 327;
+    regulated by laws in France, 395.
+    See _Trees_, _Woods_.
+
+  Forests of North America, balance of geographical elements in, 27;
+    agency of quadrupeds and insects in, 32;
+    injury to, by insects, 33;
+    meteorological importance of, 139.
+
+  Forest laws, medi�val, character of, 217;
+    do. Jewish, 217;
+    severity of, in France and England, 280;
+    under Louis IX., 281;
+    of America, created by circumstances, 302.
+
+  France, forest literature and economy of, 217;
+    legislation on forests, 233;
+
+  -- Southeastern, former physical state of, 237;
+    altered condition of, 239;
+    royal forests of, and forest laws, 280;
+    extent of, in, 296;
+    ancient lakes of, 357;
+    inundations of 1856 in, 393;
+    remedies against inundations in, 395;
+    sand dunes of Western, 485;
+    encroachments of the sea on, 494.
+
+  French peasantry, described by La Bruyere, 6;
+    do. Arthur Young, 7;
+    of Chambord, 283.
+
+  Friesland, sand dunes of, 489.
+
+  Fucinus Lake (Lago di Celano), drainage of, by the Romans, 354;
+    moderns, 355.
+
+
+  Game Laws, effect on the numbers of birds in France, 91;
+    in England and Italy, 92;
+    severity of, in France, 283;
+    unable to stop poaching, 284.
+
+  Ganges, valley of the, 548.
+
+  Gascony, coast sands of, 453;
+    dunes of, 496;
+    extent and advance of, 497;
+    fixing and reclaiming of, 504;
+    Landes of, 511;
+    their reclamation, 512.
+
+  Geological influences, 13.
+
+  Geographers, new school of, 8.
+
+  Geographical influence of changes produced by man, 352.
+
+  Geography, modern, improved form of, 57.
+
+  German Ocean, sands of, 454, 457.
+
+  Germany, extent of forests in, 299.
+
+  Glacier lakes in Switzerland, 403.
+
+  Goat, the Cashmere or Thibet, 83.
+
+  Gold fish, the migration from China, 116.
+
+  Goldau, Switzerland, destruction of, 268.
+
+  Grape disease, its economic effect in France, Italy, Sicily, 72.
+
+  Grasshopper, the rapid increase in America, 291.
+
+  Gravedigger beetle, the, 107.
+
+  Greece,
+    proposed maritime canals in, through the Corinthian Isthmus, 526;
+    Mount Athos, 527;
+    subterranean waters of, 536.
+
+  Gulls, sea, habits of, 98.
+
+  Gulf stream, the, 523.
+
+  Gunpowder chiefly used for industrial purposes, 335.
+
+
+  Haarlem Lake, origin and extent of, 346, 347;
+    reasons for draining it, 348;
+    means employed, 349;
+    successful results, 350.
+
+  Hauran, the productions of, its soil, 74.
+
+  Heilbronn, springs at, 207.
+
+  Herring fishery, produce of, 120.
+
+  Hessian fly, introduction of in the United States, 104.
+
+  Honey bee, the wild, New England, legal usage, 302.
+
+  Humid air, movement of, 183.
+
+  Hunter in New England, exploits of, 82.
+
+
+  Ibex, the Alpine, 86.
+
+  India, saline efflorescence of its soil, 382;
+    natural connection of rivers in, 401.
+
+  Insects, injurious to vegetable life, 33;
+    utility of, 99;
+    agency in the fertilization of orchids, 102;
+    mass of their exuvi� in South America, 102;
+    introduction of injurious species, 104, 106;
+    ravages of, 105;
+    tenacity of life in, 106;
+    the carnivorous, useful to man, 107;
+    destruction of, by fish, 108;
+    abundance of, in Northern Europe, 108;
+    destruction of, by birds, 109;
+    do. quadrupeds, 110;
+    do. reptiles, 110;
+    do not multiply in the forest, 291;
+    confine themselves to dead trees, 322.
+
+  Inundations, influence of the forest on, 223;
+    of the German Ocean, 334;
+    means for obviating, 384;
+    of 1856 in France, 393;
+    remedies against, 395;
+    legislative regulation of the woodlands in France for
+          prevention of, 396;
+    proposed basins of reception, 398;
+    do. in Peru and Spain, 400;
+    Rozet's plan for diminishing, 406.
+
+  Irrigation, remote date of in ancient nations, 366;
+    among Mexicans and Peruvians, 366;
+    its necessity in hot climates, 367;
+    in Europe, 367;
+    in Palestine, 368;
+    in Idum�a, 370;
+    Egypt, 371, 373;
+    quantity of water so applied, 376, 377;
+    extent of lands irrigated, 396;
+    effects of, 378;
+    on river supply, 380;
+    on human health, 381;
+    saline deposits from, in India and Egypt, 382;
+    effect of, on vegetable crops, 378;
+    on the soil, 379;
+    economic evils of, 379.
+
+  Islands, floating, in Holland and South America, 349, 351.
+
+  Ijssel river, Holland, 535.
+
+  Italy, effects of the denudation of its forests, 220;
+    political condition adverse to their preservation, 219;
+    beauty of its winter scenery, 314;
+    extent of irrigation in, 368;
+    atmospheric phenomena of Northern, 368.
+
+
+  Jupiter, satellites of, visible to the eye, 12.
+
+  Jutland, effects of felling the woods in, 150;
+    destruction of forests in, 279;
+    encroachments of the sea on, 491.
+
+
+  Kander river, Switzerland, artificial course of, 403.
+
+  Karst, the subterranean waters of, 536.
+
+  Kj�kkenm�ddinger in Denmark, 16;
+    their extent, 540.
+
+  Kohl, J. G., "the Herodotus of modern Europe," 340;
+   on dune sand, 475.
+
+
+  Labrugui�re, commune of, 208.
+
+  L�stadius, account of the Swedish Laplanders, 96.
+
+  Lakes, draining of, by steam hydraulic engines, 346;
+    natural process of filling up by aquatic vegetation, 349;
+    lowering of, in ancient and modern times, 353;
+    in Italy, 354;
+    in Switzerland, 356;
+    inconvenient consequences of, 356;
+    mountain, their disappearance, 357.
+
+  Landscape beauty, insensibility of the ancients to, 2;
+    of the oasis and the desert, 445.
+
+  Lava currents, diversion of their course, 544;
+    from Vesuvius, phenomena of, 545;
+    heat emitted by, 545.
+
+  Life, balance of animal and vegetable, 103.
+
+  Liimfjord, the, irruption of the sea into, 491;
+    aquatic vegetation of, 492;
+    original state of, 519.
+
+  Lion, an inhabitant of Europe, 85.
+
+  Lisbon, earthquake of, 544.
+
+  Locust, the, does not multiply in woods, 296;
+    tree and insect, 32.
+
+  Lombardy, statistics of irrigation in, 376.
+
+  Louis IX., of France, clemency of, 282.
+
+  Lower Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, 246.
+
+  Lumber trade of Quebec, 271;
+    of United States, 1850-'60, 301.
+
+  Lungern, lake of, lowering of, 356.
+
+
+  Madagascar, gigantic bird of, 96;
+    the ai-ai of, 110.
+
+  Madder, early cultivation of, in Europe, 20.
+
+  Madeira, named from its forests, 129.
+
+  Maize, early cultivation of, law of its acclimation, 19;
+    native country of, 73.
+
+  Malta, transported soil of, 538;
+    salt works at, 540.
+
+  Man, reaction of, on nature, 8;
+    insufficiency of data, 9;
+    geographical influence of, 13;
+    physical revolutions wrought by, 14;
+    unpremeditated results of conscious action, 15;
+    ancient relics of, in old geological formations, 16;
+    mechanical effects of, on the earth's surface, 25;
+    destructiveness of, 35;
+    in animal life and inorganic nature, 36-39;
+    character of his action compared with that of brutes, 42;
+    subversive of the balance of nature, 43;
+    sometimes exercised for good, 44;
+    present limits to, 45;
+    transfer of vegetable life by, 59;
+    remains of, 76;
+    contemporary with the mammoth, 77;
+    agency in the extermination of birds, 96;
+    do. introduction of species, 98;
+    increase of insect life, 104;
+    introduction of new forms of do. by, 105;
+    destruction of fish by, 112, 120, 122;
+    extirpation of aquatic animals by, 119;
+    possible control of minute organisms, 125;
+    his first physical conquest, 135;
+    his action on land and the waters, 330;
+    possible geographical changes by, 517;
+    incidental effects of his action, 539;
+    illimitable and ever enduring do., 548.
+
+  Maremme of Tuscany, ancient and medi�val state of, 425;
+    extent of, 427;
+    inhabitants, 428;
+    improvement of, 429;
+    sedimentary deposits of, 425, 430.
+
+  Marine isthmuses, cutting of, 517;
+    its difficulties, 518;
+    sometimes done by nature, 519.
+
+  Marmato in Popayan, 205.
+
+  Marshes, climatic effects of draining, 358;
+    insalubrity of mixture of fresh and salt water in, 417.
+
+  Mechanic arts, illustration of their mutual interdependence, 307.
+
+  Medanos of the South American desert, 482.
+
+  Mediterranean Sea, tides of, 425;
+    sand dunes of, 467;
+    poor in organic life, 520.
+
+  Mella, the river, Italy, 248.
+
+  Meteorology, uncertainty and late rise of, 16, 22;
+    varying nomenclature of, 23;
+    precipitation and evaporation, 24.
+
+  Michigan, lake, sand dunes of, 467;
+    originally wooded, 487;
+    proposed diversion of its waters, 532.
+
+  Mining excavations, effects of, 545.
+
+  Minute organisms, their offices, 123;
+    universal diffusion and products of, 124, 127;
+    possible control of their agency by man, 125;
+    the coral insect, 125;
+    the diatomace�, 126.
+
+  Miramichi, great fire of, 28.
+
+  Mistral in France, 153.
+
+  Mississippi river, "cut offs" and their effect, 415;
+    precipitation in the valley of, 436;
+    projected canal to, 533.
+
+  Mountain slides, their cause, 265, 268;
+    their frequency in the Alps, 267.
+
+  Mountainous countries, their liability to physical degradation, 50.
+
+  Monte Testaccio, Rome, 541.
+
+  Moose deer, the American, rapid multiplication of, 130.
+
+  Mushrooms, poisonous, how to render harmless, 286.
+
+
+  Natural forces, accumulation of, 46;
+    resistance to, 542.
+
+  Nature, man's reaction on, 8;
+    observation of, 10;
+    stability of, 27, 34;
+    restoration of disturbed harmonies of, 35;
+    nothing small in, 548.
+
+  Naturalists, enthusiasm of, 99.
+
+  Netherlands, ancient inundations of, 334;
+    recovery of land by diking, 334;
+    the practice derived from the Romans, 335;
+    extent of land gained from the sea, 336;
+    do. lost by incursions of do., 337;
+    character of lands gained, 338;
+    natural process of recovery, 339;
+    grandeur of the dike system of, 340;
+    method of their construction in, 341;
+    modes of protection, 343;
+    various uses of, 343;
+    effect on the level of the land, 344;
+    drainage of do., 345;
+    primitive condition of, 351;
+    effects on the social, moral, and economic interests of the
+          people of, 351;
+    sand dunes of, 486;
+    encroachments of the sea on, 494;
+    artificial dunes in, 499;
+    protection of dunes in, 500;
+    removal of do., 509.
+
+  Nile, the river, valley of, 374;
+    its ancient state, 375;
+    inundations of, 385;
+    water delivery of, 387;
+    artificial mouths of, 402;
+    consequences of diking, 410, 413;
+    richness of its deposits, 411;
+    extent of do., 412;
+    mud banks caused by its deposits, 433;
+    sand dunes at its mouths, 468;
+    conduits for irrigation, 521;
+    proposed diversion of, 528;
+    not impossible, 529;
+    effects of, 530;
+    ceramic banks of, 541.
+
+  Northmen in New England, 60.
+
+  Nubians, Nile boats of the, 17.
+
+  Numbers, the frequent error in too definite statements of, 260;
+    oriental and Italian usage of, 261.
+
+
+  Oak, the English, early uses in the arts, 223;
+    "openings" of North America, 136.
+
+  Ohio, mounds of, 18;
+    remains of a primitive people in, 135, 138;
+    apple trees of, 22.
+
+  Old World, former populousness of, 4;
+    physical decay of, 3;
+    present desolation of, 5;
+    its causes, 5;
+    ancient climate of, 19;
+    physical restoration of, 47.
+
+  Olive tree, the wild, 74;
+    importance of, 312.
+
+  Orange tree known to the ancients, 64;
+    the wild, 74.
+
+  Orchids, fertilization of, by insects, 102.
+
+  Organic life embraced in modern geography, 57;
+    its geological agency, 75;
+    geographical importance of, 7;
+    bones and relics of, human and animal, 76.
+
+  Ostrich, the, diminution of its numbers, 97.
+
+  Ottaquechee river, Vermont, transporting power of, 253.
+
+  Otter, the American, voracity of, 120.
+
+  Oxen, agricultural uses of, in United States, 80.
+
+  Oyster, the, transplantation of, 118.
+
+
+  Palestine, ancient terrace culture and irrigation of, 369;
+    disastrous effects of its neglect, 370.
+
+  Palissy, Bernard, character of, 218;
+    plan for artificial springs, 447.
+
+  Paragrandini of Lombardy, 141.
+
+  Paramelle, the Abb�, on fountains, 437.
+
+  Peat beds, accidental burning of, 546;
+    -- mosses of Denmark, 32.
+
+  Pecora, river of the Maremma, its deposits, 425.
+
+  Peru, ancient progress in the arts, 366;
+    basins of reception in, 400.
+
+  Petra, in Idum�a, ancient irrigation at, 370.
+
+  Phosphorescence of the sea unknown to the ancients, 114.
+
+  Physical decay of the earth's surface, 3;
+    its causes, 5;
+    arrest of, in new countries, 48;
+    forms and formations predisposing to, 49.
+
+  Physical geography, study of recommended, 12;
+    restoration of the earth, 8;
+    importance and possibility of, 26;
+    of disturbed harmonies, 35;
+    of the Old World, 47.
+
+  Pine, the American, former ordinary dimensions of, 275;
+    how affected by the accidents of its growth, 306;
+    the maritime, on dune sands in France, 506;
+    the pitch, hardihood of, 273;
+    umbrella, the, most elegant of trees, 309, 313;
+    the white, rapidity of its growth, 274.
+
+  Pinus cembra of Switzerland, 309.
+
+  Pisciculture, its valuable results, 118.
+
+  Plants, cultivated, uncertain identity of ancient and modern, 19;
+    do. of wild and domestic species, 73;
+    changes of habit by domestication, 19;
+    geographical influence of, 58;
+    foreign, grown in United States, 61;
+    American, grown in Europe, 63;
+    modes of introduction, 64;
+    accidental do., 66;
+    power of accommodation of, 65;
+    how affected by transfer, 68;
+    tenacity of life in wild species, 69;
+    extirpation of, 70;
+    domestic origin of, 72;
+    species employed for protection of sand dunes, 500.
+
+  Pliny, the elder, theory of springs, 198, 216.
+
+  Po, river, ancient state of its basin, 255;
+    modern changes, 256;
+    its floods, tributaries, and deposits, 256-261, 405;
+    embankments of, 385, 404;
+    sediment of, 410;
+    age and consequences of its embankments, 411;
+    mean delivery of, 412;
+    _salti_ of, 415.
+
+  Poland, sand plains of, 514.
+
+  Poplar, the Lombardy, 68;
+    characterized, 313.
+
+  Potato, native country of, 73.
+
+  Prairies, conjectural origin of, 134.
+
+  Provence, physical structure of, 237;
+    ancient state of, 238;
+    destructive action of torrents on, 236;
+    Alps of, 245.
+
+  Prussia, sand dunes of, 485;
+    drifting of, 498;
+    measures for reclaiming of, 505.
+
+
+  Quadrupeds, number in United States, 79;
+    extirpation of, 84.
+
+  Quebec, high tides of, 271;
+    lumber trade of, 272.
+
+
+  Railways, scientific uses of, 53.
+
+  Rain water, its absorption and infiltration, 438, 439;
+    economizing its precipitation, 449.
+
+  Ravenna, cathedral of, 60;
+    pine woods of, 150.
+
+  Red Sea, richness of, in organic life, 320;
+    diversion of the Nile to, its effects, 530.
+
+  Reindeer, the, 83.
+
+  Reservoirs, geographic and climatic effects of, 258.
+
+  Reventlov's organization of dune economy in Denmark, 504;
+    a benefactor to his race, 515.
+
+  Rhine, river, proposed diversion of, 533.
+
+  Rice, cultivation of, 381.
+
+  Rivers, transporting power of, 252;
+    in Vermont, 253;
+    their origin, 262;
+    injury to their banks by lumbermen, 277;
+    conditions of their rise and fall, 278;
+    mutual action of rivers and valleys, 408;
+    effect of obstructions in, 409;
+    subterranean course of, 409;
+    confluences of, effect on the current below, 424;
+    sediment of, its extent, 547.
+
+  River beds, natural change of, 401;
+    artificial do. in Egypt, 402;
+    Italy and Switzerland, 403.
+
+  River deposits, 408;
+    of the Nile, 410;
+    the Po, 411;
+    the Tuscan rivers, 414.
+
+  River embankments, 384;
+    their use, 404;
+    disadvantages, 405;
+    transverse do., superiority of, 406;
+    effects of, 409.
+
+  River mouths, obstructions of, 430;
+    by sand banks, 431;
+    accelerated by man's influence, 432;
+    effect of tidal movements, 432.
+
+  Robin, the American, voracity of, 88.
+
+  Rock generally permeable by water, 265.
+
+  Roman empire, natural advantages of its territory, 1;
+    increased by intelligent labor, 2;
+    physical decay of, 3;
+    present desolation, 4;
+    caused by its despotism and oppression, 5.
+
+  Rozet's plan for diminishing inundations, 406.
+
+  Rude tribes, continuity of arts among, 17;
+    commerce of, 18;
+    relations to organic life, 39;
+    and to nature, 41.
+
+  Russia, diminution of forests in, 298;
+    effects of, on rivers and lakes, 299;
+    sand drifts of the steppes of, 514;
+    attempts to reclaim them, 515.
+
+
+  Sacramento City, California, effect of river dike at, 405.
+
+  Sand, its composition and origin, 452;
+    action of rivers, 453;
+    ancient deposits of, 454, 456;
+    amount of, carried to the Mediterranean, 455;
+    of Egypt, 458, 461;
+    movement of, by the wind, 459;
+    drifts of, from the sea, 461;
+    dangers of accumulation of, 463;
+    two forms of deposit, 463;
+    drifting of dune, 495.
+
+  Sand banks, aquatic, 468;
+    movement of, 469;
+    connect themselves with the coast, 490.
+
+  Sand dunes, how formed, 464;
+    utilization of, 465;
+    inland, of the South American desert, 482;
+    their peculiarities, 483;
+    age, character, and permanence of, 484;
+    naturally wooded, 486;
+    not noticed by ancient writers, 487;
+    management of, 488;
+    coast, sources of supply, 465;
+    law of their formation, 466, 471, 483;
+    of the Mediterranean, 467;
+    of Lake Michigan, 467;
+    of the Nile mouths, 468;
+    of America, 469;
+    of Western Europe, 470;
+    literature of, 471;
+    height of, 472;
+    humidity of, 473;
+    of Cape Cod, 487;
+    character of their sand, 474, 481;
+    concretion within, 476;
+    interior structure of, 477;
+    general form of, 478;
+    geological importance of, 479;
+    composition of sandstone, 481;
+    as barriers against the sea, 489;
+    in Western Europe, 490;
+    extent of, 507;
+    of Gascony, 496;
+    of Denmark, 497;
+    of Prussia, 497;
+    artificial formation of, in Holland, 499;
+    protection of, 500;
+    by vegetation, 501;
+    trees adapted to, 505;
+    removal of, 509.
+
+  Sand-dune vineyard of Cap Breton, 508.
+
+  Sand plains, mode of deposit, 464;
+    constituent parts, 464;
+    inland, of Europe, 509;
+    landes of Gascony, 511;
+    Belgium, 513;
+    Eastern Europe, 513;
+    advantages of reclaiming, 515;
+    private and public enterprise, 516.
+
+  Sand springs, 511.
+
+  Sandal wood extirpated in Juan Fernandez, 130.
+
+  Saros, projected canal of, 527.
+
+  Sawmills, action of their machinery more rapid by night, 278.
+
+  Schelk, the extirpation of, 85.
+
+  Schleswig-Holstein, encroachments of the sea on, 493.
+
+  Scientific observation, practical lessons of, 54-56.
+
+  Sea, the, exclusion of, by dikes, in Lincolnshire, 333;
+    encroachments of, 490;
+    coast, 491;
+    the Liimfjord, 491;
+    Schleswig-Holstein, 493;
+    Holland, 494;
+    France, 494.
+
+  Sea cow, Steller's, extirpation of, 119.
+
+  Seal, the, in Lake Champlain, 117;
+    voracity of, 120.
+
+  Seeds, vitality of, as preserved by the forest, 287, 289.
+
+  Seine river, ancient level of, 214;
+    affluents of, 435.
+
+  Ship building of the middle ages, Venice and Genoa, 218.
+
+  Siberia, ice ravine in, 158.
+
+  Sicily, stone weapons found in, 18;
+    sulphur mines of, 72;
+    olive oil crop of, 312.
+
+  Silkworm, introduction in South America, 105.
+
+  Sinai, Mt., rain torrent at, 441;
+    production of sand in peninsula of, 454;
+    garden of monastery at, 537.
+
+  Snakes, destructive to insects, 110;
+    tenacity of species, 111;
+    number of, in Palestine and Egypt, 111.
+
+  Snow, action of the woods on, 211;
+    experiments on, 212.
+
+  Soils, amount of thermoscopic action on various, 144;
+    mechanical effects of shaking in the Netherlands, 344;
+    effect of frost on, in United States, 344.
+
+  Solar heat, economic employment of, 47.
+
+  Solitary, the, extirpation of, 95.
+
+  Sound, transmission of, in still air, 165.
+
+  Springs, artificial, proposed by Palissy, 447;
+    by Babinet, 448.
+
+  Spain, neglect of forest culture in, 279.
+
+  Squirrel, the, destructiveness of, in forests, 34;
+    of Boston, 121.
+
+  St. Helena, flora of, 65;
+    destruction of its forests, 130.
+
+  Staffordshire, phenomena of vegetation in, 288.
+
+  Starlings, habits of, in Piedmont, 111.
+
+  Stork, the, geographical range of, 93;
+    anecdote of a, 99.
+
+  Subterranean waters, their origin, 434;
+    sources of supply, 435;
+    reservoirs and currents of, 438;
+    diffusion of, in the soil, 439;
+    importance, 440;
+    of the Karst, 535;
+    of Greece, 536.
+
+  Suez canal, the, danger from sand drifts, 461;
+    effect on the Mediterranean and Red Sea basins, 520.
+
+  Sugar cane, culture of, 62.
+
+  Sugar-maple tree, produce of, 169.
+
+  Summer dikes of Holland, 342.
+
+  Sunflowers, effect of plantations of, 154.
+
+  Swallow, the, popular superstitions respecting, 418.
+
+  Switzerland, ancient lacustrine habitations of, 16, 70, 83.
+
+  Sylt Island, sand dunes of, 474;
+    encroachments of the sea on, 493.
+
+  Sylviculture, best manuals of practice of, 304;
+    when and how profitable, 305;
+    its methods, 315;
+    the _taillis_ treatment, 315;
+    the _futaie_ do., 317;
+    beneficial effects of irrigation, 319;
+    exclusion of animals, 321;
+    removal of leaves, &c., 322;
+    topping and trimming, 324.
+
+
+  Taguataga Lake, Chili, 355.
+
+  Tea plant, the, cultivated in America, 62.
+
+  Temperature, general law of, 52.
+
+  Teredo, the general diffusion of, 107.
+
+  Termite, or white ant, ravages of, 107.
+
+  Teverone, cascade of, Tivoli, 402.
+
+  Timber, general superiority of cultivated, 305;
+    slow decay of, in forest, 322.
+
+  Tobacco an American plant, 68;
+    introduction in Hungary, 67.
+
+  Tocat, Asia Minor, oak woods of, 186.
+
+  Tomato, the, introduction to New England, 19.
+
+  Torricelli, successful plan for draining the Val di Chiana, 421.
+
+  Torrents, destructive action of, 231;
+    means of prevention, 233;
+    ravages of, in Southeastern France, 237;
+    Provence, 239;
+    Upper Alps, 240;
+    Lower Alps, 246;
+    action of, in elevating the beds of mainland streams, 249;
+    in excavating ravines, 250;
+    transporting power of, 251;
+    signs of, extinguished, 263;
+    crushing force of, 392.
+
+  Trees, as organisms, specific temperature of, 156;
+    moisture given out by, 158;
+    total influence on temperature, 159;
+    absorption of water by, 166;
+    flow of sap, 169;
+    absorption of moisture by foliage of, 172;
+    exhalation of do., 174;
+    consequent refrigeration, 175;
+    amount of ligneous products of, 173;
+    protection against avalanches afforded by, 269;
+    power of resisting the action of fire, 273;
+    American forest trees, 274;
+    their dimensions, 275;
+    change in relative proportions of height and diameter, 276;
+    comparative longevity of, 277;
+    European and American compared, 308;
+    species more numerous in America, 309;
+    Spenser's catalogue of, 308;
+    interchange of European and American species, 310;
+    species of Southern Europe and their extent, 312;
+    natural order of succession in, 323.
+    See _Forest_, _Woods_.
+
+  Trieste, proposed supply of water to, 536.
+
+  Trout, the American, 115, 117, 121.
+
+  Tuscany, rivers of, their deposits, 414;
+    physical restoration in, 416;
+    improvements in Val di Chiana, 417;
+    do. in the Maremma, 424.
+
+  Tyrolese rivers, elevation of their beds, 249.
+
+
+  Ubate, lakes of, New Granada, 204.
+
+  Undulation of water, 456.
+
+  United States, foreign plants grown in, 61;
+    weight of annual harvest in, 62;
+    number of quadrupeds in, 79;
+    of birds, 86;
+    effect of felling woods on its climate, 180;
+    forests of, 300;
+    instability of life in, 328.
+
+  Upper Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, 240.
+
+  Urus, or auerochs, domesticated by man, 83;
+    extirpation of, 85.
+
+
+  Val de Lys, evidence of glacier action in, 252.
+
+  Vegetable life, transfer by man's action, 59.
+
+  Velino, cascade of, Tivoli, 402.
+
+  Vesuvius, vegetation on, 131;
+    eruption of February, 1851, 544.
+
+  Volcanic action, resistance to, 544;
+    matter, vegetation in, 131.
+
+  Volga river, proposed diversion of, 531.
+
+
+  Walcheren, formation of the island, 340.
+
+  Wallenstadt, lake of, 534.
+
+  Walnut tree, consumption of, for gun stocks, 296;
+    oil yielded by, 310.
+
+  Ward's cases for plants, 175.
+
+  Waste products, utilization of, 37.
+
+  Weeds common to Old and New World, 66;
+    extirpated in China, &c., 71.
+
+  Whale, the, food of, 113;
+    destruction of, 114.
+
+  Whale fishery, date of its commencement unknown, 112;
+    in the middle ages, 112;
+    American, 113.
+
+  Wheat, its asserted origin, 73;
+    introduction to America, 74.
+
+  Wild animals, number of, 84.
+
+  Wild organisms, vegetable and animal, tenacity of life in, 69.
+
+  Willow, the weeping, introduction in Europe, 64.
+
+  Wolf, increase of the, 84;
+    prevalence in forests of France, 296.
+
+  Wolf Spring, Soubey, 206.
+
+  Wood, increased demand for, 293;
+    ship building, railroads, &c., 294;
+    market price of, 294;
+    replaced by iron in the arts, 295;
+    means of increasing its durability, 295;
+    how affected by rapid growth, 306;
+    facilities for working, 307.
+
+  Woods, habitable earth originally covered by, 128;
+    conditions of their propagation, 131;
+    destructive agency of man and domestic animals, 132;
+    do not furnish food for man, 133;
+    first removal of, 134;
+    burning of, 136;
+    in Sweden and France, 137;
+    effect on the soil, 138;
+    destruction of, its effect, 139;
+    electrical influence of, 140;
+    chemical influence of, 142;
+    influence on temperature, 143;
+    absorbing and emitting surface of, 144;
+    in summer and winter, 147;
+    dead products of, 148;
+    as a shelter, 149;
+    in France, 149, 151;
+    New England, 149;
+    Italy and Jutland, 150;
+    as a protection against malaria, 154;
+    tend to mitigate extremes of temperature, 155.
+    See _Forest_, _Trees_.
+
+  Wood mosses and fungi, absorbent of moisture, 168.
+
+  Woodpecker, the, destroyer of insects, 109.
+
+
+  Yak, or Tartary ox, the, 83.
+
+  Yew tree, geographical range of, 70.
+
+
+  Zeeland, province, formation of, 339.
+
+  Zostera marina, 492.
+
+  Zuiderzee, proposed drainage of, 534;
+    means of, and geographical results, 535.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+FORSYTH'S "CICERO."
+
+A New Life of Cicero.
+
+BY WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C.
+
+With Twenty Illustrations. 2 vols. crown octavo. Printed on tinted and
+laid paper. Price, $5.00.
+
+
+The object of this work is to exhibit Cicero not merely as a Statesman
+and an Orator, but as he was at home in the relations of private life,
+as a Husband, a Father, a Brother, and a Friend. His letters are full of
+interesting details, which enable us to form a vivid idea of how the old
+Romans lived 2,000 years ago; and the Biography embraces not only a
+History of Events, as momentous as any in the annals of the world, but a
+large amount of Anecdote and Gossip, which amused the generation that
+witnessed the downfall of the Republic.
+
+The _London Athen�uem_ says: "Mr. Forsyth has rightly aimed to set
+before us a portrait of Cicero in the modern style of biography,
+carefully gleaning from his extensive correspondence all those little
+traits of character and habit which marked his private and domestic
+life. These volumes form a very acceptable addition to the classic
+library. The style is that of a scholar and a man of taste."
+
+From the _Saturday Review_:--"Mr. Forsyth has discreetly told his story,
+evenly and pleasantly supplied it with apt illustrations from modern
+law, eloquence, and history, and brought Cicero as near to the present
+time as the differences of age and manners warrant. * * * These volumes
+we heartily recommend as both a useful and agreeable guide to the
+writings and character of one who was next in intellectual and political
+rank to the foremost man of all the world, at a period when there were
+many to dispute with him the triple crown of forensic, philosophic, and
+political composition."
+
+"A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, Mr. Forsyth
+seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the precise attitude which
+it behoves a biographer to take when narrating the life, the personal
+life, of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth produces what we venture to say will become
+one of _the classics of English biographical literature_, and will be
+welcomed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions and
+of no profession at all."--_London Quarterly._
+
+"This book is a valuable contribution to our Standard Literature. It is
+a work which will aid our progress towards the truth; it lifts a corner
+of the veil which has hung over the scenes and actors of times so full
+of ferment, and allows us to catch a glimpse of the stage upon which the
+great drama was played."--_North American Review._
+
+
+_Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price._
+
+
+
+
+LORD DERBY'S "HOMER."
+
+The Iliad of Homer.
+
+RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE BY EDWARD, EARL OF DERBY.
+
+From the fifth London Edition.
+
+Two volumes, royal octavo, on tinted paper. Price $7.50 per vol.
+
+
+Extracts from Notices and Reviews from the English Quarterlies, &c.
+
+"The merits of Lord Derby's translation may be summed up in one word:
+"it is eminently attractive; it is instinct with life; it may be read
+with fervent interest; it is immeasurably nearer than Pope to the text
+of the original. * * * We think that Lord Derby's translation will not
+only be read, but read over and over again. * * * Lord Derby has given
+to England a version far more closely allied to the original, and
+superior to any that has yet been attempted in the blank verse of our
+language."--_Edinburgh Review, January 1865._
+
+"As often as we return from even the best of them (other translations)
+to the translation before us, we find ourselves in a purer atmosphere
+of taste. We find more spirit, more tact in avoiding either trivial
+or conceited phrases, and altogether a presence of merits, and an
+absence of defects which continues, as we read, to lengthen more
+and more the distance between Lord Derby and the foremost of his
+competitors."--_London Quarterly Review, January, 1865._
+
+"While the versification of Lord Derby is such as Pope himself would
+have admired, his Iliad is in all other essentials superior to that of
+his great rival. For the rest, if Pope is dethroned what remains? * * *
+It is the Iliad we would place in the hands of English readers as the
+truest counterpart of the original, the nearest existing approach to a
+reproduction of that original's matchless feature."--_Saturday Review._
+
+"Among those curiosities of literature which are also its treasures,
+Lord Derby's translation of Homer must occupy a very conspicuous
+place. * * * Lord Derby's work is, on the whole, more remarkable for
+the constancy of its excellence and the high level which it maintains
+throughout, than for its special bursts of eloquence. It is uniformly
+worthy of itself and its author."--_The Reader._
+
+"Whatever may be the ultimate fate of this poem--whether it take
+sufficient hold of the public mind to satisfy that demand for a
+translation of Homer which we have alluded to, and thus become a
+permanent classic of the language, or whether it give place to the still
+more perfect production of some yet unknown poet--it must equally be
+considered a splendid performance; and for the present we have no
+hesitation in saying that it is by far the best representation of
+Homer's Iliad in the English language."
+
+
+AMERICAN NOTICES.
+
+The _Publishers Circular_ says:--At the advanced age of sixty-five, the
+Earl of Derby, leader of the Tory party in England, has published a
+translation of Homer, in blank verse. Nearly all the London critics
+unite in declaring, with _The Times_, "that it is by far the best
+representation of Homer's 'Iliad' in the English language." His purpose
+was to produce a translation, and not a paraphrase--fairly and honestly
+giving the sense of every passage and of every line. Without doubt the
+greatest of all living British orators, he has now shown high poetic
+power as well as great scholarship.
+
+From the _New York World_:--"The reader of English, who seeks to know
+what Homer really was, and in what fashion he thought and felt and
+wrote, will owe to Lord Derby his first honest opportunity of doing so.
+The Earl's translation is devoid alike of pretension and of prettiness.
+It is animated in movement, simple and representative to phraseology,
+breezy in atmosphere, if we may so speak, and pervaded by a refinement
+of taste which is as far removed from daintiness or effeminacy as can
+well be imagined."
+
+
+_Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price._
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+
+1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+2. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version
+these letters have been replaced with transliterations.
+
+3. Certain words use "oe" ligature in the original, indicated by [oe]
+and [OE].
+
+4. The letters with macron are represented within square braces with an
+equals sign preceding it. For example, letter a with macron is indicated
+by [=a].
+
+5. In this text version, some of the references to appendix notes within
+footnotes were incorrect which have been corrected. Also, errors found
+in page references within Appendix have been corrected.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Nature, by George P. Marsh
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND NATURE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 37957-8.txt or 37957-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/9/5/37957/
+
+Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/37957-8.zip b/37957-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eeb361a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/37957-8.zip
diff --git a/37957-h.zip b/37957-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..610973d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/37957-h.zip
diff --git a/37957-h/37957-h.htm b/37957-h/37957-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f75bb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/37957-h/37957-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,26268 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Man and Nature, by George P. Marsh.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         text-indent: 1.5em;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    h1,h2,h4,h5 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         clear: both;
+         margin-left: auto;
+         margin-right: auto;
+         width: 75%;
+         }
+
+    h3 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         clear: both;
+         letter-spacing: .2em;
+         margin-left: auto;
+         margin-right: auto;
+         width: 75%;
+         }
+    hr { width: 33%;
+	 margin-top: 2em;
+	 margin-bottom: 2em;
+         margin-left: auto;
+         margin-right: auto;
+         clear: both;
+       }
+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    body{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+                position: absolute;
+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
+                text-align: right;
+              } /* page numbers */
+
+    .pagec  { position: absolute; right: 8%; text-align: right;}
+
+    .blockquot{font-size: 85%;  text-indent: 0em;}
+    .nblockquot{text-indent: -2em; }
+
+    .bb       {border-bottom: solid 1px;}
+    .bbt      {border-bottom: solid 1px; border-top: solid 1px;}
+    .bl       {border-left: solid 1px;}
+    .bt       {border-top: solid 1px;}
+    .br       {border-right: solid 1px;}
+    .bbox     {border: solid 1px;}
+
+    .noidt    {text-indent: 0em;}
+    .center   {text-align: center;  text-indent: 0em;}
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    .oline    {text-decoration: overline;}
+    .ft20    {font-size: 180%;}
+    .ft80    {font-size: 680%;}
+
+    .notebox    {border: solid 2px; padding: 1em; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; background: #CCCCB2;}
+
+    .footnotes        {border: dashed 1px;}
+    .footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 2em;}
+    .footnote .label  {position: absolute; right: 82%; text-align: right;}
+    .fnanchor         {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;}
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:20%; margin-right:20%; text-align: left;  text-indent: 0em;}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Nature, by George P. Marsh
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man and Nature
+       or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action
+
+Author: George P. Marsh
+
+Release Date: November 9, 2011 [EBook #37957]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND NATURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="notebox">
+
+<p class="noidt"><b>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:</b>&nbsp; In this HTML version, some of the references to appendix notes within
+footnotes which were incorrect have been corrected. Also, errors found
+in page number references within Appendix have been corrected.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>MAN AND NATURE;</h1>
+
+<h5>OR,</h5>
+
+<h3><big>PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY</big></h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION.</h4>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h5>BY<br />
+<big>GEORGE P. MARSH.</big></h5>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"> &nbsp; &nbsp; "Not all the winds, and storms, and earthquakes, and seas, and seasons of the world, have
+done so much to revolutionize the earth as <span class="smcap">Man</span>, the power of an endless life, has done since
+the day he came forth upon it, and received dominion over it."&mdash;<span class="smcap">H. Bushnell</span>, <i>Sermon on the
+Power of an Endless Life</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>NEW YORK:<br />
+CHARLES SCRIBNER &amp; CO., No. 654 BROADWAY.<br />
+1867.</h4>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 10%;" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Entered</span>, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by<br />
+CHARLES SCRIBNER,<br />
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of
+New York.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">JOHN F. TROW &amp; CO.<br />
+<small>PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER,</small><br />
+46, 48, &amp; 50 Greene St., New York.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>P R E F A C E.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The object of the present volume is: to indicate the character
+and, approximately, the extent of the changes produced
+by human action in the physical conditions of the globe we
+inhabit; to point out the dangers of imprudence and the necessity
+of caution in all operations which, on a large scale, interfere
+with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic or the
+inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance
+of the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement
+of waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally,
+to illustrate the doctrine, that man is, in both kind and degree,
+a power of a higher order than any of the other forms of animated
+life, which, like him, are nourished at the table of
+bounteous nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the rudest stages of life, man depends upon spontaneous
+animal and vegetable growth for food and clothing, and his
+consumption of such products consequently diminishes the
+numerical abundance of the species which serve his uses. At
+more advanced periods, he protects and propagates certain
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span>esculent vegetables and certain fowls and quadrupeds, and, at
+the same time, wars upon rival organisms which prey upon
+these objects of his care or obstruct the increase of their numbers.
+Hence the action of man upon the organic world tends
+to subvert the original balance of its species, and while it reduces
+the numbers of some of them, or even extirpates them altogether,
+it multiplies other forms of animal and vegetable life.</p>
+
+<p>The extension of agricultural and pastoral industry involves
+an enlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment
+upon the forests which once covered the greater part of the
+earth's surface otherwise adapted to his occupation. The felling
+of the woods has been attended with momentous consequences
+to the drainage of the soil, to the external configuration
+of its surface, and probably, also, to local climate; and
+the importance of human life as a transforming power is, perhaps,
+more clearly demonstrable in the influence man has thus
+exerted upon superficial geography than in any other result of
+his material effort.</p>
+
+<p>Lands won from the woods must be both drained and irrigated;
+river banks and maritime coasts must be secured by
+means of artificial bulwarks against inundation by inland and
+by ocean floods; and the needs of commerce require the improvement
+of natural, and the construction of artificial channels
+of navigation. Thus man is compelled to extend over the
+unstable waters the empire he had already founded upon the
+solid land.</p>
+
+<p>The upheaval of the bed of seas and the movements of
+water and of wind expose vast deposits of sand, which occupy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span>
+space required for the convenience of man, and often, by the
+drifting of their particles, overwhelm the fields of human industry
+with invasions as disastrous as the incursions of the ocean.
+On the other hand, on many coasts, sand hills both protect
+the shores from erosion by the waves and currents, and shelter
+valuable grounds from blasting sea winds. Man, therefore,
+must sometimes resist, sometimes promote, the formation and
+growth of dunes, and subject the barren and flying sands to
+the same obedience to his will to which he has reduced other
+forms of terrestrial surface.</p>
+
+<p>Besides these old and comparatively familiar methods of
+material improvement, modern ambition aspires to yet grander
+achievements in the conquest of physical nature, and projects
+are meditated which quite eclipse the boldest enterprises hitherto
+undertaken for the modification of geographical surface.</p>
+
+<p>The natural character of the various fields where human
+industry has effected revolutions so important, and where the
+multiplying population and the impoverished resources of the
+globe demand new triumphs of mind over matter, suggests a
+corresponding division of the general subject, and I have conformed
+the distribution of the several topics to the chronological
+succession in which man must be supposed to have extended
+his sway over the different provinces of his material
+kingdom. I have, then, in the Introductory chapter, stated,
+in a comprehensive way, the general effects and the prospective
+consequences of human action upon the earth's surface
+and the life which peoples it. This chapter is followed by
+four others in which I have traced the history of man's indus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>try
+as exerted upon Animal and Vegetable Life, upon the
+Woods, upon the Waters, and upon the Sands; and to these
+I have added a concluding chapter upon Probable and Possible
+Geographical Revolutions yet to be effected by the art of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>I have only to add what, indeed, sufficiently appears upon
+every page of the volume, that I address myself not to professed
+physicists, but to the general intelligence of educated, observing,
+and thinking men; and that my purpose is rather to make
+practical suggestions than to indulge in theoretical speculations
+properly suited to a different class from that to which
+those for whom I write belong.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align: right'>GEORGE P. MARSH.</p>
+<p><i>December</i> 1, 1863.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST</h2>
+
+<h4>OF WORKS CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME.</h4>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Amersfoordt, J. P.</i> Het Haarlemmermeer, Oorsprong, Geschiedenis,
+Droogmaking. Haarlem, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Andresen, C. C.</i> Om Klitformationen og Klittens Behandling og Bestyrelse.
+Kj&ouml;benhavn, 1861. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio. Pubblicati per cura del
+Ministero d'Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio. Fasc i-v. Torino,
+1862-'3. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Arago, F.</i> Extracts from, in Becquerel, Des Climats.</p>
+
+<p><i>Arriani</i>, Opera. Lipsi&aelig;, 1856. 2 vols. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Asbj&ouml;rnsen, P. Chr.</i> Om Skovene og om et ordnet Skovbrug i Norge.
+Christiania, 1855. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Aus der Natur. Die neuesten Entdeckungen auf dem Gebiete der Naturwissenschaften.
+Leipzig, various years. 20 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Av&eacute;-Lallemant, K. C. B.</i> Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom
+in der Oekonomie der Indier. Hamburg, 1861. 18mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Babinet.</i> &Eacute;tudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Observation. Paris, 1855-1863.
+7 vols. 18mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Baer, von.</i> Kaspische Studien. St. Petersburg, 1855-1859. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Barth, Heinrich.</i> Wanderungen durch die K&uuml;stenl&auml;nder des Mittelmeeres.
+V. i. Berlin, 1849. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Barth, J. B.</i> Om Skovene i deres Forhold til National&#339;conomien. Christiania,
+1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Baude, J. J.</i> Les C&ocirc;tes de la Manche, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Janvier,
+1859.</p>
+
+<p><i>Baumgarten.</i> Notice sur les Rivi&egrave;res de la Lombardie; in Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es, 1847, 1er s&eacute;mestre, pp. 129-199.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beckwith, Lieut.</i> Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. ii.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Becquerel.</i> Des Climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols bois&eacute;s et non-bois&eacute;s.
+Paris, 1853. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; &Eacute;l&eacute;ments de Physique Terrestre et de M&eacute;t&eacute;orologie. Paris, 1847.
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Belgrand.</i> De l'Influence des For&ecirc;ts sur l'&eacute;coulement des Eaux Pluviales;
+in Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es, 1854, 1er s&eacute;mestre, pp. 1, 27.</p>
+
+<p><i>Berg, Edmund von.</i>  Das Verdr&auml;ngen der Laubw&auml;lder im N&ouml;rdlichen
+Deutschlande durch die Fichte und die Kiefer. Darmstadt, 1844.
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bergs&ouml;e, A. F.</i> Greve Ch. Ditlev Frederik Reventlovs Virksomhed som
+Kongens Embedsmand og Statens Borger. Kj&ouml;benhavn, 1837. 2
+vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Berlepsch, H.</i> Die Alpen in Natur- und Lebensbildern. Leipzig, 1862. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bianchi, Celestino.</i> Compendio di Geografia Fisica Speciale d'Italia. Appendice
+alla traduzione Italiana della Geog.-Fisica di Maria Somerville.
+Firenze, 1861. (2d vol. of translation.)</p>
+
+<p><i>Bigelow, John.</i> Les &Eacute;tats Unis d'Am&eacute;rique en 1863. Paris, 1863. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Blake, Wm. P.</i> Reports in Pacific Railroad Report, vols. ii and v.</p>
+
+<p><i>Blanqui.</i> M&eacute;moire sur les Populations des Hautes Alpes; in M&eacute;moires de
+l'Acad&eacute;mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 1843.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Voyage en Bulgarie. Paris, 1843. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Pr&eacute;cis &Eacute;l&eacute;mentaire d'&Eacute;conomie Politique, suivi du R&eacute;sum&eacute; de l'Histoire
+du Commerce et de l'Industrie. Paris, 1857. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boitel, Am&eacute;d&eacute;e.</i> Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres par le Pin Maritime.
+2d edition. Paris, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bonnem&egrave;re, Eug&egrave;ne.</i> Histoire des Paysans depuis la fin du Moyen Age
+jusqu'&agrave; nos jours. Paris, 1856. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>B&ouml;ttger, C.</i> Das Mittelmeer. Leipzig, 1859.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boussingault, J. B.</i> &Eacute;conomie Rurale consider&eacute;e dans ses Rapports avec
+la Chimie, la Physique, et la M&eacute;t&eacute;orologie. 2d edition. Paris, 1851.
+2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Br&eacute;montier, N. T.</i> M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes; in Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es,
+1833, 1er s&eacute;mestre, pp. 145, 223.</p>
+
+<p><i>Brincken, J. von den.</i> Ansichten &uuml;ber die Bewaldung der Steppen des
+Europ&aelig;ischen Russland. Braunschweig, 1854. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>B&uuml;ttner, J. G.</i> Zur Physikalischen Geographie; in Berghaus, Geographisches
+Jahrbuch, No. iv, 1852, pp. 9-19.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caimi, Pietro.</i> Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi. Milano,
+1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cantegril, and others.</i> Extracts in Comptes Rendus &agrave; l'Acad&eacute;mie des Sciences.
+Paris, 1861.</p>
+
+<p><i>Castellani.</i> Dell' immediata influenza delle Selve sul corso delle acque.
+Torino, 1818, 1819. 2 vols. 4to.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<p>Census of the United States for 1860. Preliminary Report on, Washington,
+1862. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cerini, Giuseppe.</i> Dell' Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi. Milano,
+1844. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Champion, Maurice.</i> Les Inondations en France depuis le VIme Si&egrave;cle
+jusqu'&agrave; nos jours. Paris, 1858, 1862. Vols. i-iv, 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chateauvieux, F. Lullin de.</i> Lettres sur l'Italie. Seconde edition, Gen&egrave;ve,
+1834. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chevandier.</i> Extracts in Comptes Rendus &agrave; l'Acad&eacute;mie des Sciences.
+Juillet-Decembre, 1844. Paris.</p>
+
+<p><i>Clav&eacute;, Jules.</i> &Eacute;tudes sur l'&Eacute;conomie Foresti&egrave;re. Paris, 1862. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; La For&ecirc;t de Fontainebleau; Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Mai, 1863.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cooper, J. G.</i> The Forests and Trees of Northern America; in Report of
+the Commissioner of Patents for the year 1860, pp. 416-445.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cotta, Bernhard.</i> Deutschlands Boden. Leipzig, 1858. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Vorwort zu Paramelle's Quellenkunde. See <i>Paramelle</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Die Alpen. Leipzig, 1851. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Coultas, Harland.</i> What may be Learned from a Tree. New York, 1860.
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Courier, Paul-Louis.</i> &#338;uvres Compl&egrave;tes. Bruxelles, 1833. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dana, James D.</i> Manual of Geology. Philadelphia, 1863. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Delamarre, L. G.</i> Historique de la Cr&eacute;ation d'une Richesse Millionaire
+par la culture des Pins. Paris, 1827. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>D. H&eacute;ricourt, A. F.</i> Les Inondations et le livre de M. Vall&egrave;s; Annales
+Foresti&egrave;res, December, 1857, pp. 310, 321. Paris.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diggelen, B. P. G. van.</i> Groote Werken in Nederland. Zwolle, 1855.
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dumas, M. J.</i> La Science des Fontaines. 2me edition, Paris, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dumont, Aristide.</i> Des Travaux Publics dans leurs Rapports avec l'Agriculture.
+Paris, 1847. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dwight, Timothy.</i> Travels in New England and New York. New Haven,
+1821. 4 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emerson, George B.</i> A Report on the Trees and Shrubs growing naturally
+in Massachusetts. Boston, 1850. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emory, Wm. H., Col.</i> Report of Commissioners of the United States and
+Mexican Boundary Survey, vol. i, 1857.</p>
+
+<p><i>Escourrou-Miliago, A.</i> L'Italie &agrave; propos de l'Exposition Universelle de
+Paris. Paris, 1856. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Evelyn, John.</i> Silva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees. With Notes by A.
+Hunter. York, 1786. 2 vols. 4to.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Terra, a Philosophical Discourse of Earth. York, 1786. 4to. in
+vol. ii of Silva.</p>
+
+<p><i>F&eacute;raud-Giraud, L. J. D.</i> Police des Bois, D&eacute;frichements et Reboisements
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>Commentaire pratique sur les lois promulgu&eacute;es en 1859 et 1860. Paris,
+1861. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ferrara, Francesco.</i> Descrizione dell' Etna. Palermo, 1818. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Feuillide, C. de.</i> L'Alg&eacute;rie Fran&ccedil;aise. Paris, 1856. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Figuier, Louis.</i> L'Ann&eacute;e Scientifique et Industrielle. Paris, 1862-'3. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Finnboga Saga hins rama. Kaupmannah&ouml;fn, 1812. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>Foissac, P.</i> Meteorologie mit R&uuml;cksicht auf die Lehre vom Kosmos,
+Deutsch von A. H. Emsmann. Leipzig, 1859. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Forchhammer, G.</i> Geognostische Studien am Meeres-Ufer; in Leonhard
+und Bronn's Neues Jahrbuch f&uuml;r Mineralogie, Geognosie, Geologie, etc.
+Jahrgang, 1841, pp. 1-38.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fossombroni, Vittorio.</i> Memorie Idraulico-Storiche sopra la Val-di-Chiana.
+Montepulciano, 3za edizione, 1835. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fraas, C.</i> Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit. Landshut, 1847. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frisi, Paolo.</i> Del Modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti. Lucca, 1762. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fuller, Thomas.</i> The History of the Worthies of England. London, 1662.
+Folio.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gilliss, J. M., Capt.</i> United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to the
+Southern Hemisphere. Washington, 1855. 2 vols. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>Giorgini.</i> Paper by; in Salvagnoli-Marchetti, Rapporto sul Bonificamento
+delle Maremme, App. v.</p>
+
+<p><i>Girard et Parent-Duchatelet.</i> Rapport sur les Puits for&eacute;s dits Art&eacute;siens;
+Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es, 1833, 2me s&eacute;mestre, 313-344.</p>
+
+<p><i>Graham, J. D., Lieut.-Col.</i> A Lunar Tidal Wave in the North American
+Lakes demonstrated. Cambridge, 1861. 8vo. <i>pamphlet</i>. Also in vol.
+xiv, Proc. Am. Ass. for Adv. of Science for 1860.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hakluyt, Richard.</i> The Principal Navigations, Voyages, &amp;c., of the English
+Nation. London, 1598-'9. 3 vols. folio.</p>
+
+<p><i>Harrison, W.</i> An Historicall Description of the Iland of Britaine; in
+Holinshed's Chronicles. Reprint of 1807, vol. i.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hartwig, G.</i> Das Leben des Meeres. Frankfurt, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Haxthausen, August von.</i> Transkaukasia. Leipzig, 1856. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry, Prof. Joseph.</i> Paper on Meteorology in its connection with Agriculture;
+in United States Patent Office Report for 1857, pp. 419-550.</p>
+
+<p><i>Herschel, Sir J. F. W.</i> Physical Geography. Edinburgh, 1861. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Heyer, Gustav.</i> Das Verhalten der Waldb&auml;ume gegen Licht und Schatten.
+Erlangen, 1852. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hohenstein, Adolph.</i> Der Wald sammt dessen wichtigem Einfluss auf das
+Klima, &amp;c. Wien, 1860. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Humboldt, Alexander von.</i> Ansichten der Natur. Dritte Ausgabe, Stuttgart
+und T&uuml;bingen, 1849. 2 vols. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hummel, Karl.</i> Physische Geographie. Graz, 1855. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hunter, A.</i> Notes to Evelyn, Silva, and Terra. York, 1786. See <i>Evelyn</i>.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Jacini, Stefano.</i> La Propriet&agrave; Fondiaria e le Popolazioni agricole in Lombardia.
+Milano e Verona, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Joinville.</i> Histoire de Saint-Louis. Nouvelle Collection des M&eacute;moires
+pour servir &agrave; l'Histoire de France, par Michaud et Poujoulat. Tome i.
+Paris, 1836. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Josselyn, John.</i> New England Rarities. London, 1672. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Knorr, E. A.</i> Studien &uuml;ber die Buchen-Wirthschaft. Nordhausen, 1863.
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kohl, J. G.</i> Alpenreisen. Dresden und Leipzig, 1849. 3 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Die Marschen und Inseln der Herzogth&uuml;mer Schleswig und Holstein.
+Dresden und Leipzig, 1846. 3 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kramer, Gustav.</i> Der Fuciner-See. Berlin, 1839. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>Krause, G. C. A.</i> Der D&uuml;nenbau auf den Ostsee-K&uuml;sten West-Preussens.
+1850. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kremer, Alfred von.</i> &AElig;gypten, Forschungen &uuml;ber Land und Volk. Leipzig,
+1863. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kriegk, G. L.</i> Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkunde. Leipzig, 1840. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ladoucette, J. C. F.</i> Histoire, Topographie, Antiquit&eacute;s, Usages, Dialectes
+des Hautes Alpes. Seconde &eacute;dition, 1834. 1 vol. 8vo. and Atlas.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lastadius, Lars Levi.</i> Om M&ouml;jligheten och F&ouml;rdelen af allm&auml;nna Uppodlingar
+i Lappmarken. Stockholm, 1824. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>L&aelig;stadius, Petrus.</i> Journal f&ouml;r f&ouml;rsta &aring;ret af hans Tjenstg&ouml;ring s&aring;som
+Missionaire i Lappmarken. Stockholm, 1831. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Forts&auml;ttning af Journalen &ouml;fver Missions-Resor i Lappmarken.
+Stockholm, 1833. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lampridius.</i> Vita Elagabali in Script. Hist., August.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landgrebe, Georg.</i> Naturgeschichte der Vulcane. Gotha, 1855. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Laurent, Ch.</i> M&eacute;moires sur le Sahara Oriental au point de vue des Puits
+Art&eacute;siens. Paris, 1859. 8vo. <i>pamphlet</i>. Also, in M&eacute;m de la Soc. des
+Ing&eacute;nieurs Civils, and the Bulletin de la Soc. G&eacute;ologique de France.</p>
+
+<p><i>Laval.</i> M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne; in Annales des Ponts
+et Chauss&eacute;es, 1847, 2me s&eacute;mestre, pp. 218-268.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lavergne, M. L. de.</i> &Eacute;conomie Rurale de la France, depuis 1789. 2me
+&eacute;dition, Paris, 1861. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia. Parte 1er, vol. 1er. Torino, 1845. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lefort.</i> Notice sur les travaux de Fixation des Dunes; in Annales des Ponts
+et Chauss&eacute;es, 1831, 2me s&eacute;mestre, pp. 320-332.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lenormant.</i> Note relative &agrave; l'Execution d'un Puits Art&eacute;sien en Egypte
+sous la XVIII<sup>me</sup> Dynastie; Acad&eacute;mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,
+12 Novembre, 1852.</p>
+
+<p>Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London. London, 1861. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>Loftus, W. K.</i> Travels and Researches in Chald&aelig;a and Susiana. New
+York, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Lombardini.</i> Cenni Idrografi sulla Lombardia; Intorno al Sistema Idraulico
+del P&ocirc;; epitomized by Baumgarten in Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es,
+1847, 1er s&eacute;mestre, pp. 129, 199; and in Dumont, Des Travaux Publics,
+pp. 268, 335.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Sui progetti intesi ad estendere l'irrigazione della Pianura del P&ocirc;.
+Politecnico. Gennajo, 1863, pp. 5-50.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lorentz.</i> Cours &Eacute;l&eacute;mentaire de Culture des Bois, compl&eacute;t&eacute; et publie par
+A. Parade, 4me edition. Paris et Nancy, 1860. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lyell, Sir Charles.</i> The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man.
+London, 1863. 8vo. Principles of Geology. New York, 1862. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mardigny, M. de.</i> M&eacute;moire sur les Inondations des Rivi&egrave;res de l'Ard&egrave;che.
+Paris, 1860. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Marschand, A.</i> Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge. Bern, 1849. 12mo.
+<i>pamphlet</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martineau.</i> Endeavors after the Christian Life. Boston, 1858.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martins.</i> Revue des Deux Mondes, Avril, 1863.</p>
+
+<p><i>Maury, M. F.</i> The Physical Geography of the Sea. Tenth edition. London,
+1861. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Medlicott, Dr.</i> Observations of, quoted from London Athen&aelig;um, 1863.</p>
+
+<p><i>Meguscher, Francesco.</i> Memorie sulla migliore maniera per rimettere i
+Boschi della Lombardia, etc. Milano, 1859. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mejdell, Th.</i> Om Foranstaltninger til Behandling af Norges Skove. Christiania,
+1858. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mella.</i> Delle Inondazioni del Mella nella notto del 14 al 15 Agosto, 1850.
+Brescia, 1851. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Meyer, J.</i> Physik der Schweiz. Leipzig, 1854. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Michelet, J.</i> L'Insecte, 4me edition. Paris, 1860. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; L'Oiseau, 7me edition. Paris, 1861. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Monestier-Savignat, A.</i> &Eacute;tude sur les Ph&eacute;nom&egrave;nes, l'Am&eacute;nagement et la
+L&eacute;gislation des Eaux au point de vue des Inondations. Paris, 1858. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montluisant.</i> Note sur les Dess&eacute;chements, les Endiguements et les Irrigations;
+in Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es, 1833, 2me s&eacute;mestre, pp.
+281-294.</p>
+
+<p><i>Morozzi, Ferdinando.</i> Dello Stato Antico e Moderno del Fiume Arno.
+Firenze, 1762. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>M&uuml;ller, K.</i> Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt. Leipzig, 1857. 2 vols. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nangis, Guillaume de.</i> Extracts from, in Nouvelle Collection des M&eacute;moires
+pour servir par Michaud et Poujoulat. Vol. i. Paris, 1836.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nanquette, Henri.</i> Cours d'Am&eacute;nagement des For&ecirc;ts. Paris et Nancy,
+1860. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Newberry, Dr.</i> Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. vi.</p>
+
+<p>Niebelunge-Lied, Der. Abdruck der Handschrift von Joseph von Lassberg.
+Leipzig, 1840. Folio.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Niel.</i> L'Agriculture des &Eacute;tats Sardes. Turin, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>Pacific Railroad Report. Reports of Explorations and Surveys for a Railroad
+Route to the Pacific. Washington, various years. 12 vols. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>Palissy, Bernard.</i> &#338;uvres Compl&egrave;tes, avec des Notes, etc., par Paul-Antoine
+Cap. Paris, 1844. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Parade, A.</i> See <i>Lorentz</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Paramelle, Abb&eacute;.</i> Quellenkunde, Lehre von der Bildung und Auffindung
+der Quellen; mit einem Vorwort von B. Cotta. Leipzig, 1856. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Parish, Dr.</i> Life of Dr. Eleazer Wheelock. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Parry, C. C.</i> Report in United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, vol. i.</p>
+
+<p><i>Parthey, G.</i> Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante. Berlin, 1834.
+2 vols. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Piper, R. U.</i> The Trees of America. Boston, 1858, Nos. i-iv. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plinii, Historia Naturalis</i>, ed. Hardouin. Paris, 1723. 3 vols. folio.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ponz, Antonio.</i> Viage de Espa&ntilde;a. Madrid, 1788, etc. 18 vols. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Quatrefages, A. de.</i> Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste. Paris, 1854. 2 vols. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Reclus, Elis&eacute;e.</i> Le Littoral de la France; Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Decembre,
+1862.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rentzsch, Hermann.</i> Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der Volkswirthschaft.
+Leipzig, 1862. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ribbe, Charles de</i>. La Provence au point de vue des Bois, des Torrents et
+des Inondations. Paris, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ridolfi, Cosimo.</i> Lezioni Orali. Firenze, 1862. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ritter, Carl.</i> Einleitung zur allgemeinen vergleichenden Geographie.
+Berlin, 1852. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Die Erdkunde im Verh&auml;ltniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des
+Menschen. Berlin, various years. 19 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rosa, G.</i> Le Condizioni de' boschi, de' fiumi e de' torrenti nella provincia
+di Bergamo. Politecnico, Dicembre, 1861, pp. 606, 621.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Studii sui Boschi. Politecnico, Maggio, 1862, pp. 232, 238.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rossm&auml;ssler, C. A.</i> Der Wald. Leipzig und Heidelberg, 1863. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Roth, J.</i> Der Vesuv und die Umgebung von Neapel. Berlin, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rozet, M.</i> Moyens de forcer les Torrents des Montagnes de rendre une
+partie du sol qu'ils ravagent. Paris, 1856. 8vo. <i>pamphlet</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salvagnoli-Marchetti, Antonio.</i> Memorie Economico-Statistiche sulle Maremme
+Toscane. Firenze, 1846. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Raccolta di Documenti sul Bonificamento delle Maremmo Toscane.
+Firenze, 1861. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremmo Toscane. Firenze,
+1859. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Rapporto sulle Operazioni Idrauliche ed Economiche eseguite nel
+1859-'60 nelle Maremmo Toscane. Firenze, 1860. 8vo.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Sandys, George.</i> A Relation of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610. London,
+1627. Folio.</p>
+
+<p><i>Schacht, H.</i> Les Arbres, &Eacute;tudes sur leur Structure et leur V&eacute;g&eacute;tation,
+traduit par E. Morren. Bruxelles et Leipzig, 1862. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Schleiden, M. J.</i> Die Landenge von Su&ecirc;s. Leipzig, 1858. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Die Pflanze und ihr Leben. Leipzig, 1848. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Schubert, W. von.</i> Resa genom Sverige, Norrige, Lappland, etc. Stockholm,
+1823. 3 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca, L. A.</i> Opera Omnia qu&aelig; supersunt, ex rec. Ruhkopf. Aug. Taurinorum,
+1831. 6 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Simonde, J. E. L.</i> Tableau de l'Agriculture Toscane. Gen&egrave;ve, 1801. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Smith, Dr. William.</i> A Dictionary of the Bible. London, 1860. 3 vols.
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London, 1854,
+1857. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Smith, John.</i> Historie of Virginia. London, 1624. Folio.</p>
+
+<p><i>Somerville, Mary.</i> Physical Geography. Fifth edition. London, 1862.
+12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Springer, John S.</i> Forest-Life and Forest-Trees. New York, 1851. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Stanley, Dr.</i> Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. London,
+1863. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Staring, W. H.</i> De Bodem van Nederland. Haarlem, 1856. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Voormaals en Thans. Haarlem, 1858. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Stevens, Gov.</i> Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. xii.</p>
+
+<p><i>Strain, Lieut. I. C.</i> Darien Exploring Expedition, by J. T. Headley, in
+Harper's Magazine. New York, March, April, and May, 1855.</p>
+
+<p><i>Streffleur, V.</i> Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildb&auml;che. Sitz.
+Ber. der M. N. W. Classe der Kaiserl. Akad. der Wis. February, 1852,
+viii, p. 248.</p>
+
+<p><i>Str&ouml;m, Isr.</i> Om Skogarnas V&aring;rd och Sk&ouml;tsel. Upsala, 1853. <i>Pamphlet.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Surell, Alexandre.</i> &Eacute;tude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes.  Paris,
+1844. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tartini, Ferdinando.</i> Memorie sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane.
+Firenze, 1838. Folio.</p>
+
+<p><i>Thomas and Baldwin.</i> Gazetteer.  Philadelphia, 1855. 1 vol. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Thompson, Z.</i> History of Vermont, Natural, Civil, and Statistical. Burlington,
+1842. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Appendix to History of Vermont. Burlington, 1853. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Titcomb, Timothy.</i> Lessons in Life. New York, 1861. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Treadwell, Dr.</i> Observations of, quoted from Report of Commissioner of
+Patents.</p>
+
+<p><i>Troy, Paul.</i> &Eacute;tude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes. Paris et Toulouse,
+1861. 8vo. <i>pamphlet</i>.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span></p>
+<p><i>Tschudi, Friedrich von.</i> Ueber die Landwirthschaftliche Bedeutung der
+V&ouml;gel. St. Gallen, 1854. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tschudi, J. J. von.</i> Travels in Peru. New York, 1848. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Vall&egrave;s, M. F.</i> &Eacute;tudes sur les Inondations, leurs causes et leurs effets.
+Paris, 1857. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Valvasor, Johann Weichard.</i> Die Ehre des Herzogthums Crain. Laybach,
+1689. 4 vols. folio.</p>
+
+<p><i>Van Lennep.</i> Extracts from Journal of, in the Missionary Herald.</p>
+
+<p><i>Vaupell, Chr.</i> B&ouml;gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove. Kj&ouml;benhavn, 1857.
+8vo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; De Nordsj&aelig;llandske Skovmoser. Kj&ouml;benhavn, 1851. 4to. <i>pamphlet</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Venema, G. A.</i> Over het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons
+Land. Groningen, 1854. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Villa, Antonio Giovanni Batt.</i> Necessit&agrave; dei Boschi nella Lombardia.
+Milano, 1850. 4to.</p>
+
+<p><i>Viollet, J. B.</i> Th&eacute;orie des Puits Art&eacute;siens. Paris, 1840. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Walterhausen, W. Sartorius von.</i> Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau.
+G&ouml;ttingen, 1863.</p>
+
+<p><i>Webster, Noah.</i> A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral
+Subjects. New York, 1843. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wessely, Joseph.</i> Die Oesterreichischen Alpenl&auml;nder und ihre Forste.
+Wien, 1853. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wetzstein, J. G.</i> Reisebericht &uuml;ber Hauran und die Trachonen. Berlin,
+1860. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wild, Albert.</i> Die Niederlande. Leipzig, 1862. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wilhelm, Gustav.</i>  Der Boden und das Wasser. Wien, 1861. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Williams, Dr.</i> History of Vermont. 2 vols. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wittwer, W. C.</i> Die Physikalische Geographie. Leipzig, 1855. 8vo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Young, Arthur.</i> Voyages en France, pendant les ann&eacute;es 1787, 1788, 1789,
+pr&eacute;c&eacute;d&eacute;e d'une introduction par Lavergne. Paris, 1860. 2 vols. 12mo.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; Voyages en Italie et en Espagne, pendant les ann&eacute;es 1787, 1789.
+Paris, 1860. 1 vol. 12mo.</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center"><big><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I.</b></a></big></p>
+<p class="center">INTRODUCTORY.</p>
+<p class="nblockquot">Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire&mdash;Physical Decay of that
+Territory and of other parts of the Old World&mdash;Causes of the Decay&mdash;New
+School of Geographers&mdash;Reaction of Man upon Nature&mdash;Observation of Nature&mdash;Cosmical
+and Geological Influences&mdash;Geographical Influence of Man&mdash;Uncertainty
+of our Meteorological Knowledge&mdash;Mechanical Effects produced by Man
+on the surface of the Earth&mdash;Importance and Possibility of Physical Restoration&mdash;Stability
+of Nature&mdash;Restoration of Disturbed Harmonies&mdash;Destructiveness
+of Man&mdash;Physical Improvement&mdash;Human and Brute Action Compared&mdash;Forms
+and Formations most liable to Physical Degradation&mdash;Physical Decay of New
+Countries&mdash;Corrupt Influence of Private Corporations, <i>Note</i>, <span class='pagec'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><br /><big><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II.</b></a></big></p>
+<p class="center">TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND OF ANIMAL SPECIES.</p>
+<p class="nblockquot">Modern Geography embraces Organic Life&mdash;Transfer of Vegetable Life&mdash;Foreign
+Plants grown in the United States&mdash;American Plants grown in Europe&mdash;Modes
+of Introduction of Foreign Plants&mdash;Vegetables, how affected by transfer to
+Foreign Soils&mdash;Extirpation of Vegetables&mdash;Origin of Domestic Plants&mdash;Organic
+Life as a Geological and Geographical Agency&mdash;Origin and Transfer of Domestic
+Animals&mdash;Extirpation of Animals&mdash;Numbers of Birds in the United States&mdash;Birds
+as Sowers and Consumers of Seeds, and as Destroyers of Insects&mdash;Diminution
+and Extirpation of Birds&mdash;Introduction of Birds&mdash;Utility of Insects and
+Worms&mdash;Introduction of Insects&mdash;Destruction of Insects&mdash;Reptiles&mdash;Destruction
+of Fish&mdash;Introduction and Breeding of Fish&mdash;Extirpation of Aquatic Animals&mdash;Minute
+Organisms, <span class='pagec'><a href="#Page_57">57</a></span></p>
+<p><br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><big><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III.</b></a></big></p>
+<p class="center">THE WOODS.</p>
+<p class="nblockquot">The Habitable Earth originally Wooded&mdash;The Forest does not furnish Food for Man&mdash;First
+Removal of the Woods&mdash;Effects of Fire on Forest Soil&mdash;Effects of the Destruction
+of the Forest&mdash;Electrical Influence of Trees&mdash;Chemical Influence of
+the Forest.</p>
+
+<p>Influence of the Forest, considered as Inorganic Matter, on Temperature:
+<i>a</i>, Absorbing and Emitting Surface; <i>b</i>, Trees as Conductors of Heat; <i>c</i>, Trees
+in Summer and in Winter; <i>d</i>, Dead Products of Tree; <i>e</i>, Trees as a Shelter
+to Grounds to the leeward of them; <i>f</i>, Trees as a Protection against Malaria&mdash;The
+Forest, as Inorganic Matter, tends to mitigate extremes.</p>
+
+<p>Trees as Organisms: Specific Temperature&mdash;Total Influence of the Forest
+on Temperature.</p>
+
+<p>Influence of Forests on the Humidity of the Air and the Earth: <i>a</i>, as Inorganic
+Matter; <i>b</i>, as Organic&mdash;Wood Mosses and Fungi&mdash;Flow of Sap&mdash;Absorption
+and Exhalation of Moisture by Trees&mdash;Balance of Conflicting Influences&mdash;Influence
+of the Forest on Temperature and Precipitation&mdash;Influence of
+the Forest on the Humidity of the Soil&mdash;Its Influence on the Flow of Springs&mdash;General
+Consequences of the Destruction of the Woods&mdash;Literature and Condition
+of the Forest in different Countries&mdash;The Influence of the Forest on Inundations&mdash;Destructive
+Action of Torrents&mdash;The Po and its Deposits&mdash;Mountain
+Slides&mdash;Protection against the Fall of Rocks and Avalanches by Trees&mdash;Principal
+Causes of the Destruction of the Forest&mdash;American Forest Trees&mdash;Special
+Causes of the Destruction of European Woods&mdash;Royal Forests and Game Laws&mdash;Small
+Forest Plants, Vitality of Seeds&mdash;Utility of the Forest&mdash;The Forests of
+Europe&mdash;Forests of the United States and Canada&mdash;The Economy of the Forest&mdash;European
+and American Trees Compared&mdash;Sylviculture&mdash;Instability of American
+Life, <span class='pagec'><a href="#Page_128">128</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><big><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV.</b></a></big></p>
+<p class="center">THE WATERS.</p>
+<p class="nblockquot">Land artificially won from the Waters: <i>a</i>, Exclusion of the Sea by Diking; <i>b</i>,
+Draining of Lakes and Marshes; <i>c</i>, Geographical Influence of such Operations&mdash;Lowering
+of Lakes&mdash;Mountain Lakes&mdash;Climatic Effects of Draining Lakes
+and Marshes.</p>
+
+<p>Geographical and Climatic Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs, and Canals&mdash;Surface
+and Underdraining, and their Climatic and Geographical Effects&mdash;Irrigation
+and its Climatic and Geographical Effects.</p>
+
+<p>Inundations and Torrents: <i>a</i>, River Embankments; <i>b</i>, Floods of the Ard&egrave;che;
+<i>c</i>, Crushing Force of Torrents; <i>d</i>, Inundations of 1856 in France; <i>e</i>,
+Remedies against Inundations&mdash;Consequences if the Nile had been confined by
+Lateral Dikes.</p>
+
+<p>Improvements in the Val di Chiana&mdash;Improvements in the Tuscan Maremme&mdash;Obstruction
+of River Mouths&mdash;Subterranean Waters&mdash;Artesian Wells&mdash;Artificial
+Springs&mdash;Economizing Precipitation, <span class='pagec'><a href="#Page_330">330</a></span></p>
+
+<p><br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><big><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V.</b></a></big></p>
+<p class="center">THE SANDS.</p>
+<p class="nblockquot">Origin of Sand&mdash;Sand now carried down to the Sea&mdash;The Sands of Egypt and the
+adjacent Desert&mdash;The Suez Canal&mdash;The Sands of Egypt&mdash;Coast Dunes and Sand
+Plains&mdash;Sand Banks&mdash;Dunes on Coast of America&mdash;Dunes of Western Europe&mdash;Formation
+of Dunes&mdash;Character of Dune Sand&mdash;Interior Structure of Dunes&mdash;Form
+of Dunes&mdash;Geological Importance of Dunes&mdash;Inland Dunes&mdash;Age, Character,
+and Permanence of Dunes&mdash;Use of Dunes as Barrier against the Sea&mdash;Encroachments
+of the Sea&mdash;The L&uuml;mfjord&mdash;Encroachments of the Sea&mdash;Drifting
+of Dune Sands&mdash;Dunes of Gascony&mdash;Dunes of Denmark&mdash;Dunes of Prussia&mdash;Artificial
+Formation of Dunes&mdash;Trees suitable for Dune Plantations&mdash;Extent of
+Dunes in Europe&mdash;Dune Vineyards of Cape Breton&mdash;Removal of Dunes&mdash;Inland
+Sand Plains&mdash;The Landes of Gascony&mdash;The Belgian Campine&mdash;Sands and
+Steppes of Eastern Europe&mdash;Advantages of Reclaiming Dunes&mdash;Government
+Works of Improvement, <span class='pagec'><a href="#Page_451">451</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><br /><big><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI.</b></a></big></p>
+<p class="center">PROJECTED OR POSSIBLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES BY MAN.</p>
+<p class="nblockquot">Cutting of Marine Isthmuses&mdash;The Suez Canal&mdash;Canal across Isthmus of Darien&mdash;Canals
+to the Dead Sea&mdash;Maritime Canals in Greece&mdash;Canal of Saros&mdash;Cape Cod
+Canal&mdash;Diversion of the Nile&mdash;Changes in the Caspian&mdash;Improvements in North
+American Hydrography&mdash;Diversion of the Rhine&mdash;Draining of the Zuiderzee&mdash;Waters
+of the Karst&mdash;Subterranean Waters of Greece&mdash;Soil below Rock&mdash;Covering
+Rocks with Earth&mdash;Wadies of Arabia Petr&aelig;a&mdash;Incidental Effects of Human
+Action&mdash;Resistance to great Natural Forces&mdash;Effects of Mining&mdash;Espy's Theories&mdash;River
+Sediment&mdash;Nothing small in Nature, <span class='pagec'><a href="#Page_517">517</a></span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>INTRODUCTORY.</h3>
+
+<p class="blockquot">NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF THE TERRITORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE&mdash;PHYSICAL
+DECAY OF THAT TERRITORY AND OF OTHER PARTS OF THE OLD WORLD&mdash;CAUSES
+OF THE DECAY&mdash;NEW SCHOOL OF GEOGRAPHERS&mdash;REACTION OF
+MAN UPON NATURE&mdash;OBSERVATION OF NATURE&mdash;COSMICAL AND GEOLOGICAL
+INFLUENCES&mdash;GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCE OF MAN&mdash;UNCERTAINTY OF OUR
+METEOROLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE&mdash;MECHANICAL EFFECTS PRODUCED BY MAN
+ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH&mdash;IMPORTANCE AND POSSIBILITY OF PHYSICAL
+RESTORATION&mdash;STABILITY OF NATURE&mdash;RESTORATION OF DISTURBED
+HARMONIES&mdash;DESTRUCTIVENESS OF MAN&mdash;PHYSICAL IMPROVEMENT&mdash;HUMAN
+AND BRUTE ACTION COMPARED&mdash;FORMS AND FORMATIONS MOST LIABLE TO
+PHYSICAL DEGRADATION&mdash;PHYSICAL DECAY OF NEW COUNTRIES&mdash;CORRUPT
+INFLUENCE OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS, <i>note</i>.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The Roman Empire, at the period of its greatest expansion,
+comprised the regions of the earth most distinguished by a
+happy combination of physical advantages. The provinces
+bordering on the principal and the secondary basins of the
+Mediterranean enjoyed a healthfulness and an equability of
+climate, a fertility of soil, a variety of vegetable and mineral
+products, and natural facilities for the transportation and distribution
+of exchangeable commodities, which have not been
+possessed in an equal degree by any territory of like extent
+in the Old World or the New. The abundance of the land and
+of the waters adequately supplied every material want, ministered
+liberally to every sensuous enjoyment. Gold and silver,
+indeed, were not found in the profusion which has proved so
+baneful to the industry of lands richer in veins of the precious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+metals; but mines and river beds yielded them in the spare
+measure most favorable to stability of value in the medium of
+exchange, and, consequently, to the regularity of commercial
+transactions. The ornaments of the barbaric pride of the
+East, the pearl, the ruby, the sapphire, and the diamond&mdash;though
+not unknown to the luxury of a people whose conquests
+and whose wealth commanded whatever the habitable
+world could contribute to augment the material splendor of
+their social life&mdash;were scarcely native to the territory of the
+empire; but the comparative rarity of these gems in Europe,
+at somewhat earlier periods, was, perhaps, the very circumstance
+that led the cunning artists of classic antiquity to
+enrich softer stones with engravings, which invest the common
+onyx and carnelian with a worth surpassing, in cultivated
+eyes, the lustre of the most brilliant oriental jewels.</p>
+
+<p>Of these manifold blessings the temperature of the air, the
+distribution of the rains, the relative disposition of land and
+water, the plenty of the sea, the composition of the soil, and
+the raw material of some of the arts, were wholly gratuitous
+gifts. Yet the spontaneous nature of Europe, of Western
+Asia, of Libya, neither fed nor clothed the civilized inhabitants
+of those provinces. Every loaf was eaten in the sweat of the
+brow. All must be earned by toil. But toil was nowhere
+else rewarded by so generous wages; for nowhere would a
+given amount of intelligent labor produce so abundant, and, at
+the same time, so varied returns of the good things of material
+existence. The luxuriant harvests of cereals that waved on
+every field from the shores of the Rhine to the banks of the
+Nile, the vines that festooned the hillsides of Syria, of Italy,
+and of Greece, the olives of Spain, the fruits of the gardens of
+the Hesperides, the domestic quadrupeds and fowls known in
+ancient rural husbandry&mdash;all these were original products of
+foreign climes, naturalized in new homes, and gradually ennobled
+by the art of man, while centuries of persevering labor
+were expelling the wild vegetation, and fitting the earth for
+the production of more generous growths.</p>
+
+<p>Only for the sense of landscape beauty did unaided nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+make provision. Indeed, the very commonness of this source
+of refined enjoyment seems to have deprived it of half its
+value; and it was only in the infancy of lands where all the
+earth was fair, that Greek and Roman humanity had sympathy
+enough with the inanimate world to be alive to the
+charms of rural and of mountain scenery. In later generations,
+when the glories of the landscape had been heightened
+by plantation, and decorative architecture, and other forms of
+picturesque improvement, the poets of Greece and Rome were
+blinded by excess of light, and became, at last, almost insensible
+to beauties that now, even in their degraded state, enchant
+every eye, except, too often, those which a lifelong familiarity
+has dulled to their attractions.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Physical Decay of the Territory of the Roman Empire, and
+of other parts of the Old World.</i></h4>
+
+<p>If we compare the present physical condition of the countries
+of which I am speaking, with the descriptions that ancient
+historians and geographers have given of their fertility and
+general capability of ministering to human uses, we shall find
+that more than one half of their whole extent&mdash;including the
+provinces most celebrated for the profusion and variety of
+their spontaneous and their cultivated products, and for the
+wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants&mdash;is either
+deserted by civilized man and surrendered to hopeless desolation,
+or at least greatly reduced in both productiveness and
+population. Vast forests have disappeared from mountain
+spurs and ridges; the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the
+trees by the decay of leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the
+alpine pastures which skirted and indented the woods, and the
+mould of the upland fields, are washed away; meadows, once
+fertilized by irrigation, are waste and unproductive, because
+the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the ancient canals are
+broken, or the springs that fed them dried up; rivers famous
+in history and song have shrunk to humble brooklets; the
+willows that ornamented and protected the banks of the lesser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+watercourses are gone, and the rivulets have ceased to exist as
+perennial currents, because the little water that finds its way
+into their old channels is evaporated by the droughts of summer,
+or absorbed by the parched earth, before it reaches the
+lowlands; the beds of the brooks have widened into broad
+expanses of pebbles and gravel, over which, though in the hot
+season passed dryshod, in winter sealike torrents thunder;
+the entrances of navigable streams are obstructed by sandbars,
+and harbors, once marts of an extensive commerce, are
+shoaled by the deposits of the rivers at whose mouths they
+lie; the elevation of the beds of estuaries, and the consequently
+diminished velocity of the streams which flow into
+them, have converted thousands of leagues of shallow sea and
+fertile lowland into unproductive and miasmatic morasses.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the direct testimony of history to the ancient fertility
+of the regions to which I refer&mdash;Northern Africa, the
+greater Arabian peninsula, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia and
+many other provinces of Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily, and parts
+of even Italy and Spain&mdash;the multitude and extent of yet
+remaining architectural ruins, and of decayed works of internal
+improvement, show that at former epochs a dense population
+inhabited those now lonely districts. Such a population
+could have been sustained only by a productiveness of soil of
+which we at present discover but slender traces; and the
+abundance derived from that fertility serves to explain how
+large armies, like those of the ancient Persians, and of the Crusaders
+and the Tartars in later ages, could, without an organized
+commissariat, secure adequate supplies in long marches
+through territories which, in our times, would scarcely afford
+forage for a single regiment.</p>
+
+<p>It appears, then, that the fairest and fruitfulest provinces
+of the Roman Empire, precisely that portion of terrestrial surface,
+in short, which, about the commencement of the Christian
+era, was endowed with the greatest superiority of soil,
+climate, and position, which had been carried to the highest
+pitch of physical improvement, and which thus combined the
+natural and artificial conditions best fitting it for the habita<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>tion
+and enjoyment of a dense and highly refined and cultivated
+population, is now completely exhausted of its fertility, or so
+diminished in productiveness, as, with the exception of a few
+favored oases that have escaped the general ruin, to be no
+longer capable of affording sustenance to civilized man. If
+to this realm of desolation we add the now wasted and solitary
+soils of Persia and the remoter East, that once fed their
+millions with milk and honey, we shall see that a territory
+larger than all Europe, the abundance of which sustained in
+bygone centuries a population scarcely inferior to that of the
+whole Christian world at the present day, has been entirely
+withdrawn from human use, or, at best, is thinly inhabited by
+tribes too few in numbers, too poor in superfluous products,
+and too little advanced in culture and the social arts, to contribute
+anything to the general moral or material interests of
+the great commonwealth of man.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Causes of this Decay.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The decay of these once flourishing countries is partly due,
+no doubt, to that class of geological causes, whose action we
+can neither resist nor guide, and partly also to the direct violence
+of hostile human force; but it is, in a far greater proportion,
+either the result of man's ignorant disregard of the laws
+of nature, or an incidental consequence of war, and of civil and
+ecclesiastical tyranny and misrule. Next to ignorance of these
+laws, the primitive source, the <i>causa causarum</i>, of the acts and
+neglects which have blasted with sterility and physical decrepitude
+the noblest half of the empire of the C&aelig;sars, is, first, the
+brutal and exhausting despotism which Rome herself exercised
+over her conquered kingdoms, and even over her Italian territory;
+then, the host of temporal and spiritual tyrannies which
+she left as her dying curse to all her wide dominion, and
+which, in some form of violence or of fraud, still brood over
+almost every soil subdued by the Roman legions.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Man can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>not
+struggle at once against crushing oppression and the
+destructive forces of inorganic nature. When both are combined
+against him, he succumbs after a shorter or a longer
+struggle, and the fields he has won from the primeval wood
+relapse into their original state of wild and luxuriant, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+unprofitable forest growth, or fall into that of a dry and barren
+wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>Rome imposed on the products of agricultural labor in the
+rural districts taxes which the sale of the entire harvest would
+scarcely discharge; she drained them of their population by
+military conscription; she impoverished the peasantry by
+forced and unpaid labor on public works; she hampered
+industry and internal commerce by absurd restrictions and
+unwise regulations. Hence, large tracts of land were left
+uncultivated, or altogether deserted, and exposed to all the
+destructive forces which act with such energy on the surface
+of the earth when it is deprived of those protections by which
+nature originally guarded it, and for which, in well-ordered
+husbandry, human ingenuity has contrived more or less efficient
+substitutes.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Similar abuses have tended to perpetuate
+and extend these evils in later ages, and it is but recently that,
+even in the most populous parts of Europe, public attention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+has been half awakened to the necessity of restoring the disturbed
+harmonies of nature, whose well-balanced influences
+are so propitious to all her organic offspring, of repaying to
+our great mother the debt which the prodigality and the thriftlessness
+of former generations have imposed upon their successors&mdash;thus
+fulfilling the command of religion and of practical
+wisdom, to use this world as not abusing it.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>New School of Geographers.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The labors of Humboldt, of Ritter, of Guyot and their
+followers, have given to the science of geography a more
+philosophical, and, at the same time, a more imaginative character
+than it had received from the hands of their predecessors.
+Perhaps the most interesting field of speculation, thrown open
+by the new school to the cultivators of this attractive study, is
+the inquiry: how far external physical conditions, and especially
+the configuration of the earth's surface, and the distribution,
+outline, and relative position of land and water, have
+influenced the social life and social progress of man.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Reaction of Man on Nature.</i></h4>
+
+<p>But, as we have seen, man has reacted upon organized and
+inorganic nature, and thereby modified, if not determined, the
+material structure of his earthly home. The measure of that
+reaction manifestly constitutes a very important element in the
+appreciation of the relations between mind and matter, as well
+as in the discussion of many purely physical problems. But
+though the subject has been incidentally touched upon by
+many geographers, and treated with much fulness of detail in
+regard to certain limited fields of human effort, and to certain
+specific effects of human action, it has not, as a whole, so far
+as I know, been made matter of special observation, or of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>torical
+research by any scientific inquirer.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Indeed, until the
+influence of physical geography upon human life was recognized
+as a distinct branch of philosophical investigation, there
+was no motive for the pursuit of such speculations; and it was
+desirable to inquire whether we have or can become the architects
+of our own abiding place, only when it was known how
+the mode of our physical, moral, and intellectual being is
+affected by the character of the home which Providence has
+appointed, and we have fashioned, for our material habitation.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is still too early to attempt scientific method in discussing
+this problem, nor is our present store of the necessary facts
+by any means complete enough to warrant me in promising
+any approach to fulness of statement respecting them. Systematic
+observation in relation to this subject has hardly yet
+begun,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> and the scattered data which have chanced to be
+recorded have never been collected. It has now no place in
+the general scheme of physical science, and is matter of sug<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>gestion
+and speculation only, not of established and positive
+conclusion. At present, then, all that I can hope is to excite
+an interest in a topic of much economical importance, by
+pointing out the directions and illustrating the modes in
+which human action has been or may be most injurious or
+most beneficial in its influence upon the physical conditions of
+the earth we inhabit.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Observation of Nature.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In these pages, as in all I have ever written or propose to
+write, it is my aim to stimulate, not to satisfy, curiosity, and it
+is no part of my object to save my readers the labor of observation
+or of thought. For labor is life, and</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Death lives where power lives unused.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Self is the schoolmaster whose lessons are best worth his
+wages; and since the subject I am considering has not yet
+become a branch of formal instruction, those whom it may
+interest can, fortunately, have no pedagogue but themselves.
+To the natural philosopher, the descriptive poet, the painter,
+and the sculptor, as well as to the common observer, the power
+most important to cultivate, and, at the same time, hardest to
+acquire, is that of seeing what is before him. Sight is a faculty;
+seeing, an art. The eye is a physical, but not a self-acting
+apparatus, and in general it sees only what it seeks.
+Like a mirror, it reflects objects presented to it; but it may be
+as insensible as a mirror, and it does not necessarily perceive
+what it reflects.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> It is disputed whether the purely material<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+sensibility of the eye is capable of improvement and cultivation.
+It has been maintained by high authority, that the natural
+acuteness of none of our sensuous faculties can be heightened
+by use, and hence that the minutest details of the image
+formed on the retina are as perfect in the most untrained, as
+in the most thoroughly disciplined organ. This may well be
+doubted, and it is agreed on all hands that the power of multifarious
+perception and rapid discrimination may be immensely
+increased by well-directed practice.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> This exercise of the eye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+I desire to promote, and, next to moral and religious doctrine,
+I know no more important practical lessons in this earthly life
+of ours&mdash;which, to the wise man, is a school from the cradle to
+the grave&mdash;than those relating to the employment of the sense
+of vision in the study of nature.</p>
+
+<p>The pursuit of physical geography, embracing actual observation
+of terrestrial surface, affords to the eye the best general
+training that is accessible to all. The majority of even cultivated
+men have not the time and means of acquiring anything
+beyond a very superficial acquaintance with any branch of
+physical knowledge. Natural science has become so vastly
+extended, its recorded facts and its unanswered questions so
+immensely multiplied, that every strictly scientific man must
+be a specialist, and confine the researches of a whole life within
+a comparatively narrow circle. The study I am recommending,
+in the view I propose to take of it, is yet in that imperfectly
+developed state which allows its votaries to occupy
+themselves with such broad and general views as are attainable
+by every person of culture, and it does not now require a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+knowledge of special details which only years of application
+can master. It may be profitably pursued by all; and every
+traveller, every lover of rural scenery, every agriculturist, who
+will wisely use the gift of sight, may add valuable contributions
+to the common stock of knowledge on a subject which,
+as I hope to convince my readers, though long neglected, and
+now inartificially presented, is not only a very important, but
+a very interesting field of inquiry.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Cosmical and Geological Influences.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The revolutions of the seasons, with their alternations of
+temperature and of length of day and night, the climates of
+different zones, and the general condition and movements of
+the atmosphere and the seas, depend upon causes for the most
+part cosmical, and, of course, wholly beyond our control. The
+elevation, configuration, and composition of the great masses
+of terrestrial surface, and the relative extent and distribution
+of land and water, are determined by geological influences
+equally remote from our jurisdiction. It would hence seem
+that the physical adaptation of different portions of the earth
+to the use and enjoyment of man is a matter so strictly belonging
+to mightier than human powers, that we can only accept
+geographical nature as we find her, and be content with such
+soils and such skies as she spontaneously offers.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Geographical Influence of Man.</i></h4>
+
+<p>But it is certain that man has done much to mould the
+form of the earth's surface, though we cannot always distinguish
+between the results of his action and the effects of
+purely geological causes; that the destruction of the forests,
+the drainage of lakes and marshes, and the operations of rural
+husbandry and industrial art have tended to produce great
+changes in the hygrometric, thermometric, electric, and chemical
+condition of the atmosphere, though we are not yet able to
+measure the force of the different elements of disturbance, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+to say how far they have been compensated by each other, or
+by still obscurer influences; and, finally, that the myriad
+forms of animal and vegetable life, which covered the earth
+when man first entered upon the theatre of a nature whose
+harmonies he was destined to derange, have been, through his
+action, greatly changed in numerical proportion, sometimes
+much modified in form and product, and sometimes entirely
+extirpated.</p>
+
+<p>The physical revolutions thus wrought by man have not
+all been destructive to human interests. Soils to which no
+nutritious vegetable was indigenous, countries which once
+brought forth but the fewest products suited for the sustenance
+and comfort of man&mdash;while the severity of their climates created
+and stimulated the greatest number and the most imperious
+urgency of physical wants&mdash;surfaces the most rugged
+and intractable, and least blessed with natural facilities of communication,
+have been made in modern times to yield and
+distribute all that supplies the material necessities, all that
+contributes to the sensuous enjoyments and conveniences of
+civilized life. The Scythia, the Thule, the Britain, the Germany,
+and the Gaul which the Roman writers describe in such
+forbidding terms, have been brought almost to rival the native
+luxuriance and easily won plenty of Southern Italy; and,
+while the fountains of oil and wine that refreshed old Greece
+and Syria and Northern Africa have almost ceased to flow,
+and the soils of those fair lands are turned to thirsty and inhospitable
+deserts, the hyperborean regions of Europe have conquered,
+or rather compensated, the rigors of climate, and
+attained to a material wealth and variety of product that,
+with all their natural advantages, the granaries of the ancient
+world can hardly be said to have enjoyed.</p>
+
+<p>These changes for evil and for good have not been caused
+by great natural revolutions of the globe, nor are they by any
+means attributable wholly to the moral and physical action or
+inaction of the peoples, or, in all cases, even of the races that
+now inhabit these respective regions. They are products of a
+complication of conflicting or coincident forces, acting through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+a long series of generations; here, improvidence, wastefulness,
+and wanton violence; there, foresight and wisely guided persevering
+industry. So far as they are purely the calculated
+and desired results of those simple and familiar operations of
+agriculture and of social life which are as universal as civilization&mdash;the
+removal of the forests which covered the soil
+required for the cultivation of edible fruits, the drying of here
+and there a few acres too moist for profitable husbandry, by
+draining off the surface waters, the substitution of domesticated
+and nutritious for wild and unprofitable vegetable
+growths, the construction of roads and canals and artificial
+harbors&mdash;they belong to the sphere of rural, commercial, and
+political economy more properly than to geography, and
+hence are but incidentally embraced within the range of our
+present inquiries, which concern physical, not financial balances.
+I propose to examine only the greater, more permanent,
+and more comprehensive mutations which man has produced,
+and is producing, in earth, sea, and sky, sometimes,
+indeed, with conscious purpose, but for the most part, as
+unforeseen though natural consequences of acts performed for
+narrower and more immediate ends.</p>
+
+<p>The exact measurement of the geographical changes hitherto
+thus effected is, as I have hinted, impracticable, and we
+possess, in relation to them, the means of only qualitative, not
+quantitative analysis. The fact of such revolutions is established
+partly by historical evidence, partly by analogical
+deduction from effects produced in our own time by operations
+similar in character to those which must have taken
+place in more or less remote ages of human action. Both
+sources of information are alike defective in precision; the
+latter, for general reasons too obvious to require specification;
+the former, because the facts to which it bears testimony
+occurred before the habit or the means of rigorously scientific
+observation upon any branch of physical research, and especially
+upon climatic changes, existed.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Uncertainty of our Meteorological Knowledge.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The invention of measures of heat, and of atmospheric
+moisture, pressure, and precipitation, is extremely recent.
+Hence, ancient physicists have left us no thermometric or
+barometric records, no tables of the fall, evaporation, and flow
+of waters, and even no accurate maps of coast lines and the
+course of rivers. Their notices of these phenomena are almost
+wholly confined to excessive and exceptional instances of high
+or of low temperatures, extraordinary falls of rain and snow,
+and unusual floods or droughts. Our knowledge of the
+meteorological condition of the earth, at any period more than
+two centuries before our own time, is derived from these
+imperfect details, from the vague statements of ancient historians
+and geographers in regard to the volume of rivers and
+the relative extent of forest and cultivated land, from the indications
+furnished by the history of the agriculture and rural
+economy of past generations, and from other almost purely
+casual sources of information.</p>
+
+<p>Among these latter we must rank certain newly laid open
+fields of investigation, from which facts bearing on the point
+now under consideration have been gathered. I allude to the
+discovery of artificial objects in geological formations older
+than any hitherto recognized as exhibiting traces of the existence
+of man; to the ancient lacustrine habitations of Switzerland,
+containing the implements of the occupants, remains of
+their food, and other relics of human life; to the curious revelations
+of the Kj&ouml;kkenm&ouml;ddinger, or heaps of kitchen refuse,
+in Denmark, and of the peat mosses in the same and other
+northern countries; to the dwellings and other evidences of
+the industry of man in remote ages sometimes laid bare by
+the movement of sand dunes on the coasts of France and of
+the North Sea; and to the facts disclosed on the shores of the
+latter, by excavations in inhabited mounds which were, perhaps,
+raised before the period of the Roman Empire. These
+remains are memorials of races which have left no written
+records, because they perished before the historical period of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+the countries they occupied began. The plants and animals
+that furnished the relics found in the deposits were certainly
+contemporaneous with man; for they are associated with his
+works, and have evidently served his uses. In some cases, the
+animals belonged to species well ascertained to be now altogether
+extinct; in some others, both the animals and the
+vegetables, though extant elsewhere, have ceased to inhabit
+the regions where their remains are discovered. From the
+character of the artificial objects, as compared with others
+belonging to known dates, or at least to known periods of
+civilization, ingenious inferences have been drawn as to their
+age; and from the vegetation, remains of which accompany
+them, as to the climates of Central and Northern Europe at
+the time of their production.</p>
+
+<p>There are, however, sources of error which have not always
+been sufficiently guarded against in making these estimates.
+When a boat, composed of several pieces of wood fastened
+together by pins of the same material, is dug out of a bog, it
+is inferred that the vessel, and the skeletons and implements
+found with it, belong to an age when the use of iron was not
+known to the builders. But this conclusion is not warranted
+by the simple fact that metals were not employed in its construction;
+for the Nubians at this day build boats large enough
+to carry half a dozen persons across the Nile, out of small
+pieces of acacia wood pinned together entirely with wooden
+bolts. Nor is the occurrence of flint arrow heads and knives,
+in conjunction with other evidences of human life, conclusive
+proof as to the antiquity of the latter. Lyell informs us that
+some Oriental tribes still continue to use the same stone implements
+as their ancestors, "after that mighty empires, where
+the use of metals in the arts was well known, had flourished
+for three thousand years in their neighborhood;"<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> and the
+North American Indians now manufacture and use weapons
+of stone, and even of glass, chipping them in the latter case
+out of the bottoms of thick bottles, with great facility.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>We may also be misled by our ignorance of the commercial
+relations existing between savage tribes. Extremely rude
+nations, in spite of their jealousies and their perpetual wars,
+sometimes contrive to exchange the products of provinces very
+widely separated from each other. The mounds of Ohio contain
+pearls, thought to be marine, which must have come from
+the Gulf of Mexico, or perhaps even from California, and the
+knives and pipes found in the same graves are often formed of
+far-fetched material, that was naturally paid for by some home
+product exported to the locality whence the material was
+derived. The art of preserving fish, flesh, and fowl by drying
+and smoking is widely diffused, and of great antiquity. The
+Indians of Long Island Sound are said to have carried on a
+trade in dried shell fish with tribes residing very far inland.
+From the earliest ages, the inhabitants of the Faroe and
+Orkney Islands, and of the opposite mainland coasts, have
+smoked wild fowl and other flesh. Hence it is possible that
+the animal and the vegetable food, the remains of which are
+found in the ancient deposits I am speaking of, may sometimes
+have been brought from climates remote from that where it
+was consumed.</p>
+
+<p>The most important, as well as the most trustworthy con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>clusions
+with respect to the climate of ancient Europe and
+Asia, are those drawn from the accounts given by the classical
+writers of the growth of cultivated plants; but these are by
+no means free from uncertainty, because we can seldom be
+sure of an identity of species, almost never of an identity of
+race or variety, between vegetables known to the agriculturists
+of Greece and Rome and those of modern times which are
+thought most nearly to resemble them. Besides this, there is
+always room for doubt whether the habits of plants long
+grown in different countries may not have been so changed
+by domestication that the conditions of temperature and
+humidity which they required twenty centuries ago were
+different from those at present demanded for their advantageous
+cultivation.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>Even if we suppose an identity of species, of race, and of
+habit to be established between a given ancient and modern
+plant, the negative fact that the latter will not grow now
+where it flourished two thousand years ago does not in all
+cases prove a change of climate. The same result might
+follow from the exhaustion of the soil,<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> or from a change in
+the quantity of moisture it habitually contains. After a district
+of country has been completely or even partially cleared
+of its forest growth, and brought under cultivation, the drying
+of the soil, under favorable circumstances, goes on for generations,
+perhaps for ages.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> In other cases, from injudicious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+husbandry, or the diversion or choking up of natural watercourses,
+it may become more highly charged with humidity.
+An increase or diminution of the moisture of a soil almost
+necessarily supposes an elevation or a depression of its winter
+or its summer heat, and of its extreme, if not of its mean
+annual temperature, though such elevation or depression may
+be so slight as not sensibly to raise or lower the mercury in a
+thermometer exposed to the open air. Any of these causes,
+more or less humidity, or more or less warmth of soil, would
+affect the growth both of wild and of cultivated vegetation,
+and consequently, without any appreciable change in atmospheric
+temperature, precipitation, or evaporation, plants of a
+particular species might cease to be advantageously cultivated
+where they had once been easily reared.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+We are very imperfectly acquainted with the present mean
+and extreme temperature, or the precipitation and the evaporation
+of any extensive region, even in countries most densely
+peopled and best supplied with instruments and observers.
+The progress of science is constantly detecting errors of method
+in older observations, and many laboriously constructed tables
+of meteorological phenomena are now thrown aside as fallacious,
+and therefore worse than useless, because some condition
+necessary to secure accuracy of result was neglected, in obtaining
+the data on which they were founded.</p>
+
+<p>To take a familiar instance: it is but recently that attention
+has been drawn to the great influence of slight changes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+station upon the results of observations of temperature and
+precipitation. A thermometer removed but a few hundred
+yards from its first position differs not unfrequently five, sometimes
+even ten degrees in its readings; and when we are told
+that the annual fall of rain on the roof of the observatory at
+Paris is two inches less than on the ground by the side of it,
+we may see that the level of the rain-gauge is a point of much
+consequence in making estimates from its measurements. The
+data from which results have been deduced with respect to
+the hygrometrical and thermometrical conditions, the climate
+in short, of different countries, have very often been derived
+from observations at single points in cities or districts separated
+by considerable distances. The tendency of errors and accidents
+to balance each other authorizes us, indeed, to entertain
+greater confidence than we could otherwise feel in the conclusions
+drawn from such tables; but it is in the highest degree
+probable that they would be much modified by more numerous
+series of observations, at different stations within narrow
+limits.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>There is one branch of research which is of the utmost
+importance in reference to these questions, but which, from
+the great difficulty of direct observation upon it, has been less
+successfully studied than almost any other problem of physical
+science. I refer to the proportions between precipitation,
+superficial drainage, absorption, and evaporation. Precise
+actual measurement of these quantities upon even a single acre
+of ground is impossible; and in all cabinet experiments on the
+subject, the conditions of the surface observed are so different
+from those which occur in nature, that we cannot safely reason
+from one case to the other. In nature, the inclination of the
+ground, the degree of freedom or obstruction of the surface,
+the composition and density of the soil, upon which its permeability
+by water and its power of absorbing and retaining or
+transmitting moisture depend, its temperature, the dryness or
+saturation of the subsoil, vary at comparatively short distances;
+and though the precipitation upon and the superficial flow
+from very small geographical basins may be estimated with an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+approach to precision, yet even here we have no present means
+of knowing how much of the water absorbed by the earth is
+restored to the atmosphere by evaporation, and how much
+carried off by infiltration or other modes of underground
+discharge. When, therefore, we attempt to use the phenomena
+observed on a few square or cubic yards of earth, as a
+basis of reasoning upon the meteorology of a province, it is
+evident that our data must be insufficient to warrant positive
+general conclusions. In discussing the climatology of whole
+countries, or even of comparatively small local divisions, we
+may safely say that none can tell what percentage of the
+water they receive from the atmosphere is evaporated; what
+absorbed by the ground and conveyed off by subterranean
+conduits; what carried down to the sea by superficial channels;
+what drawn from the earth or the air by a given extent
+of forest, of short pasture vegetation, or of tall meadow-grass;
+what given out again by surfaces so covered, or by bare
+ground of various textures and composition, under different
+conditions of atmospheric temperature, pressure, and humidity;
+or what is the amount of evaporation from water, ice, or
+snow, under the varying exposures to which, in actual nature,
+they are constantly subjected. If, then, we are so ignorant of
+all these climatic phenomena in the best-known regions inhabited
+by man, it is evident that we can rely little upon theoretical
+deductions applied to the former more natural state of
+the same regions&mdash;less still to such as are adopted with respect
+to distant, strange, and primitive countries.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Mechanical Effects produced by Man on the Surface of the
+Earth more easily ascertainable.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In investigating the mechanical effects of human action on
+superficial geography, we are treading on safer ground, and
+dealing with much less subtile phenomena, less intractable
+elements. Great physical changes can, in some cases, be positively
+shown, in some almost certainly inferred, to have been
+produced by the operations of rural industry, and by the labors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+of man in other spheres of material effort; and hence, in this
+most important part of our subject, we can arrive at many
+positive generalizations, and obtain practical results of no
+small economical value.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Importance and Possibility of Physical Restoration.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Many circumstances conspire to invest with great present
+interest the questions: how far man can permanently modify
+and ameliorate those physical conditions of terrestrial surface
+and climate on which his material welfare depends; how far
+he can compensate, arrest, or retard the deterioration which
+many of his agricultural and industrial processes tend to produce;
+and how far he can restore fertility and salubrity to soils
+which his follies or his crimes have made barren or pestilential.
+Among these circumstances, the most prominent, perhaps, is
+the necessity of providing new homes for a European population
+which is increasing more rapidly than its means of subsistence,
+new physical comforts for classes of the people that have
+now become too much enlightened and have imbibed too
+much culture to submit to a longer deprivation of a share in
+the material enjoyments which the privileged ranks have hitherto
+monopolized.</p>
+
+<p>To supply new hives for the emigrant swarms, there are,
+first, the vast unoccupied prairies and forests of America,
+of Australia, and of many other great oceanic islands, the
+sparsely inhabited and still unexhausted soils of Southern and
+even Central Africa, and, finally, the impoverished and half-depopulated
+shores of the Mediterranean, and the interior of
+Asia Minor and the farther East. To furnish to those who
+shall remain after emigration shall have conveniently reduced
+the too dense population of many European states, those
+means of sensuous and of intellectual well-being which are
+styled "artificial wants" when demanded by the humble and
+the poor, but are admitted to be "necessaries" when claimed
+by the noble and the rich, the soil must be stimulated to its
+highest powers of production, and man's utmost ingenuity and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+energy must be tasked to renovate a nature drained, by his
+improvidence, of fountains which a wise economy would have
+made plenteous and perennial sources of beauty, health, and
+wealth.</p>
+
+<p>In those yet virgin lands which the progress of modern
+discovery in both hemispheres has brought and is still bringing
+to the knowledge and control of civilized man, not much
+improvement of great physical conditions is to be looked for.
+The proportion of forest is indeed to be considerably reduced,
+superfluous waters to be drawn off, and routes of internal
+communication to be constructed; but the primitive geographical
+and climatic features of these countries ought to be, as far
+as possible, retained.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Stability of Nature.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Nature, left undisturbed, so fashions her territory as to give
+it almost unchanging permanence of form, outline, and proportion,
+except when shattered by geologic convulsions; and
+in these comparatively rare cases of derangement, she sets
+herself at once to repair the superficial damage, and to restore,
+as nearly as practicable, the former aspect of her dominion.
+In new countries, the natural inclination of the ground, the
+self-formed slopes and levels, are generally such as best secure
+the stability of the soil. They have been graded and lowered
+or elevated by frost and chemical forces and gravitation and
+the flow of water and vegetable deposit and the action of
+the winds, until, by a general compensation of conflicting
+forces, a condition of equilibrium has been reached which,
+without the action of man, would remain, with little fluctuation,
+for countless ages.</p>
+
+<p>We need not go far back to reach a period when, in all
+that portion of the North American continent which has been
+occupied by British colonization, the geographical elements
+very nearly balanced and compensated each other. At the
+commencement of the seventeenth century, the soil, with
+insignificant exceptions, was covered with forests;<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+whenever the Indian, in consequence of war or the exhaustion
+of the beasts of the chase, abandoned the narrow fields he had
+planted and the woods he had burned over, they speedily
+returned, by a succession of herbaceous, arborescent, and arboreal
+growths, to their original state. Even a single generation
+sufficed to restore them almost to their primitive luxuriance
+of forest vegetation.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> The unbroken forests had attained to
+their maximum density and strength of growth, and, as the
+older trees decayed and fell, they were succeeded by new
+shoots or seedlings, so that from century to century no perceptible
+change seems to have occurred in the wood, except
+the slow, spontaneous succession of crops. This succession
+involved no interruption of growth, and but little break in
+the "boundless contiguity of shade;" for, in the husbandry
+of nature, there are no fallows. Trees fall singly, not by
+square roods, and the tall pine is hardly prostrate, before the
+light and heat, admitted to the ground by the removal of the
+dense crown of foliage which had shut them out, stimulate the
+germination of the seeds of broad-leaved trees that had lain,
+waiting this kindly influence, perhaps for centuries. Two
+natural causes, destructive in character, were, indeed, in
+operation in the primitive American forests, though, in the
+Northern colonies, at least, there were sufficient compensations;
+for we do not discover that any considerable permanent
+change was produced by them. I refer to the action of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+beavers and of fallen trees in producing bogs,<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> and of smaller
+animals, insects, and birds, in destroying the woods. Bogs
+are less numerous and extensive in the Northern States of the
+American union, because the natural inclination of the surface
+favors drainage; but they are more frequent, and cover more
+ground, in the Southern States, for the opposite reason.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+They generally originate in the checking of watercourses by
+the falling of timber, or of earth and rocks, across their channels.
+If the impediment thus created is sufficient to retain a
+permanent accumulation of water behind it, the trees whose
+roots are overflowed soon perish, and then by their fall
+increase the obstruction, and, of course, occasion a still wider
+spread of the stagnating stream. This process goes on until
+the water finds a new outlet, at a higher level, not liable to
+similar interruption. The fallen trees not completely covered
+by water are soon overgrown with mosses; aquatic and semi-aquatic
+plants propagate themselves, and spread until they
+more or less completely fill up the space occupied by the
+water, and the surface is gradually converted from a pond to a
+quaking morass.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> The morass is slowly solidified by vegetable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+production and deposit, then very often restored to the forest
+condition by the growth of black ashes, cedars, or, in southern
+latitudes, cypresses, and other trees suited to such a soil, and
+thus the interrupted harmony of nature is at last re&euml;stablished.</p>
+
+<p>I am disposed to think that more bogs in the Northern
+States owe their origin to beavers than to accidental obstructions
+of rivulets by wind-fallen or naturally decayed trees; for
+there are few swamps in those States, at the outlets of which
+we may not, by careful search, find the remains of a beaver
+dam. The beaver sometimes inhabits natural lakelets, but he
+prefers to owe his pond to his own ingenuity and toil. The
+reservoir once constructed, its inhabitants rapidly multiply,
+and as its harvests of pond lilies, and other aquatic plants on
+which this quadruped feeds in winter, become too small for
+the growing population, the beaver metropolis sends out
+expeditions of discovery and colonization. The pond gradually
+fills up, by the operation of the same causes as when it
+owes its existence to an accidental obstruction, and when, at
+last, the original settlement is converted into a bog by the
+usual processes of vegetable life, the remaining inhabitants
+abandon it and build on some virgin brooklet a new city of
+the waters.</p>
+
+<p>In countries somewhat further advanced in civilization
+than those occupied by the North American Indians, as in
+medi&aelig;val Ireland, the formation of bogs may be commenced
+by the neglect of man to remove, from the natural channels
+of superficial drainage, the tops and branches of trees felled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+for the various purposes to which wood is applicable in his
+rude industry; and, when the flow of the water is thus
+checked, nature goes on with the processes I have already
+described. In such half-civilized regions, too, windfalls are
+more frequent than in those where the forest is unbroken,
+because, when openings have been made in it, for agricultural
+or other purposes, the entrance thus afforded to the wind
+occasions the sudden overthrow of hundreds of trees which
+might otherwise have stood for generations, and thus have
+fallen to the ground, only one by one, as natural decay
+brought them down.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Besides this, the flocks bred by man in
+the pastoral state, keep down the incipient growth of trees on
+the half-dried bogs, and prevent them from recovering their
+primitive condition.</p>
+
+<p>Young trees in the native forest are sometimes girdled and
+killed by the smaller rodent quadrupeds, and their growth is
+checked by birds which feed on the terminal bud; but these
+animals, as we shall see, are generally found on the skirts of
+the wood only, not in its deeper recesses, and hence the mischief
+they do is not extensive. The insects which damage
+primitive forests by feeding upon products of trees essential to
+their growth, are not numerous, nor is their appearance, in
+destructive numbers, frequent; and those which perforate the
+stems and branches, to deposit and hatch their eggs, more
+commonly select dead trees for that purpose, though, unhappily,
+there are important exceptions to this latter remark.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+do not know that we have any evidence of the destruction or
+serious injury of American forests by insects, before or even
+soon after the period of colonization; but since the white man
+has laid bare a vast proportion of the earth's surface, and
+thereby produced changes favorable, perhaps, to the multiplication
+of these pests, they have greatly increased in numbers,
+and, apparently, in voracity also. Not many years ago, the
+pines on thousands of acres of land in North Carolina, were
+destroyed by insects not known to have ever done serious
+injury to that tree before. In such cases as this and others of
+the like sort, there is good reason to believe that man is the
+indirect cause of an evil for which he pays so heavy a penalty.
+Insects increase whenever the birds which feed upon them
+disappear. Hence, in the wanton destruction of the robin and
+other insectivorous birds, the <i>bipes implumis</i>, the featherless
+biped, man, is not only exchanging the vocal orchestra which
+greets the rising sun for the drowsy beetle's evening drone,
+and depriving his groves and his fields of their fairest ornament,
+but he is waging a treacherous warfare on his natural
+allies.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>In fine, in countries untrodden by man, the proportions
+and relative positions of land and water, the atmospheric
+precipitation and evaporation, the thermometric mean, and
+the distribution of vegetable and animal life, are subject to
+change only from geological influences so slow in their operation
+that the geographical conditions may be regarded as
+constant and immutable. These arrangements of nature it is,
+in most cases, highly desirable substantially to maintain, when
+such regions become the seat of organized commonwealths.
+It is, therefore, a matter of the first importance, that, in
+commencing the process of fitting them for permanent civilized
+occupation, the transforming operations should be so conducted
+as not unnecessarily to derange and destroy what, in too
+many cases, it is beyond the power of man to rectify or restore.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Restoration of Disturbed Harmonies.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In reclaiming and reoccupying lands laid waste by human
+improvidence or malice, and abandoned by man, or occupied
+only by a nomade or thinly scattered population, the task of
+the pioneer settler is of a very different character. He is to
+become a co-worker with nature in the reconstruction of the
+damaged fabric which the negligence or the wantonness of
+former lodgers has rendered untenantable. He must aid her
+in reclothing the mountain slopes with forests and vegetable
+mould, thereby restoring the fountains which she provided to
+water them; in checking the devastating fury of torrents, and
+bringing back the surface drainage to its primitive narrow
+channels; and in drying deadly morasses by opening the
+natural sluices which have been choked up, and cutting new
+canals for drawing off their stagnant waters. He must thus,
+on the one hand, create new reservoirs, and, on the other,
+remove mischievous accumulations of moisture, thereby equalizing
+and regulating the sources of atmospheric humidity and
+of flowing water, both which are so essential to all vegetable
+growth, and, of course, to human and lower animal life.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Destructiveness of Man.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to
+him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate
+waste. Nature has provided against the absolute destruction
+of any of her elementary matter, the raw material of her
+works; the thunderbolt and the tornado, the most convulsive
+throes of even the volcano and the earthquake, being only
+phenomena of decomposition and recomposition. But she has
+left it within the power of man irreparably to derange the
+combinations of inorganic matter and of organic life, which
+through the night of &aelig;ons she had been proportioning and
+balancing, to prepare the earth for his habitation, when, in the
+fulness of time, his Creator should call him forth to enter into
+its possession.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the hostile influence of man, the organic and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+the inorganic world are, as I have remarked, bound together
+by such mutual relations and adaptations as secure, if not the
+absolute permanence and equilibrium of both, a long continuance
+of the established conditions of each at any given time
+and place, or at least, a very slow and gradual succession of
+changes in those conditions. But man is everywhere a disturbing
+agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of
+nature are turned to discords. The proportions and accommodations
+which insured the stability of existing arrangements
+are overthrown. Indigenous vegetable and animal
+species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of foreign
+origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and
+the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new
+and reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes
+of animal life. These intentional changes and substitutions
+constitute, indeed, great revolutions; but vast as is their
+magnitude and importance, they are, as we shall see, insignificant
+in comparison with the contingent and unsought
+results which have flowed from them.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that, of all organic beings, man alone is to be
+regarded as essentially a destructive power, and that he wields
+energies to resist which, nature&mdash;that Nature whom all
+material life and all inorganic substance obey&mdash;is wholly
+impotent, tends to prove that, though living in physical
+nature, he is not of her, that he is of more exalted parentage,
+and belongs to a higher order of existences than those born of
+her womb and submissive to her dictates.</p>
+
+<p>There are, indeed, brute destroyers, beasts and birds and
+insects of prey&mdash;all animal life feeds upon, and, of course,
+destroys other life,&mdash;but this destruction is balanced by compensations.
+It is, in fact, the very means by which the existence
+of one tribe of animals or of vegetables is secured against
+being smothered by the encroachments of another; and the
+reproductive powers of species, which serve as the food of
+others, are always proportioned to the demand they are
+destined to supply. Man pursues his victims with reckless
+destructiveness; and, while the sacrifice of life by the lower<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+animals is limited by the cravings of appetite, he unsparingly
+persecutes, even to extirpation, thousands of organic forms
+which he cannot consume.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>The earth was not, in its natural condition, completely
+adapted to the use of man, but only to the sustenance of wild
+animals and wild vegetation. These live, multiply their kind
+in just proportion, and attain their perfect measure of strength
+and beauty, without producing or requiring any change in the
+natural arrangements of surface, or in each other's spontaneous
+tendencies, except such mutual repression of excessive increase
+as may prevent the extirpation of one species by the encroachments
+of another. In short, without man, lower animal and
+spontaneous vegetable life would have been constant in type,
+distribution, and proportion, and the physical geography of the
+earth would have remained undisturbed for indefinite periods,
+and been subject to revolution only from possible, unknown
+cosmical causes, or from geological action.</p>
+
+<p>But man, the domestic animals that serve him, the field
+and garden plants the products of which supply him with
+food and clothing, cannot subsist and rise to the full development
+of their higher properties, unless brute and unconscious
+nature be effectually combated, and, in a great degree,
+vanquished by human art. Hence, a certain measure of transformation
+of terrestrial surface, of suppression of natural, and
+stimulation of artificially modified productivity becomes necessary.
+This measure man has unfortunately exceeded. He has
+felled the forests whose network of fibrous roots bound the
+mould to the rocky skeleton of the earth; but had he allowed
+here and there a belt of woodland to reproduce itself by spontaneous
+propagation, most of the mischiefs which his reckless
+destruction of the natural protection of the soil has occasioned
+would have been averted. He has broken up the mountain
+reservoirs, the percolation of whose waters through unseen
+channels supplied the fountains that refreshed his cattle and
+fertilized his fields; but he has neglected to maintain the
+cisterns and the canals of irrigation which a wise antiquity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+had constructed to neutralize the consequences of its own
+imprudence. While he has torn the thin glebe which confined
+the light earth of extensive plains, and has destroyed the fringe
+of semi-aquatic plants which skirted the coast and checked
+the drifting of the sea sand, he has failed to prevent the
+spreading of the dunes by clothing them with artificially
+propagated vegetation. He has ruthlessly warred on all the
+tribes of animated nature whose spoil he could convert to his
+own uses, and he has not protected the birds which prey on
+the insects most destructive to his own harvests.</p>
+
+<p>Purely untutored humanity, it is true, interferes comparatively
+little with the arrangements of nature,<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> and the destruc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>tive
+agency of man becomes more and more energetic and
+unsparing as he advances in civilization, until the impoverishment,
+with which his exhaustion of the natural resources of
+the soil is threatening him, at last awakens him to the neces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>sity
+of preserving what is left, if not of restoring what has
+been wantonly wasted. The wandering savage grows no cultivated
+vegetable, fells no forest, and extirpates no useful
+plant, no noxious weed. If his skill in the chase enables him
+to entrap numbers of the animals on which he feeds, he compensates
+this loss by destroying also the lion, the tiger, the
+wolf, the otter, the seal, and the eagle, thus indirectly protecting
+the feebler quadrupeds and fish and fowls, which would
+otherwise become the booty of beasts and birds of prey. But
+with stationary life, or rather with the pastoral state, man at
+once commences an almost indiscriminate warfare upon all the
+forms of animal and vegetable existence around him, and as
+he advances in civilization, he gradually eradicates or transforms
+every spontaneous product of the soil he occupies.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Human and Brute Action Compared.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It has been maintained by authorities as high as any
+known to modern science, that the action of man upon
+nature, though greater in <i>degree</i>, does not differ in <i>kind</i>, from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+that of wild animals. It appears to me to differ in essential
+character, because, though it is often followed by unforeseen
+and undesired results, yet it is nevertheless guided by a self-conscious
+and intelligent will aiming as often at secondary and
+remote as at immediate objects. The wild animal, on the
+other hand, acts instinctively, and, so far as we are able to
+perceive, always with a view to single and direct purposes.
+The backwoodsman and the beaver alike fell trees; the man
+that he may convert the forest into an olive grove that will
+mature its fruit only for a succeeding generation, the beaver
+that he may feed upon their bark or use them in the construction
+of his habitation. Human differs from brute action, too, in its
+influence upon the material world, because it is not controlled
+by natural compensations and balances. Natural arrangements,
+once disturbed by man, are not restored until he retires
+from the field, and leaves free scope to spontaneous recuperative
+energies; the wounds he inflicts upon the material creation
+are not healed until he withdraws the arm that gave the
+blow. On the other hand, I am not aware of any evidence
+that wild animals have ever destroyed the smallest forest,
+extirpated any organic species or modified its natural character,
+occasioned any permanent change of terrestrial surface, or
+produced any disturbance of physical conditions which nature
+has not, of herself, repaired without the expulsion of the
+animal that had caused it.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+<p>The form of geographical surface, and very probably the
+climate of a given country, depend much on the character of
+the vegetable life belonging to it. Man has, by domestication,
+greatly changed the habits and properties of the plants he
+rears; he has, by voluntary selection, immensely modified the
+forms and qualities of the animated creatures that serve him;
+and he has, at the same time, completely rooted out many
+forms of animal if not of vegetable being.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> What is there, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+the influence of brute life, that corresponds to this? We have
+no reason to believe that in that portion of the American
+continent which, though peopled by many tribes of quadruped
+and fowl, remained uninhabited by man, or only thinly occupied
+by purely savage tribes, any sensible geographical change
+had occurred within twenty centuries before the epoch of
+discovery and colonization, while, during the same period,
+man had changed millions of square miles, in the fairest and
+most fertile regions of the Old World, into the barrenest
+deserts.</p>
+
+<p>The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and
+destroy the balance which nature had established between her
+organized and her inorganic creations; and she avenges herself
+upon the intruder, by letting loose upon her defaced
+provinces destructive energies hitherto kept in check by
+organic forces destined to be his best auxiliaries, but which he
+has unwisely dispersed and driven from the field of action.
+When the forest is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored
+up in its vegetable mould is evaporated, and returns only in
+deluges of rain to wash away the parched dust into which that
+mould has been converted. The well-wooded and humid hills
+are turned to ridges of dry rock, which encumbers the low
+grounds and chokes the watercourses with its debris, and&mdash;except
+in countries favored with an equable distribution of
+rain through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination
+of surface&mdash;the whole earth, unless rescued by human art
+from the physical degradation to which it tends, becomes an
+assemblage of bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of
+swampy and malarious plains. There are parts of Asia Minor,
+of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe,
+where the operation of causes set in action by man has
+brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete
+as that of the moon; and though, within that brief space<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+of time which we call "the historical period," they are known
+to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures,
+and fertile meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be
+reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted for
+human use, except through great geological changes, or other
+mysterious influences or agencies of which we have no present
+knowledge, and over which we have no prospective control.
+The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant,
+and another era of equal human crime and human
+improvidence, and of like duration with that through which
+traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would
+reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness,
+of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the
+depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the
+species.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Physical Improvement.</i></h4>
+
+<p>True, there is a partial reverse to this picture. On narrow
+theatres, new forests have been planted; inundations of flowing
+streams restrained by heavy walls of masonry and other constructions;
+torrents compelled to aid, by depositing the slime
+with which they are charged, in filling up lowlands, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+raising the level of morasses which their own overflows had
+created; ground submerged by the encroachments of the
+ocean, or exposed to be covered by its tides, has been rescued
+from its dominion by diking;<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> swamps and even lakes have
+been drained, and their beds brought within the domain of
+agricultural industry; drifting coast dunes have been checked
+and made productive by plantation; seas and inland waters
+have been repeopled with fish, and even the sands of the
+Sahara have been fertilized by artesian fountains. These
+achievements are more glorious than the proudest triumphs of
+war, but, thus far, they give but faint hope that we shall yet
+make full atonement for our spendthrift waste of the bounties
+of nature.</p>
+
+<p>It is, on the one hand, rash and unphilosophical to attempt
+to set limits to the ultimate power of man over inorganic
+nature, and it is unprofitable, on the other, to speculate on
+what may be accomplished by the discovery of now unknown
+and unimagined natural forces, or even by the invention of
+new arts and new processes. But since we have seen aerostation,
+the motive power of elastic vapors, the wonders of
+modern telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gunpowder,
+and even of a substance so harmless, unresisting, and
+inert as cotton, nothing in the way of mechanical achievement
+seems impossible, and it is hard to restrain the imagination
+from wandering forward a couple of generations to an epoch
+when our descendants shall have advanced as far beyond us in
+physical conquest, as we have marched beyond the trophies
+erected by our grandfathers.</p>
+
+<p>I must therefore be understood to mean only, that no
+agencies now known to man and directed by him seem
+adequate to the reducing of great Alpine precipices to such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+slopes as would enable them to support a vegetable clothing,
+or to the covering of large extents of denuded rock with earth,
+and planting upon them a forest growth. But among the
+mysteries which science is yet to reveal, there may be still
+undiscovered methods of accomplishing even grander wonders
+than these. Mechanical philosophers have suggested the possibility
+of accumulating and treasuring up for human use some
+of the greater natural forces, which the action of the elements
+puts forth with such astonishing energy. Could we gather,
+and bind, and make subservient to our control, the power
+which a West Indian hurricane exerts through a small area in
+one continuous blast, or the momentum expended by the
+waves, in a tempestuous winter, upon the breakwater at Cherbourg,<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a>
+or the lifting power of the tide, for a month, at the
+head of the Bay of Fundy, or the pressure of a square mile of
+sea water at the depth of five thousand fathoms, or a moment
+of the might of an earthquake or a volcano, our age&mdash;which
+moves no mountains and casts them into the sea by faith alone&mdash;might
+hope to scarp the rugged walls of the Alps and
+Pyrenees and Mount Taurus, robe them once more in a vegetation
+as rich as that of their pristine woods, and turn their
+wasting torrents into refreshing streams.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>Could this old world, which man has overthrown, be
+rebuilded, could human cunning rescue its wasted hillsides
+and its deserted plains from solitude or mere nomade occupation,
+from barrenness, from nakedness, and from insalubrity,
+and restore the ancient fertility and healthfulness of the
+Etruscan sea coast, the Campagna and the Pontine marshes,
+of Calabria, of Sicily, of the Peloponnesus and insular and
+continental Greece, of Asia Minor, of the slopes of Lebanon
+and Hermon, of Palestine, of the Syrian desert, of Mesopotamia
+and the delta of the Euphrates, of the Cyrenaica, of
+Africa proper, Numidia, and Mauritania, the thronging millions
+of Europe might still find room on the Eastern continent,
+and the main current of emigration be turned toward the
+rising instead of the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p>But changes like these must await great political and
+moral revolutions in the governments and peoples by whom
+those regions are now possessed, a command of pecuniary and
+of mechanical means not at present enjoyed by those nations,
+and a more advanced and generally diffused knowledge of the
+processes by which the amelioration of soil and climate is possible,
+than now anywhere exists. Until such circumstances
+shall conspire to favor the work of geographical regeneration,
+the countries I have mentioned, with here and there a local
+exception, will continue to sink into yet deeper desolation, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+in the mean time, the American continent, Southern Africa,
+Australia, and the smaller oceanic islands, will be almost the
+only theatres where man is engaged, on a great scale, in transforming
+the face of nature.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Arrest of Physical Decay of New Countries.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Comparatively short as is the period through which the
+colonization of foreign lands by European emigrants extends,
+great, and, it is to be feared, sometimes irreparable, injury has
+been already done in the various processes by which man
+seeks to subjugate the virgin earth; and many provinces, first
+trodden by the <i>homo sapiens Europ&aelig;</i> within the last two
+centuries, begin to show signs of that melancholy dilapidation
+which is now driving so many of the peasantry of Europe
+from their native hearths. It is evidently a matter of great
+moment, not only to the population of the states where these
+symptoms are manifesting themselves, but to the general
+interests of humanity, that this decay should be arrested, and
+that the future operations of rural husbandry and of forest
+industry, in districts yet remaining substantially in their
+native condition, should be so conducted as to prevent the
+widespread mischiefs which have been elsewhere produced by
+thoughtless or wanton destruction of the natural safeguards of
+the soil. This can be done only by the diffusion of knowledge
+on this subject among the classes that, in earlier days, subdued
+and tilled ground in which they had no vested rights, but
+who, in our time, own their woods, their pastures, and their
+ploughlands as a perpetual possession for them and theirs, and
+have, therefore, a strong interest in the protection of their
+domain against deterioration.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Forms and Formations most liable to Physical Degradation.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The character and extent of the evils under consideration
+depend very much on climate and the natural forms and constitution
+of surface. If the precipitation, whether great or
+small in amount, be equally distributed through the seasons,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+so that there are neither torrential rains nor parching droughts,
+and if, further, the general inclination of ground be moderate,
+so that the superficial waters are carried off without destructive
+rapidity of flow, and without sudden accumulation in the
+channels of natural drainage, there is little danger of the
+degradation of the soil in consequence of the removal of forest
+or other vegetable covering, and the natural face of the earth
+may be considered as substantially permanent. These conditions
+are well exemplified in Ireland, in a great part of England,
+in extensive districts in Germany and France, and, fortunately,
+in an immense proportion of the valley of the Mississippi
+and the basin of the great American lakes, as well as in
+many parts of the continents of South America and of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Destructive changes are most frequent in countries of
+irregular and mountainous surface, and in climates where the
+precipitation is confined chiefly to a single season, and where
+the year is divided into a wet and a dry period, as is the case
+throughout a great part of the Ottoman empire, and, more or
+less strictly, the whole Mediterranean basin. It is partly,
+though by no means entirely, owing to topographical and
+climatic causes that the blight, which has smitten the fairest
+and most fertile provinces of Imperial Rome, has spared Britannia,
+Germania, Pannonia, and M&#339;sia, the comparatively
+inhospitable homes of barbarous races, who, in the days of the
+C&aelig;sars, were too little advanced in civilized life to possess
+either the power or the will to wage that war against the
+order of nature which seems, hitherto, an almost inseparable
+condition precedent of high social culture, and of great progress
+in fine and mechanical art.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>In mountainous countries, on the other hand, various
+causes combine to expose the soil to constant dangers. The
+rain and snow usually fall in greater quantity, and with much
+inequality of distribution; the snow on the summits accumulates
+for many months in succession, and then is not unfrequently
+almost wholly dissolved in a single thaw, so that the
+entire precipitation of months is in a few hours hurried down
+the flanks of the mountains, and through the ravines that
+furrow them; the natural inclination of the surface promotes
+the swiftness of the gathering currents of diluvial rain and of
+melting snow, which soon acquire an almost irresistible force,
+and power of removal and transportation; the soil itself is
+less compact and tenacious than that of the plains, and if the
+sheltering forest has been destroyed, it is confined by few of
+the threads and ligaments by which nature had bound it
+together, and attached it to the rocky groundwork. Hence
+every considerable shower lays bare its roods of rock, and the
+torrents sent down by the thaws of spring, and by occasional
+heavy discharges of the summer and autumnal rains, are seas
+of mud and rolling stones that sometimes lay waste, and bury
+beneath them acres, and even miles, of pasture and field and
+vineyard.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Physical Decay of New Countries.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I have remarked that the effects of human action on the
+forms of the earth's surface could not always be distinguished
+from those resulting from geological causes, and there is also
+much uncertainty in respect to the precise influence of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+clearing and cultivating of the ground, and of other rural
+operations, upon climate. It is disputed whether either the
+mean or the extremes of temperature, the periods of the
+seasons, or the amount or distribution of precipitation and of
+evaporation, in any country whose annals are known, have
+undergone any change during the historical period. It is,
+indeed, impossible to doubt that many of the operations of the
+pioneer settler tend to produce great modifications in atmospheric
+humidity, temperature, and electricity; but we are at
+present unable to determine how far one set of effects is neutralized
+by another, or compensated by unknown agencies.
+This question scientific research is inadequate to solve, for
+want of the necessary data; but well conducted observation,
+in regions now first brought under the occupation of man,
+combined with such historical evidence as still exists, may be
+expected at no distant period to throw much light on this
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>Australia is, perhaps, the country from which we have a
+right to expect the fullest elucidation of these difficult and
+disputable problems. Its colonization did not commence until
+the physical sciences had become matter of almost universal
+attention, and is, indeed, so recent that the memory of living
+men embraces the principal epochs of its history; the peculiarities
+of its fauna, its flora, and its geology are such as to
+have excited for it the liveliest interest of the votaries of
+natural science; its mines have given its people the necessary
+wealth for procuring the means of instrumental observation,
+and the leisure required for the pursuit of scientific research;
+and large tracts of virgin forest and natural meadow are rapidly
+passing under the control of civilized man. Here, then,
+exist greater facilities and stronger motives for the careful study
+of the topics in question than have ever been found combined
+in any other theatre of European colonization.</p>
+
+<p>In North America, the change from the natural to the artificial
+condition of terrestrial surface began about the period
+when the most important instruments of meteorological observation
+were invented. The first settlers in the territory now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+constituting the United States and the British American provinces
+had other things to do than to tabulate barometrical and
+thermometrical readings, but there remain some interesting
+physical records from the early days of the colonies,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> and there
+is still an immense extent of North American soil where the
+industry and the folly of man have as yet produced little
+appreciable change. Here, too, with the present increased
+facilities for scientific observation, the future effects, direct and
+contingent, of man's labors, can be measured, and such precautions
+taken in those rural processes which we call improvements,
+as to mitigate evils, perhaps, in some degree, inseparable
+from every attempt to control the action of natural
+laws.</p>
+
+<p>In order to arrive at safe conclusions, we must first obtain
+a more exact knowledge of the topography, and of the present
+superficial and climatic condition of countries where the natural
+surface is as yet more or less unbroken. This can only be
+accomplished by accurate surveys, and by a great multiplication
+of the points of meteorological registry,<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> already so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+numerous; and as, moreover, considerable changes in the proportion
+of forest and of cultivated land, or of dry and wholly
+or partially submerged surface, will often take place within
+brief periods, it is highly desirable that the attention of
+observers, in whose neighborhood the clearing of the soil, or
+the drainage of lakes and swamps, or other great works of
+rural improvement, are going on or meditated, should be especially
+drawn not only to revolutions in atmospheric temperature
+and precipitation, but to the more easily ascertained and
+perhaps more important local changes produced by these
+operations in the temperature and the hygrometric state of
+the superficial strata of the earth, and in its spontaneous vegetable
+and animal products.</p>
+
+<p>The rapid extension of railroads, which now everywhere
+keeps pace with, and sometimes even precedes, the occupation
+of new soil for agricultural purposes, furnishes great facilities
+for enlarging our knowledge of the topography of the territory
+they traverse, because their cuttings reveal the composition
+and general structure of surface, and the inclination and elevation
+of their lines constitute known hypsometrical sections,
+which give numerous points of departure for the measurement
+of higher and lower stations, and of course for determining
+the relief and depression of surface, the slope of the
+beds of watercourses, and many other not less important
+questions.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The geological, hydrographical, and topographical surveys,
+which almost every general and even local government of the
+civilized world is carrying on, are making yet more important
+contributions to our stock of geographical and general physical
+knowledge, and, within a comparatively short space, there will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+be an accumulation of well established constant and historical
+facts, from which we can safely reason upon all the relations
+of action and reaction between man and external nature.</p>
+
+<p>But we are, even now, breaking up the floor and wainscoting
+and doors and window frames of our dwelling, for
+fuel to warm our bodies and seethe our pottage, and the world
+cannot afford to wait till the slow and sure progress of exact
+science has taught it a better economy. Many practical
+lessons have been learned by the common observation of
+unschooled men; and the teachings of simple experience, on
+topics where natural philosophy has scarcely yet spoken, are
+not to be despised.</p>
+
+<p>In these humble pages, which do not in the least aspire to
+rank among scientific expositions of the laws of nature, I shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+attempt to give the most important practical conclusions suggested
+by the history of man's efforts to replenish the earth
+and subdue it; and I shall aim to support those conclusions by
+such facts and illustrations only as address themselves to the
+understanding of every intelligent reader, and as are to be
+found recorded in works capable of profitable perusal, or at
+least consultation, by persons who have not enjoyed a special
+scientific training.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND
+OF ANIMAL SPECIES.</h3>
+
+<p class="blockquot">MODERN GEOGRAPHY EMBRACES ORGANIC LIFE&mdash;TRANSFER OF VEGETABLE
+LIFE&mdash;FOREIGN PLANTS GROWN IN THE UNITED STATES&mdash;AMERICAN PLANTS
+GROWS IN EUROPE&mdash;MODES OF INTRODUCTION OF FOREIGN PLANTS&mdash;VEGETABLES,
+HOW AFFECTED BY TRANSFER TO FOREIGN SOILS&mdash;EXTIRPATION OF
+VEGETABLES&mdash;ORIGIN OF DOMESTIC PLANTS&mdash;ORGANIC LIFE AS A GEOLOGICAL
+AND GEOGRAPHICAL AGENCY&mdash;ORIGIN AND TRANSFER OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS&mdash;EXTIRPATION
+OF ANIMALS&mdash;NUMBERS OF BIRDS IN THE UNITED STATES&mdash;BIRDS
+AS SOWERS AND CONSUMERS OF SEEDS, AND AS DESTROYERS OF INSECTS&mdash;DIMINUTION
+AND EXTIRPATION OF BIRDS&mdash;INTRODUCTION OF BIRDS&mdash;UTILITY
+OF INSECTS AND WORMS&mdash;INTRODUCTION OF INSECTS&mdash;DESTRUCTION
+OF INSECTS&mdash;REPTILES&mdash;DESTRUCTION OF FISH&mdash;INTRODUCTION AND BREEDING
+OF FISH&mdash;EXTIRPATION OF AQUATIC ANIMALS&mdash;MINUTE ORGANISMS.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Modern Geography embraces Organic Life.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It was a narrow view of geography which confined that
+science to delineation of terrestrial surface and outline, and to
+description of the relative position and magnitude of land and
+water. In its improved form, it embraces not only the globe
+itself, but the living things which vegetate or move upon it,
+the varied influences they exert upon each other, the reciprocal
+action and reaction between them and the earth they
+inhabit. Even if the end of geographical studies were only to
+obtain a knowledge of the external forms of the mineral and
+fluid masses which constitute the globe, it would still be
+necessary to take into account the element of life; for every
+plant, every animal, is a geographical agency, man a destruc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>tive,
+vegetables, and even wild beasts, restorative powers.
+The rushing waters sweep down earth from the uplands; in
+the first moment of repose, vegetation seeks to re&euml;stablish
+itself on the bared surface, and, by the slow deposit of its
+decaying products, to raise again the soil which the torrent
+had lowered. So important an element of reconstruction is
+this, that it has been seriously questioned whether, upon the
+whole, vegetation does not contribute as much to elevate, as
+the waters to depress, the level of the surface.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever man has transported a plant from its native
+habitat to a new soil, he has introduced a new geographical
+force to act upon it, and this generally at the expense of some
+indigenous growth which the foreign vegetable has supplanted.
+The new and the old plants are rarely the equivalents of each
+other, and the substitution of an exotic for a native tree, shrub,
+or grass, increases or diminishes the relative importance of the
+vegetable element in the geography of the country to which
+it is removed. Further, man sows that he may reap. The
+products of agricultural industry are not suffered to rot upon
+the ground, and thus raise it by an annual stratum of new
+mould. They are gathered, transported to greater or less distances,
+and after they have served their uses in human economy,
+they enter, on the final decomposition of their elements,
+into new combinations, and are only in small proportion
+returned to the soil on which they grew. The roots of the
+grasses, and of many other cultivated plants, however, usually
+remain and decay in the earth, and contribute to raise its
+surface, though certainly not in the same degree as the forest.</p>
+
+<p>The vegetables, which have taken the place of trees,
+unquestionably perform many of the same functions. They
+radiate heat, they condense the humidity of the atmosphere,
+they act upon the chemical constitution of the air, their roots
+penetrate the earth to greater depths than is commonly supposed,
+and form an inextricable labyrinth of filaments which
+bind the soil together and prevent its erosion by water. The
+broad-leaved annuals and perennials, too, shade the ground,
+and prevent the evaporation of moisture from its surface by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+wind and sun.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> At a certain stage of growth, grass land is
+probably a more energetic radiator and condenser than even
+the forest, but this powerful action is exerted, in its full intensity,
+for a few days only, while trees continue such functions,
+with unabated vigor, for many months in succession. Upon
+the whole, it seems quite certain, that no cultivated ground is
+as efficient in tempering climatic extremes, or in conservation
+of geographical surface and outline, as is the soil which nature
+herself has planted.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Transfer of Vegetable Life.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It belongs to vegetable and animal geography, which are
+almost sciences of themselves, to point out in detail what man
+has done to change the distribution of plants and of animated
+life and to revolutionize the aspect of organic nature; but
+some of the more important facts bearing on this subject may
+pertinently be introduced here. Most of the fruit trees grown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+in Europe and the United States are believed, and&mdash;if the
+testimony of Pliny and other ancient naturalists is to be
+depended upon&mdash;many of them are historically known, to have
+originated in the temperate climates of Asia. The wine grape
+has been thought to be truly indigenous only in the regions
+bordering on the eastern end of the Black Sea, where it now,
+particularly on the banks of the Rion, the ancient Phasis,
+propagates itself spontaneously, and grows with unexampled
+luxuriance.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> But, some species of the vine seem native to
+Europe, and many varieties of grape have been too long
+known as common to every part of the United States to admit
+of the supposition that they were all introduced by European
+colonists.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is an interesting fact that the commerce&mdash;or at least the
+maritime carrying trade&mdash;and the agricultural and mechanical
+industry of the world are, in very large proportion, dependent
+on vegetable and animal products little or not at all known
+to ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish civilization. In many
+instances, the chief supply of these articles comes from countries
+to which they are probably indigenous, and where they
+are still almost exclusively grown; but in many others, the
+plants or animals from which they are derived have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+introduced by man into the regions now remarkable for their
+most successful cultivation, and that, too, in comparatively
+recent times, or, in other words, within two or three centuries.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Foreign Plants grown in the United States.</i></h4>
+
+<p>According to Bigelow, the United States had, on the first
+of June, 1860, in round numbers, 163,000,000 acres of improved
+land, the quantity having been increased by 50,000,000
+acres within the ten years next preceding.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> Not to mention
+less important crops, this land produced, in the year ending
+on the day last mentioned, in round numbers, 171,000,000
+bushels of wheat, 21,000,000 bushels of rye, 172,000,000 bushels
+of oats, 15,000,000 bushels of pease and beans, 16,000,000
+bushels of barley, orchard fruits to the value of $20,000,000,
+900,000 bushels of cloverseed, 900,000 bushels of other grass
+seed, 104,000 tons of hemp, 4,000,000 pounds of flax, and
+600,000 pounds of flaxseed. These vegetable growths were
+familiar to ancient European agriculture, but they were all
+introduced into North America after the close of the sixteenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>Of the fruits of agricultural industry unknown to the
+Greeks and Romans, or too little employed by them to be
+of any commercial importance, the United States produced,
+in the same year, 187,000,000 pounds of rice, 18,000,000 bushels
+of buckwheat, 2,075,000,000 pounds of ginned cotton,<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+302,000,000 pounds of cane sugar, 16,000,000 gallons of cane
+molasses, 7,000,000 gallons of sorghum molasses, all yielded
+by vegetables introduced into that country within two hundred
+years, and&mdash;with the exception of buckwheat, the origin of
+which is uncertain, and of cotton&mdash;all, directly or indirectly,
+from the East Indies; besides, from indigenous plants unknown
+to ancient agriculture, 830,000,000 bushels of Indian corn or
+maize, 429,000,000 pounds of tobacco, 110,000,000 bushels of
+potatoes, 42,000,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, 39,000,000
+pounds of maple sugar, and 2,000,000 gallons of maple molasses.
+To all this we are to add 19,000,000 tons of hay,
+produced partly by new, partly by long known, partly by
+exotic, partly by native herbs and grasses, an incalculable
+quantity of garden vegetables, chiefly of European or Asiatic
+origin, and many minor agricultural products.</p>
+
+<p>The weight of this harvest of a year would be not less than
+60,000,000 tons&mdash;which is eleven times the tonnage of all the
+shipping of the United States at the close of the year 1861&mdash;and,
+with the exception of the maple sugar, the maple molasses,
+and the products of the Western prairie lands and some
+small Indian clearings, it was all grown upon lands wrested
+from the forest by the European race within little more than
+two hundred years. The wants of Europe have introduced
+into the colonies of tropical America the sugar cane, the coffee
+plant, the orange and the lemon,<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> all of Oriental origin, have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+immensely stimulated the cultivation of the former two in the
+countries of which they are natives, and, of course, promoted
+agricultural operations which must have affected the geography
+of those regions to an extent proportionate to the scale on
+which they have been pursued.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>American Plants grown in Europe.</i></h4>
+
+<p>America has partially repaid her debt to the Eastern continent.
+Maize and the potato are very valuable additions to
+the field agriculture of Europe and the East, and the tomato is
+no mean gift to the kitchen gardens of the Old World, though
+certainly not an adequate return for the multitude of esculent
+roots and leguminous plants which the European colonists
+carried with them.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> I wish I could believe, with some, that
+America is not alone responsible for the introduction of the
+filthy weed, tobacco, the use of which is the most vulgar and
+pernicious habit engrafted by the semi-barbarism of modern
+civilization upon the less multifarious sensualism of ancient
+life;<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> but the alleged occurrence of pipe-like objects in Scla<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>vonic,
+and, it has been said, in Hungarian sepulchres, is hardly
+sufficient evidence to convict those races of complicity in this
+grave offence against the temperance and the refinement of
+modern society.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Modes of Introduction of Foreign Plants.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Besides the vegetables I have mentioned, we know that
+many plants of smaller economical value have been the subjects
+of international exchange in very recent times. Busbequius,
+Austrian ambassador at Constantinople about the
+middle of the sixteenth century&mdash;whose letters contain one of
+the best accounts of Turkish life which have appeared down
+to the present day&mdash;brought home from the Ottoman capital
+the lilac and the tulip. The Belgian Clusius about the same
+time introduced from the East the horse chestnut, which has
+since wandered to America. The weeping willows of Europe
+and the United States are said to have sprung from a slip
+received from Smyrna by the poet Pope, and planted by him
+in an English garden; and the Portuguese declare that the
+progenitor of all the European and American oranges was an
+Oriental tree transplanted to Lisbon, and still living in the last
+generation.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> The present favorite flowers of the parterres of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+Europe have been imported from America, Japan and other
+remote Oriental countries, within a century and a half, and, in
+fine, there are few vegetables of any agricultural importance,
+few ornamental trees or decorative plants, which are not now
+common to the three civilized continents.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_65_2" id="Page_65_2"></a>The statistics of vegetable emigration exhibit numerical
+results quite surprising to those not familiar with the subject.
+The lonely island of St. Helena is described as producing, at
+the time of its discovery in the year 1501, about sixty vegetable
+species, including some three or four known to grow
+elsewhere also. At the present time its flora numbers seven
+hundred and fifty species. Humboldt and Bonpland found,
+among the unquestionably indigenous plants of tropical
+America, monocotyledons only, all the dicotyledons of those
+extensive regions having been probably introduced after the
+colonization of the New World by Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The faculty of spontaneous reproduction and perpetuation
+necessarily supposes a greater power of accommodation, within
+a certain range, than we find in most domesticated plants, for
+it would rarely happen that the seed of a wild plant would fall
+into ground as nearly similar, in composition and condition, to
+that where its parent grew, as the soils of different fields artificially
+prepared for growing a particular vegetable are to each
+other. Accordingly, though every wild species affects a habitat
+of a particular character, it is found that, if accidentally
+or designedly sown elsewhere, it will grow under conditions
+extremely unlike those of its birthplace.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> Cooper says: "We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+cannot say positively that <i>any</i> plant is <i>uncultivable</i> anywhere
+until it has been tried;" and this seems to be even more true
+of wild than of domesticated vegetation.</p>
+
+<p>The seven hundred new species which have found their
+way to St. Helena within three centuries and a half, were certainly
+not all, or even in the largest proportion, designedly
+planted there by human art, and if we were well acquainted
+with vegetable emigration, we should probably be able to
+show that man has intentionally transferred fewer plants than
+he has accidentally introduced into countries foreign to them.
+After the wheat, follow the tares that infest it. The weeds
+that grow among the cereal grains, the pests of the kitchen
+garden, are the same in America as in Europe.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> The overturning
+of a wagon, or any of the thousand accidents which
+befall the emigrant in his journey across the Western plains,
+may scatter upon the ground the seeds he designed for his
+garden, and the herbs which fill so important a place in the
+rustic materia medica of the Eastern States, spring up along
+the prairie paths but just opened by the caravan of the settler.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+The hortus siccus of a botanist may accidentally sow seeds
+from the foot of the Himalayas on the plains that skirt the
+Alps; and it is a fact of very familiar observation, that exotics,
+transplanted to foreign climates suited to their growth, often
+escape from the flower garden and naturalize themselves
+among the spontaneous vegetation of the pastures. When
+the cases containing the artistic treasures of Thorvaldsen were
+opened in the court of the museum where they are deposited,
+the straw and grass employed in packing them were scattered
+upon the ground, and the next season there sprang up from
+the seeds no less than twenty-five species of plants belonging
+to the Roman campagna, some of which were preserved and
+cultivated as a new tribute to the memory of the great Scandinavian
+sculptor, and at least four are said to have spontaneously
+naturalized themselves about Copenhagen.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> In the
+campaign of 1814, the Russian troops brought, in the stuffing
+of their saddles and by other accidental means, seeds from the
+banks of the Dnieper to the valley of the Rhine, and even
+introduced the plants of the steppes into the environs of Paris.
+The Turkish armies, in their incursions into Europe, brought
+Eastern vegetables in their train, and left the seeds of Oriental
+wall plants to grow upon the ramparts of Buda and Vienna.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+The Canada thistle, <i>Erigeron Canadense</i>, is said to have
+sprung up in Europe, two hundred years ago, from a seed
+which dropped out of the stuffed skin of a bird.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Vegetables, how affected by Transfer to Foreign Soils.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Vegetables, naturalized abroad either by accident or design,
+sometimes exhibit a greatly increased luxuriance of growth.
+The European cardoon, an esculent thistle, has broken out
+from the gardens of the Spanish colonies on the La Plata,
+acquired a gigantic stature, and propagated itself, in impenetrable
+thickets, over hundreds of leagues of the Pampas; and
+the <i>Anacharis alsinastrum</i>, a water plant not much inclined
+to spread in its native American habitat, has found its way
+into English rivers, and extended itself to such a degree as to
+form a serious obstruction to the flow of the current, and even
+to navigation.</p>
+
+<p>Not only do many wild plants exhibit a remarkable facility
+of accommodation, but their seeds usually possess great tenacity
+of life, and their germinating power resists very severe
+trials. Hence, while the seeds of very many cultivated vegetables
+lose their vitality in two or three years, and can be
+transported safely to distant countries only with great precautions,
+the weeds that infest those vegetables, though not cared
+for by man, continue to accompany him in his migrations, and
+find a new home on every soil he colonizes. Nature fights in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+defence of her free children, but wars upon them when they
+have deserted her banners and tamely submitted to the
+dominion of man.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+<p>Not only is the wild plant much hardier than the domesticated
+vegetable, but the same law prevails in animated brute
+and even human life. The beasts of the chase are more capable
+of endurance and privation and more tenacious of life, than
+the domesticated animals which most nearly resemble them.
+The savage fights on, after he has received half a dozen mortal
+wounds, the least of which would have instantly paralyzed the
+strength of his civilized enemy, and, like the wild boar,<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> he
+has been known to press forward along the shaft of the spear
+which was transpiercing his vitals, and to deal a deathblow on
+the soldier who wielded it.</p>
+
+<p>True, domesticated plants can be gradually acclimatized to
+bear a degree of heat or of cold, which, in their wild state,
+they would not have supported; the trained English racer
+outstrips the swiftest horse of the pampas or prairies, perhaps
+even the less systematically educated courser of the Arab; the
+strength of the European, as tested by the dynamometer, is
+greater than that of the New Zealander. But all these are
+instances of excessive development of particular capacities and
+faculties at the expense of general vital power. Expose
+untamed and domesticated forms of life, together, to an entire
+set of physical conditions equally alien to the former habits of
+both, so that every power of resistance and accommodation
+shall be called into action, and the wild plant or animal will
+live, while the domesticated will perish.</p>
+
+<p>The saline atmosphere of the sea is specially injurious both
+to seeds and to very many young plants, and it is only recently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+that the transportation of some very important vegetables
+across the ocean has been made practicable, through the
+invention of Ward's airtight glass cases. It is by this means
+that large numbers of the trees which produce the Jesuit's
+bark have been successfully transplanted from America to the
+British possessions in the East, where it is hoped they will become
+fully naturalized.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Extirpation of Vegetables.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Lamentable as are the evils produced by the too general
+felling of the woods in the Old World, I believe it does not
+satisfactorily appear that any species of native forest tree has
+yet been extirpated by man on the Eastern continent. The
+roots, stumps, trunks, and foliage found in bogs are recognized
+as belonging to still extant species. Except in some few cases
+where there is historical evidence that foreign material was
+employed, the timber of the oldest European buildings, and
+even of the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, is evidently
+the product of trees still common in or near the countries
+where such architectural remains are found; nor have the
+Egyptian catacombs themselves revealed to us the former
+existence of any woods not now familiar to us as the growth of
+still living trees.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> It is, however, said that the yew tree,
+<i>Taxus baccata</i>, formerly very common in England, Germany,
+and&mdash;as we are authorized to infer from Theophrastus&mdash;in
+Greece, has almost wholly disappeared from the latter country,
+and seems to be dying out in Germany. The wood of the
+yew surpasses that of any other European tree in closeness
+and fineness of grain, and it is well known for the elasticity
+which of old made it so great a favorite with the English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+archer. It is much in request among wood carvers and turners,
+and the demand for it explains, in part, its increasing
+scarcity. It is also worth remarking that no insect depends
+upon it for food or shelter, or aids in its fructification, no bird
+feeds upon its berries&mdash;the latter a circumstance of some
+importance, because the tree hence wants one means of propagation
+or diffusion common to so many other plants. But it
+is alleged that the reproductive power of the yew is exhausted,
+and that it can no longer be readily propagated by the natural
+sowing of its seeds, or by artificial methods. If further investigation
+and careful experiment should establish this fact, it
+will go far to show that a climatic change, of a character unfavorable
+to the growth of the yew, has really taken place in
+Germany, though not yet proved by instrumental observation,
+and the most probable cause of such change would be found
+in the diminution of the area covered by the forests.</p>
+
+<p>The industry of man is said to have been so successful in the
+local extirpation of noxious or useless vegetables in China, that,
+with the exception of a few water plants in the rice grounds, it
+is sometimes impossible to find a single weed in an extensive
+district; and the late eminent agriculturist, Mr. Coke, is reported
+to have offered in vain a considerable reward for the detection
+of a weed in a large wheatfield on his estate in England. In
+these cases, however, there is no reason to suppose that diligent
+husbandry has done more than to eradicate the pests of
+agriculture within a comparatively limited area, and the cockle
+and the darnel will probably remain to plague the slovenly
+cultivator as long as the cereal grains continue to bless him.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Origin of Domestic Plants.</i></h4>
+
+<p>One of the most important, and, at the same time, most
+difficult questions connected with our subject is: how far we
+are to regard our cereal grains, our esculent bulbs and roots,
+and the multiplied tree fruits of our gardens, as artificially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+modified and improved forms of wild, self-propagating vegetation.
+The narratives of botanical travellers have often
+announced the discovery of the original form and habitat of
+domesticated plants, and scientific journals have described the
+experiments by which the identity of particular wild and cultivated
+vegetables has been thought to be established. It is
+confidently affirmed that maize and the potato&mdash;which we
+must suppose to have been first cultivated at a much later
+period than the breadstuffs and most other esculent vegetables
+of Europe and the East&mdash;are found wild and self-propagating
+in Spanish America, though in forms not recognizable by the
+common observer as identical with the familiar corn and tuber
+of modern agriculture. It was lately asserted, upon what
+seemed very strong evidence, that the <i>&AElig;gilops ovata</i>, a plant
+growing wild in Southern France, had been actually converted
+into common wheat; but, upon a repetition of the experiments,
+later observers have declared that the apparent change
+was only a case of temporary hybridation or fecundation by
+the pollen of true wheat, and that the grass alleged to be transformed
+into wheat could not be perpetuated as such from its
+own seed.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_73_2" id="Page_73_2"></a>The very great modifications which cultivated plants are
+constantly undergoing under our eyes, and the numerous
+varieties and races which spring up among them, certainly
+countenance the doctrine, that every domesticated vegetable,
+however dependent upon human care for growth and propagation
+in its present form, may have been really derived, by a
+long succession of changes, from some wild plant not now
+much resembling it. But it is, in every case, a question of
+evidence. The only satisfactory proof that a given wild plant
+is identical with a given garden or field vegetable, is the test
+of experiment, the actual growing of the one from the seed of
+the other, or the conversion of the one into the other by transplantation
+and change of conditions. It is hardly contended
+that any of the cereals or other plants important as human
+aliment, or as objects of agricultural industry, exist and propagate
+themselves uncultivated in the same form and with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+same properties as when sown and reared by human art.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> In
+fact, the cases are rare where the identity of a wild with a
+domesticated plant is considered by the best authorities as conclusively
+established, and we are warranted in affirming of but
+few of the latter, as a historically known or experimentally
+proved fact, that they ever did exist, or could exist, independently
+of man.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Organic Life as a Geological and Geographical Agency.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The quantitative value of organic life, as a geological
+agency, seems to be inversely as the volume of the individual
+organism; for nature supplies by numbers what is wanting in
+the bulk of the plant or animal out of whose remains or structures
+she forms strata covering whole provinces, and builds
+up from the depths of the sea large islands, if not continents.
+There are, it is true, near the mouths of the great Siberian
+rivers which empty themselves into the Polar Sea, drift islands
+composed, in an incredibly large proportion, of the bones and
+tusks of elephants, mastodons, and other huge pachyderms,
+and many extensive caves in various parts of the world are
+half filled with the skeletons of quadrupeds, sometimes lying
+loose in the earth, sometimes cemented together into an osseous
+breccia by a calcareous deposit or other binding material.
+These remains of large animals, though found in comparatively
+late formations, generally belong to extinct species, and their
+modern congeners or representatives do not exist in sufficient
+numbers to be of sensible importance in geology or in geography
+by the mere mass of their skeletons.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> But the vegetable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+products found with them, and, in rare cases, in the stomachs
+of some of them, are those of yet extant plants; and besides
+this evidence, the recent discovery of works of human art,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+deposited in juxtaposition with fossil bones, and evidently at
+the same time and by the same agency which buried these
+latter&mdash;not to speak of alleged human bones found in the same
+strata&mdash;proves that the animals whose former existence they
+testify were contemporaneous with man, and possibly even
+extirpated by him.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> I do not propose to enter upon the
+thorny question, whether the existing races of man are genealogically
+connected with these ancient types of humanity, and
+I advert to these facts only for the sake of the suggestion that
+man, in his earliest known stages of existence, was probably
+a destructive power upon the earth, though perhaps not so
+emphatically as his present representatives.</p>
+
+<p>The larger wild animals are not now numerous enough in
+any one region to form extensive deposits by their remains;
+but they have, nevertheless, a certain geographical importance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+If the myriads of large browsing and grazing quadrupeds
+which wander over the plains of Southern Africa&mdash;and the
+slaughter of which by thousands is the source of a ferocious
+pleasure and a brutal triumph to professedly civilized hunters&mdash;if
+the herds of the American bison, which are numbered by
+hundreds of thousands, do not produce visible changes in the
+forms of terrestrial surface, they have at least an immense
+influence on the growth and distribution of vegetable life, and,
+of course, indirectly upon all the physical conditions of soil
+and climate between which and vegetation a mutual interdependence
+exists.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of wild quadrupeds upon vegetable life has
+been little studied, and not many facts bearing upon it have
+been recorded, but, so far as it is known, it appears to be conservative
+rather than pernicious.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> Few if any of them depend
+for their subsistence on vegetable products obtainable only by
+the destruction of the plant, and they seem to confine their
+consumption almost exclusively to the annual harvest of leaf
+or twig, or at least of parts of the vegetable easily reproduced.
+If there are exceptions to this rule, they are in cases where the
+numbers of the animal are so proportioned to the abundance
+of the vegetable, that there is no danger of the extermination
+of the plant from the voracity of the quadruped, or of the
+extinction of the quadruped from the scarcity of the plant.
+In diet and natural wants the bison resembles the ox, the ibex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+and the chamois assimilate themselves to the goat and the
+sheep; but while the wild animal does not appear to be a
+destructive agency in the garden of nature, his domestic congeners
+are eminently so. This is partly from the change of
+habits resulting from domestication and association with man,
+partly from the fact that the number of reclaimed animals is
+not determined by the natural relation of demand and spontaneous
+supply which regulates the multiplication of wild
+creatures, but by the convenience of man, who is, in comparatively
+few things, amenable to the control of the merely physical
+arrangements of nature. When the domesticated animal
+escapes from human jurisdiction, as in the case of the ox, the
+horse, the goat, and perhaps the ass&mdash;which, so far as I know,
+are the only well-authenticated instances of the complete
+emancipation of household quadrupeds&mdash;he becomes again an
+unresisting subject of nature, and all his economy is governed
+by the same laws as that of his fellows which have never been
+enslaved by man; but, so long as he obeys a human lord, he
+is an auxiliary in the warfare his master is ever waging against
+all existences except those which he can tame to a willing
+servitude.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Number of Quadrupeds in the United States.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Civilization is so intimately associated with, if not dependent
+upon, certain inferior forms of animal life, that cultivated
+man has never failed to accompany himself, in all his migrations,
+with some of these humble attendants. The ox, the horse,
+the sheep, and even the comparatively useless dog and cat, as
+well as several species of poultry, are voluntarily transported
+by every emigrant colony, and they soon multiply to numbers
+very far exceeding those of the wild genera most nearly corresponding
+to them.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> According to the census of the United<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+States for 1860,<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> the total number of horses in all the States
+of the American Union, was, in round numbers, 7,300,000;
+of asses and mules, 1,300,000; of the ox tribe, 29,000,000;<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> of
+sheep, 25,000,000; and of swine, 39,000,000. The only North<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+American quadruped sufficiently gregarious in habits, and sufficiently
+multiplied in numbers, to form really large herds, is the
+bison, or, as he is commonly called in America, the buffalo; and
+this animal is confined to the prairie region of the Mississippi
+basin and Northern Mexico. The engineers sent out to survey
+railroad routes to the Pacific estimated the number of a single
+herd of bisons seen within the last ten years on the great plains
+near the Upper Missouri, at not less than 200,000, and yet the
+range occupied by this animal is now very much smaller in
+area than it was when the whites first established themselves
+on the prairies.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> But it must be remarked that the American
+buffalo is a migratory animal, and that, at the season of his
+annual journeys, the whole stock of a vast extent of pasture
+ground is collected into a single army, which is seen at or
+very near any one point only for a few days during the entire
+season. Hence there is risk of great error in estimating the
+numbers of the bison in a given district from the magnitude
+of the herds seen at or about the same time at a single place
+of observation; and, upon the whole, it is neither proved nor
+probable that the bison was ever, at any one time, as numerous
+in North America as the domestic bovine species is at present.
+The elk, the moose, the musk ox, the caribou, and the smaller
+quadrupeds popularly embraced under the general name of
+deer,<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> though sufficient for the wants of a sparse savage popu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>lation,
+were never numerically very abundant, and the carnivora
+which fed upon them were still less so. It is almost
+needless to add that the Rocky Mountain sheep and goat must
+always have been very rare.</p>
+
+<p>Summing up the whole, then, it is evident that the wild
+quadrupeds of North America, even when most numerous,
+were few compared with their domestic successors, that they
+required a much less supply of vegetable food, and consequently
+were far less important as geographical elements than
+the many millions of hoofed and horned cattle now fed by
+civilized man on the same continent.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Origin and Transfer of Domestic Quadrupeds.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Of the origin of our domestic animals, we know historically
+nothing, because their domestication belongs to the ages
+which preceded written history; but though they cannot all
+be specifically identified with now extant wild animals, it is
+presumable that they have been reclaimed from an originally
+wild state. Ancient annalists have preserved to us fewer data
+respecting the introduction of domestic animals into new countries
+than respecting the transplantation of domestic vegetables.
+Ritter, in his learned essay on the camel, has shown that this
+animal was not employed by the Egyptians until a comparatively
+late period in their history; that he was unknown to
+the Carthaginians until after the downfall of their commonwealth;
+and that his first appearance in Western Africa is
+more recent still. The Bactrian camel was certainly brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+from Asia Minor to the Northern shores of the Black Sea, by
+the Goths, in the third or fourth century.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> The Arabian
+single-humped camel, or dromedary, has been carried to the
+Canary Islands, partially introduced into Australia, Greece,
+Spain, and even Tuscany, experimented upon to little purpose
+in Venezuela, and finally imported by the American Government
+into Texas and New Mexico, where it finds the climate
+and the vegetable products best suited to its wants, and promises
+to become a very useful agent in the promotion of the
+special civilization for which those regions are adapted.
+America had no domestic quadruped but a species of dog, the
+lama tribe, and, to a certain extent, the bison or buffalo.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> Of
+course, it owes the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, the goat,
+and the swine, as does also Australia, to European colonization.
+Modern Europe has, thus far, not accomplished much
+in the way of importation of new animals, though some interesting
+essays have been made. The reindeer was successfully
+introduced into Iceland about a century ago, while similar
+attempts failed, about the same time, in Scotland. The Cashmere
+or Thibet goat was brought to France a generation since,
+and succeeds well. The same or an allied species and the
+Asiatic buffalo were carried to South Carolina about the year
+1850, and the former, at least, is thought likely to prove of
+permanent value in the United States. The yak, or Tartary ox,
+seems to thrive in France, and success has attended the recent
+efforts to introduce the South American alpaca into Europe.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Extirpation of Quadrupeds.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Although man never fails greatly to diminish, and is perhaps
+destined ultimately to exterminate, such of the larger wild
+quadrupeds as he cannot profitably domesticate, yet their numbers
+often fluctuate, and even after they seem almost extinct,
+they sometimes suddenly increase, without any intentional
+steps to promote such a result on his part. During the wars
+which followed the French Revolution, the wolf multiplied in
+many parts of Europe, partly because the hunters were withdrawn
+from the woods to chase a nobler game, and partly
+because the bodies of slain men and horses supplied this voracious
+quadruped with more abundant food. The same animal
+became again more numerous in Poland after the general disarming
+of the rural population by the Russian Government.
+On the other hand, when the hunters pursue the wolf, the
+graminivorous wild quadrupeds increase, and thus in turn promote
+the multiplication of their great four-footed destroyer by
+augmenting the supply of his nourishment. So long as the
+fur of the beaver was extensively employed as a material for
+fine hats, it bore a very high price, and the chase of this quadruped
+was so keen that naturalists feared its speedy extinction.
+When a Parisian manufacturer invented the silk hat, which
+soon came into almost universal use, the demand for beavers'
+fur fell off, and this animal&mdash;whose habits, as we have seen, are
+an important agency in the formation of bogs and other modifications
+of forest nature&mdash;immediately began to increase, reappeared
+in haunts which he had long abandoned, and can no
+longer be regarded as rare enough to be in immediate danger
+of extirpation. Thus the convenience or the caprice of Parisian
+fashion has unconsciously exercised an influence which may
+sensibly affect the physical geography of a distant continent.</p>
+
+<p>Since the invention of gunpowder, some quadrupeds have
+completely disappeared from many European and Asiatic
+countries where they were formerly numerous. The last wolf
+was killed in Great Britain two hundred years ago, and the
+bear was extirpated from that island still earlier. The British<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+wild ox exists only in a few English and Scottish parks, while
+in Irish bogs, of no great apparent antiquity, are found antlers
+which testify to the former existence of a stag much larger
+than any extant European species. The lion is believed to
+have inhabited Asia Minor and Syria, and probably Greece
+and Sicily also, long after the commencement of the historical
+period, and he is even said to have been not yet extinct in the
+first-named two of these countries at the time of the first Crusades.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a>
+Two large graminivorous or browsing quadrupeds,
+the ur and the schelk, once common in Germany, are utterly
+extinct, the eland and the auerochs nearly so. The Nibelungen-Lied,
+which, in the oldest form preserved to us, dates from
+about the year 1,200, though its original composition no doubt
+belongs to an earlier period, thus sings:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Then slowe the dowghtie Sigfrid a wisent and an elk,<br />
+He smote four stoute uroxen and a grim and sturdie schelk.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Modern naturalists identify the elk with the eland, the wisent
+with the auerochs. The period when the ur and the schelk
+became extinct is not known. The auerochs survived in
+Prussia until the middle of the last century, but unless it is
+identical with a similar quadruped said to be found on the
+Caucasus, it now exists only in the Russian imperial forest of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+Bialowitz, where about a thousand are still preserved, and in
+some great menageries, as for example that at Sch&ouml;nbrunn,
+near Vienna, which, in 1852, had four specimens. The eland,
+which is closely allied to the American wapiti, if not specifically
+the same animal, is still kept in the royal preserves of
+Prussia, to the number of four or five hundred individuals.
+The chamois is becoming rare, and the ibex or steinbock, once
+common in all the high Alps, is now believed to be confined
+to the Cogne mountains in Piedmont, between the valleys of
+the Dora Baltea and the Orco.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Number of Birds in the United States.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The tame fowls play a much less conspicuous part in rural
+life than the quadrupeds, and, in their relations to the economy
+of nature, they are of very much less moment than four-footed
+animals, or than the undomesticated birds. The domestic
+turkey<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> is probably more numerous in the territory of the
+United States than the wild bird of the same species ever was,
+and the grouse cannot, at the period of their greatest abundance,
+have counted as many as we now number of the common
+hen. The dove, however, must fall greatly short of the
+wild pigeon in multitude, and it is hardly probable that the
+flocks of domestic geese and ducks are as numerous as once
+were those of their wild congeners. The pigeon, indeed,
+seems to have multiplied immensely, for some years after the
+first clearings in the woods, because the settlers warred unsparingly
+upon the hawk, while the crops of grain and other vegetable
+growths increased the supply of food within the reach of
+the young birds, at the age when their power of flight is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+yet great enough to enable them to seek it over a wide area.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a>
+The pigeon is not described by the earliest white inhabitants
+of the American States as filling the air with such clouds of
+winged life as astonish naturalists in the descriptions of Audubon,
+and, at the present day, the net and the gun have so
+reduced its abundance, that its appearance in large numbers is
+recorded only at long intervals, and it is never seen in the
+great flocks remembered by many still living observers as
+formerly very common.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Birds as Sowers and Consumers of Seeds, and as
+Destroyers of Insects.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Wild birds form of themselves a very conspicuous and
+interesting feature in the <i>staffage</i>, as painters call it, of the
+natural landscape, and they are important elements in the
+view we are taking of geography, whether we consider their
+immediate or their incidental influence. Birds affect vegetation
+directly by sowing seeds and by consuming them; they
+affect it indirectly by destroying insects injurious, or, in some
+cases, beneficial to vegetable life. Hence, when we kill a seed-sowing
+bird, we check the dissemination of a plant; when we
+kill a bird which digests the seed it swallows, we promote the
+increase of a vegetable. Nature protects the seeds of wild,
+much more effectually than those of domesticated plants. The
+cereal grains are completely digested when consumed by birds,
+but the germ of the smaller stone fruits and of very many other
+wild vegetables is uninjured, perhaps even stimulated to more
+vigorous growth, by the natural chemistry of the bird's stomach.
+The power of flight and the restless habits of the bird
+enable it to transport heavy seeds to far greater distances than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+they could be carried by the wind. A swift-winged bird may
+drop cherry stones a thousand miles from the tree they grow
+on; a hawk, in tearing a pigeon, may scatter from its crop the
+still fresh rice it had swallowed at a distance of ten degrees of
+latitude,<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> and thus the occurrence of isolated plants in situations
+where their presence cannot otherwise well be explained, is
+easily accounted for. There is a large class of seeds apparently
+specially fitted by nature for dissemination by animals. I
+refer to those which attach themselves, by means of hooks, or
+by viscous juices, to the coats of quadrupeds and the feathers
+of birds, and are thus transported wherever their living vehicles
+may chance to wander. Some birds, too, deliberately
+bury seeds, not indeed with a foresight aiming directly at the
+propagation of the plant, but from apparently purposeless
+secretiveness, or as a mode of preserving food for future use.</p>
+
+<p>An unfortunate popular error greatly magnifies the injury
+done to the crops of grain and leguminous vegetables by wild
+birds. Very many of those generally supposed to consume
+large quantities of the seeds of cultivated plants really feed
+almost exclusively upon insects, and frequent the wheatfields,
+not for the sake of the grain, but for the eggs, larv&aelig;, and fly
+of the multiplied tribes of insect life which are so destructive
+to the harvests. This fact has been so well established by the
+examination of the stomachs of great numbers of birds in
+Europe and New England, at different seasons of the year,
+that it is no longer open to doubt, and it appears highly probable
+that even the species which consume more or less grain
+generally make amends, by destroying insects whose ravages
+would have been still more injurious.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> On this subject, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+have much other evidence besides that derived from dissection.
+Direct observation has shown, in many instances, that the
+destruction of wild birds has been followed by a great multiplication
+of noxious insects, and, on the other hand, that these
+latter have been much reduced in numbers by the protection
+and increase of the birds that devour them. Many interesting
+facts of this nature have been collected by professed naturalists,
+but I shall content myself with a few taken from familiar
+and generally accessible sources. The following extract is
+from Michelet, <i>L'Oiseau</i> pp. 169, 170:</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>stingy</i> farmer&mdash;an epithet justly and feelingly bestowed
+by Virgil. Avaricious, blind, indeed, who proscribes
+the birds&mdash;those destroyers of insects, those defenders of his
+harvests. Not a grain for the creature which, during the rains
+of winter, hunts the future insect, finds out the nests of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+larv&aelig;, examines, turns over every leaf, and destroys, every
+day, thousands of incipient caterpillars. But sacks of corn for
+the mature insect, whole fields for the grasshoppers, which the
+bird would have made war upon. With eyes fixed upon his
+furrow, upon the present moment only, without seeing and
+without foreseeing, blind to the great harmony which is never
+broken with impunity, he has everywhere demanded or approved
+laws for the extermination of that necessary ally of his
+toil&mdash;the insectivorous bird. And the insect has well avenged
+the bird. It has become necessary to revoke in haste the proscription.
+In the Isle of Bourbon, for instance, a price was set
+on the head of the martin; it disappeared, and the grasshoppers
+took possession of the island, devouring, withering, scorching
+with a biting drought all that they did not consume. In
+North America it has been the same with the starling, the
+protector of Indian corn.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> Even the sparrow, which really
+does attack grain, but which protects it still more, the pilferer,
+the outlaw, loaded with abuse and smitten with curses&mdash;it has
+been found in Hungary that they were likely to perish without
+him, that he alone could sustain the mighty war against the
+beetles and the thousand winged enemies that swarm in the
+lowlands; they have revoked the decree of banishment, recalled
+in haste this valiant militia, which, though deficient in
+discipline, is nevertheless the salvation of the country.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not long since, in the neighborhood of Rouen and in the
+valley of Monville, the blackbird was for some time proscribed.
+The beetles profited well by this proscription; their larv&aelig;,
+infinitely multiplied, carried on their subterranean labors with
+such success, that a meadow was shown me, the surface of
+which was completely dried up, every herbaceous root was
+consumed, and the whole grassy mantle, easily loosened, might
+have been rolled up and carried away like a carpet."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Diminution and Extirpation of Birds.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The general hostility of the European populace to the
+smaller birds is, in part, the remote effect of the reaction created
+by the game laws. When the restrictions imposed upon
+the chase by those laws were suddenly removed in France,
+the whole people at once commenced a destructive campaign
+against every species of wild animal. Arthur Young, writing
+in Provence, on the 30th of August, 1789, soon after the
+National Assembly had declared the chase free, thus complains
+of the annoyance he experienced from the use made by
+the peasantry of their newly won liberty. "One would think
+that every rusty firelock in all Provence was at work in the
+indiscriminate destruction of all the birds. The wadding
+buzzed by my ears, or fell into my carriage, five or six times
+in the course of the day." * * "The declaration of the
+Assembly that every man is free to hunt on his own land<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> * * has
+filled all France with an intolerable cloud of sportsmen. * * The
+declaration speaks of compensations and
+indemnities [to the <i>seigneurs</i>], but the ungovernable populace
+takes advantage of the abolition of the game laws and laughs
+at the obligation imposed by the decree."</p>
+
+<p>The French Revolution removed similar restrictions, with
+similar results, in other countries. The habits then formed
+have become hereditary on the Continent, and though game
+laws still exist in England, there is little doubt that the blind
+prejudices of the ignorant and half-educated classes in that
+country against birds are, in some degree, at least, due to a
+legislation, which, by restricting the chase of all game worth
+killing, drives the unprivileged sportsman to indemnify himself
+by slaughtering all wild life which is not reserved for the
+amusement of his betters. Hence the lord of the manor buys
+his partridges and his hares by sacrificing the bread of his
+tenants, and so long as the farmers of Crawley are forbidden
+to follow higher game, they will suicidally revenge themselves
+by destroying the sparrows which protect their wheatfields.</p>
+
+<p>On the Continent, and especially in Italy, the comparative
+scarcity and dearness of animal food combine with the feeling
+I have just mentioned to stimulate still further the destructive
+passions of the fowler. In the Tuscan province of Grosseto,
+containing less than 2,000 square miles, nearly 300,000 thrushes
+and other small birds are annually brought to market.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Birds are less hardy in constitution, they possess less facility
+of accommodation,<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> and they are more severely affected by
+climatic excess than quadrupeds. Besides, they generally want
+the means of shelter against the inclemency of the weather
+and against pursuit by their enemies, which holes and dens
+afford to burrowing animals and to some larger beasts of prey.
+The egg is exposed to many dangers before hatching, and the
+young bird is especially tender, defenceless, and helpless.
+Every cold rain, every violent wind, every hailstorm during
+the breeding season, destroys hundreds of nestlings, and the
+parent often perishes with her progeny while brooding over it
+in the vain effort to protect it.<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> The great proportional numbers
+of birds, their migratory habits, and the ease with which
+they may escape most dangers that beset them, would seem to
+secure them from extirpation, and even from very great numerical
+reduction. But experience shows that when not pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>tected
+by law, by popular favor or superstition, or by other
+special circumstances, they yield very readily to the hostile
+influences of civilization, and, though the first operations of the
+settler are favorable to the increase of many species, the great
+extension of rural and of mechanical industry is, in a variety
+of ways, destructive even to tribes not directly warred upon
+by man.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nature sets bounds to the disproportionate increase of
+birds, while at the same time, by the multitude of their resources,
+she secures them from extinction through her own
+spontaneous agencies. Man both preys upon them and wantonly
+destroys them. The delicious flavor of game birds, and
+the skill implied in the various arts of the sportsman who
+devotes himself to fowling, make them favorite objects of the
+chase, while the beauty of their plumage, as a military and
+feminine decoration, threatens to involve the sacrifice of the
+last survivor of many once numerous species. Thus far, but
+few birds described by ancient or modern naturalists are
+known to have become absolutely extinct, though there are
+some cases in which they are ascertained to have utterly disappeared
+from the face of the earth in very recent times. The
+most familiar instances are those of the dodo, a large bird
+peculiar to the Mauritius or Isle of France, exterminated about
+the year 1690, and now known only by two or three fragments
+of skeletons, and the solitary, which inhabited the islands of
+Bourbon and Rodriguez, but has not been seen for more than
+a century. A parrot and some other birds of the Norfolk
+Island group are said to have lately become extinct. The
+wingless auk, <i>Alca impennis</i>, a bird remarkable for its excessive
+fatness, was very abundant two or three hundred years
+ago in the Faroe Islands, and on the whole Scandinavian seaboard.
+The early voyagers found either the same or a closely
+allied species, in immense numbers, on all the coasts and islands
+of Newfoundland. The value of its flesh and its oil made
+it one of the most important resources of the inhabitants of
+those sterile regions, and it was naturally an object of keen
+pursuit. It is supposed to be now completely extinct, and few
+museums can show even its skeleton.</p>
+
+<p>There seems to be strong reason to believe that our boasted
+modern civilization is guiltless of one or two sins of extermination
+which have been committed in recent ages. New Zealand
+formerly possessed three species of dinornis, one of
+which, called <i>moa</i> by the islanders, was much larger than the
+ostrich. The condition in which the bones of these birds have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+been found and the traditions of the natives concur to prove
+that, though the aborigines had probably extirpated them
+before the discovery of New Zealand by the whites, they still
+existed at a comparatively late period. The same remarks
+apply to a winged giant the eggs of which have been brought
+from Madagascar. This bird must have much exceeded the
+dimensions of the moa, at least so far as we can judge from the
+egg, which is eight times as large as the average size of the
+ostrich egg, or about one hundred and fifty times that of
+the hen.</p>
+
+<p>But though we have no evidence that man has exterminated
+many species of birds, we know that his persecutions
+have caused their disappearance from many localities where
+they once were common, and greatly diminished their numbers
+in others. The cappercailzie, <i>Tetrao urogallus</i>, the finest
+of the grouse family, formerly abundant in Scotland, had
+become extinct in Great Britain, but has been reintroduced
+from Sweden.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> The ostrich is mentioned by all the old trav<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>ellers,
+as common on the Isthmus of Suez down to the middle
+of the seventeenth century. It appears to have frequented
+Syria and even Asia Minor at earlier periods, but is now found
+only in the seclusion of remoter deserts.</p>
+
+<p>The modern increased facilities of transportation have
+brought distant markets within reach of the professional hunter,
+and thereby given a new impulse to his destructive propensities.
+Not only do all Great Britain and Ireland contribute
+to the supply of game for the British capital, but the
+canvas-back duck of the Potomac, and even the prairie hen
+from the basin of the Mississippi, may be found at the stalls
+of the London poulterer. Kohl<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> informs us that on the coasts
+of the North Sea, twenty thousand wild ducks are usually
+taken in the course of the season in a single decoy, and sent to
+the large maritime towns for sale. The statistics of the great
+European cities show a prodigious consumption of game birds,
+but the official returns fall far below the truth, because they
+do not include the rural districts, and because neither the
+poacher nor his customers report the number of his victims.
+Reproduction, in cultivated countries, cannot keep pace with
+this excessive destruction, and there is no doubt that all the
+wild birds which are chased for their flesh or their plumage
+are diminishing with a rapidity which justifies the fear that
+the last of them will soon follow the dodo and the wingless
+auk.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately the larger birds which are pursued for their
+flesh or for their feathers, and those the eggs of which are used
+as food, are, so far as we know the functions appointed to them
+by nature, not otherwise specially useful to man, and, therefore,
+their wholesale destruction is an economical evil only in
+the same sense in which all waste of productive capital is an
+evil. If it were possible to confine the consumption of game
+fowl to a number equal to the annual increase, the world
+would be a gainer, but not to the same extent as it would be
+by checking the wanton sacrifice of millions of the smaller<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+birds, which are of no real value as food, but which, as we
+have seen, render a most important service by battling, in our
+behalf, as well as in their own, against the countless legions of
+humming and of creeping things, with which the prolific powers
+of insect life would otherwise cover the earth.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Introduction of Birds.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Man has undesignedly introduced into new districts perhaps
+fewer species of birds than of quadrupeds; but the distribution
+of birds is very much influenced by the character of his
+industry, and the transplantation of every object of agricultural
+production is, at a longer or shorter interval, followed by
+that of the birds which feed upon its seeds, or more frequently
+upon the insects it harbors. The vulture, the crow, and other
+winged scavengers, follow the march of armies as regularly as
+the wolf. Birds accompany ships on long voyages, for the
+sake of the offal which is thrown overboard, and, in such cases,
+it might often happen that they would breed and become naturalized
+in countries where they had been unknown before.<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a>
+There is a familiar story of an English bird which built its nest
+in an unused block in the rigging of a ship, and made one or
+two short voyages with the vessel while hatching its eggs.
+Had the young become fledged while lying in a foreign harbor,
+they would of course have claimed the rights of citizenship
+in the country where they first took to the wing.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some enthusiastic entomologist will, perhaps, by and by
+discover that insects and worms are as essential as the larger
+organisms to the proper working of the great terraqueous
+machine, and we shall have as eloquent pleas in defence of
+the mosquito, and perhaps even of the tzetze fly, as Toussenel
+and Michelet have framed in behalf of the bird.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> The silkworm
+and the bee need no apologist; a gallnut produced by
+the puncture of an insect on a Syrian oak is a necessary ingredient
+in the ink I am writing with, and from my windows I
+recognize the grain of the kermes and the cochineal in the gay
+habiliments of the holiday groups beneath them. But agriculture,
+too, is indebted to the insect and the worm. The ancients,
+according to Pliny, were accustomed to hang branches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+of the wild fig upon the domestic tree, in order that the insects
+which frequented the former might hasten the ripening of the
+cultivated fig by their punctures&mdash;or, as others suppose, might
+fructify it by transporting to it the pollen of the wild fruit&mdash;and
+this process, called caprification, is not yet entirely obsolete.
+The earthworms long ago made good their title to the respect
+and gratitude of the farmer as well as of the angler. The
+utility of the earthworms has been pointed out in many
+scientific as well as in many agricultural treatises. The following
+extract, cut from a newspaper, will answer my present
+purpose:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Josiah Parkes, the consulting engineer of the Royal
+Agricultural Society of England, says that worms are great
+assistants to the drainer, and valuable aids to the farmer in
+keeping up the fertility of the soil. He says they love moist,
+but not wet soils; they will bore down to, but not into water;
+they multiply rapidly on land after drainage, and prefer a
+deeply dried soil. On examining with Mr. Thomas Hammond,
+of Penhurst, Kent, part of a field which he had deeply
+drained, after long-previous shallow drainage, he found that
+the worms had greatly increased in number, and that their
+bores descended quite to the level of the pipes. Many worm
+bores were large enough to receive the little finger. Mr.
+Henry Handley had informed him of a piece of land near the
+sea in Lincolnshire, over which the sea had broken and killed
+all the worms&mdash;the field remained sterile until the worms
+again inhabited it. He also showed him a piece of pasture
+land near to his house, in which worms were in such numbers
+that he thought their casts interfered too much with its produce,
+which induced him to have it rolled at night in order to
+destroy the worms. The result was, that the fertility of the
+field greatly declined, nor was it restored until they had
+recruited their numbers, which was aided by collecting and
+transporting multitudes of worms from the fields.</p>
+
+<p>"The great depth into which worms will bore, and from
+which they push up fine fertile soil, and cast it on the surface,
+has been admirably traced by Mr. C. Darwin, of Down, Kent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+who has shown that in a few years they have actually elevated
+the surface of fields by a large layer of rich mould, several inches
+thick&mdash;thus affording nourishment to the roots of grasses, and
+increasing the productiveness of the soil."</p>
+
+<p>It should be added that the writer quoted, and others who
+have discussed the subject, have overlooked one very important
+element in the fertilization produced by earthworms. I
+refer to the enrichment of the soil by their excreta during life,
+and by the decomposition of their remains when they die.
+The manure thus furnished is as valuable as the like amount
+of similar animal products derived from higher organisms, and
+when we consider the prodigious numbers of these worms
+found on a single square yard of some soils, we may easily see
+that they furnish no insignificant contribution to the nutritive
+material required for the growth of plants.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></p>
+
+<p>The perforations of the earthworm mechanically affect the
+texture of the soil and its permeability by water, and they
+therefore have a certain influence on the form and character
+of surface. But the geographical importance of insects proper,
+as well as of worms, depends principally on their connection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+with vegetable life as agents of its fecundation, and of its
+destruction.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> I am acquainted with no single fact so strikingly
+illustrative of this importance, as the following statement
+which I take from a notice of Darwin's volume, On Various
+Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized
+by Insects, in the <i>Saturday Review</i>, of October 18, 1862:
+"The net result is, that some six thousand species of orchids
+are absolutely dependent upon the agency of insects for their
+fertilization. That is to say, were those plants unvisited by
+insects, they would all rapidly disappear." What is true of
+the orchids is more or less true of many other vegetable families.
+We do not know the limits of this agency, and many
+of the insects habitually regarded as unqualified pests, may
+directly or indirectly perform functions as important to the
+most valuable plants as the services rendered by certain tribes
+to the orchids. I say directly or indirectly, because, besides
+the other arrangements of nature for checking the undue multiplication
+of particular species, she has established a police
+among insects themselves, by which some of them keep down
+or promote the increase of others; for there are insects, as
+well as birds and beasts, of prey. The existence of an insect
+which fertilizes a useful vegetable may depend on that of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+another, which constitutes his food in some stage of his life,
+and this other again may be as injurious to some plant as his
+destroyer is beneficial to another. The equation of animal and
+vegetable life is too complicated a problem for human intelligence
+to solve, and we can never know how wide a circle of
+disturbance we produce in the harmonies of nature when we
+throw the smallest pebble into the ocean of organic life.</p>
+
+<p>This much, however, we seem authorized to conclude: as
+often as we destroy the balance by deranging the original proportions
+between different orders of spontaneous life, the law
+of self-preservation requires us to restore the equilibrium, by
+either directly returning the weight abstracted from one scale,
+or removing a corresponding quantity from the other. In
+other words, destruction must be either repaired by reproduction,
+or compensated by new destruction in an opposite
+quarter.</p>
+
+<p>The parlor aquarium has taught even those to whom it is
+but an amusing toy, that the balance of animal and vegetable
+life must be preserved, and that the excess of either is fatal to
+the other, in the artificial tank as well as in natural waters.
+A few years ago, the water of the Cochituate aqueduct at
+Boston became so offensive in smell and taste as to be quite
+unfit for use. Scientific investigation found the cause in the
+too scrupulous care with which aquatic vegetation had been
+excluded from the reservoir, and the consequent death and
+decay of the animalcul&aelig; which could not be shut out, nor live
+in the water without the vegetable element.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Introduction of Insects.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The general tendency of man's encroachments upon spontaneous
+nature has been to increase insect life at the expense
+of vegetation and of the smaller quadrupeds and birds.
+Doubtless there are insects in all woods, but in temperate
+climates they are comparatively few and harmless, and the
+most numerous tribes which breed in the forest, or rather
+in its waters, and indeed in all solitudes, are those which
+little injure vegetation, such as mosquitoes, gnats, and the
+like. With the cultivated plants of man come the myriad
+tribes which feed or breed upon them, and agriculture not
+only introduces new species, but so multiplies the number of
+individuals as to defy calculation. Newly introduced vegetables
+frequently escape for years the insect plagues which had
+infested them in their native habitat; but the importation of
+other varieties of the plant, the exchange of seed, or some
+mere accident, is sure in the long run to carry the egg, the
+larva, or the chrysalis to the most distant shores where the
+plant assigned to it by nature as its possession has preceded it.
+For many years after the colonization of the United States,
+few or none of the insects which attack wheat in its different
+stages of growth, were known in America. During the Revolutionary
+war, the Hessian fly, <i>Cecidomyia destructor</i>, made its
+appearance, and it was so called because it was first observed
+in the year when the Hessian troops were brought over, and
+was popularly supposed to have been accidentally imported
+by those unwelcome strangers. Other destroyers of cereal
+grains have since found their way across the Atlantic, and a
+noxious European aphis has first attacked the American wheatfields
+within the last four or five years. Unhappily, in these
+cases of migration, the natural corrective of excessive multiplication,
+the parasitic or voracious enemy of the noxious insect,
+does not always accompany the wanderings of its prey, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+the bane long precedes the antidote. Hence, in the United
+States, the ravages of imported insects injurious to cultivated
+crops, not being checked by the counteracting influences which
+nature had provided to limit their devastations in the Old
+World, are much more destructive than in Europe. It is not
+known that the wheat midge is preyed upon in America by
+any other insect, and in seasons favorable to it, it multiplies to
+a degree which would prove almost fatal to the entire harvest,
+were it not that, in the great territorial extent of the United
+States, there is room for such differences of soil and climate as,
+in a given year, to present in one State all the conditions favorable
+to the increase of a particular insect, while in another, the
+natural influences are hostile to it. The only apparent remedy
+for this evil is, to balance the disproportionate development of
+noxious foreign species by bringing from their native country
+the tribes which prey upon them. This, it seems, has been
+attempted. The United States' Census Report for 1860, p.
+82, states that the New York Agricultural Society "has introduced
+into this country from abroad certain parasites which
+Providence has created to counteract the destructive powers
+of some of these depredators."</p>
+
+<p>This is, however, not the only purpose for which man has
+designedly introduced foreign forms of insect life. The eggs
+of the silkworm are known to have been brought from the
+farther East to Europe in the sixth century, and new silk spinners
+which feed on the castor oil bean and the ailanthus, have
+recently been reared in France and in South America with
+promising success. The cochineal, long regularly bred in
+aboriginal America, has been transplanted to Spain, and both
+the kermes insect and the cantharides have been transferred to
+other climates than their own. The honey bee must be ranked
+next to the silkworm in economical importance.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> This useful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+creature was carried to the United States by European colonists,
+in the latter part of the seventeenth century; it did not
+cross the Mississippi till the close of the eighteenth, and it is
+only within the last five or six years that it has been transported
+to California, where it was previously unknown. The
+Italian stingless bee has very lately been introduced into the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p>The insects and worms intentionally transplanted by man
+bear but a small proportion to those accidentally introduced
+by him. Plants and animals often carry their parasites with
+them, and the traffic of commercial countries, which exchange
+their products with every zone and every stage of social existence,
+cannot fail to transfer in both directions the minute
+organisms that are, in one way or another, associated with
+almost every object important to the material interests of man.<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p>
+
+<p>The tenacity of life possessed by many insects, their prodigious
+fecundity, the length of time they often remain in the
+different phases of their existence,<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> the security of the retreats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+into which their small dimensions enable them to retire, are
+all circumstances very favorable not only to the perpetuity of
+their species, but to their transportation to distant climates
+and their multiplication in their new homes. The teredo, so
+destructive to shipping, has been carried by the vessels whose
+wooden walls it mines to almost every part of the globe. The
+termite, or white ant, is said to have been brought to Rochefort
+by the commerce of that port a hundred years ago.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> This
+creature is more injurious to wooden structures and implements
+than any other known insect. It eats out almost the
+entire substance of the wood, leaving only thin partitions
+between the galleries it excavates in it; but as it never gnaws
+through the surface to the air, a stick of timber may be almost
+wholly consumed without showing any external sign of the
+damage it has sustained. The termite is found also in other
+parts of France, and particularly at Rochelle, where, thus far,
+its ravages are confined to a single quarter of the city. A
+borer, of similar habits, is not uncommon in Italy, and you
+may see in that country, handsome chairs and other furniture
+which have been reduced by this insect to a framework of
+powder of post, covered, and apparently held together, by
+nothing but the varnish.</p>
+
+<p>The carnivorous, and often the herbivorous insects render
+an important service to man by consuming dead and decaying
+animal and vegetable matter, the decomposition of which
+would otherwise fill the air with effluvia noxious to health.
+Some of them, the grave-digger beetle, for instance, bury the
+small animals in which they lay their eggs, and thereby prevent
+the escape of the gases disengaged by putrefaction. The
+prodigious rapidity of development in insect life, the great
+numbers of the individuals in many species, and the voracity
+of most of them while in the larva state, justify the appellation
+of nature's scavengers which has been bestowed upon
+them, and there is very little doubt that, in warm countries,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+they consume a much larger quantity of putrescent organic
+material than the quadrupeds and the birds which feed upon
+such aliment.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Destruction of Insects.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It is well known to naturalists, but less familiarly to common
+observers, that the aquatic larv&aelig; of some insects constitute,
+at certain seasons, a large part of the food of fresh-water
+fish, while other larv&aelig;, in their turn, prey upon the spawn
+and even the young of their persecutors.<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> The larv&aelig; of the
+mosquito and the gnat are the favorite food of the trout in the
+wooded regions where those insects abound.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> Earlier in the
+year the trout feeds on the larv&aelig; of the May fly, which is
+itself very destructive to the spawn of the salmon, and hence,
+by a sort of house-that-Jack-built, the destruction of the mos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>quito,
+that feeds the trout that preys on the May fly that
+destroys the eggs that hatch the salmon that pampers the epicure,
+may occasion a scarcity of this latter fish in waters where
+he would otherwise be abundant. Thus all nature is linked
+together by invisible bonds, and every organic creature, however
+low, however feeble, however dependent, is necessary to
+the well-being of some other among the myriad forms of life
+with which the Creator has peopled the earth.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that man has promoted the increase of the
+insect and the worm, by destroying the bird and the fish
+which feed upon them. Many insects, in the four different
+stages of their growth, inhabit in succession the earth, the
+water, and the air. In each of these elements they have their
+special enemies, and, deep and dark as are the minute recesses
+in which they hide themselves, they are pursued to the remotest,
+obscurest corners by the executioners that nature has
+appointed to punish their delinquencies, and furnished with
+cunning contrivances for ferreting out the offenders and dragging
+them into the light of day. One tribe of birds, the woodpeckers,
+seems to depend for subsistence almost wholly on
+those insects which breed in dead or dying trees, and it is,
+perhaps, needless to say that the injury these birds do the
+forest is imaginary. They do not cut holes in the trunk of the
+tree to prepare a lodgment for a future colony of boring larv&aelig;,
+but to extract the worm which has already begun his mining
+labors. Hence these birds are not found where the forester
+removes trees as fast as they become fit habitations for such
+insects. In clearing new lands in the United States, dead
+trees, especially of the spike-leaved kinds, too much decayed
+to serve for timber, and which, in that state, are worth little
+for fuel, are often allowed to stand until they fall of themselves.
+Such <i>stubs</i>, as they are popularly called, are filled
+with borers, and often deeply cut by the woodpeckers, whose
+strong bills enable them to penetrate to the very heart of the
+tree and drag out the lurking larv&aelig;. After a few years, the
+stubs fall, or, as wood becomes valuable, are cut and carried
+off for firewood, and, at the same time, the farmer selects for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+felling, in the forest he has reserved as a permanent source of
+supply of fuel and timber, the decaying trees which, like the
+dead stems in the fields, serve as a home for both the worm
+and his pursuer. We thus gradually extirpate this tribe of
+insects, and, with them, the species of birds which subsist principally
+upon them. Thus the fine, large, red-headed woodpecker,
+<i>Picus erythrocephalus</i>, formerly very common in New
+England, has almost entirely disappeared from those States,
+since the dead trees are gone, and the apples, his favorite vegetable
+food, are less abundant.</p>
+
+<p>There are even large quadrupeds which feed almost exclusively
+upon insects. The ant bear is strong enough to pull
+down the clay houses built by the species of termites that
+constitute his ordinary diet, and the curious ai-ai, a climbing
+quadruped of Madagascar&mdash;of which I believe only a single
+specimen, secured by Mr. Sandwith, has yet reached Europe&mdash;is
+provided with a very slender, hook-nailed finger, long enough
+to reach far into a hole in the trunk of a tree, and extract the
+worm which bored it.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Reptiles.</i></h4>
+
+<p>But perhaps the most formidable foes of the insect, and
+even of the small rodents, are the reptiles. The chameleon
+approaches the insect perched upon the twig of a tree, with an
+almost imperceptible slowness of motion, until, at the distance
+of a foot, he shoots out his long, slimy tongue, and rarely fails
+to secure the victim. Even the slow toad catches the swift
+and wary housefly in the same manner; and in the warm
+countries of Europe, the numerous lizards contribute very
+essentially to the reduction of the insect population, which
+they both surprise in the winged state upon walls and trees,
+and consume as egg, worm, and chrysalis, in their earlier metamorphoses.
+The serpents feed much upon insects, as well as
+upon mice, moles, and small reptiles, including also other
+snakes. The disgust and fear with which the serpent is so
+universally regarded expose him to constant persecution by
+man, and perhaps no other animal is so relentlessly sacrificed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+by him. In temperate climates, snakes are consumed by
+scarcely any beast or bird of prey except the stork, and they
+have few dangerous enemies but man, though in the tropics
+other animals prey upon them.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> It is doubtful whether any
+species of serpent has been exterminated within the human
+period, and even the dense population of China has not been
+able completely to rid itself of the viper. They have, however,
+almost entirely disappeared from particular localities. The
+rattlesnake is now wholly unknown in many large districts
+where it was extremely common half a century ago, and Palestine
+has long been, if not absolutely free from venomous
+serpents, at least very nearly so.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Destruction of Fish.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of the waters seem comparatively secure
+from human pursuit or interference by the inaccessibility of
+their retreats, and by our ignorance of their habits&mdash;a natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+result of the difficulty of observing the ways of creatures living
+in a medium in which we cannot exist. Human agency has,
+nevertheless, both directly and incidentally, produced great
+changes in the population of the sea, the lakes, and the rivers,
+and if the effects of such revolutions in aquatic life are apparently
+of small importance in general geography, they are still
+not wholly inappreciable. The great diminution in the abundance
+of the larger fish employed for food or pursued for products
+useful in the arts is familiar, and when we consider how the
+vegetable and animal life on which they feed must be affected
+by the reduction of their numbers, it is easy to see that their
+destruction may involve considerable modifications in many
+of the material arrangements of nature. The whale does not
+appear to have been an object of pursuit by the ancients, for
+any purpose, nor do we know when the whale fishery first
+commenced.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> It was, however, very actively prosecuted in
+the Middle Ages, and the Biscayans seem to have been particularly
+successful in this as indeed in other branches of nautical
+industry.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> Five hundred years ago, whales abounded in every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+sea. They long since became so rare in the Mediterranean
+as not to afford encouragement for the fishery as a regular
+occupation; and the great demand for oil and whalebone for
+mechanical and manufacturing purposes, in the present century,
+has stimulated the pursuit of the "hugest of living creatures"
+to such activity, that he has now almost wholly disappeared
+from many favorite fishing grounds, and in others is
+greatly diminished in numbers.</p>
+
+<p>What special functions, besides his uses to man, are assigned
+to the whale in the economy of nature, we do not
+know; but some considerations, suggested by the character of
+the food upon which certain species subsist, deserve to be
+specially noticed. None of the great mammals grouped under
+the general name of whale are rapacious. They all live upon
+small organisms, and the most numerous species feed almost
+wholly upon the soft gelatinous mollusks in which the sea
+abounds in all latitudes. We cannot calculate even approximately
+the number of the whales, or the quantity of organic
+nutriment consumed by an individual, and of course we can
+form no estimate of the total amount of animal matter withdrawn
+by them, in a given period, from the waters of the sea.
+It is certain, however, that it must have been enormous when
+they were more abundant, and that it is still very considerable.
+A very few years since, the United States had more than six
+hundred whaling ships constantly employed in the Pacific,
+and the product of the American whale fishery for the year
+ending June 1st, 1860, was seven millions and a half of dollars.<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>
+The mere bulk of the whales destroyed in a single year<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+by the American and the European vessels engaged in this
+fishery would form an island of no inconsiderable dimensions,
+and each one of those taken must have consumed, in the
+course of his growth, many times his own weight of mollusks.
+The destruction of the whales must have been followed by a
+proportional increase of the organisms they feed upon, and if
+we had the means of comparing the statistics of these humble
+forms of life, for even so short a period as that between the
+years 1760 and 1860, we should find a difference sufficient,
+possibly, to suggest an explanation of some phenomena at
+present unaccounted for.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, as I have observed in another work,<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> the
+phosphorescence of the sea was unknown to ancient writers, or
+at least scarcely noticed by them, and even Homer&mdash;who,
+blind as tradition makes him when he composed his epics, had
+seen, and marked, in earlier life, all that the glorious nature
+of the Mediterranean and its coasts discloses to unscientific
+observation&mdash;nowhere alludes to this most beautiful and striking
+of maritime wonders. In the passage just referred to, I
+have endeavored to explain the silence of ancient writers with
+respect to this as well as other remarkable phenomena on psychological
+grounds; but is it not possible that, in modern times,
+the animalcul&aelig; which produce it may have immensely multiplied,
+from the destruction of their natural enemies by man,
+and hence that the gleam shot forth by their decomposition, or
+by their living processes, is both more frequent and more brilliant
+than in the days of classic antiquity?</p>
+
+<p>Although the whale does not prey upon smaller creatures
+resembling himself in form and habits, yet true fishes are
+extremely voracious, and almost every tribe devours unspar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>ingly
+the feebler species, and even the spawn and young of its
+own. The enormous destruction of the pike, the trout family,
+and other ravenous fish, as well as of the fishing birds, the seal,
+and the otter, by man, would naturally have occasioned a great
+increase in the weaker and more defenceless fish on which they
+feed, had he not been as hostile to them also as to their persecutors.
+We have little evidence that any fish employed as
+human food has naturally multiplied in modern times, while
+all the more valuable tribes have been immensely reduced in
+numbers.<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> This reduction must have affected the more voracious
+species not used as food by man, and accordingly the
+shark, and other fish of similar habits, though not objects of
+systematic pursuit, are now comparatively rare in many waters
+where they formerly abounded. The result is, that man has
+greatly reduced the numbers of all larger marine animals,
+and consequently indirectly favored the multiplication of the
+smaller aquatic organisms which entered into their nutriment.
+This change in the relations of the organic and inorganic
+matter of the sea must have exercised an influence on the latter.
+What that influence has been, we cannot say, still less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+can we predict what it will be hereafter; but its action is not
+for that reason the less certain.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Introduction and Breeding of Fish.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The introduction and successful breeding of fish of foreign
+species appears to have been long practised in China and was
+not unknown to the Greeks and Romans. This art has been
+revived in modern times, but thus far without any important
+results, economical or physical, though there seems to be good
+reason to believe it may be employed with advantage on an
+extended scale. As in the case of plants, man has sometimes
+undesignedly introduced new species of aquatic animals into
+countries distant from their birthplace. The accidental escape
+of the Chinese goldfish from ponds where they were bred as a
+garden ornament, has peopled some European, and it is said
+American streams with this species. Canals of navigation and
+irrigation interchange the fish of lakes and rivers widely separated
+by natural barriers, as well as the plants which drop
+their seeds into the waters. The Erie Canal, as measured by
+its own channel, has a length of about three hundred and sixty
+miles, and it has ascending and descending locks in both directions.
+By this route, the fresh-water fish of the Hudson and
+the Upper Lakes, and some of the indigenous vegetables of
+these respective basins, have intermixed, and the fauna and
+flora of the two regions have now more species common to
+both than before the canal was opened. Some accidental
+attraction not unfrequently induces fish to follow a vessel for
+days in succession, and they may thus be enticed into zones
+very distant from their native habitat. Several years ago, I
+was told at Constantinople, upon good authority, that a couple
+of fish, of a species wholly unknown to the natives, had just
+been taken in the Bosphorus. They were alleged to have followed
+an English ship from the Thames, and to have been frequently
+observed by the crew during the passage, but I was
+unable to learn their specific character.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the fish which pass the greater part of the year in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+salt water spawn in fresh, and some fresh-water species, the
+common brook trout of New England for instance, which,
+under ordinary circumstances, never visit the sea, will, if transferred
+to brooks emptying directly into the ocean, go down
+into the salt water after spawning time, and return again the
+next season. Sea fish, the smelt among others, are said to
+have been naturalized in fresh water, and some naturalists
+have argued from the character of the fish of Lake Baikal, and
+especially from the existence of the seal in that locality, that
+all its inhabitants were originally marine species, and have
+changed their habits with the gradual conversion of the
+saline waters of the lake&mdash;once, as is assumed, a maritime bay&mdash;into
+fresh.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> The presence of the seal is hardly conclusive on
+this point, for it is sometimes seen in Lake Champlain at the
+distance of some hundreds of miles from even brackish water.
+One of these animals was killed on the ice in that lake in February,
+1810, another in February, 1846,<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> and remains of the
+seal have been found at other times in the same waters.</p>
+
+<p>The remains of the higher orders of aquatic animals are
+generally so perishable that, even where most abundant, they
+do not appear to be now forming permanent deposits of any
+considerable magnitude; but it is quite otherwise with shell
+fish, and, as we shall see hereafter, with many of the minute
+limeworkers of the sea. There are, on the southern coast of
+the United States, beds of shells so extensive that they were
+formerly supposed to have been naturally accumulated, and
+were appealed to as proofs of an elevation of the coast by geological
+causes; but they are now ascertained to have been
+derived from oysters, consumed in the course of long ages by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+the inhabitants of Indian towns. The planting of a bed of
+oysters in a new locality might, very probably, lead, in time,
+to the formation of a bank, which, in connection with other
+deposits, might perceptibly affect the line of a coast, or, by
+changing the course of marine currents, or the outlet of a
+river, produce geographical changes of no small importance.
+The transplantation of oysters to artificial ponds has long been
+common, and it appears to have recently succeeded well on a
+large scale in the open sea on the French coast. A great
+extension of this fishery is hoped for, and it is now proposed to
+introduce upon the same coast the American soft clam, which
+is so abundant in the tide-washed beach sands of Long Island
+Sound as to form an important article in the diet of the neighboring
+population.</p>
+
+<p>The intentional naturalization of foreign fish, as I have said,
+has not thus far yielded important fruits; but though this particular
+branch of what is called, not very happily, <i>pisciculture</i>,
+has not yet established its claims to the attention of the physical
+geographer or the political economist, the artificial breeding
+of domestic fish has already produced very valuable results,
+and is apparently destined to occupy an extremely conspicuous
+place in the history of man's efforts to compensate his prodigal
+waste of the gifts of nature. The restoration of the primitive
+abundance of salt and fresh water fish, is one of the greatest
+material benefits that, with our present physical resources,
+governments can hope to confer upon their subjects. The
+rivers, lakes, and seacoasts once restocked, and protected by
+law from exhaustion by taking fish at improper seasons, by
+destructive methods, and in extravagant quantities, would
+continue indefinitely to furnish a very large supply of most
+healthful food, which, unlike all domestic and agricultural
+products, would spontaneously renew itself and cost nothing
+but the taking. There are many sterile or wornout soils in
+Europe so situated that they might, at no very formidable
+cost, be converted into permanent lakes, which would serve not
+only as reservoirs to retain the water of winter rains and snow,
+and give it out in the dry season for irrigation, but as breed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>ing
+ponds for fish, and would thus, without further cost, yield
+a larger supply of human food than can at present be obtained
+from them even at a great expenditure of capital and labor in
+agricultural operations. The additions which might be made
+to the nutriment of the civilized world by a judicious administration
+of the resources of the waters, would allow some
+restriction of the amount of soil at present employed for agricultural
+purposes, and a corresponding extension of the area
+of the forest, and would thus facilitate a return to primitive
+geographical arrangements which it is important partially to
+restore.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Extirpation of Aquatic Animals.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It does not seem probable that man, with all his rapacity
+and all his enginery, will succeed in totally extirpating any
+salt-water fish, but he has already exterminated at least one
+marine warm-blooded animal&mdash;Steller's sea cow&mdash;and the
+walrus, the sea lion, and other large amphibia, as well as the
+principal fishing quadrupeds, are in imminent danger of extinction.
+Steller's sea cow, <i>Rhytina Stelleri</i>, was first seen by
+Europeans in the year 1741, on Bering's Island. It was a
+huge amphibious mammal, weighing not less than eight thousand
+pounds, and appears to have been confined exclusively to
+the islands and coasts in the neighborhood of Bering's Strait.
+Its flesh was very palatable, and the localities it frequented
+were easily accessible from the Russian establishments in
+Kamtschatka. As soon as its existence and character, and the
+abundance of fur animals in the same waters, were made
+known to the occupants of those posts by the return of the
+survivors of Bering's expedition, so active a chase was commenced
+against the amphibia of that region, that, in the course
+of twenty-seven years, the sea cow, described by Steller as
+extremely numerous in 1741, is believed to have been completely
+extirpated, not a single individual having been seen
+since the year 1768. The various tribes of seals in the Northern
+and Southern Pacific, the walrus and the sea otter, are
+already so reduced in numbers that they seem destined soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+to follow the sea cow, unless protected by legislation stringent
+enough, and a police energetic enough, to repress the ardent
+cupidity of their pursuers.</p>
+
+<p>The seals, the otter tribe, and many other amphibia which
+feed almost exclusively upon fish, are extremely voracious, and
+of course their destruction or numerical reduction must have
+favored the multiplication of the species of fish principally
+preyed upon by them. I have been assured by the keeper of
+several tamed seals that, if supplied at frequent intervals, each
+seal would devour not less than fourteen pounds of fish, or
+about a quarter of his own weight, in a day.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> A very intelligent
+and observing hunter, who has passed a great part of his
+life in the forest, after carefully watching the habits of the
+fresh-water otter of the Northern American States, estimates
+their consumption of fish at about four pounds per day.</p>
+
+<p>Man has promoted the multiplication of fish by making
+war on their brute enemies, but he has by no means thereby
+compensated his own greater destructiveness.<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> The bird and
+beast of prey, whether on land or in the water, hunt only as
+long as they feel the stimulus of hunger, their ravages are
+limited by the demands of present appetite, and they do not
+wastefully destroy what they cannot consume. Man, on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+contrary, angles to-day that he may dine to-morrow; he takes
+and dries millions of fish on the banks of Newfoundland, that
+the fervent Catholic of the shores of the Mediterranean may
+have wherewithal to satisfy the cravings of the stomach during
+next year's Lent, without imperilling his soul by violating the
+discipline of the papal church; and all the arrangements of
+his fisheries are so organized as to involve the destruction of
+many more fish than are secured for human use, and the loss
+of a large proportion of the annual harvest of the sea in the
+process of curing, or in transportation to the places of its
+consumption.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a></p>
+
+<p>Fish are more affected than quadrupeds by slight and even
+imperceptible differences in their breeding places and feeding
+grounds. Every river, every brook, every lake stamps a special
+character upon its salmon, its shad, and its trout, which is
+at once recognized by those who deal in or consume them.
+No skill can give the fish fattened by food selected and prepared
+by man the flavor of those which are nourished at the
+table of nature, and the trout of the artificial ponds in Germany
+and Switzerland are so inferior to the brook fish of the
+same species and climate, that it is hard to believe them identical.
+The superior sapidity of the American trout to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+European species, which is familiar to every one acquainted
+with both continents, is probably due less to specific difference
+than to the fact that, even in the parts of the New World
+which have been longest cultivated, wild nature is not yet
+tamed down to the character it has assumed in the Old, and
+which it will acquire in America also when her civilization
+shall be as ancient as is now that of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Man has hitherto hardly anywhere produced such climatic
+or other changes as would suffice of themselves totally to banish
+the wild inhabitants of the dry land, and the disappearance of
+the native birds and quadrupeds from particular localities is to
+be ascribed quite as much to his direct persecutions as to the
+want of forest shelter, of appropriate food, or of other conditions
+indispensable to their existence. But almost all the processes
+of agriculture, and of mechanical and chemical industry, are
+fatally destructive to aquatic animals within reach of their
+influence. When, in consequence of clearing the woods, the
+changes already described as thereby produced in the beds
+and currents of rivers, are in progress, the spawning grounds
+of fish are exposed from year to year to a succession of mechanical
+disturbances; the temperature of the water is higher
+in summer, colder in winter, than when it was shaded and
+protected by wood; the smaller organisms, which formed the
+sustenance of the young fry, disappear or are reduced in numbers,
+and new enemies are added to the old foes that preyed
+upon them; the increased turbidness of the water in the
+annual inundations chokes the fish; and, finally, the quickened
+velocity of its current sweeps them down into the larger
+rivers or into the sea, before they are yet strong enough to
+support so great a change of circumstances.<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> Industrial oper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>ations
+are not less destructive to fish which live or spawn in
+fresh water. Milldams impede their migrations, if they do
+not absolutely prevent them, the sawdust from lumber mills
+clogs their gills, and the thousand deleterious mineral substances,
+discharged into rivers from metallurgical, chemical,
+and manufacturing establishments, poison them by shoals.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Minute Organisms.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Besides the larger creatures of the land and of the sea, the
+quadrupeds, the reptiles, the birds, the amphibia, the crustacea,
+the fish, the insects, and the worms, there are other
+countless forms of vital being. Earth, water, the ducts and
+fluids of vegetable and of animal life, the very air we breathe,
+are peopled by minute organisms which perform most important
+functions in both the living and the inanimate kingdoms
+of nature. Of the offices assigned to these creatures, the most
+familiar to common observation is the extraction of lime, and
+more rarely, of silex, from the waters inhabited by them, and
+the deposit of these minerals in a solid form, either as the
+material of their habitations or as the exuvi&aelig; of their bodies.
+The microscope and other means of scientific observation
+assure us that the chalk beds of England and of France, the
+coral reefs of marine waters in warm climates, vast calcareous
+and silicious deposits in the sea and in many fresh-water
+ponds, the common polishing earths and slates, and many
+species of apparently dense and solid rock, are the work of the
+humble organisms of which I speak, often, indeed, of animalcul&aelig;
+so small as to become visible only by the aid of lenses
+magnifying a hundred times the linear measures. It is pop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>ularly
+supposed that animalcul&aelig;, or what are commonly embraced
+under the vague name of infusoria, inhabit the water
+alone, but the atmospheric dust transported by every wind
+and deposited by every calm is full of microscopic life or of its
+relics. The soil on which the city of Berlin stands, contains
+at the depth of ten or fifteen feet below the surface, living
+elaborators of silex;<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> and a microscopic examination of a
+handful of earth connected with the material evidences of
+guilt has enabled the naturalist to point out the very spot
+where a crime was committed. It has been computed that
+one sixth part of the solid matter let fall by great rivers at
+their outlets consists of still recognizable infusory shells and
+shields, and, as the friction of rolling water must reduce much
+of these fragile structures to a state of comminution which
+even the microscope cannot resolve into distinct particles and
+identify as relics of animal or of vegetable life, we must conclude
+that a considerably larger proportion of river deposits is
+really the product of animalcules.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is evident that the chemical, and in many cases the
+mechanical character of a great number of the objects important
+in the material economy of human life, must be affected
+by the presence of so large an organic element in their substance,
+and it is equally obvious that all agricultural and all
+industrial operations tend to disturb the natural arrangements
+of this element, to increase or to diminish the special adaptation
+of every medium in which it lives to the particular orders of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+being inhabited by it. The conversion of woodland into pasturage,
+of pasture into plough land, of swamp or of shallow
+sea into dry ground, the rotations of cultivated crops, must
+prove fatal to millions of living things upon every rood of
+surface thus deranged by man, and must, at the same time,
+more or less fully compensate this destruction of life by promoting
+the growth and multiplication of other tribes equally
+minute in dimensions.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know that man has yet endeavored to avail himself,
+by artificial contrivances, of the agency of these wonderful
+architects and manufacturers. We are hardly well enough
+acquainted with their natural economy to devise means to turn
+their industry to profitable account, and they are in very
+many cases too slow in producing visible results for an age so
+impatient as ours. The over-civilization of the nineteenth century
+cannot wait for wealth to be amassed by infinitesimal
+gains, and we are in haste to <i>speculate</i> upon the powers of
+nature, as we do upon objects of bargain and sale in our trafficking
+one with another. But there are still some cases where
+the little we know of a life, whose workings are invisible to
+the naked eye, suggests the possibility of advantageously
+directing the efforts of troops of artisans that we cannot see.
+Upon coasts occupied by the corallines, the reef-building animalcule
+does not work near the mouth of rivers. Hence the
+change of the outlet of a stream, often a very easy matter, may
+promote the construction of a barrier to coast navigation at one
+point, and check the formation of a reef at another, by diverting
+a current of fresh water from the former and pouring it
+into the sea at the latter. Cases may probably be found in
+tropical seas, where rivers have prevented the working of the
+coral animalcules in straits separating islands from each other
+or from the mainland. The diversion of such streams might
+remove this obstacle, and reefs consequently be formed which
+should convert an archipelago into a single large island, and
+finally join that to the neighboring continent.</p>
+
+<p>Quatrefages proposed to destroy the teredo in harbors by
+impregnating the water with a mineral solution fatal to them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+Perhaps the labors of the coralline animals might be arrested
+over a considerable extent of sea coast by similar means. The
+reef builders are leisurely architects, but the precious coral
+is formed so rapidly that the beds may be refished advantageously
+as often as once in ten years.<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> It does not seem
+impossible that this coral might be transplanted to the American
+coast, where the Gulf stream would furnish a suitable
+temperature beyond the climatic limits that otherwise confine
+its growth; and thus a new source of profit might perhaps be
+added to the scanty returns of the hardy fisherman.</p>
+
+<p>In certain geological formations, the diatomace&aelig; deposit, at
+the bottom of fresh-water ponds, beds of silicious shields, valuable
+as a material for a species of very light firebrick, in the
+manufacture of water glass and of hydraulic cement, and ultimately,
+doubtless, in many yet undiscovered industrial processes.
+An attentive study of the conditions favorable to the
+propagation of the diatomace&aelig; might perhaps help us to profit
+directly by the productivity of this organism, and, at the same
+time, disclose secrets of nature capable of being turned to
+valuable account in dealing with silicious rocks, and the metal
+which is the base of them. Our acquaintance with the obscure
+and infinitesimal life of which I have now been treating is
+very recent, and still very imperfect. We know that it is of
+vast importance in the economy of nature, but we are so ambitious
+to grasp the great, so little accustomed to occupy ourselves
+with the minute, that we are not yet prepared to enter
+seriously upon the question how far we can control and direct
+the operations, not of unembodied physical forces, but of
+beings, in popular apprehension, almost as immaterial as they.</p>
+
+<p>Nature has no unit of magnitude by which she measures
+her works. Man takes his standards of dimension from himself.
+The hair's breadth was his minimum until the microscope
+told him that there are animated creatures to which one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+of the hairs of his head is a larger cylinder than is the trunk
+of the giant California redwood to him. He borrows his inch
+from the breadth of his thumb, his palm and span from the
+width of his hand and the spread of his fingers, his foot from
+the length of the organ so named; his cubit is the distance
+from the tip of his middle finger to his elbow, and his fathom
+is the space he can measure with his outstretched arms. To a
+being who instinctively finds the standard of all magnitudes
+in his own material frame, all objects exceeding his own dimensions
+are absolutely great, all falling short of them absolutely
+small. Hence we habitually regard the whale and the
+elephant as essentially large and therefore important creatures,
+the animalcule as an essentially small and therefore
+unimportant organism. But no geological formation owes its
+origin to the labors or the remains of the huge mammal, while
+the animalcule composes, or has furnished, the substance of
+strata thousands of feet in thickness, and extending, in unbroken
+beds, over many degrees of terrestrial surface. If man
+is destined to inhabit the earth much longer, and to advance
+in natural knowledge with the rapidity which has marked his
+progress in physical science for the last two or three centuries,
+he will learn to put a wiser estimate on the works of creation,
+and will derive not only great instruction from studying the
+ways of nature in her obscurest, humblest walks, but great
+material advantage from stimulating her productive energies
+in provinces of her empire hitherto regarded as forever inaccessible,
+utterly barren.<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WOODS.</h3>
+
+<p class="blockquot">THE HABITABLE EARTH ORIGINALLY WOODED&mdash;THE FOREST DOES NOT FURNISH
+FOOD FOR MAN&mdash;FIRST REMOVAL OF THE WOODS&mdash;EFFECTS OF FIRE ON FOREST
+SOIL&mdash;EFFECTS OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST&mdash;ELECTRICAL INFLUENCE
+OF TREES&mdash;CHEMICAL INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST, CONSIDERED AS INORGANIC MATTER, ON TEMPERATURE:
+<i>a</i>, ABSORBING AND EMITTING SURFACE; <i>b</i>, TREES AS CONDUCTORS
+OF HEAT; <i>c</i>, TREES IN SUMMER AND IN WINTER; <i>d</i>, DEAD PRODUCTS OF
+TREES; <i>e</i>, TREES AS A SHELTER TO GROUNDS TO THE LEEWARD OF THEM;
+<i>f</i>, TREES AS A PROTECTION AGAINST MALARIA&mdash;THE FOREST, AS INORGANIC
+MATTER, TENDS TO MITIGATE EXTREMES.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">TREES AS ORGANISMS: SPECIFIC TEMPERATURE&mdash;TOTAL INFLUENCE OF
+THE FOREST ON TEMPERATURE.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE AIR AND THE EARTH:
+<i>a</i>, AS INORGANIC MATTER; <i>b</i>, AS ORGANIC&mdash;WOOD MOSSES AND FUNGI&mdash;FLOW
+OF SAP&mdash;ABSORPTION AND EXHALATION OF MOISTURE BY TREES&mdash;BALANCE OF
+CONFLICTING INFLUENCES&mdash;INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON TEMPERATURE AND
+PRECIPITATION&mdash;INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE SOIL&mdash;ITS
+INFLUENCE ON THE FLOW OF SPRINGS&mdash;GENERAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE
+DESTRUCTION OF THE WOODS&mdash;LITERATURE AND CONDITION OF THE FOREST
+IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES&mdash;THE INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON INUNDATIONS&mdash;DESTRUCTIVE
+ACTION OF TORRENTS&mdash;THE PO AND ITS DEPOSITS&mdash;MOUNTAIN
+SLIDES&mdash;PROTECTION AGAINST THE FALL OF ROCKS AND AVALANCHES BY
+TREES&mdash;PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST&mdash;AMERICAN
+FOREST TREES&mdash;SPECIAL CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN WOODS&mdash;ROYAL
+FORESTS AND GAME LAWS&mdash;SMALL FOREST PLANTS, VITALITY OF
+SEEDS&mdash;UTILITY OF THE FOREST&mdash;THE FORESTS OF EUROPE&mdash;FORESTS OF THE
+UNITED STATES AND CANADA&mdash;THE ECONOMY OF THE FOREST&mdash;EUROPEAN AND
+AMERICAN TREES COMPARED&mdash;SYLVICULTURE&mdash;INSTABILITY OF AMERICAN
+LIFE.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Habitable Earth Originally Wooded.</i></h4>
+
+<p>There is good reason to believe that the surface of the habitable
+earth, in all the climates and regions which have been
+the abodes of dense and civilized populations, was, with few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+exceptions, already covered with a forest growth when it first
+became the home of man. This we infer from the extensive
+vegetable remains&mdash;trunks, branches, roots, fruits, seeds, and
+leaves of trees&mdash;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 that
+large provinces, where the earth has long been wholly bare of
+trees, were clothed with vast and almost unbroken woods
+when first made known to Greek and Roman civilization;<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a>
+and from the state of much of North and of South America
+when they were discovered and colonized by the European
+race.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a></p>
+
+<p>These evidences are strengthened by observation of the
+natural economy of our own time; for, whenever a tract of
+country, once inhabited and cultivated by man, is abandoned
+by him and by domestic animals,<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> and surrendered to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+undisturbed influences of spontaneous nature, its soil sooner or
+later clothes itself with herbaceous and arborescent plants, and
+at no long interval, with a dense forest growth. Indeed, upon
+surfaces of a certain stability, and not absolutely precipitous
+inclination, the special conditions required for the spontaneous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+propagation of trees may all be negatively 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, in decomposing the surface of the rocks they
+cover; they arrest and confine the dust which the wind scatters
+over them, and their final decay adds new material to the
+soil already half formed beneath and upon them. A very thin
+stratum of mould is sufficient for the germination of seeds of
+the hardy evergreens and birches, the roots of which are often
+found in immediate contact with the rock, supplying their
+trees with nourishment from a soil derived from the decomposition
+of their own foliage, or sending out long rootlets into
+the surrounding earth in search of juices to feed them.</p>
+
+<p>The eruptive matter of volcanoes, forbidding as is its aspect,
+does not refuse nutriment to the woods. The refractory
+lava of Etna, it is true, remains long barren, and that of the
+great eruption of 1669 is still almost wholly devoid of vegetation.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a>
+But the cactus is making inroads even here, while the
+volcanic sand and molten rock thrown out by Vesuvius soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+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 <i>trees</i> that are falne
+therein." "Next to this," he continues, "the matter thrown
+up is ruddy, light, and soft: more removed, blacke and ponderous:
+the uttermost brow, that declineth like the seates in a
+theater, flourishing with trees and excellent pasturage. The
+midst of the hill is shaded with chestnut trees, and others
+bearing sundry fruits."<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p>
+
+<p>I am convinced that forests would soon cover many parts
+of the Arabian and African deserts, if man and domestic animals,
+especially the goat and the camel, were banished from
+them. The hard palate and tongue and strong teeth and jaws
+of this latter quadruped enable him to break off and masticate
+tough and thorny branches as large as the finger. He is particularly
+fond of the smaller twigs, leaves, and seedpods of
+the <i>sont</i> and other acacias, which, like the American Robinia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+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 routes of travel. In the shade of these
+trees, annual grasses and perennial shrubs shoot up, but are
+mown down by the hungry cattle of the Bedouin, as fast as
+they grow. A few years of undisturbed vegetation would
+suffice to cover such points with groves, and these would gradually
+extend themselves over soils where now scarcely any
+green thing but the bitter colocynth and the poisonous foxglove
+is ever seen.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Forest does not Furnish Food for Man.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In a region absolutely covered with trees, human life could
+not long be sustained, for want of animal and vegetable food.
+The depths of the forest seldom furnish 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 here only grow the shrubs and grasses, and
+here only are found the seeds and insects, which form the sustenance
+of the non-carnivorous birds and quadrupeds.<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>First Removal of the Forest.</i></h4>
+
+<p>As soon as multiplying man had filled the open grounds
+along the margin of the rivers, the lakes, and the sea, and sufficiently
+peopled the natural meadows and savannas of the
+interior, where such existed,<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> he could find room for expansion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+and further growth, only by the removal of a portion of the
+forest that hemmed him in. The destruction of the woods,
+then, was man's first geographical conquest, his first violation of
+the harmonies of inanimate nature.</p>
+
+<p>Primitive man had little occasion to fell trees for fuel, or,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+for the construction of dwellings, boats, and the implements
+of his rude agriculture and handicrafts. Windfalls would
+furnish a thin population with a sufficient supply of such
+material, and if occasionally a growing tree was cut, the injury
+to the forest would be too insignificant to be at all appreciable.</p>
+
+<p>The accidental escape and spread of fire, or, possibly, the
+combustion of forests by lightning, must have first suggested
+the advantages to be derived from the removal of too abundant
+and extensive woods, and, at the same time, have pointed
+out a means by which a large tract of surface could readily be
+cleared of much of this natural incumbrance. As soon as agriculture
+had commenced at all, it would be observed that the
+growth of cultivated plants, as well as of many species of wild
+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
+ground would be abandoned for new fields won from the
+forest by the same means, and the deserted plain or hillock
+would soon clothe itself anew with shrubs and trees, to be
+again subjected to the same destructive process, and again surrendered
+to the restorative powers of vegetable nature.<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+rude economy would be continued for generations, and wasteful
+as it is, is still largely pursued in Northern Sweden, Swedish
+Lapland, and sometimes even in France and the United States.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Effects of Fire on Forest Soil.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Aside from the mechanical and chemical effects of the disturbance
+of the soil by agricultural operations, and of the freer
+admission of sun, rain, and air to the ground, the fire of itself
+exerts an important influence on its texture and condition. It
+consumes a portion of the half-decayed vegetable mould which
+served to hold its mineral particles together and to retain the
+water of precipitation, and thus loosens, pulverizes, 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 which had spontaneously covered
+it. These new conditions help to explain the natural
+succession of forest crops, so generally observed in all woods
+cleared by fire and then abandoned. There is no doubt, however,
+that other influences contribute to the same result,
+because effects more or less analogous follow when the trees
+are destroyed by other causes, as by high winds, by the woodman's
+axe, and even by natural decay.<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Effects of Destruction of the Forest.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The physico-geographical effects of the destruction of the
+forests may be divided into two great classes, each having an
+important influence on vegetable and on animal life in all 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 meteorology of the
+countries exposed to the action of these influences; the second,
+their superficial geography, or, in other words, configuration,
+consistence, and clothing of surface.</p>
+
+<p>For reasons assigned in the first chapter, the meteorological
+or climatic branch of the subject is the most obscure, and the
+conclusions of physicists respecting it are, in a great degree,
+inferential only, not founded on experiment or direct observation.
+They are, as might be expected, somewhat discordant,
+though certain general results are almost universally accepted,
+and seem indeed too well supported to admit of serious question.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Electrical Influence of Trees.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The properties of trees, singly and in groups, as exciters or
+conductors of electricity, and their consequent influence upon
+the electrical state of the atmosphere, do not appear to have
+been much investigated; and the conditions of the forest itself
+are so variable and so complicated, that the solution of any
+general problem respecting its electrical influence would be a
+matter of extreme difficulty. It is, indeed, impossible to suppose
+that a dense cloud, a sea of vapor, can pass over miles of
+surface bristling with good conductors, without undergoing
+some change of electrical condition. Hypothetical cases may
+be put in which the character of the change could be deduced
+from the known laws of electrical action. But in actual
+nature, the elements are too numerous for us to seize. The
+true electrical condition of neither cloud nor forest could be
+known, and it could seldom be predicted whether the vapors
+would be dissolved as they floated over the wood, or discharged
+upon it in a deluge of rain. With regard to possible electrical
+influences of the forest, wider still in their range of action, the
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+the mountain soils whose older inhabitants scarcely knew this
+plague.<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> The <i>paragrandini</i>,<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> which the learned curate of
+Rivolta advised to erect, with sheaves of straw set up vertically,
+over a great extent of cultivated country, are but a Liliputian
+image of the vast paragrandini, pines, larches, firs,
+which nature had planted by millions on the crests and ridges
+of the Alps and the Apennines."<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> "Electrical action being
+diminished," says Meguscher, "and the rapid congelation of
+vapors by the abstraction of heat being impeded by the influence
+of the woods, it is rare that hail or waterspouts are
+produced, within the precincts of a large forest when it is
+assailed by the tempest."<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> Arthur Young was told that since
+the forests which covered the mountains between the Riviera
+and the county of Montferrat had disappeared, hail had become
+more destructive in the district of Acqui,<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> and it appears<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+upon good authority, that a similar increase in the frequency
+and violence of hail storms in the neighborhood of Saluzzo
+and Mondov&igrave;, the lower part of the Valtelline, and the territory
+of Verona and Vicenza, is probably to be ascribed to a
+similar cause.<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Chemical Influence of the Forest.</i></h4>
+
+<p>We know that the air in a close apartment is appreciably
+affected through the inspiration and expiration of gases by
+plants growing in it. The same operations are performed on
+a gigantic scale by the forest, and it has even been supposed
+that the absorption of carbon, by the rank vegetation of earlier
+geological periods, occasioned a permanent change in the constitution
+of the terrestrial atmosphere.<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> To the effects thus
+produced, are to be added those of the ultimate gaseous decomposition
+of the vast vegetable mass annually shed by trees, 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&mdash;infinitesimal, one might
+almost say&mdash;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 little trace the influence of the woods in the analysis of the
+atmosphere, as we can prove that the mineral ingredients of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+land springs sensibly affect the chemistry of the sea. I may,
+then, properly dismiss the chemical, as I have done the electrical
+influences of the forest, and treat them both alike, if not
+as unimportant agencies, at least as quantities of unknown
+value in our meteorological equation.<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> Our inquiries upon
+this branch of the subject will accordingly be limited to the
+thermometrical and hygrometrical influences of the woods.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Influence of the Forest, considered as Inorganic Matter,
+on Temperature.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The evaporation of fluids, and the condensation and expansion
+of vapors and gases, are attended with changes of temperature;
+and the quantity of moisture which the air is capable
+of containing, and, of course, the evaporation, rise and fall
+with the thermometer. The hygroscopical 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 reference to its living processes of absorption and
+exhalation of water and gases, has, as an absorbent, a radiator
+and a conductor of heat, and as a mere covering of the ground,
+an influence on the temperature of the air and the earth, which
+may be considered by itself.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>a. <i>Absorbing and Emitting Surface.</i></h4>
+
+<p>A given area of ground, as estimated by the every-day rule
+of measurement in yards or acres, presents always the same
+apparent quantity of absorbing, radiating, and reflecting surface;
+but the real extent of that surface is very variable,
+depending, as it does, upon its configuration, and the bulk and
+form of the adventitious objects it bears upon it; and, besides,
+the true superficies remaining the same, its power of absorption,
+radiation, reflection, and conduction of heat will be much
+affected by its consistence, its greater or less humidity, and its
+color, as well as by its inclination of plane and exposure.<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+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 covered, and would add to the
+field on which it stood so much surface capable of receiving
+and emitting heat, though, in consequence of obliquity and
+direction of plane, its actual absorption and emission of heat
+might not be so great as that of an additional quantity of level
+ground containing four times the area of its base. The lesser
+inequalities which always occur in the surface of ordinary
+earth affect in the same way its quantity of superficies acting
+upon the temperature of the atmosphere, and acted on by it,
+though the amount of this action and reaction is not susceptible
+of measurement.</p>
+
+<p>Analogous effects are produced by other objects, of whatever
+form or character, standing or lying upon the earth, and
+no solid can be placed upon a flat piece of ground, without
+itself exposing a greater surface than it covers. This applies,
+of course, to forest trees and their leaves, and indeed to all
+vegetables, as well as to other prominent bodies. If we suppose
+forty trees to be planted on an acre, one being situated in
+the centre of every square of two rods the side, and to grow
+until their branches and leaves 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 some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>what
+augment the sum total.<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> 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
+disposition of the foliage interferes with that free communication
+between sun and sky above, and leaf surface below, on
+which the amount of radiation and absorption of heat depends.
+From all these considerations, it appears that though the
+effective thermoscopic surface of a forest in full leaf does not
+exceed that of bare ground in the same proportion as does its
+measured superficies, yet the actual quantity of area capable
+of receiving and emitting heat must be greater in the former
+than in the latter case.<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a></p>
+
+<p>It must further be remembered that the form and texture
+of a given surface are important elements in determining its
+thermoscopic character. Leaves are porous, and admit air
+and light more or less freely into their substance; they are
+generally smooth and even glazed on one surface; they are
+usually covered on one or both sides with spicul&aelig;, and they
+very commonly present one or more acuminated points in their
+outline&mdash;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 together. But the frigorific effect of
+leafy structure is well observed in the deposit of dew and the
+occurrence of hoarfrost on the foliage of grasses and other
+small vegetables, and on other objects of similar form and con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>sistence,
+when the temperature of the air a few yards above
+has not been brought down to the dew point, still less to 32&deg;,
+the degree of cold required to congeal dew to frost.<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4>b. <i>Trees as Conductors of Heat.</i></h4>
+
+<p>We are also to take into account the action of the forest as
+a conductor of heat between the atmosphere and the earth.
+In the most important countries of America and Europe, and
+especially in those which have suffered most from the destruction
+of the woods, the superficial strata of the earth are colder
+in winter, 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. As conductors, they convey the
+heat of the atmosphere to the earth when the earth is colder
+than the air, and transmit it in the contrary direction when
+the temperature of the earth is higher than that of the atmosphere.
+Of course, then, as conductors, they tend to equalize
+the temperature of the earth and the air.</p>
+
+
+<h4>c. <i>Trees in Summer and Winter.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In countries where the questions I am considering have
+the greatest practical importance, a very large proportion, if
+not a majority, of the trees are of deciduous foliage, 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 ground or the radiation
+from it; whereas, in the former, they often interpose a complete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+canopy between the ground and the sky, and materially interfere
+with both processes.</p>
+
+
+<h4>d. <i>Dead Products of Trees.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Besides this various action of standing trees considered as
+inorganic matter, the forest exercises, by the annual moulting
+of its foliage, still another influence on the temperature of the
+earth, and, consequently, of the atmosphere which rests upon
+it. If you examine the constitution of the superficial soil in a
+primitive or an old and undisturbed artificially planted wood,
+you find, first, a deposit of undecayed leaves, twigs, and seeds,
+lying in loose layers on the surface; then, more compact beds
+of the same materials in incipient, and, as you descend, more
+and more advanced stages of decomposition; 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 forest, it would act upon the temperature of
+the atmosphere, and be acted on by it, in a very different way
+from the leaves and mould which rest upon it. Leaves, still
+entire, or partially decayed, are very indifferent conductors of
+heat, and, therefore, though they diminish the warming influence
+of the summer sun on the soil below them, they, on the
+other hand, prevent the escape of heat from that soil in winter,
+and, consequently, in cold climates, even when the ground
+is not covered by a protecting mantle of snow, the earth does
+not freeze to as great a depth in the wood as in the open field.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>e. <i>Trees as a Shelter to Ground to the Leeward.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The action of the forest, considered merely as a mechanical
+shelter to grounds lying to the leeward of it, would seem to be
+an influence of too restricted a character to deserve much
+notice; but many facts concur to show that it is an important
+element in local climate, and that it is often a valuable means
+of defence against the spread of miasmatic 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 from the west, to the mild
+breezes of the sea. Hence a decrease of the cold of winter.
+If a similar forest were to be cleared on the eastern border
+of France, the glacial east wind would prevail with greater
+strength, and the winters would become more severe. Thus
+the removal of a belt of wood would produce opposite effects
+in the two regions."<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a></p>
+
+<p>This opinion receives confirmation from an observation of
+Dr. Dwight, who remarks, in reference to the woods of New
+England: "Another effect of removing the forest will be the
+free passage of the winds, and among them of the southern
+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 ocean, and
+imparted their warmth frequently, and in such degrees as,
+forty years since, were in the same places very little known.
+This fact, also, contributes to lengthen the summer, and to
+shorten the winter-half of the year."<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is thought in Italy that the clearing of the Apennines
+has very materially affected the climate of the valley of the
+Po. It is asserted in Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia that: "In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+consequence of the felling of the woods on the Apennines, the
+sirocco prevails greatly on the right bank of the 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 formerly straw roofs
+resisted the force of the winds, tiles are now hardly sufficient;
+in others, where tiles answered for roofs, large slabs of stone
+are now ineffectual; and in many neighboring communes the
+grapes and the grain are swept off by the blasts of the south
+and southwest winds."</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, according to the same authority, the
+pinery of Porto, near Ravenna&mdash;which is 33 kilometres long,
+and is one of the oldest pine woods in Italy&mdash;having been
+replanted with resinous trees after it was unfortunately cut,
+has relieved the city from the sirocco to which it had become
+exposed, and in a great degree restored its ancient climate.<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a></p>
+
+<p>The felling of the woods on the Atlantic coast of Jutland
+has exposed the soil not only to drifting sands, but to sharp
+sea winds, that have exerted a sensible deteriorating effect on
+the climate of that peninsula, which has no mountains to serve
+at once as a barrier to the force of the winds, and as a storehouse
+of moisture received by precipitation or condensed from
+atmospheric vapors.<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is evident that the effect of the forest, as a mechanical
+impediment to the passage of the wind, would extend to a very
+considerable distance above its own height, and hence protect
+while standing, or lay open when felled, a much larger surface
+than might at first thought be supposed. The atmosphere,
+movable as are its particles, and light and elastic as are its
+masses, is nevertheless held together as a continuous whole by the
+gravitation of its atoms and their consequent pressure on each
+other, if not by attraction between them, and, therefore, an obstruction
+which mechanically impedes the movement of a given<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+stratum of air, will retard the passage of the strata above and
+below it. To this effect may often be added that of an ascending
+current from the forest itself, 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 m&egrave;tres from each other, as a shelter which experience
+had proved to be useful in France.<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> "In the valley of
+the Rhone," says Becquerel, "a simple hedge, two m&egrave;tres in
+height, is a sufficient protection for a distance of twenty-two
+m&egrave;tres."<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> The mechanical shelter acts, no doubt, chiefly as
+a defence against the mechanical force of the wind, but its uses
+are by no means limited to this effect. If the current of air
+which it resists moves horizontally, it would prevent the access
+of cold or parching blasts to the ground for a great distance;
+and did the wind even descend at a large angle with the surface,
+still a considerable extent of ground would be protected
+by a forest to the windward of it. If we suppose the trees of
+a wood to have a mean height of only twenty yards, they
+would often beneficially affect the temperature or the moisture
+of a belt of land two or three hundred yards in width, and thus
+perhaps rescue valuable crops from destruction.<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The local retardation of spring so much complained of in
+Italy, France, and Switzerland, and the increased frequency of
+late frosts at that season, appear to be ascribable to the admission
+of cold blasts to the surface, by the felling of the forests
+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
+vegetation, and that, in consequence of "the usurpation of
+winter on the domain of spring," the district of Mugello has
+lost all its mulberries, except the few which find in the lee of
+buildings a protection like that once furnished by the forest.<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a></p>
+
+<p>"It is proved," says Clav&eacute;, "&Eacute;tudes," p. 44, "that the department
+of Ard&egrave;che, which now contains not a single considerable
+wood, has experienced within thirty years a climatic
+disturbance, of which the late frosts, formerly unknown in the
+country, are one of the most melancholy effects. Similar
+results have been observed in the plain of Alsace, in consequence
+of the denudation of several of the crests of the
+Vosges."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dussard, as quoted by Ribbe,<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> maintains that even the
+<i>mistral</i>, or northwest wind, whose chilling blasts are so fatal
+to tender vegetation in the spring, "is the child of man, the
+result of his devastations." "Under the reign of Augustus,"
+continues he, "the forests which protected the C&eacute;vennes were
+felled, or destroyed by fire, in mass. A vast country, before
+covered with impenetrable woods&mdash;powerful obstacles to the
+movement and even to the formation of hurricanes&mdash;was suddenly
+denuded, swept bare, stripped, and soon after, a scourge
+hitherto unknown struck terror over the land from Avignon
+to the Bouches du Rhone, thence to Marseilles, and then extended
+its 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 crops, were not then exposed to the loss of their harvests
+by tempests, cold, or drought. The deterioration was
+rapid in its progress. Under the Consulate, the clearings had
+exerted so injurious an effect upon the climate, that the cultivation
+of the olive had retreated several leagues, and since the
+winters and springs of 1820 and 1836, this branch of rural
+industry has been abandoned in a great number of localities
+where it was advantageously pursued before. The orange now
+flourishes only at a few sheltered points of the coast, and it is
+threatened even at Ily&egrave;res, where the clearing of the hills near
+the town has proved very prejudicial to this valuable tree.</p>
+
+<p>Marchand informs us that, since the felling of the woods,
+late spring frosts are more frequent in many localities north<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+of the Alps; that fruit trees thrive well no longer, and that it
+is difficult to raise young trees.<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4>f. <i>Trees as a Protection against Malaria.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The influence of forests in preventing the diffusion of miasmatic
+vapors is a matter of less familiar observation, and perhaps
+does not come strictly within the sphere of the present
+inquiry, but its importance will justify me in devoting some
+space to the subject. "It has been observed" (I quote again
+from Becquerel) "that humid air, charged with miasmata, is
+deprived of them in passing through the forest. Rigaud de
+Lille observed localities in Italy where the interposition of a
+screen of trees preserved everything beyond it, while the
+unprotected grounds were subject to fevers."<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> Few European
+countries present better opportunities for observation on this
+point than Italy, because in that kingdom the localities exposed
+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,
+<i>Populus alba</i>, in such directions as to obstruct the currents of
+air from malarious localities, and thus intercept a great proportion
+of the pernicious exhalations."<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> Lieutenant Maury
+even believed that a few rows of sunflowers, planted between the
+Washington Observatory and the marshy banks of the Potomac,
+had saved the inmates of that establishment from the
+intermittent fevers to which they had been formerly liable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+Maury's experiments have been repeated in Italy. Large
+plantations of sunflowers have been made upon the alluvial
+deposits of the Oglio, above its entrance into the Lake of Iseo
+near Pisogne, and it is said with favorable results to the health
+of the neighborhood.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> In fact, the generally beneficial effects
+of a forest wall or other vegetable screen, as a protection against
+noxious exhalations from marshes or other sources of disease
+situated to the windward of them, are very commonly admitted.</p>
+
+<p>It is argued that, in these cases, the foliage of trees and of
+other vegetables exercises a chemical as well as a mechanical
+effect upon the atmosphere, and some, who allow that forests
+may intercept the circulation of the miasmatic effluvia of
+swampy soils, or even render them harmless by decomposing
+them, contend, 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 appear to be generally the case.<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> It is, at all
+events, well known that the great swamps of Virginia and the
+Carolinas, in climates nearly similar to that of Italy, are healthy
+even to the white man, so long as the forests in and around
+them remain, but become very insalubrious when the woods
+are felled.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Forest, as Inorganic Matter, tends to mitigate Extremes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The surface which trees and leaves present augments the
+general superficies of the earth exposed to the absorption of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+heat, and increases the radiating and reflecting area in the
+same proportion. It is impossible to measure the relative
+value of these two elements&mdash;increase of absorbing and increase
+of emitting surface&mdash;as 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 surface acted on by it.
+But it seems probable that its greatest influence in this respect
+is due to its character of a screen, or mechanical obstacle to
+the transmission of heat between the earth and the air; and
+this is equally true of the standing tree and of the dead
+foliage which it deposits in successive layers at its foot.</p>
+
+<p>The complicated action of trees and their products, as dead
+absorbents, radiators, reflectors, and conductors of heat, and as
+interceptors of its transmission, is so intimately 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 the latter class of influences; but upon the
+whole, the forest must thus far be regarded as tending to mitigate
+extremes, and, therefore, as an equalizer of temperature.</p>
+
+
+<h4>TREES AS ORGANISMS.</h4>
+
+<h4><i>Specific Heat.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Trees, considered as organisms, produce in themselves, or
+in the air, a certain amount of heat, by absorbing and condensing
+atmospheric vapor, and they exert an opposite influence
+by absorbing water and exhaling it in the form of vapor;
+but there is still another 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 own, an organic
+power of generating heat, like that with which the warm-blooded
+animals are gifted, though by a different process, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+certain amount of weight is to be ascribed to this element, in
+estimating the action of the forest upon atmospheric temperature.</p>
+
+<p>"Observation shows," says Meguscher, "that the wood of
+a living tree maintains a temperature of +12&deg; or 13&deg; Cent.
+[= 54&deg;, 56&deg; Fahr.] when the temperature of the air stands at
+3&deg;, 7&deg;, and 8&deg; [=37&deg;, 46&deg;, 47&deg; F.] above zero, and that the
+internal warmth of the tree does not rise and fall in proportion
+to that of the atmosphere. So long as the latter is below 18&deg;
+[= 67&deg; Fahr.], that of the tree is always the highest; but if the
+temperature of the air rises to 18&deg;, that of the vegetable growth
+is the lowest. Since, then, trees maintain at all seasons a constant
+mean temperature of 12&deg; [= 54&deg; Fahr.], it is easy to see
+why the air in contact with the forest must be warmer in winter,
+cooler in summer, than in situations where it is deprived
+of that influence."<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></p>
+
+<p>Boussingault remarks: "In many flowers there has been
+observed a very considerable evolution of heat, at the approach
+of fecundation. In certain <i>arums</i> the temperature rises to 40&deg;
+or 50&deg; Cent. [= 104&deg; or 122&deg; Fahr.]. It is very probable that
+this phenomenon is general, and varies only in the intensity
+with which it is manifested."<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p>
+
+<p>If we suppose the fecundation of the flowers of forest trees
+to be attended with a tenth only of this calorific power, they
+could not fail to exert an important influence on the warmth
+of the atmospheric strata in contact with them.</p>
+
+<p>In a paper on Meteorology by Professor Henry, published
+in the United States Patent Office Report for 1857, p. 504,
+that distinguished physicist observes: "As a general deduction
+from chemical and mechanical principles, we think no
+change of temperature is ever produced where the actions
+belonging to one or both of 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+further than it is protected from the external air. The
+experiments which have been made on this point, we think,
+have been directed by a false analogy. During the active
+circulation of the sap and the production of new tissue,
+variations of temperature belonging exclusively to the plant
+may be observed; but it is inconsistent with general principles
+that heat should be generated where no change is
+taking place."</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that moisture is given out by trees
+and evaporated in extremely cold winter-weather, and unless
+new fluid were supplied from the roots, the tree would be
+exhausted of its juices before winter was over. But this is not
+observed to be the fact, and, though the point is disputed,
+respectable authorities declare that "wood felled in the depth
+of winter is the heaviest and fullest of sap."<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> 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 and developed its leaves while the
+rest of the tree in the external air remained in its winter
+sleep."<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> The roots of forest trees in temperate climates,
+remain, for the most part, in a moist soil, of a temperature not
+much below the annual mean, through the whole winter; and
+we cannot account for the uninterrupted moisture of the tree,
+unless we suppose that the roots furnish a constant supply of
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Atkinson describes a ravine in a valley in Siberia, which
+was filled with ice to the depth of twenty-five feet. Poplars
+were growing in this ice, which was thawed to the distance of
+some inches from the stem. But the surface of the soil beneath
+it must have remained still frozen, for the holes around the
+trees were full of water resulting from its melting, and this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+would have escaped below if the ground had been thawed. In
+this case, although the roots had not thawed the thick covering
+of earth above them, the trunks must have melted the ice in
+contact with them. The trees, when observed by Atkinson,
+were in full leaf, but it does not appear at what period the ice
+around their stems had melted.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_159_2" id="Page_159_2"></a>From these facts, and others of the like sort, it would seem
+that "all vegetable functions are" not absolutely "dormant"
+in winter, and, therefore, that trees may give out <i>some</i> heat 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 be
+sufficiently affected by heat evolved in the vital processes of
+vegetation, to raise the thermometric mean of wooded countries
+for that season, and, of course, for the year.<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Total Influence of the Forest on Temperature.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It has not yet been found practicable to measure, sum up,
+and equate the total influence of the forest, its processes and its
+products, dead and living, upon temperature, and investigators
+differ much in their conclusions on this subject. It seems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+probable that in every particular case the result is, if not determined,
+at least so much modified by local conditions which are
+infinitely varied, that no general formula is applicable to the
+question.</p>
+
+<p>In the report to which I referred on page 149, Gay-Lussac
+says: "In my opinion we have not yet any positive proof that
+the forest has, in itself, any real influence on the climate 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 advantage; but these
+questions are so complicated when they are examined in a
+climatological point of view, that the solution of them is very
+difficult, not to say impossible."</p>
+
+<p>Becquerel, on the other hand, considers it certain that in
+tropical climates, the destruction of the forests is accompanied
+with an elevation of the mean temperature, and he thinks it
+highly probable that it has the same effect in the temperate
+zones. The following is the substance of his remarks on this
+subject:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Forests act as frigorific causes in three ways:</p>
+
+<p>"1. They shelter the ground against solar irradiation and
+maintain a greater humidity.</p>
+
+<p>"2. They produce a cutaneous transpiration by the leaves.</p>
+
+<p>"3. They multiply, by the expansion of their branches, the
+surfaces which are cooled by radiation.</p>
+
+<p>"These three causes acting with greater or less force, we
+must, in the study of the climatology of a country, take into
+account the proportion between the area of the forests and the
+surface which is bared of trees and covered with herbs and
+grasses.</p>
+
+<p>"We should be inclined to believe <i>&agrave; priori</i>, according to
+the foregoing considerations, that the clearing of the woods,
+by raising the temperature and increasing the dryness of the
+air, ought to react on climate. There is no doubt that, if the
+vast 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+degrees [centigrade, = 85&deg; Fahr.]. In that case, the ascending
+currents of warm air would cease, or be less warm, and
+would not contribute, by descending in our latitudes, to soften
+the climate of Western Europe. Thus the clearing of a great
+country may react on the climates of regions more or less
+remote from it.</p>
+
+<p>"The observations by Boussingault leave no doubt on this
+point. This writer determined the mean temperature of
+wooded and of cleared points, under the same latitude, 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 the portion of the tropics
+nearest to the equator, and where radiation tends powerfully
+during the night to lower the temperature under a sky without
+clouds."<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a></p>
+
+<p>The result of these observations, which has been pretty
+generally adopted by physicists, is that the mean temperature
+of cleared land in the tropics appears to be about one degree
+centigrade, or a little less than two degrees of Fahrenheit,
+above that of the forest. On page 147 of the volume just
+cited, Becquerel argues that, 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 are so different in the two
+regions compared, that I think we cannot, with entire confidence,
+reason from the one to the other, and it is much to be
+desired that observations be made on the summer and winter
+temperature of both the air and the ground in the depths of
+the North American forests, before it is too late.<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE AIR AND THE EARTH.</h4>
+
+<h4>a. <i>As Inorganic Matter.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The most important influence of the forest on climate is,
+no doubt, that which it exercises on the humidity of the air
+and the earth, and this climatic action it exerts partly as dead,
+partly as living matter. By its interposition as a curtain between
+the sky and the ground, it intercepts a large proportion
+of the dew and the lighter showers, which would otherwise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+moisten the surface of the soil, and restores it to the atmosphere
+by evaporation; while in heavier rains, the large drops
+which fall upon the leaves and branches are broken into
+smaller ones, and consequently strike the ground with less
+mechanical force, or are perhaps even dispersed into vapor
+without reaching it.<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> As a screen, it prevents the access of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+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 from it.<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> In the forest, the air is almost
+quiescent, and moves only as local changes of temperature
+affect the specific gravity of its particles. Hence there is often
+a dead calm in the woods when a furious blast is raging in the
+open country at a few yards' distance. The denser the forest&mdash;as
+for example, where it consists of spike-leaved trees, or is
+thickly intermixed with them&mdash;the more obvious is its effect,
+and no one can have passed from the field to the wood in cold,
+windy weather, without having remarked it.<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The vegetable mould, resulting from the decomposition of
+leaves and of wood, carpets the ground with a spongy covering
+which obstructs the evaporation from the mineral earth below,
+drinks up the rains and melting snows that would otherwise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+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, penetrate far below the superficial soil, conduct the water
+along their surface to the lower depths to which they reach,
+and thus serve to drain the superior strata and remove the
+moisture out of the reach of evaporation.</p>
+
+
+<h4>b. <i>The Forest as Organic.</i></h4>
+
+<p>These are the principal modes in which the humidity of
+the atmosphere is affected by the forest regarded as lifeless
+matter. Let us inquire how its organic processes act upon
+this meteorological element.</p>
+
+<p>The commonest observation shows that the wood and bark
+of living trees are always more or less pervaded with watery
+and other fluids, one of which, the sap, is very abundant in
+trees of deciduous foliage when the buds begin to swell and
+the leaves to develop themselves in the spring. The outer
+bark of most trees is of a corky character, not admitting the
+absorption of much moisture from the atmosphere through its
+pores, and we can hardly suppose that the buds are able to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+extract from the air a much larger supply. The obvious conclusion
+as to the source from which the extraordinary quantity
+of sap at this season is derived, is that to which scientific
+investigation leads us, namely, that it is absorbed 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 organs.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a> The amount of water taken up by the
+roots, however, is vastly greater than that imbibed through the
+leaves, especially at the season when the juices are most abun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>dant,
+and when, as we have seen, the leaves are yet in embryo.
+The quantity of water thus received from the air and the earth,
+in a single year, by a wood of even a hundred acres, is very
+great, though experiments are wanting to furnish the data for
+even an approximate estimate of its measure; for only the
+vaguest conclusions can be drawn from the observations which
+have been made on the imbibition and exhalation of water by
+trees and other plants reared in artificial conditions diverse
+from those of the natural forest.<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Wood Mosses and Fungi.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Besides the water drawn by the roots from the earth and
+the vapor absorbed by the leaves from the air, the wood
+mosses and fungi, which abound in all dense forests, take up
+a great quantity of moisture from the atmosphere when it is
+charged with humidity, and exhale it again when the air is
+dry. These humble organizations, which play a more important
+part in regulating the humidity 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 pasturage, or deserted.
+These mosses discharge a portion of the functions appropriated
+to the wood, and while they render the soil of improved lands
+much less fit for agricultural use, they, at the same time, prepare
+it for the growth of a new harvest of trees, when the
+infertility they produce shall have driven man to abandon it
+and suffer it to relapse into the hands of nature.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Flow of Sap.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The amount of sap which can be withdrawn from living
+trees furnishes, not indeed a measure of the quantity of water
+sucked up by their roots from the ground&mdash;for we cannot
+extract from a tree its whole moisture&mdash;but numerical data
+which may aid the imagination to form a general notion of the
+powerful action of the forest as an absorbent of humidity from
+the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The only forest tree known to Europe and North America,
+the sap of which is largely enough applied to economical uses
+to have made the amount of its flow a matter of practical
+importance and popular observation, is the sugar maple, <i>Acer
+saccharinum</i>, of the Anglo-American Provinces and States.
+In the course of a single "sugar season," which lasts ordinarily
+from twenty-five to thirty days, a sugar maple two feet in
+diameter will yield not less than twenty gallons of sap, and
+sometimes much more.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> This, however, is but a trifling pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>portion
+of the water 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;<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a>
+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.<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a>
+The number of large maple trees on an acre is frequently not
+less than fifty,<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> and of course the quantity of moisture ab<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>stracted
+from the soil by this tree alone is measured by thousands
+of gallons to the acre. The sugar orchards, as they are
+called, contain also many young maples too small for tapping,
+and numerous other trees&mdash;two of which, at least, the black
+birch, <i>Betula lenta</i>, and yellow birch, <i>Betula excelsa</i>, both
+very common in the same climate, are far more abundant in
+sap than the maple<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a>&mdash;are scattered among the sugar trees;
+for the North American native forests are remarkable for the
+mixture of their crops.</p>
+
+<p>The sap of the maple, and of other trees with deciduous
+leaves which grow in the same climate, flows most freely in
+the early spring, and especially in clear weather, when the
+nights are frosty and the days warm; for it is then that the
+melting snows supply the earth with moisture in the justest
+proportion, and that the absorbent power of the roots is stimulated
+to its highest activity.<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When the buds are ready to burst, and the green leaves
+begin to show themselves beneath their scaly covering, the
+ground has become drier, the thirst of the roots is quenched,
+and the flow of sap from them to the stem is greatly diminished.<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Absorption and Exhalation of Moisture.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The leaves now commence the process of absorption, and
+imbibe both uncombined gases and an unascertained but perhaps
+considerable quantity of watery vapor from the humid
+atmosphere of spring which bathes them.</p>
+
+<p>The organic action of the tree, as thus far described, tends
+to the desiccation of air and earth; but when we consider
+what volumes of water are daily absorbed by a large tree, and
+how small a proportion of the weight of this fluid consists of
+matter which enters into new combinations, and becomes a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+part of the solid framework of the vegetable, or a component
+of its deciduous products, it is evident that the superfluous
+moisture must somehow be carried off almost as rapidly as it
+flows into the tree.<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> At the very commencement of vegeta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>tion
+in spring, some of this fluid certainly escapes through the
+buds, the nascent foliage, and the pores of the barb, and vegetable
+physiology tells us that there is a current of sap toward
+the roots as well as from them.<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a> 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 the air. In any
+event, all the water derived by the growing tree from the
+atmosphere and the ground is returned again by transpiration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+or exudation, after having surrendered to the plant the small
+proportion of matter required for vegetable growth which it
+held in solution or suspension.<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> The hygrometrical equilibrium
+is then restored, so far as this: the tree yields up again
+the moisture it had drawn from the earth and the air, though
+it does not return it each to each; for the vapor carried off by
+transpiration greatly exceeds the quantity of water absorbed by
+the foliage from the atmosphere, and the amount, if any, carried
+back to the ground by the roots.</p>
+
+<p>The evaporation of the juices of the plant, by whatever
+process effected, takes up atmospheric heat and produces refrigeration.
+This effect is not less real, though much less
+sensible, in the forest than in meadow or pasture land, and it
+cannot be doubted that the local temperature is considerably
+affected by it. But the evaporation that cools the air diffuses
+through it, at the same time, a medium which powerfully
+resists the escape of heat from the earth by radiation. Visible
+vapors or clouds, it is well known, prevent frosts by obstruct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>ing
+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 less resistance to the transmission of
+direct solar heat, and indeed the beams of the sun seem more
+scorching when received through clear air charged with uncondensed
+moisture than after passing through a dry atmosphere.
+Hence the reduction of temperature by the evaporation of
+moisture from vegetation, though sensible, is less than it would
+be if water in the gaseous state were as impervious to heat given
+out by the sun as to that emitted by terrestrial objects.</p>
+
+<p>The hygroscopicity of vegetable mould is much greater than
+that of any mineral earth, and therefore the soil of the forest
+absorbs more atmospheric moisture than the open ground. The
+condensation 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&deg; to 27&deg; centigrade, making a difference of
+nearly thirteen degrees of Fahrenheit, and that of soil rich
+in humus from 20&deg; to 31&deg; centigrade, a difference of almost
+twenty degrees of Fahrenheit.<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Balance of Conflicting Influences.</i></h4>
+
+<p>We have shown that the forest, considered as dead matter,
+tends to diminish the moisture of the air, by preventing the
+sun's rays from reaching the ground and evaporating the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+water that falls upon the surface, and also by spreading over
+the earth a spongy mantle which sucks up and retains the
+humidity it receives from the atmosphere, while, at the same
+time, this covering 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 the air by absorbing moisture from it, and,
+on the other, to increase that humidity by pouring out into the
+atmosphere, in a vaporous form, the water it draws up through
+its roots. This last operation, at the same time, lowers the
+temperature of the air in contact with or proximity to the
+wood, by the same law as in other cases of the conversion of
+water into vapor.</p>
+
+<p>As I have repeatedly said, we cannot measure the value of
+any one of these elements of climatic disturbance, raising or
+lowering of temperature, increase or diminution of humidity,
+nor can we say that in any one season, any one year, or any
+one fixed cycle, however long or short, they balance and compensate
+each other. They 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, moisture and
+drought. They serve as equalizers of temperature and humidity,
+and it is highly probable that, in analogy with most
+other works and workings of nature, they, at certain or uncertain
+periods, restore the equilibrium which, whether as lifeless
+masses or as living organisms, they may have temporarily
+disturbed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, man destroyed these natural harmonizers
+of climatic discords, he sacrificed an important conservative
+power, though it is far from certain that he has thereby
+affected the mean, however much he may have exaggerated
+the extremes of atmospheric temperature and humidity, or, in
+other words, may have increased the range and lengthened the
+scale of thermometric and hygrometric variation.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Influence of the Forest on Temperature and Precipitation.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Aside from the question of compensation, it does not seem
+probable that the forests sensibly affect the total quantity of
+precipitation, or the general mean of atmospheric temperature
+of the globe, or even that they had this influence when their
+extent was vastly greater than at present. The waters cover
+about three fourths of the face of the earth,<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> and if we deduct
+the frozen zones, the peaks and crests of lofty mountains and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+their craggy slopes, the Sahara and other great African and
+Asiatic deserts, and all such other portions of the solid surface
+as are permanently unfit for the growth of wood, we shall 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&mdash;the latter of
+which always presents an evaporable surface&mdash;enormously preponderate.
+It is, upon the whole, not probable that so small
+an extent of forest, so situated, could produce an appreciable
+influence on the <i>general</i> climate of the globe, though it might
+appreciably affect the local action of all climatic elements.
+The total annual amount of solar heat absorbed and radiated
+by the earth, and the sum of terrestrial evaporation and atmospheric
+precipitation must be supposed constant; but the distribution
+of heat and of humidity is exposed to disturbance in
+both time and place, by a multitude of local causes, among
+which the presence or absence of the forest is doubtless one.</p>
+
+<p>So far as we are able to sum up the general results, it would
+appear that, in countries in the temperate zone still chiefly
+covered with wood, the summers would be cooler, moister,
+shorter, 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,
+though there is some conflict of testimony and of opinion on
+this point, and some apparently well-established exceptions to
+particular branches of what appears to be the general law.</p>
+
+<p>One of these occurs both in climates where the cold of
+winter is severe enough to freeze the ground to a considerable
+depth, as in Sweden and the Northern States of the American
+Union, and in milder zones, where the face of the earth is
+exposed to cold mountain winds, as in some parts of Italy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+of France; for there, as we have seen, the winter is believed
+to extend itself into the months which belong to the spring,
+later than at periods when the forest covered the greater part
+of the ground.<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> More causes than one doubtless contribute to
+this result; but in the case of Sweden and the United States,
+the most obvious explanation of the fact is to be found in the
+loss of the shelter afforded to the ground by the thick coating
+of leaves which the forest sheds 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+off, or perhaps half thawed, several times during the winter.
+The water from the melting snow runs into the depressions,
+and when, after a day or two of warm sunshine or tepid rain,
+the cold returns, it is consolidated to ice, and the bared ridges
+and swells of earth are deeply frozen.<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> It requires many days
+of mild weather to raise the temperature of soil in this condition,
+and of the air in contact with it, to that of the earth in
+the forests of the same climatic region. Flora is already plaiting
+her sylvan wreath before the corn flowers which are to
+deck the garland of Ceres have waked from their winter's
+sleep; and it is not a popular error to believe that, where
+man has substituted his artificial crops for the spontaneous
+harvest of nature, spring delays her coming.</p>
+
+<p>In many cases, the apparent change in the period of the
+seasons is a purely local phenomenon, which is probably compensated
+by a higher temperature in other months, without
+any real disturbance of the average thermometrical equilibrium.
+We may easily suppose that there are analogous partial
+deviations from the general law of precipitation; and,
+without 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 even the
+mean temperature of the forest is below that of the open country
+in the same latitude. If the air in a wood is cooler than
+that around it, it must reduce the temperature of the atmospheric
+stratum immediately above it, and, of course, whenever
+a saturated current sweeps over it, it must produce precipitation
+which would fall upon or near it.</p>
+
+<p>But the subject is so exceedingly complex and difficult,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+that it is safer to regard it as a historical problem, or at least
+as what lawyers call a mixed question of law and fact, than to
+attempt to decide it upon <i>&agrave; priori</i> grounds. Unfortunately the
+evidence 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 followed by a diminution in the annual quantity of
+rain and dew. Indeed, it has long been a popularly settled
+belief that vegetation and the condensation and fall of atmospheric
+moisture are reciprocally necessary to each other, and
+even the poets sing of</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Afric's barren sand,</span><br />
+Where nought can grow, because it raineth not,<br />
+And where no rain can fall to bless the land,<br />
+Because nought grows there.<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Before stating the evidence on the general question and
+citing the judgments of the learned upon it, however, it is well
+to remark that the comparative variety or frequency of inundations
+in earlier and later centuries is not necessarily, 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 precipitation in its valley, than upon
+the rapidity with which it is conducted, on or under the surface
+of the ground, to the central artery that drains the basin.
+But this point will be more fully discussed in a subsequent
+chapter.</p>
+
+<p>There is another important observation which may properly
+be introduced here. It is not universally, or even generally
+true, that the atmosphere returns its humidity to the local<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+source from which it receives it. The air is constantly in
+motion,</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&mdash;&mdash;howling tempests scour amain<br />
+From sea to land, from land to sea;<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="noidt">and, therefore, it is always probable that the evaporation
+drawn up by the atmosphere from a given river, or sea, or
+forest, or meadow, will be discharged by precipitation, not at
+or near the point where it rose, but at a distance of miles,
+leagues, or even degrees. The currents of the upper air are
+invisible, and they leave behind them no landmark to record
+their track. We know not whence they come, or whither
+they go. We have a certain rapidly increasing acquaintance
+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 waste square miles of
+fertile corn land; nor do we know whether the rain which
+feeds our brooklets is due to the transpiration from a neighboring
+forest, or to the evaporation from a far-off sea. If,
+therefore, it were proved that the annual quantity of rain and
+dew is now as great on the plains of Castile, for example, as it
+was when they were covered with the native forest, it would
+by no means follow that those woods did not augment the
+amount of precipitation elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>But I return to the question. Beginning with the latest
+authorities, I cite a passage from Clav&eacute;.<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> After arguing that
+we cannot reason from the climatic effects of the forest in tropical
+and sub-tropical countries as to its influence in temperate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+latitudes, the author proceeds: "The action of the forests on
+rain, a consequence of that which they exercise on temperature,
+is difficult to estimate in our climate, but is very pronounced
+in hot countries, and is established by numerous
+examples. 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&deg; 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 drop of rain had fallen for three years.<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> The
+terrible droughts which desolate the Cape Verd Islands must
+also be attributed to the destruction of the forests. In the
+Island of St. Helena, where the wooded surface has considerably
+extended within a few years, it has been observed that
+the rain has increased in the same proportion. It is now in
+quantity double what it was during the residence of Napoleon.
+In Egypt, recent plantations have caused rains, which hitherto
+were almost unknown."</p>
+
+<p>Schacht<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> observes: "In wooded countries, the atmosphere
+is generally humid, and rain and dew fertilize the soil. As
+the lightning rod abstracts the electric fluid from the stormy
+sky, so the forest attracts to itself the rain from the clouds,
+which, in falling, refreshes not it alone, but extends its benefits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+to the neighboring fields. * * The forest, presenting a considerable
+surface for evaporation, gives to its own soil and to
+all the adjacent ground an abundant and enlivening dew.
+There falls, it is true, less dew on a tall and thick wood than
+on the surrounding meadows, which, 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 coasts: both water the soil and thereby insure its fertility."
+In a note upon this passage, quoting as authority the <i>Historia
+de la Conquista de las siete islas de Gran Canaria, de Juan de
+Abreu Galindo</i>, 1632, p. 47, he adds: "Old historians relate
+that a celebrated laurel in Ferro formerly furnished drinkable
+water to the inhabitants of the island. The water flowed from
+its foliage, uninterruptedly, drop by drop, and was collected in
+cisterns. Every morning the sea breeze drove a cloud toward
+the wonderful tree, which attracted it to its huge top," where
+it was condensed to a liquid form.</p>
+
+<p>In a number of the <i>Missionary Herald</i>, published at Boston,
+the date of which I have mislaid, the Rev. Mr. Van
+Lennep, well known as a competent observer, gives the following
+remarkable account of a similar fact witnessed by him
+in an excursion to the east of Tocat in Asia Minor:</p>
+
+<p>"In this region, some 3,000 feet above the sea, the trees
+are mostly oak, and attain a large size. I noticed an illustration
+of the influence of trees in general in collecting moisture.
+Despite the fog, of a week's duration, the ground was everywhere
+perfectly dry. The dry oak leaves, however, had gathered
+the water, and the branches and trunks of the trees were
+more or less wet. In many cases the water had run down the
+trunk and moistened the soil around the roots of the tree. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+two places, 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 as it reached the ground. This is a most striking
+illustration of the acknowledged influence of trees in collecting
+moisture; and one cannot for a moment doubt, that
+the parched regions which commence at Sivas, and extend in
+one direction to the Persian Gulf, and in another to the Red
+Sea, were once a fertile garden, teeming with a prosperous
+population, before the forests which covered the hillsides were
+cut down&mdash;before the cedar and the fir tree were rooted up
+from the sides of Lebanon.</p>
+
+<p>"As we now descended the northern side of the watershed,
+we passed through the grove of walnut, oak, and black mulberry
+trees, which shade the village of Oktab, whose houses,
+cattle, and ruddy children were indicative of prosperity."</p>
+
+<p>Coultas thus argues: "The ocean, winds, and woods may
+be regarded as the several parts of a grand distillatory apparatus.
+The sea is the boiler in which vapor 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 naturally condenses the vapor, and showers of rain
+are thus distilled from the cloud masses which float in the
+atmosphere, by the woods beneath them."<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sir John F. W. Herschel enumerates among "the influences
+unfavorable to rain," "absence of vegetation in warm climates,
+and especially of trees. This is, no doubt," continues 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 injured by denudation (Earl of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+Lovelace on Climate, etc.), and, on the other hand, rain has
+become more frequent in Egypt since the more vigorous cultivation
+of the palm tree."</p>
+
+<p>Hohenstein remarks: "With respect to the temperature in
+the forest, I have already observed that, at certain times of
+the day and of the year, it is less than in the open field.
+Hence the woods may, in the daytime, in summer and toward
+the end of winter, tend to increase the fall of rain; but it
+is otherwise 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 to deposit their water. These considerations render
+it probable that the forest increases the quantity of rain; but
+they do not establish the certainty of this conclusion, because
+we have no positive numerical data to produce on the depression
+of temperature, and the humidity of the air in the
+woods."<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a></p>
+
+<p>Barth presents the following view of the subject: "The
+ground in the forest, as well as the atmospheric stratum over
+it, continues humid after the woodless districts have lost their
+moisture; and the air, charged with the humidity drawn from
+them, is usually carried away by the winds before it has deposited
+itself in a condensed form on the earth. Trees constantly
+transpire through their leaves a great quantity of moisture,
+which they partly absorb again by the same organs, while
+the greatest part of their supply is pumped up through their
+widely ramifying roots from considerable depths in the ground.
+Thus a constant evaporation is produced, which keeps the
+forest atmosphere moist even in long droughts, when all other
+sources of humidity in the forest itself are dried up. * * *
+Little is required to compel the stratum 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+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
+follows that wooded districts have both more frequent and
+more abundant rain, and in general are more humid, than
+woodless regions; for what is true of the woods themselves, in
+this respect, is true also of their treeless neighborhood, which,
+in consequence of the ready mobility of the air and its constant
+changes, receives a share of the characteristics of the forest
+atmosphere, coolness and moisture. * * * When the districts
+stripped of trees have long been deprived of rain and
+dew, * * * and the grass and the fruits of the field are
+ready to wither, the grounds which are surrounded by woods
+are green and flourishing. By night they are refreshed with
+dew, which is never wanting in the moist air of the forest, and
+in due season they are watered by a beneficent shower, or a
+mist which rolls slowly over them."<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a></p>
+
+<p>Asbj&ouml;rnsen, after adducing the familiar theoretical arguments
+on this point, adds: "The rainless territories in Peru
+and North Africa establish this conclusion, and numerous
+other examples show that woods exert an influence in producing
+rain, and that rain fails where they are wanting; for
+many countries have, by the destruction of the forests, been
+deprived of rain, moisture, springs, and watercourses, which
+are necessary for vegetable growth. * * * The narratives
+of travellers show the deplorable consequences of felling
+the woods in the Island of Trinidad, Martinique, San Do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>mingo,
+and indeed, in almost the entire West Indian group.
+* * * In Palestine and many other parts of Asia and
+Northern Africa, which in ancient times 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 planted with
+trees, this effect has been manifest, and similar observations
+have been made in several places in Southern France. In
+Lower Egypt, both at Cairo and near Alexandria, rain rarely
+fell in considerable quantity&mdash;for example, during the French
+occupation of Egypt, about 1798, it did not rain for sixteen
+months&mdash;but since Mehemet Aali and Ibrahim Pacha executed
+their vast plantations (the former alone having planted more
+than twenty millions of olive and fig trees, cottonwood,
+oranges, acacias, planes, &amp;c.), there now falls a good deal of
+rain, especially along the coast, in the months of November,
+December, and January; and even at Cairo it rains both
+oftener and more abundantly, so that real showers are no
+rarity."<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a></p>
+
+<p>Babinet, in one of his lectures,<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> cites the supposed fact of
+the increase of rain in Egypt in consequence of the planting
+of trees, and thus remarks upon it: "A few years ago it
+never rained in Lower Egypt. The constant north winds,
+which almost exclusively prevail there, passed without obstruction
+over a surface bare of vegetation. Grain was kept on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+the roofs in Alexandria, without 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.<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> The forests of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+Vosges and Ardennes produce the same effects in the north
+east of France, and send us a great river, the Meuse, which is
+as remarkable for its volume as for the small extent of its
+basin. With respect to the retardation of the atmospheric
+currents, and the effects of that retardation, one of my illustrious
+colleagues, M. Mignet, who is not less a profound
+thinker than an eloquent writer, suggested to me that, to produce
+rain, a forest was as good as a mountain, and this is
+literally true."</p>
+
+<p>Monestier-Savignat arrives at this conclusion: "Forests on
+the one hand diminish evaporation; on the other, they act on
+the atmosphere as refrigerating causes. The second scale of
+the balance predominates over the other, for it is established
+that in wooded countries it rains oftener, and that, the quantity
+of rain being equal, they are more humid."<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a></p>
+
+<p>Boussingault&mdash;whose observations on the drying up of
+lakes and springs, from the destruction of the woods, in tropical
+America, have often been cited as a conclusive proof that
+the quantity of rain was thereby diminished&mdash;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 on a subsequent page, he concludes
+that, "arguing from meteorological facts collected in
+the equinoctial regions, there is reason to presume that clearings
+diminish the annual fall of rain."<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a></p>
+
+<p>The same eminent author proposes series of observations on
+the level of natural lakes, especially on those without outlet,
+as a means of determining the increase or diminution of precipitation
+in their basins, and, of course, of measuring the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+effect of clearing when such operations take place within those
+basins. But it must be observed that lakes without a visible
+outlet are of very rare occurrence, and besides, where no
+superficial 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 of a lake is to be ascribed to infiltration, to percolation,
+or to evaporation.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> Further, we are, in general, as little able
+to affirm that a given lake derives all its water from the fall
+of rain within its geographical basin, or that it receives all the
+water that falls in that basin except what evaporates from the
+ground, as we are to show that all its superfluous water is
+carried off by visible channels and by evaporation.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose the strata of the mountains on two sides of a lake,
+east and west, to be tilted in the same direction, and that those
+of the hill on the east side incline toward the lake, those of
+that on the west side from it. In this case a large proportion
+of the rain which falls on the eastern slope of the eastern hill
+may find its way between the strata to the lake, and an equally
+large proportion of the precipitation upon the eastern slope of
+the western ridge may escape out of the basin by similar channels.
+In such case the clearing of the <i>outer</i> slopes of either
+or both mountains, while the forests of the <i>inner</i> declivities
+remained intact, might affect the quantity of water received by
+the lake, and it would always be impossible to know to what
+territorial extent influences thus affecting the level of a lake<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+might reach. Boussingault admits that extensive clearing
+<i>below</i> 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 of natural
+lakes, then, cannot be relied upon as a proof, still less as a
+measure of an increase or diminution in the fall of rain within
+their geographical basins, resulting from the felling of the
+woods which covered them; though such phenomena afford
+very strong presumptive evidence that the supply of water is
+somehow augmented or lessened. The supply is, in most
+cases, derived much less from the precipitation which falls
+directly upon the surface of lakes, than from waters which
+flow above or under the ground around them, and which, in
+the latter case, often come from districts not comprised within
+what superficial geography would regard as belonging to the
+lake basins.</p>
+
+<p>It is, upon the whole, evident that the question can hardly
+be determined except by the comparison of pluviometrical
+observations made at a given station before and after the destruction
+of the woods. Such observations, unhappily, are
+scarcely 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&mdash;France, for example&mdash;where forest
+plantation is now going on upon a large scale. The Smithsonian
+Institution at Washington is well situated for directing
+the attention of observers in the newer territory of the United
+States to this subject, and it is to be hoped that it will not fail
+to avail itself of its facilities for this purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Numerous other authorities might be cited in support of
+the proposition that forests tend, at least in certain latitudes
+and at certain seasons, to produce rain; but though the arguments
+of the advocates of this doctrine are very plausible, not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+to say convincing, their opinions are rather <i>&agrave; priori</i> conclusions
+from general meteorological laws, than deductions from facts
+of observation, and it is remarkable that there is so little direct
+evidence on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, Foissac expresses the opinion that
+forests have no influence on precipitation, beyond that of promoting
+the deposit of dew in their vicinity, and he states, as a
+fact of experience, that the planting of large vegetables, and
+especially of trees, is a very efficient means of drying morasses,
+because the plants draw from the earth a quantity of water
+larger than the average annual fall of rain.<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> Kl&ouml;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 diminution of volume is to be ascribed to a
+decrease of precipitation in consequence of the felling of the
+forests, and states, what other physicists confirm, that, during
+the same period, meteorological records in various parts of
+Europe show rather an augmentation than a reduction of
+rain.<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a></p>
+
+<p>The observations of Belgrand tend to show, contrary to the
+general opinion, that less rain falls in wooded than in denuded
+districts. He compared the precipitation for the year 1852, at
+Vezelay in the valley of the Bouchat, and at Avallon in the
+valley of the Greneti&egrave;re. At the first of these places it was
+881 millim&egrave;tres, at the latter 581 millim&egrave;tres. 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 proportions of
+forest and cultivated country around them, the basin of the
+Bouchat being entirely bare, while that of the Greneti&egrave;re is
+well wooded.<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> Observations in the same valleys, considered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+with reference to the seasons, show the following pluviometric
+results:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='4'>FOR LA GRENETI&Egrave;RE.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>February,</td><td align='left'>1852,</td><td align='right'> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 42.2</td><td>millim&egrave;tres precipitation.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>November,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>23.8</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>January,</td><td align='left'>1853,</td><td align='right'>35.4</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>Total,</td><td align='right'><span class="oline">106.4</span></td><td align='left'>in three cold months.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='4'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>September,</td><td align='left'>1851,</td><td align='right'>27.1</td><td>millim&egrave;tres precipitation.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>May,</td><td align='left'>1852,</td><td align='right'>20.9</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>June,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>56.3</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>July,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>22.8</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>September,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>22.8</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>Total,</td><td align='right'><span class="oline">149.9</span></td><td align='left'>in five warm months.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='4'><br />FOR LE BOUCHAT.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>February,</td><td align='left'>1852,</td><td align='right'>51.3</td><td>millim&egrave;tres precipitation.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>November,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>36.6</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>January,</td><td align='left'>1853,</td><td align='right'>92.0</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>Total,</td><td align='right'><span class="oline">179.9</span></td><td align='left'>in three cold months.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='4'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>September,</td><td align='left'>1851,</td><td align='right'>43.8</td><td>millim&egrave;tres precipitation.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>May,</td><td align='left'>1852,</td><td align='right'>13.2</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>June,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>55.5</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>July,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>19.5</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>September,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>26.5</td><td align='center'>" &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp; "</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>Total,</td><td align='right'><span class="oline">158.5</span></td><td align='left'>in five warm months.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>These observations, so far as they go, seem to show that
+more rain falls in cleared than in wooded countries, but this
+result is so contrary to what has been generally accepted as a
+theoretical conclusion, that further experiment is required to
+determine the question.</p>
+
+<p>Becquerel&mdash;whose treatise on the climatic effects of the
+destruction of the forest is the fullest general discussion of that
+subject known to me&mdash;does not examine this particular point,
+and as, in the summary of the results of his investigations, he
+does not ascribe to the forest any influence upon precipitation,
+the presumption is that he rejects the doctrine of its importance
+as an agent in producing the fall of rain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The effect of the forest on precipitation, then, is not entirely
+free from doubt, and we cannot positively affirm that the total
+annual quantity of rain is diminished or increased by the destruction
+of the woods, though both theoretical considerations
+and the balance of testimony strongly 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 more uniform degree of humidity in the
+atmosphere than is observed in cleared grounds. Scarcely
+less can it be questioned that they promote the frequency of
+showers, and, if they do not augment the amount of precipitation,
+they equalize its distribution through the different
+seasons.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Influence of the Forest on the Humidity of the Soil.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I have hitherto confined myself to the influence of the
+forest on meteorological conditions, a subject, as has been seen,
+full of difficulty and uncertainty. Its comparative effects on
+the temperature, 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 and greater superficial
+watercourses, are much less disputable as well as more easily estimated,
+and much more important, than its possible value as a
+cause of strictly climatic equilibrium or disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>The action of the forest on the earth is chiefly mechanical,
+but the organic process of abstraction of water by its roots
+affects the quantity of that fluid contained in the vegetable
+mould, and in the mineral strata near the surface, and, consequently,
+the consistency of the soil. In treating of the effects
+of trees on the moisture of the atmosphere, I have said that the
+forest, by interposing a canopy between the sky and the
+ground, and by covering the surface with a thick mantle of
+fallen leaves, at once obstructed insolation and prevented the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+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 than that of cleared land.
+This agrees with experience. The soil of the forest is always
+moist, except in the extremest droughts, and it is exceedingly
+rare that a primitive wood suffers from want of humidity.
+How far this accumulation of water affects the condition of
+neighboring grounds by lateral infiltration, we do not know,
+but we shall see, in a subsequent chapter, that water is conveyed
+to great distances by this process, and we may hence
+infer that the influence in question is an important one.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Influence of the Forest on the Flow of Springs.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It is well established that the protection afforded by the
+forest against the escape of moisture from its soil, insures the
+permanence and regularity of natural springs, not only within
+the limits of the wood, but at some distance beyond its borders,
+and thus contributes to the supply of an element essential
+to both vegetable and animal life. As the forests are
+destroyed, the springs which flowed from the woods, and, consequently,
+the greater watercourses fed by them, diminish
+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
+years ago, by simply allowing the bushes and young trees to
+grow up on a rocky knoll, not more than half an acre in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+extent, immediately above it, and has since continued to flow
+uninterruptedly. The uplands in the Atlantic States formerly
+abounded in sources and rills, but in many parts of those
+States which have been cleared for above a generation or two,
+the hill pastures now suffer severely from drought, and in dry
+seasons no longer afford either water or herbage for cattle.</p>
+
+<p>Foissac, indeed, quotes from the elder Pliny (<i>Nat. Hist.</i>,
+xxxi, c. 30) a passage affirming that the felling of the woods
+gives rise to springs which did not exist before because the
+water of the soil was absorbed by the trees; and the same
+meteorologist declares, as I observed in treating of the effect
+of the forest on atmospheric humidity, that the planting of
+trees tends to drain marshy ground, because the roots absorb
+more water than falls from the air. But Pliny's statement
+rests on very doubtful authority, and Foissac cites no evidence
+in support of his own proposition.<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a> 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 reason, the cabins of the first settlers
+were perched upon the hills. As the forests have been from
+time to time removed, and the face of the earth laid open to
+the air and sun, the moisture has been evaporated, and the
+removal of the highways and of human habitations from the
+bleak hills to the sheltered valleys, is one of the most agree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>able
+among the many improvements which later generations
+have witnessed in the interior of New England and the other
+Northern States.</p>
+
+<p>Almost every treatise on the economy of the forest adduces
+numerous facts in support of the doctrine that the clearing of
+the woods tends to diminish the flow of springs and the humidity
+of the soil, and it might seem unnecessary to bring
+forward further evidence on this point.<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> But the subject is of
+too much practical importance and of too great philosophical
+interest to be summarily disposed of; and it ought particularly
+to be noticed that there is at least one case&mdash;that of some
+loose soils which, when bared of wood, very rapidly absorb
+and transmit to lower strata the water they receive from the
+atmosphere, as argued by Vall&egrave;s<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a>&mdash;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&mdash;as, in very heavy
+showers, it sometimes does&mdash;or been absorbed by the vegetable
+mould and retained until it was evaporated, might descend
+through porous earth until it meets an impermeable stratum,
+and then be conducted along it, until, finally, at the outcrop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>ping
+of this stratum, it bursts from a hillside as a running
+spring. But such instances are doubtless too rare to form a
+frequent or an important exception to the general law, because
+it is only under very uncommon circumstances that rain water
+runs off over the surface of forest ground instead of sinking
+into it, and very rarely the case that such a soil as has just
+been supposed is covered by a layer of vegetable earth thick
+enough to retain, until it is evaporated, all the rain that falls
+upon it, without imparting any water to the strata below it.</p>
+
+<p>If we look at the point under discussion as purely a question
+of fact, to be determined by positive evidence and not by
+argument, the observations of Boussingault are, both in the
+circumstances they detail, and in the weight of authority to
+be attached to the testimony, among the most important yet
+recorded. They are embodied in the fourth section of the
+twentieth chapter of that writer's <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale</i>, and I have
+already referred to them on page 191 for another 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,<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> "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 the increasing breadth of the belt
+of pebbles along their banks seems to prove the loss of a part
+of their water; and, finally, abundant springs have almost
+dried up. These observations have been principally made in
+valleys bounded by high mountains, and it is thought to have
+been noticed that this diminution of the waters has immediately
+followed the epoch when the inhabitants have begun
+to destroy, unsparingly, the woods which were spread over the
+face of the land.</p>
+
+<p>"These facts would indicate that, where clearings have
+been made, it rains less than formerly, and this is the gener<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>ally
+received opinion. * * * But while the facts I have
+stated have been established, it has been observed, at the same
+time, that, since the clearing of the mountains, the rivers and
+the torrents, which seemed to have lost a part of their water,
+sometimes suddenly swell, and that, occasionally, to a degree
+which causes great disasters. Besides, after violent storms,
+springs which had become almost exhausted have been observed
+to burst out with impetuosity, 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.
+For instance: if the low water of the Rhone during one part
+of the year were exactly compensated by a sufficient number
+of floods, it would follow that this river would convey to the
+Mediterranean the same volume of water which it carried to
+that sea in ancient times, before the period when the countries
+near its source were stripped of their woods, and when, probably,
+its mean depth was not subject to so great variations as
+in our days. If this were so, the forests would have this value&mdash;that
+of regulating, of economizing in a certain sort, the
+drainage of the rain water.</p>
+
+<p>"If running streams really become rarer in proportion as
+clearing is extended, it follows either that the rain is less abundant,
+or that evaporation is greatly favored by a surface which
+is no longer protected by trees against the rays of the sun and
+the wind. These two causes, acting in the same direction,
+must often be cumulative in their effects, and before we attempt
+to fix the value of each, it is proper 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+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 this effect is due. * * * I shall attach no
+value except to facts which have taken place under the eye of
+man, as it is the influence of his labors on the meteorological
+condition of the atmosphere which I propose to estimate.
+What I am about to detail has been observed particularly in
+America, but I shall endeavor to establish, that what I believe
+to be true of America would be equally so for any other continent.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the most interesting parts of Venezuela is, no
+doubt, the valley of Aragua. Situated at a short distance from
+the coast, and endowed, from its elevation, with various climates
+and a soil of unexampled fertility, its agriculture embraces
+at once the crops suited to tropical regions and to
+Europe. Wheat succeeds 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 no outlet to the ocean,
+form, by their union, the beautiful Lake of Tacarigua or Valencia.
+This lake, according to Humboldt, is larger than that of
+Neufch&acirc;tel; it is at an elevation of 439 m&egrave;tres [= 1,460
+English feet] above the sea, and its greatest length does not
+exceed two leagues and a half [= seven English miles].</p>
+
+<p>"At the time of Humboldt's visit to the valley of Aragua,
+the inhabitants were struck by the gradual diminution which
+the lake had been undergoing for thirty years. In fact, by
+comparing the descriptions given by historians 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, had often traversed the valley
+of Aragua, says positively that New Valencia was founded, in
+1555, at half a league from the Lake of Tacarigua; in 1800,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+Humboldt found this city 5,260 m&egrave;tres [= 3&#8531; English miles]
+from the shore.</p>
+
+<p>"The aspect of the soil furnished new proofs. Many hillocks
+on the plain retain the name of islands, which they more
+justly bore when they were surrounded by water. The ground
+laid bare by the retreat of the lake was converted into 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 built in 1740 on
+the island of Cabrera, was now on a peninsula; and, finally,
+on two granitic islands, those of Cura and Cabo Blanco, Humboldt
+observed among the shrubs, some m&egrave;tres above the
+water, fine sand filled with helicites.</p>
+
+<p>"These clear and positive facts suggested numerous explanations,
+all assuming a subterranean outlet, which permitted
+the discharge of the water to the ocean. Humboldt disposed
+of these hypotheses, and, after a careful examination of the
+locality, the distinguished traveller did not hesitate to ascribe
+the diminution of the waters of the lake to the numerous clearings
+which had been made in the valley of Aragua within half
+a century. * * *</p>
+
+<p>"In 1800, the valley of Aragua possessed a population as
+dense as that of any of the best-peopled parts of France.
+* * * Such was the prosperous condition of this fine country
+when Humboldt occupied the Hacienda de Cura.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-two years later, I explored the valley of Aragua,
+fixing my residence in the little town of Maracay. For some
+years previous, the inhabitants had observed that the waters
+of the lake were no longer retiring, but, on the contrary, were
+sensibly rising. Grounds, not long before occupied by plantations,
+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 to flood the road between Maracay and New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+Valencia. The fears which the inhabitants of the shores had
+so long entertained were reversed. * * * Those who had
+explained the diminution of the lake by the supposition of subterranean
+channels were suspected of blocking them up, to
+prove themselves in the right.</p>
+
+<p>"During the twenty-two years which had elapsed, important
+political events had occurred. Venezuela no longer belonged
+to Spain. The peaceful valley of Aragua had been the
+theatre of bloody struggles, and a war of extermination 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 plantations were abandoned, and the forest,
+which in the tropics so rapidly encroaches, had soon recovered
+a large proportion of the soil which man had wrested from
+it by more than a century of constant and painful labor.</p>
+
+<p>"At the time of the growing prosperity of the valley of
+Aragua, the principal affluents of the lake were diverted, to
+serve for irrigation, and the rivers were dry for more than six
+months of the year. At the period of my visit, their waters,
+no longer employed, flowed freely."</p>
+
+<p>Boussingault proceeds to state that two lakes near Ubate
+in New Granada, at an elevation of 2,562 m&egrave;tres (= 8,500
+English feet), where there is a constant temperature of 14&deg; to
+16&deg; centigrade [= 57&deg;, 61&deg; Fahrenheit], had formed but one,
+a century before his visit; that the waters were gradually
+retiring, and the plantations extending over the abandoned
+bed; that, by inquiry of old hunters and by examination of
+parish records, he found that extensive clearings had been
+made and were still going on.</p>
+
+<p>He found, also, that the length of the Lake of Fuquen&eacute;, in
+the same valley, had, within two centuries, been reduced from
+ten leagues to one and a half, its breadth from three leagues to
+one. At the former period, timber was abundant, and the
+neighboring mountains were 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+entirely stripped of their wood, chiefly to furnish fuel for salt-works.
+Our author adds that other cases, similar to those
+already detailed, might be cited, and he proceeds to show, by
+several examples, that the waters of other lakes in the same
+regions, where the valleys had always been bare of wood, or
+where the forests had not been disturbed, had undergone no
+change of level.</p>
+
+<p>Boussingault further maintains that the lakes of Switzerland
+have sustained a depression of level since the too prevalent
+destruction of the woods, and arrives at the general conclusion,
+that, "in countries where great clearings have been made,
+there has most probably been a diminution in the living waters
+which flow upon the surface of the ground." This conclusion
+he further supports by two examples: one, where a fine spring,
+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 rain
+gauges, established as soon as the decrease of water began to
+excite alarm, showed a greater fall of rain for the second year
+of observation than the first, yet there was no appreciable
+increase in the flow of the mill streams. From these cases, the
+distinguished physicist infers that very restricted local clearings
+may diminish and even suppress springs and brooks,
+without any reduction in the total quantity of rain.</p>
+
+<p>It will have been noticed that these observations, with the
+exception of the last two cases, do not bear directly upon the
+question of the diminution of springs by clearings, but they
+logically infer it from the subsidence of the natural reservoirs
+which springs once filled. There is, however, no want of positive
+evidence on this subject.</p>
+
+<p>Marschand cites the following instances: "Before the felling
+of the woods, within the last few years, in the valley of the
+Soulce, the Combe-&egrave;s-Mounin and the Little Valley, the Sorne<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+furnished a regular and sufficient supply 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 that it has been necessary to
+change the water wheels, because those of the old construction
+are no longer able to drive the machinery, and at last to introduce
+a steam engine to prevent the stoppage of the works for
+want of water.</p>
+
+<p>"When the factory of St. Ursanne was established, the
+river that furnished its power was abundant, long known and
+tried, and had, from time immemorial, sufficed for the machinery
+of a previous factory. Afterward, the woods near its
+sources were cut. The supply of water fell off in consequence,
+the factory wanted water for half the year, and was at last
+obliged to stop altogether.</p>
+
+<p>"The spring of Combefoulat, in the commune of Seleate,
+was well known as one of the best in the country; it was
+remarkably abundant and sufficient, in spite of the severest
+droughts, to supply all the fountains of the town; but, as soon
+as considerable forests were felled in Combe-de-pr&eacute; Martin and
+in the valley of Combefoulat, the famous spring which lies
+below these woods has become a mere thread of water, and
+disappears altogether in times of drought.</p>
+
+<p>"The spring of Varieux, which formerly supplied the castle
+of Pruntrut, lost more than half its water after the clearing of
+Varieux and Rongeoles. These woods have been replanted,
+the young trees are growing well, and with the woods, the
+waters of the spring are increasing.</p>
+
+<p>"The Dog Spring between Pruntrut and Bressancourt has
+entirely vanished since the surrounding forests grounds were
+brought under cultivation.</p>
+
+<p>"The Wolf Spring, in the commune of Soubey, furnishes a
+remarkable example of the influence of the woods upon fountains.
+A few years ago this spring did not exist. At the
+place where it now rises, a small thread of water was observed
+after very long rains, but the stream disappeared with the rain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+The spot is in the 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 occasional rill, and furnished abundant
+water in the longest droughts. For forty or fifty years,
+this spring was considered the best in the Clos du Doubs. A
+few years since, the grove was felled, and the ground turned
+again to a pasture. The spring disappeared with the wood,
+and is now as dry as it was ninety years ago."<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The influence of the forest on springs," says Hummel,
+"is strikingly shown by an instance at Heilbronn. The woods
+on the hills surrounding the town are cut in regular succession
+every twentieth year. As the annual cuttings approach a certain
+point, the springs yield less water, some of them none at
+all; but as the young growth shoots up, they now more and
+more freely, and at length bubble up again in all their original
+abundance."<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a></p>
+
+<p>Piper states the following case: "Within about half a mile
+of my residence there is a pond upon which mills have been
+standing for a long time, dating back, I believe, to the first
+settlement of the town. These have been kept in constant
+operation until within some twenty or thirty years, when the
+supply of water began to fail. The 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
+season of freshets; and, what was never heard of before, the
+stream itself has been entirely dry. Within the last ten years
+a new growth of wood has sprung up on most of the land
+formerly occupied by the old forest; and now the water runs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+through the year, notwithstanding the great droughts of the
+last few years, going back from 1856."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Piper quotes from a letter of William C. Bryant the
+following remarks: "It is a common observation that our
+summers are become drier, and our streams smaller. Take
+the Cuyahoga as an illustration. Fifty years ago large barges
+loaded with goods went up and down that river, and one of
+the vessels engaged in the 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, at New Portage, and
+sailed to New Orleans without breaking bulk. Now, the river
+hardly affords a supply of water at New Portage for the canal.
+The same may be said of other streams&mdash;they are drying up.
+And from the same cause&mdash;the destruction of our forests&mdash;our
+summers are growing drier, and our winters colder."<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a></p>
+
+<p>No observer has more carefully studied the influence of the
+forest upon the flow of the waters, or reasoned more ably on
+the ascertained phenomena than Cantegril. The facts presented
+in the following case, communicated by him to the
+<i>Ami des Sciences</i> for December, 1859, are as nearly conclusive
+as any single instance well can be:</p>
+
+<p>"In the territory of the commune of Labrugui&egrave;re, there is
+a forest of 1,834 hectares [4,530 acres], known by the name of
+the Forest of Montaut, and belonging to that commune. It
+extends along the northern slope of the Black Mountains.
+The soil is granitic, the maximum altitude 1,243 m&egrave;tres [4,140
+feet], and the inclination ranges between 15 and 60 to 100.</p>
+
+<p>"A small current of water, the brook of Caunan, takes its
+rise in this forest, and receives the waters of two thirds of its
+surface. At the lower extremity of the wood and on the
+stream are several fulleries, each requiring a force of eight
+horse-power to drive the water wheels which work the stamp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>ers.
+The commune of Labrugui&egrave;re had been for a long time
+famous for its opposition to forest laws. Trespasses and abuses
+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 the current
+of the Caunan. The violence of the floods was sometimes such
+that they were obliged to stop the machinery for some time.
+During the summer another inconvenience was felt. If the
+dry weather continued a little longer than usual, the delivery
+of water became insignificant. Each fullery could for the
+most part only employ a single set of stampers, and it was not
+unusual to see the work entirely suspended.</p>
+
+<p>"After 1840, the municipal authority succeeded in enlightening
+the population as to their true interests. Protected
+by a more watchful supervision, aided by well-managed replantation,
+the forest has continued to improve to the present
+day. In proportion to the restoration of the forest, the condition
+of 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 rain; the floods follow a regular progression till they reach
+their maximum, and decrease in the same manner. Finally,
+the fulleries are no longer forced to suspend work in summer;
+the water is always sufficiently abundant to allow the employment
+of two sets of stampers at least, and often even of three.</p>
+
+<p>"This example is remarkable in this respect, that, all other
+circumstances having remained the same, the changes in the
+action of the stream can be attributed only to the restoration
+of the forest&mdash;changes which may be thus summed up: diminution
+of flood water during rains&mdash;increase of delivery at other
+seasons."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Forest in Winter.</i></h4>
+
+<p>To estimate rightly the importance of the forest as a natural
+apparatus for accumulating the water that falls upon the
+surface and transmitting it to the subjacent strata, we must
+compare the condition and properties of its soil with those of
+cleared and cultivated earth, and examine the consequently
+different action of these soils at different seasons of the year.
+The disparity between them is greatest in climates where, as
+in the Northern American States and 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 or near the tropics, but they are not wanting in
+higher latitudes; for a large part of Asiatic and even of
+European Turkey is almost wholly deprived of summer rains.
+In the principal regions occupied by European cultivation,
+and where alone the questions discussed in this volume are
+recognized as having, at present, any practical importance,
+rain falls at all seasons, and it is to these regions that, on this
+point as well as others, I chiefly confine my attention.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of the forest upon the waters of the earth
+has been more studied in France than in any other part of the
+civilized world, because that country has, in recent times, suffered
+most severely from the destruction of the woods. But
+in the southern provinces of that empire, where the evils
+resulting from this cause are 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 are
+gone. For these reasons, the specific character of the forest,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+as a winter reservoir of moisture in countries with a cold and
+dry atmosphere, has not attracted so much attention in France
+and Northern Europe as it deserves in the United States,
+where an excessive climate renders that function of the woods
+more important.</p>
+
+<p>In New England, irregular as the climate is, the first
+autumnal snows usually fall before the ground is frozen at all,
+or when the frost extends at most to the depth of only a few
+inches. In the woods, especially those situated upon the
+elevated ridges which supply the natural irrigation of the soil
+and feed 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 unfavorable for radiation, but, even when it is of considerable
+thickness, it is not wholly impervious to the rays of the
+sun, and for this reason, as well as from the warmth of lower
+strata, the frozen crust, if one has been formed, is soon thawed,
+and does not again fall below the freezing point during the
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>The snow in contact with the earth now begins to melt,
+with greater or less rapidity, according to the relative temperature
+of the earth and the air, while the water resulting from
+its dissolution is imbibed by the vegetable mould, and carried
+off by infiltration so fast that both the 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 partially protected from the action of the sun, and
+as very little water runs off in the winter by superficial watercourses,
+except in rare cases of sudden thaw, there can be no
+question that much the greater part of the snow deposited in
+the forest is slowly melted and absorbed by the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The quantity of snow that falls in extensive forests, far
+from the open country, has seldom been ascertained by direct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+observation, because there are few meteorological stations in
+such situations. In the Northeastern border States of the
+American Union, the ground in the deep woods is covered
+with snow four or five months, and the proportion of water
+which falls in snow does not exceed one fifth of the total precipitation
+for the year.<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a> 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 unevaporated in the forest, for many days after snow
+let fall at the same time in the cleared field has disappeared
+without either a thaw to melt it or a wind powerful enough to
+drift it away. Even when bared of their leaves, the trees of a
+wood obstruct, in an important degree, both the direct action
+of the sun's rays on the snow, and the movement of drying
+and thawing winds.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Piper records the following observations: "A body of
+snow, one foot in depth, and sixteen feet square, was protected
+from the wind by a tight board fence about five feet high,
+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
+on, which lasted about a fortnight, the larger body of snow
+was entirely dissolved in less than a week, while the smaller
+body was not wholly gone at the end of the second week.</p>
+
+<p>"Equal quantities of snow were placed in vessels of the
+same kind and capacity, the temperature of the air being seventy
+degrees. In the 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 first was dissolved in
+sixteen minutes, while the latter had a small unthawed proportion
+remaining at the end of eighty-five minutes."<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a></p>
+
+<p>The snow in the woods is protected in the same way,
+though not literally to the same extent as by the fence in one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+of these cases and the cover in the other. Little of the winter
+precipitation, therefore, is lost by evaporation, and as it slowly
+melts at bottom it is absorbed by the earth, and but a very
+small quantity of water runs off from the surface. 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 sinking deep enough to reach
+wells and springs, which, of course, depend very much on
+winter rains and snows for their entire supply. This observation,
+though specially true of cleared and cultivated grounds,
+is not wholly inapplicable to the forest, particularly when, as
+is too often the case in Europe, the underwood and the decaying
+leaves are removed.</p>
+
+<p>The general effect of the forest in cold climates is to assimilate
+the winter state of the ground to that of wooded regions
+under softer skies; and it is a circumstance well worth noting,
+that in 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 umbrella pines, ilexes, cork oaks, and other
+trees of persistent foliage, whose evergreen leaves afford to
+the soil a protection analogous to that which it derives from
+snow in more northern climates.</p>
+
+<p>The water imbibed by the soil in winter sinks until it
+meets a more or less impermeable, or a saturated stratum, and
+then, by unseen conduits, slowly finds its way to the channels
+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 percolating through the vegetable
+and mineral layers, acquires their temperature, and is
+chemically affected by their action, but it carries very little
+matter in mechanical suspension.</p>
+
+<p>The process I have described is a slow one, and the supply
+of moisture derived from the snow, augmented by the rains of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+the following seasons, keeps the forest ground, where the surface
+is level or but moderately inclined, in a state of saturation
+through almost the whole 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 highlands.
+Their channels are subject only to slow and gradual
+changes, and they carry down to the lakes and the sea no
+accumulation of sand or silt to fill up their outlets, and, by
+raising their beds, to force them to spread over the low
+grounds near their mouth.<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a></p>
+
+<p>In this state of things, destructive tendencies of all sorts
+are arrested or compensated, and tree, bird, beast, and fish,
+alike, find a constant uniformity of condition most favorable to
+the regular and harmonious coexistence of them all.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>General Consequences of the Destruction of the Forest.</i></h4>
+
+<p>With the disappearance of the forest, all is changed. At
+one season, the earth parts with its warmth by radiation to an
+open sky&mdash;receives, at another, an immoderate heat from the
+unobstructed rays of the sun. Hence the climate becomes
+excessive, and the soil is alternately parched by the fervors of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+summer, and seared by the rigors of winter. Bleak winds
+sweep unresisted over its surface, drift away the snow that
+sheltered it from the frost, and dry up its scanty moisture.
+The precipitation becomes as regular as the temperature; the
+melting snows and vernal rains, no longer absorbed by a loose
+and bibulous vegetable mould, rush over the frozen surface,
+and pour down the valleys seaward, instead of filling a retentive
+bed of absorbent earth, and storing up a supply of moisture
+to feed perennial springs. The soil is bared of its covering
+of leaves, broken and loosened by the plough, deprived of the
+fibrous 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 by the deposition
+of the mineral and vegetable matter carried down by the
+waters. The channels of great rivers become unnavigable,
+their estuaries are choked up, and harbors which once sheltered
+large navies are shoaled by dangerous sandbars. The earth,
+stripped of its vegetable glebe, grows less and less productive,
+and, consequently, less able to protect itself by weaving a new
+network of roots to bind its particles together, a new carpeting
+of turf to shield it from wind and sun and scouring rain.
+Gradually it becomes altogether barren. The washing of the
+soil from the mountains leaves bare ridges of sterile rock, and
+the rich organic mould which covered them, now swept down
+into the dank low grounds, promotes a luxuriance of aquatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+vegetation that breeds fever, and more insidious forms of mortal
+disease, by its decay, and thus the earth is rendered no
+longer fit for the habitation of man.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a></p>
+
+<p>To the general truth of this sad picture there are many
+exceptions, even in countries of excessive climates. Some of
+these are due to favorable conditions of surface, of geological
+structure, and of the distribution of rain; in many 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 the violation of her
+harmonies, though slow, is sure, and the gradual deterioration
+of soil and climate in such exceptional regions is as certain to
+result from the destruction of the woods as is any natural effect
+to follow its cause.</p>
+
+<p>In the vast farrago of crudities which the elder Pliny's ambition
+of encyclop&aelig;dic attainment and his ready credulity have
+gathered together, we meet some judicious observations.
+Among these we must reckon the remark with which 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 are stripped of the trees
+which formerly confined and absorbed the rains." The absorption
+here referred to is not that of the soil, but of the roots,
+which, Pliny supposed, drank up the water to feed the growth
+of the trees.</p>
+
+<p>Although this particular evil effect of too extensive clearing
+was so early noticed, the lesson seems to have been soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+forgotten. The legislation of the Middle Ages in Europe is
+full of absurd provisions concerning the forests, which sovereigns
+sometimes destroyed because they 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.<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> It was
+reserved to later ages to appreciate their geographical importance,
+and it is only in very recent times, only in a few European
+countries, that the too general felling of the woods has
+been recognized as the most destructive among the many
+causes of the physical deterioration of the earth.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Condition of the Forest, and its Literature in different
+Countries.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The literature of the forest, which in England and America
+has not yet become sufficiently extensive to be known as a
+special branch of authorship, counts its thousands of volumes
+in Germany, Italy, and France. It is in 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
+investigated. On the other hand, the purely economical aspects
+of sylviculture have been most satisfactorily expounded,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+and that art has been most philosophically discussed, and most
+skilfully and successfully practised, in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>The eminence of Italian theoretical hydrographers and the
+great ability of Italian hydraulic engineers are well known,
+but the specific geographical importance of the woods has not
+been so clearly recognized in Italy as in the states bordering
+it on the north and west. It is true that the face of nature has
+been as completely revolutionized by man, and that the action
+of torrents has created as wide and as hopeless devastation in
+that country as in France; but in the French Empire the desolation
+produced by clearing the forests is more recent,<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> has
+been more suddenly effected, and, therefore, excites a livelier
+and more general interest than in Italy, where public opinion
+does not so readily connect the effect with its true cause.
+Italy, too, from ancient habit, employs little wood in architectural
+construction; for generations she has maintained no military
+or commercial marine large enough to require exhaustive
+quantities of timber,<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a> and the mildness of her climate makes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+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 administration
+of this great public interest might have been
+understood. The woods which controlled and regulated the
+flow of the river sources were very often in one jurisdiction,
+the plains to be irrigated, or to be inundated by floods and
+desolated by torrents, in another. Concert of action on such a
+subject between a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties was
+obviously impossible, and nothing but the union of all the
+Italian states under a single government can render practicable
+the establishment of such arrangements for the conservation
+and restoration of the forests and the regulation of the
+flow of the waters as are necessary for the full development of
+the yet unexhausted resources of that fairest of lands, and
+even for the permanent maintenance of the present condition
+of its physical geography.</p>
+
+<p>The denudation of the Central and Southern Apennines
+and of the Italian declivity of the Western Alps began at a
+period of unknown antiquity, but it does not seem to have
+been carried to a very dangerous length until the foreign con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>quests
+and extended commerce of Rome created a greatly
+increased demand for wood for the construction of ships and
+for military material. The Eastern Alps, the Western Apennines,
+and the Maritime Alps retained their forests much later;
+but even here the want of wood, and the injury to the plains
+and the navigation of the rivers by sediment brought down by
+the torrents, led to some legislation for the protection of the
+forests, by the Republic of Venice in the fifteenth century, by
+that of 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.<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a> 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 property in
+some of them were so burdensome that rural municipalities
+sometimes proposed to cede their common woods to the Government,
+without any other compensation than the remission
+of the taxes imposed on forest lands.<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> Under such circumstances,
+woodlands would soon become disafforested, and where
+facilities of transportation and a good demand for timber have
+increased the inducements to fell it, as upon the borders of the
+Mediterranean, the destruction of the forest and all the evils
+which attend it have gone on at a seriously alarming rate. It
+has even been calculated that four tenths of the area of the
+Ligurian provinces have been washed away or rendered incapable
+of cultivation by the felling of the woods.<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The damp and cold climate of England requires the maintenance
+of household fires through a large part of the year.
+Contrivances for economizing fuel were of later introduction
+in that country than on the Continent. The soil, like the sky,
+was, in general, charged with humidity; its natural condition
+was unfavorable for common roads, and the transportation of
+so heavy a material as coal, by land, from the remote counties
+where alone it was mined in the Middle Ages, was costly and
+difficult. For all these reasons, the consumption of wood was
+large, and apprehensions of the exhaustion of the forests were
+excited at an early period. Legislation there, as elsewhere,
+proved ineffectual to protect them, and many authors of the
+sixteenth century express fears of serious evils from the wasteful
+economy of the people in this respect. Harrison, in his
+curious chapter "Of Woods and Marishes" in Holinshed's
+compilation, complains of the rapid decrease of the forests, and
+adds: "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, r&eacute;ed,
+rush, and also <i>seacole</i>, 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 s&eacute;e 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,
+and vpwards, after that rate, either by fr&eacute;e deed, copie hold,
+or fee farme, might plant one acre of wood, or sowe the same
+with oke mast, hasell, b&eacute;ech, and sufficient prouision be made
+that it may be cherished and kept. But I feare me that I
+should then liue too long, and so long, that I should either be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+wearie of the world, or the world of me."<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a> Evelyn's "Silva,"
+the first edition of which appeared in 1664, rendered an extremely
+important service to the cause of the woods, and there
+is no doubt that the ornamental plantations in which England
+far surpasses all other countries, are, in some measure, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+fruit of Evelyn's enthusiasm. In England, however, arboriculture,
+the planting and nursing of single trees, has, until
+recently, been better understood than sylviculture, the sowing
+and training of the forest. But this latter branch of rural
+improvement is now pursued on a very considerable scale,
+though, so far as I know, not by the National Government.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Influence of the Forest on Inundations.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Besides the climatic question, which I have already sufficiently
+discussed, and the obvious inconveniences of a scanty
+supply of charcoal, of fuel, and of timber for architectural and
+naval construction and for the thousand other uses to which
+wood is applied in rural and domestic economy, and in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+various industrial 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 transportation of earth, gravel, pebbles,
+and even of considerable masses of rock, from higher to lower
+levels, by torrents. There are, however, connected with this
+general subject, several other topics of minor or strictly local
+interest, or of more uncertain character, which I shall have
+occasion more fully to speak of hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these three principal subjects&mdash;the influence
+of the woods on springs and other living waters&mdash;has been
+already considered; and if the facts stated in that discussion
+are well established, and the conclusions I have drawn from
+them are logically sound, it would seem to follow, as a necessary
+corollary, that the action of the forest is as important in
+diminishing the frequency and violence 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 of
+rivers, and, consequently, the overflow of their banks, which
+constitutes what is called inundation. The mechanical resistance,
+too, offered by the trunks of trees and of undergrowth
+to the flow of water over the surface, tends sensibly to retard
+the rapidity of its descent down declivities, and to divert and
+divide streams which may have already accumulated from
+smaller threads of water.<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Inundations are produced by the insufficiency of the natural
+channels of rivers to carry off the waters of their basins as
+fast as those waters flow into them. In accordance with the
+usual economy of nature, we should presume that she had
+everywhere provided the means of discharging, without disturbance
+of her general arrangements or abnormal destruction
+of her products, the precipitation which she sheds upon the
+face of the earth. Observation confirms this presumption, at
+least in the countries to which I confine my 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 the currents. Even now the trees come down
+almost to the water's edge along the rivers, in the larger forests
+of the United States, and the surface of the streams seems
+liable to no great change in level or in rapidity of current. A
+circumstance almost conclusive as to the regularity of flow in
+forest rivers, is that they do not form large sedimentary deposits,
+at their points of discharge into lakes or larger streams,
+such accumulations beginning, or at least advancing far more
+rapidly, after the valleys are cleared.</p>
+
+<p>In the Northern United States, although inundations are
+sometimes produced in the height of summer by heavy rains,
+it will be found generally true that the most rapid rise of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+waters, and, of course, the most destructive "freshets," as they
+are called in America, are produced by the sudden dissolution
+of the snow before the open ground is thawed in the spring.
+It frequently happens that a powerful thaw sets in after a long
+period of frost, and the snow which had been months in accumulating
+is dissolved and carried off in a few hours. When
+the snow is deep, it, to use a popular expression, "takes the
+frost out of the ground" in the woods, and, if it lies long
+enough, in the fields 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 often filled with drifts to the height of many feet.
+The knolls become frozen to a great depth; succeeding partial
+thaws melt the surface snow, and the water runs down into the
+furrows of ploughed fields, and other artificial and natural hollows,
+and then often freezes to solid ice. In this state of things,
+almost the entire surface of the cleared land is impervious to
+water, and from the absence of trees and the general smoothness
+of the ground, it offers little mechanical resistance to
+superficial currents. If, under these circumstances, warm
+weather accompanied by rain occurs, the rain and melted
+snow are swiftly hurried to the bottom of the valleys and
+gathered to raging torrents.</p>
+
+<p>It ought further to be considered that, though the lighter
+ploughed soils readily imbibe a great deal of water, yet the
+grass lands, and all the heavy and tenacious earths, absorb it
+in much smaller quantities, and less rapidly than the vegetable
+mould of the forest. Pasture, meadow, and clayey soils, taken
+together, greatly predominate over the sandy ploughed fields,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+in all large agricultural districts, and hence, even if, in the
+case we are supposing, the open ground chance to have been
+thawed before 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 bursts, from the hydrostatic pressure from
+below, or is violently torn up by the current, and is swept by
+the impetuous stream, in large masses and with resistless fury,
+against banks, bridges, dams, and mills erected near them.
+The bark of the trees along the rivers is often abraded, at a
+height of many feet above the ordinary water level, by cakes
+of floating ice, which are at last stranded by the receding flood
+on meadow or ploughland, to delay, by their chilling influence,
+the advent of the tardy spring.</p>
+
+<p>The surface of a forest, in its natural condition, can never
+pour forth such deluges of water as flow from cultivated soil.
+Humus, or vegetable mould, is capable of absorbing almost
+twice its own weight of water. The soil in a forest of deciduous
+foliage is composed of humus, 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
+saturated, for it then gives off a portion of its moisture
+to the mineral earth below, and thus is ready to receive a new
+supply; and, besides, the bed of leaves not yet converted to
+mould takes up and retains a very considerable proportion of
+snow water, as well as of rain.</p>
+
+<p>In the warm climates of Southern Europe, as I have
+already said, the functions of the forest, so far as the disposal
+of the water of precipitation is concerned, are essentially the
+same at all seasons, and are analogous to those which it per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>forms
+in the Northern United States in summer. Hence, in
+the former countries, the winter floods have not the characteristics
+which mark them in the latter, nor is the conservative
+influence of the woods in winter relatively so important,
+though it is equally unquestionable.</p>
+
+<p>If the summer floods in the United States are attended
+with less pecuniary damage than those of the Loire and other
+rivers of France, the Po and its tributaries in Italy, the Emme
+and her sister torrents which devastate the valleys of Switzerland,
+it is partly because the banks of American rivers are not
+yet lined with towns, their shores and 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 the Old World, is, in a still greater degree, to be
+ascribed to the fact that, with all our thoughtless improvidence,
+we have not yet bared all the sources of our streams, not yet
+overthrown all the barriers which nature has erected to restrain
+her own destructive energies. Let us be wise in time, and
+profit by the errors of our older brethren!</p>
+
+<p>The influence of the forest in preventing inundations has
+been very generally recognized, both as a theoretical inference
+and as a fact of observation; but Belgrand and his commentator
+Vall&egrave;s have deduced an opposite result from various facts
+of experience and from scientific considerations. They contend
+that the superficial drainage is more regular from cleared
+than from 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 latter are, first, that the fallen leaves in the forest
+constitute an impermeable covering of the soil over, not
+through, which the water of rains and of melting snows flows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+off, and secondly, that the roots of trees penetrate and choke
+up the fissures in the rocks, so as to impede the passage of
+water through channels which nature has provided for its
+descent to lower strata.</p>
+
+<p>As to the first of these, we may appeal to familiar facts
+within the personal knowledge of every man acquainted with
+the operations of sylvan nature. I have before me a letter
+from an acute and experienced observer, containing this paragraph:
+"I think that rain water does not ever, except in very
+trifling quantities, flow over the leaves in the woods in summer
+or 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 winter after the snow has principally disappeared, the
+water in and between the layers of leaves sometimes freezes
+into a solid crust, which allows the flow of water over it. But
+this occurs only in depressions and on a very small scale; and
+the ice thus formed is so soon dissolved that no sensible effect
+is produced on the escape of water from the general surface.</p>
+
+<p>As to the influence of roots upon drainage, I believe there
+is no doubt that they, independently of their action as absorbents,
+mechanically promote it. Not only does the water of
+the soil follow them downward,<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> but their 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 of roots within them increases the area of the crev<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>ice
+in proportion to its length. Consequently, the widening
+of a fissure to the extent of one inch might give an additional
+drainage equal to a square foot of open tubing.</p>
+
+<p>The observations and reasonings of Belgrand and Vall&egrave;s,
+though their conclusions have not been accepted by many, are
+very important in one point of view. These writers insist
+much on the necessity of taking into account, in estimating
+the relations between precipitation and evaporation, the abstraction
+of water from the surface and surface currents, by
+absorption and infiltration&mdash;an element unquestionably of
+great value, but hitherto much neglected by meteorological
+inquirers, who have very often reasoned as if the surface earth
+were either impermeable to water, or already saturated with
+it; whereas, in fact, it is a sponge, always imbibing humidity
+and always giving it off, not by evaporation only, but by infiltration
+and percolation.</p>
+
+<p>The destructive effects of inundations considered simply as
+a mechanical power by which life is endangered, crops destroyed,
+and the artificial constructions of man overthrown,
+are very terrible. Thus far, however, the flood is a temporary
+and by no means an irreparable evil, for if its ravages end here,
+the prolific powers of nature and the industry of man soon
+restore what had been lost, and the face of the earth no 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.<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> If,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+then, the too rapid flow of the surface waters occasioned no
+other evil than to produce, once in ten years upon the average,
+an inundation which should destroy the harvest of the low
+grounds along the rivers, the damage would be too inconsiderable,
+and of too transitory a character, to warrant the inconveniences
+and the expense involved in the measures which the
+most competent judges in many parts of Europe believe the
+respective governments ought to take to obviate it.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Destructive Action of Torrents.</i></h4>
+
+<p>But the great, the irreparable, the appalling mischiefs
+which have already resulted, and threaten to ensue on a still
+more extensive scale hereafter, from too rapid superficial drainage,
+are of a properly geographical character, and consist
+primarily in erosion, displacement, and transportation of the
+superficial strata, vegetable and mineral&mdash;of the integuments,
+so to speak, with which nature has clothed the skeleton framework
+of the globe. It is difficult to convey by description an
+idea of the desolation of the regions most exposed to the ravages
+of torrent and of flood; and the thousands, who, in these
+days of travel, are whirled by steam near or even through the
+theatres of these calamities, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+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
+the impression that nature pronounced the curse of perpetual
+sterility and desolation upon these sublime but fearful wastes,
+difficult to believe that they were once, and but for the folly
+of man might still be, blessed with all the natural advantages
+which Providence has bestowed upon the most favored climes.
+But the historical evidence is conclusive as to the destructive
+changes occasioned by the agency of man upon the flanks of
+the Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and other mountain
+ranges in Central and Southern Europe, and the progress of
+physical deterioration has been so rapid that, in some localities,
+a single generation has witnessed the beginning and the
+end of the melancholy revolution.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain that a desolation, like that which has overwhelmed
+many once beautiful and fertile regions of Europe,
+awaits an important part of the territory of the United States,
+and of other comparatively new countries over which European
+civilization is now extending its sway, unless prompt measures
+are taken to check the action of destructive causes already in
+operation. It is vain to expect that legislation can do anything
+effectual to arrest the progress of the evil in those countries,
+except so far as the state is still the proprietor of extensive
+forests. Woodlands which have passed into private hands
+will everywhere be managed, in spite of legal restrictions, upon
+the same economical principles as other possessions, and every
+proprietor will, as a general 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&mdash;the right,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+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 the most serious fears are entertained, not only of
+the depopulation of those districts, but of enormous mischiefs
+to the provinces contiguous to them.<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> The only legal provisions
+from which anything is to be hoped, are such as shall
+make it a matter of private advantage to the landholder to
+spare the trees upon his grounds, and promote the growth of
+the young wood. Something may be done by exempting
+standing forests from taxation, and by imposing taxes on wood
+felled for fuel or for timber, something by premiums or honorary
+distinctions for judicious management of the woods. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+would be difficult to induce governments, general or local, to
+make the necessary appropriations for such purposes, but there
+can be no doubt that it would be sound economy in the end.</p>
+
+<p>In countries where there exist municipalities endowed with
+an intelligent public spirit, the purchase and control of forests
+by such corporations would often prove advantageous; and in
+some of the provinces of Northern Lombardy, experience has
+shown that such operations may be conducted with great benefit
+to all the interests connected with the proper management
+of the woods. 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 value, that there is, too often,
+nothing left that is worth protecting. In the canton of Ticino,
+the peasants have very frequently voted to sell the town woods
+and divide the proceeds among the corporators. The sometimes
+considerable sums thus received are squandered in wild
+revelry, and the sacrifice of the forests brings not even a momentary
+benefit to the proprietors.<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is evidently a matter of the utmost importance that the
+public, and especially land owners, be roused to a sense of the
+dangers to which the indiscriminate clearing of the woods may
+expose not only future generations, but the very soil itself.
+Fortunately, some of the American States, as well as the governments
+of many European colonies, still retain the ownership
+of great tracts of primitive woodland. The State of New
+York, for example, has, in its northeastern counties, a vast
+extent of territory in which the lumberman has only here and
+there established his camp, and where the forest, though interspersed
+with permanent settlements, robbed of some of its
+finest pine groves, and often ravaged by devastating fires, still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+covers 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
+remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a
+museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the
+recreation of the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous
+tree, and humble plant that loves the shade, and fish
+and fowl and four-footed beast, may dwell and perpetuate their
+kind, in the enjoyment of such imperfect protection as the
+laws of a people jealous of restraint can afford them. The
+immediate loss to the public treasury from the adoption of this
+policy would be inconsiderable, for these lands are sold at low
+rates. The forest alone, economically managed, would, without
+injury, and even with benefit to its permanence and growth,
+soon yield a regular income larger than the present value of
+the fee.</p>
+
+<p>The collateral advantages of the preservation of these forests
+would be far greater. Nature threw up those mountains
+and clothed them with lofty woods, that they might serve as a
+reservoir to supply with perennial waters the thousand rivers
+and rills that are fed by the rains and snows of the Adirondacks,
+and as a screen for the fertile plains of the central counties
+against 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+the preservation of every influence that tends to maintain an
+equilibrium of temperature and humidity is of cardinal importance.
+The felling of the Adirondack woods would ultimately
+involve for Northern and Central New York consequences
+similar to those which have resulted from the laying
+bare of the southern and western declivities of the French
+Alps and the spurs, ridges, and detached peaks in front of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the evils to be apprehended from the clearing
+of the mountains of New York may be less in degree than
+those which a similar cause has produced in Southern France,
+where the intensity of its action has been increased by the
+inclination of the mountain declivities, and by the peculiar
+geological constitution of the earth. The degradation of the
+soil is, perhaps, not equally promoted by a combination of the
+same circumstances, in any of the American 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 larger quantities of sediment, and the increasing
+obstructions to the navigation of the Hudson, which are extending
+themselves down the channel in proportion as the
+fields are encroaching upon the forest, give good grounds for
+the fear of serious injury to the commerce of the important
+towns on the upper waters of that river, unless measures are
+taken to prevent the expansion of "improvements" which
+have already been carried beyond the demands of a wise
+economy.</p>
+
+<p>I have stated, in a general way, the nature of the evils in
+question, and of the processes by which they are produced;
+but I shall make their precise character and magnitude better
+understood by presenting some descriptive and statistical details
+of facts of actual occurrence. I select for this purpose the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+southeastern portion of France, not because that territory has
+suffered more severely than some others, but because its deterioration
+is comparatively recent, and has been watched and
+described by very competent and trustworthy observers, whose
+reports are more easily accessible than those published in other
+countries.<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a></p>
+
+<p>The provinces of Dauphiny, Avignon, and Provence comprise
+a territory of fourteen or fifteen thousand square miles,
+bounded northwest by the Isere, northeast and east by the
+Alps, south by the Mediterranean, west by the Rhone, and
+extending from 42&deg; to about 45&deg; of north latitude. The surface
+is generally hilly and even mountainous, and several 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 districts, the vine and the fig everywhere
+flourish, the olive thrives as far north as 43&frac12;&deg;, and upon
+the coast, grow the orange, the lemon, and the date palm. The
+forest trees, too, are of southern type, umbrella pines, various
+species of evergreen oaks, and many other trees and shrubs of
+persistent broad-leaved foliage, characterizing the landscape.</p>
+
+<p>The rapid slope of the mountains naturally exposed these
+provinces to damage by torrents, and the Romans diminished
+their injurious effects by erecting, in the beds of ravines, barriers
+of rocks loosely piled up, which permitted a slow escape
+of the water, but compelled it to deposit above the dikes the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+earth and gravel with which it was charged.<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> 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 process of
+clearing the soil went on so slowly that, for centuries, neither
+the want of timber and fuel, nor the other evils about to be
+depicted, were seriously felt. Indeed, throughout the Middle
+Ages, these provinces were well wooded, and famous for the
+fertility and abundance, not only of the low grounds, but of
+the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the state of things at the close of the fifteenth
+century. The statistics of the seventeenth show that while
+there had been an increase of prosperity and population in
+Lower Provence, as well as in the correspondingly situated
+parts of the other two provinces I have mentioned, there was
+an alarming decrease both in the wealth and in the population
+of Upper Provence and Dauphiny, although, by the clearing
+of the forests, a great extent of 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 con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>sequence
+of the gradual abandonment of the wasted soil by its
+starving occupants. The growth of the large towns on and
+near the Rhone and the coast, their advance in commerce and
+industry, and the consequently enlarged demand for agricultural
+products, ought naturally to have increased the rural
+population and the value of their lands; but the physical
+decay of the uplands was such that considerable tracts were
+deserted altogether, and in Upper Provence, the fires which in
+1471 counted 897, were reduced to 747 in 1699, to 728 in
+1733, and to 635 in 1776.</p>
+
+<p>These facts I take from the <i>La Provence au point de vue
+des Bois, des Torrents et des Inondations</i>, of Charles de Ribbe,
+one of the highest authorities, and I add further details from
+the same source.</p>
+
+<p>"Commune of Barles, 1707: Two hills have become connected
+by land slides, and have formed a lake which covers
+the best part of the soil. 1746: New slides buried twenty
+houses composing a village, no trace of which is left; more
+than one third of the land had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Monans, 1724: Deserted by its inhabitants and no longer
+cultivated.</p>
+
+<p>"Gueydan, 1760: It appears by records that the best
+grounds have been swept off since 1756, and that ravines
+occupy their place.</p>
+
+<p>"Digne, 1762: The river Bl&eacute;one has destroyed the most
+valuable part of the territory.</p>
+
+<p>"Malmaison, 1768: The inhabitants have emigrated, all
+their fields having been lost."</p>
+
+<p>In the case of the commune of St. Laurent du Var, it
+appears that, after clearings in the Alps, succeeded by others
+in the common woods of the town, the floods 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 away in 1761. In 1762, after another
+destructive inundation, many of the inhabitants emigrated,
+and in 1765, one half of the territory had been laid waste.</p>
+
+<p>"In 1766, the assessor Serraire said to the Assembly: 'As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+to the damage caused by brooks and torrents, it is impossible
+to deny its extent. Upper Provence 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. Villages
+have been almost submerged by torrents which formerly
+had not even names, and large towns are on the point of
+destruction from the same cause.'"</p>
+
+<p>In 1776, Viscount Puget thus reported: "The mere aspect
+of Upper Provence is calculated to appal the patriotic magistrate.
+One sees only lofty mountains, deep valleys with precipitous
+sides, rivers with broad 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 consequences of
+indiscriminate clearing; villages whose inhabitants, finding no
+longer the means of subsistence, are emigrating day by day;
+houses dilapidated to huts, and but a miserable remnant of
+population."</p>
+
+<p>"In a document of the year 1771, the ravages of the torrents
+were compared to the effects of an earthquake, half the
+soil in many communes seeming to have been swallowed up.</p>
+
+<p>"Our mountains," said the administrators of the province
+of the Lower Alps in 1792, "present nothing but a surface of
+stony tufa; clearing is still going on, and the little rivulets are
+becoming torrents. Many communes have lost their harvests,
+their flocks, and their houses by floods. The washing down
+of the mountains is to be ascribed to the clearings and the
+practice of burning them over."</p>
+
+<p>These complaints, it will be seen, all date before the Revolution,
+but the desolation they describe has since advanced
+with still swifter steps.</p>
+
+<p>Surell&mdash;whose valuable work, <i>&Eacute;tude sur les Torrents
+des Hautes Alpes</i>, published in 1841, presents the most appalling
+picture of the desolations of the torrent, and, at the same
+time, the most careful studies of the history and essential character
+of this great evil&mdash;in speaking of the valley of D&eacute;voluy,
+on page 152, says: "Everything concurs to show that it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+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 district. Many localities, now completely
+bare, still retain the name of 'wood,' and one of them
+is called, in old deeds, <i>Comba nigra</i> [Black forest or dell], on
+account of its dense woods. These and many other proofs
+confirm the local traditions which are unanimous on this
+point.</p>
+
+<p>"There, as everywhere in the Upper Alps, the clearings
+began on the flanks of the mountains, and were gradually
+extended into the valleys and then to the highest accessible
+peaks. Then followed the Revolution, and caused the destruction
+of the remainder of the trees which had thus far escaped
+the woodman's axe."</p>
+
+<p>In a note to this passage, the writer says: "Several persons
+have told me that they had lost flocks of sheep, by straying,
+in the forests of Mont Auroux, which covered the flanks
+of the mountain from La Cluse to Agn&egrave;res. These declivities
+are now as bare as the palm of the hand."</p>
+
+<p>The ground upon the steep mountains being once bared of
+trees, and the underwood killed by the grazing of horned cattle,
+sheep, and goats, every depression becomes a watercourse.
+"Every storm," says Surell, 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 being swept
+into ravines formed in the course of a few hours. Sometimes
+the flood pours in a sheet over the surface, without ravine or
+even bed, and ruins extensive grounds, which are abandoned
+forever."</p>
+
+<p>I cannot follow Surell in his description and classification
+of torrents, and I must refer the reader to his instructive work
+for a full exposition of the theory of the subject. In order,
+however, to show what a concentration of destructive energies
+may be effected by felling the woods that clothe and support
+the sides of mountain abysses, I cite his description of a valley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+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," says he, "is frightful. Within a distance of less
+than three kilom&egrave;tres [= one mile and seven eighths English],
+more than sixty torrents hurl into the depths of the gorge the
+debris torn from its two flanks. The smallest of these secondary
+torrents, if transferred to a fertile valley, would be
+enough to ruin it."</p>
+
+<p>The eminent political economist Blanqui, in a memoir read
+before the Academy of Moral and Political Science on the 25th
+of November, 1843, thus expresses himself: "Important as
+are the causes of impoverishment already described, they are
+not to be compared to the consequences which have followed
+from the two inveterate evils of the Alpine provinces of
+France, the extension of clearing and the ravages of torrents.
+* * The most important result of this destruction is this:
+that the agricultural capital, or rather the ground itself&mdash;which,
+in a rapidly increasing degree, is daily swept away by
+the waters&mdash;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 once the springs and the
+fuel. Between Grenoble and Brian&ccedil;on in the valley of the
+Romanche, many villages are so destitute of wood that they
+are reduced to the necessity of baking their bread with sun-dried
+cowdung, and even this they can afford to do but once
+a year. This bread becomes so hard that it can be cut only
+with an axe, and I have myself seen a loaf of bread in September,
+at the kneading of which I was present the January
+previous.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever has visited the valley of Barcelonette, those of
+Embrun, and of Verdun, and that Arabia Petr&aelig;a of the department
+of the Upper Alps, called D&eacute;voluy, knows that there
+is no time to lose, that in fifty years from this date France<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+will be separated from Savoy, as Egypt from Syria, by a
+desert."<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a></p>
+
+<p>It deserves to be specially noticed that the district here
+referred to, though now among the most hopelessly waste in
+France, was very productive even down to so late a period as
+the commencement of the French Revolution. Arthur Young,
+writing in 1789, says: "About Barcelonette and in the highest
+parts of the mountains, the hill pastures feed a million of
+sheep, besides large herds of other cattle;" and he adds:
+"With such a soil, 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."<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> 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 course of the Loire are the only streams he mentions
+as inflicting serious injury by their floods. The ravages
+of the torrents had, indeed, as we have seen, commenced earlier
+in some other localities, but we are authorized to infer that
+they were, in Young's time, too limited in range, and relatively
+too insignificant, to require notice in a general view of
+the provinces where they have now ruined so large a proportion
+of the soil.</p>
+
+<p>But I resume my citations.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not exaggerate," says Blanqui. "When I shall have
+finished my excursion and designated localities by their names,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+there will rise, I am sure, more than one voice 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 province of Constantine; for there you
+can travel on horseback, and you find grass in the spring,
+whereas in more than fifty communes in the Alps there is
+absolutely nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"The clear, brilliant, Alpine sky of Embrun, of Gap, of
+Barcelonette, and of Digne, which for months is without a
+cloud, produces droughts interrupted only by diluvial rains
+like those of the tropics. The abuse of the right of pasturage
+and the felling of the woods have stripped the soil of all its
+grass and all its trees, and the scorching sun bakes it to the
+consistence of porphyry. When moistened by the rain, as it
+has neither support nor cohesion, it rolls down to the valleys,
+sometimes in floods resembling black, yellow, or reddish lava,
+sometimes in streams of pebbles, and even huge blocks of
+stone, which pour down with a frightful roar, and in 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
+shivers to fragments the very rocks, and of the rain which
+sweeps them down, penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart
+of the mountain, while the beds of the torrents issuing from
+them are sometimes raised several feet, in a single year, by
+the debris, so that they reach the level of the bridges, which,
+of course, are then carried off. The torrent beds are recognized
+at a great distance, as they issue from the mountains,
+and they spread themselves over the low grounds, in fan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>-shaped
+expansions, like a mantle of stone, sometimes ten thousand
+feet wide, rising high at the centre, and curving toward
+the circumference till their lower edges meet the plain.</p>
+
+<p>"Such is their aspect in dry weather. But no tongue can
+give an adequate description of their devastations in one of
+those sudden floods which resemble, in almost none of their
+phenomena, the action of ordinary river water. They are now
+no longer overflowing brooks, but real seas, tumbling down in
+cataracts, 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 accompanied
+with a roar louder than the crash of thunder. A furious wind
+precedes the rushing water and announces its approach. Then
+comes a violent eruption, followed by a flow of muddy waves,
+and after a few hours all returns to the dreary silence which
+at periods of rest marks these abodes of desolation.</p>
+
+<p>"This is but an imperfect sketch of this scourge of the
+Alps. Its devastations are increasing with the progress of
+clearing, and are every day turning a portion of our frontier
+departments into barren wastes.</p>
+
+<p>"The unfortunate passion for clearing manifested itself at
+the beginning of the French Revolution, and has much increased
+under the pressure of immediate want. It has now
+reached an extreme point, and must be speedily checked, or
+the last inhabitant will be compelled to retreat when the last
+tree falls.</p>
+
+<p>"The elements of destruction are increasing in violence.
+Rivers might be mentioned whose beds have been raised ten
+feet in a single year. The devastation advances in geometrical
+progression as the higher slopes are bared of their wood,
+and 'the ruin from above,' to use the words of a peasant,
+'helps to hasten the desolation below.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Alps of Provence present a terrible aspect. In the
+more equable climate of Northern France, one can form no
+conception of those parched mountain gorges where not even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+a bush can be found to shelter a bird, where, at most, the
+wanderer sees in summer here and there a withered lavender,
+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 the soil they overflow in
+their swift descent, and leave it even more seared than it was
+from want of moisture. Man at last retires from the fearful
+desert, and I have, the present season, found not a living soul
+in districts where I remember to have enjoyed hospitality
+thirty years ago."</p>
+
+<p>In 1853, ten years after the date of Blanqui's memoir, M.
+de Bonville, prefect of the Lower Alps, addressed to the Government
+a report in which the following passages occur:</p>
+
+<p>"It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept
+off by the increasing violence of that curse of the mountains,
+the torrents, is daily diminishing with fearful rapidity. 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 the grass
+they require for their sustenance, scratch the ground in search
+of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed and carried
+off by melting snows and summer storms.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty
+years they have been too often depicted to require to be
+further discussed, but it is important to show that their ravages
+are daily extending the range of devastation. The bed
+of the Durance, which now in some places exceeds 2,000
+m&egrave;tres [about 6,600 feet, or a mile and a quarter] in width,
+and, at ordinary times, has a current of water less than 10
+m&egrave;tres [about 33 feet] wide, shows something of the extent of
+the damage.<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a> Where, ten years ago, there were still woods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+and cultivated grounds to be seen, there is now but a vast
+torrent: there is not one of our mountains which has not at
+least one torrent, and new ones are daily forming.</p>
+
+<p>"An indirect proof of the diminution of the soil is to be
+found in the depopulation of the country. In 1852, I reported
+to the General Council that, according to the census
+of that year, the population of the department of the Lower
+Alps had fallen off no less than 5,000 souls in the five years
+between 1846 and 1851.</p>
+
+<p>"Unless prompt and energetic measures are taken, it is
+easy to fix the epoch when the French Alps will be but a
+desert. The interval between 1851 and 1856 will show a
+further decrease of population. In 1862, the ministry will
+announce a continued and progressive reduction in the number
+of acres devoted to agriculture; every year will aggravate
+the evil, and, in a half century, France will count more ruins,
+and a department the less."</p>
+
+<p>Time has verified the predictions of De Bonville. The later
+census returns show a progressive diminution in the population
+of the departments of the Lower Alps, the Is&egrave;re, the
+Drome, Ari&egrave;ge, the Upper and the Lower Pyrenees, the
+Loz&egrave;re, the Ardennes, the Doubs, the Vosges, and, in short, in
+all 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 rendered
+uninhabitable, by ruthlessly depriving them of their natural
+advantages and securities, to provinces where the face of the
+earth was so formed by nature as to need no such safeguards,
+and where, consequently, she preserves her outlines in spite of
+the wasteful improvidence of man.<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Highly colored as these pictures seem, they are not exaggerated,
+although the hasty tourist through Southern France
+and Northern Italy, finding little in his high road experiences
+to justify them, might suppose them so. The lines of communication
+by locomotive train and diligence lead generally over
+safer ground, 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, is producing analogous effects upon the lower
+ridges of the Alps and the plains which skirt them; and even
+now one needs but an hour's departure from some great thoroughfares
+to reach sites where the genius of destruction revels
+as wildly as in the most frightful of the abysses which Blanqui
+has painted.<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is one effect of the action of torrents which few travellers
+on the Continent are heedless enough to pass without
+notice. I refer to the elevation of the beds of mountain
+streams in consequence of the deposit of the 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 as the bed of the torrent is
+raised, so that, to reach a river, you ascend from the fields
+beside it; and sometimes the ordinary level of the stream is
+above the streets and even the roofs of the towns through
+which it passes.<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The traveller who visits the depths of an Alpine ravine,
+observes the length and width of the gorge and the great
+height and apparent solidity of the precipitous walls which
+bound it, and calculates the mass of rock required to fill the
+vacancy, can hardly believe that the humble brooklet which
+purls at his feet has been the principal agent in accomplishing
+this tremendous erosion. Closer observation will often teach
+him, 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 mighty enough
+to sweep down the largest masses of gravel and of rock.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+The simple measurement of the cubical contents of the semi-circular
+hillock which he climbed before he entered the gorge,
+the structure and composition of which conclusively show
+that it must have been washed out of this latter by torrential
+action, will often account satisfactorily for the disposal of most
+of the matter which once filled the ravine.</p>
+
+<p>It must further be remembered, that every inch of the
+violent movement of the rocks is accompanied with crushing
+concussion, or, at least, with great abrasion, and, as you follow
+the deposit along the course of the waters which transport it,
+you find the stones gradually rounding off in form, and diminishing
+in size until they pass successively into gravel, sand,
+impalpable slime.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I do not mean to assert that all the rocky valleys of the
+Alps have been produced by the action of torrents resulting
+from the destruction of the forests. All the greater, and many
+of 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 convulsion,
+widened and scarped, and often even polished, so to
+speak, by the action of glaciers during the ice period, and but
+little changed in form by running water in later eras.<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a></p>
+
+<p>In these valleys of ancient formation, which extend into
+the very heart of the mountains, the streams, though rapid,
+have lost the true torrential character, if, indeed, they ever
+possessed it. Their beds have become approximately constant,
+and their walls no longer crumble and fall into 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 central ridge, and accumulated thickly between
+their solid buttresses. But it is on this crust that the mountaineer
+dwells. Here are his forests, here his pastures, and the
+ravages of the torrent both destroy his world, and convert it
+into a source of overwhelming desolation to the plains below.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Transporting Power of Rivers.</i></h4>
+
+<p>An instance that fell under my own observation in 1857,
+will serve to show something of the eroding and transporting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+power of streams which, in these respects, fall incalculably
+below the torrents of the Alps. In a flood of the Ottaquechee,
+a small river which flows through Woodstock, Vermont,
+a milldam on that stream burst, and the sediment with which
+the pond was filled, estimated after careful measurement at
+13,000 cubic yards, was carried down by the current. Between
+this dam and the slack water of another, four miles below, the
+bed of the stream, which is composed of pebbles interspersed
+in a few places with larger stones, is about sixty-five feet wide,
+though, at low water, the breadth of the current is considerably
+less. The sand and fine gravel were smoothly and evenly distributed
+over the bed to a width of fifty-five or sixty feet, and
+for a distance of about two miles, except at two or three intervening
+rapids, filled up all the interstices between the stones,
+covering them to the depth 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 breakage
+of the dam, had then been undisturbed for about twenty-five
+years, and its contents consisted almost entirely of sand, the
+rapidity of the current in floods being such that it would let
+fall little lighter sediment, even above an obstruction like a
+dam. The quantity I have mentioned evidently bears a very
+inconsiderable proportion to the total erosion of the stream<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+during that period, because the wash of the banks consists
+chiefly of fine earth rather than of sand, and after the pond
+was once filled, or nearly so, even this material could no longer
+be deposited in it. The fact of the complete removal of the
+deposit I have described between the two dams in a single
+freshet, shows that, in spite of considerable obstruction from
+roughness of bed, large quantities of sand may be taken up
+and carried off by streams of no great rapidity of inclination;
+for the whole descent of the bed of the river between the two
+dams&mdash;a distance of four miles&mdash;is but sixty feet, or fifteen feet
+to the mile.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Po and its Deposits.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The current of the river Po, for a considerable distance
+after its volume of water is otherwise sufficient for continuous
+navigation, is too rapid for that purpose until near Piacenza,
+where its velocity becomes too much reduced to transport
+great quantities of mineral matter, except in a state of minute
+division. Its southern affluents bring down from the Apennines
+a large quantity of fine earth from various geological
+formations, while its Alpine tributaries west of the Ticino are
+charged chiefly with rock ground down to sand or gravel.<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+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 remained unconfined. But, as the surface of the water in
+floods is from six to fifteen feet above the general level of its
+banks, the Po can, at that period, receive no contributions of
+earth from the washing of the fields of Lombardy, and there is
+no doubt that a large proportion of the sediment it now deposits
+at its mouth descended from the Alps in the form of
+rock, though reduced by the grinding action of the waters, in
+its passage seaward, to the condition of fine sand, and often
+of silt.<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a></p>
+
+<p>We know little of the history of the Po, or of the geography
+of the coast near the point where it enters the Adriatic,
+at any period more than twenty centuries before our own.
+Still less can we say how much of the plains of Lombardy had
+been formed by its action, combined with other causes, before
+man accelerated its levelling operations by felling the first
+woods on the mountains whence its waters are derived. But
+we know that since the Roman conquest of Northern Italy, its
+deposits have amounted to a quantity which, if recemented
+into rock, recombined into gravel, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+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 the Po
+has filled up the lagoon, and Ravenna is now four miles from
+the sea. The town of Adria, which lies between the Po and
+the Adige, at the distance of some four or five miles from each,
+was once a harbor famous enough to have given its name to
+the Adriatic sea, and it was still a seaport in the time of Augustus.
+The combined action of the two rivers has so advanced
+the coast line that Adria is now about fourteen miles inland,
+and, in other places, the deposits made within the same period
+by these and other neighboring streams have a width of
+twenty miles.</p>
+
+<p>What proportion of the earth with which they are charged
+these rivers have borne out into deep water, during the last two
+thousand years, we do not know, but as they still transport
+enormous quantities, as the North Adriatic appears to have
+shoaled rapidly, and as long islands, composed in great part
+of fluviatile deposits, have formed opposite their mouths, it
+must evidently have been very great. The floods of the Po
+occur but once, or sometimes twice in a year.<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a> At other
+times, its waters are comparatively limpid and seem to hold
+no great amount of mud or fine sand in mechanical suspension;
+but at high water it contains a large proportion of solid matter,
+and according to Lombardini, it annually transports to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+shores of the Adriatic not less than 42,760,000 cubic m&egrave;tres,
+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.<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> The depth of the annual deposit is stated at eighteen
+centim&egrave;tres, 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 the northern declivity of the
+Apennines by torrents. Nearly the whole of the debris thus
+removed from the southern face of the Alps between Monte
+Rosa and the sources of the Adda&mdash;a length of watershed not
+less than one hundred and fifty miles&mdash;is arrested by the still
+waters of the Lakes Maggiore and Como, and some smaller
+lacustrine reservoirs, and never reaches the sea. The Po is
+not continuously embanked except for the lower half of its
+course. Above Piacenza, therefore, it spreads and deposits
+sediment over a wide surface, and the water withdrawn from
+it for irrigation at lower points, as well as its inundations in
+the occasional ruptures of its banks, carry over the adjacent
+soil a large amount of slime.</p>
+
+<p>If we add to the estimated annual deposits of the Po at its
+mouth, the earth and sand transported to the sea by the Adige,
+the Brenta, and other less important streams, the prodigious
+mass of detritus swept into Lago Maggiore by the Tosa, the
+Maggia, and the Ticino, into the lake of Como by the Maira<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+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 assume that we have an aggregate of not
+less than four times the quantity carried to the Adriatic by the
+Po, or 220,000,000 cubic yards of solid matter, abstracted every
+year from the Italian Alps and the Apennines, and removed
+out of their domain by the force of running water.<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a></p>
+
+<p>The present rate of deposit at the mouth of the Po has continued
+since the year 1600, the previous advance of the coast,
+after the year 1200, having been only one third as rapid. The
+great increase of erosion and transport is ascribed by Lombardini
+chiefly to the destruction of the forests in the basin of that
+river and the valleys, of its tributaries, since the beginning of
+the seventeenth century.<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a> We have no data to show the rate
+of deposit in any given century before the year 1200, and it
+doubtless varied according 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 their mechanical
+force is then greatest, and because the loose earth and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+stones of freshly cleared forest ground are most easily removed.
+Many of the Alpine valleys west of the Ticino&mdash;that of the
+Dora Baltea for instance&mdash;were nearly stripped of their forests
+in the days of the Roman empire, others in the Middle Ages,
+and, of course, there must have been, at different periods before
+the year 1200, epochs when the erosion and transportation of
+solid matter from the Alps and the Apennines were as great as
+since the year 1600.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the whole, we shall not greatly err if we assume
+that, for a period of not less than two thousand years, the
+walls of the basin of the Po&mdash;the Italian slope of the Alps,
+and the northern and northeastern declivities of the Apennines&mdash;have
+annually sent down into the Adriatic, the lakes,
+and the plains, not less than 150,000,000 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.<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a>
+There are very large portions of this area, where, as we know
+from ancient remains&mdash;roads, bridges, and the like&mdash;from
+other direct testimony, and from geological considerations,
+very little degradation has taken place within twenty centuries,
+and hence the quantity to be assigned to localities
+where the destructive causes have been most active is increased
+in proportion.</p>
+
+<p>If this vast mass of pulverized rock and earth were restored
+to the localities from which it was derived, it certainly would
+not obliterate valleys and gorges hollowed out 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 many bare mountain ridges,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+essentially change the line of junction between plain and
+mountain, and carry back a long reach of the Adriatic coast
+many miles to the west.<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is, indeed, not to be supposed that all the degradation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+of the mountains is due to the destruction of the forests&mdash;that
+the flanks of every Alpine valley in Central Europe below the
+snow line were once covered with earth and green with woods,
+but there are not many particular cases, in which we can, with
+certainty, or even with strong probability, affirm the contrary.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We cannot measure the share which human action has had
+in augmenting the intensity of causes of mountain degradation,
+but we know that the clearing of the woods has, in some cases,
+produced within two or three generations, effects as blasting
+as those generally ascribed to geological convulsions, 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 now desolate valleys in those mountains
+is to be ascribed to the same cause, and authentic descriptions
+of the irresistible force of the torrent show that, aided by frost
+and heat, it is adequate to level Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa
+themselves, unless new upheavals shall maintain their elevation.</p>
+
+<p>It has been contended that all rivers which take their rise
+in mountains originated in torrents. These, it is said, have
+lowered the summits by gradual erosion, and, with the material
+thus derived, have formed shoals in the sea which once
+beat against the cliffs; then, by successive deposits, gradually
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+at the present hour, depressing still lower the ridges of the
+Alps and the Apennines, raising still higher the plains of
+Lombardy and Provence, extending the coast still farther into
+the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, reducing the inclination
+of their own beds and the rapidity of their flow, and thus
+tending to become river-like in character.</p>
+
+<p>There are cases where torrents cease their ravages of themselves,
+in consequence of some change in the condition of the
+basin where they originate, or of the face of the mountain at a
+higher level, while the plain or the sea below remains in substantially
+the same state as before. If a torrent rises in a
+small valley containing no great amount of earth and of disintegrated
+or loose rock, it may, in the course of a certain period,
+wash out all the transportable material, and if the valley is
+then left with solid walls, it will cease to furnish debris 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
+requires long and careful study to detect the primitive form,
+masked as it is by groves of trees, by cultivated fields, and
+often by houses, but, when examined closely, and from different
+points of view, its characteristic figure manifestly appears,
+and its true history cannot be mistaken. Along the hillock
+flows a streamlet, issuing from the ravine, and quietly watering
+the fields. This was originally a torrent, and in the background
+may be discovered its mountain basin. Such <i>extinguished</i>
+torrents, if I may use the expression, are numerous."<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But for the intervention of man and domestic animals, these
+latter beneficent revolutions would occur more frequently, proceed
+more rapidly. The new scarped mountains, the hillocks
+of debris, the plains elevated by sand and gravel spread over
+them, the shores freshly 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, generations,
+but centuries;<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a> and man, who even now finds scarce breathing
+room on this vast globe, cannot retire from the Old World to
+some yet undiscovered continent, and wait for the slow action
+of such causes to replace, by a new creation, the Eden he has
+wasted.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Mountain Slides.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I have said that the mountainous regions of the Atlantic
+States of the American Union are exposed to similar ravages,
+and I may add that there is, in some cases, reason to apprehend
+from the same cause even more appalling calamities than
+those which 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+rock was produced by the denudation of the surface. It may
+have been occasioned by this cause, or by the construction of
+the road through the Notch, the excavations for which, perhaps,
+cut through the buttresses that supported the sloping
+strata above.</p>
+
+<p>Not to speak of the fall of earth when the roots which held
+it together, and the bed of leaves and mould which sheltered
+it both from disintegrating frost and from sudden drenching
+and dissolution by heavy showers, are gone, it is easy to see
+that, in a climate with severe winters, the removal of the forest,
+and, consequently, of the soil it had contributed to form,
+might cause the displacement and descent of great masses of
+rock. The woods, the vegetable mould, and the soil beneath,
+protect the rocks they cover from the direct action of heat and
+cold, and from the expansion and contraction which accompany
+them. Most rocks, while covered with earth, contain a
+considerable quantity of water.<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a> A fragment of rock pervaded
+with moisture cracks and splits, if thrown into a furnace,
+and sometimes with a loud detonation; 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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+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 strata
+from freezing in the hardest winters, and the moisture descends,
+in a liquid form, until it escapes in springs, or passes
+off by deep subterranean channels. But when the ridges are
+laid bare, the water of the autumnal rains fills the minutest
+pores and veins and fissures and lines of separation of the
+rocks, then suddenly freezes, and bursts asunder huge, and
+apparently solid blocks of adamantine stone.<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a> Where the
+strata are inclined at a considerable angle, the freezing of a
+thin film of water over a large interstratal area might occasion
+a slide that should cover miles with its ruins; and similar
+results might be produced by the simple hydrostatic pressure
+of a column of water, admitted by the removal of the covering
+of earth to flow into a crevice faster than it could escape
+through orifices below.</p>
+
+<p>Earth or rather mountain slides, compared to which the
+catastrophe that buried the Willey family in New Hampshire
+was but a pinch of dust, have often occurred in the Swiss
+Italian, and French Alps. The land slip, which overwhelmed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+and covered to the depth of seventy feet, the town of Plurs in
+the valley of the Maira, on the night of the 4th of September,
+1618, sparing not a soul of a 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 of the Cordevole,
+a tributary of the Piave, destroying in its fall three hamlets
+and sixty lives. The rubbish filled the valley for a distance
+of nearly two miles, and, by damming up the waters of the
+Cordevole, formed a lake about three miles long, and a hundred
+and fifty feet deep, which still subsists, though reduced
+to half its original length by the wearing down of its outlet.<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a></p>
+
+<p>On the 14th of February, 1855, the hill of Belmonte, a little
+below the parish of San Stefano, in Tuscany, slid into the valley
+of the Tiber, which consequently flooded the village to the
+depth of fifty feet, and was finally drained off by a tunnel.
+The mass of debris is stated to have been about 3,500 feet
+long, 1,000 wide, and not less than 600 high.<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a></p>
+
+<p>Such displacements of earth and rocky strata rise to the
+magnitude of geological convulsions, but they are of so rare
+occurrence in countries still covered by the primitive forest, so
+common where the mountains have 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&mdash;both of which a
+coating of vegetation would have prevented&mdash;that we are justified
+in ascribing them for the most part to the same cause as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+that to which the destructive effects of mountain torrents are
+chiefly due&mdash;the felling of the woods.</p>
+
+<p>In nearly every case of this sort the circumstances of which
+are known, the immediate cause of the slip has been, either an
+earthquake, the imbibition of water in large quantities by bare
+earth, or its introduction between or beneath solid strata. If
+water insinuates 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 afforded by inequalities of face and
+by friction; if it finds its way beneath hard earth or rock
+reposing on clay or other bedding of similar properties, it converts
+the supporting layer into a semi-fluid mud, which opposes
+no obstacle to the sliding of the strata above.</p>
+
+<p>The upper part of the mountain which buried Goldau was
+composed of a hard but brittle conglomerate, called <i>nagelflue</i>,
+resting on an unctuous clay, and inclining rapidly toward the
+village. Much earth remained upon the rock, in irregular
+masses, but the woods had been felled, and the water had free
+access to the surface, and to the crevices which sun and frost
+had already produced in the rock, and of course, to the slimy
+stratum 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 into a viscous
+paste. The mass that fell measured between two and a half
+and three miles in length by one thousand feet in width, and
+its average thickness is thought to have been about a hundred
+feet. The highest portion of the mountain was more than
+three thousand feet above the village, and the momentum
+acquired by the rocks and earth in their descent carried huge
+blocks of stone far up the opposite slope of the Rigi.</p>
+
+<p>The Piz, which fell into the Cordevole, rested on a steeply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+inclined stratum of limestone, with a thin layer of calcareous
+marl intervening, which, by long exposure to frost and the
+infiltration of water, had lost its original consistence, and
+become a loose and slippery mass instead of a cohesive and
+tenacious bed.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Protection against fall of Rocks and Avalanches by Trees.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Forests often subserve a valuable purpose in preventing
+the fall of rocks, by mere mechanical resistance. Trees, as
+well as herbaceous vegetation, grow in the Alps upon declivities
+of surprising steepness of inclination, and the traveller sees
+both luxuriant grass and flourishing woods on slopes at which
+the soil, in the 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 has stopped its progress just as it was
+beginning to slide down to a lower level. When a forest in
+such a position is cut, these blocks lose their support, and a
+single wet season is enough not only to bare the face of a considerable
+extent of rock, but to cover with earth and stone
+many acres of fertile soil below.<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a></p>
+
+<p>In Switzerland and other snowy and mountainous countries,
+forests render a most important service by preventing
+the formation and fall of destructive avalanches, and in many
+parts of the Alps exposed to this catastrophe, the woods are
+protected, though too often ineffectually, by law. No forest,
+indeed, could arrest a large avalanche once in motion, but the
+mechanical resistance afforded by the trees prevents their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+formation, both by obstructing the wind, which gives to the
+dry snow of the <i>Staub-Lawine</i>, or dust avalanche, its first
+impulse, and by checking the disposition of moist snow to
+gather itself into what is called the <i>Rutsch-Lawine</i>, 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.<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a> The path once opened down the flanks
+of the mountain, the evil is almost beyond remedy. The snow
+sometimes carries off the earth from the face of the rock, or, if
+the soil is left, fresh slides every winter destroy the young
+plantations, and the restoration of the wood becomes impossible.
+The track widens with every new avalanche. Dwellings
+and their occupants are buried in the snow, or swept
+away by the rushing mass, or by the furious blasts it occasions
+through the displacement of the air; roads and bridges are
+destroyed; rivers blocked up, which swell till they overflow
+the valley above, and then, bursting their snowy barrier, flood
+the fields below with all the horrors of a winter inundation.<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Principal Causes of the Destruction of the Forest.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The needs of agriculture are the most familiar cause of the
+destruction of the forest in new countries; for not only does
+an increasing population demand additional acres to grow the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+vegetables which feed it and its domestic animals, but the slovenly
+husbandry of the border settler soon exhausts the luxuriance
+of his first fields, and compels him to remove his
+household gods to a fresher 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 fairest ornaments.
+The value of timber increases with its dimensions in
+almost geometrical proportion, and the tallest, most vigorous,
+and most symmetrical trees fall the first sacrifice. This is a
+fortunate circumstance for the remainder of the wood; for the
+impatient lumberman contents himself with felling a few of
+the best trees, and then hurries on to take his tithe of still
+virgin groves.</p>
+
+<p>The unparalleled facilities for internal navigation, afforded
+by the numerous rivers of the present and former British colonial
+possessions in North America, have proved very fatal to
+the forests of that continent. Quebec has become a centre for
+a lumber trade, which, in the bulk of its material, and, consequently,
+in the tonnage required for its transportation, rivals
+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.<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> Ships, of burden formerly undreamed of, have
+been built to convey the timber to the markets of Europe, and
+during the summer months the St. Lawrence is almost as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+crowded with vessels as the Thames.<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> Of late, Chicago, in
+Illinois, has been one of the greatest lumber as well as grain
+depots of the United States, and it receives and distributes
+contributions from all the forests in the States washed by Lake
+Michigan, as well as from some more distant points.</p>
+
+<p>The operations of the lumberman involve other dangers to
+the woods besides the loss of the trees felled by him. The
+narrow clearings around his <i>shanties</i><a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a> form openings which let
+in the wind, and thus sometimes occasion the overthrow of
+thousands of trees, the fall of which dams up small streams,
+and creates bogs by the spreading of the waters, while the
+decaying trunks facilitate the multiplication 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, indiscriminately, every age and every species of tree.<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+While, then, without much injury to the younger growths, the
+native forest will bear several "cuttings over" in a generation&mdash;for
+the increasing value of lumber brings into use, every
+four or five years, a quality of timber which had been before
+rejected as unmarketable&mdash;a fire may render the declivity of a
+mountain unproductive for a century.<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>American Forest Trees.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The remaining forests of the Northern States and of Canada
+no longer boast the mighty pines which almost rivalled the
+gigantic Sequoia of California; and the growth of the larger
+forest trees is so slow, after they have attained to a certain
+size, that if every pine and oak 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.<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a>
+Dr. Williams, who wrote about sixty years ago, states
+the following as the dimensions of "such trees as are esteemed
+large ones of their kind in that part of America" [Vermont],
+qualifying his account with the remark that his measurements
+"do not denote the greatest which nature has produced of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+their particular species, but the greatest which are to be found
+in most of our towns."</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><th></th><th colspan='4'>Diameter</th><th>Height.</th></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Pine,</td><td align='center'>6</td><td align='center'>feet,</td><td align='center'></td><td align='center'></td><td align='center'>247 feet.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Maple,</td><td align='center'>5</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='center'>9</td><td align='center'>inches,</td><td class="bl"></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Buttonwood,</td><td align='center'>5</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='center'>6</td><td align='center'>"</td><td class="bl"></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Elm,</td><td align='center'>5</td><td align='center'>"</td><td></td><td></td><td class="bl"></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Hemlock,</td><td align='center'>4</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='center'>9</td><td align='center'>"</td><td class="bl"> &mdash; From 100 to 200 feet.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Oak,</td><td align='center'>4</td><td align='center'>"</td><td></td><td></td><td class="bl"></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Basswood,</td><td align='center'>4</td><td align='center'>"</td><td></td><td></td><td class="bl"></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ash,</td><td align='center'>4</td><td align='center'>"</td><td></td><td></td><td class="bl"></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Birch,</td><td align='center'>4</td><td align='center'>"</td><td></td><td></td><td class="bl"></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>He adds a note saying that a white pine was cut in Dunstable,
+New Hampshire, in the year 1736, the diameter of
+which was seven feet and eight inches. Dr. Dwight says that
+a fallen pine in Connecticut was found to measure two hundred
+and forty-seven feet in height, and adds: "A few years
+since, such trees were in great numbers 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: "Fifty
+years ago, several trees growing on rather dry land in Blandford,
+Massachusetts, measured, after they were felled, two
+hundred and twenty-three feet. All these trees are surpassed
+by a pine felled at Hanover, New Hampshire, about a hundred
+years ago, and described as measuring two hundred and seventy-four
+feet.<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a></p>
+
+<p>These descriptions, it will be noticed, apply to trees cut
+from sixty to one hundred years since. Persons, whom observation
+has rendered familiar with the present character of
+the American forest, will be struck with the smallness of the
+diameter which Dr. Williams and Dr. Dwight ascribe to trees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+of such extraordinary height. Individuals of the several species
+mentioned in Dr. Williams's table, are now hardly to be
+found in the same climate, exceeding one half or at most two
+thirds of the height which he assigns to them; but, except in
+the case of the oak and 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 caused the destruction of
+all the best&mdash;that is, the tallest and straightest&mdash;specimens of
+both; the other, that the thinning of the woods by the axe of
+the lumberman has allowed the access of light and heat and
+air to trees of humbler worth and lower stature, which have
+survived their more towering brethren. These, consequently,
+have been able to expand their crowns and swell their stems
+to a degree not possible so long as they were overshadowed
+and stifled by the lordly oak and pine. While, therefore, the
+New England forester must search long before he finds a pine</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">fit to be the mast</span><br />
+Of some great ammiral,<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="noidt">beeches and elms and birches, as sturdy as the mightiest of
+their progenitors, are still no rarity.<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another evil, sometimes of serious magnitude, which attends
+the operations of the lumberman, is the injury to the
+banks of rivers from the practice of floating. I do not here
+allude to rafts, which, being under the control of those who
+navigate them, may be so guided as to avoid damage to the
+shore, but to masts, logs, and other pieces of timber singly
+intrusted to the streams, to be conveyed by their currents to
+sawmill ponds, or to convenient places for collecting them
+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 opened, or the dam is blown
+up or otherwise suddenly broken, and the whole mass of lumber
+above it is hurried down with the rolling flood. Both of
+these modes of proceeding expose the banks of the rivers
+employed as channels of flotation to abrasion,<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> and in some of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+the American States it has been found necessary to protect, by
+special legislation, the lands through which they flow from the
+serious injury sometimes received through the practices I have
+described.<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Special Causes of the Destruction of European Woods.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The causes of forest waste thus far enumerated are more
+or less common to both continents; but in Europe extensive
+woods have, at different periods, been deliberately destroyed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+by fire or the axe, because they afforded a retreat to enemies,
+robbers, and outlaws, and this practice is said to have been
+resorted to in the Mediterranean provinces of France as recently
+as the time of Napoleon I.<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a> The severe and even sanguinary
+legislation, by which some of the governments of
+medi&aelig;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. The laws of almost every European
+state more or less adequately secure the permanence of
+the forest; and I believe Spain is the only European land
+which has not made some public provision for the protection
+and restoration of the woods&mdash;the only country whose people
+systematically war upon the garden of God.<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Royal Forests and Game Laws.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The French authors I have quoted, as well as many other
+writers of the same nation, refer to the French Revolution as
+having given a new impulse to destructive causes which were
+already threatening the total extermination of the woods.<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a>
+The general crusade against the forests, which accompanied
+that important event, is to be ascribed, in a considerable degree,
+to political resentments. The forest codes of the medi&aelig;val
+kings, and the local "coutumes" of feudalism contained
+many severe and even inhuman provisions, 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,<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a> 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 <i>Histoire des Ducs
+de Normandie et des Rois d'Angleterre</i>, p. 67, "was hunting
+one day in a new forest, which he had caused to be made out
+of eighteen parishes that he had destroyed, when, by mis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>chance,
+he was killed by an arrow wherewith Tyreus de Rois
+[Sir Walter Tyrell] thought to slay a beast, but missed the
+beast, and slew the king, who was beyond it. And in this
+very same forest, his brother Richard ran so hard against a
+tree that he died of it. And men commonly said that these
+things were because they had so laid waste and taken the said
+parishes."</p>
+
+<p>These barbarous acts, as Bonnem&egrave;re observes,<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a> were simply
+the transfer of the customs of the French kings, of their vassals,
+and even of inferior gentlemen, to conquered England. "The
+death of a hare," says our author, "was a hanging matter, the
+murder of a plover a capital crime. Death was inflicted on
+those who spread nets for pigeons; wretches who had drawn a
+bow upon a stag were to be tied to the animal alive; and
+among the seigniors it was a standing excuse for having killed
+game on forbidden ground, that they aimed at a serf." The
+feudal lords enforced these codes with unrelenting rigor, and
+not unfrequently took the law into their own hands. In the
+time of Louis IX, according to William of Nangis, "three
+noble children, born in Flanders, who were sojourning at the
+abbey of St. Nicholas in 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."<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+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 criminal than
+themselves, the king was much inclined to inflict the punishment
+of death on the proud baron. "If he believed," said he,
+"that our Lord would be as well content with hanging as with
+pardoning, he would hang Sir Enguerrand in spite of all his
+barons;" but noble and clerical interests unfortunately prevailed.
+The king was persuaded to inflict a milder retribution,
+and the murderer was condemned to pay ten thousand
+livres in coin, and to "build for the souls of the three children
+two chapels wherein mass should be said every day."<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a> The
+hope of shortening the purgatorial term of the young persons,
+by the religious rites to be celebrated in the chapels, was
+doubtless the consideration which operated most powerfully
+on the mind of the king; and Europe lost a great example for
+the sake of a mass.</p>
+
+<p>The desolation and depopulation, resulting from the exten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>sion
+of the forest and the enforcement of the game laws,
+induced several of the French kings to consent to some relaxation
+of the severity of these latter. Francis I, however, revived
+their barbarous provisions, and, according to Bonnem&egrave;re,
+even so good a monarch as Henry IV re&euml;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, "was imposed
+on every one shooting at pigeons, which, at that time,
+swooped down by thousands upon the new-sown fields and
+devoured the seed. But let us count even this a progress, for
+we have seen that the murder of a pigeon had been a capital
+crime."<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a></p>
+
+<p>Not only were the slightest trespasses on the forest domain&mdash;the
+cutting of an oxgoad, for instance&mdash;severely punished,
+but game animals were still sacred when they had wandered
+from their native precincts and were ravaging the fields of the
+peasantry. A herd of deer or of wild boars often consumed
+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," says Paul Louis Courier,
+speaking in the name of the peasants of Chambord, in the
+"Simple Discours," "the game has made war upon us. Paris
+was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its environs,
+now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to
+support the gamekeepers."<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the popular mind, the forest was associated with all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+abuses of feudalism, and the evils the peasantry had suffered
+from the legislation which protected both it and the game it
+sheltered, blinded them to the still greater physical mischiefs
+which its destruction was to entail upon them. No longer
+protected by law, the crown forests and those of the great
+lords were attacked with relentless fury, unscrupulously plundered
+and wantonly laid waste, and even the rights of property
+in small private woods were no longer respected.<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a>
+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 plough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>land,
+its injurious effects upon climate, health, facility of
+internal communication, and the like. Thus resentful memory
+of the wrongs associated with the forest, popular ignorance,
+and the cupidity of speculators cunning enough to turn these
+circumstances to profitable account, combined to hasten the
+sacrifice of the remaining woods, and a waste was produced
+which hundreds of years and millions of treasure will hardly
+repair.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Small Forest Plants, and Vitality of Seed.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Another function of the woods to which I have barely
+alluded deserves a fuller notice than can be bestowed upon it
+in a treatise the scope of which is purely economical. The
+forest is the native habitat of a large number of humbler
+plants, to the growth and perpetuation of which its shade, its
+humidity, and its vegetable mould appear to be indispensable
+necessities.<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a> We cannot positively say that the felling of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+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 not naturally propagating
+themselves in the open ground, may perhaps germinate
+and grow under artificial stimulation and protection, and
+finally become hardy enough to maintain an independent
+existence in very different circumstances from those which at
+present seem essential to their life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Besides this, although the accounts of the growth of seeds,
+which have lain for ages in the ashy dryness of Egyptian catacombs,
+are to be received with great caution, or, more probably,
+to be rejected altogether, yet their vitality seems almost
+imperishable while they remain in the situations in which
+nature deposits them. When a forest 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, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other
+trees belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession,
+restore again the original wood. In these cases, the
+seeds of the new crop may often have been brought by the
+wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other causes; but, in
+many instances, this explanation is not probable.</p>
+
+<p>When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United
+States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with
+a crop of fire weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom seen
+growing under other circumstances, and often not to be found
+for a distance 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 buried, or a special pabulum furnished only by
+the combustion of the vegetable remains that cover the ground
+in the woods. Earth brought up from wells or other excavations
+soon produces a harvest of plants often very unlike those
+of the local flora.</p>
+
+<p>Moritz Wagner, as quoted by Wittwer,<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a> remarks in his
+description of Mount Ararat: "A singular phenomenon to
+which my guide drew my attention is the appearance of several
+plants on the earth-heaps left by the last catastrophe [an
+earthquake], which grow nowhere else on the mountain, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+had never been observed in this region before. The seeds of
+these plants were probably 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 sylvan plants, too deeply buried
+by successive layers of forest foliage and the mould resulting
+from its decomposition to be reached by the plough when the
+trees are gone and the ground brought under cultivation, may,
+if a wiser posterity replants the wood which sheltered their
+parent stems, germinate and grow, after lying for generations
+in a state of suspended animation.</p>
+
+<p>Darwin says: "In Staffordshire, on the estate of a relation,
+where I had ample means of investigation, there was a large
+and extremely barren heath, which had never been touched by
+the hand of man, but several hundred acres of exactly the
+same nature had been enclosed twenty-five years previously
+and planted with Scotch fir. The change in the native vegetation
+of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable&mdash;more
+than is generally seen in passing from one quite different
+soil to another; not only the proportional numbers of the
+heath plants were wholly changed, but <i>twelve species</i> of plants
+(not counting grasses and sedges) flourished in the plantation
+which could not be found on the heath."<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a> 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 seeds had been deposited when an ancient forest protected
+the growth of the plants which bore them, and that
+they sprang up to new life when a return of favorable conditions
+awaked them from a sleep of centuries. Darwin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+indeed says that the heath "had never been touched by the
+hand of man." Perhaps not, after it became a heath; but
+what evidence is there to control the general presumption
+that this heath was preceded by a forest, in whose shade the
+vegetables which dropped the seeds in question might have
+grown?<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a></p>
+
+<p>Although, therefore, the destruction of a wood and the
+reclaiming of the soil to agricultural uses suppose the death
+of its smaller dependent flora, these revolutions do not exclude
+the possibility of its resurrection. In a practical view of the
+subject, however, we must admit that when the woodman fells
+a tree he sacrifices the colony of humbler growths which had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+vegetated under its protection. Some wood plants are known
+to possess valuable medicinal properties, and experiment may
+show that the number of these is greater than we now suppose.
+Few of them, however, have any other economical value than
+that of furnishing a slender pasturage to cattle allowed to
+roam in the woods; and even this small advantage is far
+more than compensated by the mischief 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 <i>materia
+medica</i>, 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 than the brandy cask whose staves are split out from its
+heart wood; a bed of anemones, hepaticas, or wood violets
+than the leeks and onions which he may grow on the soil they
+have enriched and in the air they made fragrant&mdash;he who has
+enjoyed that special training of the heart and intellect which
+can be acquired only in the unviolated sanctuaries of nature,
+"where man is distant, but God is near"&mdash;will not rashly
+assert his right to extirpate a tribe of harmless vegetables,
+barely because their products neither tickle his palate nor fill
+his pocket; and his regret at the dwindling area of the forest
+solitude will be augmented by the reflection that the nurselings
+of the woodland perish with the pines, the oaks, and the
+beeches that sheltered them.<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Although, as I have said, birds do not frequent the deeper
+recesses of the wood,<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id="FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> yet a very large proportion of them
+build their nests in trees, and find in their foliage and
+branches a secure retreat from the inclemencies of the seasons
+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
+wood legions of their winged enemies, which swoop down
+upon the fields to save man's harvests by devouring the destroying
+worm, and surprising the lagging beetle in his tardy
+retreat to the dark cover where he lurks through the hours of
+daylight.</p>
+
+<p>The insects most injurious to rural industry do not multiply
+in or near the woods. The locust, which ravages the East
+with its voracious armies, is bred in vast open plains which
+admit the full heat of the sun to hasten the hatching of the
+eggs, gather no moisture to destroy them, and harbor no bird
+to feed upon the larv&aelig;.<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a> It is only since the felling of the
+forests of Asia Minor and Cyrene that the locust has become
+so fearfully destructive in those countries; and the grasshopper,
+which now threatens to be almost as great a pest to the
+agriculture of some North American soils, breeds in seriously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+injurious numbers only where a wide extent of surface is bare
+of woods.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Utility of the Forest.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In most parts of Europe, the woods are already so nearly
+extirpated that the mere protection of those which now exist
+is by no means an adequate remedy for the evils resulting
+from the want of them; and besides, as I have already 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,<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a> and France has now
+set herself energetically at work to restore the woods in the
+southern provinces, and thereby to prevent the utter depopulation
+and waste with which that once fertile soil and delicious
+climate are threatened.</p>
+
+<p>The objects of the restoration of the forest are as multifarious
+as the motives that have led to its destruction, and as the
+evils which that destruction has occasioned. It is hoped that
+the planting of the mountains will diminish the frequency and
+violence of 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, prevent the spread of miasmatic effluvia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+and, finally, furnish an inexhaustible and self-renewing supply
+of a material indispensable to so many purposes of domestic
+comfort, to the successful exercise of every art of peace, every
+destructive energy of war.<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id="FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a></p>
+
+<p>But our enumeration of the uses of trees is not yet complete.
+Besides the influence of the forest, in mountain ranges,
+as a means of preventing the scooping out of ravines and the
+accumulations of water 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 considered in the chapter on
+the waters; and another very important use of trees, that of
+fixing movable sand-dunes, and reclaiming them to profitable
+cultivation, will be pointed out in the chapter on the sands.</p>
+
+<p>The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures and the
+mechanical arts, of military armaments, and especially of the
+commercial fleets and navies of Christendom within the present
+century, has greatly augmented the demand for wood,<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+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 her only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+remaining trees fit for such uses.<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a> The walnut trees alone
+felled in Europe within two years to furnish the armies of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+America with gunstocks, would form a forest of no inconsiderable
+extent.<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Forests of Europe.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Mirabeau estimated the forests of France in 1750 at seventeen
+millions of hectares [42,000,000 acres]; in 1860 they
+were reduced to eight millions [19,769,000 acres]. This
+would be at the rate of 82,000 hectares [202,600 acres] per
+year. Troy, from whose valuable pamphlet, <i>&Eacute;tude sur le
+Reboisement des Montagnes</i>, I take these statistical details,
+supposes that Mirabeau's statement may have been an extravagant
+one, but it still remains certain that the waste has been
+enormous; for it is known that, in some departments, that of
+Ari&egrave;ge, for instance, clearing has gone on during the last half
+century at the rate of three thousand acres a year,<a name="FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a> and in all
+parts of the empire trees have been felled faster than they
+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.<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+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 any agricultural
+use. Hence it is evident that the proportion of forest
+in 1750, taking even Mirabeau's large estimate, was not very
+much too great for permanent maintenance, though doubtless
+the distribution was so unequal that it would have been sound
+policy to fell the woods and clear land in some provinces,
+while large forests should have been planted in others.<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a> Du<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>ring
+the period in question, France neither exported manufactured
+wood or rough timber, nor derived important collateral
+advantages of any sort from the destruction of her forests.
+She is consequently impoverished and crippled to the extent
+of the difference between what she actually possesses of
+wooded surface and what she ought to have retained.</p>
+
+<p>Italy and Spain are bared of trees in a greater degree than
+France, and even Russia, which we habitually consider as substantially
+a forest country, is beginning to suffer seriously for
+want of wood. Jourdier, as quoted by Clav&eacute;, observes: "Instead
+of a vast territory with immense forests, which we expect
+to meet, one sees only scattered groves thinned by the wind or
+by the axe of the <i>moujik</i>, 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 man
+or of fire, those two great enemies of Muscovite sylviculture.
+This is so true, that clear-sighted men already foresee a crisis
+which will become terrible, unless the discovery of great deposits
+of some new combustible, as pit coal or anthracite, shall
+diminish its evils."<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id="FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Germany, from character of surface and climate, and from
+the attention which has long been paid in all the German
+States to sylviculture, is, taken as a whole, in a far better condition
+in this respect than its more southern neighbors; but in
+the Alpine 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 parts of the territory of Bavaria, where, not long since,
+wood abounded, I may mention the fact that the water of salt
+springs is, in some instances, conveyed to the distance of sixty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+miles, in iron pipes, to reach a supply of fuel for boiling it
+down.<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Forests of the United States and Canada.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The vast forests of the United States and Canada cannot
+long resist the improvident habits of the backwoodsman and
+the increased demand for lumber. According to the census
+of the former country for 1860, which gives returns of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+"sawed and planed lumber" alone, timber for framing and
+for a vast variety of mechanical purposes being omitted altogether,
+the value of the former material prepared for market
+in the United States was, in 1850, $58,521,976; in 1860,
+$95,912,286. The quantity of unsawed lumber is not likely to
+have increased 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
+value. Perhaps this rise of prices may even be sufficient to
+make the entire difference between the value of "sawed and
+planed lumber" produced in the ten years in question by the
+six New England States (21 per cent.), and the six Middle
+States (15 per cent.); but the amount produced by the Western
+and by the Southern States had doubled, and that returned
+from the Pacific States and Territories had trebled in value in
+the same interval, so that there was certainly, in those States, a
+large increase in the actual quantity prepared for sale.</p>
+
+<p>I greatly doubt whether any one of the American States,
+except, perhaps, Oregon, has, at this moment, more woodland
+than it ought permanently to preserve, though, no doubt, a
+different distribution of the forests in all of them might be
+highly advantageous. It is a great misfortune to the American
+Union that the State Governments have so generally
+disposed of their original domain to private citizens. It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+true that public property is not sufficiently respected in the
+United States; and it is also true that, within the memory of
+almost every man of mature age, timber was of so little value
+in that country, that the owners of private woodlands submitted,
+almost without complaint, to what would be regarded
+elsewhere as very aggravated trespasses upon them.<a name="FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a> Under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+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, not to the action
+of their local or general legislatures. Even in France, government
+has moved with too slow and hesitating a pace, and preventive
+measures do not yet compensate destructive causes.
+The judicious remarks of Troy on this point may well be
+applied to other countries than France, other measures of
+public policy than the preservation of the woods. "To move
+softly," says he, "is to commit the most dangerous, the most
+unpardonable of imprudences; it diminishes the prestige of
+authority; it furnishes a triumph to the sneerer and the incredulous;
+it strengthens opposition and encourages resistance;
+it ruins the administration in the opinion of the people,
+weakens its power and depresses its courage."<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id="FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Economy of the Forest.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The legislation of European states upon sylviculture, and
+the practice of that art, divide themselves into two great
+branches&mdash;the preservation of existing forests, and the creation
+of new. From the long operation of causes already set forth,
+what is understood in America and other new countries by
+the "primitive forest," no longer exists in the territories which
+were the seats 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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+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 man and by domestic animals, and they always
+present more or less of an artificial character and arrangement.
+Both they and planted forests, which, though certainly not
+few, are of recent date in Europe, demand, as well for protection
+as for promotion of growth, a treatment different in some
+respects from that which would be suited to the character and
+wants of the virgin wood.</p>
+
+<p>On this latter branch of the subject, experience and observation
+have not yet collected a sufficient stock of facts to serve
+for the construction of a complete system of sylviculture; but
+the management of the forest as it exists in France&mdash;the different
+zones and climates of which country present many points
+of analogy with those of the United States and some of the
+British colonies&mdash;has been carefully studied, and several manuals
+of practice have been prepared for the foresters of that
+empire. I believe the best of these is the <i>Cours &Eacute;l&eacute;mentaire
+de Culture des Bois cr&eacute;&eacute; &agrave; l'&Eacute;cole Foresti&egrave;re de Nancy, par
+M. Lorentz, compl&eacute;t&eacute;, et publi&eacute; par A. Parade</i>, with a supplement
+under the title of <i>Cours d'Am&eacute;nagement des For&ecirc;ts, par
+Henri Nanquette</i>. The <i>&Eacute;tudes sur l'&Eacute;conomie Foresti&egrave;re, par
+Jules Clav&eacute;</i>, 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 sufficiently specific in its details to serve that
+purpose. Notwithstanding the difference of conditions between
+the aboriginal and the trained forest, the judicious
+observer who aims at the preservation of the former will reap
+much instruction from the treatises I have cited, and I believe
+he will be convinced that the sooner a natural wood is brought
+into the state of an artificially regulated one, the better it is
+for all the multiplied interests which depend on the wise administration
+of this branch of public economy.<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One consideration bearing on this subject has received less
+attention than it merits, because most persons interested in
+such questions have not opportunities for the comparison I
+refer to. I mean the great general superiority of cultivated
+timber to that of strictly spontaneous growth. I say <i>general</i>
+superiority, because there are exceptions to the rule. The
+white pine, <i>Pinus strobus</i>, for instance, and other trees 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 wholly free from knots, is regular
+in annular structure, soft and uniform in texture, and,
+consequently, superior to almost all other timber for joinery.
+If, while a large pine is spared, the broad-leaved or other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+smaller trees around it are felled, the swaying of the tree from
+the action of the wind mechanically produces separations
+between the layers of annual growth, and greatly diminishes
+the value of the timber.</p>
+
+<p>The same defect is often observed in pines which, from
+some accident of growth, have much overtopped their fellows
+in the virgin forest. The white pine, growing in the fields, or
+in open glades in the woods, is totally different from the true
+forest tree, both in general aspect and in quality of wood. Its
+stem is much shorter, its top less tapering, its foliage denser
+and more inclined to gather into tufts, its branches more
+numerous and of larger diameter, its wood shows 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 with trees grown in the
+open grounds from known white-pine seedlings, I believe their
+peculiar character is due to unfavorable circumstances in their
+early growth. The pine, then, is an exception to the general
+rule as to the inferiority of the forest to the open-ground tree.
+The pasture oak and pasture beech, on the contrary, are well
+known to produce far better timber than those grown in the
+woods, and there are few trees to which the remark is not
+equally applicable.<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another advantage of the artificially regulated forest is,
+that it admits of such grading of the ground as to favor the
+retention or discharge of water at will, while the facilities it
+affords for selecting and duly proportioning, as well as properly
+spacing, the trees which compose it, are too obvious to
+require to be more than hinted at. In conducting these operations,
+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 Clav&eacute;, "is not, as
+is often supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each
+other in long perspective, without bond of union, and capable
+of isolation from each other; it is, on the contrary, a whole,
+the different parts of which are interdependent upon each
+other, and it constitutes, so to speak, a true individuality.
+Every forest has a special character, determined by the form
+of the surface it grows upon, the kinds of trees that compose
+it, and the manner in which they are grouped."<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>European and American Trees compared.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The woods of North America are strikingly distinguished
+from those of Europe by the vastly greater variety of species
+they contain. According to Clav&eacute;, there are in "France and
+in most parts of Europe" only about twenty forest trees, five
+or six of which are spike-leaved and resinous, the remainder
+broad-leaved."<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a> Our author, however, doubtless means genera,
+though he uses the word <i>esp&egrave;ces</i>. Rossm&auml;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&mdash;the
+locust, <i>Robinia pseudacacia</i>, and the Weymouth or white
+pine, <i>Pinus strobus</i>&mdash;and the cedar of Lebanon from Asia,
+though it is indigenous in Algeria also. We may then safely
+say that Europe does not possess above forty or fifty trees of
+such economical value as to be worth the special care of the
+forester, while the oak alone numbers not less than thirty
+species in the United States,<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id="FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a> and some other North American
+genera are almost equally diversified.<a name="FNanchor_287_287" id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+<p>Few European trees, except those bearing edible fruit, have
+been naturalized in the United States, while the American
+forest flora has made large contributions to that of Europe. It
+is a very poor taste which has led to the substitution of the
+less picturesque European for the graceful and majestic American
+elm, in some public grounds in the United States. On
+the other hand, the European mountain ash&mdash;which in beauty
+and healthfulness of growth is superior to our own&mdash;the horse
+chestnut, and the abele, or silver poplar, are valuable additions
+to the ornamental trees of North America. The Swiss arve
+or zirbelkiefer, <i>Pinus cembra</i>, which yields a well-flavored
+edible seed and furnishes excellent wood for carving, the umbrella
+pine which also bears a seed agreeable to the taste, and
+which, 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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+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
+in strength and elasticity of fibre, is valuable for its timber and
+its oil.<a name="FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> The maritime pine, which has proved of such immense
+use in fixing drifting sands in France, may perhaps be
+better adapted to this purpose than any of the pines of the
+New World, and it is of great importance for its turpentine,
+resin, and tar. The &eacute;pic&eacute;a, or common fir, <i>Abies picea</i>, <i>Abies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+excelsa</i>, <i>Picea excelsa</i>, abundant in the mountains of France
+and the contiguous country, is known for its product, Burgundy
+pitch, and, as it flourishes in a greater variety of soil
+and climate than almost any other spike-leaved tree, it might
+be well worth transplantation.<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id="FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a> The cork oak has been introduced
+into the United States, I believe, and would undoubtedly
+thrive in the Southern section of the Union.<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id="FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the walnut, the chestnut, the cork oak, the mulberry,
+the olive, the orange, the lemon, the fig, and the multitude of
+other trees which, by their fruit, or by other products, yield
+an annual revenue, nature has provided Southern Europe with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+a partial compensation for the loss of the native forest. It is
+true that these trees, planted as most of them are at such distances
+as to admit of cultivation, or of the growth of grass
+among them, are but an 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 wanting, certainly,
+north of the Alps. The apple, the pear, and the prune
+are important in the economy both of man and of nature, but
+they are far less numerous in Switzerland and Northern
+France than are the trees I have mentioned in Southern
+Europe, both because they are in general less remunerative,
+and because the climate, in higher latitudes, does not permit
+the free introduction of shade trees into grounds occupied for
+agricultural purposes.<a name="FNanchor_291_291" id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a></p>
+
+<p>The multitude of species, intermixed as they are in their
+spontaneous growth, gives the American forest landscape a
+variety of aspect not often seen in the woods of Europe, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+the gorgeous tints, which nature repeats from the dying dolphin
+to paint the falling leaf of the American maples, oaks,
+and ash trees, clothe the hillsides 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 most American
+travellers in Europe are willing to allow; and, besides, the
+small deciduous shrubs which often carpet the forest glades of
+these mountains are dyed with a ruddy and orange glow,
+which, in the distant landscape, is no mean substitute for the
+scarlet and crimson and gold and amber of the transatlantic
+woodland.</p>
+
+<p>No American evergreen known to me resembles the umbrella
+pine sufficiently to be a fair object of comparison with
+it.<a name="FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292"></a><a href="#Footnote_292_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a> A cedar, very common above the Highlands on the
+Hudson, is extremely like the cypress, straight, slender, with
+erect, compressed ramification, and feathered to the ground,
+but its foliage is neither so dark nor so dense, the tree does not
+attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor has it the lithe
+flexibility 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&mdash;if I may apply such
+an expression to anything but human affectation of movement&mdash;the
+most awkward of trees. The poplar trembles before the
+blast, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its foliage, gropes
+around with its feeble branches, and hisses as in impotent
+passion. The cypress gathers its limbs still more closely to its
+stem, bows a gracious salute rather than an humble obeisance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+to the tempest, bends to the wind with an elasticity that
+assures you of its prompt return to its regal attitude, and sends
+from its thick leaflets a murmur like the roar of the far-off
+ocean.</p>
+
+<p>The cypress and the umbrella pine are not merely conventional
+types of the Italian landscape. They are essential elements
+in a field of rural beauty which can be seen in perfection
+only in the basin of the Mediterranean, and they are as
+characteristic of this class of scenery as the date palm is of the
+oases of the desert. There is, however, this difference: a single
+cypress or pine is often enough to shed beauty over a wide
+area; the palm is a social tree, and its beauty is not so much
+that of the individual as of the group. The frequency of the
+cypress and the pine&mdash;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&mdash;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 wheel carriages
+and high roads can acquire any notion of the face of the
+earth, and form any proper geographical image of that country.
+At other seasons, not high walls only, but equally impervious
+hedges, and now, unhappily, acacias thickly planted
+along the railway routes, confine the view so completely, that
+the arch of a tunnel, or a night cap over the traveller's eyes,
+is scarcely a more effectual obstacle to the gratification of his
+curiosity.<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293"></a><a href="#Footnote_293_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Sylviculture.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The art, or, as the Continental foresters call it, the science
+of sylviculture has been so little pursued in England and
+America, that its nomenclature has not been introduced into
+the English vocabulary, and I shall not be able to describe 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 like the present,
+but the almost total want of conveniently accessible means of
+information on the subject, in English-speaking countries, will
+justify me in presenting it with somewhat more of detail than
+would otherwise be pertinent.</p>
+
+<p>The two best known methods are those distinguished as
+the <i>taillis</i>, copse or coppice treatment,<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id="FNanchor_294_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a> and the <i>futaie</i>, for which
+I find no English equivalent, but which may not inappropriately
+be called the <i>full-growth</i> system. A <i>taillis</i>, copse, or
+coppice, is a wood composed of shoots from the roots of trees
+previously cut for fuel and timber. The shoots are thinned
+out from time to time, and finally cut, either after a fixed
+number of years, or after the young trees have attained to certain
+dimensions, their roots being then left to send out a new
+progeny as before. This is the cheapest method of management,
+and therefore the best wherever the price of labor and
+of capital bears a high proportion to that of 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+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,<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295"></a><a href="#Footnote_295_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a> and the mixed character of the forest&mdash;in many
+respects an important advantage, if not an indispensable condition
+of growth&mdash;is lost;<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id="FNanchor_296_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a> and besides this, large wood of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+any species cannot be grown in this method, because trees
+which shoot from decaying stumps and their dying roots,
+become hollow or otherwise unsound before they acquire their
+full dimensions. A more fatal objection still, is, that the roots
+of trees will not bear more than two or three, or at most four
+cuttings of their shoots before their vitality is exhausted, and
+the wood can then be restored only by replanting entirely.
+The period of cutting coppices varies in Europe from fifteen to
+forty years, according to soil, species, and rapidity of growth.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>futaie</i>, or full-growth system, the trees are allowed
+to stand as long as they continue in healthy and vigorous
+growth. This is a shorter period than would be at first supposed,
+when we consider the advanced age and great dimensions
+to which, under favorable circumstances, many forest
+trees attain in temperate climates. But, as every observing
+person familiar with the natural forest is aware, these are exceptional
+cases, just as are instances of great longevity or of
+gigantic stature among men. Able vegetable physiologists
+have maintained that the tree, like most reptiles, has no natural
+limit of life or of growth, and that the only reason why
+our oaks and our pines do not reach the age of twenty centuries
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+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 sequoia, it may not be
+able to carry it beyond one hundred and fifty in the oak. The
+limit may be different, too, in different trees of the same species,
+not from defective organization in those of inferior
+growth, but from more or less favorable conditions of soil,
+nourishment, and exposure. Whenever a tree attains to the
+limit beyond which its circulating fluids cannot rise, we may
+suppose that decay begins, and death follows, from the same
+causes which bring about the same results in animals of limited
+size&mdash;such, for example, as the interruption of functions
+essential to life, in consequence of the clogging up of ducts by
+matter assimilable in the stage of growth, but no longer so
+when increment has ceased.</p>
+
+<p>In the natural woods, we observe that, though, among the
+myriads of trees which grow upon a square mile, there are
+several vegetable giants, yet the great majority of them begin
+to decay long before they have attained their maximum of
+stature, and this seems to be still more emphatically true of
+the artificial forest. In France, according to Clav&eacute;, "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 woods
+[<i>bois blancs</i>], in wet soils, languish and die before reaching the
+fiftieth year."<a name="FNanchor_297_297" id="FNanchor_297_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a> These ages are certainly below the average of
+those of American forest trees, and are greatly exceeded in
+very numerous well-attested instances of isolated trees in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The former mode of treating the futaie, called the garden
+system, was to cut the trees individually as they arrived at
+maturity, but, in the best regulated forests, this practice has
+been abandoned for the German method, which embraces not
+only the securing of the largest immediate profit, but the re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>planting
+of the forest, and the care of the young growth. This
+is effected in the case of a forest, whether natural or artificial,
+which is to be subjected to regular management, by three
+operations. The first of these consists in felling about one
+third of the wood, in such way as to leave convenient spaces
+for the growth of young trees. The remaining two-thirds are
+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 mutually
+give to each other, the remainder of the original forest is felled,
+and the wood now consists wholly of young and vigorous trees.
+This result is obtained after about twenty years. At convenient
+periods afterward, the unhealthy stocks and those
+injured by wind or other accidents are removed, and in some
+instances the growth of the remainder is promoted by irrigation
+or by fertilizing applications.<a name="FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298"></a><a href="#Footnote_298_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a> When the forest is ap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>proaching
+to maturity, the original processes already described
+are repeated; and as, in different parts of an extensive forest,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+they would take place in different zones, it would afford indefinitely
+an annual crop of firewood and timber.</p>
+
+<p>The duties of the forester do not end here. It sometimes
+happens that the glades left by felling the older trees are not
+sufficiently seeded, or that the species, or <i>essences</i>, as the
+French oddly call them, are not duly proportioned in the new
+crop. In this case, seed must be artificially sown, or young
+trees planted in the vacancies.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most important rules in the administration of
+the forest is the absolute exclusion of domestic quadrupeds
+from every wood which is not destined to be cleared. No
+growth of young trees is possible where cattle are admitted to
+pasture at any season of the year, though they are undoubtedly
+most destructive while trees are in leaf.<a name="FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299"></a><a href="#Footnote_299_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is often necessary to take measures for the protection of
+young trees against the rabbit, the mole, and other rodent
+quadrupeds, and of older ones against the damage done by the
+larv&aelig; of insects hatched upon the surface or in the tissues of
+the bark, or even in the wood itself. The much greater liability
+of the artificial 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 regulated forest are abundant compensations
+for the loss thus occasioned, and the progress of entomological
+science will, perhaps, suggest new methods of preventing
+the ravages of insects. Thus far, however, the collection
+and destruction of the eggs, by simple but expensive means,
+has proved the only effectual remedy.<a name="FNanchor_300_300" id="FNanchor_300_300"></a><a href="#Footnote_300_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is common in Europe to permit the removal of the fallen
+leaves and fragments of bark and branches with which the
+forest soil is covered, and sometimes the cutting of the lower<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>
+twigs of evergreens. The leaves and twigs are principally
+used as litter for cattle, and finally as manure, the bark and
+wind-fallen branches as fuel. By long usage, sometimes by
+express grant, this privilege has become a vested right of the
+population in the neighborhood of many public, and even
+large private forests; but it is generally regarded as a serious
+evil. To remove the leaves and fallen twigs 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 ploughing. The carbonic acid given out
+by decaying leaves, when taken up by water, serves to dissolve
+the mineral constituents of the soil, and is particularly active
+in disintegrating feldspar and the clay derived from its decomposition.
+* * * The leaves belong to the soil. Without
+them it cannot preserve its fertility, and cannot furnish nutriment
+to the beech. The trees languish, produce seed incapable
+of germination, and the spontaneous self-sowing, which
+is an indispensable element in the best systems of sylviculture,
+fails altogether in the bared and impoverished soil."<a name="FNanchor_301_301" id="FNanchor_301_301"></a><a href="#Footnote_301_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Besides these evils, the removal of the leaves deprives the
+soil of that spongy character which gives it such immense
+value as a reservoir of moisture and a regulator of the flow of
+springs; and, finally, it exposes the surface roots to the drying
+influence of sun and wind, to accidental mechanical injury
+from the tread of animals or men, and, in cold climates, to the
+destructive effects of frost.</p>
+
+<p>The annual lopping and trimming of trees for fuel, so common
+in Europe, is fatal to the higher uses of the forest, but
+where small groves are made, or rows of trees planted, for no
+other purpose than to secure a supply of firewood, or to serve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>
+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 use an old English word,
+a doddered tree, is in general a melancholy object, yet it must
+be admitted that the aspect of some species&mdash;the American
+locust, <i>Robinia pseudacacia</i>, for instance&mdash;when young, is
+improved by this process.<a name="FNanchor_302_302" id="FNanchor_302_302"></a><a href="#Footnote_302_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the needs of agriculture as a principal
+cause of the destruction of the forest, and of domestic cattle as
+particularly injurious to the growth of young trees. But these
+animals affect the forest, indirectly, in a still more important
+way, because the extent of cleared ground required for agricultural
+use depends very much on the number and kinds of
+the cattle bred. We have seen, in a former chapter, that, in
+the United States, the domestic quadrupeds amount to more
+than a hundred millions, or three times the number of the
+human population of the Union. In many of the Western
+States, the swine subsist more or less on acorns, nuts, and
+other products of the woods, and the prairies, or natural meadows
+of the Mississippi valley, yield a large amount 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+consumed by man, and the sheep is reared rather for its fleece
+than for food. Besides this, the ground required to produce
+the grass and grain consumed in rearing and fattening a grazing
+quadruped, would yield a far larger amount of nutriment,
+if devoted to the growing of breadstuffs, than is furnished by
+his flesh; and, upon the whole, whatever advantages may be
+reaped from the breeding of domestic cattle, it is plain that
+the cleared land devoted to their sustenance in the originally
+wooded part of the United States, after deducting a quantity
+sufficient to produce an amount of aliment equal to their flesh,
+still greatly exceeds that cultivated for vegetables, directly
+consumed by the people of the same regions; or, to express a
+nearly equivalent idea in other words, the meadow and the
+pasture, taken together, much exceed the plough land.<a name="FNanchor_303_303" id="FNanchor_303_303"></a><a href="#Footnote_303_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a></p>
+
+<p>In fertile countries, like the United States, the foreign
+demand for animal and vegetable aliment, for cotton, and for
+tobacco, much enlarges the sphere of agricultural operations,
+and, of course, prompts 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 of the Old World that derive
+the raw material of their mechanical industry from distant
+lands, and import many articles of vegetable food or luxury
+which their own climates cannot advantageously produce.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The growth of arboreal vegetation is so slow that, though
+he who buries an acorn may hope to see it shoot up to a miniature
+resemblance of the majestic tree which shall shade his
+remote descendants, yet the longest life hardly embraces the
+seedtime and the harvest of a forest. The planter of a wood
+must be actuated by higher motives than those of an investment
+the profits of which consist in direct pecuniary gain to
+himself or even to his posterity; for if, in rare cases, an artificial
+forest may, in two 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.<a name="FNanchor_304_304" id="FNanchor_304_304"></a><a href="#Footnote_304_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a> 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 to those that are to come after it.
+Especially is this obligation incumbent upon Americans. No
+civilized people profits so largely from the toils and sacrifices
+of its immediate predecessors as they; no generations have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+ever sown so liberally, and, in their own persons, reaped so
+scanty a return, as the pioneers of Anglo-American social life.
+We can repay our debt to our noble forefathers only by a like
+magnanimity, by a like self-forgetting care for the moral and
+material interests of our own posterity.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Instability of American Life.</i></h4>
+
+<p>All human institutions, associate arrangements, modes of
+life, have their characteristic imperfections. The natural, perhaps
+the necessary defect of ours, is their instability, their
+want of fixedness, not in form only, but even in spirit. The
+face of physical nature in the United States shares this incessant
+fluctuation, and the landscape is as variable as the habits
+of the population. It is time for some abatement in the restless
+love of change which characterizes us, and makes us almost
+a nomade rather than a sedentary people.<a name="FNanchor_305_305" id="FNanchor_305_305"></a><a href="#Footnote_305_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>
+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&mdash;woodland and plough land&mdash;would
+involve a certain persistence of character in all the
+branches of industry, all the occupations and habits of life,
+which depend upon or are immediately connected with either,
+without implying a rigidity that should exclude flexibility of
+accommodation to the many changes of external circumstance
+which human wisdom can neither prevent nor foresee, and
+would thus help us to become, more emphatically, a well-ordered
+and stable commonwealth, and, not less conspicuously,
+a people of progress.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Note</span> on word <i>watershed</i>, omitted on p. 257.&mdash;Sir John F. W. Herschel
+(<i>Physical Geography</i>, 137, and elsewhere) spells this word <i>water-sched</i>, because
+he considers it a translation, or rather an adoption of the German
+"Wasser-scheide, separation of the waters, not water-<i>shed</i>, the slope <i>down
+which</i> 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 <i>Wasserscheide</i>; but the spelling <i>water-sched</i>, proposed by Herschel,
+is objectionable, both because <i>sch</i> is a combination of letters wholly unknown
+to modern English orthography and properly representing no sound
+recognized in English orthoepy, and for the still better reason that <i>watershed</i>,
+in the sense of <i>division-of-the-waters</i>, has a legitimate English etymology.</p>
+
+<p>The Anglo-Saxon <i>sceadan</i> meant both to separate or divide, and to shade
+or shelter. It is the root of the English verbs <i>to shed</i> and <i>to shade</i>, and in
+the former meaning is the A. S. equivalent of the German verb <i>scheiden</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shed</i> in Old English had the meaning <i>to separate</i> or <i>distinguish</i>. It is
+so used in the <i>Owl and the Nightingale</i>, v. 197. Palsgrave (<i>Lesclarcissement,
+etc.</i>, p. 717) defines <i>I shede</i>, I departe thinges asonder; and the word
+still means <i>to divide</i> in several English local dialects. Hence, <i>watershed</i>,
+the division or separation of the waters, is good English both in sense and
+spelling.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WATERS.</h3>
+
+<p class="blockquot">LAND ARTIFICIALLY WON FROM THE WATERS: <i>a</i>, EXCLUSION OF THE SEA BY
+DIKING; <i>b</i>, DRAINING OF LAKES AND MARSHES; <i>c</i>, GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCE
+OF SUCH OPERATIONS&mdash;LOWERING OF LAKES&mdash;MOUNTAIN LAKES&mdash;CLIMATIC
+EFFECTS OF DRAINING LAKES AND MARSHES&mdash;GEOGRAPHICAL AND
+CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF AQUEDUCTS, RESERVOIRS, AND CANALS&mdash;SURFACE AND
+UNDERDRAINING, AND THEIR CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHICAL EFFECTS&mdash;IRRIGATION
+AND ITS CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHICAL EFFECTS.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">INUNDATIONS AND TORRENTS: <i>a</i>, RIVER EMBANKMENTS; <i>b</i>, FLOODS OF
+THE ARD&Egrave;CHE; <i>c</i>, CRUSHING FORCE OF TORRENTS; <i>d</i>, INUNDATIONS OF 1856
+IN FRANCE; <i>e</i>, REMEDIES AGAINST INUNDATIONS&mdash;CONSEQUENCES IF THE
+NILE HAD BEEN CONFINED BY LATERAL DIKES.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">IMPROVEMENTS IN THE VAL DI CHIANA&mdash;IMPROVEMENTS IN THE TUSCAN
+MAREMME&mdash;OBSTRUCTION OF RIVER MOUTHS&mdash;SUBTERRANEAN WATERS&mdash;ARTESIAN
+WELLS&mdash;ARTIFICIAL SPRINGS&mdash;ECONOMIZING PRECIPITATION.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Land artificially won from the Waters.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Man, as we have seen, has done much to revolutionize the
+solid surface of the globe, and to change the distribution and
+proportions, if not the essential character, of the organisms
+which inhabit the land and even the waters. Besides the influence
+thus exerted upon the life which peoples the sea, his
+action upon the land has involved a certain amount of indirect
+encroachment upon the territorial jurisdiction of the ocean.
+So far as he has increased the erosion of running waters by the
+destruction of the forest, he has promoted the deposit of solid
+matter in the sea, thus reducing its depth, advancing the coast
+line, and diminishing the area covered by the waters. He has
+gone beyond this, and invaded the realm of the ocean by con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>structing
+within its borders wharves, piers, lighthouses, breakwaters,
+fortresses, and other facilities for his commercial and
+military operations; and in some countries he has permanently
+rescued from tidal overflow, and even from the very bed of
+the deep, tracts of ground extensive enough to constitute valuable
+additions to his agricultural domain. The quantity of
+soil gained from the sea by these different modes of acquisition
+is, indeed, too inconsiderable to form an appreciable element
+in the comparison of the general proportion between the two
+great forms of terrestrial surface, land and water; but the
+results of such operations, considered in their physical and
+their moral bearings, are sufficiently important to entitle them
+to special notice in every comprehensive view of the relations
+between man and nature.</p>
+
+<p>There are cases, as on the western shores of the Baltic,
+where, in consequence of the secular elevation of the coast, the
+sea appears to be retiring; others, where, from the slow sinking
+of the land, it seems to be advancing. These movements
+depend upon geological causes wholly out of our reach, and
+man can neither advance nor retard them. There are also
+cases where similar apparent effects are produced by local
+oceanic currents, by river deposit or erosion, by tidal action, or
+by the influence of the wind upon the waves and the sands of
+the sea beach. A regular current may drift suspended earth
+and seaweed along a coast until they are caught by an eddy
+and finally deposited out of the reach of further disturbance,
+or it may scoop out the bed of the sea and undermine promontories
+and headlands; a powerful river, as the wind changes
+the direction of its flow at its outlet, may wash away shores
+and sandbanks at one point to deposit their material at another;
+the tide or waves, stirred to unusual depths by the
+wind, may gradually wear down the line of coast, or they
+may form shoals and coast dunes by depositing the sand they
+have rolled up from the bottom of the ocean. These latter
+modes of action are slow in producing effects sufficiently important
+to be noticed in general geography, or even to be
+visible in the representations of coast line laid down in ordi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>nary
+maps; but they nevertheless form conspicuous features
+in local topography, and they are attended with consequences
+of great moment to the material and the moral interests of
+men.</p>
+
+<p>The forces which produce these results are all in a considerable
+degree subject to control, or rather to direction and
+resistance, by human power, and it is in guiding and combating
+them that man has achieved some of his most remarkable
+and honorable conquests over nature. The triumphs in question,
+or what we generally call harbor and coast improvements,
+whether we estimate their value by the money and
+labor expended upon them, or by their bearing upon the interests
+of commerce and the arts of civilization, must take a very
+high rank among the great works of man, and they are fast
+assuming a magnitude greatly exceeding their former relative
+importance. The extension of commerce and of the military
+marine, and especially the introduction of vessels of increased
+burden and deeper draught of water, have imposed upon engineers
+tasks of a character which a century ago would have
+been pronounced, and, in fact, would have been impracticable;
+but necessity has stimulated an ingenuity which has contrived
+means of executing them, and which gives promise of yet
+greater performance in time to come.</p>
+
+<p>Men have ceased to admire the power which heaped up the
+great pyramid to gratify the pride of a despot with a giant
+sepulchre; for many great harbors, many important lines of
+internal communication, in the civilized world, now exhibit
+works which surpass the vastest remains of ancient architectural
+art in mass and weight of matter, demand the exercise
+of far greater constructive skill, and involve a much heavier
+pecuniary expenditure than would now be required for the
+building of the tomb of Cheops. It is computed that the great
+pyramid, the solid contents of which when complete were about
+3,000,000 cubic yards, could be erected for a million of pounds
+sterling. The breakwater at Cherbourg, founded in rough water
+sixty feet, deep, at an average distance of more than two miles
+from the shore, contains double the mass of the pyramid, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>
+many a comparatively unimportant railroad has been constructed
+at twice the cost which would now build that stupendous
+monument. Indeed, although man, detached from the
+solid earth, is almost powerless to struggle against the sea, he
+is fast becoming invincible by it so long as his foot is planted
+on the shore, or even on the bottom of the rolling ocean; and
+though on some battle fields between the waters and the land,
+he is obliged slowly to yield his ground, yet he retreats still
+facing the foe, and will finally be able to say to the sea:
+"Thus far shalt thou come and no farther, and here shall thy
+proud waves be stayed!"</p>
+
+<p>The description of works of harbor and coast improvement
+which have only an economical value, not a true geographical
+importance, does not come within the plan of the present
+volume, and in treating this branch of my subject, I shall
+confine myself to such as are designed either to gain new soil
+by excluding the waters from grounds which they had permanently
+or occasionally covered, or to resist new encroachments
+of the sea upon the land.</p>
+
+
+<h4>a. <i>Exclusion of the Sea by Diking.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The draining of the Lincolnshire fens in England, which
+converted about 400,000 acres of marsh, pool, and tide-washed
+flat into plough land and pasturage, is a work, or rather series
+of works, of great magnitude, and it possesses much economical,
+and, indeed, no trifling geographical importance. Its
+plans and methods were, at least in part, borrowed from the
+example of like improvements in Holland, and it is, in difficulty
+and extent, inferior to works executed for the same purpose
+on the opposite coast of the North Sea, by Dutch, Frisic,
+and Low German engineers. The space I can devote to such
+operations will be better employed in describing the latter,
+and I content myself with the simple statement I have already
+made of the quantity of worthless and even pestilential land
+which has been rendered both productive and salubrious in
+Lincolnshire, by diking out the sea, and the rivers which traverse
+the fens of that country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The almost continued prevalence of west winds upon both
+coasts of the German Ocean occasions a constant set of the
+currents of that sea to the east, and both for this reason and
+on account of the greater violence of storms from the former
+quarter, the English shores are much less exposed to invasion
+by the waves than those of the Netherlands and the provinces
+contiguous to them on the north. The old Netherlandish
+chronicles are filled with the most startling accounts of the
+damage done by the irruptions of the ocean, from west winds
+or extraordinarily high tides, at times long before any considerable
+extent of seacoast was diked. Several hundreds of these
+terrible inundations are recorded, and in very many of them
+the loss of human lives is estimated as high as one hundred
+thousand. It is impossible to doubt that there must be enormous
+exaggeration in these numbers; for, with all the reckless
+hardihood shown by men in braving the dangers and privations
+attached by nature to their birthplace, it is inconceivable
+that so dense a population as such wholesale destruction of life
+supposes could find the means of subsistence, or content itself
+to dwell, on a territory liable, a dozen times in a century, to
+such fearful devastation. There can be no doubt, however,
+that the low continental shores of the German Ocean very frequently
+suffered immense injury from inundation by the sea,
+and it is natural, therefore, that the various arts of resistance
+to the encroachments of the ocean, and, finally, of aggressive
+warfare upon its domain, and of permanent conquest of its
+territory, should have been earlier studied and carried to
+higher perfection in the latter countries, than in England,
+which had much less to lose or to gain by the incursions or the
+retreat of the waters.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, although the confinement of swelling rivers by
+artificial embankments is of great antiquity, I do not know
+that the defence or acquisition of land from the sea by diking
+was ever practised on a large scale until systematically undertaken
+by the Netherlanders, a few centuries after the commencement
+of the Christian era. The silence of the Roman
+historians affords a strong presumption that this art was un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>known
+to the inhabitants of the Netherlands at the time of the
+Roman invasion, and the elder Pliny's description of the mode
+of life along the coast which has now been long diked in,
+applies precisely to the habits of the people who live on the
+low islands and mainland flats lying outside of the chain of
+dikes, and wholly unprotected by embankments of any sort.</p>
+
+<p>It has been conjectured, and not without probability, that
+the causeways built by the Romans across the marshes of the
+Low Countries, in their campaigns against the Germanic tribes,
+gave the natives the first hint of the utility which might be
+derived from similar constructions applied to a different purpose.<a name="FNanchor_306_306" id="FNanchor_306_306"></a><a href="#Footnote_306_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a>
+If this is so, it is one of the most interesting among
+the many instances in which the arts and enginery of war have
+been so modified as to be eminently promotive of the blessings
+of peace, thereby in some measure compensating the wrongs
+and sufferings they have inflicted on humanity.<a name="FNanchor_307_307" id="FNanchor_307_307"></a><a href="#Footnote_307_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a> The Low<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>landers
+are believed to have secured some coast and bay islands
+by ring dikes, and to have embanked some fresh water channels,
+as early as the eighth or ninth century; but it does not
+appear that sea dikes, important enough to be noticed in historical
+records, were constructed on the mainland before the thirteenth
+century. The practice of draining inland accumulation
+of water, whether fresh or salt, for the purpose of bringing
+under cultivation the ground they cover, is of later origin, and
+is said not to have been adopted until after the middle of the
+fifteenth century.<a name="FNanchor_308_308" id="FNanchor_308_308"></a><a href="#Footnote_308_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a></p>
+
+<p>The total amount of surface gained to the agriculture of
+the Netherlands by diking out the sea and by draining shallow
+bays and lakes, is estimated by Staring at three hundred and
+fifty-five thousand <i>bunder</i> or hectares, equal to eight hundred
+and seventy-seven thousand two hundred and forty acres,
+which is one tenth of the area of the kingdom.<a name="FNanchor_309_309" id="FNanchor_309_309"></a><a href="#Footnote_309_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a> In very many
+instances, the dikes have been partially, in some particularly
+exposed localities totally destroyed by the violence of the sea,
+and the drained lands again flooded. In some cases, the soil
+thus painfully won from the ocean has been entirely lost; in
+others it has been recovered by repairing or rebuilding the
+dikes and pumping out the water. Besides this, the weight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>
+of the dikes gradually sinks them into the soft soil beneath,
+and this loss of elevation must be compensated by raising the
+surface, while the increased burden thus added tends to sink
+them still lower. "Tetens declares," says Kohl, "that in some
+places the dikes have gradually sunk to the depth of sixty or
+even a hundred feet."<a name="FNanchor_310_310" id="FNanchor_310_310"></a><a href="#Footnote_310_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a> For these reasons, the processes of
+dike building have been almost everywhere again and again
+repeated, and thus the total expenditure of money and of labor
+upon the works in question is much greater than would appear
+from an estimate of the actual cost of diking-in a given extent
+of coast land and draining a given area of water surface.<a name="FNanchor_311_311" id="FNanchor_311_311"></a><a href="#Footnote_311_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a></p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, by erosion of the coast line, the drifting
+of sand dunes into the interior, and the drowning of fens and
+morasses by incursions of the sea&mdash;all caused, or at least
+greatly aggravated, by human improvidence&mdash;the Netherlands
+have lost a far larger area of land since the commencement of
+the Christian era than they have gained by diking and draining.
+Staring despairs of the possibility of calculating the loss
+from the first-mentioned two causes of destruction, but he esti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>mates
+that not less than six hundred and forty thousand bunder,
+or one million five hundred and eighty-one thousand
+acres, of fen and marsh have been washed away, or rather
+deprived of their vegetable surface and covered by water, and
+thirty-seven thousand bunder, or ninety-one thousand four
+hundred acres of recovered land, have been lost by the destruction
+of the dikes which protected them.<a name="FNanchor_312_312" id="FNanchor_312_312"></a><a href="#Footnote_312_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a> The average value
+of land gained from the sea is estimated at about nineteen
+pounds sterling, or ninety dollars, per acre; while the lost
+fen and morass was not worth more than one twenty-fifth
+part of the same price. The ground buried by the drifting of
+the dunes appears to have been almost entirely of this latter
+character, and, upon the whole, there is no doubt that the soil
+added by human industry to the territory of the Netherlands,
+within the historical period, greatly exceeds in pecuniary value
+that which has fallen a prey to the waves during the same era.</p>
+
+<p>Upon most low and shelving coasts, like those of the Netherlands,
+the maritime currents are constantly changing, in
+consequence of the variability of the winds, and the shifting
+of the sandbanks, which the currents themselves now form and
+now displace. While, therefore, at one point the sea is advancing
+landward, and requiring great effort to prevent the
+undermining and washing away of the dikes, it is shoaling at
+another by its own deposits, and exposing, at low water, a
+gradually widening belt of sands and ooze. The coast lands
+selected for diking-in are always at points where the sea is
+depositing productive soil. The Eider, the Elbe, the Weser,
+the Ems, the Rhine, the Maas, and the Schelde bring down
+large quantities of fine earth. The prevalence of west winds
+prevents the waters from carrying this material far out from
+the coast, and it is at last deposited northward or southward
+from the mouth of the rivers which contribute it, according to
+the varying drift of the currents.</p>
+
+<p>The process of natural deposit which prepares the coast for
+diking-in is thus described by Staring: "All sea-deposited soil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+is composed of the same constituents. First comes a stratum
+of sand, with marine shells, or the shells of mollusks living in
+brackish water. If there be tides, and, of course, flowing and
+ebbing currents, mud is let fall upon the sand only after the
+latter has been raised above low-water mark; for then only,
+at the change from flood to ebb, is the water still enough to
+form a deposit of so light a material. Where mud is found at
+greater depths, as, for example, in a large proportion of the Ij,
+it is a proof that at this point there was never any considerable
+tidal flow or other current. * * * The powerful
+tidal currents, flowing and ebbing twice a day, drift sand with
+them. They scoop out the bottom at one point, raise it at
+another, and the sandbanks in the current are continually
+shifting. As soon as a bank raises itself above low-water
+mark, flags and reeds establish themselves upon it. The mechanical
+resistance of these plants checks the retreat of the
+high water and favors the deposit of the earth suspended in it,
+and the formation of land goes on with surprising rapidity.
+When it has risen to high-water level, it is soon covered with
+grasses, and becomes what is called <i>schor</i> in Zeeland, <i>kwelder</i>
+in Friesland. Such grounds are the foundation or starting
+point of the process of diking. When they are once elevated
+to the flood-tide level, no more mud is deposited upon them
+except by extraordinary high tides. Their further rise is,
+accordingly, very slow, and it is seldom advantageous to delay
+longer the operation of diking."<a name="FNanchor_313_313" id="FNanchor_313_313"></a><a href="#Footnote_313_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a></p>
+
+<p>The formation of new banks by the sea is constantly going
+on at points favorable for the deposit of sand and earth, and
+hence opportunity is continually afforded for enclosure of new
+land outside of that already diked in, the coast is fast advancing
+seaward, and every new embankment increases the security
+of former enclosures. The province of Zeeland consists
+of islands washed by the sea on their western coasts, and separated
+by the many channels through which the Schelde and
+some other rivers find their way to the ocean. In the twelfth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>
+century these islands were much smaller and more numerous
+than at present. They have been gradually enlarged, and, in
+several instances, at last connected by the extension of their
+system of dikes. Walcheren is formed of ten islets united into
+one about the end of the fourteenth century. At the middle
+of the fifteenth century, Goeree and Overflakkee consisted of
+separate islands, containing altogether about ten thousand
+acres; by means of above sixty successive advances of the
+dikes, they have been brought to compose a single island,
+whose area is not less than sixty thousand acres.<a name="FNanchor_314_314" id="FNanchor_314_314"></a><a href="#Footnote_314_314" class="fnanchor">[314]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the Netherlands&mdash;which the first Napoleon characterized
+as a deposit of the Rhine, and as, therefore, by natural
+law, rightfully the property of him who controlled the sources
+of that great river&mdash;and on the adjacent Frisic, Low German
+and Danish shores and islands, sea and river dikes have been
+constructed on a grander and more imposing scale than in any
+other country. The whole economy of the art has been there
+most thoroughly studied, and the literature of the subject is
+very extensive. For my present aim, which is concerned with
+results rather than with processes, it is not worth while to refer
+to professional treatises, and I shall content myself with presenting
+such information as can be gathered from works of a
+more popular character.<a name="FNanchor_315_315" id="FNanchor_315_315"></a><a href="#Footnote_315_315" class="fnanchor">[315]</a></p>
+
+<p>The superior strata of the lowlands upon and near the
+coast are, as we have seen, principally composed of soil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>
+brought down by the great rivers I have mentioned, and
+either directly deposited by them upon the sands of the bottom,
+or carried out to sea by their currents, and then, after a
+shorter or longer exposure to the chemical and mechanical
+action of salt water and marine currents, restored again to the
+land by tidal overflow and subsidence from the waters in
+which it was suspended. At a very remote period, the coast
+flats were, at many points, raised so high by successive alluvious
+or tidal deposits as to be above ordinary high water
+level, but they were still liable to occasional inundation from
+river floods, and from the sea water also, when heavy or long-continued
+west winds drove it landward. The extraordinary
+fertility of this soil and its security as a retreat from hostile
+violence attracted to it a considerable population, while its
+want of protection against inundation exposed it to the devastations
+of which the chroniclers of the Middle Ages have left
+such highly colored pictures. The first permanent dwellings
+on the coast flats were erected upon artificial mounds, and
+many similar precarious habitations still exist on the unwalled
+islands and shores beyond the chain of dikes. River embankments,
+which, as is familiarly known, have from the earliest
+antiquity been employed in many countries where sea dikes
+are unknown, were probably the first works of this character
+constructed in the Low Countries, and when two neighboring
+streams of fresh water had been embanked, the next step in
+the process would naturally be to connect the river walls
+together by a transverse dike or raised causeway, which would
+serve to secure the intermediate ground both against the backwater
+of river floods and against overflow by the sea. The
+oldest true sea dikes described in historical records, however,
+are those enclosing islands in the estuaries of the great rivers,
+and it is not impossible that the double character they possess
+as a security against maritime floods and as a military rampart,
+led to their adoption upon those islands before similar
+constructions had been attempted upon the mainland.</p>
+
+<p>At some points of the coast, various contrivances, such as
+piers, piles, and, in fact, obstructions of all sorts to the ebb of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
+the current, are employed to facilitate the deposit of slime,
+before a regular enclosure is commenced. Usually, however,
+the first step is to build low and cheap embankments, extending
+from an older dike, or from high ground, around the
+parcel of flat intended to be secured. These are called summer
+dikes (<i>sommer-deich</i>, pl. <i>sommer-deiche</i>, German; <i>zomerkaai</i>,
+<i>zomerkade</i>, pl. <i>zomerkaaie</i>, <i>zomerkaden</i>, Dutch). They are
+erected when a sufficient extent of ground to repay the cost
+has been elevated enough to be covered with coarse vegetation
+fit for pasturage. They serve both to secure the ground from
+overflow by the ordinary flood tides of mild weather, and to
+retain the slime deposited by very high water, which would
+otherwise be partly carried off by the retreating ebb. The
+elevation of the soil goes on slowly after this; but when it has
+at last been sufficiently enriched, and raised high enough to
+justify the necessary outlay, permanent dikes are constructed
+by which the water is excluded at all seasons. These embankments
+are constructed of sand from the coast dunes or from
+sandbanks, and of earth from the mainland or from flats outside
+the dikes, bound and strengthened by fascines, and provided
+with sluices, which are generally founded on piles and
+of very expensive construction, for drainage at low water.
+The outward slope of the sea dikes is gentle, experience having
+shown that this form is least exposed to injury both from the
+waves and from floating ice, and the most modern dikes are
+even more moderate in the inclination of the seaward scarp
+than the older ones.<a name="FNanchor_316_316" id="FNanchor_316_316"></a><a href="#Footnote_316_316" class="fnanchor">[316]</a> The crown of the dike, however, for the
+last three or four feet of its height, is much steeper, being
+intended rather as a protection against the spray than against
+the waves, and the inner slope is always comparatively abrupt.</p>
+
+<p>The height and thickness of dikes varies according to the
+elevation of the ground they enclose, the rise of the tides, the
+direction of the prevailing winds, and other special causes of
+exposure, but it may be said that they are, in general, raised
+from fifteen to twenty feet above ordinary high-water mark.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
+The water slopes of river dikes are protected by plantations of
+willows or strong semi-aquatic shrubs or grasses, but as these
+will not grow upon banks exposed to salt water, sea dikes
+must be faced with stone, fascines, or some other <i>rev&ecirc;tement</i>.<a name="FNanchor_317_317" id="FNanchor_317_317"></a><a href="#Footnote_317_317" class="fnanchor">[317]</a>
+Upon the coast of Schleswig and Holstein, where the people
+have less capital at their command, they defend their embankments
+against ice and the waves by a coating of twisted straw
+or reeds, which must be renewed as often as once, sometimes
+twice a year. The inhabitants of these coasts call the chain of
+dikes "the golden border," a name it well deserves, whether
+we suppose it to refer to its enormous cost, or, as is more
+probable, to its immense value as a protection to their fields
+and their firesides.</p>
+
+<p>When outlying flats are enclosed by building new embankments,
+the old interior dikes are suffered to remain, both as an
+additional security against the waves, and because the removal
+of them would be expensive. They serve, also, as roads or
+causeways, a purpose for which the embankments nearest the
+sea are seldom employed, because the whole structure might
+be endangered from the breaking of the turf by wheels and
+the hoofs of horses. Where successive rows of dikes have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
+thus constructed, it is observed that the ground defended by
+the more ancient embankments is lower than that embraced
+within the newer enclosures, and this depression of level has
+been ascribed to a general subsidence of the coast from geological
+causes; but the better opinion seems to be that it is, in
+most cases, due merely to the consolidation and settling of the
+earth from being more effectually dried, from the weight of
+the dikes, from the tread of men and cattle, and from the
+movement of the heavy wagons which carry off the crops.<a name="FNanchor_318_318" id="FNanchor_318_318"></a><a href="#Footnote_318_318" class="fnanchor">[318]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>
+Notwithstanding this slow sinking, most of the land enclosed
+by dikes is still above low-water mark, and can, therefore, be
+wholly or partially freed from rain water, and from that received
+by infiltration from higher ground, by sluices opened
+at the ebb of the tide. For this purpose, the land is carefully
+ditched, and advantage is taken of every favorable occasion for
+discharging the water through the sluices. But the ground
+cannot be effectually drained by this means, unless it is elevated
+four or five feet, at least, above the level of the ebb tide,
+because the ditches would not otherwise have a sufficient
+descent to carry the water off in the short interval between
+ebb and flow, and because the moisture of the saturated subsoil
+is always rising by capillary attraction. Whenever, therefore,
+the soil has sunk below the level I have mentioned, and
+in cases where its surface has never been raised above it,
+pumps, worked by wind or some other mechanical power,
+must be very frequently employed to keep the land dry
+enough for pasturage and cultivation.<a name="FNanchor_319_319" id="FNanchor_319_319"></a><a href="#Footnote_319_319" class="fnanchor">[319]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>b. <i>Draining of Lakes and Marshes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The substitution of steam engines for the feeble and uncertain
+action of windmills, in driving pumps, has much facilitated
+the removal of water from the polders and the draining
+of lakes, marshes, and shallow bays, and thus given such an
+impulse to these enterprises, that not less than one hundred
+and ten thousand acres were reclaimed from the waters, and
+added to the agricultural domain of the Netherlands, between
+1815 and 1858. The most important of these undertakings
+was the draining of the Lake of Haarlem, and for this purpose
+some of the most powerful hydraulic engines ever constructed
+were designed and executed.<a name="FNanchor_320_320" id="FNanchor_320_320"></a><a href="#Footnote_320_320" class="fnanchor">[320]</a> The origin of this lake is unknown.
+It is supposed by some geographers to be a part of
+an ancient bed of the Rhine, the channel of which, as there is
+good reason to believe, has undergone great changes since the
+Roman invasion of the Netherlands; by others it is thought
+to have once formed an inland marine channel, separated from
+the sea by a chain of low islands, which the sand washed up
+by the tides has since connected with the mainland and converted
+into a continuous line of coast. The best authorities,
+however, find geological evidence that the surface occupied by
+the lake was originally a marshy tract containing within its
+limits little solid ground, but many ponds and inlets, and
+much floating as well as fixed fen.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of the cutting of turf for fuel, and the de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>struction
+of the few trees and shrubs which held the loose soil
+together with their roots, the ponds are supposed to have gradually
+extended themselves, until the action of the wind upon
+their enlarged surface gave their waves sufficient force to overcome
+the resistance of the feeble barriers which separated
+them, and to unite them all into a single lake. Popular tradition,
+it is true, ascribes the formation of the Lake of Haarlem
+to a single irruption of the sea, at a remote period, and connects
+it with one or another of the destructive inundations of
+which the Netherland chronicles describe so many; but on a
+map of the year 1531, a chain of four smaller waters occupies
+nearly the ground afterward covered by the Lake of Haarlem,
+and they have more probably been united by gradual encroachments
+resulting from the improvident practices above
+referred to, though no doubt the consummation may have
+been hastened by floods, and by the neglect to maintain dikes,
+or the intentional destruction of them, in the long wars of the
+sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The Lake of Haarlem was a body of water not far from
+fifteen miles in length, by seven in greatest width, lying between
+the cities of Amsterdam and Leyden, running parallel
+with the coast of Holland at the distance of about five miles
+from the sea, and covering an area of about 45,000 acres. By
+means of the Ij, it communicated with the Zuiderzee, the
+Mediterranean of the Netherlands, and its surface was little
+above the mean elevation of that of the sea. Whenever, therefore,
+the waters of the Zuiderzee were acted upon by strong
+northwest winds, those of the Lake of Haarlem were raised proportionally
+and driven southward, while winds from the south
+tended to create a flow in the opposite direction. The shores
+of the lake were everywhere low, and though in the course of
+the eighty years between 1767 and 1848 more than &pound;350,000
+or $1,700,000 had been expended in checking its encroachments,
+it often burst its barriers, and produced destructive
+inundations. On the 29th of November, 1836, a south wind
+brought its waters to the very gates of Amsterdam, and on the
+26th of December of the same year, in a northwest gale, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+overflowed twenty thousand acres of land at the southern extremity
+of the lake, and flooded a part of the city of Leyden.
+The depth of water did not, in general, exceed fourteen feet,
+but the bottom was a semi-fluid ooze or slime, which partook
+of the agitation of the waves, and added considerably to their
+mechanical force. Serious fears were entertained that the lake
+would form a junction with the inland waters of the Legmeer
+and Mijdrecht, swallow up a vast extent of valuable soil, and
+finally endanger the security of a large proportion of the land
+which the industry of Holland had gained in the course of
+centuries from the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>For this reason, and for the sake of the large addition the
+bottom of the lake would make to the cultivable soil of the
+state, it was resolved to drain it, and the preliminary steps for
+that purpose were commenced in the year 1840. The first
+operation was to surround the entire lake with a ring canal
+and dike, in order to cut off the communication with the Ij, and
+to exclude the water of the streams and morasses which discharged
+themselves into it from the land side. The dike was
+composed of different materials, according to the means of supply
+at different points, such as sand from the coast dunes, earth
+and turf excavated from the line of the ring canal, and floating
+turf,<a name="FNanchor_321_321" id="FNanchor_321_321"></a><a href="#Footnote_321_321" class="fnanchor">[321]</a> fascines being everywhere used to bind and compact the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>
+mass together. This operation was completed in 1848, and
+three steam pumps were then employed for five years in discharging
+the water. The whole enterprise was conducted at
+the expense of the state, and in 1853 the recovered lands were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>
+offered for sale for its benefit. Up to 1858, forty-two thousand
+acres had been sold at not far from sixteen pounds sterling
+or seventy-seven dollars an acre, amounting altogether to
+&pound;661,000 sterling or $3,200,000. The unsold lands were valued
+at more than &pound;6,000 or nearly $30,000, and as the total
+cost was &pound;764,500 or about $3,700,000, the direct loss to the
+state, exclusive of interest on the capital expended, may be
+stated at &pound;100,000 or something less than $500,000.</p>
+
+<p>In a country like the United States, of almost boundless
+extent of sparsely inhabited territory, such an expenditure for
+such an object would be poor economy. But Holland has a
+narrow domain, great pecuniary resources, an excessively
+crowded population, and a consequent need of enlarged room
+and opportunity for the exercise of industry. Under such circumstances,
+and especially with an exposure to dangers so
+formidable, there is no question of the wisdom of the measure.
+It has already provided homes and occupation for more than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>
+five thousand citizens, and furnished a profitable investment
+for a capital of not less than &pound;400,000 sterling or $2,000,000,
+which has been expended in improvements over and above the
+purchase money of the soil; and the greater part of this sum,
+as well as of the cost of drainage, has been paid as a compensation
+for labor. The excess of governmental expenditure over
+the receipts, if employed in constructing ships of war or fortifications,
+would have added little to the military strength of the
+kingdom; but the increase of territory, the multiplication of
+homes and firesides which the people have an interest in defending,
+and the augmentation of agricultural resources, constitute
+a stronger bulwark against foreign invasion than a ship
+of the line or a fortress armed with a hundred cannon.</p>
+
+<p>The bearing of the works I have noticed, and of others
+similar in character, upon the social and moral, as well as the
+purely economical interests of the people of the Netherlands,
+has induced me to describe them more in detail than the general
+purpose of this volume may be thought to justify; but if
+we consider them simply from a geographical point of view,
+we shall find that they are possessed of no small importance as
+modifications of the natural condition of terrestrial surface.
+There is good reason to believe that before the establishment
+of a partially civilized race upon the territory now occupied
+by Dutch, Frisic, and Low German communities, the grounds
+not exposed to inundation were overgrown with dense woods,
+that the lowlands between these forests and the sea coasts were
+marshes, covered and partially solidified by a thick matting
+of peat plants and shrubs interspersed with trees, and that
+even the sand dunes of the shore were protected by a vegetable
+growth which, in a great measure, prevented the drifting
+and translocation of them.</p>
+
+<p>The present causes of river and coast erosion existed, indeed,
+at the period in question; but some of them must have
+acted with less intensity, there were strong natural safeguards
+against the influence of marine and fresh-water currents, and
+the conflicting tendencies had arrived at a condition of approximate
+equilibrium, which permitted but slow and gradual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+changes in the face of nature. The destruction of the forests
+around the sources and along the valleys of the rivers by man
+gave them a more torrential character. The felling of the
+trees, and the extirpation of the shrubbery upon the fens by
+domestic cattle, deprived the surface of cohesion and consistence,
+and the cutting of peat for fuel opened cavities in it,
+which, filling at once with water, rapidly extended themselves
+by abrasion of their borders, and finally enlarged to pools,
+lakes, and gulfs, like the Lake of Haarlem and the northern
+part of the Zuiderzee. The cutting of the wood and the depasturing
+of the grasses upon the sand dunes converted them from
+solid bulwarks against the ocean to loose accumulations of
+dust, which every sea breeze drove farther landward, burying,
+perhaps, fertile soil and choking up watercourses on one side,
+and exposing the coast to erosion by the sea upon the other.</p>
+
+
+<h4>c. <i>Geographical Influence of such Operations.</i></h4>
+
+<p><a name="Page_352_2" id="Page_352_2"></a>The changes which human action has produced within
+twenty centuries in the Netherlands and the neighboring provinces,
+are certainly of no small geographical importance, considered
+simply as a direct question of loss and gain of territory.
+They have also undoubtedly been attended with some climatic
+consequences, they have exercised a great influence on the
+spontaneous animal and vegetable life of this region, and they
+cannot have failed to produce effects upon tidal and other
+oceanic currents, the range of which may be very extensive.
+The force of the tidal wave, the height to which it rises, the
+direction of its currents, and, in fact, all the phenomena which
+characterize it, as well as all the effects it produces, depend as
+much upon the configuration of the coast it washes, and the
+depth of water, and form of bottom near the shore, as upon
+the attraction which occasions it. Every one of the terrestrial
+conditions which affect the character of tidal and other marine
+currents has been very sensibly modified by the operations I
+have described, and on this coast, at least, man has acted
+almost as powerfully on the physical geography of the sea as
+on that of the land.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Lowering of Lakes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The hydraulic works of the Netherlands and of the neighboring
+states are of such magnitude, that they quite throw into
+the shade all other known artificial arrangements for defending
+the land against the encroachments of the rivers and the sea,
+and for reclaiming to the domain of agriculture and civilization
+soil long covered by the waters. But although the recovery
+and protection of lands flooded by the sea seems to be
+an art wholly of Netherlandish origin, we have abundant evidence,
+that in ancient as well as in comparatively modern
+times, great enterprises more or less analogous in character
+have been successfully undertaken, both in inland Europe and
+in the less familiar countries of the East.</p>
+
+<p>One of the best known of these is the tunnel which serves
+to discharge the surplus waters of the Lake of Albano, about
+fourteen miles from Rome. This lake, about six miles in circuit,
+occupies one of the craters of an extinct volcanic range,
+and the surface of its waters is about nine hundred feet above
+the sea. It is fed by rivulets and subterranean springs originating
+in the Alban Mount, or Monte Cavo, the most elevated
+peak of the volcanic group just mentioned, which rises to the
+height of about three thousand feet. At present the lake has
+no discoverable natural outlet, but it is not known that the
+water ever stood at such a height as to flow regularly over the
+lip of the crater. It seems that at the earliest period of which
+we have any authentic memorials, its level was usually kept
+by evaporation, or by discharge through subterranean channels,
+considerably below the rim of the basin which encompassed
+it, but in the year 397 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span>, the water, either from the
+obstruction of such channels, or in consequence of increased
+supplies from unknown sources, rose to such a height as to
+flow over the edge of the crater, and threaten inundation to
+the country below by bursting through its walls. To obviate
+this danger, a tunnel for carrying off the water was pierced at
+a level much below the height to which it had risen. This
+gallery, cut entirely with the chisel through the rock for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>
+distance of six thousand feet, or nearly a mile and one seventh,
+is still in so good condition as to serve its original purpose.
+The fact that this work was contemporaneous with the siege
+of Veii, has given to ancient annalists occasion to connect the
+two events, but modern critics are inclined to reject Livy's
+account of the matter, as one of the many improbable fables
+which disfigure the pages of that historian. It is, however,
+repeated by Cicero and by Dionysins of Halicarnassus, and it
+is by no means impossible that, in an age when priests and
+soothsayers monopolized both the arts of natural magic and the
+little which yet existed of physical science, the Government of
+Rome, by their aid, availed itself at once of the superstition
+and of the military ardor of its citizens to obtain their sanction
+to an enterprise which sounder arguments might not have
+induced them to approve.</p>
+
+<p>Still more remarkable is the tunnel cut by the Emperor
+Claudius to drain the Lake Fucinus, now Lago di Celano, in
+the Neapolitan territory, about fifty miles eastward of Rome.
+This lake, as far as its history is known, has varied very considerably
+in its dimensions at different periods, according to
+the character of the seasons. It has no visible outlet, but was
+originally either drained by natural subterranean conduits, or
+kept within certain extreme limits by evaporation. In years
+of uncommon moisture, it spread over the adjacent soil and
+destroyed the crops; in dry seasons, it retreated, and produced
+epidemic disease by poisonous exhalations from the decay of
+vegetable and animal matter upon its exposed bed. Julius
+C&aelig;sar had proposed the construction of a tunnel to drain the
+lake, but the enterprise was not actually undertaken until the
+reign of Claudius, when&mdash;after a temporary failure, from
+errors in levelling by the engineers, as was pretended at the
+time, or, as now appears certain, in consequence of frauds by
+the contractors in the execution of the work&mdash;it was at least
+partially completed. From this imperfect construction, it
+soon got out of repair, but was restored by Hadrian, and seems
+to have answered its design for some centuries. In the barbarism
+which followed the downfall of the empire, it again fell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>
+into decay, and though numerous attempts were made to repair
+it during the Middle Ages, no tolerable success seems to
+have attended any of these efforts, until the present generation.</p>
+
+<p>Works have now been some years in progress for restoring,
+or rather enlarging and rebuilding this ancient tunnel, upon a
+scale of grandeur which does infinite honor to the liberality
+and public spirit of the projectors, and with an ingenuity of
+design and a constructive skill which reflect the highest credit
+upon the professional ability of the engineers who have planned
+the works and directed their execution. The length of this
+tunnel is 18,634 feet, or rather more than three miles and a
+half. Of course, it is one of the longest subterranean galleries
+yet executed in Europe, and it offers many curious particulars
+in its original design which cannot here be described. The
+difference between the highest and the lowest known levels of
+the surface of the lake amounts to at least forty feet, and the
+difference of area covered at these respective stages is not
+much less than eight thousand acres. The tunnel will reduce
+the water to a much lower point, and it is computed
+that, including the lands occasionally overflowed, not less than
+forty thousand acres of as fertile soil as any in Italy will be
+recovered from the lake and permanently secured from inundation
+by its waters.</p>
+
+<p>Many similar enterprises have been conceived and executed
+in modern times, both for the purpose of reclaiming
+land covered by water and for sanitary reasons.<a name="FNanchor_322_322" id="FNanchor_322_322"></a><a href="#Footnote_322_322" class="fnanchor">[322]</a> They are
+sometimes attended with wholly unexpected evils, as, for example,
+in the case of Barton Pond, in Vermont, and in that
+of the Lake Storsj&ouml;, in Sweden, already mentioned on a former<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>
+page. Another still less obvious consequence of the withdrawal
+of the waters has occasionally been observed in these
+operations. The hydrostatic force with which the water, in
+virtue of its specific gravity, presses against the banks that
+confine it, has a tendency to sustain them whenever their composition
+and texture are not such as to expose them to softening
+and dissolution by the infiltration of the water. If then,
+the slope of the banks is considerable, or if the earth of which
+they are composed rests on a smooth and slippery stratum
+inclining toward the bed of the lake, they are liable to fall or
+slide forward when the mechanical support of the water is
+removed, and this sometimes happens on a considerable scale.
+A few years ago, the surface of the Lake of Lungern, in the
+Canton of Unterwalden, in Switzerland, was lowered by driving
+a tunnel about a quarter of a mile long through the narrow
+ridge, called the Kaiserstuhl, which forms a barrier at the
+north end of the basin. When the water was drawn off, the
+banks, which are steep, cracked and burst, several acres of
+ground slid down as low as the water receded, and even the
+whole village of Lungern was thought to be in no small danger.</p>
+
+<p>Other inconveniences of a very serious character have often
+resulted from the natural wearing down, or, much more frequently,
+the imprudent destruction, of the barriers which confine
+mountain lakes. In their natural condition, such basins
+serve both to receive and retain the rocks and other detritus
+brought down by the torrents which empty into them, and to
+check the impetus of the rushing waters by bringing them to
+a temporary pause; but if the outlets are lowered so as to
+drain the reservoirs, the torrents continue their rapid flow
+through the ancient bed of the basins, and carry down with
+them the sand and gravel with which they are charged, instead
+of depositing their burden as before in the still waters of
+the lakes.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Mountain Lakes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It is a common opinion in America that the river meadows,
+bottoms, or <i>intervales</i>, as they are popularly called, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
+generally the beds of ancient lakes which have burst their
+barriers and left running currents in their place. It was shown
+by Dr. Dwight, many years ago, that this is very far from
+being universally true; but there is no doubt that mountain
+lakes were of much more frequent occurrence in primitive
+than in modern geography, and there are many chains of such
+still existing in regions where man has yet little disturbed the
+original features of the earth. In the long valleys of the Adirondack
+range in Northern New York, and in the mountainous
+parts of Maine, eight, ten, and even more lakes and
+lakelets are sometimes found in succession, each emptying into
+the next lower pool, and so all at last into some considerable
+river. When the mountain slopes which supply these basins
+shall be stripped of their woods, the augmented swelling of
+the lakes will break down their barriers, their waters will run
+off, and the valleys will present successions of flats with rivers
+running through them, instead of chains of lakes connected by
+natural canals.</p>
+
+<p>A similar state of things seems to have existed in the ancient
+geography of France. "Nature," says Lavergne, "has
+not excavated on the flanks of our Alps reservoirs as magnificent
+as those of Lombardy; she had, however, constructed
+smaller, but more numerous lakes, which the negligence of
+man has permitted to disappear. Auguste de Gasparin,
+brother of the illustrious agriculturist, demonstrated more
+than thirty years ago, in an original paper, that many natural
+dikes formerly existed in the mountain valleys, which have
+been swept away by the waters. He proposed to rebuild and
+to multiply them. This interesting suggestion has reappeared
+several times since, but has met with strong opposition from
+skilful engineers. It would, nevertheless, be well to try the
+experiment of creating artificial lakes which should fill themselves
+with the water of melting snows and deluging rains, to
+be drawn out in times of drought. If this plan has able opposers,
+it has also warm advocates. Experience alone can
+decide the question."<a name="FNanchor_323_323" id="FNanchor_323_323"></a><a href="#Footnote_323_323" class="fnanchor">[323]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Climatic Effects of Draining Lakes and Marshes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The draining of lakes, marshes, and other superficial accumulations
+of moisture, reduces the water surface of a country,
+and, of course, the evaporation from it. Lakes, too, in elevated
+positions, lose a part of their water by infiltration, and thereby
+supply other lakes, springs, and rivulets at lower levels. Hence,
+it is evident that the draining of such waters, if carried on
+upon a large scale, must affect both the humidity and the temperature
+of the atmosphere, and the permanent supply of
+water for extensive districts.<a name="FNanchor_324_324" id="FNanchor_324_324"></a><a href="#Footnote_324_324" class="fnanchor">[324]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Geographical and Climatic Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs,
+and Canals.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Many processes of internal improvement, such as aqueducts
+for the supply of great cities, railroad cuts and embankments,
+and the like, divert water from its natural channels,
+and affect its distribution and ultimate discharge. The collecting
+of the waters of a considerable district into reservoirs,
+to be thence carried off by means of aqueducts, as, for example,
+in the forest of Belgrade, near Constantinople, deprives
+the grounds originally watered by the springs and rivulets of
+the necessary moisture, and reduces them to barrenness. Similar
+effects must have followed from the construction of the
+numerous aqueducts which supplied ancient Rome with such
+a profuse abundance of water. On the other hand, the filtration
+of water through the banks or walls of an aqueduct car<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>ried
+upon a high level across low ground, often injures the
+adjacent soil, and is prejudicial to the health of the neighboring
+population; and it has been observed in Switzerland, that
+fevers have been produced by the stagnation of the water in
+excavations from which earth had been taken to form embankments
+for railways.</p>
+
+<p>If we consider only the influence of physical improvements
+on civilized life, we shall perhaps ascribe to navigable canals a
+higher importance, or at least a more diversified influence,
+than to any other works of man designed to control the waters
+of the earth, and to affect their distribution, They bind distant
+regions together by social ties, through the agency of the
+commerce they promote; they facilitate the transportation of
+military stores and engines, and of other heavy material connected
+with the discharge of the functions of government; they
+encourage industry by giving marketable value to raw material
+and to objects of artificial elaboration which would otherwise
+be worthless on account of the cost of conveyance; they
+supply from their surplus waters means of irrigation and of
+mechanical power; and, in many other ways, they contribute
+much to advance the prosperity and civilization of nations. Nor
+are they wholly without geographical importance. They sometimes
+drain lands by conveying off water which would otherwise
+stagnate on the surface, and, on the other hand, like aqueducts,
+they render the neighboring soil cold and moist by the
+percolation of water through their embankments;<a name="FNanchor_325_325" id="FNanchor_325_325"></a><a href="#Footnote_325_325" class="fnanchor">[325]</a> they dam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>
+up, check, and divert the course of natural currents, and deliver
+them at points opposite to, or distant from, their original
+outlets; they often require extensive reservoirs to feed them,
+thus retaining through the year accumulations of water&mdash;which
+would otherwise run off, or evaporate in the dry season&mdash;and
+thereby enlarging the evaporable surface of the
+country; and we have already seen that they interchange the
+flora and the fauna of provinces widely separated by nature.
+All these modes of action certainly influence climate and the
+character of terrestrial surface, though our means of observation
+are not yet perfected enough to enable us to appreciate
+and measure their effects.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Climatic and Geographical Effects of Surface and
+Underground Draining.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I have commenced this chapter with a description of the
+dikes and other hydraulic works of the Netherland engineers,
+because the geographical results of such operations are more
+obvious and more easily measured, though certainly not more
+important, than those of the older and more widely diffused
+modes of resisting or directing the flow of waters, which have
+been practised from remote antiquity in the interior of all
+civilized countries. Draining and irrigation are habitually
+regarded as purely agricultural processes, having little or no
+relation to technical geography; but we shall find that they
+exert a powerful influence on soil, climate, and animal and
+vegetable life, and may, therefore, justly claim to be regarded
+as geographical elements.</p>
+
+<h4><i>Surface and Under-draining and their Effects.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Superficial draining is a necessity in all lands newly reclaimed
+from the forest. The face of the ground in the woods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>
+is never so regularly inclined as to permit water to flow freely
+over it. There are, even on the hillsides, many small ridges
+and depressions, partly belonging to the original distribution
+of the soil, and partly occasioned by irregularities in the
+growth and deposit of vegetable matter. These, in the husbandry
+of nature, serve as dams and reservoirs to collect a
+larger supply of moisture than the spongy earth can at once
+imbibe. Besides this, the vegetable mould is, even under the
+most favorable circumstances, slow in parting with the humidity
+it has accumulated under the protection of the woods,
+and the infiltration from neighboring forests contributes to
+keep the soil of small clearings too wet for the advantageous
+cultivation of artificial crops. For these reasons, surface draining
+must have commenced with agriculture itself, and there is
+probably no cultivated district, one may almost say no single
+field, which is not provided with artificial arrangements for
+facilitating the escape of superficial water, and thus carrying off
+moisture which, in the natural condition of the earth, would
+have been imbibed by the soil.</p>
+
+<p>The beneficial effects of surface drainage, the necessity of
+extending the fields as population increased, and the inconveniences
+resulting from the presence of marshes in otherwise
+improved regions, must have suggested at a very early period
+of human industry the expediency of converting bogs and
+swamps into dry land by drawing off their waters; and it
+would not be long after the introduction of this practice before
+further acquisition of agricultural territory would be made by
+lowering the outlet of small ponds and lakes, and adding the
+ground they covered to the domain of the husbandman.</p>
+
+<p>All these processes belong to the incipient civilization of
+the ante-historical periods, but the construction of subterranean
+channels for the removal of infiltrated water marks ages and
+countries distinguished by a great advance in agricultural
+theory and practice, a great accumulation of pecuniary capital,
+and a density of population which creates a ready demand and
+a high price for all products of rural industry. Under-draining,
+too, would be most advantageous in damp and cool cli<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>mates,
+where evaporation is slow, and upon soils where the
+natural inclination of surface does not promote a very rapid
+flow of the surface waters. All the conditions required to
+make this mode of rural improvement, if not absolutely necessary,
+at least apparently profitable, exist in Great Britain, and
+it is, therefore, very natural that the wealthy and intelligent
+farmers of England should have carried this practice farther,
+and reaped a more abundant pecuniary return from it, than
+those of any other country.</p>
+
+<p>Besides superficial and subsoil drains, there is another
+method of disposing of superfluous surface water, which, however,
+can rarely be practised, because the necessary conditions
+for its employment are not of frequent occurrence. Whenever
+a tenacious water-holding stratum rests on a loose, gravelly
+bed, so situated as to admit of a free discharge of water from
+or through it by means of the outcropping of the bed at a lower
+level, or of deep-lying conduits leading to distant points of
+discharge, superficial waters may be carried off by opening a
+passage for them through the impervious into the permeable
+stratum. Thus, according to Bischof, as early as the time of
+King R&eacute;n&eacute;, in the first half of the fifteenth century, the plain
+of Paluns, near Marseilles, was laid dry by boring, and Wittwer
+informs us that drainage is effected at Munich by conducting
+the superfluous water into large excavations, from which it
+filters through into a lower stratum of pebble and gravel lying
+a little above the level of the river Isar.<a name="FNanchor_326_326" id="FNanchor_326_326"></a><a href="#Footnote_326_326" class="fnanchor">[326]</a> So at Washington,
+in the western part of the city, which lies high above the rivers
+Potomac and Rock Creek, many houses are provided with dry
+wells for draining their cellars and foundations. These extend
+through hard tenacious earth to the depth of thirty or forty
+feet, when they strike a stratum of gravel, through which the
+water readily passes off.</p>
+
+<p>This practice has been extensively employed at Paris, not
+merely for carrying off ordinary surface water, but for the dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>charge
+of offensive and deleterious fluids from chemical and
+manufacturing establishments. A well of this sort received,
+in the winter of 1832-'33, twenty thousand gallons per day
+of the foul water from a starch factory, and the same process
+was largely used in other factories. The apprehension of
+injury to common and artesian wells and springs led to an
+investigation on this subject, in behalf of the municipal authorities,
+by Girard and Parent Duchatelet, in the latter year.
+The report of these gentlemen, published in the <i>Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i> for 1833, second half year, is full of curious
+and instructive facts respecting the position and distribution
+of the subterranean waters under and near Paris; but it must
+suffice to say that the report came to the conclusion that, in
+consequence of the absolute immobility of these waters, and
+the relatively small quantity of noxious fluid to be conveyed
+to them, there was no danger of the diffusion of this latter, if
+discharged into them. This result will not surprise those who
+know that, in another work, Duchatelet maintains analogous
+opinions as to the effect of the discharge of the city sewers
+into the Seine upon the waters of that river. The quantity of
+matter delivered by them he holds to be so nearly infinitesimal,
+as compared with the volume of water of the Seine, that
+it cannot possibly affect it to a sensible degree. I would, however,
+advise determined water drinkers living at Paris to adopt
+his conclusions, without studying his facts and his arguments;
+for it is quite possible that he may convert his readers to a
+faith opposite to his own, and that they will finally agree with
+the poet who held water an "ignoble beverage."</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Climatic and Geographical Effects of Surface Draining.</i></h4>
+
+<p>When we remove water from the surface, we diminish the
+evaporation from it, and, of course, the refrigeration which
+accompanies all evaporation is diminished in proportion.
+Hence superficial draining ought to be attended with an elevation
+of atmospheric temperature, and, in cold countries, it
+might be expected to lessen the frequency of frosts. Accordingly,
+it is a fact of experience that, other things being equal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
+dry soils, and the air in contact with them, are perceptibly
+warmer during the season of vegetation, when evaporation is
+most rapid, than moist lands and the atmospheric stratum
+resting upon them. Instrumental observation on this special
+point has not yet been undertaken on a very large scale, but
+still we have thermometric data sufficient to warrant the general
+conclusion, and the influence of drainage in diminishing the
+frequency of frost appears to be even better established than a
+direct increase of atmospheric temperature. The steep and
+dry uplands of the Green Mountain range in New England
+often escape frosts when the Indian corn harvest on moister
+grounds, five hundred or even a thousand feet lower, is destroyed
+or greatly injured by them. The neighborhood of a
+marsh is sure to be exposed to late spring and early autumnal
+frosts, but they cease to be feared after it is drained, and this
+is particularly observable in very cold climates, as, for example,
+in Lapland.<a name="FNanchor_327_327" id="FNanchor_327_327"></a><a href="#Footnote_327_327" class="fnanchor">[327]</a></p>
+
+<p>In England, under-drains are not generally laid below the
+reach of daily variations of temperature, or below a point from
+which moisture might be brought to the surface by capillary
+attraction and evaporated by the heat of the sun. They, therefore,
+like surface drains, withdraw from local solar action much
+moisture which would otherwise be vaporized by it, and, at
+the same time, by drying the soil above them, they increase its
+effective hygroscopicity, and it consequently absorbs from the
+atmosphere a greater quantity of water than it did when, for
+want of under-drainage, the subsoil was always humid, if not
+saturated. Under-drains, then, contribute to the dryness as
+well as to the warmth of the atmosphere, and, as dry ground
+is more readily heated by the rays of the sun than wet, they
+tend also to raise the mean, and especially the summer temperature
+of the soil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So far as respects the immediate improvement of soil and
+climate, and the increased abundance of the harvests, the English
+system of surface and subsoil drainage has fully justified
+the eulogiums of its advocates; but its extensive adoption
+appears to have been attended with some altogether unforeseen
+and undesirable consequences, very analogous to those which
+I have described as resulting from the clearing of the forests.
+The under-drains carry off very rapidly the water imbibed by
+the soil from precipitation, and through infiltration from neighboring
+springs or other sources of supply. Consequently, in
+wet seasons, or after heavy rains, a river bordered by artificially
+drained lands receives in a few hours, from superficial
+and from subterranean conduits, an accession of water which,
+in the natural state of the earth, would have reached it only
+by small instalments after percolating through hidden paths
+for weeks or even months, and would have furnished perennial
+and comparatively regular contributions, instead of swelling
+deluges, to its channel. Thus, when human impatience rashly
+substitutes swiftly acting artificial contrivances for the slow
+methods by which nature drains the surface and superficial
+strata of a river basin, the original equilibrium is disturbed,
+the waters of the heavens are no longer stored up in the earth
+to be gradually given out again, but are hurried out of man's
+domain with wasteful haste; and while the inundations of the
+river are sudden and disastrous, its current, when the drains
+have run dry, is reduced to a rivulet, it ceases to supply the
+power to drive the machinery for which it was once amply
+sufficient, and scarcely even waters the herds that pasture upon
+its margin.<a name="FNanchor_328_328" id="FNanchor_328_328"></a><a href="#Footnote_328_328" class="fnanchor">[328]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Irrigation and its Climatic and Geographical Effects.</i></h4>
+
+<p>We know little of the history of the extinct civilizations
+which preceded the culture of the classic ages, and no nation
+has, in modern times, spontaneously emerged from barbarism,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>
+and created for itself the arts of social life.<a name="FNanchor_329_329" id="FNanchor_329_329"></a><a href="#Footnote_329_329" class="fnanchor">[329]</a> The improvements
+of the savage races whose history we can distinctly trace
+are borrowed and imitative, and our theories as to the origin
+and natural development of industrial art are conjectural. Of
+course, the relative antiquity of particular branches of human
+industry depends much upon the natural character of soil, climate,
+and spontaneous vegetable and animal life in different
+countries; and while the geographical influence of man would,
+under given circumstances, be exerted in one direction, it
+would, under different conditions, act in an opposite or a
+diverging line. I have given some reasons for thinking that
+in the climates to which our attention has been chiefly directed,
+man's first interference with the natural arrangement and disposal
+of the waters was in the way of drainage of surface.
+But if we are to judge from existing remains alone, we should
+probably conclude that irrigation is older than drainage; for,
+in the regions regarded by general tradition as the cradle of
+the human race, we find traces of canals evidently constructed
+for the former purpose at a period long preceding the ages of
+which we have any written memorials. There are, in ancient
+Armenia, extensive districts which were already abandoned to
+desolation at the earliest historical epoch, but which, in a yet
+remoter antiquity, had been irrigated by a complicated and
+highly artificial system of canals, the lines of which can still
+be followed; and there are, in all the highlands where the
+sources of the Euphrates rise, in Persia, in Egypt, in India,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
+and in China, works of this sort which must have been in
+existence before man had begun to record his own annals.</p>
+
+<p>In warm countries, such as most of those just mentioned,
+the effects I have described as usually resulting from the clearing
+of the forests would very soon follow. In such climates,
+the rains are inclined to be periodical; they are also violent,
+and for these reasons the soil would be parched in summer
+and liable to wash in winter. In these countries, therefore, the
+necessity for irrigation must soon have been felt, and its introduction
+into mountainous regions like Armenia must have
+been immediately followed by a system of terracing, or at
+least scarping the hillsides. Pasture and meadow, indeed,
+may be irrigated even when the surface is both steep and irregular,
+as may be observed abundantly on the Swiss as well as
+on the Piedmontese slope of the Alps; but in dry climates,
+plough land and gardens on hilly grounds require terracing,
+both for supporting the soil and for administering water by
+irrigation, and it should be remembered that terracing, of
+itself, even without special arrangements for controlling the
+distribution of water, prevents or at least checks the flow of
+rain water, and gives it time to sink into the ground instead
+of running off over the surface.</p>
+
+<p>There are few things in Continental husbandry which surprise
+English or American observers so much as the extent to
+which irrigation is employed in agriculture, and that, too, on
+soils, and with a temperature, where their own experience
+would have led them to suppose it would be injurious to vegetation
+rather than beneficial to it. The summers in Northern
+Italy, though longer, are very often not warmer than in New
+England; and in ordinary years, the summer rains are as frequent
+and as abundant in the former country as in the latter.
+Yet in Piedmont and Lombardy, irrigation is bestowed upon
+almost every crop, while in New England it is never employed
+at all in farming husbandry, or indeed for any purpose except
+in kitchen gardens, and possibly, in rare cases, in some other
+small branch of agricultural industry.<a name="FNanchor_330_330" id="FNanchor_330_330"></a><a href="#Footnote_330_330" class="fnanchor">[330]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The summers in Egypt, in Syria, and in Asia Minor and
+even Rumelia, are almost rainless. In such climates, the
+necessity of irrigation is obvious, and the loss of the ancient
+means of furnishing it readily explains the diminished fertility
+of most of the countries in question.<a name="FNanchor_331_331" id="FNanchor_331_331"></a><a href="#Footnote_331_331" class="fnanchor">[331]</a> The surface of Pales<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>tine,
+for example, is composed, in a great measure, of rounded
+limestone hills, once, no doubt, covered with forests. These
+were partially removed before the Jewish conquest.<a name="FNanchor_332_332" id="FNanchor_332_332"></a><a href="#Footnote_332_332" class="fnanchor">[332]</a> When
+the soil began to suffer from drought, reservoirs to retain the
+waters of winter were hewn in the rock near the tops of the
+hills, and the declivities were terraced. So long as the cisterns
+were in good order, and the terraces kept up, the fertility of
+Palestine was unsurpassed, but when misgovernment and for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>eign
+and intestine war occasioned the neglect or destruction
+of these works&mdash;traces of which still meet the traveller's eye at
+every step,&mdash;when the reservoirs were broken and the terrace
+walls had fallen down, there was no longer water for irrigation
+in summer, the rains of winter soon washed away most of the
+thin layer of earth upon the rocks, and Palestine was reduced
+almost to the condition of a desert.</p>
+
+<p>The course of events has been the same in Idum&aelig;a. The
+observing traveller discovers everywhere about Petra, particularly
+if he enters the city by the route of Wadi Ksheibeh,
+very extensive traces of ancient cultivation, and upon the
+neighboring ridges are the ruins of numerous cisterns evidently
+constructed to furnish a supply of water for irrigation.<a name="FNanchor_333_333" id="FNanchor_333_333"></a><a href="#Footnote_333_333" class="fnanchor">[333]</a> In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>
+primitive ages, the precipitation of winter in these hilly countries
+was, in great part, retained for a time in the superficial
+soil, first by the vegetable mould of the forests, and then by
+the artificial arrangements I have described. The water imbibed
+by the earth was partly taken up by direct evaporation,
+partly absorbed by vegetation, and partly carried down by
+infiltration to subjacent strata which gave it out in springs at
+lower levels, and thus a fertility of soil and a condition of the
+atmosphere were maintained sufficient to admit of the dense
+population that once inhabited those now arid wastes. At
+present, the rain water runs immediately off from the surface
+and is carried down to the sea, or is drunk up by the sands of
+the wadis, and the hillsides which once teemed with plenty
+are bare of vegetation, and seared by the scorching winds of
+the desert.</p>
+
+<p>In Southern Europe, in the Turkish Empire, and in many
+other countries, a very large proportion of the surface is, if not
+absolutely flooded, at least thoroughly moistened by irrigation,
+a great number of times in the course of every season, and this,
+especially, at periods when it would otherwise be quite dry,
+and when, too, the power of the sun and the capacity of the
+air for absorbing moisture are greatest. Hence it is obvious
+that the amount of evaporation from the earth in these countries,
+and, of course, the humidity and the temperature of both
+the soil and the atmosphere in contact with it, must be much
+affected by the practice of irrigation. The cultivable area of
+Egypt, or the space accessible to cultivation, between desert
+and desert, is more than seven thousand square statute miles.
+Much of the surface, though not out of the reach of irrigation,
+lies too high to be economically watered, and irrigation and
+cultivation are therefore confined to an area of five or six thousand
+square miles, nearly the whole of which is regularly and
+constantly watered when not covered by the inundation, except
+in the short interval between the harvest and the rise of
+the waters. For nearly half of the year, then, irrigation adds
+five or six thousand square miles, or more than a square equatorial
+degree, to the evaporable surface of the Nile valley, or,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>
+in other words, more than decuples the area from which an
+appreciable quantity of moisture would otherwise be evaporated;
+for after the Nile has retired within its banks, its
+waters by no means cover one tenth of the space just mentioned.<a name="FNanchor_334_334" id="FNanchor_334_334"></a><a href="#Footnote_334_334" class="fnanchor">[334]</a>
+The fresh-water canals now constructing, in connec<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>tion
+with the works for the Suez canal, will not only restore
+the long abandoned fields east of the Nile, but add to the arable
+soil of Egypt hundreds of square miles of newly reclaimed
+desert, and thus still further increase the climatic effects of
+irrigation.<a name="FNanchor_335_335" id="FNanchor_335_335"></a><a href="#Footnote_335_335" class="fnanchor">[335]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Nile receives not a single tributary in its course through
+Egypt; there is not so much as one living spring in the whole
+land,<a name="FNanchor_336_336" id="FNanchor_336_336"></a><a href="#Footnote_336_336" class="fnanchor">[336]</a> and, with the exception of a narrow strip of coast, where
+the annual precipitation is said to amount to six inches, the
+fall of rain in the territory of the Pharaohs is not two inches
+in the year. The subsoil of the whole valley is pervaded with
+moisture by infiltration from the Nile, and water can everywhere
+be found at the depth of a few feet. Were irrigation
+suspended, and Egypt abandoned, as in that case it must be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>
+to the operations of nature, there is no doubt that trees, the
+roots of which penetrate deeply, would in time establish themselves
+on the deserted soil, fill the valley with verdure, and
+perhaps at last temper the climate, and even call down abundant
+rain from the heavens.<a name="FNanchor_337_337" id="FNanchor_337_337"></a><a href="#Footnote_337_337" class="fnanchor">[337]</a> But the immediate effect of
+discontinuing irrigation would be, first, an immense reduction
+of the evaporation from the valley in the dry season, and then
+a greatly augmented dryness and heat of the atmosphere.
+Even the almost constant north wind&mdash;the strength of which
+would be increased in consequence of these changes&mdash;would
+little reduce the temperature of the narrow cleft between the
+burning mountains which hem in the channel of the Nile, so
+that a single year would transform the most fertile of soils to
+the most barren of deserts, and render uninhabitable a territory
+that irrigation makes capable of sustaining as dense a
+population as has ever existed in any part of the world.<a name="FNanchor_338_338" id="FNanchor_338_338"></a><a href="#Footnote_338_338" class="fnanchor">[338]</a>
+Whether man found the valley of the Nile a forest, or such a
+waste as I have just described, we do not historically know.
+In either case, he has not simply converted a wilderness into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>
+a garden, but has unquestionably produced extensive climatic
+change.<a name="FNanchor_339_339" id="FNanchor_339_339"></a><a href="#Footnote_339_339" class="fnanchor">[339]</a></p>
+
+<p>The fields of Egypt are more regularly watered than those
+of any other country bordering on the Mediterranean, except
+the rice grounds in Italy, and perhaps the <i>marcite</i> or winter
+meadows of Lombardy; but irrigation is more or less employed
+throughout almost the entire basin of that sea, and is everywhere
+attended with effects which, if less in degree, are analogous
+in character to those resulting from it in Egypt. In
+general, it may be said that the soil is nowhere artificially
+watered except when it is so dry that little moisture would be
+evaporated from it, and, consequently, every acre of irrigated
+ground is so much added to the evaporable surface of the
+country. When the supply of water is unlimited, it is allowed,
+after serving its purpose on one field, to run into drains, canals,
+or rivers. But in most regions where irrigation is regularly
+employed, it is necessary to economize the water; after passing
+over or through one parcel of ground, it is conducted to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>
+another; no more is withdrawn from the canals at any one
+point than is absorbed by the soil it irrigates, or evaporated
+from it, and, consequently, it is not restored to liquid circulation,
+except by infiltration or precipitation. We are safe, then,
+in saying that the humidity evaporated from any artificially
+watered soil is increased by a quantity bearing a large proportion
+to the whole amount distributed over it; for most even
+of that which is absorbed by the earth is immediately given
+out again either by vegetables or by evaporation.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to ascertain precisely either the extent of surface
+thus watered, or the amount of water supplied, in any
+given country, because these quantities vary with the character
+of the season; but there are not many districts in Southern Europe
+where the management of the arrangements for irrigation
+is not one of the most important branches of agricultural labor.
+The eminent engineer Lombardini describes the system of irrigation
+in Lombardy as, "every day in summer, diffusing
+over 550,000 hectares of land 45,000,000 cubic m&egrave;tres of water,
+which is equal to the entire volume of the Seine, at an ordinary
+flood, or a rise of three m&egrave;tres above the hydrometer at
+the bridge of La Tournelle at Paris."<a name="FNanchor_340_340" id="FNanchor_340_340"></a><a href="#Footnote_340_340" class="fnanchor">[340]</a> Niel states the quantity
+of land irrigated in the former kingdom of Sardinia, including
+Savoy, in 1856, at 240,000 hectares, or not much less than
+600,000 acres. This is about four thirteenths of the cultivable
+soil of the kingdom. According to the same author, the irrigated
+lands in France did not exceed 100,000 hectares, or
+247,000 acres, while those in Lombardy amounted to 450,000
+hectares, more than 1,100,000 acres.<a name="FNanchor_341_341" id="FNanchor_341_341"></a><a href="#Footnote_341_341" class="fnanchor">[341]</a> In these three states
+alone, then, there were more than three thousand square miles
+of artificially watered land, and if we add the irrigated soils
+of the rest of Italy, of the Mediterranean islands, of the Spanish
+peninsula, of Turkey in Europe and in Asia Minor, of
+Syria, of Egypt and the remainder of Northern Africa, we
+shall see that irrigation increases the evaporable surface of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>
+Mediterranean basin by a quantity bearing no inconsiderable
+proportion to the area naturally covered by water within it.
+As near as can be ascertained, the amount of water applied
+to irrigated lands is scarcely anywhere less than the total precipitation
+during the season of vegetable growth, and in general
+it much exceeds that quantity. In grass grounds and in
+field culture it ranges from 27 or 28 to 60 inches, while in
+smaller crops, tilled by hand labor, it is sometimes carried as
+high as 300 inches.<a name="FNanchor_342_342" id="FNanchor_342_342"></a><a href="#Footnote_342_342" class="fnanchor">[342]</a> The rice grounds and the <i>marcite</i> of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span>
+Lombardy are not included in these estimates of the amount
+of water applied. Arrangements are concluded, and new
+plans proposed, for an immense increase of the lands fertilized
+by irrigation in France and Italy, and there is every reason to
+believe that the artificially watered soil of the latter country
+will be doubled, that of France quadrupled, before the end of
+this century. There can be no doubt that by these operations
+man is exercising a powerful influence on soil, on vegetable
+and animal life, and on climate, and hence that in this, as
+in many other fields of industry, he is truly a geographical
+agency.<a name="FNanchor_343_343" id="FNanchor_343_343"></a><a href="#Footnote_343_343" class="fnanchor">[343]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>
+The quantity of water artificially withdrawn from running
+streams for the purpose of irrigation is such as very sensibly
+to affect their volume, and it is, therefore, an important element
+in the geography of rivers. Brooks of no trifling current<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>
+are often wholly diverted from their natural channels to supply
+the canals, and their entire mass of water completely
+absorbed, so that it does not reach the river which it naturally
+feeds, except in such proportion as it is conveyed to it by infiltration.
+Irrigation, therefore, diminishes great rivers in warm
+countries by cutting off their sources of supply as well as by
+direct abstraction of water from their channels. We have just
+seen that the system of irrigation in Lombardy deprives the
+Po of a quantity of water equal to the total delivery of the
+Seine at ordinary flood, or, in other words, of the equivalent
+of a tributary navigable for hundreds of miles by vessels of
+considerable burden. The new canals commenced and projected
+will greatly increase the loss. The water required for
+irrigation in Egypt is less than would be supposed from the
+exceeding rapidity of evaporation in that arid climate; for the
+soil is thoroughly saturated during the inundation, and infiltration
+from the Nile continues to supply a considerable
+amount of humidity in the dryest season. Linant Bey computed
+that twenty-nine cubic m&egrave;tres per day sufficed to irrigate
+a hectare in the Delta.<a name="FNanchor_344_344" id="FNanchor_344_344"></a><a href="#Footnote_344_344" class="fnanchor">[344]</a> This is equivalent to a fall of
+rain of two millim&egrave;tres and nine tenths per day, or, if we suppose
+water to be applied for one hundred and fifty days during
+the dry season, to a total precipitation of 435 millim&egrave;tres,
+about seventeen inches and one third. Taking the area of
+actually cultivated soil in Egypt at the low estimate of
+3,600,000 acres, and the average amount of water daily applied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>
+in both Upper and Lower Egypt at twelve hundredths of an
+inch in depth, we have an abstraction of 61,000,000 cubic
+yards, which&mdash;the mean daily delivery of the Nile being in
+round numbers 320,000,000 cubic yards&mdash;is nearly one fifth
+of the average quantity of water contributed to the Mediterranean
+by that river.</p>
+
+<p>Irrigation, as employed for certain special purposes in
+Europe and America, is productive of very prejudicial climatic
+effects. I refer particularly to the cultivation of rice in the
+Slave States of the American Union and in Italy. The climate
+of the Southern States is not necessarily unhealthy for the
+white man, but he can scarcely sleep a single night in the
+vicinity of the rice grounds without being attacked by a dangerous
+fever.<a name="FNanchor_345_345" id="FNanchor_345_345"></a><a href="#Footnote_345_345" class="fnanchor">[345]</a> The neighborhood of the rice fields is less
+pestilential in Lombardy and Piedmont than in South Carolina
+and Georgia, but still very insalubrious to both man and
+beast. "Not only does the population decrease where rice is
+grown," says Escourrou Milliago, "but even the flocks are
+attacked by typhus. In the rice grounds, the soil is divided
+into compartments rising in gradual succession to the level of
+the irrigating canal, in order that the water, after having
+flowed one field, may be drawn off to another, and thus a
+single current serve for several compartments, the lowest field,
+of course, still being higher than the ditch which at last drains
+both it and the adjacent soil. This arrangement gives a cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>tain
+force of hydrostatic pressure to the water with which the
+rice is irrigated, and the infiltration from these fields is said to
+extend through neighboring grounds, sometimes to the distance
+of not less than a myriam&egrave;tre, or six English miles, and to be
+destructive to crops and even trees reached by it. Land thus
+affected can no longer be employed for any purpose but growing
+rice, and when prepared for that crop, it propagates still
+further the evils under which it had itself suffered, and, of
+course, the mischief is a growing one."<a name="FNanchor_346_346" id="FNanchor_346_346"></a><a href="#Footnote_346_346" class="fnanchor">[346]</a></p>
+
+<p>The attentive traveller in Egypt and Nubia cannot fail to
+notice many localities, generally of small extent, where the
+soil is rendered infertile by an excess of saline matter in its
+composition. In many cases, perhaps in all, these barren spots
+lie rather above the level usually flooded by the inundations
+of the Nile, and yet they exhibit traces of former cultivation.
+Recent observations in India, a notice of which I find in an
+account of a meeting of the Asiatic Society in the Athen&aelig;um
+of December 20, 1862, No. 1834, suggest a possible explanation
+of this fact. At this meeting, Professor Medlicott read an essay
+on "the saline efflorescence called 'Reh' and 'Kuller,'"
+which is gradually invading many of the most fertile districts
+of Northern and Western India, and changing them into sterile
+deserts. It consists principally of sulphate of soda (Glauber's
+salts), with varying proportions of common salt. Mr. Medlicott
+pronounces "these salts (which, in small quantities are
+favorable to fertility of soil) to be the gradual result of concentration
+by evaporation of river and canal waters, which contain
+them in very minute quantities, and with which the lands are
+either irrigated or occasionally overflowed." The river inundations
+in hot countries usually take place but once in a year,
+and, though the banks remain submerged for days or even
+weeks, the water at that period, being derived principally from
+rains and snows, must be less highly charged with mineral
+matter than at lower stages, and besides, it is always in motion.
+The water of irrigation, on the other hand, is applied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>
+for many months in succession, it is drawn from rivers at the
+seasons when their proportion of salts is greatest, and it either
+sinks into the superficial soil, carrying with it the saline substances
+it holds in solution, or is evaporated from the surface,
+leaving them upon it. Hence irrigation must impart to the
+soil more salts than natural inundation. The sterilized
+grounds in Egypt and Nubia lying above the reach of the
+floods, as I have said, we may suppose them to have been first
+cultivated in that remote antiquity when the Nile valley received
+its earliest inhabitants. They must have been artificially
+irrigated from the beginning; they may have been
+under cultivation many centuries before the soil at a lower
+level was invaded by man, and hence it is natural that they
+should be more strongly impregnated with saline matter than
+fields which are exposed every year, for some weeks, to the
+action of running water so nearly pure that it would be more
+likely to dissolve salts than to deposit them.</p>
+
+
+<h4>INUNDATIONS AND TORRENTS.</h4>
+
+<p>In pointing out in a former chapter the evils which have
+resulted from the too extensive destruction of the forests, I
+dwelt at some length on the increased violence of river inundations,
+and especially on the devastations of torrents, in countries
+improvidently deprived of their woods, and I spoke of
+the replanting of the forests as the only effectual method of
+preventing the frequent recurrence of disastrous floods. There
+are many regions where, from the loss of the superficial soil,
+from financial considerations, and from other causes, the restoration
+of the woods is not, under present circumstances, to
+be hoped for. Even where that measure is feasible and in
+actual process of execution, a great number of years must
+elapse before the action of the destructive causes in question
+can be arrested or perhaps even sensibly mitigated by it. Besides
+this, leaving out of view the objections urged by Belgrand
+and his followers to the generally received opinions
+concerning the beneficial influence of the forest as respects<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>
+river inundations&mdash;for no one disputes its importance in preventing
+the formation and limiting the ravages of mountain
+torrents&mdash;floods will always occur in years of excessive precipitation,
+whether the surface of the soil be generally cleared or
+generally wooded.</p>
+
+<p>Physical improvement in this respect, then, cannot he confined
+to preventive measures, but, in countries subject to damage
+by inundation, means must he contrived to obviate dangers
+and diminish injuries to which human life and all the works
+of human industry will occasionally be exposed, in spite of
+every effort to lessen the frequency of their recurrence by
+acting directly on the causes that produce them. As every
+civilized country is, in some degree, subject to inundation by
+the overflow of rivers, the evil is a familiar one, and needs no
+general description. In discussing this branch of the subject,
+therefore, I may confine myself chiefly to the means that have
+been or may be employed to resist the force and limit the
+ravages of floods, which, left wholly unrestrained, would not
+only inflict immense injury upon the material interests of man,
+but produce geographical revolutions of no little magnitude.</p>
+
+
+<h4>a. <i>River Embankments.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The most obvious and doubtless earliest method of preventing
+the escape of river waters from their natural channels,
+and the overflow of fields and towns by their spread, is that of
+raised embankments along their course. The necessity of such
+embankments usually arises from the gradual elevation of the
+bed of running streams in consequence of the deposit of the
+earth and gravel they are charged with in high water; and, as
+we have seen, this elevation is rapidly accelerated when the
+highlands around the headwaters of rivers are cleared of their
+forests. When a river is embanked at a given point, and, consequently,
+the water of its floods, which would otherwise
+spread over a wide surface, is confined within narrow limits,
+the velocity of the current and its transporting power are augmented,
+and its burden of sand and gravel is deposited at some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>
+lower point, where the rapidity of its flow is checked by a
+diminution in the inclination of the bed, by a wider channel,
+or finally by a lacustrine or marine basin which receives its
+waters. Wherever it lets fall solid material, its channel is
+raised in consequence, and the declivity of the whole bed
+between the head of the embankment and the slack of the
+stream is reduced. Hence the current, at first accelerated by
+confinement, is afterward checked by the mechanical resistance
+of the matter deposited, and by the diminished inclination
+of its channel, and then begins again to let fall the earth
+it holds in suspension, and to raise its bed at the point where
+its overflow had been before prevented by embankment. The
+bank must now be raised in proportion, and these processes
+would be repeated and repeated indefinitely, had not nature
+provided a remedy in floods, which sweep out recent deposits,
+burst the bonds of the river and overwhelm the adjacent country
+with final desolation, or divert the current into a new
+channel, destined to become, in its turn, the scene of a similar
+struggle between man and the waters.</p>
+
+<p>Few rivers, like the Nile, more than compensate by the
+fertilizing properties of their water and their slime for the
+damage they may do in inundations, and, consequently, there
+are few whose floods are not an object of dread, few whose
+encroachments upon their banks are not a source of constant
+anxiety and expense to the proprietors of the lands through
+which they flow. River dikes, for confining the spread of
+currents at high water, are of great antiquity in the East, and
+those of the Po and its tributaries were begun before we have
+any trustworthy physical or political annals of the provinces
+upon their borders. From the earliest ages, the Italian hydraulic
+engineers have stood in the front rank of their profession,
+and the Italian literature of this branch of material improvement
+is exceedingly voluminous. But the countries for
+which I write have no rivers like the Po, no plains like those
+of Lombardy, and the dangers to which the inhabitants of
+English and American river banks are exposed are more nearly
+analogous to those that threaten the soil and population in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>
+valleys and plains of France, than to the perils and losses of
+the Lombard. The writings of the Italian hydrographers, too,
+though rich in professional instruction, are less accessible to
+foreigners and less adapted to popular use than those of French
+engineers.<a name="FNanchor_347_347" id="FNanchor_347_347"></a><a href="#Footnote_347_347" class="fnanchor">[347]</a> For these reasons I shall take my citations principally
+from French authorities, though I shall occasionally
+allude to Italian writers on the floods of the Tiber, of the Arno,
+and some other Italian streams which much resemble those of
+the rivers of England and the United States.</p>
+
+
+<h4>b. <i>Floods of the Ard&egrave;che.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The floods of mountain streams are attended with greater
+immediate danger to life and property than those of rivers of
+less rapid flow, because their currents are more impetuous, and
+they rise more suddenly and with less previous warning. At
+the same time, their ravages are confined within narrower
+limits, the waters retire sooner to their accustomed channel,
+and the danger is more quickly over, than in the case of inundations
+of larger rivers. The Ard&egrave;che, which has given its
+name to a department in France, drains a basin of 600,238
+acres, or a little less than nine hundred and thirty-eight square
+miles. Its remotest source is about seventy-five miles, in a
+straight line, from its junction with the Rhone, and springs at
+an elevation of four thousand feet above that point. At the
+lowest stage of the river, the bed of the Chassezac, its largest
+and longest tributary, is in many places completely dry on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>
+surface&mdash;the water being sufficient only to supply the subterranean
+channels of infiltration&mdash;and the Ard&egrave;che itself is
+almost everywhere fordable, even below the mouth of the
+Chassezac. But in floods, the river has sometimes risen more
+than sixty feet at the Pont d'Arc, a natural arch of two hundred
+feet chord, which spans the stream below its junction
+with all its important affluents. At the height of the inundation
+of 1827, the quantity of water passing this point&mdash;after
+deducting thirty per cent. for material transported with the
+current and for irregularity of flow&mdash;was estimated at 8,845
+cubic yards to the second, and between twelve at noon on the
+10th of September of that year and ten o'clock the next
+morning, the water discharged through the passage in question
+amounted to more than 450,000,000 cubic yards. This quantity,
+distributed equally through the basin of the river, would
+cover its entire area to a depth of more than five inches.</p>
+
+<p>The Ard&egrave;che rises so suddenly that, in the inundation of
+1846, the women who were washing in the bed of the river
+had not time to save their linen, and barely escaped with their
+lives, though they instantly fled upon hearing the roar of the
+approaching flood. Its waters and those of its affluents fall
+almost as rapidly, for in less than twenty-four hours after the
+rain has ceased in the C&eacute;vennes, where it rises, the Ard&egrave;che
+returns within its ordinary channel, even at its junction with
+the Rhone. In the flood of 1772, the water at La Beaume de
+Ruoms, on the Beaume, a tributary of the Ard&egrave;che, rose thirty-five
+feet above low water, but the stream was again fordable
+on the evening of the same day. The inundation of 1827 was,
+in this respect, exceptional, for it continued three days, during
+which period the Ard&egrave;che poured into the Rhone 1,305,000,000
+cubic yards of water.</p>
+
+<p>The Nile delivers into the sea 101,000 cubic feet or 3,741
+cubic yards per second, on an average of the whole year.<a name="FNanchor_348_348" id="FNanchor_348_348"></a><a href="#Footnote_348_348" class="fnanchor">[348]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>
+This is equal to 323,222,400 cubic yards per day. In a single
+day of flood, then, the Ard&egrave;che, a river too insignificant to be
+known except in the local topography of France, contributed
+to the Rhone once and a half, and for three consecutive days
+once and one third, as much as the average delivery of the
+Nile during the same periods, though the basin of the latter
+river contains 500,000 square miles of surface, or more than
+five hundred times as much as that of the former.</p>
+
+<p>The average annual precipitation in the basin of the Ard&egrave;che
+is not greater than in many other parts of Europe, but
+excessive quantities of rain frequently fall in that valley in the
+autumn. On the 9th of October, 1827, there fell at Joyeuse,
+on the Beaume, no less than thirty-one inches between three
+o'clock in the morning and midnight. Such facts as this explain
+the extraordinary suddenness and violence of the floods
+of the Ard&egrave;che, and the basins of many other tributaries of
+the Rhone exhibit meteorological phenomena not less remarkable.<a name="FNanchor_349_349" id="FNanchor_349_349"></a><a href="#Footnote_349_349" class="fnanchor">[349]</a>
+The inundation of the 10th September, 1857, was
+accompanied with a terrific hurricane, which passed along the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>
+eastern slope of the high grounds where the Ard&egrave;che and several
+other western affluents of the Rhone take their rise. The
+wind tore up all the trees in its path, and the rushing torrents
+bore their trunks down to the larger streams, which again transported
+them to the Rhone in such rafts that one might almost
+have crossed that river by stepping from trunk to trunk.<a name="FNanchor_350_350" id="FNanchor_350_350"></a><a href="#Footnote_350_350" class="fnanchor">[350]</a>
+The Rhone, therefore, is naturally subject to great and sudden
+inundations, and the same remark may be applied to most of
+the principal rivers of France, because the geographical character
+of all of them is approximately the same.</p>
+
+<p>The height and violence of the inundations of most great
+rivers are determined by the degree in which the floods of the
+different tributaries are coincident in time. Were all the affluents
+of the Rhone to pour their highest annual floods into its
+channel at once, were a dozen Niles to empty themselves into
+its bed at the same moment, its water would rise to a height
+and rush with an impetus that would sweep into the Mediterranean
+the entire population of its banks, and all the works
+that man has erected upon the plains which border it. But
+such a coincidence can never happen. The tributaries of this
+river run in very different directions, and some of them are
+swollen principally by the melting of the snows about their
+sources, others almost exclusively by heavy rains. When a
+damp southeast wind blows up the valley of the Ard&egrave;che, its
+moisture is condensed, and precipitated in a deluge upon the
+mountains which embosom the headwaters of that stream,
+thus producing a flood, while a neighboring basin, the axis of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>
+which lies transversely or obliquely to that of the Ard&egrave;che, is
+not at all affected.<a name="FNanchor_351_351" id="FNanchor_351_351"></a><a href="#Footnote_351_351" class="fnanchor">[351]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is easy to see that the damage occasioned by such floods
+as I have described must be almost incalculable, and it is by
+no means confined to the effects produced by overflow and the
+mechanical force of the superficial currents. In treating of
+the devastations of torrents in a former chapter, I confined
+myself principally to the erosion of surface and the transportation
+of mineral matter to lower grounds by them. The general
+action of torrents, as there shown, tends to the ultimate
+elevation of their beds by the deposit of the earth, gravel, and
+stone conveyed by them; but until they have thus raised their
+outlets so as sensibly to diminish the inclination of their channels&mdash;and
+sometimes when extraordinary floods give the torrents
+momentum enough to sweep away the accumulations
+which they have themselves heaped up&mdash;the swift flow of their
+currents, aided by the abrasion of the rolling rocks and gravel,
+scoops their beds constantly deeper, and they consequently not
+only undermine their banks, but frequently sap the most solid
+foundations which the art of man can build for the support of
+bridges and hydraulic structures.<a name="FNanchor_352_352" id="FNanchor_352_352"></a><a href="#Footnote_352_352" class="fnanchor">[352]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the inundation of 1857, the Ard&egrave;che destroyed a stone
+bridge near La Beaume, which had been built about eighty
+years before. The resistance of the piers, which were erected
+on piles, the channel at that point being of gravel, produced
+an eddying current that washed away the bed of the river
+above them, and the foundation, thus deprived of lateral support,
+yielded to the weight of the bridge, and the piles and
+piers fell up stream.</p>
+
+<p>By a curious law of compensation, the stream which, at
+flood, scoops out cavities in its bed, often fills them up again
+as soon as the diminished velocity of the current allows it to
+let fall the sand and gravel with which it is charged, so that
+when the waters return to their usual channel, the bottom
+shows no sign of having been disturbed. In a flood of the
+Escontay, a tributary of the Rhone, in 1846, piles driven sixteen
+feet into its gravelly bed for the foundation of a pier were
+torn up and carried off, and yet, when the river had fallen to
+low-water mark, the bottom at that point appeared to have
+been raised higher than it was before the flood, by new deposits
+of sand and gravel, while the cut stones of the half-built
+pier were found buried to a great depth, in the excavation
+which the water had first washed out. The gravel with which
+rivers thus restore the level of their beds is principally derived
+from the crushing of the rocks brought down by the mountain
+torrents, and the destructive effects of inundations are immensely
+diminished by this reduction of large stones to minute
+fragments. If the blocks hurled down from the cliffs were
+transported unbroken to the channels of large rivers, the mechanical
+force of their movement would be irresistible. They
+would overthrow the strongest barriers, spread themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span>
+over a surface as wide as the flow of the waters, and convert
+the most smiling valleys into scenes of the wildest desolation.</p>
+
+
+<h4>c. <i>Crushing Force of Torrents.</i></h4>
+
+<p>There are few operations of nature where the effect seems
+more disproportioned to the cause than in the comminution of
+rock in the channel of swift waters. Igneous rocks are generally
+so hard as to be wrought with great difficulty, and they
+bear the weight of enormous superstructures without yielding
+to the pressure; but to the torrent they are as wheat to the millstone.
+The streams which pour down the southern scarp of the
+Mediterranean Alps along the Riviera di Ponente, near Genoa,
+have short courses, and a brisk walk of a couple of hours or
+even less takes you from the sea beach to the headspring of
+many of them. In their heaviest floods, they bring rounded
+masses of serpentine quite down to the sea, but at ordinary
+high water their lower course is charged only with finely
+divided particles of that rock. Hence, while, near their
+sources, their channels are filled with pebbles and angular
+fragments, intermixed with a little gravel, the proportions are
+reversed near their mouths, and, just above the points where
+their outlets are partially choked by the rolling shingle of the
+beach, their beds are composed of sand and gravel to the
+almost total exclusion of pebbles. The greatest depth of the
+basin of the Ard&egrave;che is seventy-five miles, but most of its tributaries
+have a much shorter course. "These affluents," says
+Mardigny, "hurl into the bed of the Ard&egrave;che enormous blocks
+of rock, which this river, in its turn, bears onward, and grinds
+down, at high water, so that its current rolls only gravel at its
+confluence with the Rhone."<a name="FNanchor_353_353" id="FNanchor_353_353"></a><a href="#Footnote_353_353" class="fnanchor">[353]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Guglielmini argued that the gravel and sand of the beds
+of running streams were derived from the trituration of rocks
+by the action of the currents, and inferred that this action was
+generally sufficient to reduce hard rock to sand in its passage
+from the source to the outlet of rivers. Frisi controverted this
+opinion, and maintained that river sand was of more ancient
+origin, and he inferred from experiments in artificially grinding
+stones that the concussion, friction, and attrition of rock in the
+channel of running waters were inadequate to its comminution,
+though he admitted that these same causes might reduce silicious
+sand to a fine powder capable of transportation to the
+sea by the currents.<a name="FNanchor_354_354" id="FNanchor_354_354"></a><a href="#Footnote_354_354" class="fnanchor">[354]</a> Frisi's experiments were tried upon
+rounded and polished river pebbles, and prove nothing with
+regard to the action of torrents upon the irregular, more or
+less weathered, and often cracked and shattered rocks which
+lie loose in the ground at the head of mountain valleys. The
+fury of the waters and of the wind which accompanies them
+in the floods of the French Alpine torrents is such, that large
+blocks of stone are hurled out of the bed of the stream to
+the height of twelve or thirteen feet. The impulse of masses
+driven with such force overthrows the most solid masonry,
+and their concussion cannot fail to be attended with the crushing
+of the rocks themselves.<a name="FNanchor_355_355" id="FNanchor_355_355"></a><a href="#Footnote_355_355" class="fnanchor">[355]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4>d. <i>Inundations of 1856 in France.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The month of May, 1856, was remarkable for violent and
+almost uninterrupted rains, and most of the river basins of
+France were inundated to an extraordinary height. In the
+valleys of the Loire and its affluents, about a million of acres,
+including many towns and villages, were laid under water,
+and the amount of pecuniary damage was almost incalculable.<a name="FNanchor_356_356" id="FNanchor_356_356"></a><a href="#Footnote_356_356" class="fnanchor">[356]</a>
+The flood was not less destructive in the valley of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>
+the Rhone, and in fact an invasion by a hostile army could
+hardly have been more disastrous to the inhabitants of the
+plains than was this terrible deluge. There had been a flood
+of this latter river in the year 1840, which, for height and
+quantity of water, was almost as remarkable as that of 1856,
+but it took place in the month of November, when the crops
+had all been harvested, and the injury inflicted by it upon
+agriculturists was, therefore, of a character to be less severely
+and less immediately felt than the consequences of the inundation
+of 1856.<a name="FNanchor_357_357" id="FNanchor_357_357"></a><a href="#Footnote_357_357" class="fnanchor">[357]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the fifteen years between these two great floods, the
+population and the rural improvements of the river valleys
+had much increased, common roads, bridges, and railways had
+been multiplied and extended, telegraph lines had been constructed,
+all of which shared in the general ruin, and hence
+greater and more diversified interests were affected by the
+catastrophe of 1856 than by any former like calamity. The
+great flood of 1840 had excited the attention and roused the
+sympathies of the French people, and the subject was invested
+with new interest by the still more formidable character of the
+inundations of 1856. It was felt that these scourges had ceased
+to be a matter of merely local concern, for, although they bore
+most heavily on those whose homes and fields were situated
+within the immediate reach of the swelling waters, yet they
+frequently destroyed harvests valuable enough to be a matter
+of national interest, endangered the personal security of the
+population of important political centres, interrupted communication
+for days and even weeks together on great lines of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>
+traffic and travel&mdash;thus severing as it were all Southwestern
+France from the rest of the empire&mdash;and finally threatened to
+produce great and permanent geographical changes. The
+well-being of the whole commonwealth was seen to be involved
+in preventing the recurrence, and in limiting the range
+of such devastations. The Government encouraged scientific
+investigation of the phenomena and their laws. Their causes,
+their history, their immediate and remote consequences, and
+the possible safeguards to be employed against them, have
+been carefully studied by the most eminent physicists, as well
+as by the ablest theoretical and practical engineers of France.
+Many hitherto unobserved facts have been collected, many
+new hypotheses suggested, and many plans, more or less original
+in character, have been devised for combating the evil;
+but thus far, the most competent judges are not well agreed as
+to the mode, or even the possibility, of applying a remedy.</p>
+
+
+<h4>e. <i>Remedies against Inundations.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Perhaps no one point has been more prominent in the discussions
+than the influence of the forest in equalizing and
+regulating the flow of the water of precipitation. As we have
+already seen, opinion is still somewhat divided on this subject,
+but the conservative action of the woods in this respect has
+been generally recognized by the public of France, and the
+Government of the empire has made this principle the basis of
+important legislation for the protection of existing forests, and
+for the formation of new. The clearing of woodland, and the
+organization and functions of a police for its protection, are
+regulated by a law bearing date June 18th, 1859, and provision
+was made for promoting the restoration of private
+woods by a statute adopted on the 28th of July, 1860. The
+former of these laws passed the legislative body by a vote of
+246 against 4, the latter with but a single negative voice.
+The influence of the government, in a country where the throne
+is so potent as in France, would account for a large majority,
+but when it is considered that both laws, the former especially,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>
+interfere very materially with the rights of private domain,
+the almost entire unanimity with which they were adopted is
+proof of a very general popular conviction, that the protection
+and extension of the forests is a measure more likely than any
+other to check the violence, if not to prevent the recurrence, of
+destructive inundations. The law of July 28th, 1860, appropriated
+10,000,000 francs, to be expended, at the rate of 1,000,000
+francs per year, in executing or aiding the replanting of woods.
+It is computed that this appropriation will secure the creation
+of new forest to the extent of about 250,000 acres, or one eleventh
+part of the soil where the restoration of the forest is
+thought feasible and, at the same time, specially important as
+a security against the evils ascribed in a great measure to its
+destruction.</p>
+
+<p>The provisions of the laws in question are preventive rather
+than remedial; but some immediate effect may be expected to
+result from them, particularly if they are accompanied with
+certain other measures, the suggestion of which has been
+favorably received. The strong repugnance of the mountaineers
+to the application of a system which deprives them
+of a part of their pasturage&mdash;for the absolute exclusion of
+domestic animals is indispensable to the maintenance of an
+existing forest and to the formation of a new&mdash;is the most
+formidable obstacle to the execution of the laws of 1859-'60.
+It is proposed to compensate this loss by a cheap system of
+irrigation of lower pasture grounds, consisting in little more
+than in running horizontal furrows along the hillsides, thus
+converting the scarp of the hills into a succession of small terraces
+which, when once turfed over, are very permanent.
+Experience is said to have demonstrated that this simple process
+suffices to retain the water of rains, of snows, and of small
+springs and rivulets, long enough for the irrigation of the soil,
+thus increasing its product of herbage in a fivefold proportion,
+and that it partially checks the too rapid flow of surface water
+into the valleys, and, consequently, in some measure obviates
+one of the most prominent causes of inundations.<a name="FNanchor_358_358" id="FNanchor_358_358"></a><a href="#Footnote_358_358" class="fnanchor">[358]</a> It is evi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>dent
+that, if such results are produced by this method, its introduction
+upon an extensive scale must also have the same
+climatic effects as other systems of irrigation.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be the ultimate advantages of reclothing a
+large extent of the territory of France with wood, or of so
+shaping its surface as to prevent the too rapid flow of water
+over it, the results to be obtained by such processes can be
+realized in an adequate measure only after a long succession
+of years. Other steps must be taken, both for the immediate
+security of the lives and property of the present generation,
+and for the prevention of yet greater and remoter evils which
+are inevitable unless means to obviate them are found before
+it is forever too late. The frequent recurrence of inundations
+like those of 1856, for a single score of years, in the basins of
+the Rhone and the Loire, with only the present securities
+against them, would almost depopulate the valleys of those
+rivers, and produce physical revolutions in them, which, like
+revolutions in the political world, could never be made to "go
+backward."</p>
+
+<p>Destructive inundations are seldom, if ever, produced by
+precipitation within the limits of the principal valley, but
+almost uniformly by sudden thaws or excessive rains on the
+mountain ranges where the tributaries take their rise. It is
+therefore plain that any measures which shall check the flow
+of surface waters into the channels of the affluents, or which
+shall retard the delivery of such waters into the principal
+stream by its tributaries, will diminish in the same proportion
+the dangers and the evils of inundation by great rivers. The
+retention of the surface waters upon or in the soil can hardly
+be accomplished except by the methods already mentioned,
+replanting of forests, and furrowing or terracing. The current
+of mountain streams can be checked by various methods,
+among which the most familiar and obvious is the erection of
+barriers or dams across their channels, at points convenient for
+forming reservoirs large enough to retain the superfluous
+waters of great rains and thaws. Besides the utility of such
+basins in preventing floods, the construction of them is recom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>mended
+by very strong considerations, such as the meteorological
+effects of increased evaporable surface, the furnishing
+of a constant supply of water for agricultural and mechanical
+purposes, and, finally, their value as ponds for breeding and
+rearing fish, and, perhaps, for cultivating aquatic vegetables.</p>
+
+<p>The objections to the general adoption of the system of
+reservoirs are these: the expense of their construction and
+maintenance; the reduction of cultivable area by the amount
+of surface they must cover; the interruption they would occasion
+to free communication; the probability that they would
+soon be filled up with sediment, and the obvious fact that
+when full of earth or even water, they would no longer serve
+their principal purpose; the great danger to which they would
+expose the country below them in case of the bursting of their
+barriers;<a name="FNanchor_359_359" id="FNanchor_359_359"></a><a href="#Footnote_359_359" class="fnanchor">[359]</a> the evil consequences they would occasion by prolonging
+the flow of inundations in proportion as they diminished
+their height; the injurious effects it is supposed they
+would produce upon the salubrity of the neighboring districts;
+and, lastly, the alleged impossibility of constructing artificial
+basins sufficient in capacity to prevent, or in any considerable
+measure to mitigate, the evils they are intended to guard
+against.</p>
+
+<p>The last argument is more easily reduced to a numerical
+question than the others. The mean and extreme annual precipitation
+of all the basins where the construction of such
+works would be seriously proposed is already approximately
+known by meteorological tables, and the quantity of water,
+delivered by the greatest floods which have occurred within
+the memory of man, may be roughly estimated from their
+visible traces. From these elements, or from recorded observations,
+the capacity of the necessary reservoirs can be calculated.
+Let us take the case of the Ard&egrave;che. In the inundation
+of 1857, that river poured into the Rhone 1,305,000,000
+cubic yards of water in three days. If we suppose that half<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>
+this quantity might have been suffered to flow down its channel
+without inconvenience, we shall have about 650,000,000
+cubic yards to provide for by reservoirs. The Ard&egrave;che and
+its principal affluent, the Chassezac, have, together, about
+twelve considerable tributaries rising near the crest of the
+mountains which bound the basin. If reservoirs of equal
+capacity were constructed upon all of them, each reservoir
+must be able to contain 54,000,000 cubic yards, or, in other
+words, must be equal to a lake 3,000 yards long, 1,000 yards
+wide, and 18 yards deep, and besides, in order to render any
+effectual service, the reservoirs must all have been empty at
+the commencement of the rains which produced the inundation.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far, I have supposed the swelling of the waters to be
+uniform throughout the whole basin; but such was by no
+means the fact in the inundation of 1857, for the rise of the
+Chassezac, which is as large as the Ard&egrave;che proper, did not
+exceed the limits of ordinary floods, and the dangerous excess
+came solely from the headwaters of the latter stream. Hence
+reservoirs of double the capacity I have supposed would have
+been necessary upon the tributaries of that river, to prevent
+the injurious effects of the inundation. It is evident that the
+construction of reservoirs of such magnitude for such a purpose
+is financially, if not physically, impracticable, and when we
+take into account a point I have just suggested, namely, that
+the reservoirs must be empty at all times of apprehended flood,
+and, of course, their utility limited almost solely to the single
+object of preventing inundations, the total inapplicability of
+such a measure in this particular case becomes still more glaringly
+manifest.</p>
+
+<p>Another not less conclusive fact is that the valleys of all
+the upland tributaries of the Ard&egrave;che descend so rapidly, and
+have so little lateral expansion, as to render the construction
+of capacious reservoirs in them quite impracticable. Indeed,
+engineers have found but two points in the whole basin suitable
+for that purpose, and the reservoirs admissible at these
+would have only a joint capacity of about 70,000,000 cubic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>
+yards, or less than one ninth part of what I suppose to be
+required. The case of the Ard&egrave;che is no doubt an extreme
+one, both in the topographical character of its basin and in its
+exposure to excessive rains; but all destructive inundations
+are, in a certain sense, extreme cases also, and this of the
+Ard&egrave;che serves to show that the construction of reservoirs is
+not by any means to be regarded as a universal panacea
+against floods.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, on the other hand, is this measure to be summarily
+rejected. Nature has adopted it on a great scale, on both
+flanks of the Alps, and on a smaller, on those of the Adirondacks
+and lower chains, and in this as in many other instances,
+her processes may often be imitated with advantage. The
+validity of the remaining objections to the system under discussion
+depends on the topography, geology, and special climate
+of the regions where it is proposed to establish such
+reservoirs. Many upland streams present numerous points
+where none of these objections, except those of expense and of
+danger from the breaking of dams, could have any application.
+Reservoirs may be so constructed as to retain the entire precipitation
+of the heaviest thaws and rains, leaving only the
+ordinary quantity to flow along the channel; they may be
+raised to such a height as only partially to obstruct the surface
+drainage; or they may be provided with sluices by means of
+which their whole contents can be discharged in the dry season
+and a summer crop be grown upon the ground they cover
+at high water. The expediency of employing them and the
+mode of construction depend on local conditions, and no rules
+of universal applicability can be laid down on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>It is remarkable that nations which we, in the false pride
+of our modern civilization, so generally regard as little less
+than barbarian, should have long preceded Christian Europe in
+the systematic employment of great artificial basins for the
+various purposes they are calculated to subserve. The ancient
+Peruvians built strong walls, of excellent workmanship, across
+the channels of the mountain sources of important streams,
+and the Arabs executed immense works of similar description,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>
+both in the great Arabian peninsula and in all the provinces
+of Spain which had the good fortune to fall under their sway.
+The Spaniards of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who, in
+many points of true civilization and culture, were far inferior
+to the races they subdued, wantonly destroyed these noble
+monuments of social and political wisdom, or suffered them to
+perish, because they were too ignorant to appreciate their
+value, or too unskilful as practical engineers to be able to
+maintain them, and some of their most important territories
+were soon reduced to sterility and poverty in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Another method of preventing or diminishing the evils of
+inundation by torrents and mountain rivers, analogous to that
+employed for the drainage of lakes, consists in the permanent
+or occasional diversion of their surplus waters, or of their entire
+currents, from their natural courses, by tunnels or open channels
+cut through their banks. Nature, in many cases, resorts
+to a similar process. Most great rivers divide themselves into
+several arms in their lower course, and enter the sea by different
+mouths. There are also cases where rivers send off lateral
+branches to convey a part of their waters into the channel
+of other streams.<a name="FNanchor_360_360" id="FNanchor_360_360"></a><a href="#Footnote_360_360" class="fnanchor">[360]</a> The most remarkable of these is the junction
+between the Amazon and the Orinoco by the natural
+canal of the Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro. In India, the
+Cambodja and the Menam are connected by the Anam; the
+Saluen and the Irawaddi by the Panlaun. There are similar
+examples, though on a much smaller scale, in Europe. The
+Torne&aring; and the Calix rivers in Lapland communicate by the
+Tarando, and in Westphalia, the Else, an arm of the Haase,
+falls into the Weser.</p>
+
+<p>The change of bed in rivers by gradual erosion of their
+banks is familiar to all, but instances of the sudden abandonment
+of a primitive channel are by no means wanting. At a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>
+period of unknown antiquity, the Ard&egrave;che pierced a tunnel
+200 feet wide and 100 high, through a rock, and sent its whole
+current through it, deserting its former bed, which gradually
+filled up, though its course remained traceable. In the great
+inundation of 1827, the tunnel proved insufficient for the discharge
+of the water, and the river burst through the obstructions
+which had now choked up its ancient channel, and resumed
+its original course.<a name="FNanchor_361_361" id="FNanchor_361_361"></a><a href="#Footnote_361_361" class="fnanchor">[361]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was probably such facts as these that suggested to
+ancient engineers the possibility of like artificial operations,
+and there are numerous instances of the execution of works for
+this purpose in very remote ages. The Bahr Jusef, the great
+stream which supplies the Fayoum with water from the Nile,
+has been supposed, by some writers, to be a natural channel;
+but both it and the Bahr el Wady are almost certainly artificial
+canals constructed to water that basin, to regulate the
+level of Lake Moeris, and possibly, also, to diminish the dangers
+resulting from excessive inundations of the Nile, by serving
+as waste-weirs to discharge a part of its surplus waters.
+Several of the seven ancient mouths of the Nile are believed
+to be artificial channels, and Herodotus even asserts that King
+Menes diverted the entire course of that river from the Libyan
+to the Arabian side of the valley. There are traces of an
+ancient river bed along the western mountains, which give
+some countenance to this statement. But it is much more
+probable that the works of Menes were designed rather to
+prevent a natural, than to produce an artificial, change in the
+channel of the river.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the most celebrated cascades in Europe, those of
+the Teverone at Tivoli and of the Velino at Terni, owe, if not
+their existence, at least their position and character, to the
+diversion of their waters from their natural beds into new
+channels, in order to obviate the evils produced by their frequent
+floods. Remarkable works of the same sort have been
+executed in Switzerland, in very recent times. Until the year<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span>
+1714, the Kander, which drains several large Alpine valleys,
+ran, for a considerable distance, parallel with the Lake of
+Thun, and a few miles below the city of that name emptied
+into the river Aar. It frequently flooded the flats along the
+lower part of its course, and it was determined to divert it into
+the Lake of Thun. For this purpose, two parallel tunnels
+were cut through the intervening rock, and the river turned
+into them. The violence of the current burst up the roof of
+the tunnels, and, in a very short time, wore the new channel
+down not less than one hundred feet, and even deepened the
+former bed at least fifty feet, for a distance of two or three
+miles above the tunnel. The lake was two hundred feet deep
+at the point where the river was conducted into it, but the
+gravel and sand carried down by the Kander has formed at its
+mouth a delta containing more than a hundred acres, which is
+still advancing at the rate of several yards a year. The Linth,
+which formerly sent its waters directly to the Lake of Zurich,
+and often produced very destructive inundations, was turned
+into the Wallensee about forty years ago, and in both these
+cases a great quantity of valuable land was rescued both from
+flood and from insalubrity.</p>
+
+<p>In Switzerland, the most terrible inundations often result
+from the damming up of deep valleys by ice slips or by the
+gradual advance of glaciers, and the accumulation of great
+masses of water above the obstructions. The ice is finally dissolved
+by the heat of summer or the flow of warm waters, and
+when it bursts, the lake formed above is discharged almost in
+an instant, and all below is swept down to certain destruction.
+In 1595, about a hundred and fifty lives and a great amount
+of property were lost by the eruption of a lake formed by the
+descent of a glacier into the valley of the Drance, and a similar
+calamity laid waste a considerable extent of soil in the
+year 1818. On this latter occasion, the barrier of ice and
+snow was 3,000 feet long, 600 thick, and 400 high, and the
+lake which had formed above it contained not less than
+800,000,000 cubic feet. A tunnel was driven through the ice,
+and about 300,000,000 cubic feet of water safely drawn off by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span>
+it, but the thawing of the walls of the tunnel rapidly enlarged
+it, and before the lake was half drained, the barrier gave way
+and the remaining 500,000,000 cubic feet of water were discharged
+in half an hour. The recurrence of these floods has
+since been prevented by directing streams of water, warmed
+by the sun, upon the ice in the bed of the valley, and thus
+thawing it before it accumulates in sufficient mass to threaten
+serious danger.</p>
+
+<p>In the cases of diversion of streams above mentioned, important
+geographical changes have been directly produced by
+those operations. By the rarer process of draining glacier
+lakes, natural eruptions of water, which would have occasioned
+not less important changes in the face of the earth, have been
+prevented by human agency.</p>
+
+<p>The principal means hitherto relied upon for defence
+against river inundations has been the construction of dikes
+along the banks of the streams, parallel to the channel and
+generally separated from each other by a distance not much
+greater than the natural width of the bed.<a name="FNanchor_362_362" id="FNanchor_362_362"></a><a href="#Footnote_362_362" class="fnanchor">[362]</a> If such walls are
+high enough to confine the water and strong enough to resist
+its pressure, they secure the lands behind them from all the
+evils of inundation except those resulting from infiltration;
+but such ramparts are enormously costly in original construction
+and maintenance, and, as we have already seen, the filling
+up of the bed of the river in its lower course, by sand and
+gravel, involves the necessity of occasionally incurring new
+expenditures in increasing the height of the banks.<a name="FNanchor_363_363" id="FNanchor_363_363"></a><a href="#Footnote_363_363" class="fnanchor">[363]</a> They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span>
+are attended, too, with some collateral disadvantages. They
+deprive the earth of the fertilizing deposits of the waters,
+which are powerful natural restoratives of soils exhausted by
+cultivation; they accelerate the rapidity and transporting
+power of the current at high water by confining it to a narrower
+channel, and it consequently conveys to the sea the
+earthy matter it holds in suspension, and chokes up harbors
+with a deposit which it would otherwise have spread over a
+wide surface; they interfere with roads and the convenience
+of river navigation, and no amount of cost or care can secure
+them from occasional rupture, in case of which the rush of the
+waters through the breach is more destructive than the natural
+flow of the highest inundation.<a name="FNanchor_364_364" id="FNanchor_364_364"></a><a href="#Footnote_364_364" class="fnanchor">[364]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span>For these reasons, many experienced engineers are of
+opinion that the system of longitudinal dikes ought to be
+abandoned, or, where that cannot be done without involving
+too great a sacrifice of existing constructions, their elevation
+should be much reduced, so as to present no obstruction to the
+lateral spread of extraordinary floods, and they should be provided
+with sluices to admit the water without violence whenever
+they are likely to be overflowed. Where dikes have not
+been erected, and where they have been reduced in height, it
+is proposed to construct, at convenient intervals, transverse
+embankments of moderate height running from the banks of
+the river across the plains to the hills which bound them.
+These measures, it is argued, will diminish the violence of
+inundations by permitting the waters to extend themselves
+over a greater surface and thus retarding the flow of the river
+currents, and will, at the same time, secure the deposit of fertilizing
+slime upon all the soil covered by the flood.</p>
+
+<p>Rozet, an eminent French engineer, has proposed a method
+of diminishing the ravages of inundations, which aims to combine
+the advantages of all other systems, and at the same time
+to obviate the objections to which they are all more or less
+liable.<a name="FNanchor_365_365" id="FNanchor_365_365"></a><a href="#Footnote_365_365" class="fnanchor">[365]</a> The plan of Rozet is recommended by its simplicity
+and cheapness as well as its facility and rapidity of execution,
+and is looked upon with favor by many persons very competent
+to judge in such matters. He proposes to commence with
+the amphitheatres in which mountain torrents so often rise, by
+covering their slopes and filling their beds with loose blocks
+of rock, and by constructing at their outlets, and at other narrow
+points in the channels of the torrents, permeable barriers
+of the same material promiscuously heaped up, much according
+to the method employed by the ancient Romans in their
+northern provinces for a similar purpose. By this means, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span>
+supposes, the rapidity of the current would be checked, and the
+quantity of transported pebbles and gravel much diminished.</p>
+
+<p>When the stream has reached that part of its course where
+it is bordered by soil capable of cultivation, and worth the
+expense of protection, he proposes to place along one or both
+sides of the stream, according to circumstances, a line of cubical
+blocks of stone or pillars of masonry three or four feet high
+and wide, and at the distance of about eleven yards from each
+other. The space between the two lines, or between a line and
+the opposite high bank, would, of course, be determined by
+observation of the width of the swift-water current at high
+floods. As an auxiliary measure, small ditches and banks, or
+low walls of pebbles, should be constructed from the line of
+blocks across the grounds to be protected, nearly at right
+angles to the current, but slightly inclining downward, and at
+convenient distances from each other. Rozet thinks the proper
+interval would be 300 yards, and it is evident that, if he is
+right in his main principle, hedges, rows of trees, or even
+common fences, would in many cases answer as good a purpose
+as banks and trenches or low walls. The blocks or pillars
+of stone would, he contends, check the lateral currents so as to
+compel them to let fall all their pebbles and gravel in the main
+channel&mdash;where they would be rolled along until ground down
+to sand or silt&mdash;and the transverse obstructions would detain
+the water upon the soil long enough to secure the deposit of
+its fertilizing slime. Numerous facts are cited in support of
+the author's views, and I imagine there are few residents of
+rural districts whose own observation will not furnish testimony
+confirmatory of their soundness.<a name="FNanchor_366_366" id="FNanchor_366_366"></a><a href="#Footnote_366_366" class="fnanchor">[366]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The deposit of slime by rivers upon the flats along their
+banks not only contributes greatly to the fertility of the soil
+thus flowed, but it subserves a still more important purpose in
+the general economy of nature. All running streams begin
+with excavating channels for themselves, or deepening the
+natural depressions in which they flow;<a name="FNanchor_367_367" id="FNanchor_367_367"></a><a href="#Footnote_367_367" class="fnanchor">[367]</a> but in proportion as
+their outlets are raised by the solid material transported by
+their currents, their velocity is diminished, they deposit gravel
+and sand at constantly higher and higher points, and so at last
+elevate, in the middle and lower part of their course, the beds
+they had previously scooped out.<a name="FNanchor_368_368" id="FNanchor_368_368"></a><a href="#Footnote_368_368" class="fnanchor">[368]</a> The raising of the chan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span>nels
+is compensated in part by the simultaneous elevation of
+their banks and the flats adjoining them, from the deposit of
+the finer particles of earth and vegetable mould brought down
+from the mountains, without which elevation the low grounds
+bordering all rivers would be, as in many cases they in fact
+are, mere morasses.</p>
+
+<p>All arrangements which tend to obstruct this process of
+raising the flats adjacent to the channel, whether consisting in
+dikes which confine the waters, and, at the same time, augment
+the velocity of the current, or in other means of producing
+the last-mentioned effect, interfere with the restorative
+economy of nature, and at last occasion the formation of
+marshes where, if left to herself, she would have accumulated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span>
+inexhaustible stores of the richest soil, and spread them out in
+plains above the reach of ordinary floods.<a name="FNanchor_369_369" id="FNanchor_369_369"></a><a href="#Footnote_369_369" class="fnanchor">[369]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Consequences if the Nile had been Diked.</i></h4>
+
+<p>If a system of continuous lateral dikes, like those of the Po,
+had been adopted in Egypt in the early dynasties, when the
+power and the will to undertake the most stupendous material
+enterprises were so eminently characteristic of the government
+of that country, and the waters of the annual inundation consequently
+prevented from flooding the land, it is conceivable
+that the productiveness of the small area of cultivable soil in
+the Nile valley might have been long kept up by artificial irrigation
+and the application of manures. But nature would
+have rebelled at last, and centuries before our time the mighty
+river would have burst the fetters by which impotent man had
+vainly striven to bind his swelling floods, the fertile fields of
+Egypt would have been converted into dank morasses, and
+then, perhaps, in some distant future, when the expulsion of
+man should have allowed the gradual restoration of the primitive
+equilibrium, would be again transformed into luxuriant
+garden and plough land. Fortunately, the "wisdom of Egypt"
+taught her children better things. They invited and welcomed,
+not repulsed, the slimy embraces of Nilus, and his favors have
+been, from the hoariest antiquity, the greatest material blessing
+ever bestowed upon a people.<a name="FNanchor_370_370" id="FNanchor_370_370"></a><a href="#Footnote_370_370" class="fnanchor">[370]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The valley of the Po has probably not been cultivated or
+inhabited so long as that of the Nile, but embankments have
+been employed on its lower course for at least two thousand
+years, and for many centuries they have been connected in a
+continuous chain. I have pointed out in a former chapter the
+effects produced on the geography of the Adriatic by the deposit
+of river sediment in the sea at the mouths of the Po, the
+Adige, and the Brenta. If these rivers had been left unconfined,
+like the Nile, and allowed to spread their muddy waters
+at will, according to the laws of nature, the slime they have
+carried to the coast would have been chiefly distributed over the
+plains of Lombardy. Their banks would have risen as fast as
+their beds, the coast line would not have been extended so far
+into the Adriatic, and, the current of the streams being consequently
+shorter, the inclination of their channel and the
+rapidity of their flow would not have been so greatly diminished.
+Had man spared a reasonable proportion of the forests
+of the Alps, and not attempted to control the natural drainage
+of the surface, the Po would resemble the Nile in all its essential
+characteristics, and, in spite of the difference of climate,
+perhaps be regarded as the friend and ally, not the enemy and
+the invader, of the population which dwells upon its banks.<a name="FNanchor_371_371" id="FNanchor_371_371"></a><a href="#Footnote_371_371" class="fnanchor">[371]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Nile is larger than all the rivers of Lombardy together,<a name="FNanchor_372_372" id="FNanchor_372_372"></a><a href="#Footnote_372_372" class="fnanchor">[372]</a>
+it drains a basin twenty times as extensive, its banks
+have been occupied by man probably twice as long. But its
+geographical character has not been much changed in the
+whole period of recorded history, and, though its outlets have
+somewhat fluctuated in number and position, its historically
+known encroachments upon the sea are trifling compared with
+those of the Po and the neighboring streams. The deposits of
+the Nile are naturally greater in Upper than in Lower Egypt.
+They are found to have raised the soil at Thebes about seven
+feet within the last seventeen hundred years, and in the Delta
+the rise has been certainly more than half as great.</p>
+
+<p>We shall, therefore, not exceed the truth if we suppose the
+annually inundated surface of Egypt to have been elevated,
+upon an average, ten feet, within the last 5,000 years, or twice
+and a half the period during which the history of the Po is
+known to us.<a name="FNanchor_373_373" id="FNanchor_373_373"></a><a href="#Footnote_373_373" class="fnanchor">[373]</a></p>
+
+<p>We may estimate the present actually cultivated area of
+Egypt at about 5,500 square statute miles. As I have computed
+in a note on page 372, that area is not more than half
+as extensive as under the dynasties of the Pharaohs and the
+Ptolemies; for&mdash;though, in consequence of the elevation of
+the river bed, the inundations now have a wider <i>natural</i>
+spread&mdash;the industry of the ancient Egyptians conducted the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span>
+Nile water over a great extent of soil it does not now reach.
+We may, then, adopt a mean between the two quantities, and
+we shall probably come near the truth if we assume the convenient
+number of 7,920 square statute miles as the average
+measure of the inundated land during the historical period.
+Taking the deposit on this surface at ten feet, the river sediment
+let fall on the soil of Egypt within the last fifty centuries
+would amount to fifteen cubic miles.</p>
+
+<p>Had the Nile been banked in, like the Po, all this deposit,
+except that contained in the water diverted by canals or otherwise
+drawn from the river for irrigation and other purposes,
+would have been carried out to sea.<a name="FNanchor_374_374" id="FNanchor_374_374"></a><a href="#Footnote_374_374" class="fnanchor">[374]</a> This would have been
+a considerable quantity; for the Nile holds earth in suspension
+even at low water, a much larger proportion during the
+flood, and irrigation must have been carried on during the
+whole year. The precise amount which would have been thus
+distributed over the soil is matter of conjecture, but three
+cubic miles is certainly a liberal estimate. This would leave
+twelve cubic miles as the quantity which embankments would
+have compelled the Nile to transport to the Mediterranean over
+and above what it has actually deposited in that sea. The
+Mediterranean is shoal for some miles out to sea along the
+whole coast of the Delta, and the large bays or lagoons within
+the coast line, which communicate both with the river and the
+sea, have little depth of water. These lagoons the river deposits
+would have filled up, and there would still have been surplus
+earth enough to extend the Delta far into the Mediterranean.<a name="FNanchor_375_375" id="FNanchor_375_375"></a><a href="#Footnote_375_375" class="fnanchor">[375]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Deposits of the Tuscan Rivers.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The Arno, and all the rivers rising on the western slopes
+and spurs of the Apennines, carry down immense quantities
+of mud to the Mediterranean. There can be no doubt that the
+volume of earth so transported is very much greater than it
+would have been had the soil about the headwaters of those
+rivers continued to be protected from wash by forests; and
+there is as little question that the quantity borne out to sea
+by the rivers of Western Italy is much increased by artificial
+embankments, because they are thereby prevented from
+spreading over the surface the sedimentary matter with which
+they are charged. The western coast of Tuscany has advanced
+some miles seaward within a very few centuries. The bed of
+the sea, for a long distance, has been raised, and of course the
+relative elevation of the land above it lessened; harbors have
+been filled up and destroyed; long lines of coast dunes have
+been formed, and the diminished inclination of the beds of the
+rivers near their outlets has caused their waters to overflow
+their banks and convert them into pestilential marshes. The
+territorial extent of Western Italy has thus been considerably
+increased, but the amount of soil habitable and cultivable by
+man has been, in a still higher proportion, diminished. The
+coast of ancient Etruria was filled with great commercial
+towns, and their rural environs were occupied by a large and
+prosperous population. But maritime Tuscany has long been
+one of the most unhealthy districts in Christendom; the
+famous mart of Populonia has not an inhabitant; the coast is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>
+almost absolutely depopulated, and the malarious fevers have
+extended their ravages far into the interior.</p>
+
+<p>These results are certainly not to be ascribed wholly to
+human action. They are, in a large proportion, due to geological
+causes over which man has no control. The soil of
+much of Tuscany becomes pasty, almost fluid even, as soon as
+it is moistened, and when thoroughly saturated with water, it
+flows like a river. Such a soil as this would not be completely
+protected by woods, and, indeed, it would now be difficult to
+confine it long enough to allow it to cover itself with forest
+vegetation. Nevertheless, it certainly was once chiefly wooded,
+and the rivers which flow through it must then have been
+much less charged with earthy matter than at present, and
+they must have carried into the sea a smaller proportion of
+their sediment when they were free to deposit it on their banks
+than since they have been confined by dikes.<a name="FNanchor_376_376" id="FNanchor_376_376"></a><a href="#Footnote_376_376" class="fnanchor">[376]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is, in general, true, that the intervention of man has
+hitherto seemed to insure the final exhaustion, ruin, and desolation
+of every province of nature which he has reduced to his
+dominion. Attila was only giving an energetic and picturesque
+expression to the tendencies of human action, as personified
+in himself, when he said that "no grass grew where
+his horse's hoofs had trod." The instances are few, where a
+second civilization has flourished upon the ruins of an ancient
+culture, and lands once rendered uninhabitable by human acts
+or neglect have generally been forever abandoned as hopelessly
+irreclaimable. It is, as I have before remarked, a question
+of vast importance, how far it is practicable to restore the
+garden we have wasted, and it is a problem on which experience
+throws little light, because few deliberate attempts have
+yet been made at the work of physical regeneration, on a scale
+large enough to warrant general conclusions in any one class
+of cases.</p>
+
+<p>The valleys and shores of Tuscany form, however, a striking
+exception to this remark. The success with which human
+guidance has made the operations of nature herself available
+for the restoration of her disturbed harmonies, in the Val di
+Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, is among the noblest, if not
+the most brilliant achievements of modern engineering, and,
+regarded in all its bearings on the great question of which I
+have just spoken, it is, as an example, of more importance to
+the general interests of humanity than the proudest work of
+internal improvement that mechanical means have yet constructed.
+The operations in the Val di Chiana have consisted
+chiefly in so regulating the flow of the surface waters into and
+through it, as to compel them to deposit their sedimentary
+matter at the will of the engineers, and thereby to raise
+grounds rendered insalubrious and unfit for agricultural use
+by stagnating water; the improvements in the Maremma have
+embraced both this method of elevating the level of the soil,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>
+and the prevention of the mixture of salt water with fresh in
+the coast marshes and shallow bays, which is a very active
+cause of the development of malarious influences.<a name="FNanchor_377_377" id="FNanchor_377_377"></a><a href="#Footnote_377_377" class="fnanchor">[377]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Improvements in the Val di Chiana.</i></h4>
+
+<p>For twenty miles or more after the remotest headwaters of
+the Arno have united to form a considerable stream, this river
+flows southeastward to the vicinity of Arezzo. It here sweeps
+round to the northwest, and follows that course to near its
+junction with the Sieve, a few miles above Florence, from
+which point its general direction is westward to the sea. From
+the bend at Arezzo, a depression called the Val di Chiana runs
+southeastward until it strikes into the valley of the Paglia, a
+tributary of the Tiber, and thus connects the basin of the latter
+river with that of the Arno. In the Middle Ages, and down to
+the eighteenth century, the Val di Chiana was often overflowed
+and devastated by the torrents which poured down
+from the highlands, transporting great quantities of slime with
+their currents, stagnating upon its surface, and gradually converting
+it into a marshy and unhealthy district, which was at
+last very greatly reduced in population and productiveness.
+It had, in fact, become so desolate that even the swallow had
+deserted it.<a name="FNanchor_378_378" id="FNanchor_378_378"></a><a href="#Footnote_378_378" class="fnanchor">[378]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The bed of the Arno near Arezzo and that of the Paglia at
+the southern extremity of the Val di Chiana did not differ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>
+much in level. The general inclination of the valley was
+therefore small; it does not appear to have ever been divided
+into opposite slopes by a true watershed, and the position of
+the summit seems to have shifted according to the varying
+amount and place of deposit of the sediment brought down
+by the lateral streams which emptied into it. The length of
+its principal channel of drainage, and even the direction of its
+flow at any given point, were therefore fluctuating. Hence,
+much difference of opinion was entertained at different times
+with regard to the normal course of this stream, and, consequently,
+to the question whether it was to be regarded as properly
+an affluent of the Tiber or of the Arno.</p>
+
+<p>The bed of the latter river at the bend has been eroded to
+the depth of thirty or forty feet, and that, apparently, at no
+very remote period. If it were elevated to what was evidently
+its original height, the current of the Arno would be so much
+above that of the Paglia as to allow of a regular flow from its
+channel to the latter stream, through the Val di Chiana, provided
+the bed of the valley had remained at the level which
+excavations prove it to have had a few centuries ago, before it
+was raised by the deposits I have mentioned. These facts,
+together with the testimony of ancient geographers which
+scarcely admits of any other explanation, are thought to prove
+that all the waters of the Upper Arno were originally discharged
+through the Val di Chiana into the Tiber, and that a
+part of them still continued to flow, at least occasionally, in
+that direction down to the days of the Roman empire, and
+perhaps for some time later. The depression of the bed of the
+Arno, and the raising of that of the valley by the deposits of
+the lateral torrents and of the Arno itself, finally cut off the
+branch of the river which had flowed to the Tiber, and all its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>
+waters were turned into its present channel, though the principal
+drainage of the Val di Chiana appears to have been in a
+southeastwardly direction until within a comparatively recent
+period.</p>
+
+<p>In the sixteenth century, the elevation of the bed of the
+valley had become so considerable, that in 1551, at a point
+about ten miles south of the Arno, it was found to be not less
+than one hundred and thirty feet above that river; then followed
+a level of ten miles, and then a continuous descent to
+the Paglia. Along the level portion of the valley was a boatable
+channel, and lakes, sometimes a mile or even two miles
+in breadth, had formed at various points farther south. At
+this period, the drainage of the summit level might easily
+have been determined in either direction, and the opposite
+descents of the valley made to culminate at the north or at the
+south end of the level. In the former case, the watershed
+would have been ten miles south of the Arno; in the latter,
+twenty miles, and the division would have been not very
+unequal.</p>
+
+<p>Various schemes were suggested at this time for drawing
+off the stagnant waters, as well as for the future regular drainage
+of the valley, and small operations for those purposes were
+undertaken with partial success; but it was feared that the
+discharge of the accumulated waters into the Tiber would produce
+a dangerous inundation, while the diversion of the drainage
+into the Arno would increase the violence of the floods to
+which that river was very subject, and no decisive steps were
+taken. In 1606, an engineer whose name has not been preserved
+proposed, as the only possible method of improvement,
+the piercing of a tunnel through the hills bounding the valley
+on the west to convey its waters to the Ombrone, but the
+expense and other objections prevented the adoption of this
+project.<a name="FNanchor_379_379" id="FNanchor_379_379"></a><a href="#Footnote_379_379" class="fnanchor">[379]</a> The fears of the Roman Government for the security
+of the valley of the Tiber had induced it to construct barriers
+across that part of the channel which lay within its territory,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span>
+and these obstructions, though not specifically intended for
+that purpose, naturally promoted the deposit of sediment and
+the elevation of the bed of the valley in their neighborhood.
+The effect of this measure and of the continued spontaneous
+action of the torrents was, that the northern slope, which in
+1551 had commenced at the distance of ten miles from the
+Arno, was found in 1605 to begin, nearly thirty miles south of
+that river, and in 1645 it had been removed about six miles
+farther in the same direction.<a name="FNanchor_380_380" id="FNanchor_380_380"></a><a href="#Footnote_380_380" class="fnanchor">[380]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the seventeenth century, the Tuscan and Papal Governments
+consulted Galileo, Torricelli, Castelli, Cassini, Viviani,
+and other distinguished philosophers and engineers, on the possibility
+of reclaiming the valley by a regular artificial drainage.
+Most of these eminent physicists were of opinion that the
+measure was impracticable, though not altogether for the same
+reasons; but they seem to have agreed in thinking that the
+opening of such channels, in either direction, as would give the
+current a flow sufficiently rapid to drain the lands properly,
+would dangerously augment the inundations of the river&mdash;whether
+the Tiber or the Arno&mdash;into which the waters should
+be turned. The general improvement of the valley was now
+for a long time abandoned, and the waters were allowed to
+spread and stagnate until carried off by partial drainage, infiltration,
+and evaporation. Torricelli had contended that the
+slope of a large part of the valley was too small to allow it to
+be drained by ordinary methods, and that no practicable depth
+and width of canal would suffice for that purpose. It could
+be laid dry, he thought, only by converting its surface into an
+inclined plane, and he suggested that this might be accomplished
+by controlling the flow of the numerous torrents which
+pour into it, so as to force them to deposit their sediment at
+the pleasure of the engineer, and, consequently, to elevate the
+level of the area over which it should be spread.<a name="FNanchor_381_381" id="FNanchor_381_381"></a><a href="#Footnote_381_381" class="fnanchor">[381]</a> This plan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>
+did not meet with immediate general acceptance, but it was
+soon adopted for local purposes at some points in the southern
+part of the valley, and it gradually grew in public favor and
+was extended in application until its final triumph a hundred
+years later.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of these encouraging successes, however, the fear
+of danger to the valley of the Arno and the Tiber, and the
+difficulty of an agreement between Tuscany and Rome&mdash;the
+boundary between which states crossed the Val di Chiana not
+far from the halfway point between the two rivers&mdash;and of
+reconciling other conflicting interests, prevented the resumption
+of the projects for the general drainage of the valley until
+after the middle of the eighteenth century. In the mean time
+the science of hydraulics had become better understood, and
+the establishment of the natural law according to which the
+velocity of a current of water, and of course the proportional
+quantity discharged by it in a given time, are increased by
+increasing its mass, had diminished if not dissipated the fear
+of exposing the banks of the Arno to greater danger from
+inundations by draining the Val di Chiana into it.</p>
+
+<p>The suggestion of Torricelli was finally adopted as the basis
+of a comprehensive system of improvement, and it was decided
+to continue and extend the inversion of the original flow of the
+waters, and to turn them into the Arno from a point as far to
+the south as should be found practicable. The conduct of the
+works was committed to a succession of able engineers who,
+for a long series of years, were under the general direction of
+the celebrated philosopher and statesman Fossombroni, and the
+success has fully justified the expectations of the most sanguine
+advocates of the scheme. The plan of improvement embraced
+two branches: the one, the removal of certain obstructions in
+the bed of the Arno, and, consequently, the further depression
+of the channel of that river, in certain places, with the view<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>
+of increasing the rapidity of its current; the other, the gradual
+filling up of the ponds and swamps, and raising of the lower
+grounds of the Val di Chiana, by directing to convenient
+points the flow of the streams which pour down into it, and
+there confining their waters by temporary dams until the sediment
+was deposited where it was needed. The economical
+result of these operations has been, that in 1835 an area of
+more than four hundred and fifty square miles of pond, marsh,
+and damp, sickly low grounds had been converted into fertile,
+healthy and well-drained soil, and, consequently, that so
+much territory has been added to the agricultural domain
+of Tuscany.</p>
+
+<p>But in our present view of the subject, the geographical
+revolution which has been accomplished is still more interesting.
+The climatic influence of the elevation and draining of
+the soil must have been considerable, though I do not know
+that an increase or a diminution of the mean temperature or
+precipitation in the valley has been established by meteorological
+observation. There is, however, in the improvement
+of the sanitary condition of the Val di Chiana, which was formerly
+extremely unhealthy, satisfactory proof of a beneficial
+climatic change. The fevers, which not only decimated the
+population of the low grounds but infested the adjacent hills,
+have ceased their ravages, and are now not more frequent than
+in other parts of Tuscany. The strictly topographical effect
+of the operations in question, besides the conversion of marsh
+into dry surface, has been the inversion of the inclination of
+the valley for a distance of thirty-five miles, so that this great
+plain which, within a comparatively short period, sloped and
+drained its waters to the south, now inclines and sends its
+drainage to the north. The reversal of the currents of the
+valley has added to the Arno a new tributary equal to the
+largest of its former affluents, and a most important circumstance
+connected with this latter fact is, that the increase of
+the volume of its waters has accelerated their velocity in a still
+greater proportion, and, instead of augmenting the danger from
+its inundations, has almost wholly obviated that source of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span>
+apprehension. Between the beginning of the fifteenth century
+and the year 1761, thirty-one destructive floods of the Arno
+are recorded; between 1761, when the principal streams of the
+Val di Chiana were diverted into that river, and 1835, not
+one.<a name="FNanchor_382_382" id="FNanchor_382_382"></a><a href="#Footnote_382_382" class="fnanchor">[382]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Improvements in the Tuscan Maremme.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In the improvements of the Tuscan Maremma, more formidable
+difficulties have been encountered. The territory to be
+reclaimed was more extensive; the salubrious places of retreat
+for laborers and inspectors were more remote; the courses of
+the rivers to be controlled were longer and their natural inclination
+less rapid; some of them, rising in wooded regions,
+transported comparatively little earthy matter,<a name="FNanchor_383_383" id="FNanchor_383_383"></a><a href="#Footnote_383_383" class="fnanchor">[383]</a> and above all,</p>
+
+<p>A like example is observed in the Anapus near Syracuse, which, below
+the junction of its two branches, is narrower, though swifter than either
+of them, and such cases are by no means unfrequent. The immediate
+effect of the confluence of two rivers upon the current below depends
+upon local circumstances, and especially upon the angle of incidence.
+If the two nearly coincide in direction, so as to include a small angle, the
+joint current will have a greater velocity than the slower confluent, perhaps
+even than either of them. If the two rivers run in transverse, still
+more if they flow in more or less opposite directions, the velocity of the
+principal branch will be retarded both above and below the junction, and
+at high water it may even set back the current of the affluent.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the diversion of a considerable branch from a river
+retards its velocity below the point of separation, and here a deposit of
+earth in its channel immediately begins, which has a tendency to turn the
+whole stream into the new bed. "Theory and the authority of all hydrographical
+writers combine to show that the channels of rivers undergo an
+elevation of bed below a canal of diversion."&mdash;Letter of <span class="smcap">Fossombroni</span>, in
+<span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>, <i>Raccolta di Documenti</i>, p. 32. See the early authorities and discussions
+on the principle stated in the text, in <span class="smcap">Frisi</span>, <i>Del modo di regolare i
+Fiumi e i Torrenti</i>, libro iii, capit. i.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>
+the coast, which is a recent deposit of the waters, is little
+elevated above the sea, and admits into its lagoons and the
+mouths of its rivers floods of salt water with every western
+wind, every rising tide.<a name="FNanchor_384_384" id="FNanchor_384_384"></a><a href="#Footnote_384_384" class="fnanchor">[384]</a></p>
+
+<p>The western coast of Tuscany is not supposed to have been
+an unhealthy region before the conquest of Etruria by the
+Romans, but it certainly became so within a few centuries
+after that event. This was a natural consequence of the neglect
+or wanton destruction of the public improvements, and
+especially the hydraulic works in which the Etruscans were so
+skilful, and of the felling of the upland forests, to satisfy the
+demand for wood at Rome for domestic, industrial, and military
+purposes. After the downfall of the Roman empire, the
+incursions of the barbarians, and then feudalism, foreign domination,
+intestine wars, and temporal and spiritual tyrannies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>
+aggravated still more cruelly the moral and physical evils
+which Tuscany and the other Italian States were doomed to
+suffer, and from which they have enjoyed but brief respites
+during the whole period of modern history. The Maremma
+was already proverbially unhealthy in the time of Dante, who
+refers to the fact in several familiar passages, and the petty
+tyrants upon its borders often sent criminals to places of confinement
+in its territory, as a slow but certain mode of execution.
+Ignorance of the causes of the insalubrity, and often the
+interference of private rights,<a name="FNanchor_385_385" id="FNanchor_385_385"></a><a href="#Footnote_385_385" class="fnanchor">[385]</a> prevented the adoption of measures
+to remove it, and the growing political and commercial
+importance of the large towns in more healthful localities
+absorbed the attention of Government, and deprived the Maremma
+of its just share in the systems of physical improvement
+which were successfully adopted in interior and Northern Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Before any serious attempts were made to drain or fill up
+the marshes of the Maremme, various other sanitary experiments
+were tried. It was generally believed that the insalubrity
+of the province was the consequence, not the cause,
+of its depopulation, and that, if it were once densely inhabited,
+the ordinary operations of agriculture, and especially the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>
+maintenance of numerous domestic fires, would restore it to its
+ancient healthfulness.<a name="FNanchor_386_386" id="FNanchor_386_386"></a><a href="#Footnote_386_386" class="fnanchor">[386]</a> In accordance with these views, settlers
+were invited from various parts of Italy, from Greece,
+and, after the accession of the Lorraine princes, from that
+country also, and colonized in the Maremme. To strangers
+coming from soils and skies so unlike those of the Tuscan
+marshes, the climate was more fatal than to the inhabitants of
+the neighboring districts, whose constitutions had become in
+some degree inured to the local influences, or who at least
+knew better how to guard against them. The consequence
+very naturally was that the experiment totally failed to produce
+the desired effects, and was attended with a great sacrifice
+of life and a heavy loss to the treasury of the state.</p>
+
+<p>The territory known as the Tuscan Maremma, <i>ora maritima</i>,
+or Maremme&mdash;for the plural form is most generally used&mdash;lies
+upon and near the western coast of Tuscany, and comprises
+about 1,900 square miles English, of which 500 square
+miles, or 320,000 acres, are plain and marsh including 45,500
+acres of water surface, and about 290,000 acres are forest.
+One of the mountain peaks, that of Mount Amiata, rises to the
+height of 6,280 feet. The mountains of the Maremma are
+healthy, the lower hills much less so, as the malaria is felt at
+some points at the height of 1,000 feet, and the plains, with
+the exception of a few localities favorably situated on the seacoast,
+are in a high degree pestilential. The fixed population
+is about 80,000, of whom one sixth live on the plains in the
+winter and about one tenth in the summer. Nine or ten thousand
+laborers come down from the mountains of the Maremma
+and the neighboring provinces into the plain, during the latter
+season, to cultivate and gather the crops.</p>
+
+<p>Out of this small number of inhabitants and strangers,
+35,619 were ill enough to require medical treatment between
+the 1st of June, 1840, and the 1st of June, 1841, and more
+than one half the cases were of intermittent, malignant, gas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>tric,
+or catarrhal fever. Very few agricultural laborers escaped
+fever, though the disease did not always manifest itself until
+they had returned to the mountains. In the province of Grosseto,
+which embraces nearly the whole of the Maremma, the
+annual mortality was 3.92 per cent. the average duration of
+life but 23.18 years, and 75 per cent. of the deaths were among
+persons engaged in agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>The filling up of the low grounds and the partial separation
+of the waters of the sea and the land, which had been in
+progress since the year 1827, now began to show very decided
+effects upon the sanitary condition of the population. In the
+year ending June 1st, 1842, the number of the sick was reduced
+by more than 2,000, and the cases of fever by more than
+4,000. The next year, the cases of fever fell to 10,500, and in
+that ending June 1st, 1844, to 9,200. The political events of
+1848 and the preceding and following years, occasioned the
+suspension of the works of improvement in the Maremma, but
+they were resumed after the revolution of 1859, and are now
+in successful progress.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken, with some detail, of the improvements in
+the Val di Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, because of their
+great relative importance, and because their history is well
+known; but like operations have been executed in the territory
+of Pisa and upon the coast of the duchy of Lucca. In
+the latter case, they were confined principally to prevention
+of the intermixing of fresh water with that of the sea. In
+1741, sluices or lock gates were constructed for this purpose,
+and the following year, the fevers, which had been destructive
+to the coast population for a long time previous, disappeared
+altogether. In 1768 and 1769, the works having fallen to
+decay, the fevers returned in a very malignant form, but the
+rebuilding of the gates again restored the healthfulness of the
+shore. Similar facts recurred in 1784 and 1785, and again
+from 1804 to 1821. This long and repeated experience has at
+last impressed upon the people the necessity of vigilant attention
+to the sluices, which are now kept in constant repair.
+The health of the coast is uninterrupted, and Viareggio, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>
+capital town of the district, is now much frequented for its sea
+baths and its general salubrity, at a season when formerly it
+was justly shunned as the abode of disease and death.<a name="FNanchor_387_387" id="FNanchor_387_387"></a><a href="#Footnote_387_387" class="fnanchor">[387]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is now a hundred years since the commencement of the
+improvements in the Val di Chiana, and those of the Maremma
+have been in more or less continued operation for
+above a generation. They have, as we have seen, produced
+important geographical changes in the surface of the earth
+and in the flow of considerable rivers, and their effects have
+been not less conspicuous in preventing other changes, of a
+deleterious character, which would infallibly have taken place
+if they had not been arrested by the improvements in question.
+It has been already stated that, in order to prevent the
+overflow of the valley of the Tiber by freely draining the Val
+di Chiana into it, the Papal authorities, long before the commencement
+of the Tuscan works, constructed strong barriers
+near the southern end of the valley, which detained the waters
+of the wet season until they could be gradually drawn off into
+the Paglia. They consequently deposited most of their sediment
+in the Val di Chiana and carried down comparatively
+little earth to the Tiber. The lateral streams contributing the
+largest quantities of sedimentary matter to the Val di Chiana
+originally flowed into that valley near its northern end; and
+the change of their channels and outlets in a southern direction,
+so as to raise that part of the valley by their deposits and
+thereby reverse its drainage, was one of the principal steps in
+the process of improvement.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that the north end of the Val di Chiana
+near the Arno had been raised by spontaneous deposit of
+sediment to such a height as to interpose a sufficient obstacle
+to all flow in that direction. If, then, the Roman
+dam had not been erected, or the works of the Tuscan
+Government undertaken, the whole of the earth, which has
+been arrested by those works and employed to raise the bed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span>
+and reverse the declivity of the valley, would have been carried
+down to the Tiber and thence into the sea. The deposit
+thus created, would, of course, have contributed to increase
+the advance of the shore at the mouth of that river, which has
+long been going on at the rate of three m&egrave;tres and nine tenths
+(twelve feet and nine inches) per annum.<a name="FNanchor_388_388" id="FNanchor_388_388"></a><a href="#Footnote_388_388" class="fnanchor">[388]</a> It is evident that
+a quantity of earth, sufficient to effect the immense changes I
+have described in a wide valley more than thirty miles long,
+if deposited at the outlet of the Tiber, would have very considerably
+modified the outline of the coast, and have exerted no
+unimportant influence on the flow of that river, by raising its
+point of discharge and lengthening its channel.</p>
+
+<p>The sediment washed into the marshes of the Maremme is
+not less than 12,000,000 cubic yards per annum. The escape
+of this quantity into the sea, which is now almost wholly prevented,
+would be sufficient to advance the coast line fourteen
+yards per year, for a distance of forty miles, computing the
+mean depth of the sea near the shore at twelve yards. It is
+true that in this case, as well as in that of other rivers, the
+sedimentary matter would not be distributed equally along
+the shore, and much of it would be carried out into deep
+water, or perhaps transported by the currents to distant coasts.
+The immediate effects of the deposit, therefore, would not be
+so palpable as they appear in this numerical form, but they
+would be equally certain, and would infallibly manifest themselves,
+first, perhaps, at some remote point, and afterward at
+or near the outlets of the rivers which produced them.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Obstruction of River Mouths.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The mouths of a large proportion of the streams known to
+ancient internal navigation are already blocked up by sandbars
+or fluviatile deposits, and the maritime approaches to
+river harbors frequented by the ships of Phenicia and Carthage
+and Greece and Rome are shoaled to a considerable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span>
+distance out to sea. The inclination of almost every known
+river bed has been considerably reduced within the historical
+period, and nothing but great volume of water, or exceptional
+rapidity of flow, now enables a few large streams like the
+Amazon, the La Plata, the Ganges, and, in a less degree, the
+Mississippi, to carry their own deposits far enough out into
+deep water to prevent the formation of serious obstructions to
+navigation. But the degradation of their banks, and the
+transportation of earthy matter to the sea by their currents,
+are gradually filling up the estuaries even of these mighty
+floods, and unless the threatened evil shall be averted by the
+action of geological forces, or by artificial contrivances more
+efficient than dredging machines, the destruction of every harbor
+in the world which receives a considerable river must
+inevitably take place at no very distant date.</p>
+
+<p>This result would, perhaps, have followed in some incalculably
+distant future, if man had not come to inhabit the
+earth as soon as the natural forces which had formed its surface
+had arrived at such an approximate equilibrium that his
+existence on the globe was possible; but the general effect of
+his industrial operations has been to accelerate it immensely.
+Rivers, in countries planted by nature with forests and never
+inhabited by man, employ the little earth and gravel they
+transport chiefly to raise their own beds and to form plains in
+their basins.<a name="FNanchor_389_389" id="FNanchor_389_389"></a><a href="#Footnote_389_389" class="fnanchor">[389]</a> In their upper course, where the current is
+swiftest, they are most heavily charged with coarse rolled or
+suspended matter, and this, in floods, they deposit on their
+shores in the mountain valleys where they rise; in their middle
+course, a lighter earth is spread over the bottom of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span>
+widening basins, and forms plains of moderate extent; the fine
+silt which floats farther is deposited over a still broader area,
+or, if carried out to sea, is, in great part quickly swept far off
+by marine currents and dropped at last in deep water. Man's
+"improvement" of the soil increases the erosion from its surface;
+his arrangements for confining the lateral spread of the
+water in floods compel the rivers to transport to their mouths
+the earth derived from that erosion even in their upper course;
+and, consequently, the sediment they deposit at their outlets is
+not only much larger in quantity, but composed of heavier
+materials, which sink more readily to the bottom of the sea
+and are less easily removed by marine currents.</p>
+
+<p>The tidal movement of the ocean, deep sea currents, and
+the agitation of inland waters by the wind, lift up the sands
+strewn over the bottom by diluvial streams or sent down by
+mountain torrents, and throw them up on dry land, or deposit
+them in sheltered bays and nooks of the coast&mdash;for the flowing
+is stronger than the ebbing tide, the affluent than the refluent
+wave. This cause of injury to harbors it is not in man's
+power to resist by any means at present available; but, as we
+have seen, something can be done to prevent the degradation
+of high grounds, and to diminish the quantity of earth which
+is annually abstracted from the mountains, from table lands,
+and from river banks, to raise the bottom of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>This latter cause of harbor obstruction, though an active
+agent, is, nevertheless, in many cases, the less powerful of the
+two. The earth suspended in the lower course of fluviatile
+currents is lighter than sea sand, river water lighter than sea
+water, and hence, if a land stream enters the sea with a considerable
+volume, its water flows over that of the sea, and
+bears its slime with it until it lets it fall far from shore, or, as
+is more frequently the case, mingles with some marine current
+and transports its sediment to a remote point of deposit. The
+earth borne out of the mouths of the Nile is in part carried
+over the waves which throw up sea sand on the beach, and
+deposited in deep water, in part drifted by the current, which
+sweeps east and north along the coasts of Egypt and Syria,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span>
+until it finds a resting place in the northeastern angle of the
+Mediterranean.<a name="FNanchor_390_390" id="FNanchor_390_390"></a><a href="#Footnote_390_390" class="fnanchor">[390]</a> Thus the earth loosened by the rude Abyssinian
+ploughshare, and washed down by the rain from the
+hills of Ethiopia which man has stripped of their protecting
+forests, contributes to raise the plains of Egypt, to shoal the
+maritime channels which lead to the city built by Alexander
+near the mouth of the Nile, and to fill up the harbors made
+famous by Phenician commerce.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Subterranean Waters.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I have frequently alluded to a branch of geography, the
+importance of which is but recently adequately recognized&mdash;the
+subterranean waters of the earth considered as stationary
+reservoirs, as flowing currents, and as filtrating fluids. The
+earth drinks in moisture by direct absorption from the atmosphere,
+by the deposition of dew, by rain and snow, by percolation
+from rivers and other superficial bodies of water, and
+sometimes by currents flowing into caves or smaller visible
+apertures.<a name="FNanchor_391_391" id="FNanchor_391_391"></a><a href="#Footnote_391_391" class="fnanchor">[391]</a> Some of this humidity is exhaled again by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>
+soil, some is taken up by organic growths and by inorganic
+compounds, some poured out upon the surface by springs and
+either immediately evaporated or carried down to larger
+streams and to the sea, some flows by subterranean courses
+into the bed of fresh-water rivers<a name="FNanchor_392_392" id="FNanchor_392_392"></a><a href="#Footnote_392_392" class="fnanchor">[392]</a> or of the ocean, and some
+remains, though even here not in forever motionless repose, to
+fill deep cavities and underground channels.<a name="FNanchor_393_393" id="FNanchor_393_393"></a><a href="#Footnote_393_393" class="fnanchor">[393]</a> In every case<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span>
+the aqueous vapors of the air are the ultimate source of supply,
+and all these hidden stores are again returned to the atmosphere
+by evaporation.</p>
+
+<p>The proportion of the water of precipitation taken up by
+direct evaporation from the surface of the ground seems to
+have been generally exaggerated, sufficient allowance not
+being made for moisture carried downward, or in a lateral
+direction, by infiltration or by crevices in the superior rocky
+or earthy strata. According to Wittwer, Mariotte found that
+but one sixth of the precipitation in the basin of the Seine was
+delivered into the sea by that river, "so that five sixths
+remained for evaporation and consumption by the organic
+world."<a name="FNanchor_394_394" id="FNanchor_394_394"></a><a href="#Footnote_394_394" class="fnanchor">[394]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Maury&mdash;whose scientific reputation, though
+fallen, has not quite sunk to the level of his patriotism&mdash;estimates
+the annual amount of precipitation in the valley of the
+Mississippi at 620 cubic miles, the discharge of that river into
+the sea at 107 cubic miles, and concludes that "this would
+leave 513 cubic miles of water to be evaporated from this
+river basin annually."<a name="FNanchor_395_395" id="FNanchor_395_395"></a><a href="#Footnote_395_395" class="fnanchor">[395]</a> In these and other like computations,
+the water carried down into the earth by capillary and larger
+conduits is wholly lost sight of, and no thought is bestowed
+upon the supply for springs, for common and artesian wells,
+and for underground rivers, like those in the great caves of
+Kentucky, which may gush up in fresh-water currents at the
+bottom of the Caribbean Sea, or rise to the light of day in the
+far-off peninsula of Florida.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of the emphatically modern science of geology
+has corrected these erroneous views, because the observations
+on which it depends have demonstrated not only the existence,
+but the movement, of water in nearly all geological formations,
+have collected evidence of the presence of large reservoirs
+at greater or less depths beneath surfaces of almost every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span>
+character, and have investigated the rationale of the attendant
+phenomena. The distribution of these waters has been minutely
+studied with reference to a great number of localities,
+and though the actual mode of their vertical and horizontal
+transmission is still involved in much doubt, the laws which
+determine their aggregation are so well understood, that, when
+the geology of a given district is known, it is not difficult to
+determine at what depth water will be reached by the borer,
+and to what height it will rise.</p>
+
+<p>The same principles have been successfully applied to the
+discovery of small subterranean collections or currents of water,
+and some persons have acquired, by a moderate knowledge of
+the superficial structure of the earth combined with long practice,
+a skill in the selection of favorable places for digging
+wells which seems to common observers little less than miraculous.
+The Abb&eacute; Paramelle&mdash;a French ecclesiastic who devoted
+himself for some years to this subject and was extensively
+employed as a well-finder&mdash;states, in his work on Fountains,
+that in the course of thirty-four years he had pointed out more
+than ten thousand subterranean springs, and though his geological
+speculations were often erroneous, the highest scientific
+authorities in Europe have testified to the great practical value
+of his methods, and the almost infallible certainty of his predictions.<a name="FNanchor_396_396" id="FNanchor_396_396"></a><a href="#Footnote_396_396" class="fnanchor">[396]</a></p>
+
+<p>Babinet quotes a French proverb, "Summer rain wets
+nothing," and explains it as meaning that the water of such
+rains is "almost totally taken up by evaporation." "The
+rains of summer," he adds, "however abundant they may be,
+do not penetrate the soil to a greater depth than 15 or 20
+centim&egrave;tres. In summer the evaporating power of the heat is
+five or six times as great as in winter, and this power is
+exerted by an atmosphere capable of containing five times as
+much vapor as in winter." "A stratum of snow which prevents
+evaporation [from the soil] causes almost all the water
+that composes it to filter down into the earth, and form a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span>
+reserve for springs, wells, and rivers which could not be supplied
+by any amount of summer rain." "This latter&mdash;useful,
+indeed like dew, to vegetation&mdash;does not penetrate the soil
+and accumulate a store to feed springs and to be brought up
+by them to the open air."<a name="FNanchor_397_397" id="FNanchor_397_397"></a><a href="#Footnote_397_397" class="fnanchor">[397]</a> This conclusion, however applicable
+it may be to the climate and soil of France, is too broadly
+stated to be accepted as a general truth, and in countries
+where the precipitation is small in the winter months, familiar
+observation shows that the quantity of water yielded by deep
+wells and natural springs depends not less on the rains of summer
+than on those of the rest of the year, and, consequently,
+that much of the precipitation of that season must find its way
+to strata too deep to lose water by evaporation.</p>
+
+<p>The supply of subterranean reservoirs and currents, as well
+as of springs, is undoubtedly derived chiefly from infiltration,
+and hence it must be affected by all changes of the natural
+surface that accelerate or retard the drainage of the soil, or
+that either promote or obstruct evaporation from it. It has
+sufficiently appeared from what has gone before, that the spontaneous
+drainage of cleared ground is more rapid than that of
+the forest, and consequently, that the felling of the woods, as
+well as the draining of swamps, deprives the subterranean
+waters of accessions which would otherwise be conveyed to
+them by infiltration. The same effect is produced by artificial
+contrivances for drying the soil either by open ditches or by
+underground pipes or channels, and in proportion as the sphere
+of these operations is extended, the effect of them cannot fail
+to make itself more and more sensibly felt in the diminished
+supply of water furnished by wells and running springs.<a name="FNanchor_398_398" id="FNanchor_398_398"></a><a href="#Footnote_398_398" class="fnanchor">[398]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is undoubtedly true that loose soils, stripped of vegetation
+and broken up by the plough or other processes of cultivation,
+may, until again carpeted by grasses or other plants,
+absorb more rain and snow water than when they were covered
+by a natural growth; but it is also true that the evaporation
+from such soils is augmented in a still greater proportion.
+Rain scarcely penetrates beneath the sod of grass ground, but
+runs off over the surface; and after the heaviest showers a
+ploughed field will often be dried by evaporation before the
+water can be carried off by infiltration, while the soil of a
+neighboring grove will remain half saturated for weeks together.
+Sandy soils frequently rest on a tenacious subsoil, at
+a moderate depth, as is usually seen in the pine plains of the
+United States, where pools of rain water collect in slight depressions
+on the surface of earth, the upper stratum of which
+is as porous as a sponge. In the open grounds such pools are
+very soon dried up by the sun and wind; in the woods they
+remain unevaporated long enough for the water to diffuse itself
+laterally until it finds, in the subsoil, crevices through which
+it may escape, or slopes which it may follow to their outcrop
+or descend along them to lower strata.</p>
+
+<p>The readiness with which water not obstructed by impermeable
+strata diffuses itself through the earth in all directions&mdash;and,
+consequently, the importance of keeping up the supply
+of subterranean reservoirs&mdash;find a familiar illustration in the
+effect of paving the ground about the stems of vines and trees.
+The surface earth around the trunk of a tree may be made perfectly
+impervious to water, by flag stones and cement, for a
+distance greater than the spread of the roots; and yet the tree
+will not suffer for want of moisture, except in droughts severe
+enough sensibly to affect the supply in deep wells and springs.
+Both forest and fruit trees grow well in cities where the streets
+and courts are closely paved, and where even the lateral access
+of water to the roots is more or less obstructed by deep cellars
+and foundation walls. The deep-lying veins and sheets of
+water, supplied by infiltration from above, send up moisture
+by capillary attraction, and the pavement prevents the soil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span>
+beneath it from losing its humidity by evaporation. Hence,
+city-grown trees find moisture enough for their roots, and
+though plagued with smoke and dust, often retain their freshness
+while those planted in the open fields, where sun and
+wind dry up the soil faster than the subterranean fountains
+can water it, are withering from drought. Without the help
+of artificial conduit or of water carrier, the Thames and the
+Seine refresh the ornamental trees that shade the thoroughfares
+of London and of Paris, and beneath the hot and reeking
+mould of Egypt, the Nile sends currents to the extremest border
+of its valley.<a name="FNanchor_399_399" id="FNanchor_399_399"></a><a href="#Footnote_399_399" class="fnanchor">[399]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Artesian Wells.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The existence of artesian wells depends upon that of subterranean
+reservoirs and rivers, and the supply yielded by
+borings is regulated by the abundance of such sources. The
+waters of the earth are, in many cases, derived from superficial
+currents which are seen to pour into chasms opened, as it were,
+expressly for their reception; and in others where no apertures
+in the crust of the earth have been detected, their existence is
+proved by the fact that artesian wells sometimes bring up
+from great depths seeds, leaves, and even living fish, which
+must have been carried down through channels large enough
+to admit a considerable stream. But in general, the sheets
+and currents of water reached by deep boring appear to be
+primarily due to infiltration from highlands where the water is
+first collected in superficial or subterranean reservoirs. By
+means of channels conforming to the dip of the strata, these
+reservoirs communicate with the lower basins, and exert upon
+them a fluid pressure sufficient to raise a column to the surface,
+whenever an orifice is opened.<a name="FNanchor_400_400" id="FNanchor_400_400"></a><a href="#Footnote_400_400" class="fnanchor">[400]</a> The water delivered by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span>
+an artesian well is, therefore, often derived from distant
+sources, and may be wholly unaffected by geographical or
+meteorological changes in its immediate neighborhood, while
+the same changes may quite dry up common wells and springs
+which are fed only by the local infiltration of their own narrow
+basins.</p>
+
+<p>In most cases, artesian wells have been bored for purely
+economical or industrial purposes, such as to obtain good water
+for domestic use or for driving light machinery, to reach saline
+or other mineral springs, and recently, in America, to open
+fountains of petroleum or rock oil. The geographical and geological
+effects of such abstraction of fluids from the bowels of
+the earth are too remote and uncertain to be here noticed;<a name="FNanchor_401_401" id="FNanchor_401_401"></a><a href="#Footnote_401_401" class="fnanchor">[401]</a>
+but artesian wells have lately been employed in Algeria for a
+purpose which has even now a substantial, and may hereafter
+acquire a very great geographical importance. It was observed
+by many earlier as well as recent travellers in the East,
+among whom Shaw deserves special mention, that the Libyan
+desert, bordering upon the cultivated shores of the Mediterranean,
+appeared in many places to rest upon a subterranean
+lake at an accessible distance below the surface. The Moors
+are vaguely said to have <i>bored</i> artesian wells down to this
+reservoir, to obtain water for domestic use and irrigation, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span>
+I do not find such wells described by any trustworthy traveller,
+and the universal astonishment and incredulity with
+which the native tribes viewed the operations of the French
+engineers sent into the desert for that purpose, are a sufficient
+proof that this mode of reaching the subterranean waters was
+new to them. They were, however, aware of the existence of
+water below the sands, and were dexterous in digging wells&mdash;square
+shafts lined with a framework of palm-tree stems&mdash;to
+the level of the sheet. The wells so constructed, though not
+technically artesian wells, answer the same purpose; for the
+water rises to the surface and flows over it as from a spring.<a name="FNanchor_402_402" id="FNanchor_402_402"></a><a href="#Footnote_402_402" class="fnanchor">[402]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These wells, however, are too few and too scanty in supply
+to serve any other purposes than the domestic wells of other
+countries, and it is but recently that the transformation of
+desert into cultivable land by this means has been seriously
+attempted. The French Government has bored a large number
+of artesian wells in the Algerian desert within a few years,
+and the native sheikhs are beginning to avail themselves of
+the process. Every well becomes the nucleus of a settlement
+proportioned to the supply of water, and before the end of the
+year 1860, several nomade tribes had abandoned their wandering
+life, established themselves around the wells, and
+planted more than 30,000 palm trees, besides other perennial
+vegetables.<a name="FNanchor_403_403" id="FNanchor_403_403"></a><a href="#Footnote_403_403" class="fnanchor">[403]</a> The water is found at a small depth, generally
+from 100 to 200 feet, and though containing too large a pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span>portion
+of mineral matter to be acceptable to a European palate,
+it answers well for irrigation, and does not prove unwholesome
+to the natives.</p>
+
+<p>The most obvious use of artesian wells in the desert at
+present is that of creating stations for the establishment of military
+posts and halting places for the desert traveller; but if
+the supply of water shall prove adequate for the indefinite
+extension of the system, it is probably destined to produce a
+greater geographical transformation than has ever been effected
+by any scheme of human improvement. The most striking
+contrast of landscape scenery that nature brings near together
+in time or place, is that between the greenery of the tropics,
+or of a northern summer, and the snowy pall of leafless winter.
+Next to this in startling novelty of effect, we must rank the
+sudden transition from the shady and verdant oasis of the
+desert to the bare and burning party-colored ocean of sand and
+rock which surrounds it.<a name="FNanchor_404_404" id="FNanchor_404_404"></a><a href="#Footnote_404_404" class="fnanchor">[404]</a> The most sanguine believer in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span>
+indefinite human progress hardly expects that man's cunning
+will accomplish the universal fufilment of the prophecy, "the
+desert shall blossom as the rose," in its literal sense; but sober
+geographers have thought the future conversion of the sand
+plains of Northern Africa into fruitful gardens, by means of
+artesian wells, not an improbable expectation. They have
+gone farther, and argued that, if the soil were covered with
+fields and forests, vegetation would call down moisture from
+the Libyan sky, and that the showers which are now wasted
+on the sea, or so often deluge Southern Europe with destructive
+inundation, would in part be condensed over the arid
+wastes of Africa, and thus, without further aid from man,
+bestow abundance on regions which nature seems to have condemned
+to perpetual desolation.</p>
+
+<p>An equally bold speculation, founded on the well-known
+fact, that the temperature of the earth and of its internal waters
+increases as we descend beneath the surface, has suggested that
+artesian wells might supply heat for industrial and domestic
+purposes, for hot-house cultivation, and even for the local
+amelioration of climate. The success with which Count Lardarello
+has employed natural hot springs for the evaporation
+of water charged with boracic acid, and other fortunate applications
+of the heat of thermal sources, lend some countenance
+to the latter project; but both must, for the present, be ranked
+among the vague possibilities of science, not regarded as probable
+future triumphs of man over nature.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Artificial Springs.</i></h4>
+
+<p>A more plausible and inviting scheme is that of the creation
+of perennial springs by husbanding rain and snow water,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span>
+storing it up in artificial reservoirs of earth, and filtering it
+through purifying strata, in analogy with the operations of
+nature. The sagacious Palissy&mdash;starting from the theory that
+all springs are primarily derived from precipitation, and reasoning
+justly on the accumulation and movement of water in
+the earth&mdash;proposed to reduce theory to practice, and to imitate
+the natural processes by which rain is absorbed by the
+earth and given out again in running fountains. "When I
+had long and diligently considered the cause of the springing
+of natural fountains and the places where they be wont to
+issue," says he, "I did plainly perceive, at last, that they do
+proceed and are engendered of nought but the rains. And it
+is this, look you, which hath moved me to enterprise the gathering
+together of rain water after the manner of nature, and
+the most closely according to her fashion that I am able; and
+I am well assured that by following the formulary of the
+Supreme Contriver of fountains, I can make springs, the water
+whereof shall be as good and pure and clear as of such which
+be natural."<a name="FNanchor_405_405" id="FNanchor_405_405"></a><a href="#Footnote_405_405" class="fnanchor">[405]</a> Palissy discusses the subject of the origin
+of springs at length and with much ability, dwelling specially
+on infiltration, and, among other things, thus explains the frequency
+of springs in mountainous regions: "Having well
+considered the which, thou mayest plainly see the reason why
+there be more springs and rivulets proceeding from the mountains
+than from the rest of the earth; which is for no other
+cause but that the rocks and mountains do retain the water of
+the rains like vessels of brass. And the said waters falling
+upon the said mountains descend continually through the earth,
+and through crevices, and stop not till they find some place
+that is bottomed with stone or close and thick rocks; and they
+rest upon such bottom until they find some channel or other
+manner of issue, and then they flow out in springs or brooks
+or rivers, according to the greatness of the reservoirs and of
+the outlets thereof."<a name="FNanchor_406_406" id="FNanchor_406_406"></a><a href="#Footnote_406_406" class="fnanchor">[406]</a></p>
+
+<p>After a full exposition of his theory, Palissy proceeds to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span>
+describe his method of creating springs, which is substantially
+the same as that lately proposed by Babinet in the following
+terms: "Choose a piece of ground containing four or five
+acres, with a sandy soil, and with a gentle slope to determine
+the flow of the water. Along its upper line, dig a trench five
+or six feet deep and six feet wide. Level the bottom of the
+trench, and make it impermeable by paving, by macadamizing,
+by bitumen, or, more simply and cheaply, by a layer of clay.
+By the side of this trench dig another, and throw the earth
+from it into the first, and so on until you have rendered the
+subsoil of the whole parcel impermeable to rain water. Build
+a wall along the lower line with an aperture in the middle for
+the water, and plant fruit or other low trees upon the whole,
+to shade the ground and check the currents of air which promote
+evaporation. This will infallibly give you a good spring
+which will flow without intermission and supply the wants of
+a whole hamlet or a large chateau."<a name="FNanchor_407_407" id="FNanchor_407_407"></a><a href="#Footnote_407_407" class="fnanchor">[407]</a> Babinet states that the
+whole amount of precipitation on a reservoir of the proposed
+area, in the climate of Paris, would be about 13,000 cubic
+yards, not above one half of which, he thinks, would be lost,
+and, of course, the other half would remain available to supply
+the spring. I much doubt whether this expectation would be
+realized in practice, in its whole extent; for if Babinet is right
+in supposing that the summer rain is wholly evaporated, the
+winter rains, being much less in quantity, would hardly suffice
+to keep the earth saturated and give off so large a surplus.</p>
+
+<p>The method of Palissy, though, as I have said, similar in
+principle to that of Babinet, would be cheaper of execution,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span>
+and, at the same time, more efficient. He proposes the construction
+of relatively small filtering receptacles, into which he
+would conduct the rain falling upon a large area of rocky
+hillside, or other sloping ground not readily absorbing water.
+This process would, in all probability, be a very successful, as
+well as an inexpensive, mode of economizing atmospheric precipitation,
+and compelling the rain and snow to form perennial
+fountains at will.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Economizing Precipitation.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The methods suggested by Palissy and by Babinet are of
+limited application, and designed only to supply a sufficient
+quantity of water for the domestic use of small villages or large
+private establishments. Dumas has proposed a much more
+extensive system for collecting and retaining the whole precipitation
+in considerable valleys, and storing it in reservoirs,
+whence it is to be drawn for household and mechanical purposes,
+for irrigation, and, in short, for all the uses to which the
+water of natural springs and brooks is applicable. His plan
+consists in draining both surface and subsoil, by means of conduits
+differing in construction according to local circumstances,
+but in the main not unlike those employed in improved agriculture,
+collecting the water in a central channel, securing its
+proper filterage, checking its too rapid flow by barriers at convenient
+points, and finally receiving the whole in spacious
+covered reservoirs, from which it may be discharged in a constant
+flow or at intervals as convenience may dictate.<a name="FNanchor_408_408" id="FNanchor_408_408"></a><a href="#Footnote_408_408" class="fnanchor">[408]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is no reasonable doubt that a very wide employment
+of these various contrivances for economizing and supplying
+water is practicable, and the expediency of resorting to them
+is almost purely an economical question. There appears to be
+no serious reason to apprehend collateral evils from them, and
+in fact all of them, except artesian wells, are simply indirect
+methods of returning to the original arrangements of nature,
+or, in other words, of restoring the fluid circulation of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span>
+globe; for when the earth was covered with the forest, perennial
+springs gushed from the foot of every hill, brooks flowed
+down the bed of every valley. The partial recovery of the
+fountains and rivulets which once abundantly watered the face
+of the agricultural world seems practicable by such means,
+even without any general replanting of the forests; and the
+cost of one year's warfare, if judiciously expended in a combination
+of both methods of improvement, would secure, to
+almost every country that man has exhausted, an amelioration
+of climate, a renovated fertility of soil, and a general physical
+improvement, which might almost be characterized as a new
+creation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SANDS.</h3>
+
+<p class="blockquot">ORIGIN OF SAND&mdash;SAND NOW CARRIED DOWN TO THE SEA&mdash;THE SANDS OF
+EGYPT AND THE ADJACENT DESERT&mdash;&mdash;THE SUEZ CANAL&mdash;&mdash;THE SANDS OF EGYPT&mdash;COAST
+DUNES AND SAND PLAINS&mdash;SAND BANKS&mdash;DUNES ON COAST OF AMERICA&mdash;DUNES
+OF WESTERN EUROPE&mdash;FORMATION OF DUNES&mdash;CHARACTER OF
+DUNE SAND&mdash;INTERIOR STRUCTURE OF DUNES&mdash;FORM OF DUNES&mdash;GEOLOGICAL
+IMPORTANCE OF DUNES&mdash;INLAND DUNES&mdash;AGE, CHARACTER, AND
+PERMANENCE OF DUNES&mdash;USE OF DUNES AS BARRIER AGAINST THE SEA&mdash;ENCROACHMENTS
+OF THE SEA&mdash;THE LIIMFJORD&mdash;ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA&mdash;DRIFTING
+OF DUNE SANDS&mdash;DUNES OF GASCONY&mdash;DUNES OF DENMARK&mdash;DUNES
+OF PRUSSIA&mdash;ARTIFICIAL FORMATION OF DUNES&mdash;TREES SUITABLE FOR DUNE
+PLANTATIONS&mdash;EXTENT OF DUNES IN EUROPE&mdash;DUNE VINEYARDS OF CAPE
+BRETON&mdash;REMOVAL OF DUNES&mdash;INLAND SAND PLAINS&mdash;THE LANDES OF GASCONY&mdash;THE
+BELGIAN CAMPINE&mdash;SANDS AND STEPPES OF EASTERN EUROPE&mdash;ADVANTAGES
+OF RECLAIMING DUNES&mdash;GOVERNMENT WORKS OF IMPROVEMENT.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Origin of Sand.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Sand, which is found in beds or strata at the bottom of the
+sea or in the channels of rivers, as well as in extensive deposits
+upon or beneath the surface of the dry land, appears to
+consist essentially of the detritus of rocks. It is not always by
+any means clear through what agency the solid rock has been
+reduced to a granular condition; for there are beds of quartzose
+sand, where the sharp, angular shape of the particles renders
+it highly improbable that they have been formed by
+gradual abrasion and attrition, and where the supposition of a
+crushing mechanical force seems equally inadmissible. In
+common sand, the quartz grains are the most numerous; but
+this is not a proof that the rocks from which these particles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span>
+were derived were wholly, or even chiefly, quartzose in character;
+for, in many composite rocks, as, for example, in the
+granitic group, the mica, felspar, and hornblende are more
+easily decomposed by chemical action, or disintegrated, comminuted,
+and reduced to an impalpable state by mechanical
+force, than the quartz. In the destruction of such rocks, therefore,
+the quartz would survive the other ingredients, and
+remain unmixed, when they had been decomposed and had
+entered into new chemical combinations, or been ground to
+slime and washed away by water currents.</p>
+
+<p>The greater or less specific gravity of the different constituents
+of rock doubtless aids in separating them into distinct
+masses when once disintegrated, though there are veined and
+stratified beds of sand where the difference between the upper
+and lower layers, in this respect, is too slight to be supposed
+capable of effecting a complete separation.<a name="FNanchor_409_409" id="FNanchor_409_409"></a><a href="#Footnote_409_409" class="fnanchor">[409]</a> In cases where
+rock has been reduced to sandy fragments by heat, or by
+obscure chemical and other molecular forces, the sandbeds
+may remain undisturbed, and represent, in the series of geological
+strata, the solid formations from which they were
+derived. The large masses of sand not found in place have
+been transported and accumulated by water or by wind, the
+former being generally considered the most important of these
+agencies; for the extensive deposits of the Sahara, of the deserts
+of Persia, and of that of Gobi, are commonly supposed to
+have been swept together or distributed by marine currents,
+and to have been elevated above the ocean by the same means
+as other upheaved strata.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meteoric and mechanical influences are still active in the
+reduction of rocks to a fragmentary state; but the quantity of
+sand now transported to the sea seems to be comparatively
+inconsiderable, because&mdash;not to speak of the absence of diluvial
+action&mdash;the number of torrents emptying directly into the sea
+is much less than it was at earlier periods. The formation of
+alluvial plains in maritime bays, by the sedimentary matter
+brought down from the mountains, has lengthened the flow of
+such streams and converted them very generally into rivers,
+or rather affluents of rivers much younger than themselves.
+The filling up of the estuaries has so reduced the slope of all
+large and many small rivers, and, consequently, so checked the
+current of what the Germans call their <i>Unterlauf</i>, or lower
+course, that they are much less able to transport heavy material
+than at earlier epochs. The slime deposited by rivers at
+their junction with the sea, is usually found to be composed
+of material too finely ground and too light to be denominated
+sand, and it can be abundantly shown that the sandbanks at
+the outlet of large streams are of tidal, not of fluviatile origin,
+or, in lakes and tideless seas, a result of the concurrent action
+of waves and of wind.</p>
+
+<p>Large deposits of sand, therefore, must in general be considered
+as of ancient, not of recent formation, and many eminent
+geologists ascribe them to diluvial action. Staring has
+discussed this question very fully, with special reference to the
+sands of the North Sea, the Zuiderzee, and the bays and channels
+of the Dutch coast.<a name="FNanchor_410_410" id="FNanchor_410_410"></a><a href="#Footnote_410_410" class="fnanchor">[410]</a> His general conclusion is, that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span>
+rivers of the Netherlands "move sand only by a very slow displacement
+of sandbanks, and do not carry it with them as a
+suspended or floating material." The sands of the German
+Ocean he holds to be a product of the "great North German
+drift," deposited where they now lie before the commencement
+of the present geological period, and he maintains similar
+opinions with regard to the sands thrown up by the Mediterranean
+at the mouths of the Nile and on the Barbary coast.<a name="FNanchor_411_411" id="FNanchor_411_411"></a><a href="#Footnote_411_411" class="fnanchor">[411]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Sand now carried to the Sea.</i></h4>
+
+<p>There are, however, cases where mountain streams still
+bear to the sea perhaps relatively small, but certainly absolutely
+large, amounts of disintegrated rock.<a name="FNanchor_412_412" id="FNanchor_412_412"></a><a href="#Footnote_412_412" class="fnanchor">[412]</a> The quantity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span>
+sand and gravel carried into the Mediterranean by the torrents
+of the Maritime Alps, the Ligurian Apennines, the islands of
+Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, and the mountains of Calabria, is
+apparently great. In mere mass, it is possible, if not probable,
+that as much rocky material, more or less comminuted, is contributed
+to the basin of the Mediterranean by Europe, even
+excluding the shores of the Adriatic and the Euxine, as is
+washed up from it upon the coasts of Africa and Syria. A
+great part of this material is thrown out again by the waves
+on the European shores of that sea. The harbors of Luni, Albenga,
+San Remo, and Savona west of Genoa, and of Porto
+Fino on the other side, are filling up, and the coast near Carrara
+and Massa is said to have advanced upon the sea to a dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span>tance
+of 475 feet in thirty-three years.<a name="FNanchor_413_413" id="FNanchor_413_413"></a><a href="#Footnote_413_413" class="fnanchor">[413]</a> Besides this, we have no
+evidence of the existence of deep-water currents in the Mediterranean,
+extensive enough and strong enough to transport
+quartzose sand across the sea. It may be added that much of
+the rock from which the torrent sands of Southern Europe are
+derived contains little quartz, and hence the general character
+of these sands is such that they must be decomposed or ground
+down to an impalpable slime, long before they could be swept
+over to the African shore.</p>
+
+<p>The torrents of Europe, then, do not at present furnish the
+material which composes the beach sands of Northern Africa,
+and it is equally certain that those sands are not brought down
+by the rivers of the latter continent. They belong to a remote
+geological period, and have been accumulated by causes which
+we cannot at present assign. The wind does not stir water to
+great depths with sufficient force to disturb the bottom,<a name="FNanchor_414_414" id="FNanchor_414_414"></a><a href="#Footnote_414_414" class="fnanchor">[414]</a> and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span>
+the sand thrown upon the coast in question must be derived
+from a narrow belt of sea. It must hence, in time, become
+exhausted, and the formation of new sandbanks and dunes
+upon the southern shores of the Mediterranean will cease at
+last for want of material.<a name="FNanchor_415_415" id="FNanchor_415_415"></a><a href="#Footnote_415_415" class="fnanchor">[415]</a></p>
+
+<p>But even in the cases where the accumulations of sand in
+extensive deserts appear to be of marine formation, or rather
+aggregation, and to have been brought to their present position
+by upheaval, they are not wholly composed of material
+collected or distributed by the currents of the sea; for, in all
+such regions, they continue to receive some small contributions
+from the disintegration of the rocks which underlie, or crop
+out through, the superficial deposits. In some instances, too,
+as in Northern Africa, additions are constantly made to the
+mass by the prevalence of sea winds, which transport, or, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span>
+speak more precisely, roll the finer beach sand to considerable
+distances into the interior. But this is a very slow process, and
+the exaggerations of travellers have diffused a vast deal of
+popular error on the subject.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Sands of Egypt.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In the narrow valley of the Nile&mdash;which, above its bifurcation
+near Cairo, is, throughout Egypt and Nubia, generally
+bounded by precipitous cliffs&mdash;wherever a ravine or other considerable
+depression occurs in the wall of rock, one sees what
+seems a stream of desert sand pouring down, and common
+observers have hence concluded that the whole valley is in
+danger of being buried under a stratum of infertile soil. The
+ancient Egyptians apprehended this, and erected walls, often
+of unburnt brick, across the outlet of gorges and lateral valleys,
+to check the flow of the sand streams. In later ages,
+these walls have mostly fallen into decay, and no preventive
+measures against such encroachments are now resorted to. But
+the extent of the mischief to the soil of Egypt, and the future
+danger from this source, have been much overrated. The sand
+on the borders of the Nile is neither elevated so high by the
+wind, nor transported by that agency in so great masses, as is
+popularly supposed; and of that which is actually lifted or
+rolled and finally deposited by air currents, a considerable
+proportion is either calcareous, and, therefore, readily decomposable,
+or in the state of a very fine dust, and so, in neither
+case, injurious to the soil. There are, indeed, both in Africa and
+in Arabia, considerable tracts of fine silicious sand, which may
+be carried far by high winds, but these are exceptional cases,
+and in general the progress of the desert sand is by a rolling
+motion along the surface.<a name="FNanchor_416_416" id="FNanchor_416_416"></a><a href="#Footnote_416_416" class="fnanchor">[416]</a> So little is it lifted, and so incon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span>siderable
+is the quantity yet remaining on the borders of
+Egypt, that a wall four or five feet high suffices for centuries
+to check its encroachments. This is obvious to the eye of
+every observer who prefers the true to the marvellous; but
+the old-world fable of the overwhelming of caravans by the
+fearful simoom&mdash;which, even the Arabs no longer repeat, if
+indeed they are the authors of it&mdash;is so thoroughly rooted in
+the imagination of Christendom that most desert travellers, of
+the tourist class, think they shall disappoint the readers of
+their journals if they do not recount the particulars of their
+escape from being buried alive by a sand storm, and the popular
+demand for a "sensation" must be gratified accordingly.<a name="FNanchor_417_417" id="FNanchor_417_417"></a><a href="#Footnote_417_417" class="fnanchor">[417]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another circumstance is necessary to be considered in estimating
+the danger to which the arable lands of Egypt are
+exposed. The prevailing wind in the valley of the Nile and
+its borders is from the north, and it may be said without
+exaggeration that the north wind blows for three quarters of
+the year.<a name="FNanchor_418_418" id="FNanchor_418_418"></a><a href="#Footnote_418_418" class="fnanchor">[418]</a> The effect of winds blowing up the valley is to
+drive the sands of the desert plateau which border it, in a
+direction parallel with the axis of the valley, not transversely
+to it; and if it ran in a straight line, the north wind would
+carry no desert sand into it. There are, however, both curves
+and angles in its course, and hence, wherever its direction
+deviates from that of the wind, it might receive sand drifts
+from the desert plain through which it runs. But, in the
+course of ages, the winds have, in a great measure, bared the
+projecting points of their ancient deposits, and no great accumulations
+remain in situations from which either a north or a
+south wind would carry them into the valley.<a name="FNanchor_419_419" id="FNanchor_419_419"></a><a href="#Footnote_419_419" class="fnanchor">[419]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Suez Canal.</i></h4>
+
+<p>These considerations apply, with equal force, to the supposed
+danger of the obstruction of the Suez Canal by the drift<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span>ing
+of the desert sands. The winds across the isthmus are
+almost uniformly from the north, and they swept it clean of
+flying sands long ages since. The traces of the ancient canal
+between the Red Sea and the Nile are easily followed for a
+considerable distance from Suez. Had the drifts upon the
+isthmus been as formidable as some have feared and others
+have hoped, those traces would have been obliterated, and
+Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes filled up, many centuries
+ago. The few particles driven by the rare east and west
+winds toward the line of the canal, would easily be arrested
+by plantations or other simple methods, or removed by dredging.
+The real dangers and difficulties of this magnificent
+enterprise&mdash;and they are great&mdash;consist in the nature of the
+soil to be removed in order to form the line, and especially in
+the constantly increasing accumulation of sea sand at the southern
+terminus by the tides of the Red Sea, and at the northern,
+by the action of the winds. Both seas are shallow for miles
+from the shore, and the excavation and maintenance of deep
+channels, and of capacious harbors with easy and secure entrances,
+in such localities, is doubtless one of the hardest problems
+offered to modern engineers for practical solution.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Sands of Egypt.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The sand let fall in Egypt by the north wind is derived,
+not from the desert, but from a very different source&mdash;the sea.
+Considerable quantities of sand are thrown up by the Mediterranean,
+at and between the mouths of the Nile, and indeed
+along almost the whole southern coast of that sea, and drifted
+into the interior to distances varying according to the force of
+the wind and the abundance and quality of the material. The
+sand so transported contributes to the gradual elevation of the
+Delta, and of the banks and bed of the river itself. But just
+in proportion as the bed of the stream is elevated, the height
+of the water in the annual inundations is increased also, and as
+the inclination of the channel is diminished, the rapidity of the
+current is checked, and the deposition of the slime it holds in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span>
+suspension consequently promoted. Thus the winds and the
+water, moving in contrary directions, join in producing a common
+effect.</p>
+
+<p>The sand, blown over the Delta and the cultivated land
+higher up the stream during the inundation, is covered or
+mixed with the fertile earth brought down by the river, and
+no serious injury is sustained from it. That spread over the
+same ground after the water has subsided, and during the
+short period when the soil is not stirred by cultivation or covered
+by the flood, forms a thin pellicle over the surface as far
+as it extends, and serves to divide and distinguish the successive
+layers of slime deposited by the annual inundations. The
+particles taken up by the wind on the sea beach are borne
+onward, by a hopping motion, or rolled along the surface,
+until they are arrested by the temporary cessation of the wind,
+by vegetation, or by some other obstruction, and they may, in
+process of time, accumulate in large masses, under the lee of
+rocky projections, buildings, or other barriers which break the
+force of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>In these facts we find the true explanation of the sand
+drifts, which have half buried the Sphinx and so many other
+ancient monuments in that part of Egypt. These drifts, as I
+have said, are not primarily from the desert, but from the sea;
+and, as might be supposed from the distance they have travelled,
+they have been long in gathering. While Egypt was a
+great and flourishing kingdom, measures were taken to protect
+its territory against the encroachment of sand, whether from
+the desert or from the sea; but the foreign conquerors, who
+destroyed so many of its religious monuments, did not spare
+its public works, and the process of physical degradation undoubtedly
+began as early as the Persian invasion. The urgent
+necessity, which has compelled all the successive tyrannies of
+Egypt to keep up some of the canals and other arrangements
+for irrigation, was not felt with respect to the advancement of
+the sands; for their progress was so slow as hardly to be perceptible
+in the course of a single reign, and long experience
+has shown that, from the natural effect of the inundations, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span>
+cultivable soil of the valley is, on the whole, trenching upon
+the domain of the desert, not retreating before it.</p>
+
+<p>The oases of the Libyan, as well as of many Asiatic deserts,
+have no such safeguards. The sands are fast encroaching upon
+them, and threaten soon to engulf them, unless man shall resort
+to artesian wells and plantations, or to some other efficient
+means of checking the advance of this formidable enemy, in
+time to save these islands of the waste from final destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Accumulations of sand are, in certain cases, beneficial as a
+protection against the ravages of the sea; but, in general, the
+vicinity, and especially the shifting of bodies of this material,
+are destructive to human industry, and hence, in civilized
+countries, measures are taken to prevent its spread. This,
+however, can be done only where the population is large and
+enlightened, and the value of the soil, or of the artificial erections
+and improvements upon it, is considerable. Hence in
+the deserts of Africa and of Asia, and the inhabited lands
+which border on them, no pains are usually taken to check the
+drifts, and when once the fields, the houses, the springs, or the
+canals of irrigation are covered or choked, the district is abandoned
+without a struggle, and surrendered to perpetual desolation.<a name="FNanchor_420_420" id="FNanchor_420_420"></a><a href="#Footnote_420_420" class="fnanchor">[420]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Sand Dunes and Sand Plains.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Two forms of sand deposit are specially important in European
+and American geography. The one is that of dune or
+shifting hillock upon the coast, the other that of barren plain
+in the interior. The coast dunes are composed of sand washed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span>
+up from the depths of the sea by the waves, and heaped in
+knolls and ridges by the winds. The sand with which many
+plains are covered, appears sometimes to have been deposited
+upon them while they were yet submerged, sometimes to have
+been drifted from the sea coast, and scattered over them by
+wind currents, sometimes to have been washed upon them by
+running water. In these latter cases, the deposit, though in
+itself considerable, is comparatively narrow in extent and
+irregular in distribution, while, in the former, it is often evenly
+spread over a very wide surface. In all great bodies of either
+sort, the silicious grains are the principal constituent, though,
+when not resulting from the disintegration of silicious rock
+and still remaining in place, they are generally accompanied
+with a greater or less admixture of other mineral particles, and
+of animal and vegetable remains,<a name="FNanchor_421_421" id="FNanchor_421_421"></a><a href="#Footnote_421_421" class="fnanchor">[421]</a> and they are, also, usually
+somewhat changed in consistence by the ever-varying conditions
+of temperature and moisture to which they have been
+exposed since their deposit. Unless the proportion of these
+latter ingredients is so large as to create a certain adhesiveness
+in the mass&mdash;in which case it can no longer properly be called
+sand&mdash;it is infertile, and, if not charged with water, partially
+agglutinated by iron, lime, or other cement, or confined by
+alluvion resting upon it, it is much inclined to drift, whenever,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span>
+by any chance, the vegetable network which, in most cases,
+thinly clothes and at the same time confines it, is broken.</p>
+
+<p>Human industry has not only fixed the flying dunes, but,
+by mixing clay and other tenacious earths with the superficial
+stratum of extensive sand plains, and by the application of fertilizing
+substances, it has made them abundantly productive
+of vegetable life. These latter processes belong to agriculture
+and not to geography, and, therefore, are not embraced within
+the scope of the present subject. But the preliminary steps,
+whereby wastes of loose, drifting barren sands are transformed
+into wooded knolls and plains, and finally, through the accumulation
+of vegetable mould, into arable ground, constitute a
+conquest over nature which precedes agriculture&mdash;a geographical
+revolution&mdash;and, therefore, an account of the means by
+which the change has been effected belongs properly to the
+history of man's influence on the great features of physical
+geography. I proceed, then, to examine the structure of
+dunes, and to describe the warfare man wages with the sand
+hills, striving on the one hand to maintain and even extend
+them, as a natural barrier against encroachments of the sea,
+and, on the other, to check their moving and wandering propensities,
+and prevent them from trespassing upon the fields he
+has planted and the habitations in which he dwells.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Coast Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Coast dunes are oblong ridges or round hillocks, formed by
+the action of the wind upon sands thrown up by the waves on
+the beach of seas, and sometimes of fresh-water lakes. On
+most coasts, the supply of sand for the formation of dunes is
+derived from tidal waves. The flow of the tide is more rapid,
+and consequently its transporting power greater, than that of
+the ebb; the momentum, acquired by the heavy particles in
+rolling in with the water, tends to carry them even beyond the
+flow of the waves; and at the turn of the tide, the water is in
+a state of repose long enough to allow it to let fall much of the
+solid matter it holds in suspension. Hence, on all low, tide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span>-washed
+coasts of seas with sandy bottoms, there exist several
+conditions favorable to the formation of sand deposits along
+high-water mark.<a name="FNanchor_422_422" id="FNanchor_422_422"></a><a href="#Footnote_422_422" class="fnanchor">[422]</a> If the land winds are of greater fre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span>quency,
+duration, or strength than the sea winds, the sands
+left by the retreating wave will be constantly blown back into
+the water; but if the prevailing air currents are in the opposite
+direction, the sands will soon be carried out of the reach
+of the highest waves, and transported continually farther and
+farther into the interior of the land, unless obstructed by high
+grounds, vegetation, or other obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>The tide, though a usual, is by no means a necessary condition
+for the accumulations of sand out of which dunes are
+formed. The Baltic and the Mediterranean are almost tideless
+seas, but there are dunes on the Russian and Prussian coasts
+of the Baltic, and at the mouths of the Nile and many other
+points on the shores of the Mediterranean. The vast shoals in
+the latter sea, known to the ancients as the Greater and Lesser
+Syrtis, are of marine origin. They are still filling up with
+sand, washed up from greater depths, or sometimes drifted
+from the coast in small quantities, and will probably be converted,
+at some future period, into dry land covered with sand
+hills. There are also extensive ranges of dunes upon the eastern
+shores of the Caspian, and at the southern, or rather southeastern
+extremity of Lake Michigan.<a name="FNanchor_423_423" id="FNanchor_423_423"></a><a href="#Footnote_423_423" class="fnanchor">[423]</a> There is no doubt that
+this latter lake formerly extended much farther in that direction,
+but its southern portion has gradually shoaled and at last
+been converted into solid land, in consequence of the prevalence
+of the northwest winds. These blow over the lake a
+large part of the year, and create a southwardly set of the currents,
+which wash up sand from the bed of the lake and throw
+it on shore. Sand is taken up from the beach at Michigan City
+by every wind from that quarter, and, after a heavy blow of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span>
+some hours' duration, sand ridges may be observed on the
+north side of the fences, like the snow wreaths deposited by a
+drifting wind in winter. Some of the particles are carried
+back by contrary winds, but most of them lodge on or behind
+the dunes, or in the moist soil near the lake, or are entangled
+by vegetables, and tend permanently to elevate the level.
+Like effects are produced by constant sea winds, and dunes
+will generally be formed on all low coasts where such prevail,
+whether in tideless or in tidal waters.</p>
+
+<p>Jobard thus describes the <i>modus operandi</i>, under ordinary
+circumstances, at the mouths of the Nile, where a tide can
+scarcely be detected: "When a wave breaks, it deposits an
+almost imperceptible line of fine sand. The next wave brings
+also its contribution, and shoves the preceding line a little
+higher. As soon as the particles are fairly out of the reach of
+the water they are dried by the heat of the burning sun, and
+immediately seized by the wind and rolled or borne farther
+inland. The gravel is not thrown out by the waves, but rolls
+backward and forward until it is worn down to the state of
+fine sand, when it, in its turn, is cast upon the land and taken
+up by the wind."<a name="FNanchor_424_424" id="FNanchor_424_424"></a><a href="#Footnote_424_424" class="fnanchor">[424]</a> This description applies only to the common
+every-day action of wind and water; but just in proportion
+to the increasing force of the wind and the waves, there is
+an increase in the quantity of sand, and in the magnitude of
+the particles carried off from the beach by it, and, of course,
+every storm in a landward direction adds sensibly to the accumulation
+upon the shore.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Sand Banks.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Although dunes, properly so called, are found only on dry
+land and above ordinary high-water mark, and owe their
+elevation and structure to the action of the wind, yet, upon
+many shelving coasts, accumulations of sand much resembling
+dunes are formed under water at some distance from the shore
+by the oscillations of the waves, and are well known by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span>
+name of sand banks. They are usually rather ridges than
+banks, of moderate inclination, and with the steepest slope seaward;
+and their form differs from that of dunes only in being
+lower and more continuous. Upon the western coast of the
+island of Amrum, for example, there are three rows of such
+banks, the summits of which are at a distance of perhaps a
+couple of miles from each other; so that, including the width
+of the banks themselves, the spaces between them, and the
+breadth of the zone of dunes upon the land, the belt of
+moving sands on that coast is probably not less than eight
+miles wide.</p>
+
+<p>Under ordinary circumstances, sand banks are always rolling
+landward, and they compose the magazine from which
+the material for the dunes is derived. The dunes, in fact, are
+but aquatic sand banks transferred to dry land. The laws of
+their formation are closely analogous, because the action of the
+two fluids, by which they are respectively accumulated and
+built up, is very similar when brought to bear upon loose particles
+of solid matter. It would, indeed, seem that the slow
+and comparatively regular movements of the heavy, unelastic
+water ought to affect such particles very differently from the
+sudden and fitful impulses of the light and elastic air. But
+the velocity of the wind currents gives them a mechanical
+force approximating to that of the slower waves, and, however
+difficult it may be to explain all the phenomena that characterize
+the structure of the dunes, observation has proved that
+it is nearly identical with that of submerged sand banks. The
+differences of form are generally ascribable to the greater number
+and variety of surface accidents of the ground on which
+the sand hills of the land are built up, and to the more frequent
+changes, and wider variety of direction, in the courses of the
+wind.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Dunes on the Coast of America.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Upon the Atlantic coast of the United States, the prevalence
+of western or off-shore winds is unfavorable to the formation
+of dunes, and, though marine currents lodge vast quan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span>tities
+of sand, in the form of banks, on that coast, its shores are
+proportionally more free from sand hills than some others of
+lesser extent. There are, however, very important exceptions.
+The action of the tide throws much sand upon some points of
+the New England coast, as well as upon the beaches of Long
+Island and other more southern shores, and here dunes resembling
+those of Europe are formed. There are also extensive
+ranges of dunes on the Pacific coast of the United States, and
+at San Francisco they border some of the streets of the city.</p>
+
+<p>The dunes of America are far older than her civilization,
+and the soil they threaten or protect possesses, in general, too
+little value to justify any great expenditure in measures for
+arresting their progress or preventing their destruction.
+Hence, great as is their extent and their geographical importance,
+they have, at present, no such intimate relations to
+human life as to render them objects of special interest in the
+point of view I am taking, and I do not know that the laws
+of their formation and motion have been made a subject of
+original investigation by any American observer.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Dunes of Western Europe.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Upon the western coast of Europe, on the contrary, the
+ravages occasioned by the movement of sand dunes, and the
+serious consequences often resulting from the destruction of
+them, have long engaged the earnest attention of governments
+and of scientific men, and for nearly a century persevering and
+systematic effort has been made to bring them under human
+control. The subject has been carefully studied in Denmark
+and the adjacent duchies, in Western Prussia, in the Netherlands,
+and in France; and the experiments in the way of
+arresting the drifting of the dunes, and of securing them, and
+the lands they shelter, from the encroachments of the sea, have
+resulted in the adoption of a system of coast improvement substantially
+the same in all these countries. The sands, like the
+forests, have now their special literature, and the volumes and
+memoirs, which describe them and the processes employed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span>
+subdue them, are full of scientific interest and of practical
+instruction.<a name="FNanchor_425_425" id="FNanchor_425_425"></a><a href="#Footnote_425_425" class="fnanchor">[425]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Formation of Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The laws which govern the formation of dunes are substantially
+these. We have seen that, under certain conditions,
+sand is accumulated above high-water mark on low sea and
+lake shores. So long as the sand is kept wet by the spray or
+by capillary attraction, it is not disturbed by air currents, but
+as soon as the waves retire sufficiently to allow it to dry, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span>
+becomes the sport of the wind, and is driven up the gently
+sloping beach until it is arrested by stones, vegetables, or other
+obstructions, and thus an accumulation is formed which constitutes
+the foundation of a dune. However slight the elevation
+thus created, it serves to stop or retard the progress of the sand
+grains which are driven against its shoreward face, and to protect
+from the further influence of the wind the particles which
+are borne beyond it, or rolled over its crest, and fall down
+behind it. If the shore above the beach line were perfectly
+level and straight, the grass or bushes upon it of equal height,
+the sand thrown up by the waves uniform in size and weight
+of particles as well as in distribution, and if the action of the
+wind were steady and regular, a continuous bank would be
+formed, everywhere alike in height and cross section. But no
+such constant conditions anywhere exist. The banks are
+curved, broken, unequal in elevation; they are sometimes
+bare, sometimes clothed with vegetables of different structure
+and dimensions; the sand thrown up is variable in quantity
+and character; and the winds are shifting, gusty, vortical,
+and often blowing in very narrow currents. From all these
+causes, instead of uniform hills, there rise irregular rows of
+sand heaps, and these, as would naturally be expected, are of
+a pyramidal, or rather conical shape, and connected at bottom
+by more or less continuous ridges of the same material.</p>
+
+<p>On a receding coast, dunes will not attain so great a height
+as on more secure shores, because they are undermined and
+carried off before they have time to reach their greatest dimensions.
+Hence, while at sheltered points in Southwestern
+France, there are dunes three hundred feet or more in height,
+those on the Frisic Islands and the exposed parts of the coast
+of Schleswig-Holstein range only from twenty to one hundred
+feet. On the western shores of Africa, it is said that they
+sometimes attain an elevation of six hundred feet. This is one
+of the very few points known to geographers where desert
+sands are advancing seaward, and here they rise to the greatest
+altitude to which sand grains can be carried by the wind.</p>
+
+<p>The hillocks, once deposited, are held together and kept in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span>
+shape, partly by mere gravity, and partly by the slight cohesion
+of the lime, clay, and organic matter mixed with the
+sand; and it is observed that, from capillary attraction, evaporation
+from lower strata, and retention of rain water, they
+are always moist a little below the surface.<a name="FNanchor_426_426" id="FNanchor_426_426"></a><a href="#Footnote_426_426" class="fnanchor">[426]</a> By successive
+accumulations, they gradually rise to the height of thirty,
+fifty, sixty, or a hundred feet, and sometimes even much
+higher. Strong winds, instead of adding to their elevation,
+sweep off loose particles from their surface, and these, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span>
+others blown over or between them, build up a second row of
+dunes, and so on according to the character of the wind, the
+supply and consistence of the sand, and the face of the country.
+In this way is formed a belt of sand dunes, irregularly dispersed
+and varying much in height and dimensions, and some
+times many miles in breadth. On the Island of Sylt, in the
+German Sea, where there are several rows, the width of the
+belt is from half a mile to a mile. There are similar ranges
+on the coast of Holland, exceeding two miles in breadth, while
+at the mouths of the Nile they form a zone not less than ten
+miles wide. The base of some of the dunes in the Delta of
+the Nile is reached by the river during the annual inundation,
+and the infiltration of the water, which contains lime, has converted
+the lower strata into a silicious limestone, or rather a
+calcareous sandstone, and thus afforded an opportunity of
+studying the structure of that rock in a locality where its
+origin and mode of aggregation and solidification are known.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Character of Dune Sand.</i></h4>
+
+<p>"Dune sand," says Staring, "consists of well-rounded
+grains of quartz, more or less colored by iron, and often mingled
+with fragments of shells, small indeed, but still visible to
+the naked eye.<a name="FNanchor_427_427" id="FNanchor_427_427"></a><a href="#Footnote_427_427" class="fnanchor">[427]</a> These fragments are not constant constituents
+of dune sand. They are sometimes found at the very
+summits of the hillocks, as at Overveen; in the King's Dune,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span>
+near Egmond, they form a coarse calcareous gravel very
+largely distributed through the sand, while the interior dunes
+between Haarlem and Warmond exhibit no trace of them. It
+is yet undecided whether the presence or absence of these fragments
+is determined by the period of the formation of the
+dunes, or whether it depends on a difference in the process by
+which different dunes have been accumulated. Land shells,
+such as snails, for example, are found on the surface of the
+dunes in abundance, and many of the shelly fragments in
+the interior of the hillocks may be derived from the same
+source."<a name="FNanchor_428_428" id="FNanchor_428_428"></a><a href="#Footnote_428_428" class="fnanchor">[428]</a></p>
+
+<p>J. G. Kohl has some poetical thoughts upon the origin and
+character of the dune sands, which are worth quoting:</p>
+
+<p>"The sand was composed of pure transparent quartz. I
+could not observe this sand without the greatest admiration.
+If it is the product of the waves, breaking and crushing flints
+and fragments of quartz against each other, it is a result
+which could be brought about only in the course of countless
+ages. We need not lift ourselves to the stars, to their incalculable
+magnitudes and distances and numbers, in order to
+feel the giddiness of astonishment. Here, upon earth, in the
+simple sand, we find miracle enough. Think of the number
+of sand grains contained in a single dune, then of all the dunes
+upon this widely extended coast&mdash;not to speak of the innumerable
+grains in the Arabian, African, and Prussian deserts&mdash;this,
+of itself, is sufficient to overwhelm a thoughtful fancy.
+How long, how many times must the waves have risen and
+sunk in order to reduce these vast heaps to powder!</p>
+
+<p>"During the whole time I spent on this coast, I had always
+some sand in my fingers, was rubbing and rolling it about,
+examining it on all sides, holding a little shining grain on the
+tip of my finger, and thinking to myself how, in its corners,
+its angles, its whole configuration, it might very probably
+have a history longer than that of the old German nation&mdash;possibly
+longer than that of the human race. Where was the
+original quartz crystal, of which this is a fragment, first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span>
+formed? To what was it once fixed? What power broke it
+loose? How was it beaten smaller and ever smaller by the
+waves? They tossed it, for &aelig;ons, to and fro upon the beach,
+rolled it up and down, forced it to make thousands and thousands
+of daily voyages for millions and millions of days. Then
+the wind bore it away, and used it in building up a dune;
+there it lay for centuries, packed in with its fellows, protecting
+the marshes and cherished by the inhabitants, till, seized again
+by the pursuing sea, it fell once more into the water, there to
+begin the endless dance anew&mdash;and again to be swept away by
+the wind&mdash;and again to find rest in the dunes, a protection
+and a blessing to the coast. There is something mysterious
+about such a grain of sand, and at last I went so far as to fancy
+a little immortal spark linked with each one, presiding over
+its destiny, and sharing its vicissitudes. Could we arm our
+eyes with a microscope, and then dive, like a sparling, into
+one of these dunes, the pile, which is in fact only a heap of
+countless little crystal blocks, would strike us as the most marvellous
+building upon earth. The sunbeams would pass, with
+illuminating power, through all these little crystalline bodies.
+We should see how every sand grain is formed, by what multifarious
+little facets it is bounded, we should even discover
+that it is itself composed of many distinct particles."<a name="FNanchor_429_429" id="FNanchor_429_429"></a><a href="#Footnote_429_429" class="fnanchor">[429]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sand concretions form within the dunes and especially in
+the depressions between them. These are sometimes so extensive
+and impervious as to retain a sufficient supply of water to
+feed perennial springs, and to form small permanent ponds,
+and they are a great impediment to the penetration of roots,
+and consequently to the growth of trees planted, or germinating
+from self-sown seeds, upon the dunes.<a name="FNanchor_430_430" id="FNanchor_430_430"></a><a href="#Footnote_430_430" class="fnanchor">[430]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Interior Structure of Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The interior structure of the dunes, the arrangement of
+their particles, is not, as might be expected, that of an unorganized,
+confused heap, but they show a strong tendency to
+stratification. This is a point of much geological interest,
+because it indicates that sandstone may owe its stratified character
+to the action of wind as well as of water. The origin
+and peculiar character of these layers are due to a variety of
+causes. A southwest wind and current may deposit upon a
+dune a stratum of a given color and mineral composition, and
+this may be succeeded by a northwest wind and current,
+bringing with them particles of a different hue, constitution,
+and origin.</p>
+
+<p>Again, if we suppose a violent tempest to strew the beach
+with sand grains very different in magnitude and specific gravity,
+and, after the sand is dry, to be succeeded by a gentle
+breeze, it is evident that only the lighter particles will be
+taken up and carried to the dunes. If, after some time, the
+wind freshens, heavier grains will be transported and deposited
+on the former, and a still stronger succeeding gale will
+roll up yet larger kernels. Each of these deposits will form a
+stratum. If we suppose the tempest to be followed, after the
+sand is dry, not by a gentle breeze, but by a wind powerful
+enough to lift at the same time particles of very various magnitudes
+and weights, the heaviest will often lodge on the dune
+while the lighter will be carried farther. This would produce
+a stratum of coarse sand, and the same effect might result from
+the blowing away of light particles out of a mixed layer, while
+the heavier remained undisturbed.<a name="FNanchor_431_431" id="FNanchor_431_431"></a><a href="#Footnote_431_431" class="fnanchor">[431]</a> Still another cause of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span>
+stratification may be found in the occasional interposition of a
+thin layer of leaves or other vegetable remains between successive
+deposits, and this I imagine to be more frequent than has
+been generally supposed.</p>
+
+<p>The eddies of strong winds between the hillocks must also
+occasion disturbances and re-arrangements of the sand layers,
+and it seems possible that the irregular thickness and the
+strange contortions of the strata of the sandstone at Petra
+may be due to some such cause. A curious observation of
+Professor Forchhammer suggests an explanation of another
+peculiarity in the structure of the sandstone of Mount Seir.
+He describes dunes in Jutland, composed of yellow quartzose
+sand intermixed with black titanian iron. When the wind
+blows over the surface of the dunes, it furrows the sand with
+alternate ridges and depressions, ripples, in short, like those of
+water. The swells, the dividing ridges of the system of sand
+ripples, are composed of the light grains of quartz, while the
+heavier iron rolls into the depressions between, and thus the
+whole surface of the dune appears as if covered with a fine
+black network.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Form of Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The sea side of dunes, being more exposed to the caprices
+of the wind, is more irregular in form than the lee or land side,
+where the arrangement of the particles is affected by fewer
+disturbing and conflicting influences. Hence, the stratification
+of the windward slope is somewhat confused, while the sand on
+the lee side is found to be disposed in more regular beds, inclining
+landward, and with the largest particles lowest,
+where their greater weight would naturally carry them. The
+lee side of the dunes, being thus formed of sand deposited
+according to the laws of gravity, is very uniform in its slope,
+which, according to Forchhammer, varies little from an angle
+of 30&deg; with the horizon, while the more exposed and irregular
+weather side lies at an inclination of from 5&deg; to 10&deg;. When,
+however, the outer tier of dunes is formed so near the waterline
+as to be exposed to the immediate action of the waves, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span>
+is undermined, and the face of the hill is very steep and sometimes
+nearly perpendicular.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Geological Importance of Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>These observations, and other facts which a more attentive
+study on the spot would detect, might furnish the means of
+determining interesting and important questions concerning
+geological formations in localities very unlike those where
+dunes are now thrown up. For example, Studer supposes that
+the drifting sand hills of the African desert were originally
+coast dunes, and that they have been transported to their present
+position far in the interior, by the rolling and shifting leeward
+movement to which all dunes not covered with vegetation
+are subject. The present general drift of the sands of that
+desert appears to be to the southwest and west, the prevailing
+winds blowing from the northeast and east; but it has been
+doubted whether the shoals of the western coast of Northern
+Africa, and the sands upon that shore, are derived from the
+bottom of the Atlantic, in the usual manner, or, by an inverse
+process, from those of the Sahara. The latter, as has been
+before remarked, is probably the truth, though observations
+are wanting to decide the question.<a name="FNanchor_432_432" id="FNanchor_432_432"></a><a href="#Footnote_432_432" class="fnanchor">[432]</a> There is nothing violently
+improbable in the supposition that they may have been
+first thrown up by the Mediterranean on its Libyan coast, and
+thence blown south and west over the vast space they now
+cover. But whatever has been their source and movement,
+they can hardly fail to have left on their route some sandstone
+monuments to mark their progress, such, for example, as we
+have seen are formed from the dune sand at the mouth of the
+Nile; and it is conceivable that the character of the drifting
+sands themselves, and of the conglomerates and sandstones to
+whose formation they have contributed, might furnish satisfac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span>tory
+evidence as to their origin, their starting point, and the
+course by which they have wandered so far from the sea.<a name="FNanchor_433_433" id="FNanchor_433_433"></a><a href="#Footnote_433_433" class="fnanchor">[433]</a></p>
+
+<p>If the sand of coast dunes is, as Staring describes it, composed
+chiefly of well-rounded quartzose grains, fragments of
+shells, and other constant ingredients, it would often be recognizable
+as coast sand, in its agglutinate state of sandstone.
+The texture of this rock varies from an almost imperceptible
+fineness of grain to great coarseness, and affords good facilities
+for microscopic observation of its structure. There are sandstones,
+such, for example, as are used for grindstones, where
+the grit, as it is called, is of exceeding sharpness; others where
+the angles of the grains are so obtuse that they scarcely act at
+all on hard metals. The former may be composed of grains
+of rock, disintegrated indeed, and recemented together, but
+not, in the meanwhile, much rolled; the latter, of sands long
+washed by the sea, and drifted by land winds. There is,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span>
+indeed, so much resemblance between the effects of driving
+winds and of rolling water upon light bodies, that there would
+be difficulty in distinguishing them;<a name="FNanchor_434_434" id="FNanchor_434_434"></a><a href="#Footnote_434_434" class="fnanchor">[434]</a> but after all, it is not
+probable that sandstone, composed of grains thrown up from
+the salt sea, and long tossed by the winds, would be identical
+in its structure with that formed from fragments of rock
+crushed by mechanical force, or disintegrated by heat, and
+again agglutinated without much exposure to the action of
+moving water.<a name="FNanchor_435_435" id="FNanchor_435_435"></a><a href="#Footnote_435_435" class="fnanchor">[435]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Inland Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I have met with some observations indicating a structural
+difference between interior and coast dunes, which might perhaps
+be recognized in the sandstones formed from these two
+species of sand hills respectively. In the great American desert
+between the Andes and the Pacific, Meyen found sand
+heaps of a perfect falciform shape.<a name="FNanchor_436_436" id="FNanchor_436_436"></a><a href="#Footnote_436_436" class="fnanchor">[436]</a> They were from seven
+to fifteen feet high, the chord of their arc measuring from twenty
+to seventy paces. The slope of the convex face is described as
+very small, that of the concave as high as 70&deg; or 80&deg;, and their
+surfaces were rippled. No smaller dunes were observed, nor
+any in the process of formation. The concave side uniformly
+faced the northwest, except toward the centre of the desert,
+where, for a distance of one or two hundred paces, they gradually
+opened to the west, and then again gradually resumed the
+former position.</p>
+
+<p>P&ouml;ppig ascribes a falciform shape to the movable, a conical
+to the fixed dunes, or <i>medanos</i>, of the same desert. "The medanos,"
+he observes, "are hillock-like elevations of sand, some
+having a firm, others a loose base. The former [latter], which
+are always crescent shaped, are from ten to twenty feet high,
+and have an acute crest. The inner side is perpendicular, and
+the outer or bow side forms an angle with a steep inclination
+downward. When driven by violent winds, the medanos pass
+rapidly over the plains. The smaller and lighter ones move
+quickly forward, before the larger; but the latter soon overtake
+and crush them, whilst they are themselves shivered by the
+collision. These medanos assume all sorts of extraordinary
+figures, and sometimes move along the plain in rows forming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span>
+most intricate labyrinths. * * A plain often appears to be
+covered with a row of medanos, and some days afterward it
+is again restored to its level and uniform aspect. * * *</p>
+
+<p>"The medanos with immovable bases are formed on the
+blocks of rocks which are scattered about the plain. The sand
+is driven against them by the wind, and as soon as it reaches
+the top point, it descends on the other side until that is likewise
+covered; thus gradually arises a conical-formed hill. Entire
+hillock chains with acute crests are formed in a similar manner.
+* * * On their southern declivities are found vast masses
+of sand, drifted thither by the mid-day gales. The northern
+declivity, though not steeper than the southern, is only sparingly
+covered with sand. If a hillock chain somewhat distant
+from the sea extends in a line parallel with the Andes, namely,
+from S. S. E. to N. N. W., the western declivity is almost entirely
+free of sand, as it is driven to the plain below by the
+southeast wind, which constantly alternates with the wind from
+the south."<a name="FNanchor_437_437" id="FNanchor_437_437"></a><a href="#Footnote_437_437" class="fnanchor">[437]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to reconcile this description with that of Meyen,
+but if confidence is to be reposed in the accuracy of either
+observer, the formation of the sand hills in question must be
+governed by very different laws from those which determine
+the structure of coast dunes. Captain Gilliss, of the American
+navy, found the sand hills of the Peruvian desert to be in general
+crescent shaped, as described by Meyen, and a similar
+structure is said to characterize the inland dunes of the Llano
+Estacado and other plateaus of the North American desert,
+though these latter are of greater height and other dimensions
+than those described by Meyen. There is no very obvious explanation
+of this difference in form between maritime and
+inland sand hills, and the subject merits investigation.<a name="FNanchor_438_438" id="FNanchor_438_438"></a><a href="#Footnote_438_438" class="fnanchor">[438]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Age, Character, and Permanence of Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The origin of most great lines of dunes goes back past all
+history. There are on many coasts, several distinct ranges of
+sand hills which seem to be of very different ages, and to have
+been formed under different relative conditions of land and
+water.<a name="FNanchor_439_439" id="FNanchor_439_439"></a><a href="#Footnote_439_439" class="fnanchor">[439]</a> In some cases, there has been an upheaval of the coast
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span>line since the formation of the oldest hillocks, and these have
+become inland dunes, while younger rows have been thrown
+up on the new beach laid bare by elevation of the sea bed.
+Our knowledge of the mode of their first accumulation is derived
+from observation of the action of wind and water in the
+few instances where, with or without the aid of man, new
+coast dunes have been accumulated, and of the influence of
+wind alone in elevating new sand heaps inland of the coast
+tier, when the outer rows are destroyed by the sea, as also
+when the sodded surface of ancient sands has been broken, and
+the subjacent strata laid open to the air.</p>
+
+<p>It is a question of much interest, in what degree the naked
+condition of most dunes is to be ascribed to the improvidence
+and indiscretion of man. There are, in Western France, extensive
+ranges of dunes covered with ancient and dense forests,
+while the recently formed sand hills between them and the sea
+are bare of vegetation, and are rapidly advancing upon the
+wooded dunes, which they threaten to bury beneath their
+drifts. Between the old dunes and the new, there is no discoverable
+difference in material or in structure; but the modern
+sand hills are naked and shifting, the ancient, clothed with
+vegetation and fixed. It has been conjectured that artificial
+methods of confinement and plantation were employed by the
+primitive inhabitants of Gaul; and Laval, basing his calculations
+on the rate of annual movement of the shifting dunes,
+assigns the fifth century of the Christian era as the period when
+these processes were abandoned.<a name="FNanchor_440_440" id="FNanchor_440_440"></a><a href="#Footnote_440_440" class="fnanchor">[440]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is no historical evidence that the Gauls were acquainted
+with artificial methods of fixing the sands of the
+coast, and we have little reason to suppose that they were advanced
+enough in civilization to be likely to resort to such
+processes, especially at a period when land could have had but
+a moderate value.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In other countries, dunes have spontaneously clothed themselves
+with forests, and the rapidity with which their surface
+is covered by various species of sand plants, and finally by
+trees, where man and cattle and burrowing animals are excluded
+from them, renders it highly probable that they would,
+as a general rule, protect themselves, if left to the undisturbed
+action of natural causes. The sand hills of the Frische Nehrung,
+on the coast of Prussia, were formerly wooded down to
+the water's edge, and it was only in the last century that, in
+consequence of the destruction of their forests, they became
+moving sands.<a name="FNanchor_441_441" id="FNanchor_441_441"></a><a href="#Footnote_441_441" class="fnanchor">[441]</a> There is every reason to believe that the
+dunes of the Netherlands were clothed with trees until after
+the Roman invasion. The old geographers, in describing these
+countries, speak of vast forests extending to the very brink of
+the sea; but drifting coast dunes are first mentioned by the
+chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and so far as we know they
+have assumed a destructive character in consequence of the
+improvidence of man.<a name="FNanchor_442_442" id="FNanchor_442_442"></a><a href="#Footnote_442_442" class="fnanchor">[442]</a> The history of the dunes of Michigan,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span>
+so far as I have been able to learn from my own observation,
+or that of others, is the same. Thirty years ago, when that
+region was scarcely inhabited, they were generally covered
+with a thick growth of trees, chiefly pines, and underwood, and
+there was little appearance of undermining and wash on the
+lake side, or of shifting of the sands, except where the trees
+had been cut or turned up by the roots.<a name="FNanchor_443_443" id="FNanchor_443_443"></a><a href="#Footnote_443_443" class="fnanchor">[443]</a></p>
+
+<p>Nature, as she builds up dunes for the protection of the sea
+shore, provides, with similar conservatism, for the preservation
+of the dunes themselves; so that, without the interference of
+man, these hillocks would be, not perhaps absolutely perpetual,
+but very lasting in duration, and very slowly altered in form or
+position. When once covered with the trees, shrubs, and herbaceous
+growths adapted to such localities, dunes undergo no
+apparent change, except the slow occasional undermining of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span>
+the outer tier, and accidental destruction by the exposure of
+the interior, from the burrowing of animals, or the upturning
+of trees with their roots, and all these causes of displacement
+are very much less destructive when a vegetable covering exists
+in the immediate neighborhood of the breach.</p>
+
+<p>Before the occupation of the coasts by civilized and therefore
+destructive man, dunes, at all points where they have been
+observed, seem to have been protected in their rear by forests,
+which served to break the force of the winds in both directions,<a name="FNanchor_444_444" id="FNanchor_444_444"></a><a href="#Footnote_444_444" class="fnanchor">[444]</a>
+and to have spontaneously clothed themselves with a dense
+growth of the various plants, grasses, shrubs, and trees, which
+nature has assigned to such soils. It is observed in Europe
+that dunes, though now without the shelter of a forest country
+behind them, begin to protect themselves as soon as human
+trespassers are excluded, and grazing animals denied access to
+them. Herbaceous and arborescent plants spring up almost at
+once, first in the depressions, and then upon the surface of the
+sand hills. Every seed that sprouts, binds together a certain
+amount of sand by its roots, shades a little ground with its
+leaves, and furnishes food and shelter for still younger or
+smaller growths. A succession of a very few favorable seasons
+suffices to bind the whole surface together with a vegetable
+network, and the power of resistance possessed by the dunes
+themselves, and the protection they afford to the fields behind
+them, are just in proportion to the abundance and density of
+the plants they support.</p>
+
+<p>The growth of the vegetable covering can, of course, be
+much accelerated by judicious planting and watchful care, and
+this species of improvement is now carried on upon a vast
+scale, wherever the value of land is considerable and the population
+dense. In the main, the dunes on the coast of the
+German Sea, notwithstanding the great quantity of often fertile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span>
+land they cover, and the evils which result from their movement,
+are, upon the whole, a protective and beneficial agent,
+and their maintenance is an object of solicitude with the governments
+and people of the shores they protect.<a name="FNanchor_445_445" id="FNanchor_445_445"></a><a href="#Footnote_445_445" class="fnanchor">[445]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Use of Dunes as a Barrier against the Sea.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Although the sea throws up large quantities of sand on flat
+lee-shores, there are, as we have seen, many cases where it
+continually encroaches on those same shores and washes them
+away. At all points of the shallow North Sea where the
+agitation of the waves extends to the bottom, banks are forming
+and rolling eastward. Hence the sea sand tends to accumulate
+upon the coast of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, and
+were there no conflicting influences, the shore would rapidly
+extend itself westward. But the same waves which wash
+the sand to the coast undermine the beach they cover, and still
+more rapidly degrade the shore at points where it is too high
+to receive partial protection by the formation of dunes upon
+it. The earth of the coast is generally composed of particles
+finer, lighter, and more transportable by water than the sea
+sand. While, therefore, the billows raised by a heavy west
+wind may roll up and deposit along the beach thousands of
+tons of sand, the same waves may swallow up even a larger
+quantity of fine shore earth. This earth, with a portion of the
+sand, is swept off by northwardly and southwardly currents,
+and let fall at other points of the coast, or carried off, altogether,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span>
+out of the reach of causes which might bring it back to its
+former position.</p>
+
+<p>Although, then, the eastern shore of the German Ocean
+here and there advances into the sea, it in general retreats
+before it, and but for the protection afforded it by natural
+arrangements seconded by the art and industry of man, whole
+provinces would soon be engulfed by the waters. This protection
+consists in an almost unbroken chain of sand banks and
+dunes, extending from the northernmost point of Jutland to
+the Elbe, a distance of not much less than three hundred miles,
+and from the Elbe again, though with more frequent and wider
+interruptions, to the Atlantic borders of France and Spain.<a name="FNanchor_446_446" id="FNanchor_446_446"></a><a href="#Footnote_446_446" class="fnanchor">[446]</a>
+So long as the dunes are maintained by nature or by human
+art, they serve, like any other embankment or dike, as a partial
+or a complete protection against the encroachments of the sea;
+and on the other hand, when their drifts are not checked by
+natural processes, or by the industry of man, they become a
+cause of as certain, if not of as sudden, destruction as the
+ocean itself whose advance they retard.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Encroachments of the Sea.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The eastward progress of the sea on the Danish and Netherlandish
+coast, and on certain shores of the Atlantic, depends so
+much on local geological structure, on the force and direction
+of tidal and other marine currents, on the volume and rapidity
+of coast rivers, on the contingencies of the weather and on
+other varying circumstances, that no general rate can he assigned
+to it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At Agger, near the western end of the Liimfjord, in Jutland,
+the coast was washed away, between the years 1815 and
+1839, at the rate of more than eighteen feet a year. The advance
+of the sea appears to have been something less rapid
+for a century before; but from 1840 to 1857, it gained upon
+the land no less than thirty feet a year. At other points of
+the shore of Jutland, the loss is smaller, but the sea is encroaching
+generally upon the whole line of the coast.<a name="FNanchor_447_447" id="FNanchor_447_447"></a><a href="#Footnote_447_447" class="fnanchor">[447]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Liimfjord.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The irruption of the sea into the fresh-water lagoon of
+Liimfjord in Jutland, in 1825&mdash;one of the most remarkable
+encroachments of the ocean in modern times&mdash;is expressly ascribed
+to "mismanagement of the dunes" on the narrow neck
+of land which separated the fjord from the North Sea. At
+earlier periods, the sea had swept across the isthmus, and even
+burst through it, but the channel had been filled up again,
+sometimes by artificial means, sometimes by the operation of
+natural causes, and on all these occasions effects were produced
+very similar to those resulting from the formation of the new
+channel in 1825, which still remains open.<a name="FNanchor_448_448" id="FNanchor_448_448"></a><a href="#Footnote_448_448" class="fnanchor">[448]</a> Within comparatively
+recent historical ages, the Liimfjord has thus been several
+times alternately filled with fresh and with salt water, and man
+has produced, by neglecting the dunes, or at least might have
+prevented by maintaining them, changes identical with those
+which are usually ascribed to the action of great geological
+causes, and sometimes supposed to have required vast periods
+of time for their accomplishment.</p>
+
+<p>"This breach," says Forchhammer, "which converted the
+Liimfjord into a sound, and the northern part of Jutland into
+an island, occasioned remarkable changes. The first and most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span>
+striking phenomenon was the sudden destruction of almost all
+the fresh-water fish previously inhabiting this lagoon, which
+was famous for its abundant fisheries. Millions of fresh-water
+fish were thrown on shore, partly dead and partly dying, and
+were carted off by the people. A few only survived, and still
+frequent the shores at the mouth of the brooks. The eel,
+however, has gradually accommodated itself to the change of
+circumstances, and is found in all parts of the fjord, while to
+all other fresh-water fish, the salt water of the ocean seems to
+have been fatal. It is more than probable that the sand washed
+in by the irruption covers, in many places, a layer of dead fish,
+and has thus prepared the way for a petrified stratum similar
+to those observed in so many older formations.</p>
+
+<p>"As it seems to be a law of nature that animals whose life
+is suddenly extinguished while yet in full vigor, are the most
+likely to be preserved by petrification, we find here one of the
+conditions favorable to the formation of such a petrified stratum.
+The bottom of the Liimfjord was covered with a vigorous
+growth of aquatic plants, belonging both to fresh and to salt
+water, especially <i>Zostera marina</i>. This vegetation totally
+disappeared after the irruption, and, in some instances, was
+buried by the sand; and here again we have a familiar phenomenon
+often observed in ancient strata&mdash;the indication of
+a given formation by a particular vegetable species&mdash;and when
+the strata deposited at the time of the breach shall be accessible
+by upheaval, the period of eruption will be marked by a
+stratum of <i>Zostera</i>, and probably by impressions of fresh-water
+fishes.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very remarkable that the <i>Zostera marina</i>, a sea plant,
+was destroyed even where no sand was deposited. This was
+probably in consequence of the sudden change from brackish to
+salt water. * * It is well established that the Liimfjord
+communicated with the German Ocean at some former period.
+To that era belong the deep beds of oyster shells and <i>Cardium
+edule</i>, which are still found at the bottom of the fjord. And
+now, after an interval of centuries, during which the lagoon
+contained no salt-water shell fish, it again produces great num<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span>bers
+of <i>Mytilus edulis</i>. Could we obtain a deep section of the
+bottom, we should find beds of <i>Ostrea edulis</i> and <i>Cardium
+edule</i>, then a layer of <i>Zostera marina</i> with fresh-water fish,
+and then a bed of <i>Mytilus edulis</i>. If, in course of time, the
+new channel should be closed, the brooks would fill the lagoon
+again with fresh water; fresh-water fish and shell fish would
+reappear, and thus we should have a repeated alternation
+of organic inhabitants of the sea and of the waters of the
+land.</p>
+
+<p>"These events have been accompanied with but a comparatively
+insignificant change of land surface, while the formations
+in the bed of this inland sea have been totally revolutionized
+in character."<a name="FNanchor_449_449" id="FNanchor_449_449"></a><a href="#Footnote_449_449" class="fnanchor">[449]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, Holland, and France.</i></h4>
+
+<p>On the islands on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein, the advance
+of the sea has been more unequivocal and more rapid.
+Near the beginning of the last century, the dunes which had
+protected the western coast of the island of Sylt began to roll
+to the east, and the sea followed closely as they retired. In
+1757, the church of Rantum, a village upon that island, was
+obliged to be taken down in consequence of the advance of the
+sand hills; in 1791, these hills had passed beyond its site, the
+waves had swallowed up its foundations, and the sea gained so
+rapidly, that, fifty years later, the spot where they lay was
+seven hundred feet from the shore.<a name="FNanchor_450_450" id="FNanchor_450_450"></a><a href="#Footnote_450_450" class="fnanchor">[450]</a></p>
+
+<p>The most prominent geological landmark on the coast of
+Holland is the Huis te Britten, <i>Arx Britannica</i>, a fortress
+built by the Romans, in the time of Caligula, on the main
+land near the mouth of the Rhine. At the close of the seventeenth
+century, the sea had advanced sixteen hundred paces
+beyond it. The older Dutch annalists record, with much parade
+of numerical accuracy, frequent encroachments of the sea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span>
+upon many parts of the Netherlandish coast. But though the
+general fact of an advance of the ocean upon the land is established
+beyond dispute, the precision of the measurements
+which have been given is open to question. Staring, however,
+who thinks the erosion of the coast much exaggerated by popular
+geographers, admits a loss of more than a million and a
+half acres, chiefly worthless morass;<a name="FNanchor_451_451" id="FNanchor_451_451"></a><a href="#Footnote_451_451" class="fnanchor">[451]</a> and it is certain that
+but for the resistance of man, but for his erection of dikes and
+protection of dunes, there would now be left of Holland little
+but the name. It is, as has been already seen, still a debated
+question among geologists whether the coast of Holland now
+is, and for centuries has been, subsiding. I believe most investigators
+maintain the affirmative; and if the fact is so, the
+advance of the sea upon the land is, in part, due to this cause.
+But the rate of subsidence is at all events very small, and
+therefore the encroachments of the ocean upon the coast are
+mainly to be ascribed to the erosion and transportation of the
+soil by marine waves and currents.</p>
+
+<p>The sea is fast advancing at several points of the western
+coast of France, and unknown causes have given a new impulse
+to its ravages since the commencement of the present century.
+Between 1830 and 1842, the Point de Grave, on the north side
+of the Gironde, retreated one hundred and eighty m&egrave;tres, or
+about fifty feet per year; from the latter year to 1846, the rate
+was increased to more than three times that quantity, and the
+loss in those four years was above six hundred feet. All the
+buildings at the extremity of the peninsula have been taken
+down and rebuilt farther landward, and the lighthouse of the
+Grave now occupies its third position. The sea attacked the
+base of the peninsula also, and the Point de Grave and the adjacent
+coasts have been for twenty years the scene of one of
+the most obstinately contested struggles between man and the
+ocean recorded in the annals of modern engineering.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot, indeed, be affirmed that human power is able to
+arrest altogether the incursions of the waves on sandy coasts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span>
+by planting the beach, and clothing the dunes with wood. On
+the contrary, both in Holland and on the French coast, it has
+been found necessary to protect the dunes themselves by piling
+and by piers and sea walls of heavy masonry. But experience
+has amply shown that the processes referred to are entirely
+successful in preventing the movement of the dunes, and the
+drifting of their sands over cultivated lands behind them; and
+that, at the same time, the plantations very much retard the
+landward progress of the waters.<a name="FNanchor_452_452" id="FNanchor_452_452"></a><a href="#Footnote_452_452" class="fnanchor">[452]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Drifting of Dune Sands.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Besides their importance as a barrier against the inroads
+of the ocean, dunes are useful by sheltering the cultivated
+ground behind them from the violence of the sea wind, from
+salt spray, and from the drifts of beach sand which would
+otherwise overwhelm them. But the dunes themselves, unless
+their surface sands are kept moist, and confined by the growth
+of plants, or at least by a crust of vegetable earth, are constantly
+rolling inward; and thus, while, on one side, they lay
+bare the traces of ancient human habitations or other evidences
+of the social life of primitive man, they are, on the other, burying
+fields, houses, churches, and converting populous districts
+into barren and deserted wastes.</p>
+
+<p>Especially destructive are they when, by any accident, a
+cavity is opened into them to a considerable depth, thereby
+giving the wind access to the interior, where the sand is thus
+first dried, and then scooped out and scattered far over the
+neighboring soil. The dune is now a magazine of sand, no
+longer a rampart against it, and mischief from this source
+seems more difficult to resist than from almost any other drift,
+because the supply of material at the command of the wind, is
+more abundant and more concentrated than in its original thin
+and widespread deposits on the beach. The burrowing of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span>
+conies in the dunes is, in this way, not unfrequently a cause of
+their destruction and of great injury to the fields behind them.
+Drifts, and even inland sand hills, sometimes result from breaking
+the surface of more level sand deposits, far within the
+range of the coast dunes. Thus we learn from Staring, that
+one of the highest inland dunes in Friesland owes its origin to
+the opening of the drift sand by the uprooting of a large oak.<a name="FNanchor_453_453" id="FNanchor_453_453"></a><a href="#Footnote_453_453" class="fnanchor">[453]</a></p>
+
+<p>Great as are the ravages produced by the encroachment of
+the sea upon the western shores of continental Europe, they
+have been in some degree compensated by spontaneous marine
+deposits at other points of the coast, and we have seen in a
+former chapter that the industry of man has reclaimed a large
+territory from the bosom of the ocean. These latter triumphs
+are not of recent origin, and the incipient victories which paved
+the way for them date back perhaps as far as ten centuries.
+In the mean time, the dunes had been left to the operation of
+the laws of nature, or rather freed, by human imprudence,
+from the fetters with which nature had bound them, and it is
+scarcely three generations since man first attempted to check
+their destructive movements. As they advanced, he unresistingly
+yielded and retreated before them, and they have buried
+under their sandy billows many hundreds of square miles of
+luxuriant cornfields and vineyards and forests.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Dunes of Gascony.</i></h4>
+
+<p>On the west coast of France, a belt of dunes, varying in
+width from a quarter of a mile to five miles, extends from the
+Adour to the estuary of the Gironde, and covers an area of
+three hundred and seventy-five square miles. When not fixed
+by vegetable growths, they advance eastward at a mean rate
+of about one rod, or sixteen and a half feet, a year. We do
+not know historically when they began to drift, but if we suppose
+their motion to have been always the same as at present,
+they would have passed over the space between the sea coast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span>
+and their eastern boundary, and covered the large area above
+mentioned, in fourteen hundred years. We know, from written
+records, that they have buried extensive fields and forests
+and thriving villages, and changed the courses of rivers, and
+that the lighter particles carried from them by the winds, even
+where not transported in sufficient quantities to form sand
+hills, have rendered sterile much land formerly fertile.<a name="FNanchor_454_454" id="FNanchor_454_454"></a><a href="#Footnote_454_454" class="fnanchor">[454]</a> They
+have also injuriously obstructed the natural drainage of the
+maritime districts by choking up the beds of the streams, and
+forming lakes and pestilential swamps of no inconsiderable extent.
+In fact, so completely do they embank the coast, that
+between the Gironde and the village of Mimizan, a distance of
+one hundred miles, there are but two outlets for the discharge
+of all the waters which flow from the land to the sea; and the
+eastern front of the dunes is bordered by a succession of stagnant
+pools, some of which are more than six miles in length
+and breadth.<a name="FNanchor_455_455" id="FNanchor_455_455"></a><a href="#Footnote_455_455" class="fnanchor">[455]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Dunes of Denmark and Prussia.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In the small kingdom of Denmark, inclusive of the duchies
+of Schleswig and Holstein, the dunes cover an area of more
+than two hundred and sixty square miles. The breadth of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span>
+chain is very various, and in some places it consists only of a
+single row of sand hills, while in others, it is more than six
+miles wide. The general rate of eastward movement of the
+drifting dunes is from three to twenty-four feet per annum.
+If we adopt the mean of thirteen feet and a half for the annual
+motion, the dunes have traversed the widest part of the belt in
+about twenty-five hundred years. Historical data are wanting
+as to the period of the formation of these dunes and of the
+commencement of their drifting; but there is recorded evidence
+that they have buried a vast extent of valuable land
+within three or four centuries, and further proof is found in
+the fact that the movement of the sands is constantly uncovering
+ruins of ancient buildings, and other evidences of human
+occupation, at points far within the present limits of the uninhabitable
+desert. Andresen estimates the average depth of the
+sand deposited over this area at thirty feet, which would give
+a cubic mile and a half for the total quantity.<a name="FNanchor_456_456" id="FNanchor_456_456"></a><a href="#Footnote_456_456" class="fnanchor">[456]</a></p>
+
+<p>The drifting of the dunes on the coast of Prussia commenced
+not much more than a hundred years ago. The
+Frische Nehrung is separated from the mainland by the
+Frische Haff, and there is but a narrow strip of arable land
+along its eastern borders. Hence its rolling sands have covered
+a comparatively small extent of dry land, but fields and villages
+have been buried and valuable forests laid waste by
+them. The loose coast row has drifted over the inland ranges,
+which, as was noticed in the description of these dunes on a
+former page, were protected by a surface of different composition,
+and the sand has thus been raised to a height which it
+could not have reached upon level ground. This elevation has
+enabled it to advance upon and overwhelm woods, which, upon
+a plain, would have checked its progress, and, in one instance,
+a forest of many hundred acres of tall pines was destroyed by
+the drifts between 1804 and 1827.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Control of Dunes by Man.</i></h4>
+
+<p>There are three principal modes in which the industry of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span>
+man is brought to bear upon the dunes. First, the creation of
+them, at points where, from changes in the currents or other
+causes, new encroachments of the sea are threatened; second,
+the maintenance and protection of them where they have been
+naturally formed; and third, the removal of the inner rows
+where the belt is so broad that no danger is to be apprehended
+from the loss of them.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Artificial Formation of Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In describing the natural formation of dunes, it was said
+that they began with an accumulation of sand around some
+vegetable or other accidental obstruction to the drifting of the
+particles. A high, perpendicular cliff, which deadens the wind
+altogether, prevents all accumulation of sand; but, up to a
+certain point, the higher and broader the obstruction, the more
+sand will heap up in front of it, and the more will that which
+falls behind it be protected from drifting farther. This familiar
+observation has taught the inhabitants of the coast that an
+artificial wall or dike will, in many situations, give rise to a
+broad belt of dunes. Thus a sand dike or wall, of three or four
+miles in length, thrown in 1610 across the Koegras, a tide-washed
+flat between the Zuiderzee and the North Sea, has
+occasioned the formation of rows of dunes a mile in breadth,
+and thus excluded the sea altogether from the Koegras. A
+similar dike, called the Zijperzeedijk, has produced another
+scarcely less extensive belt in the course of two centuries.</p>
+
+<p>A few years since, the sea was threatening to cut through
+the island of Ameland, and, by encroachment on the southern
+side and the blowing off of the sand from a low flat which connected
+the two higher parts of the island, it had made such
+progress, that in heavy storms the waves sometimes rolled
+quite across the isthmus. The construction of a breakwater
+and a sand dike have already checked the advance of the sea,
+and a large number of sand hills has been formed, the rapid
+growth of which promises complete future security against
+both wind and wave. Similar effects have been produced by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span>
+the erection of plank fences, and even of simple screens of
+wattling and reeds.<a name="FNanchor_457_457" id="FNanchor_457_457"></a><a href="#Footnote_457_457" class="fnanchor">[457]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Protection of Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The dunes of Holland are sometimes protected from the
+dashing of the waves by a <i>rev&ecirc;tement</i> of stone, or by piles;
+and the lateral high-water currents, which wash away their
+base, are occasionally checked by transverse walls running
+from the foot of the dunes to low-water mark; but the great
+expense of such constructions has prevented their adoption on
+a large scale.<a name="FNanchor_458_458" id="FNanchor_458_458"></a><a href="#Footnote_458_458" class="fnanchor">[458]</a> The principal means relied on for the protection
+of the sand hills are the planting of their surfaces and
+the exclusion of burrowing and grazing animals. There are
+grasses, creeping plants, and shrubs of spontaneous growth,
+which flourish in loose sand, and, if protected, spread over considerable
+tracts, and finally convert their face into a soil capable
+of cultivation, or, at least, of producing forest trees.
+Krause enumerates one hundred and seventy-one plants as
+native to the coast sands of Prussia, and the observations of
+Andresen in Jutland carry the number of these vegetables up
+to two hundred and thirty-four.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these plants, especially the <i>Arundo arenaria</i> or
+<i>arenosa</i>, or <i>Psamma</i> or <i>Psammophila arenaria</i>&mdash;Klittetag, or
+Hjelme in Danish, helm in Dutch, D&uuml;nenhalm, Sandschilf, or
+H&uuml;gelrohr in German, gourbet in French, and marram in
+English&mdash;are exclusively confined to sandy soils, and thrive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span>
+well only in a saline atmosphere.<a name="FNanchor_459_459" id="FNanchor_459_459"></a><a href="#Footnote_459_459" class="fnanchor">[459]</a> The arundo grows to the
+height of about twenty-four inches, but sends its strong roots
+with their many rootlets to a distance of forty or fifty feet. It
+has the peculiar property of nourishing best in the loosest soil,
+and a sand shower seems to refresh it as the rain revives the
+thirsty plants of the common earth. Its roots bind together the
+dunes, and its leaves protect their surface. When the sand
+ceases to drift, the arundo dies, its decaying roots fertilizing
+the sand, and the decomposition of its leaves forming a layer
+of vegetable earth over it. Then follows a succession of other
+plants which gradually fit the sand hills, by growth and decay,
+for forest planting, for pasturage, and sometimes for ordinary
+agricultural use.</p>
+
+<p>But the protection and gradual transformation of the dunes
+is not the only service rendered by this valuable plant. Its
+leaves are nutritious food for sheep and cattle, its seeds for
+poultry;<a name="FNanchor_460_460" id="FNanchor_460_460"></a><a href="#Footnote_460_460" class="fnanchor">[460]</a> cordage and netting twine are manufactured from
+its fibres, it makes a good material for thatching, and its dried
+roots furnish excellent fuel. These useful qualities, unfortunately,
+are too often prejudicial to its growth. The peasants
+feed it down with their cattle, cut it for rope making, or dig it
+up for fuel, and it has been found necessary to resort to severe
+legislation to prevent them from bringing ruin upon themselves
+by thus improvidently sacrificing their most effectual
+safeguard against the drifting of the sands.<a name="FNanchor_461_461" id="FNanchor_461_461"></a><a href="#Footnote_461_461" class="fnanchor">[461]</a></p>
+
+<p>In 1539, a decree of Christian III, king of Denmark, imposed
+a fine upon persons convicted of destroying certain species
+of sand plants upon the west coast of Jutland. This ordinance
+was renewed and made more comprehensive in 1558,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span>
+and in 1569 the inhabitants of several districts were required,
+by royal rescript, to do their best to check the sand drifts,
+though the specific measures to be adopted for that purpose
+are not indicated. Various laws against stripping the dunes
+of their vegetation were enacted in the following century, but
+no active measures were taken for the subjugation of the sand
+drifts until 1779, when a preliminary system of operation for
+that purpose was adopted. This consisted in little more than
+the planting of the <i>Arundo arenaria</i> and other sand plants,
+and the exclusion of animals destructive to these vegetables.<a name="FNanchor_462_462" id="FNanchor_462_462"></a><a href="#Footnote_462_462" class="fnanchor">[462]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span>
+Ten years later, plantations of forest trees, which have since
+proved so valuable a means of fixing the dunes and rendering
+them productive, were commenced, and have been continued
+ever since.<a name="FNanchor_463_463" id="FNanchor_463_463"></a><a href="#Footnote_463_463" class="fnanchor">[463]</a> During this latter period, Br&eacute;montier, without
+any knowledge of what was doing in Denmark, experimented
+upon the cultivation of forest trees on the dunes of Gascony,
+and perfected a system, which, with some improvements in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span>
+matters of detail, is still largely pursued on those shores. The
+example of Denmark was soon followed in the neighboring
+kingdom of Prussia, and in the Netherlands; and, as we shall
+see hereafter, these improvements have been everywhere
+crowned with most flattering success.</p>
+
+<p>Under the administration of Reventlov, a little before the
+close of the last century, the Danish Government organized a
+regular system of improvement in the economy of the dunes.
+They were planted with the arundo and other vegetables of
+similar habits, protected against trespassers, and at last partly
+covered with forest trees. By these means much waste soil has
+been converted into arable ground, a large growth of valuable
+timber obtained, and the further spread of the drifts, which
+threatened to lay waste the whole peninsula of Jutland, to a
+considerable extent arrested.</p>
+
+<p>In France, the operations for fixing and reclaiming the
+dunes&mdash;which began under the direction of Br&eacute;montier about
+the same time as in Denmark, and which are, in principle and
+in many of their details, similar to those employed in the latter
+kingdom&mdash;have been conducted on a far larger scale, and with
+greater success, than in any other country. This is partly
+owing to a climate more favorable to the growth of suitable
+forest trees than that of Northern Europe, and partly to the
+liberality of the Government, which, having more important
+landed interests to protect, has put larger means at the disposal
+of the engineers than Denmark and Prussia have found it convenient
+to appropriate to that purpose. The area of the dunes
+already secured from drifting, and planted by the processes invented
+by Br&eacute;montier and perfected by his successors, is about
+100,000 acres.<a name="FNanchor_464_464" id="FNanchor_464_464"></a><a href="#Footnote_464_464" class="fnanchor">[464]</a> This amount of productive soil, then, has been
+added to the resources of France, and a still greater quantity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span>
+of valuable land has been thereby rescued from the otherwise
+certain destruction with which it was threatened by the advance
+of the rolling sand hills.</p>
+
+<p>The improvements of the dunes on the coast of West Prussia
+began in 1795, under S&ouml;ren Bj&ouml;rn, a native of Denmark, and,
+with the exception of the ten years between 1807 and 1817,
+they have been prosecuted ever since. The methods do not
+differ essentially from those employed in Denmark and France,
+though they are modified by local circumstances, and, with
+respect to the trees selected for planting, by climate. In 1850,
+between the mouth of the Vistula and Kahlberg, 6,300 acres,
+including about 1,900 acres planted with pines and birches,
+had been secured from drifting; between Kahlberg and the
+eastern boundary of West-Prussia, 8,000 acres; and important
+preliminary operations had been carried on for subduing the
+dunes on the west coast.<a name="FNanchor_465_465" id="FNanchor_465_465"></a><a href="#Footnote_465_465" class="fnanchor">[465]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Trees suited to Dune Plantations.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The tree which has been found to thrive best upon the
+sand hills of the French coast, and at the same time to confine
+the sand most firmly and yield the largest pecuniary returns,
+is the maritime pine, <i>Pinus maritima</i>, a species valuable both
+for its timber and for its resinous products. It is always grown
+from seed, and the young shoots require to be protected for
+several seasons, by the branches of other trees, planted in rows,
+or spread over the surface and staked down, by the growth of
+the <i>Arundo arenaria</i> and other small sand plants, or by wattled
+hedges. The beach, from which the sand is derived, has
+been generally planted with the arundo, because the pine does
+not thrive well so near the sea; but it is thought that a species
+of tamarisk is likely to succeed in that latitude even better
+than the arundo. The shade and the protection offered by the
+branching top of this pine are favorable to the growth of deciduous
+trees, and, while still young, of shrubs and smaller plants,
+which contribute more rapidly to the formation of vegetable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span>
+mould, and thus, when the pine has once taken root, the redemption
+of the waste is considered as effectually secured.</p>
+
+<p>In France, the maritime pine is planted on the sands of the
+interior as well as on the dunes of the sea coast, and with equal
+advantage. This tree resembles the pitch pine of the Southern
+American States in its habits, and is applied to the same uses.
+The extraction of turpentine from it begins at the age of about
+twenty years, or when it has attained a diameter of from nine
+to twelve inches. Incisions are made up and down the trunk,
+to the depth of about half an inch in the wood, and it is insisted
+that if not more than two such slits are cut, the tree is not
+sensibly injured by the process. The growth, indeed, is somewhat
+checked, but the wood becomes superior to that of trees
+from which the turpentine is not extracted. Thus treated, the
+pine continues to flourish to the age of one hundred or one
+hundred and twenty years, and up to this age the trees on a
+hectare yield annually 350 kilogrammes of essence of turpentine,
+and 280 kilogrammes of resin, worth together 110 francs.
+The expense of extraction and distillation is calculated at 44
+francs, and a clear profit of 66 francs per hectare, or more than
+five dollars per acre, is left.<a name="FNanchor_466_466" id="FNanchor_466_466"></a><a href="#Footnote_466_466" class="fnanchor">[466]</a> This is exclusive of the value of
+the timber, when finally cut, which, of course, amounts to a
+very considerable sum.</p>
+
+<p>In Denmark, where the climate is much colder, hardier
+conifers, as well as the birch and other northern trees, are
+found to answer a better purpose than the maritime pine, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span>
+it is doubtful whether this tree would be able to resist the winter
+on the dunes of Massachusetts. Probably the pitch pine of
+the Northern States, in conjunction with some of the American
+oaks, birches, and poplars, and especially the robinia or locust,
+would prove very suitable to be employed on the sand hills of
+Cape Cod and Long Island. The ailanthus, now coming into
+notice as a sand-loving tree, may, perhaps, serve a better purpose
+than any of them.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Extent of Dunes in Europe.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The dunes of Denmark, as we have seen, cover an area of
+two hundred and sixty square miles, or one hundred and
+sixty-six thousand acres; those of the Prussian coast are
+vaguely estimated at from eighty-five to one hundred and ten
+thousand acres; those of Holland at one hundred and forty
+thousand acres;<a name="FNanchor_467_467" id="FNanchor_467_467"></a><a href="#Footnote_467_467" class="fnanchor">[467]</a> those of Gascony at about three hundred
+thousand acres.<a name="FNanchor_468_468" id="FNanchor_468_468"></a><a href="#Footnote_468_468" class="fnanchor">[468]</a> I do not find any estimate of their extent in
+other provinces of France, in the duchies of Schleswig and
+Holstein, or in the Baltic provinces of Russia, but it is probable
+that the entire quantity of dune land upon the eastern shores
+of the Atlantic and the Baltic does not fall much short of a
+million of acres.<a name="FNanchor_469_469" id="FNanchor_469_469"></a><a href="#Footnote_469_469" class="fnanchor">[469]</a> This vast deposit of sea sand extends along<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span>
+the coast for a distance of several hundred miles, and from the
+time of the destruction of the forests which covered it, to the
+year 1789, the whole line was rolling inward and burying the
+soil beneath it, or rendering the fields unproductive by the
+sand which drifted from it. At the same time, as the sand
+hills moved eastward, the ocean was closely following their
+retreat and swallowing up the ground they had covered, as
+fast as their movement left it bare.</p>
+
+<p>Planting the dunes has completely prevented the surface
+sands from blowing over the soil to the leeward of the plantations,
+and though it has not, in all cases, arrested the encroachments
+of the sea, it has so greatly retarded the rapidity of their
+advance, that sandy coasts, when once covered with forests,
+may be considered as substantially secure, so long as proper
+measures are taken for the protection of the woods.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Dune Vineyards of Cap Breton.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In the vicinity of Cap Breton in France, a peculiar process
+is successfully employed, both for preventing the drifting of
+dunes, and for rendering the sands themselves immediately
+productive; but this method is applicable only in exceptional
+cases of favorable climate and exposure. It consists in planting
+vineyards upon the dunes, and protecting them by hedges
+of broom, <i>Erica scoparia</i>, so disposed as to form rectangles
+about thirty feet by forty. The vines planted in these enclosures
+thrive admirably, and the grapes produced by them are
+among the best grown in France. The dunes are so far from
+being an unfavorable soil for the vine, that fresh sea-sand is
+regularly employed as a fertilizer for it, alternating every other
+season with ordinary manure. The quantity of sand thus applied
+every second year, raises the surface of the vineyard
+about four or five inches. The vines are cut down every year
+to three or four shoots, and the raising of the soil rapidly cov<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span>ers
+the old stocks. As fast as buried, they send out new roots
+near the surface, and thus the vineyard is constantly renewed,
+and has always a youthful appearance, though it may have
+been already planted a couple of generations. This practice is
+ascertained to have been followed for two centuries, and is
+among the oldest well-authenticated attempts of man to resist
+and vanquish the dunes.<a name="FNanchor_470_470" id="FNanchor_470_470"></a><a href="#Footnote_470_470" class="fnanchor">[470]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Removal of Dunes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The artificial removal of dunes, no longer necessary as a
+protection, does not appear to have been practised upon a large
+scale except in the Netherlands, where the numerous canals
+furnish an easy and economical means of transporting the
+sand, and where the construction and maintenance of sea and
+river dikes, and of causeways and other embankments and
+fillings, create a great demand for that material. Sand is also
+employed in Holland, in large quantities, for improving the
+consistence of the tough clay bordering upon or underlying
+diluvial deposits, and for forming an artificial soil for the
+growth of certain garden and ornamental vegetables. When
+the dunes are removed, the ground they covered is restored to
+the domain of industry; and the quantity of land, recovered
+in the Netherlands by the removal of the barren sands which
+encumbered it, amounts to hundreds and perhaps thousands of
+acres.<a name="FNanchor_471_471" id="FNanchor_471_471"></a><a href="#Footnote_471_471" class="fnanchor">[471]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Inland Sand Plains.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The inland sand plains of Europe are either derived from
+the drifting of dunes or other beach sands, or consist of diluvial
+deposits. As we have seen, when once the interior of a dune
+is laid open to the wind, its contents are soon scattered far and
+wide over the adjacent country, and the beach sands, no longer
+checked by the rampart which nature had constrained them to
+build against their own encroachments, are also carried to con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span>siderable
+distances from the coast. Few regions have suffered
+so much from this cause in proportion to their extent, as the
+peninsula of Jutland. So long as the woods, with which nature
+had planted the Danish dunes, were spared, they seem to have
+been stationary, and we have no historical evidence, of an earlier
+date than the sixteenth century, that they had become in any
+way injurious. From that period, there are frequent notices of
+the invasions of cultivated grounds by the sands; and excavations
+are constantly bringing to light proof of human habitation
+and of agricultural industry, in former ages, on soils now
+buried beneath deep drifts from the dunes and beaches of the
+sea coast.<a name="FNanchor_472_472" id="FNanchor_472_472"></a><a href="#Footnote_472_472" class="fnanchor">[472]</a></p>
+
+<p>Extensive tracts of valuable plain land in the Netherlands
+and in France have been covered in the same way with a layer
+of sand deep enough to render them infertile, and they can be
+restored to cultivation only by processes analogous to those
+employed for fixing and improving the dunes.<a name="FNanchor_473_473" id="FNanchor_473_473"></a><a href="#Footnote_473_473" class="fnanchor">[473]</a> Diluvial sand
+plains, also, have been reclaimed by these methods in the
+Duchy of Austria, between Vienna and the Semmering ridge,
+in Jutland, and in the great champaign country of Northern
+Germany, especially the Mark Brandenburg, where artificial
+forests can be propagated with great ease, and where, consequently,
+this branch of industry has been pursued on a great
+scale, and with highly beneficial results, both as respects the
+supply of forest products and the preparation of the soil for
+agricultural use.</p>
+
+<p>As a general rule, inland sands are looser, dryer, and more
+inclined to drift, than those of the sea coast, where the moist
+and saline atmosphere of the ocean keeps them always more
+or less humid and cohesive. No shore dunes are so movable
+as the medanos of Peru described in a passage quoted from P&ouml;p<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span>pig
+on a former page, or as the sand hills of Poland, both of
+which seem better entitled to the appellation of sand waves than
+those of the Sahara or of the Arabian desert. The sands of
+the valley of the Lower Euphrates&mdash;themselves probably of
+submarine origin, and not derived from dunes&mdash;are advancing
+to the northwest with a rapidity which seems fabulous when
+compared with the slow movement of the sand hills of Gascony
+and the Low German coasts. Loftus, speaking of Niliyya, an
+old Arab town a few miles east of the ruins of Babylon, says
+that, "in 1848, the sand began to accumulate around it, and in
+six years, the desert, within a radius of six miles, was covered
+with little, undulating domes, while the ruins of the city were
+so buried that it is now impossible to trace their original form
+or extent."<a name="FNanchor_474_474" id="FNanchor_474_474"></a><a href="#Footnote_474_474" class="fnanchor">[474]</a> Loftus considers this sand flood as the "vanguard
+of those vast drifts which, advancing from the southeast,
+threaten eventually to overwhelm Babylon and Baghdad."</p>
+
+<p>An observation of Layard, cited by Loftus, appears to me
+to furnish a possible explanation of this irruption. He "passed
+two or three places where the sand, issuing from the earth
+like water, is called 'Aioun-er-rummal,' sand springs." These
+"springs" are very probably merely the drifting of sand from
+the ancient subsoil, where the protecting crust of aquatic deposit
+and vegetable earth has been broken through, as in the
+case of the drift which arose from the upturning of an oak
+mentioned on a former page. When the valley of the Euphrates
+was regularly irrigated and cultivated, the underlying
+sands were bound by moisture, alluvial slime, and vegetation;
+but now, that all improvement is neglected, and the surface, no
+longer watered, has become parched, powdery, and naked, a
+mere accidental fissure in the superficial stratum may soon be
+enlarged to a wide opening, that will let loose sand enough to
+overwhelm a province.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Landes of Gascony.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The most remarkable sand plain of France lies at the southwestern
+extremity of the empire, and is generally known as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</a></span>
+the Landes, or heaths, of Gascony. Clav&eacute; thus describes it:
+"Composed of pure sand, resting on an impermeable stratum
+called <i>alios</i>, the soil of the Landes was, for centuries, considered
+incapable of cultivation. Parched in summer, drowned
+in winter, it produced only ferns, rushes, and heath, and
+scarcely furnished pasturage for a few half-starved flocks. To
+crown its miseries, this plain was continually threatened by the
+encroachments of the dunes. Vast ridges of sand, thrown up
+by the waves, for a distance of more than fifty leagues along
+the coast, and continually renewed, were driven inland by the
+west wind, and, as they rolled over the plain, they buried the
+soil and the hamlets, overcame all resistance, and advanced
+with fearful regularity. The whole province seemed devoted
+to certain destruction, when Br&eacute;montier invented his method
+of fixing the dunes by plantations of the maritime pine."<a name="FNanchor_475_475" id="FNanchor_475_475"></a><a href="#Footnote_475_475" class="fnanchor">[475]</a></p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_512_2" id="Page_512_2"></a>Although the Landes had been almost abandoned for ages,
+they show numerous traces of ancient cultivation and prosperity,
+and it is principally by means of the encroachments of the
+sands that they have become reduced to their present desolate
+condition. The destruction of the coast towns and harbors,
+which furnished markets for the products of the plains, the damming
+up of the rivers, and the obstruction of the smaller channels
+of natural drainage by the advance of the dunes, were no
+doubt very influential causes; and if we add the drifting of
+the sea sand over the soil, we have at least a partial explanation
+of the decayed agriculture and diminished population of this
+great waste. When the dunes were once arrested, and the
+soil to the east of them was felt to be secure against invasion
+by them, experiments, in the way of agricultural improvement,
+by drainage and plantation, were commenced, and they have
+been attended with such signal success, that the complete recovery
+of one of the dreariest and most extensive wastes in
+Europe may be considered as both a probable and a near
+event.<a name="FNanchor_476_476" id="FNanchor_476_476"></a><a href="#Footnote_476_476" class="fnanchor">[476]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>The Belgian Campine.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In the northern part of Belgium, and extending across the
+confines of Holland, is another very similar heath plain, called
+the Campine. This is a vast sand flat, interspersed with
+marshes and inland dunes, and, until recently, considered
+wholly incapable of cultivation. Enormous sums have been
+expended in reclaiming it by draining and other familiar
+agricultural processes, but without results at all proportional
+to the capital invested. In 1849, the unimproved portion of
+the Campine was estimated at little less than three hundred
+and fifty thousand acres. The example of France has prompted
+experiments in the planting of trees, especially the maritime
+pine, upon this barren waste, and the results have been such
+as to show that its sands may both be fixed and made productive,
+not only without loss, but with positive pecuniary advantage.<a name="FNanchor_477_477" id="FNanchor_477_477"></a><a href="#Footnote_477_477" class="fnanchor">[477]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Sands and Steppes of Eastern Europe.</i></h4>
+
+<p>There are still unsubdued sand wastes in many parts of interior
+Europe not familiarly known to tourists or even geographers.
+"Olkuez and Schiewier in Poland," says Naumann,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</a></span>
+"lie in true sand deserts, and a boundless plain of sand stretches
+around Ozenstockau, on which there grows neither tree nor
+shrub. In heavy winds, this plain resembles a rolling sea, and
+the sand hills rise and disappear like the waves of the ocean.
+The heaps of waste from the Olkuez mines are covered with
+sand to the depth of four fathoms."<a name="FNanchor_478_478" id="FNanchor_478_478"></a><a href="#Footnote_478_478" class="fnanchor">[478]</a> No attempts have yet
+been made to subdue the sands of Poland, but when peace and
+prosperity shall be restored to that unhappy country, there is
+no reasonable doubt that the measures, which have proved so
+successful on similar formations in Germany, may be employed
+with advantage in the Polish deserts.</p>
+
+<p>There are sand drifts in parts of the steppes of Russia, but
+in general the soil of those vast plains is of a different, though
+very varied, composition, and is covered with vegetation. The
+steppes, however, have many points of analogy with the sand
+plains of Northern Germany, and if they are ever fitted for
+civilized occupation, it must be by the same means, that is, by
+planting forests. It is disputed whether the steppes were ever
+wooded. They were certainly bare of forest growth at a very
+remote period; for Herodotus describes the country of the
+Scythians between the Ister and the Tanais as woodless, with
+the exception of the small province of Xyl&aelig;a between the
+Dnieper and the Gulf of Perekop. They are known to have
+been occupied by a large nomade and pastoral population down
+to the sixteenth century, though these tribes are now much reduced
+in numbers. The habits of such races are scarcely less
+destructive to the forest than those of civilized life. Pastoral
+tribes do not employ much wood for fuel or for construction,
+but they carelessly or recklessly burn down the forests, and
+their cattle effectually check the growth of young trees wherever
+their range extends.</p>
+
+<p>At present, the furious winds which sweep over the plains,
+the droughts of summer, and the rights and abuses of pasturage,
+constitute very formidable obstacles to the employment of
+measures which have been attended with so valuable results on
+the sand wastes of France and Germany. The Russian Gov<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</a></span>ernment
+has, however, attempted the wooding of the steppes, and
+there are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of Odessa,
+where the soil is of a particularly loose and sandy character.<a name="FNanchor_479_479" id="FNanchor_479_479"></a><a href="#Footnote_479_479" class="fnanchor">[479]</a>
+The trees best suited to this locality, and, as there is good reason
+to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the <i>Ailanthus
+glandulosa</i>, or Japan varnish tree.<a name="FNanchor_480_480" id="FNanchor_480_480"></a><a href="#Footnote_480_480" class="fnanchor">[480]</a> The remarkable success
+which has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at
+Odessa, will, no doubt, stimulate to similar trials elsewhere,
+and it seems not improbable that the arundo and the maritime
+pine, which have fixed so many thousand acres of drifting
+sands in Western Europe, will be, partially at least, superseded
+by the tamarisk and the varnish tree.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Advantages of Reclaiming the Sands.</i></h4>
+
+<p>If we consider the quantity of waste land which has been
+made productive by the planting of the sand hills and plains,
+and the extent of fertile soil, the number of villages and other
+human improvements, and the value of the harbors, which the
+same process has saved from being buried under the rolling
+dunes, and at last swallowed up forever by the invasions of the
+sea, we shall be inclined to rank Br&eacute;montier and Reventlov
+among the greatest benefactors of their race. With the excep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</a></span>tion
+of the dikes of the Netherlands, their labors are the first
+deliberate and direct attempts of man to make himself, on a
+great scale, a geographical power, to restore natural balances
+which earlier generations had disturbed, and to atone, by acts
+guided by foreseeing and settled purpose, for the waste which
+thoughtless improvidence had created.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Government Works.</i></h4>
+
+<p>There is an important political difference between these latter
+works and the diking system of the Netherlandish and
+German coasts. The dikes originally were, and in modern
+times very generally have been, private enterprises, undertaken
+with no other aim than to add a certain quantity of cultivable
+soil to the former possessions of their proprietor, or sometimes
+of the state. In short, with few exceptions, they have been
+merely a pecuniary investment, a mode of acquiring land not
+economically different from purchase. The planting of the
+dunes, on the contrary, has always been a public work, executed,
+not with the expectation of reaping a regular direct percentage
+of income from the expenditure, but dictated by higher views
+of state economy&mdash;by the same governmental principles, in
+fact, which animate all commonwealths in repelling invasion
+by hostile armies, or in repairing the damages that invading
+forces may have inflicted on the general interests of the people.
+The restoration of the forests in the southern part of France,
+as now conducted by the Government of that empire, is a
+measure of the same elevated character as the fixing of the
+dunes. In former ages, forests were formed or protected simply
+for the sake of the shelter they afforded to game, or for
+the timber they yielded; but the recent legislation of France,
+and of some other Continental countries, on this subject, looks
+to more distant as well as nobler ends, and these are among
+the public acts which most strongly encourage the hope that
+the rulers of Christendom are coming better to understand the
+true duties and interests of civilized government.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>PROJECTED OR POSSIBLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES BY MAN.</h3>
+
+<p class="blockquot">CUTTING OF MARINE ISTHMUSES&mdash;THE SUEZ CANAL&mdash;CANAL ACROSS ISTHMUS
+OF DARIEN&mdash;CANALS TO THE DEAD SEA&mdash;MARITIME CANALS IN GREECE&mdash;CANAL
+OF SAROS&mdash;CAPE COD CANAL&mdash;DIVERSION OF THE NILE&mdash;CHANGES
+IN THE CASPIAN&mdash;IMPROVEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICAN HYDROGRAPHY&mdash;DIVERSION
+OF RHINE&mdash;DRAINING OF THE ZUIDERZEE&mdash;WATERS OF THE KARST&mdash;SUBTERRANEAN
+WATERS OF GREECE&mdash;SOIL BELOW ROCK&mdash;COVERING ROCKS
+WITH EARTH&mdash;WADIES OF ARABIA PETR&AElig;A&mdash;INCIDENTAL EFFECTS OF HUMAN
+ACTION&mdash;RESISTANCE TO GREAT NATURAL FORCES&mdash;EFFECTS OF MINING&mdash;ESPY'S
+THEORIES&mdash;RIVER SEDIMENT&mdash;NOTHING SMALL IN NATURE.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Cutting of Marine Isthmuses.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Besides the great enterprises of physical transformation of
+which I have already spoken, other works of internal improvement
+or change have been projected in ancient and modern
+times, the execution of which would produce considerable, and,
+in some cases, extremely important, revolutions in the face of
+the earth. Some of the schemes to which I refer are evidently
+chimerical; others are difficult, indeed, but cannot be said to
+be impracticable, though discouraged by the apprehension of
+disastrous consequences from the disturbance of existing natural
+or artificial arrangements; and there are still others, the
+accomplishment of which is ultimately certain, though for the
+present forbidden by economical considerations.</p>
+
+<p>When we consider the number of narrow necks or isthmuses
+which separate gulfs and bays of the sea from each other, or
+from the main ocean, and take into account the time and cost,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</a></span>
+and risks of navigation which would be saved by executing
+channels to connect such waters, and thus avoiding the necessity
+of doubling long capes and promontories, or even continents,
+it seems strange that more of the enterprise and money
+which have been so lavishly expended in forming artificial
+rivers for internal navigation should not have been bestowed
+upon the construction of maritime canals. Many such have
+been projected in early and in recent ages, and some trifling
+cuts between marine waters have been actually made, but no
+work of this sort, possessing real geographical or even commercial
+importance, has yet been effected.</p>
+
+<p>These enterprises are attended with difficulties and open to
+objections, which are not, at first sight, obvious. Nature
+guards well the chains by which she connects promontories
+with mainlands, and binds continents together. Isthmuses are
+usually composed of adamantine rock or of shifting sands&mdash;the
+latter being much the more refractory material to deal
+with. In all such works there is a necessity for deep excavation
+below low-water mark&mdash;always a matter of great difficulty;
+the dimensions of channels for sea-going ships must be much
+greater than those of canals of inland navigation; the height
+of the masts or smoke pipes of that class of vessels would
+often render bridging impossible, and thus a ship canal might
+obstruct a communication more important than that which it
+was intended to promote; the securing of the entrances of
+marine canals and the construction of ports at their termini
+would in general be difficult and expensive, and the harbors
+and the channel which connected them would be extremely
+liable to fill up by deposits washed in from sea and shore.
+Besides all this, there is, in many cases, an alarming uncertainty
+as to the effects of joining together waters which nature
+has put asunder. A new channel may deflect strong currents
+from safe courses, and thus occasion destructive erosion of shores
+otherwise secure, or promote the transportation of sand or slime
+to block up important harbors, or it may furnish a powerful
+enemy with dangerous facilities for hostile operations along the
+coast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nature sometimes mocks the cunning and the power of man
+by spontaneously performing, for his benefit, works which he
+shrinks from undertaking, and the execution of which by him
+she would resist with unconquerable obstinacy. A dangerous
+sand bank, that all the enginery of the world could not dredge
+out in a generation, may be carried off in a night by a strong
+river flood, or a current impelled by a violent wind from an
+unusual quarter, and a passage scarcely navigable by fishing
+boats may be thus converted into a commodious channel for
+the largest ship that floats upon the ocean. In the remarkable
+gulf of Liimfjord in Jutland, nature has given a singular example
+of a canal which she alternately opens as a marine strait,
+and, by shutting again, converts into a fresh-water lagoon.
+The Liimfjord was doubtless originally an open channel from
+the Atlantic to the Baltic between two islands, but the sand
+washed up by the sea blocked up the western entrance, and
+built a wall of dunes to close it more firmly. This natural
+dike, as we have seen, has been more than once broken through,
+and it is perhaps in the power of man, either permanently to
+maintain the barrier, or to remove it and keep a navigable
+channel constantly open. If the Liimfjord becomes an open
+strait, the washing of sea sand through it would perhaps block
+up some of the belts and small channels now important for the
+navigation of the Baltic, and the direct introduction of a tidal
+current might produce very perceptible effects on the hydrography
+of the Cattegat.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>The Suez Canal.</i></h4>
+
+<p>If the Suez Canal&mdash;the greatest and most truly cosmopolite
+physical improvement ever undertaken by man&mdash;shall prove
+successful, it will considerably affect the basins of the Mediterranean
+and of the Red Sea, though in a different manner, and
+probably in a less degree than the diversion of the current of the
+Nile from the one to the other&mdash;to which I shall presently refer&mdash;would
+do. It is, indeed, conceivable, that if a free channel
+be once cut from sea to sea, the coincidence of a high tide
+and a heavy south wind might produce a hydraulic force<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[Pg 520]</a></span>
+that would convert the narrow canal into an open strait. In
+such a case, it is impossible to estimate, or even to foresee, the
+consequences which might result from the unobstructed mingling
+of the flowing and ebbing currents of the Red Sea with
+the almost tideless waters of the Mediterranean. There can be
+no doubt, however, that they would be of a most important
+character as respects the simply geographical features and the
+organic life of both. But the shallowness of the two seas at
+the termini of the canal, the action of the tides of the one and
+the currents of the other, and the nature of the intervening isthmus,
+render the occurrence of such a cataclysm in the highest
+degree improbable. The obstruction of the canal by sea sand
+at both ends is a danger far more difficult to guard against and
+avert, than an irruption of the waters of either sea.</p>
+
+<p>There is, then, no reason to expect any change of coast
+lines or of natural navigable channels as a direct consequence
+of the opening of the Suez Canal, but it will, no doubt, produce
+very interesting revolutions in the animal and vegetable population
+of both basins. The Mediterranean, with some local
+exceptions&mdash;such as the bays of Calabria, and the coast of
+Sicily so picturesquely described by Quatrefages<a name="FNanchor_481_481" id="FNanchor_481_481"></a><a href="#Footnote_481_481" class="fnanchor">[481]</a>&mdash;is comparatively
+poor in marine vegetation, and in shell as well as
+in fin fish. The scarcity of fish in some of its gulfs is proverbial,
+and you may scrutinize long stretches of beach on its
+northern shores, after every south wind for a whole winter,
+without finding a dozen shells to reward your search. But no
+one who has not looked down into tropical or subtropical seas
+can conceive the amazing wealth of the Red Sea in organic
+life. Its bottom is carpeted or paved with marine plants, with
+zoophytes and with shells, while its waters are teeming with
+infinitely varied forms of moving life. Most of its vegetables
+and its animals, no doubt, are confined by the laws of their organization
+to warmer temperatures than that of the Mediterranean,
+but among them there must be many, whose habitat
+is of a wider range, many whose powers of accommodation
+would enable them to acclimate themselves in a colder sea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We may suppose the less numerous aquatic fauna and flora
+of the Mediterranean to be equally capable of climatic adaptation,
+and hence, when the canal shall be opened, there will be
+an interchange of the organic population not already common
+to both seas. Destructive species, thus newly introduced, may
+diminish the numbers of their proper prey in either basin, and,
+on the other hand, the increased supply of appropriate food
+may greatly multiply the abundance of others, and at the same
+time add important contributions to the aliment of man in the
+countries bordering on the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>A collateral feature of this great project deserves notice as
+possessing no inconsiderable geographical importance. I refer
+to the conduit or conduits constructed from the Nile to the
+isthmus, primarily to supply fresh water to the laborers on the
+great canal, and ultimately to serve as aqueducts for the city
+of Suez, and for the irrigation and reclamation of a large extent
+of desert soil. In the flourishing days of the Egyptian
+empire, the waters of the Nile were carried over important
+districts east of the river. In later ages, most of this territory
+relapsed into a desert, from the decay of the canals which
+once fertilized it. There is no difficulty in restoring the ancient
+channels, or in constructing new, and thus watering not only
+all the soil that the wisdom of the Pharaohs had improved, but
+much additional land. Hundreds of square miles of arid sand
+waste would thus be converted into fields of perennial verdure,
+and the geography of Lower Egypt would be thereby sensibly
+changed. If the canal succeeds, considerable towns will grow
+up at once at both ends of the channel, and at intermediate
+points, all depending on the maintenance of aqueducts from
+the Nile, both for water and for the irrigation of the neighboring
+fields which are to supply them with bread. Important
+interests will thus be created, which will secure the permanence
+of the hydraulic works and of the geographical changes produced
+by them, and Suez, or Port Said, or the city at Lake
+Timsah, may become the capital of the government which has
+been so long established at Cairo.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Canal across the Isthmus of Darien.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The most colossal project of canalization ever suggested,
+whether we consider the physical difficulties of its execution,
+the magnitude and importance of the waters proposed to be
+united, or the distance which would be saved in navigation, is
+that of a channel between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific,
+across the Isthmus of Darien. I do not now speak of a lock
+canal, by way of the Lake of Nicaragua or any other route&mdash;for
+such a work would not differ essentially from other canals,
+and would scarcely possess a geographical character&mdash;but of an
+open cut between the two seas. It has been by no means shown
+that the construction of such a channel is possible, and, if it
+were opened, it is highly probable that sand bars would accumulate
+at both entrances, so as to obstruct any powerful current
+through it. But if we suppose the work to be actually
+accomplished, there would be, in the first place, such a mixture
+of the animal and vegetable life of the two great oceans as I
+have stated to be likely to result from the opening of the Suez
+Canal between two much smaller basins. In the next place,
+if the channel were not obstructed by sand bars, it might sooner
+or later be greatly widened and deepened by the mechanical
+action of the current through it, and consequences, not inferior
+in magnitude to any physical revolution which has taken place
+since man appeared upon the earth, might result from it.</p>
+
+<p>What those consequences would be is in a great degree
+matter of pure conjecture, and there is much room for the exercise
+of the imagination on the subject; but, as more than one
+geographer has suggested, there is one possible result which
+throws all other conceivable effects of such a work quite into the
+shade. I refer to changes in the course of the two great oceanic
+rivers, the Gulf Stream and the corresponding current on the
+Pacific side of the isthmus. The warm waters which the Gulf
+Stream transports to high latitudes and then spreads out, like
+an expanded hand, along the eastern shores of the Atlantic,
+give out, as they cool, heat enough to raise the mean temperature
+of Western Europe several degrees. In fact, the Gulf<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</a></span>
+Stream is the principal cause of the superiority of the climate
+of Western Europe over those of Eastern America and Eastern
+Asia in the corresponding latitudes. All the meteorological
+conditions of the former region are in a great measure regulated
+by it, and hence it is the grandest and most beneficent of all
+purely geographical phenomena. We do not yet know enough
+of the laws which govern the movements of this mighty flood
+of warmth and life to be able to say whether its current would
+be perceptibly affected by the severance of the Isthmus of
+Darien; but as it enters and sweeps round the Gulf of Mexico,
+it is possible that the removal of the resistance of the land
+which forms the western shore of that sea, might allow the
+stream to maintain its original westward direction, and join
+itself to the tropical current of the Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of such a change would be an immediate depression
+of the mean temperature of Western Europe to the level
+of that of Eastern America, and perhaps the climate of the
+former continent might become as excessive as that of the
+latter, or even a new "ice period" be occasioned by the withdrawal
+of so important a source of warmth from the northern
+zones. Hence would result the extinction of vast multitudes
+of land and sea plants and animals, and a total revolution in
+the domestic and rural economy of human life in all those
+countries from which the New World has received its civilized
+population. Other scarcely less startling consequences may be
+imagined as possible; but the whole speculation is too dreary,
+distant, and improbable to deserve to be long indulged in.<a name="FNanchor_482_482" id="FNanchor_482_482"></a><a href="#Footnote_482_482" class="fnanchor">[482]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Canals to the Dead Sea.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The project of Captain Allen for opening a new route to
+India by cuts between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea,
+and between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea, presents many
+interesting considerations.<a name="FNanchor_483_483" id="FNanchor_483_483"></a><a href="#Footnote_483_483" class="fnanchor">[483]</a> The hypsometrical observations
+of Bertou, Roth, and others, render it highly probable, if
+not certain, that the watershed in the Wadi-el-Araba between
+the Dead Sea and the Red Sea is not less than three hundred
+feet above the mean level of the latter, and if this is so, the
+execution of a canal from the one sea to the other is quite out
+of the question. But the summit level between the Mediterranean
+and the Jordan, near Jezreel, is believed to be little, if
+at all, more than one hundred feet above the sea, and the distance
+is so short that the cutting of a channel through the
+dividing ridge would probably be found by no means an impracticable
+undertaking. Although, therefore, we have no
+reason to believe it possible to open a navigable channel to the
+east by way of the Dead Sea, there is not much doubt that the
+basin of the latter might be made accessible from the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>The level of the Dead Sea lies 1,316.7 feet below that of
+the ocean. It is bounded east and west by mountain ridges,
+rising to the height of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the
+ocean. From its southern end, a depression called the Wadi-el-Araba
+extends to the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the
+Red Sea. The Jordan empties into its northern extremity,
+after having passed through the Lake of Tiberias at an elevation
+of 663.4 feet above the Dead Sea, or 653.3 below the Mediterranean,
+and drains a considerable valley north of the lake,
+as well as the plain of Jericho, which lies between the lake
+and the sea. If the waters of the Mediterranean were admitted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[Pg 525]</a></span>
+freely into the basin of the Dead Sea, they would raise its surface
+to the general level of the ocean, and consequently flood
+all the dry land below that level within the basin.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know that accurate levels have been taken in the
+valley of the Jordan above the Lake of Tiberias, and our information
+is very vague as to the hypsometry of the northern
+part of the Wadi-el-Araba. As little do we know where a
+contour line, carried around the basin at the level of the Mediterranean,
+would strike its eastern and western borders. We
+cannot, therefore, accurately compute the extent of now dry
+land which would be covered by the admission of the waters
+of the Mediterranean, or the area of the inland sea which
+would be thus created. Its length, however, would certainly
+exceed one hundred and fifty miles, and its mean breadth, including
+its gulfs and bays, could scarcely be less than fifteen,
+perhaps even twenty. It would cover very little ground now
+occupied by civilized or even uncivilized man, though some of
+the soil which would be submerged&mdash;for instance, that watered
+by the Fountain of Elisha and other neighboring sources&mdash;is of
+great fertility, and, under a wiser government and better civil
+institutions, might rise to importance, because, from its depression,
+it possesses a very warm climate, and might supply Southeastern
+Europe with tropical products more readily than they
+can be obtained from any other source. Such a canal and sea
+would be of no present commercial importance, because they
+would give access to no new markets or sources of supply; but
+when the fertile valleys and the deserted plains east of the
+Jordan shall be reclaimed to agriculture and civilization, these
+waters would furnish a channel of communication which might
+become the medium of a very extensive trade.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever might be the economical results of the opening
+and filling of the Dead Sea basin, the creation of a new evaporable
+area, adding not less than 2,000 or perhaps 3,000 square
+miles to the present fluid surface of Syria, could not fail to
+produce important meteorological effects. The climate of
+Syria would be tempered, its precipitation and its fertility increased,
+the courses of its winds and the electrical condition
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[Pg 526]</a></span>of its atmosphere modified. The present organic life of the
+valley would be extinguished, and many tribes of plants
+and animals would emigrate from the Mediterranean to the
+new home which human art had prepared for them. It is
+possible, too, that the addition of 1,300 feet, or forty atmospheres,
+of hydrostatic pressure upon the bottom of the basin
+might disturb the equilibrium between the internal and the
+external forces of the crust of the earth at this point of abnormal
+configuration, and thus produce geological convulsions the
+intensity of which cannot be even conjectured.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Maritime Canals in Greece.</i></h4>
+
+<p>A maritime canal executed and another projected in ancient
+times, the latter of which is again beginning to excite
+attention, deserve some notice, though their importance is of a
+commercial rather than a geographical character. The first
+of these is the cut made by Xerxes through the rock which
+connects the promontory of Mount Athos with the mainland;
+the other, a navigable canal through the Isthmus of Corinth.
+In spite of the testimony of Herodotus and Thucydides, the
+Romans classed the canal of Xerxes among the fables of "mendacious
+Greece," and yet traces of it are perfectly distinct at
+the present day through its whole extent, except at a single
+point where, after it had become so choked as to be no longer
+navigable, it was probably filled up to facilitate communication
+by land between the promontory and the country in the
+rear of it.</p>
+
+<p>If the fancy kingdom of Greece shall ever become a sober
+reality, escape from its tutelage and acquire such a moral as
+well as political status that its own capitalists&mdash;who now prefer
+to establish themselves and employ their funds anywhere
+else rather than in their native land&mdash;have any confidence in
+the permanency of its institutions, a navigable channel will no
+doubt be opened between the gulfs of Lepanto and &AElig;gina.
+The annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece will make such
+a work almost a political necessity, and it would not only fur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[Pg 527]</a></span>nish
+valuable facilities for domestic intercourse, but become an
+important channel of communication between the Levant and
+the countries bordering on the Adriatic, or conducting their
+trade through that sea.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, the importance of this latter canal and of a
+navigable channel between Mount Athos and the continent
+would be chiefly commercial, but both of them would be conspicuous
+instances of the control of man over nature in a field
+where he has thus far done little to interfere with her spontaneous
+arrangements. If they were constructed upon such a
+scale as to admit of the free passage of the water through
+them, in either direction, as the prevailing winds should impel
+it, they would exercise a certain influence on the coast currents,
+which are important as hydrographical elements, and
+also as producing abrasion of the coast and a drift at the bottom
+of seas, and hence would be entitled to a higher rank than
+simply as artificial means of transit.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Canal of Saros.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It has been thought practicable to cut a canal across the
+peninsula of Gallipoli from the outlet of the Sea of Marmora
+into the Gulf of Saros. It may be doubted whether the mechanical
+difficulties of such a work would not be found insuperable;
+but when Constantinople shall recover the important political
+and commercial rank which naturally belongs to her, the execution
+of such a canal will be recommended by strong reasons
+of military expediency, as well as by the interests of trade.
+An open channel across the peninsula would divert a portion
+of the water which now flows through the Dardanelles, diminish
+the rapidity of that powerful current, and thus in part remove
+the difficulties which obstruct the navigation of the
+strait. It would considerably abridge the distance by water
+between Constantinople and the northern coast of the &AElig;gean,
+and it would have the important advantage of obliging an
+enemy to maintain two blockading fleets instead of one.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[Pg 528]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Cape Cod Canal.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The opening of a navigable cut through the narrow neck
+which separates the southern part of Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts
+from the Atlantic, was long ago suggested, and there
+are few coast improvements on the Atlantic shores of the United
+States which are recommended by higher considerations of
+utility. It would save the most important coasting trade of
+the United States the long and dangerous navigation around
+Cape Cod, afford a new and safer entrance to Boston harbor
+for vessels from Southern ports, secure a choice of passages,
+thus permitting arrivals upon the coast and departures from it
+at periods when wind and weather might otherwise prevent
+them, and furnish a most valuable internal communication in
+case of coast blockade by a foreign power. The difficulties of
+the undertaking are no doubt formidable, but the expense of
+maintenance and the uncertainty of the effects of currents setting
+through the new strait are still more serious objections.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Diversion of the Nile.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most remarkable project of great physical
+change, proposed or threatened in earlier ages, is that of the
+diversion of the Nile from its natural channel, and the turning
+of its current into either the Libyan desert or the Red Sea.
+The Ethiopian or Abyssinian princes more than once menaced
+the Memlouk sultans with the execution of this alarming project,
+and the fear of so serious an evil is said to have induced
+the Moslems to conciliate the Abyssinian kings by large presents,
+and by some concessions to the oppressed Christians of
+Egypt.<a name="FNanchor_484_484" id="FNanchor_484_484"></a><a href="#Footnote_484_484" class="fnanchor">[484]</a> Indeed, Arabic historians affirm that in the tenth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[Pg 529]</a></span>
+century the Ethiopians dammed the river, and, for a whole
+year, cut off its waters from Egypt. The probable explanation
+of this story is to be found in a season of extreme drought,
+such as have sometimes occurred in the valley of the Nile.
+About the beginning of the sixteenth century, Albuquerque
+the "Terrible" revived the scheme of turning the Nile into
+the Red Sea, with the hope of destroying the transit trade
+through Egypt by way of Kesseir. In 1525 the King of Portugal
+was requested by the Emperor of Abyssinia to send him
+engineers for that purpose; a successor of that prince threatened
+to attempt the project about the year 1700, and even as
+late as the French occupation of Egypt, the possibility of
+driving out the intruder by this means was suggested in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be positively affirmed that the diversion of the
+waters of the Nile to the Red Sea is impossible. In the chain
+of mountains which separates the two valleys, Brown found a
+deep depression or wadi, extending from the one to the other,
+at no great elevation above the bed of the river. The Libyan
+desert is so much higher than the Nile below the junction of
+the two principal branches at Khartum, that there is no reason
+to believe a new channel for their united waters could be
+found in that direction; but the Bahr-el-Abiad flows through,
+if it does not rise in, a great table land, and some of its tributaries
+are supposed to communicate in the rainy season with
+branches of great rivers flowing in quite another direction.
+Hence it is probable that a portion at least of the waters of
+this great arm of the Nile&mdash;and perhaps a quantity the abstraction
+of which would be sensibly felt in Egypt&mdash;might be
+sent to the Atlantic by the Niger, lost in the inland lakes of
+Central Africa, or employed to fertilize the Libyan sand
+wastes.</p>
+
+<p>Admitting the possibility of turning the whole river into
+the Red Sea, let us consider the probable effect of the change.
+First and most obvious is the total destruction of the fertility
+of Middle and Lower Egypt, the conversion of that part of the
+valley into a desert, and the extinction of its imperfect civiliza<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[Pg 530]</a></span>tion,
+if not the absolute extirpation of its inhabitants. This is
+the calamity threatened by the Abyssinian princes and the ferocious
+Portuguese warrior, and feared by the sultans of Egypt.
+Beyond these immediate and palpable consequences neither
+party then looked; but a far wider geographical area, and far
+more extensive and various human interests, would be affected
+by the measure. The spread of the Nile during the annual inundation
+covers, for many weeks, several thousand square
+miles with water, and at other seasons of the year pervades
+the same and even a larger area with moisture by infiltration.
+The abstraction of so large an evaporable surface from the
+southern shores of the Mediterranean could not but produce
+important effects on many meteorological phenomena, and the
+humidity, the temperature, the electrical condition and the atmospheric
+currents of Northeastern Africa might be modified
+to a degree that would sensibly affect the climate of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The Mediterranean, deprived of the contributions of the
+Nile, would require a larger supply, and of course a stronger
+current, of water from the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar;
+the proportion of salt it contains would be increased,
+and the animal life of at least its southern borders would be
+consequently modified; the current which winds along its
+southern, eastern, and northeastern shores would be diminished
+in force and volume, if not destroyed altogether, and its
+basin and its harbors would be shoaled by no new deposits
+from the highlands of inner Africa.</p>
+
+<p>In the much smaller Red Sea, more immediately perceptible,
+if not greater, effects, would be produced. The deposits
+of slime would reduce its depth, and perhaps, in the course of
+ages, divide it into an inland and an open sea; its waters
+would be more or less freshened, and its immensely rich marine
+fauna and flora changed in character and proportion, and,
+near the mouth of the river, perhaps even destroyed altogether;
+its navigable channels would be altered in position and often
+quite obstructed; the flow of its tides would be modified by
+the new geographical conditions; the sediment of the river
+would form new coast lines and lowlands, which would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[Pg 531]</a></span>
+covered with vegetation, and probably thereby produce sensible
+climatic changes.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Changes in the Caspian.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The Russian Government has contemplated the establishment
+of a nearly direct water communication between the Caspian
+Sea and the Sea of Azoff, partly by natural and partly by
+artificial channels, and there are now navigable canals between
+the Don and the Volga; but these works, though not wanting
+in commercial and political interest, do not possess any geographical
+importance. It is, however, very possible to produce
+appreciable geographical changes in the basin of the Caspian
+by the diversion of the great rivers which flow from Central
+Russia. The surface of the Caspian is eighty-three feet
+below the level of the Sea of Azoff, and its depression has been
+explained upon the hypothesis that the evaporation exceeds
+the supply derived, directly and indirectly, from precipitation,
+though able physicists now maintain that the sinking of this
+sea is due to a subsidence of its bottom from geological causes.
+At Tsaritsin, the Don, which empties into the Sea of Azoff,
+and the Volga, which pours into the Caspian, approach each
+other within ten miles. Near this point, by means of open or
+subterranean canals, the Don might be turned into the Volga,
+or the Volga into the Don. If we suppose the whole or a
+large proportion of the waters of the Don to be thus diverted
+from their natural outlet and sent down to the Caspian, the
+equilibrium between the evaporation from that sea and its
+supply of water might be restored, or its level even raised
+above its ancient limits. If the Volga were turned into the
+Sea of Azoff, the Caspian would be reduced in dimensions
+until the balance between loss and gain should be re&euml;stablished,
+and it would occupy a much smaller area than at present.
+Such changes in the proportion of solid and fluid surface
+would have some climatic effects in the territory which drains
+into the Caspian, and on the other hand, the introduction of a
+greater quantity of fresh water into the Sea of Azoff would
+render that gulf less saline, affect the character and numbers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[Pg 532]</a></span>
+of its fish, and perhaps be not wholly without sensible influence
+on the water of the Black Sea.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Improvements in North American Hydrography.</i></h4>
+
+<p>We are not yet well enough acquainted with the geography
+of Central Africa, or of the interior of South America, to conjecture
+what hydrographical revolutions might there be
+wrought; but from the fact that many important rivers in
+both continents drain extensive table lands, of very moderate
+inclination, there is reason to suppose that important changes
+in the course of rivers might be accomplished. Our knowledge
+of the drainage of North America is much more complete,
+and it is certain that there are numerous points where
+the courses of great rivers, or the discharge of considerable
+lakes, might be completely diverted, or at least partially directed
+into different channels.</p>
+
+<p>The surface of Lake Erie is 565 feet above that of the Hudson
+at Albany, and it is so near the level of the great plain
+lying east of it, that it was found practicable to supply the
+western section of the canal, which unites it with the Hudson,
+with water from the lake, or rather from the Niagara which
+flows out of it. Hence a channel might be constructed, which
+would draw off into the valley of the Genesee any desirable
+proportion of the water naturally discharged by the Niagara.
+The greatest depth of water yet sounded in Lake Erie is but
+two hundred and seventy feet, the mean depth one hundred
+and twenty. Open canals parallel with the Niagara, or directly
+toward the Genesee, might be executed upon a scale
+which would exercise an important influence on the drainage
+of the lake, if there were any adequate motive for such an undertaking.
+Still easier would it be to create additional outlets
+for the waters of Lake Superior at the Saut St. Mary&mdash;where
+the river which drains the lake descends twenty-two feet in a
+single mile&mdash;and thus produce incalculable effects, both upon
+that lake and upon the great chain of inland waters which
+communicate with it.</p>
+
+<p>The summit level between Lake Michigan and the Des<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[Pg 533]</a></span>
+Plaines, a tributary of the Mississippi, is only twenty-seven
+feet above the lake, and the intervening distance is but a very
+few miles. It has often been proposed to cut an open channel
+across this ridge, and there is no doubt of the practicability of
+the project. Were this accomplished, although such a cut
+would not, of itself, form a navigable canal, a part of the
+waters of Lake Michigan would be contributed to the Gulf of
+Mexico, instead of to that of St. Lawrence, and the flow might
+be so regulated as to keep the Illinois and the Mississippi at
+flood at all seasons of the year. The increase in the volume
+of these rivers would augment their velocity and their transporting
+power, and consequently, the erosion of their banks
+and the deposit of slime in the Gulf of Mexico, while the introduction
+of a larger body of cold water into the beds of these
+rivers would very probably produce a considerable effect on
+the animal life that peoples them. The diversion of water
+from the common basin of the great lakes through a new channel,
+in a direction opposite to their natural discharge, would
+not be absolutely without influence on the St. Lawrence,
+though probably the effect would be too small to be in any
+way perceptible.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Diversion of the Rhine.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The interference of physical improvements with vested
+rights and ancient arrangements, is a more formidable obstacle
+in old countries than in new, to enterprises involving anything
+approaching to a geographical revolution. Hence such projects
+meet with stronger opposition in Europe than in America,
+and the number of probable changes in the face of nature
+in the former continent is proportionally less. I have noticed
+some important hydraulic improvements as already executed
+or in progress in Europe, and I may refer to some others as
+contemplated or suggested. One of these is the diversion of
+the Rhine from its present channel below Ragatz, by a cut
+through the narrow ridge near Sargans, and the consequent
+turning of its current into the Lake of Wallenstadt. This
+would be an extremely easy undertaking, for the ridge is but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[Pg 534]</a></span>
+twenty feet above the level of the Rhine, and hardly two hundred
+yards wide. There is no present adequate motive for
+this diversion, but it is easy to suppose that it may become advisable
+within no long period. The navigation of the Lake
+of Constance is rapidly increasing in importance, and the
+shoaling of the eastern end of that lake by the deposits of the
+Rhine may require a remedy which can be found by no other
+so ready means as the discharge of that river into the Lake of
+Wallenstadt. The navigation of this latter lake is not important,
+nor is it ever likely to become so, because the rocky and
+precipitous character of its shores renders their cultivation
+impossible. It is of great depth, and its basin is capacious
+enough to receive and retain all the sediment which the Rhine
+would carry into it for thousands of years.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Draining of the Zuiderzee.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I have referred to the draining of the Lake of Haarlem as
+an operation of great geographical as well as economical and
+mechanical interest. A much more gigantic project, of a similar
+character, is now engaging the attention of the Netherlandish
+engineers. It is proposed to drain the great salt-water
+basin called the Zuiderzee. This inland sea covers an area of
+not less than two thousand square miles, or about one million
+three hundred thousand acres. The seaward half, or that portion
+lying northwest of a line drawn from Enkhuizen to Stavoren,
+is believed to have been converted from a marsh to an
+open bay since the fifth century after Christ, and this change
+is ascribed, partly if not wholly, to the interference of man
+with the order of nature. The Zuiderzee communicates with
+the sea by at least six considerable channels, separated from
+each other by low islands, and the tide rises within the basin
+to the height of three feet. To drain the Zuiderzee, these
+channels must first be closed and the passage of the tidal flood
+through them cut off. If this be done, the coast currents will
+be restored approximately to the lines they followed fourteen
+or fifteen centuries ago, and there can be little doubt that an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[Pg 535]</a></span>
+appreciable effect will thus be produced upon all the tidal
+phenomena of that coast, and, of course, upon the maritime
+geography of Holland.</p>
+
+<p>A ring dike and canal must then be constructed around
+the landward side of the basin, to exclude and carry off the
+fresh-water streams which now empty into it. One of these,
+the Ijssel, a considerable river, has a course of eighty miles,
+and is, in fact, one of the outlets of the Rhine, though augmented
+by the waters of several independent tributaries.
+These preparations being made, and perhaps transverse dikes
+erected at convenient points for dividing the gulf into smaller
+portions, the water must be pumped out by machinery, in substantially
+the same way as in the case of the Lake of Haarlem.
+No safe calculations can be made as to the expenditure of time
+and money required for the execution of this stupendous enterprise,
+but I believe its practicability is not denied by competent
+judges, though doubts are entertained as to its financial
+expediency. The geographical results of this improvement
+would be analogous to those of the draining of the Lake of
+Haarlem, but many times multiplied in extent, and its meteorological
+effects, though perhaps not perceptible on the coast,
+could hardly fail to be appreciable in the interior of Holland.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Waters of the Karst.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The singular structure of the Karst, the great limestone
+plateau lying to the north of Trieste, has suggested some engineering
+operations which might be attended with sensible
+effects upon the geography of the province. I have described
+this table land as, though now bare of forests, and almost of
+vegetation, having once been covered with woods, and as being
+completely honeycombed by caves through which the drainage
+of that region is conducted. Schmidl has spent years in
+studying the subterranean geography and hydrography of this
+singular district, and his discoveries, and those of earlier cave-hunters,
+have led to various proposals of physical improvement
+of a novel character. Many of the underground water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[Pg 536]</a></span>
+courses of the Karst are without visible outlet, and, in some
+instances at least, they, no doubt, send their waters, by deep
+channels, to the Adriatic.<a name="FNanchor_485_485" id="FNanchor_485_485"></a><a href="#Footnote_485_485" class="fnanchor">[485]</a> The city of Trieste is very insufficiently
+provided with fresh water. It has been thought practicable
+to supply this want by tunnelling through the wall of
+the plateau, which rises abruptly in the rear of the town, until
+some subterranean stream is encountered, the current of which
+can be conducted to the city. More visionary projectors have
+gone further, and imagined that advantage might be taken of
+the natural tunnels under the Karst for the passage of roads,
+railways, and even navigable canals. But however chimerical
+these latter schemes may seem, there is every reason to believe
+that art might avail itself of these galleries for improving the
+imperfect drainage of the champaign country bounded by the
+Karst, and that stopping or opening the natural channels
+might very much modify the hydrography of an extensive
+region.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Subterranean Waters of Greece.</i></h4>
+
+<p>There are parts of continental Greece which resemble the
+Karst and the adjacent plains in being provided with a natural
+subterranean drainage. The superfluous waters run off into
+limestone caves called <i>catavothra</i> (&#954;&#945;&#964;&#945;&#946;&#972;&#952;&#961;&#945;). In ancient
+times, the entrances to the catavothra were enlarged or partially
+closed as the convenience of drainage or irrigation required,
+and there is no doubt that similar measures might be
+adopted at the present day with great advantage both to the
+salubrity and the productiveness of the regions so drained.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[Pg 537]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Soil below Rock.</i></h4>
+
+<p>One of the most singular changes of natural surface effected
+by man is that observed by Beechey and by Barth at L&icirc;n
+Tefla, and near Gebel Gen&ucirc;nes, in the district of Ben G&acirc;si, in
+Northern Africa. In this region the superficial stratum originally
+consisted of a thin sheet of rock covering a layer of fertile
+earth. This rock has been broken up, and, when not practicable
+to find use for it in fences, fortresses, or dwellings,
+heaped together in high piles, and the soil, thus bared of its
+stony shell, has been employed for agricultural purposes.<a name="FNanchor_486_486" id="FNanchor_486_486"></a><a href="#Footnote_486_486" class="fnanchor">[486]</a> If
+we remember that gunpowder was unknown at the period
+when these remarkable improvements were executed, and of
+course that the rock could have been broken only with the
+chisel and wedge, we must infer that land had at that time a
+very great pecuniary value, and, of course, that the province,
+though now exhausted, and almost entirely deserted by man,
+had once a dense population.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Covering Rock with Earth.</i></h4>
+
+<p>If man has, in some cases, broken up rock to reach productive
+ground beneath, he has, in many other instances, covered
+bare ledges, and sometimes extensive surfaces of solid stone,
+with fruitful earth, brought from no inconsiderable distance.
+Not to speak of the Campo Santo at Pisa, filled, or at least
+coated, with earth from the Holy Land, for quite a different
+purpose, it is affirmed that the garden of the monastery of St.
+Catherine at Mount Sinai is composed of Nile mud, transported
+on the backs of camels from the banks of that river. Parthey
+and older authors state that all the productive soil of the
+Island of Malta was brought over from Sicily.<a name="FNanchor_487_487" id="FNanchor_487_487"></a><a href="#Footnote_487_487" class="fnanchor">[487]</a> The accuracy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[Pg 538]</a></span>
+of the information may be questioned in both cases, but similar
+practices, on a smaller scale, are matter of daily observation in
+many parts of Southern Europe. Much of the wine of the
+Moselle is derived from grapes grown on earth carried high
+up the cliffs on the shoulders of men. In China, too, rock
+has been artificially covered with earth to an extent which
+gives such operations a real geographical importance, and the
+accounts of the importation of earth at Malta, and the fertilization
+of the rocks on Mount Sinai with slime from the Nile,
+may be not wholly without foundation.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Wadies of Arabia, Petr&aelig;a.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In the latter case, indeed, river sediment might be very
+useful as a manure, but it could hardly be needed as a soil;
+for the growth of vegetation in the wadies of the Sinaitic Peninsula
+shows that the disintegrated rock of its mountains requires
+only water to stimulate it to considerable productiveness.
+The wadies present, not unfrequently, narrow gorges,
+which might easily be closed, and thus accumulations of earth,
+and reservoirs of water to irrigate it, might be formed which
+would convert many a square mile of desert into flourishing
+date gardens and cornfields. Not far from Wadi Feiran, on
+the most direct route to Wadi Esh-Sheikh, is a very narrow
+pass called by the Arabs El Bueb (El Bab) or, The Gate,
+which might be securely closed to a very considerable height,
+with little labor or expense. Above this pass is a wide and
+nearly level expanse, containing a hundred acres, perhaps
+much more. This is filled up to a certain regular level with
+deposits brought down by torrents before the Gate, or Bueb,
+was broken through, and they have now worn down a channel
+in the deposits to the bed of the wadi. If a dam were constructed
+at the pass, and reservoirs built to retain the winter
+rains, a great extent of valley might be rendered cultivable.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">[Pg 539]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Incidental Effects of Human Action.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I have more than once alluded to the collateral and unsought
+consequences of human action as being often more momentous
+than the direct and desired results. There are cases
+where such incidental, or, in popular speech, accidental, consequences,
+though of minor importance in themselves, serve to
+illustrate natural processes; others, where, by the magnitude
+and character of the material traces they leave behind them,
+they prove that man, in primary or in more advanced stages
+of social life, must have occupied particular districts for a
+longer period than has been supposed by popular chronology.
+"On the coast of Jutland," says Forchhammer, "wherever a
+bolt from a wreck or any other fragment of iron is deposited
+in the beach sand, the particles are cemented together, and
+form a very solid mass around the iron. A remarkable formation
+of this sort was observed a few years ago in constructing
+the sea wall of the harbor of Elsineur. This stratum, which
+seldom exceeded a foot in thickness, rested upon common
+beach sand, and was found at various depths, less near the
+shore, greater at some distance from it. It was composed of
+pebbles and sand, and contained a great quantity of pins, and
+some coins of the reign of Christian IV, between the beginning
+and the middle of the seventeenth century. Here and
+there, a coating of metallic copper had been deposited by galvanic
+action, and the presence of completely oxydized metallic
+iron was often detected. An investigation undertaken by
+Councillor Reinhard and myself, at the instance of the Society
+of Science, made it in the highest degree probable that this
+formation owed its origin to the street sweepings of the town,
+which had been thrown upon the beach, and carried off and
+distributed by the waves over the bottom of the harbor."<a name="FNanchor_488_488" id="FNanchor_488_488"></a><a href="#Footnote_488_488" class="fnanchor">[488]</a>
+These and other familiar observations of the like sort show
+that a sandstone reef, of no inconsiderable magnitude, might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">[Pg 540]</a></span>
+originate from the stranding of a ship with a cargo of iron,<a name="FNanchor_489_489" id="FNanchor_489_489"></a><a href="#Footnote_489_489" class="fnanchor">[489]</a> or
+from throwing the waste of an establishment for working metals
+into running water which might carry it to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Parthey records a singular instance of unforeseen mischief
+from an interference with the arrangements of nature. A landowner
+at Malta possessed a rocky plateau sloping gradually
+toward the sea, and terminating in a precipice forty or fifty
+feet high, through natural openings in which the sea water
+flowed into a large cave under the rock. The proprietor attempted
+to establish salt works on the surface, and cut shallow
+pools in the rock for the evaporation of the water. In order
+to fill the salt pans more readily, he sank a well down to the
+cave beneath, through which he drew up water by a windlass
+and buckets. The speculation proved a failure, because the
+water filtered through the porous bottom of the pans, leaving
+little salt behind. But this was a small evil, compared with
+other destructive consequences that followed. When the sea
+was driven into the cave by violent west or northwest winds,
+it shot a <i>jet d'eau</i> through the well to the height of sixty feet,
+the spray of which was scattered far and wide over the neighboring
+gardens and blasted the crops. The well was now
+closed with stones, but the next winter's storms hurled them
+out again, and spread the salt spray over the grounds in the
+vicinity as before. Repeated attempts were made to stop the
+orifice, but at the time of Parthey's visit the sea had thrice
+burst through, and it was feared that the evil was without
+remedy.<a name="FNanchor_490_490" id="FNanchor_490_490"></a><a href="#Footnote_490_490" class="fnanchor">[490]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned the great extent of the heaps of oyster
+and other shells left by the American Indians on the Atlantic
+coast of the United States. Some of the Danish kitchen-middens,
+which closely resemble them, are a thousand feet
+long, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred wide, and
+from six to ten high. These piles have an importance as geological
+witnesses, independent of their bearing upon human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">[Pg 541]</a></span>
+history. Wherever the coast line appears, from other evidence,
+to have remained unchanged in outline and elevation since
+they were accumulated, they are found near the sea, and not
+more than about ten feet above its level. In some cases they
+are at a considerable distance from the beach, and in these instances,
+so far as yet examined, there are proofs that the coast
+has advanced in consequence of upheaval or of fluviatile or
+marine deposit. Where they are altogether wanting, the coast
+seems to have sunk or been washed away by the sea. The
+constancy of these observations justifies geologists in arguing,
+where other evidence is wanting, the advance of land or sea
+respectively, or the elevation or depression of the former, from
+the position or the absence of these heaps alone.</p>
+
+<p>Every traveller in Italy is familiar with Monte Testaccio,
+the mountain of potsherds, at Rome; but this deposit, large
+as it is, shrinks into insignificance when compared with masses
+of similar origin in the neighborhood of older cities. The castaway
+pottery of ancient towns in Magna Gr&aelig;cia composes
+strata of such extent and thickness that they have been dignified
+with the appellation of the ceramic formation. The Nile,
+as it slowly changes its bed, exposes in its banks masses of the
+same material, so vast that the population of the world during
+the whole historical period would seem to have chosen this
+valley as a general deposit for its broken vessels.</p>
+
+<p>The fertility imparted to the banks of the Nile by the water
+and the slime of the inundations, is such that manures are
+little employed. Hence much domestic waste, which would
+elsewhere be employed to enrich the soil, is thrown out into
+vacant places near the town. Hills of rubbish are thus piled
+up which astonish the traveller almost as much as the solid
+pyramids themselves. The heaps of ashes and other household
+refuse collected on the borders and within the limits of
+Cairo were so large, that the removal of them by Ibrahim
+Pacha has been looked upon as one of the great works of the
+age.</p>
+
+<p>The soil near cities, the street sweepings of which are
+spread upon the ground as manure, is perceptibly raised by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">[Pg 542]</a></span>
+them and by other effects of human industry, and in spite of
+all efforts to remove the waste, the level of the ground on
+which large towns stand is constantly elevated. The present
+streets of Rome are twenty feet above those of the ancient
+city. The Appian way between Rome and Albano, when
+cleared out a few years ago, was found buried four or five feet
+deep, and the fields along the road were elevated nearly or
+quite as much. The floors of many churches in Italy, not
+more than six or seven centuries old, are now three or four feet
+below the adjacent streets, though it is proved by excavations
+that they were built as many feet above them.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Resistance to Great Natural Forces.</i></h4>
+
+<p>I have often spoken of the greater and more subtile natural
+forces, and especially of geological agencies, as powers beyond
+human guidance or resistance. This is no doubt at present
+true in the main, but man has shown that he is not altogether
+impotent to struggle with even these mighty servants of nature,
+and his unconscious as well as his deliberate action may
+in some cases have increased or diminished the intensity of their
+energies. It is a very ancient belief that earthquakes are more
+destructive in districts where the crust of the earth is solid and
+homogeneous, than where it is of a looser and more interrupted
+structure. Aristotle, Pliny the elder, and Seneca believed
+that not only natural ravines and caves, but quarries, wells,
+and other human excavations, which break the continuity of
+the terrestrial strata and facilitate the escape of elastic vapors,
+have a sensible influence in diminishing the violence and preventing
+the propagation of the earth waves. In all countries
+subject to earthquakes this opinion is still maintained, and it
+is asserted that, both in ancient and in modern times, buildings
+protected by deep wells under or near them have suffered less
+from earthquakes than those the architects of which have neglected
+this precaution.<a name="FNanchor_491_491" id="FNanchor_491_491"></a><a href="#Footnote_491_491" class="fnanchor">[491]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">[Pg 543]</a></span></p>
+<p>If the commonly received theory of the cause of earthquakes
+is true&mdash;that, namely, which ascribes them to the elastic
+force of gases accumulated or generated in subterranean
+reservoirs&mdash;it is evident that open channels of communication
+between such reservoirs and the atmosphere might serve as a
+harmless discharge of gases that would otherwise acquire destructive
+energy. The doubt is whether artificial excavations
+can be carried deep enough to reach the laboratory where the
+elastic fluids are distilled. There are, in many places, small
+natural crevices through which such fluids escape, and the
+source of them sometimes lies at so moderate a depth that they
+pervade the superficial soil and, as it were, transpire from it,
+over a considerable area. When the borer of an ordinary artesian
+well strikes into a cavity in the earth, imprisoned air
+often rushes out with great violence, and this has been still
+more frequently observed in sinking mineral-oil wells. In
+this latter case, the discharge of a vehement current of inflammable
+fluid sometimes continues for hours and even longer
+periods. These facts seem to render it not wholly improbable
+that the popular belief of the efficacy of deep wells in mitigating
+the violence of earthquakes is well founded.</p>
+
+<p>In general, light, wooden buildings are less injured by
+earthquakes than more solid structures of stone or brick, and
+it is commonly supposed that the power put forth by the earth
+wave is too great to be resisted by any amount of weight or
+solidity of mass that man can pile up upon the surface. But
+the fact that in countries subject to earthquakes many very large
+and strongly constructed palaces, temples, and other monuments
+have stood for centuries, comparatively uninjured, suggests
+a doubt whether this opinion is sound. The earthquake
+of the first of November, 1755, which was felt over a twelfth
+part of the earth's surface, was probably the most violent of
+which we have any clear and distinct account, and it seems to
+have exerted its most destructive force at Lisbon. It has often
+been noticed as a remarkable fact, that the mint, a building
+of great solidity, was almost wholly unaffected by the shock
+which shattered every house and church in the city, and its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">[Pg 544]</a></span>
+escape from the common ruin can hardly be accounted for except
+upon the supposition that its weight, compactness, and
+strength of material enabled it to resist an agitation of the
+earth which overthrew all weaker structures. On the other
+hand, a stone pier in the harbor of Lisbon, on which thousands
+of people had taken refuge, sank with its foundations to a
+great depth during the same earthquake; and it is plain that
+where subterranean cavities exist, at moderate depths, the erection
+of heavy masses upon them would tend to promote the
+breaking down of the strata which roof them over.</p>
+
+<p>No physicist, I believe, has supposed that man can avert
+the eruption of a volcano or diminish the quantity of melted
+rock which it pours out of the bowels of the earth; but it is
+not always impossible to divert the course of even a large current
+of lava. "The smaller streams of lava near Catania,"
+says Ferrara, in describing the great eruption of 1669, "were
+turned from their course by building dry walls of stone as a
+barrier against them. * * * It was proposed to divert
+the main current from Catania, and fifty men, protected by
+hides, were sent with hooks and iron bars to break the flank
+of the stream near Belpasso.<a name="FNanchor_492_492" id="FNanchor_492_492"></a><a href="#Footnote_492_492" class="fnanchor">[492]</a> When the opening was made,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">[Pg 545]</a></span>
+fluid lava poured forth and flowed rapidly toward Paterno;
+but the inhabitants of that place, not caring to sacrifice their
+own town to save Catania, rushed out in arms and put a stop
+to the operation."<a name="FNanchor_493_493" id="FNanchor_493_493"></a><a href="#Footnote_493_493" class="fnanchor">[493]</a> In the eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, the
+viceroy saved from impending destruction the town of Portici,
+and the valuable collection of antiquities then deposited there
+but since removed to Naples, by employing several thousand
+men to dig a ditch above the town, by which the lava current
+was carried off in another direction.<a name="FNanchor_494_494" id="FNanchor_494_494"></a><a href="#Footnote_494_494" class="fnanchor">[494]</a></p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Effects of Mining.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The excavations made by man, for mining and other purposes,
+may sometimes occasion disturbance of the surface by
+the subsidence of the strata above them, as in the case of the
+mine of Fahlun, but such accidents must always be too inconsiderable
+in extent to deserve notice in a geographical point of
+view. Such excavations, however, may interfere materially
+with the course of subterranean waters, and it has even been
+conjectured that the removal of large bodies of metallic ore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">[Pg 546]</a></span>
+from their original deposits might, at least locally, affect the
+magnetic and electrical condition of the earth's crust to a sensible
+degree.</p>
+
+<p>Accidental fires in mines of coal or lignite sometimes lead
+to consequences not only destructive to large quantities of valuable
+material, but may, directly or indirectly, produce results
+important in geography. The coal occasionally takes fire from
+the miners' lights or other fires used by them, and, if long exposed
+to air in deserted galleries, may be spontaneously kindled.
+Under favorable circumstances, a stratum of coal will
+burn till it is exhausted, and a cavity may be burnt out in a
+few months which human labor could not excavate in many
+years. Wittwer informs us that a coal mine at St. Etienne in
+Dauphiny has been burning ever since the fourteenth century,
+and that a mine near Duttweiler, another near Epterode, and
+a third at Zwickau, have been on fire for two hundred years.
+Such conflagrations not only produce cavities in the earth, but
+communicate a perceptible degree of heat to the surface, and
+the author just quoted cites cases where this heat has been advantageously
+employed in forcing vegetation.<a name="FNanchor_495_495" id="FNanchor_495_495"></a><a href="#Footnote_495_495" class="fnanchor">[495]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">[Pg 547]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4><i>Espy's Theories.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Espy's well known suggestion of the possibility of causing
+rain artificially, by kindling great fires, is not likely to be
+turned to practical account, but the speculations of this able
+meteorologist are not, for that reason, to be rejected as worthless.
+His labors exhibit great industry in the collection of
+facts, much ingenuity in dealing with them, remarkable insight
+into the laws of nature, and a ready perception of analogies
+and relations not obvious to minds less philosophically
+constituted. They have unquestionably contributed very essentially
+to the advancement of meteorological science. The
+possibility that the distribution and action of electricity may
+be considerably modified by long lines of iron railways and
+telegraph wires, is a kindred thought, and in fact rests much
+on the same foundation as the belief in the utility of lightning
+rods, but such influence is too obscure and too small to have
+been yet detected.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>River Sediment.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The manifestation of the internal heat of the earth at any
+given point is conditioned by the thickness of the crust at such
+point. The deposits of rivers tend to augment that thickness at
+their estuaries. The sediment of slowly flowing rivers emptying
+into shallow seas is spread over so great a surface that we
+can hardly imagine the foot or two of slime they let fall over
+a wide area in a century to form an element among even the
+infinitesimal quantities which compose the terms of the equations
+of nature. But some swift rivers, rolling mountains of
+fine earth, discharge themselves into deeply scooped gulfs or
+bays, and in such cases the deposit amounts, in the course of a
+few years, to a mass the transfer of which from the surface of a
+large basin, and its accumulation at a single point, may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">[Pg 548]</a></span>
+supposed to produce other effects than those measurable by
+the sounding line. Now, almost all the operations of rural
+life, as I have abundantly shown, increase the liability of the
+soil to erosion by water. Hence, the clearing of the valley of
+the Ganges by man must have much augmented the quantity
+of earth transported by that river to the sea, and of course
+have strengthened the effects, whatever they may be, of thickening
+the crust of the earth in the Bay of Bengal. In such
+cases, then, human action must rank among geological influences.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Nothing Small in Nature.</i></h4>
+
+<p>It is a legal maxim that "the law concerneth not itself
+with trifles," <i>de minimus non curat lex</i>; but in the vocabulary
+of nature, little and great are terms of comparison only; she
+knows no trifles, and her laws are as inflexible in dealing with
+an atom as with a continent or a planet.<a name="FNanchor_496_496" id="FNanchor_496_496"></a><a href="#Footnote_496_496" class="fnanchor">[496]</a> The human opera<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">[Pg 549]</a></span>tions
+mentioned in the last few paragraphs, therefore, do act in
+the ways ascribed to them, though our limited faculties are at
+present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their immediate,
+still more their ultimate consequences. But our inability
+to assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance
+of natural arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the existence
+of such causes in any general view of the relations between
+man and nature, and we are never justified in assuming
+a force to be insignificant because its measure is unknown, or
+even because no physical effect can now be traced to it as its
+origin. The collection of phenomena must precede the analysis
+of them, and every new fact, illustrative of the action and
+reaction between humanity and the material world around it,
+is another step toward the determination of the great question,
+whether man is of nature or above her.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">[Pg 550]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FOOTNOTES" id="FOOTNOTES"></a>FOOTNOTES:</h2>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In the Middle Ages, feudalism, and a nominal Christianity whose
+corruptions had converted the most beneficent of religions into the most
+baneful of superstitions, perpetuated every abuse of Roman tyranny, and
+added new oppressions and new methods of extortion to those invented
+by older despotisms. The burdens in question fell most heavily on the
+provinces that had been longest colonized by the Latin race, and these are
+the portions of Europe which have suffered the greatest physical degradation.
+"Feudalism," says Blanqui, "was a concentration of scourges.
+The peasant, stripped of the inheritance of his fathers, became the property
+of inflexible, ignorant, indolent masters; he was obliged to travel
+fifty leagues with their carts whenever they required it; he labored for
+them three days in the week, and surrendered to them half the product
+of his earnings during the other three; without their consent he could
+not change his residence, or marry. And why, indeed, should he wish to
+marry, when he could scarcely save enough to maintain himself? The
+Abbot Alcuin had twenty thousand slaves, called <i>serfs</i>, who were forever
+attached to the soil. This is the great cause of the rapid depopulation observed
+in the Middle Ages, and of the prodigious multitude of monasteries
+which sprang up on every side. It was doubtless a relief to such miserable
+men to find in the cloisters a retreat from oppression; but the human
+race never suffered a more cruel outrage, industry never received a wound
+better calculated to plunge the world again into the darkness of the rudest
+antiquity. It suffices to say that the prediction of the approaching end of
+the world, industriously spread by the rapacious monks at this time, was
+received without terror."&mdash;<i>R&eacute;sum&eacute; de l'Histoire du Commerce</i>, p. 156.
+</p><p>
+The abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pr&eacute;s, which, in the time of Charlemagne,
+had possessed a million of acres, was, down to the Revolution,
+still so wealthy, that the personal income of the abbot was 300,000 livres.
+The abbey of Saint-Denis was nearly as rich as that of Saint-Germain-des-Pr&eacute;s.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lavergne</span>,
+<i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale de la France</i>, p. 104.
+</p><p>
+Paul Louis Courier quotes from La Bruy&egrave;re the following striking picture
+of the condition of the French peasantry in his time: "One sees
+certain dark, livid, naked, sunburnt, wild animals, male and female, scattered
+over the country and attached to the soil, which they root and turn
+over with indomitable perseverance. They have, as it were, an articulate
+voice, and when they rise to their feet, they show a human face. They
+are, in fact, men; they creep at night into dens, where they live on black
+bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the labor of ploughing,
+sowing, and harvesting, and therefore deserve some small share of the
+bread they have grown." "These are his own words," adds Courier;
+"he is speaking of the fortunate peasants, of those who had work and
+bread, and they were then the few."&mdash;<i>P&eacute;tition &agrave; la Chambre des D&eacute;put&iacute;s
+pour les Villageois que l'on emp&ecirc;che de danser.</i>
+</p><p>
+Arthur Young, who travelled in France from 1787 to 1789, gives, in
+the twenty-first chapter of his Travels, a frightful account of the burdens
+of the rural population even at that late period. Besides the regular
+governmental taxes, and a multitude of heavy fines imposed for trifling
+offences, he enumerates about thirty seignorial rights, the very origin and
+nature of some of which are now unknown, while those of some others,
+claimed and enforced by ecclesiastical as well as by temporal lords, are as
+repulsive to humanity and morality, as the worst abuses ever practised by
+heathen despotism. Most of these, indeed, had been commuted for money
+payments, and were levied on the peasantry as pecuniary imposts for the
+benefit of prelates and lay lords, who, by virtue of their nobility, were
+exempt from taxation. Who can wonder at the hostility of the French
+plebeian classes toward the aristocracy in the days of the Revolution?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The temporary depopulation of an exhausted soil may be, in some
+cases, a physical, though, like fallows in agriculture, a dear-bought advantage.
+Under favorable circumstances, the withdrawal of man and his
+flocks allows the earth to clothe itself again with forests, and in a few
+generations to recover its ancient productiveness. In the Middle Ages,
+worn-out fields were depopulated, in many parts of the Continent, by civil
+and ecclesiastical tyrannies, which insisted on the surrender of the half of
+a loaf already too small to sustain its producer. Thus abandoned, these
+lands often relapsed into the forest state, and, some centuries later, were
+again brought under cultivation with renovated fertility.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The subject of climatic change, with and without reference to human
+action as a cause, has been much discussed by Moreau de Jonnes, Dureau,
+de la Malle, Arago, Humboldt, Fuster, Gasparin, Becquerel, and many
+other writers in Europe, and by Noah Webster, Forry, Drake, and others
+in America. Fraas has endeavored to show, by the history of vegetation
+in Greece, not merely that clearing and cultivation have affected climate,
+but that change of climate has essentially modified the character of vegetable
+life. See his <i>Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+</p><p class="poem">
+Gods Almagt wenkte van den troon,<br />
+En schiep elk volk een land ter woon:<br />
+Hier vestte Zij een grondgebied,<br />
+Dat Zij ons zelven scheppen liet.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The udometric measurements of Belgrand, reported in the <i>Annales
+Foresti&egrave;res</i> for 1854, and discussed by Vall&egrave;s in chap. vi of his <i>&Eacute;tudes
+sur les Inondations</i>, constitute the earliest, and, in some respects, the most
+remarkable series known to me, of persevering and systematic observations
+bearing directly and exclusively upon the influence of human action
+on climate, or, to speak more accurately, on precipitation and natural
+drainage. The conclusions of Belgrand, however, and of Vall&egrave;s, who
+adopts them, have not been generally accepted by the scientific world, and
+they seem to have been, in part at least, refuted by the arguments of H&eacute;ricourt
+and the observations of Cantegril, Jeandel, and Belland. See chapter
+iii: <i>The Woods</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Verses addressed by G. C. to Sir Walter Raleigh.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hakluyt</span>, i, p. 668.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>
+</p><p class="poem">
+&mdash;&mdash;I troer, at Synets Sands er lagt i &Ouml;iet,<br />
+Mens dette kun er Redskab. Synet str&ouml;mmer<br />
+Fra Sj&aelig;lens Dyb, og &Ouml;iets fine Nerver<br />
+Gaae ud fra Hjernens hemmelige V&aelig;rksted.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Henrik Hertz</span>, <i>Kong Ren&eacute;'s Datter</i>, sc. ii.</span>
+</p>
+<p class="poem">
+In the material eye, you think, sight lodgeth!<br />
+The <i>eye</i> is but an organ. <i>Seeing</i> streameth<br />
+From the soul's inmost depths. The fine perceptive<br />
+Nerve springeth from the brain's mysterious workshop.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Skill in marksmanship, whether with firearms or with other projectile
+weapons, depends more upon the training of the eye than is generally
+supposed, and I have often found particularly good shots to possess an
+almost telescopic vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle, the barrel
+serves as a guide to the eye, but there are sportsmen who fire with the
+but of the gun at the hip. In this case, as in the use of the sling, the lasso,
+and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see <span class="smcap">Babinet</span>, <i>Lectures</i>, vii, p. 84), in
+throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a stone, and in the employment
+of the blow pipe and the bow, the movements of the hand and arm are
+guided by that mysterious sympathy which exists between the eye and
+the unseeing organs of the body.
+</p><p>
+In shooting the tortoises of the Amazon and its tributaries, the Indians
+use an arrow with a long twine and a float attached to it. Av&eacute;-Lallemant
+(<i>Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom</i>, p. 32) thus describes their
+mode of aiming: "As the arrow, if aimed directly at the floating tortoise,
+would strike it at a small angle, and glance from its flat and wet shell, the
+archers have a peculiar method of shooting. They are able to calculate
+exactly their own muscular effort, the velocity of the stream, the distance
+and size of the tortoise, and they shoot the arrow directly up into the air,
+so that it falls almost vertically upon the shell of the tortoise, and sticks
+in it." Analogous calculations&mdash;if such physico-mental operations can
+properly be so called&mdash;are made in the use of other missiles; for no projectile
+flies in a right line to its mark. But the exact training of the eye lies
+at the bottom of all of them, and marksmanship depends almost wholly upon
+the power of that organ, whose directions the blind muscles implicitly
+follow. It is perhaps not out of place to observe here that our English
+word aim comes from the Latin &aelig;stimo, I calculate or estimate. See
+<span class="smcap">Wedgwood's</span> <i>Dictionary of English Etymology</i>, and the note to the American
+edition, under <i>Aim</i>.
+</p><p>
+Another proof of the control of the limbs by the eye has been observed
+in deaf-and-dumb schools, and others where pupils are first taught to write
+on large slates or blackboards. The writing is in large characters, the
+small letters being an inch or more high. They are formed with chalk or
+a slate pencil firmly grasped in the fingers, and by appropriate motions of
+the wrist, elbow, and shoulder, not of the finger joints. Nevertheless,
+when a pen is put into the hand of a pupil thus taught, his handwriting,
+though produced by a totally different set of muscles and muscular movements,
+is identical in character with that which he has practised on the
+blackboard.
+</p><p>
+It has been much doubted whether the artists of the classic ages possessed
+a more perfect sight than those of modern times, or whether, in executing
+their minute mosaics and gem engravings, they used magnifiers.
+Glasses ground convex have been found at Pompeii, but they are too
+rudely fashioned and too imperfectly polished to have been of any practical
+use for optical purposes. But though the ancient artists may have
+had a microscopic vision, their astronomers cannot have had a telescopic
+power of sight; for they did not discover the satellites of Jupiter, which
+are often seen with the naked eye at Oormeeah, in Persia, and sometimes,
+as I can testify by personal observation, at Cairo.
+</p><p>
+For a very remarkable account of the restoration of vision impaired
+from age, by judicious training, see <i>Lessons in Life</i>, by <span class="smcap">Timothy Titcomb</span>,
+lesson xi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Antiquity of Man</i>, p. 377.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> "One of them [the Indians] seated himself near me, and made from
+a fragment of quartz, with a simple piece of round bone, one end of which
+was hemispherical, with a small crease in it (as if worn by a thread) the
+sixteenth of an inch deep, an arrow head which was very sharp and piercing,
+and such as they use on all their arrows. The skill and rapidity with
+which it was made, without a blow, but by simply breaking the sharp
+edges with the creased bone by the strength of his hands&mdash;for the crease
+merely served to prevent the instrument from slipping, affording no leverage&mdash;was
+remarkable."&mdash;<i>Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Pacific
+Railroad</i>, vol. ii, 1855, <i>Lieut.</i> <span class="smcap">Beckwith's</span> <i>Report</i>, p. 43.
+</p><p>
+It has been said that stone weapons are not found in Sicily, except in
+certain caves half filled with the skeletons of extinct animals. If they
+have not been found in that island in more easily accessible localities, I
+suspect it is because eyes familiar with such objects have not sought for
+them. In January, 1854, I picked up an arrow head of quartz in a little
+ravine or furrow just washed out by a heavy rain, in a field near the
+Simeto. It is rudely fashioned, but its artificial character and its special
+purpose are quite unequivocal.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Probably no cultivated vegetable affords so good an opportunity of
+studying the laws of acclimation of plants as maize or Indian corn.
+Maize is grown from the tropics to at least lat. 47&deg; in Northeastern
+America, and farther north in Europe. Every two or three degrees of
+latitude brings you to a new variety, with new climatic adaptations, and
+the capacity of the plant to accommodate itself to new conditions of temperature
+and season seems almost unlimited. We may easily suppose a
+variety of this grain, which had become acclimated in still higher latitudes,
+to have been lost, and in such case the failure to raise a crop from seed
+brought from some distance to the south would not prove that the climate
+had become colder.
+</p><p>
+Many persons now living remember that, when the common tomato
+was first introduced into Northern New England, it often failed to ripen;
+but, in the course of a very few years, it completely adapted itself to the
+climate, and now not only matures both its fruit and its seeds with as
+much certainty as any cultivated vegetable, but regularly propagates itself
+by self-sown seed. Meteorological observations, however, do not show
+any amelioration of the summer climate in those States within that
+period. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_1">No. 1</a>.
+</p><p>
+Maize and the tomato, if not new to human use, have not been long
+known to civilization, and were, very probably, reclaimed and domesticated
+at a much more recent period than the plants which form the great
+staples of agricultural husbandry in Europe and Asia. Is the great power
+of accomodation to climate possessed by them due to this circumstance?
+There is some reason to suppose that the character of maize has been sensibly
+changed by cultivation in South America; for, according to P&ouml;ppig,
+the ears of this grain found in old Peruvian tombs belong to varieties not
+now known in Peru.&mdash;<i>Travels in Peru</i>, chap. vii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> The cultivation of madder is said to have been introduced into Europe
+by an Oriental in the year 1765, and it was first planted in the neighborhood
+of Avignon. Of course, it has been grown in that district for less
+than a century; but upon soils where it has been a frequent crop, it is
+already losing much of its coloring properties.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lavergne</span>, <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale
+de la France</i>, pp. 259-291.
+</p><p>
+I believe there is no doubt that the cultivation of madder in the vicinity
+of Avignon is of recent introduction; but it appears from Fuller and other
+evidence, that this plant was grown in Europe before the middle of the
+seventeenth century. The madder brought to France from Persia may be
+of a different species, or, at least, variety. "Some two years since," says
+Fuller, "madder was sown by Sir Nicholas Crispe at Debtford, and I hope
+will have good success; first because it groweth in Zeland in the same (if
+not a more <i>northern</i>) <i>latitude</i>. Secondly, because <i>wild madder</i> grows here
+in abundance; and why may not <i>tame madder</i> if <i>cicurated</i> by art.
+Lastly, because as good as any grew some thirty years since at Barn-Elms,
+in Surrey, though it quit not cost through some error in the first planter
+thereof, which now we hope will be rectified."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Fuller</span>, <i>Worthies of England</i>,
+ii, pp. 57, 58.
+</p><p>
+Perhaps the recent diseases of the olive, the vine, and the silkworm&mdash;the
+prevailing malady of which insect is supposed by some to be the effect
+of an incipient decay of the mulberry tree&mdash;may be, in part, due to
+changes produced in the character of the soil by exhaustion through long
+cultivation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> In many parts of New England there are tracts, miles in extent, and
+presenting all varieties of surface and exposure, which were partially cleared
+sixty or seventy years ago, and where little or no change in the proportion
+of cultivated ground, pasturage, and woodland has taken place since. In
+some cases, these tracts compose basins apparently scarcely at all exposed
+to any local influence in the way of percolation or infiltration of water
+toward or from neighboring valleys. But in such situations, apart from
+accidental disturbances, the ground is growing drier and drier, from year
+to year, springs are still disappearing, and rivulets still diminishing in their
+summer supply of water. A probable explanation of this is to be found
+in the rapid drainage of the surface of cleared ground, which prevents the
+subterranean natural reservoirs, whether cavities or merely strata of bibulous
+earth, from filling up. How long this process is to last before an
+equilibrium is reached, none can say. It may be, for years; it may be, for
+centuries.
+</p><p>
+Livingstone states facts which favor the supposition that a secular
+desiccation is still going on in central Africa. When the regions where
+the earth is growing drier were cleared of wood, or, indeed, whether
+forests ever grew there, we are unable to say, but the change appears to
+have been long in progress. There is reason to suspect a similar revolution
+in Arabia Petr&aelig;a. In many of the wadis, and particularly in the gorges
+between Wadi Feiran and Wadi Esh Sheikh, there are water-worn banks
+showing that, at no very remote period, the winter floods must have risen
+fifty feet in channels where the growth of acacias and tamarisks and the
+testimony of the Arabs concur to prove that they have not risen six feet
+within the memory or tradition of the present inhabitants. There is little
+probability that any considerable part of the Sinaitic peninsula has been
+wooded since its first occupation by man, and we must seek the cause of
+its increasing dryness elsewhere than in the removal of the forest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> The soil of newly subdued countries is generally in a high degree
+favorable to the growth of the fruits of the garden and the orchard, but
+usually becomes much less so in a very few years. Plums, of many varieties,
+were formerly grown, in great perfection and abundance, in many
+parts of New England where at present they can scarcely be reared at all;
+and the peach, which, a generation or two ago, succeeded admirably in the
+southern portion of the same States, has almost ceased to be cultivated
+there. The disappearance of these fruits is partly due to the ravages of
+insects, which have in later years attacked them; but this is evidently by
+no means the sole, or even the principal cause of their decay. In these
+cases, it is not to the exhaustion of the particular acres on which the fruit
+trees have grown that we are to ascribe their degeneracy, but to a general
+change in the condition of the soil or the air; for it is equally impossible
+to rear them successfully on absolutely new land in the neighborhood of
+grounds where, not long since, they bore the finest fruit.
+</p><p>
+I remember being told, many years ago, by one of the earliest settlers
+of the State of Ohio, a very intelligent and observing person, that the
+apple trees raised there from seed sown soon after the land was cleared,
+bore fruit in less than half the time required to bring to bearing those
+reared from seed sown when the ground had been twenty years under cultivation.
+</p><p>
+In the peat mosses of Denmark, Scotch firs and other trees not now
+growing in the same localities, are found in abundance. Every generation
+of trees leaves the soil in a different state from that in which it found it;
+every tree that springs up in a group of trees of another species than its
+own, grows under different influences of light and shade and atmosphere
+from its predecessors. Hence the succession of crops, which occurs in all
+natural forests, seems to be due rather to changes of condition than of climate.
+See chapter iii, <i>post</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> The nomenclature of meteorology is vague and sometimes equivocal.
+Not long since, it was suspected that the observers reporting to a scientific
+institution did not agree in their understanding of the mode of expressing
+the direction of the wind prescribed by their instructions. It was found,
+upon inquiry, that very many of them used the names of the compass-points
+to indicate the quarter <i>from</i> which the wind blew, while others
+employed them to signify the quarter <i>toward</i> which the atmospheric currents
+were moving. In some instances, the observers were no longer
+within the reach of inquiry, and of course their tables of the wind were of
+no value.
+</p><p>
+"Winds," says Mrs. Somerville, "are named from the points whence
+they blow, currents exactly the reverse. An easterly wind comes from
+the east; whereas an easterly current comes from the west, and flows
+toward the east."&mdash;<i>Physical Geography</i>, p. 229.
+</p><p>
+There is no philological ground for this distinction, and it probably
+originated in a confusion of the terminations <i>-wardly</i> and <i>-erly</i>, both of
+which are modern. The root of the former ending implies the direction
+<i>to</i> or <i>to-ward</i> which motion is supposed. It corresponds to, and is probably
+allied with, the Latin <i>versus</i>. The termination <i>-erly</i> is a corruption
+or softening of <i>-ernly</i>, easterly for easternly, and many authors of the
+seventeenth century so write it. In Hakluyt (i, p. 2), <i>easterly</i> is applied to
+place, "<i>easterly</i> bounds," and means <i>eastern</i>. In a passage in Drayton,
+"<i>easterly</i> winds" must mean winds <i>from</i> the east; but the same author, in
+speaking of nations, uses <i>northerly</i> for <i>northern</i>. Hakewell says: "The
+sonne cannot goe more <i>southernely</i> from vs, nor come more <i>northernely</i>
+towards vs." Holland, in his translation of Pliny, referring to the moon
+has: "When shee is <i>northerly</i>," and "shee is gone <i>southerly</i>." Richardson,
+to whom I am indebted for the above citations, quotes a passage from
+Dampier where <i>westerly</i> is applied to the wind, but the context does not
+determine the direction. The only example of the termination in <i>-wardly</i>
+given by this lexicographer is from Donne, where it means <i>toward</i> the
+west.
+</p><p>
+Shakspeare, in <i>Hamlet</i> (v. ii), uses <i>northerly</i> wind for wind <i>from</i> the
+north. Milton does not employ either of these terminations, nor were
+they known to the Anglo-Saxons, who, however, had adjectives of direction
+in <i>-an</i> or <i>-en</i>, <i>-ern</i> and <i>-weard</i>, the last always meaning the point
+<i>toward</i> which motion is supposed, the others that <i>from</i> which it proceeds.
+</p><p>
+We use an <i>east</i> wind, an <i>eastern</i> wind, and an <i>easterly</i> wind, to signify
+the same thing. The two former expressions are old, and constant in meaning;
+the last is recent, superfluous, and equivocal. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_2">No. 2</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> I do not here speak of the vast prairie region of the Mississippi
+valley, which cannot properly be said ever to have been a field of British
+colonization; but of the original colonies, and their dependencies in the
+territory of the present United States, and in Canada. It is, however,
+equally true of the Western prairies as of the Eastern forest land, that they
+had arrived at a state of equilibrium, though under very different conditions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> The great fire of Miramichi in 1825, probably the most extensive and
+terrific conflagration recorded in authentic history, spread its ravages over
+nearly six thousand square miles, chiefly of woodland, and was of such
+intensity that it seemed to consume the very soil itself. But so great are
+the recuperative powers of nature, that, in twenty-five years, the ground
+was thickly covered again with trees of fair dimensions, except where cultivation
+and pasturage kept down the forest growth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> The English nomenclature of this geographical feature does not seem
+well settled. We have <i>bog</i>, <i>swamp</i>, <i>marsh</i>, <i>morass</i>,<i> moor</i>, <i>fen</i>, <i>turf moss</i>,
+<i>peat moss</i>, <i>quagmire</i>, all of which, though sometimes more or less accurately
+discriminated, are often used interchangeably, or are perhaps employed,
+each exclusively, in a particular district. In Sweden, where,
+especially in the Lappish provinces, this terr-aqueous formation is very extensive
+and important, the names of its different kinds are more specific
+in their application. The general designation of all soils permanently
+pervaded with water is <i>K&auml;rr</i>. The elder L&aelig;stadius divides the <i>K&auml;rr</i>
+into two genera: <i>Myror</i> (sing. <i>myra</i>), and <i>Mossar</i> (sing. <i>mosse</i>). "The
+former," he observes, "are grass-grown, and overflowed with water
+through almost the whole summer; the latter are covered with mosses
+and always moist, but very seldom overflowed." He enumerates the
+following species of <i>Myra</i>, the character of which will perhaps be sufficiently
+understood by the Latin terms into which he translates the vernacular
+names, for the benefit of strangers not altogether familiar with the
+language and the subject: 1. <i>H&ouml;myror</i>, paludes graminos&aelig;. 2. <i>Dy</i>, paludes
+profund&aelig;. 3. <i>Flarkmyror</i>, or proper <i>k&auml;rr</i>, paludes limos&aelig;. 4.
+<i>Fj&auml;llmyror</i>, paludes uliginos&aelig;. 5. <i>Tufmyror</i>, paludes c&aelig;spitos&aelig;. 6. <i>Rismyror</i>,
+paludes virgat&aelig;. 7. <i>Starr&auml;ngar</i>, prata irrigata, with their subdivisions,
+dry <i>starr&auml;ngar</i> or <i>ris&auml;ngar</i>, wet <i>starr&auml;ngar</i> and <i>fr&auml;kengropar</i>. 8.
+<i>P&ouml;lar</i>, laeun&aelig;. 9. <i>G&ouml;lar</i>, foss&aelig; inundat&aelig;. The <i>Mossar</i>, paludes turfos&aelig;,
+which are of great extent, have but two species: 1. <i>Torfmossar</i>, called
+also <i>Mossmyror</i> and <i>Snottermyror</i>, and, 2. <i>Bj&ouml;rnmossar</i>.
+</p><p>
+The accumulations of stagnant or stagnating water originating in bogs
+are distinguished into <i>Tr&#257;sk</i>, stagna, and <i>Tjernar</i> or <i>Tj&auml;rnar</i> (sing. <i>Tjern</i>
+or <i>Tj&auml;rn</i>), stagnatiles. <i>Tr&#257;sk</i> are pools fed by bogs, or water emanating
+from them, and their bottoms are slimy; <i>Tjernar</i> are small <i>Tr&auml;sk</i> situated
+within the limits of <i>Mossar</i>.&mdash;<span class="smcap">L. L. L&aelig;stadius</span>, <i>om M&ouml;jligheten af Uppodlingar
+i Lappmarken</i>, pp. 23, 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Although the quantity of bog land in New England is less than in
+many other regions of equal area, yet there is a considerable extent of this
+formation in some of the Northeastern States. Dana (<i>Manual of Geology</i>,
+p. 614) states that the quantity of peat in Massachusetts is estimated at
+120,000,000 cords, or nearly 569,000,000 cubic yards, but he does not give
+either the area or the depth of the deposits. In any event, however, bogs
+cover but a small percentage of the territory in any of the Northern States,
+while it is said that one tenth of the whole surface of Ireland is composed
+of bogs, and there are still extensive tracts of undrained marsh in England.
+</p><p>
+Bogs, independently of their importance in geology as explaining the
+origin of some kinds of mineral coal, have a present value as repositories
+of fuel. Peat beds have sometimes a thickness of ten or twelve yards, or
+even more. A depth of ten yards would give 48,000 cubic yards to the
+acre. The greatest quantity of firewood yielded by the forests of New
+England to the acre is 100 cords solid measure, or 474 cubic yards; but
+this comprises only the trunks and larger branches. If we add the small
+branches and twigs, it is possible that 600 cubic yards might, in some cases,
+be cut on an acre. This is only one eightieth part of the quantity of
+peat sometimes found on the same area. It is true that a yard of peat and
+a yard of wood are not the equivalents of each other, but the fuel on an
+acre of deep peat is worth much more than that on an acre of the best
+woodland. Besides this, wood is perishable, and the quantity on an acre
+cannot be increased beyond the amount just stated; peat is indestructible,
+and the beds are always growing.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> "Aquatic plants have a utility in raising the level of marshy grounds,
+which renders them very valuable, and may well be called a geological
+function. * * *
+</p><p>
+"The engineer drains ponds at a great expense by lowering the surface
+of the water; nature attains the same end, gratuitously, by raising the
+level of the soil without depressing that of the water; but she proceeds
+more slowly. There are, in the Landes, marshes where this natural filling
+has a thickness of four m&egrave;tres, and some of them, at first lower than
+the sea, have been thus raised and drained so as to grow summer crops,
+such, for example, as maize."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Boitel</span>, <i>Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres</i>,
+p. 227.
+</p><p>
+The bogs of Denmark&mdash;the examination of which by Steenstrup and
+Vaupell has presented such curious results with respect to the natural succession
+of forest trees&mdash;appear to have gone through this gradual process
+of drying, and the birch, which grows freely in very wet soils, has contributed
+very effectually by its annual deposits to raise the surface above
+the water level, and thus to prepare the ground for the oak.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Vaupell</span>,
+<i>B&ouml;gens Indvandring</i>, pp. 39, 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Careful examination of the peat mosses in North Sj&aelig;lland&mdash;which
+are so abundant in fossil wood that, within thirty years, they have yielded
+above a million of trees&mdash;shows that the trees have generally fallen from
+age and not from wind. They are found in depressions on the declivities
+of which they grew, and they lie with the top lowest, always falling
+toward the bottom of the valley.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Vaupell</span>, <i>B&ouml;gens Indvandring i de
+Danske Skove</i>, pp. 10, 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> The locust insect, <i>Clitus pictus</i>, which deposits its eggs in the American
+locust, <i>Robinia pseudacacia</i>, is one of these, and its ravages have been
+and still are most destructive to that very valuable tree, so remarkable for
+combining rapidity of growth with strength and durability of wood. This
+insect, I believe, has not yet appeared in Europe, where, since the so general
+employment of the <i>Robinia</i> to clothe and protect embankments and
+the scarps of deep cuts on railroads, it would do incalculable mischief. As
+a traveller, however, I should find some compensation for this evil in the
+destruction of these acacia hedges, which as completely obstruct the view
+on hundreds of miles of French and Italian railways, as the garden walls
+of the same countries do on the ordinary roads. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_4">No. 4</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> In the artificial woods of Europe, insects are far more numerous and
+destructive to trees than in the primitive forests of America, and the same
+remark may be made of the smaller rodents, such as moles, mice, and
+squirrels. In the dense native wood, the ground and the air are too
+humid, the depth of shade too great for many tribes of these creatures,
+while near the natural meadows and other open grounds, where circumstances
+are otherwise more favorable for their existence and multiplication,
+their numbers are kept down by birds, serpents, foxes, and smaller
+predacious quadrupeds. In civilized countries, these natural enemies of
+the worm, the beetle and the mole, are persecuted, sometimes almost exterminated,
+by man, who also removes from his plantations the decayed
+or wind-fallen trees, the shrubs and underwood, which, in a state of
+nature, furnished food and shelter to the borer and the rodent, and often
+also to the animals that preyed upon them. Hence the insect and the
+gnawing quadruped are allowed to increase, from the expulsion of the
+police which, in the natural wood, prevent their excessive multiplication,
+and they become destructive to the forest because they are driven to the
+living tree for nutriment and cover. The forest of Fontainebleau is almost
+wholly without birds, and their absence is ascribed by some writers to
+the want of water, which, in the thirsty sands of that wood, does not
+gather into running brooks; but the want of undergrowth is perhaps
+an equally good reason for their scarcity. In a wood of spontaneous
+growth, ordered and governed by nature, the squirrel does not attack
+trees, or at least the injury he may do is too trifling to be perceptible, but
+he is a formidable enemy to the plantation. "The squirrels bite the cones
+of the pine and consume the seed which might serve to restock the wood;
+they do still more mischief by gnawing off, near the leading shoot, a strip
+of bark, and thus often completely girdling the tree. Trees so injured
+must be felled, as they would never acquire a vigorous growth. The
+squirrel is especially destructive to the pine in Sologne, where he gnaws
+the bark of tress twenty or twenty-five years old." But even here, nature
+sometimes provides a compensation, by making the appetite of this quadruped
+serve to prevent an excessive production of seed cones, which tends
+to obstruct the due growth of the leading shoot. "In some of the pineries
+of Brittany which produce cones so abundantly as to strangle the development
+of the leading shoot of the maritime pine, it has been observed that
+the pines are most vigorous where the squirrels are most numerous, a result
+attributed to the repression of the cones by this rodent."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Boitel</span>, <i>Mise en
+valeur des Terres pauvres</i>, p. 50. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_5">No. 5</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> The terrible destructiveness of man is remarkably exemplified in the
+chase of large mammalia and birds for single products, attended with the
+entire waste of enormous quantities of flesh, and of other parts of the animal,
+which are capable of valuable uses. The wild cattle of South America
+are slaughtered by millions for their hides and horns; the buffalo of North
+America for his skin or his tongue; the elephant, the walrus, and the
+narwhal for their tusks; the cetacea, and some other marine animals, for
+their oil and whalebone; the ostrich and other large birds, for their
+plumage. Within a few years, sheep have been killed in New England by
+whole flocks, for their pelts and suet alone, the flesh being thrown away;
+and it is even said that the bodies of the same quadrupeds have been used
+in Australia as fuel for limekilns. What a vast amount of human nutriment,
+of bone, and of other animal products valuable in the arts, is thus
+recklessly squandered! In nearly all these cases, the part which constitutes
+the motive for this wholesale destruction, and is alone saved, is
+essentially of insignificant value as compared with what is thrown away.
+The horns and hide of an ox are not economically worth a tenth part as
+much as the entire carcass.
+</p><p>
+One of the greatest benefits to be expected from the improvements of
+civilization is, that increased facilities of communication will render it possible
+to transport to places of consumption much valuable material that is
+now wasted because the price at the nearest market will not pay freight.
+The cattle slaughtered in South America for their hides would feed millions
+of the starving population of the Old World, if their flesh could be
+economically preserved and transported across the ocean.
+</p><p>
+We are beginning to learn a better economy in dealing with the inorganic
+world. The utilization&mdash;or, as the Germans more happily call it,
+the Verwerthung, the <i>beworthing</i>&mdash;of waste from metallurgical, chemical,
+and manufacturing establishments, is among the most important results of
+the application of science to industrial purposes. The incidental products
+from the laboratories of manufacturing chemists often become more valuable
+than those for the preparation of which they were erected. The slags
+from silver refineries, and even from smelting houses of the coarser metals,
+have not unfrequently yielded to a second operator a better return than
+the first had derived from dealing with the natural ore; and the saving of
+lead carried off in the smoke of furnaces has, of itself, given a large profit
+on the capital invested in the works. A few years ago, an officer of an
+American mint was charged with embezzling gold committed to him for
+coinage. He insisted, in his defence, that much of the metal was volatilized
+and lost in refining and melting, and upon scraping the chimneys
+of the melting furnaces and the roofs of the adjacent houses, gold enough
+was found in the soot to account for no small part of the deficiency.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> It is an interesting and not hitherto sufficiently noticed fact, that the
+domestication of the organic world, so far as it has yet been achieved, belongs,
+not indeed to the savage state, but to the earliest dawn of civilization,
+the conquest of inorganic nature almost as exclusively to the most advanced
+stages of artificial culture. It is familiarly known to all who have occupied
+themselves with the psychology and habits of the ruder races, and of persons
+with imperfectly developed intellects in civilized life, that although
+these humble tribes and individuals sacrifice, without scruple, the lives of
+the lower animals to the gratification of their appetites and the supply of
+their other physical wants, yet they nevertheless seem to cherish with
+brutes, and even with vegetable life, sympathies which are much more
+feebly felt by civilized men. The popular traditions of the simpler peoples
+recognize a certain community of nature between man, brute animals, and
+even plants; and this serves to explain why the apologue or fable, which
+ascribes the power of speech and the faculty of reason to birds, quadrupeds,
+insects, flowers, and trees, is one of the earliest forms of literary composition.
+</p><p>
+In almost every wild tribe, some particular quadruped or bird, though
+persecuted as a destroyer of more domestic beasts, or hunted for food, is
+regarded with peculiar respect, one might almost say, affection. Some of
+the North American aboriginal nations celebrate a propitiatory feast to the
+manes of the intended victim before they commence a bear hunt; and the
+Norwegian peasantry have not only retained an old proverb which ascribes
+to the same animal "<i>ti M&#339;nds Styrke og tolv M&#339;nds Vid</i>," ten men's
+strength and twelve men's cunning, but they still pay to him something
+of the reverence with which ancient superstition invested him. The
+student of Icelandic literature will find in the saga of <i>Finnbogi hinn rami</i>
+a curious illustration of this feeling, in an account of a dialogue between a
+Norwegian bear and an Icelandic champion&mdash;dumb show on the part of
+Bruin, and chivalric words on that of Finnbogi&mdash;followed by a duel, in
+which the latter, who had thrown away his arms and armor in order that
+the combatants might meet on equal terms, was victorious. Drummond
+Hay's very interesting work on Morocco contains many amusing notices
+of a similar feeling entertained by the Moors toward the redoubtable
+enemy of their flocks&mdash;the lion.
+</p><p>
+This sympathy helps us to understand how it is that most if not all
+the domestic animals&mdash;if indeed they ever existed in a wild state&mdash;were
+appropriated, reclaimed and trained before men had been gathered into
+organized and fixed communities, that almost every known esculent plant
+had acquired substantially its present artificial character, and that the
+properties of nearly all vegetable drugs and poisons were known at the
+remotest period to which historical records reach. Did nature bestow
+upon primitive man some instinct akin to that by which she teaches the
+brute to select the nutritious and to reject the noxious vegetables indiscriminately
+mixed in forest and pasture?
+</p><p>
+This instinct, it must be admitted, is far from infallible, and, as has
+been hundreds of times remarked by naturalists, it is in many cases not an
+original faculty but an acquired and transmitted habit. It is a fact familiar
+to persons engaged in sheep husbandry in New England&mdash;and I have seen
+it confirmed by personal observation&mdash;that sheep bred where the common
+laurel, as it is called, <i>Kalmia angustifolia</i>, abounds, almost always avoid
+browsing upon the leaves of that plant, while those brought from districts
+where laurel is unknown, and turned into pastures where it grows, very
+often feed upon it and are poisoned by it. A curious acquired and hereditary
+instinct, of a different character, may not improperly be noticed here.
+I refer to that by which horses bred in provinces where quicksands are
+common avoid their dangers or extricate themselves from them. See
+<span class="smcap">Br&eacute;montier</span>, <i>M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1833:
+<i>premier s&eacute;mestre</i>, pp. 155-157.
+</p><p>
+It is commonly said in New England, and I believe with reason, that
+the crows of this generation are wiser than their ancestors. Scarecrows
+which were effectual fifty years ago are no longer respected by the plunderers
+of the cornfield, and new terrors must from time to time be invented
+for its protection. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_6">No. 6</a>.
+</p><p>
+Civilization has added little to the number of vegetable or animal
+species grown in our fields or bred in our folds, while, on the contrary,
+the subjugation of the inorganic forces, and the consequent extension of
+man's sway over, not the annual products of the earth only, but her substance
+and her springs of action, is almost entirely the work of highly refined
+and cultivated ages. The employment of the elasticity of wood and
+of horn, as a projectile power in the bow, is nearly universal among the
+rudest savages. The application of compressed air to the same purpose, in
+the blowpipe, is more restricted, and the use of the mechanical powers,
+the inclined plane, the wheel and axle, and even the wedge and lever,
+seems almost unknown except to civilized man. I have myself seen European
+peasants to whom one of the simplest applications of this latter
+power was a revelation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> The difference between the relations of savage life, and of incipient
+civilization, to nature, is well seen in that part of the valley of the Mississippi
+which was once occupied by the mound builders and afterward by
+the far less developed Indian tribes. When the tillers of the fields, which
+must have been cultivated to sustain the large population that once inhabited
+those regions perished, or were driven out, the soil fell back to the
+normal forest state, and the savages who succeeded the more advanced
+race interfered very little, if at all, with the ordinary course of spontaneous
+nature.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> There is a possible&mdash;but only a possible&mdash;exception in the case of the
+American bison. See note on that subject in chap. iii, <i>post</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Whatever may be thought of the modification of organic species by
+natural selection, there is certainly no evidence that animals have exerted
+upon any form of life an influence analogous to that of domestication upon
+plants, quadrupeds, and birds reared artificially by man; and this is as
+true of unforeseen as of purposely effected improvements accomplished by
+voluntary selection of breeding animals.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> &mdash;&mdash;"And it may be remarked that, as the world has passed through
+these several stages of strife to produce a Christendom, so by relaxing in
+the enterprises it has learnt, does it tend downwards, through inverted
+steps, to wildness and the waste again. Let a people give up their contest
+with moral evil; disregard the injustice, the ignorance, the greediness, that
+may prevail among them, and part more and more with the Christian element
+of their civilization; and in declining this battle with sin, they will
+inevitably get embroiled with men. Threats of war and revolution punish
+their unfaithfulness; and if then, instead of retracing their steps, they
+yield again, and are driven before the storm, the very arts they had created,
+the structures they had raised, the usages they had established, are
+swept away; 'in that very day their thoughts perish.' The portion they
+had reclaimed from the young earth's ruggedness is lost; and failing to
+stand fast against man, they finally get embroiled with nature, and are
+thrust down beneath her ever-living hand."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Martineau's</span> <i>Sermon</i>, "<i>The
+Good Soldier of Jesus Christ</i>."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> The dependence of man upon the aid of spontaneous nature, in his
+most arduous material works, is curiously illustrated by the fact that one
+of the most serious difficulties to be encountered in executing the proposed
+gigantic scheme of draining the Zuiderzee in Holland, is that of procuring
+brushwood for the fascines to be employed in the embankments. See
+<span class="smcap">Diggelen's</span> pamphlet, "<i>Groote Werken in Nederland</i>."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> In heavy storms, the force of the waves as they strike against a sea
+wall is from one and a half to two tons to the square foot, and Stevenson,
+in one instance at Skerryvore, found this force equal to three tons per foot.
+</p><p>
+The seaward front of the breakwater at Cherbourg exposes a surface
+of about 2,500,000 square feet. In rough weather the waves beat against
+this whole face, though at the depth of twenty-two yards, which is the
+height of the breakwater, they exert a very much less violent motive force
+than at and near the surface of the sea, because this force diminishes in
+geometrical, as the distance below the surface increases in arithmetical proportion.
+The shock of the waves is received several thousand times in the
+course of twenty-four hours, and hence the sum of impulse which the
+breakwater resists in one stormy day amounts to many thousands of
+millions of tons. The breakwater is entirely an artificial construction.
+If then man could accumulate and control the forces which he is able effectually
+to resist, he might be said to be, physically speaking, omnipotent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Some well known experiments show that it is quite possible to accumulate
+the solar heat by a simple apparatus, and thus to obtain a temperature
+which might be economically important even in the climate of Switzerland.
+Saussure, by receiving the sun's rays in a nest of boxes blackened
+within and covered with glass, raised a thermometer enclosed in the
+inner box to the boiling point; and under the more powerful sun of the
+cape of Good Hope, Sir John Herschel cooked the materials for a family
+dinner by a similar process, using, however, but a single box, surrounded
+with dry sand and covered with two glasses. Why should not so easy a
+method of economizing fuel be resorted to in Italy, and even in more
+northerly climates?
+</p><p>
+The unfortunate John Davidson records in his journal that he saved fuel
+in Morocco by exposing his teakettle to the sun on the roof of his house,
+where the water rose to the temperature of one hundred and forty degrees,
+and, of course, needed little fire to bring it to boil. But this was the
+direct and simple, not the accumulated heat of the sun.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> In the successive stages of social progress, the most destructive periods
+of human action upon nature are the pastoral condition, and that of
+incipient stationary civilization, or, in the newly discovered countries of
+modern geography, the colonial, which corresponds to the era of early
+civilization in older lands. In more advanced states of culture, conservative
+influences make themselves felt; and if highly civilized communities do
+not always restore the works of nature, they at least use a less wasteful
+expenditure than their predecessors in consuming them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> The character of geological formation is an element of very great importance
+in determining the amount of erosion produced by running water,
+and, of course, in measuring the consequences of clearing off the forests.
+The soil of the French Alps yields very readily to the force of currents,
+and the declivities of the northern Apennines are covered with earth which
+becomes itself a fluid when saturated with water. Hence the erosion of
+such surfaces is vastly greater than on many other mountains of equal
+steepness of inclination. This point is fully considered by the authors referred
+to in chap. iii, <i>post</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> The Travels of Dr. Dwight, president of Yale College, which embody
+the results of his personal observations, and of his inquiries among the
+early settlers, in his vacation excursions in the Northern States of the
+American Union, though presenting few instrumental measurements or
+tabulated results, are of value for the powers of observation they exhibit,
+and for the sound common sense with which many natural phenomena,
+such for instance as the formation of the river meadows, called "intervales,"
+in New England, are explained. They present a true and interesting
+picture of physical conditions, many of which have long ceased to
+exist in the theatre of his researches, and of which few other records are
+extant.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> The general law of temperature is that it decreases as we ascend.
+But, in hilly regions, the law is reversed in cold, still weather, the cold air
+descending, by reason of its greater gravity, into the valleys. If there be
+wind enough, however, to produce a disturbance and intermixture of
+higher and lower atmospheric strata, this exception to the general law
+does not take place. These facts have long been familiar to the common
+people of Switzerland and of New England, but their importance has not
+been sufficiently taken into account in the discussion of meteorological
+observations. The descent of the cold air and the rise of the warm affect
+the relative temperatures of hills and valleys to a much greater extent than
+has been usually supposed. A gentleman well known to me kept a thermometrical
+record for nearly half a century, in a New England country
+town, at an elevation of at least 1,500 feet above the sea. During these
+years his thermometer never fell lower than 26&deg; Fahrenheit, while at the
+shire town of the county, situated in a basin one thousand feet lower, and
+ten miles distant, as well as at other points in similar positions, the mercury
+froze several times in the same period.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Railroad surveys must be received with great caution where any
+motive exists for <i>cooking</i> them. Capitalists are shy of investments in roads
+with steep grades, and of course it is important to make a fair show of
+facilities in obtaining funds for new routes. Joint-stock companies have
+no souls; their managers, in general, no consciences. Cases can be cited
+where engineers and directors of railroads, with long grades above one
+hundred feet to the mile, have regularly sworn in their annual reports, for
+years in succession, that there were no grades upon their routes exceeding
+half that elevation. In fact, every person conversant with the history of
+these enterprises knows that in their public statements falsehood is the
+rule, truth the exception.
+</p><p>
+What I am about to remark is not exactly relevant to my subject; but
+it is hard to "get the floor" in the world's great debating society, and
+when a speaker who has anything to say once finds access to the public
+ear, he must make the most of his opportunity, without inquiring too nicely
+whether his observations are "in order." I shall harm no honest man by
+endeavoring, as I have often done elsewhere, to excite the attention of
+thinking and conscientious men to the dangers which threaten the great
+moral and even political interests of Christendom, from the unscrupulousness
+of the private associations that now control the monetary affairs, and
+regulate the transit of persons and property, in almost every civilized
+country. More than one American State is literally governed by unprincipled
+corporations, which not only defy the legislative power, but have,
+too often, corrupted even the administration of justice. Similar evils
+have become almost equally rife in England, and on the Continent; and I
+believe the decay of commercial morality, and indeed of the sense of all
+higher obligations than those of a pecuniary nature, on both sides of the
+Atlantic, is to be ascribed more to the influence of joint-stock banks and
+manufacturing and railway companies, to the workings, in short, of what is
+called the principle of "associate action," than to any other one cause of
+demoralization.
+</p><p>
+The apophthegm, "the world is governed too much," though unhappily
+too truly spoken of many countries&mdash;and perhaps, in some aspects,
+true of all&mdash;has done much mischief whenever it has been too unconditionally
+accepted as a political axiom. The popular apprehension of
+being over-governed, and, I am afraid, more emphatically the fear of being
+over-taxed, has had much to do with the general abandonment of certain
+governmental duties by the ruling powers of most modern states. It is
+theoretically the duty of government to provide all those public facilities
+of intercommunication and commerce, which are essential to the prosperity
+of civilized commonwealths, but which individual means are inadequate
+to furnish, and for the due administration of which individual guaranties
+are insufficient. Hence public roads, canals, railroads, postal communications,
+the circulating medium of exchange, whether metallic or representative,
+armies, navies, being all matters in which the nation at large
+has a vastly deeper interest than any private association can have, ought
+legitimately to be constructed and provided only by that which is the visible
+personification and embodiment of the nation, namely, its legislative
+head. No doubt the organization and management of these institutions
+by government are liable, as are all things human, to great abuses. The
+multiplication of public placeholders, which they imply, is a serious evil.
+But the corruption thus engendered, foul as it is, does not strike so deep as
+the rottenness of private corporations; and official rank, position, and duty
+have, in practice, proved better securities for fidelity and pecuniary integrity
+in the conduct of the interests in question, than the suretyships of
+private corporate agents, whose bondsmen so often fail or abscond before
+their principal is detected.
+</p><p>
+Many theoretical statesmen have thought that voluntary associations
+for strictly pecuniary and industrial purposes, and for the construction and
+control of public works, might furnish, in democratic countries, a compensation
+for the small and doubtful advantages, and at the same time secure
+an exemption from the great and certain evils, of aristocratic institutions.
+The example of the American States shows that private corporations&mdash;whose
+rule of action is the interest of the association, not the conscience
+of the individual&mdash;though composed of ultra-democratic elements, may
+become most dangerous enemies to rational liberty, to the moral interests
+of the commonwealth, to the purity of legislation and of judicial action,
+and to the sacredness of private rights.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> It is impossible to say how far the abstraction of water from the earth
+by broad-leaved field and garden plants&mdash;such as maize, the gourd family,
+the cabbage, &amp;c.&mdash;is compensated by the condensation of dew, which sometimes
+pours from them in a stream, by the exhalation of aqueous vapor
+from their leaves, which is directly absorbed by the ground, and by the
+shelter they afford the soil from sun and wind, thus preventing evaporation.
+American farmers often say that after the leaves of Indian corn
+are large enough to "shade the ground," there is little danger that the
+plants will suffer from drought; but it is probable that the comparative
+security of the fields from this evil is in part due to the fact that, at this
+period of growth, the roots penetrate down to a permanently humid
+stratum of soil, and draw from it the moisture they require. Stirring the
+ground between the rows of maize with a light harrow or cultivator, in
+very dry seasons, is often recommended as a preventive of injury by
+drought. It would seem, indeed, that loosening and turning over the surface
+earth might aggravate the evil by promoting the evaporation of the
+little remaining moisture; but the practice is founded partly on the belief
+that the hygroscopicity of the soil is increased by it to such a degree that
+it gains more by absorption than it loses by evaporation, and partly on the
+doctrine that to admit air to the rootlets, or at least to the earth near
+them, is to supply directly elements of vegetable growth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> The vine-wood planks of the ancient great door of the cathedral at
+Ravenna, which measured thirteen feet in length by a foot and a quarter
+in width, are traditionally said to have been brought from the Black Sea,
+by way of Constantinople, about the eleventh or twelfth century. No
+vines of such dimensions are now found in any other part of the East, and,
+though I have taken some pains on the subject, I never found in Syria or
+in Turkey a vine stock exceeding six inches in diameter, bark excluded.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> The Northmen who&mdash;as I think it has been indisputably established
+by Professor Rafn of Copenhagen&mdash;visited the coast of Massachusetts about
+the year 1000, found grapes growing there in profusion, and the vine still
+flourishes in great variety and abundance in the southeastern counties of
+that State. The townships in the vicinity of the Dighton rock, supposed
+by many&mdash;with whom, however, I am sorry I cannot agree&mdash;to bear a
+Scandinavian inscription, abound in wild vines, and I have never seen a
+region which produced them so freely. I have no doubt that the cultivation
+of the grape will become, at no distant day, one of the most important
+branches of rural industry in that district.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Les &Eacute;tats Unis d'Am&eacute;rique en 1863</i>, p. 360. By "improved" land, in
+the reports on the census of the United States, is meant "cleared land
+used for grazing, grass, or tillage, or which is now fallow, connected with
+or belonging to a farm."&mdash;<i>Instructions to Marshals and Assistants, Census
+of 1850</i>, schedule 4, &sect;&sect; 2, 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Cotton, though cultivated in Asia and Africa from the remotest antiquity,
+and known as a rare and costly product to the Latins and the
+Greeks, was not used by them to any considerable extent, nor did it enter
+into their commerce as a regular article of importation. The early voyagers
+found it in common use in the West Indies and in the provinces first
+colonized by the Spaniards; but it was introduced into the territory of the
+United States by European settlers, and did not become of any importance
+until after the Revolution. Cotton seed was sown in Virginia as early as
+1621, but was not cultivated with a view to profit for more than a century
+afterward. Sea-island cotton was first grown on the coast of Georgia in
+1786, the seed having been brought from the Bahamas, where it had been
+introduced from Anguilla.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Bigelow</span>, <i>Les &Eacute;tats Unis en 1863</i>, p. 370.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> The sugar cane was introduced by the Arabs into Sicily and Spain as
+early as the ninth century, and though it is now scarcely grown in those
+localities, I am not aware of any reason to doubt that its cultivation might
+be revived with advantage. From Spain it was carried to the West Indies,
+though different varieties have since been introduced into those islands
+from other sources. Tea is now cultivated with a certain success in Brazil,
+and promises to become an important crop in the Southern States of the
+American Union. The lemon is, I think, readily recognizable, by Pliny's
+description, as known to the ancients, but it does not satisfactorily appear
+that they were acquainted with the orange.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> John Smith mentions, in his <i>Historie of Virginia</i>, 1624, pease and
+beans as having been cultivated by the natives before the arrival of the
+whites, and there is no doubt, I believe, that the pumpkin and several
+other cucurbitaceous plants are of American origin; but most, if not all
+the varieties of pease, beans, and other pod fruits now grown in American
+gardens, are from European and other foreign seed. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_8">No. 8</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> There are some usages of polite society which are inherently low in
+themselves, and debasing in their influence and tendency, and which no
+custom or fashion can make respectable or fit to be followed by self-respecting
+persons. It is essentially vulgar to smoke or chew tobacco, and
+especially to take snuff; it is unbecoming a gentleman, to perform the
+duties of his coachman; it is indelicate in a lady to wear in the street
+skirts so long that she cannot walk without grossly soiling them. Not
+that all these things are not practised by persons justly regarded as gentlemen
+and ladies; but the same individuals would be, and feel themselves to
+be, much more emphatically gentlemen and ladies, if they abstained from
+them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> The name <i>portogallo</i>, so generally applied to the orange in Italy,
+seems to favor this claim. The orange, however, was known in Europe
+before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and, therefore, before the
+establishment of direct relations between Portugal and the East.
+</p><p>
+A correspondent of the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, in describing the newly excavated
+villa, which has been named Livia's Villa, near the Porta del Popolo at
+Rome, states that: "The walls of one of the rooms are, singularly enough,
+decorated with landscape paintings, a grove of palm and <i>orange</i> trees, with
+fruits and birds on the branches&mdash;the colors all as fresh and lively as if
+painted yesterday." The writer remarks on the character of this decoration
+as something very unusual in Roman architecture; and if the trees in
+question are really orange, and not lemon trees, this circumstance may
+throw some doubt on the antiquity of the painting. If, on the other hand,
+it proves really ancient, it shows that the orange was known to the Roman
+painters, if not gardeners. The landscape may perhaps represent Oriental,
+not European scenery. The accessories of the picture would probably determine
+that question.&mdash;<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, No. 1859, June 13, 1863.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">M&uuml;ller</span>, <i>Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt</i>, p. 86, asserts that in 1802 the ancestor
+of all the mulberries in France, planted in 1500, was still standing
+in a garden in the village of Allan-Mont&eacute;limart.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> The vegetables which, so far as we know their history, seem to have
+been longest the objects of human care, can, by painstaking industry, be
+made to grow under a great variety of circumstances, and some of them&mdash;the
+vine for instance&mdash;prosper nearly equally well, when planted and
+tended, on soils of almost any geological character; but their seeds vegetate
+only in artificially prepared ground, they have little self-sustaining
+power, and they soon perish when the nursing hand of man is withdrawn
+from them. In range of climate, wild plants are much more limited than
+domestic, but much less so with regard to the state of the soil in which
+they germinate and grow. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_9">No. 9</a>.
+</p><p>
+Dr. Dwight remarks that the seeds of American forest trees will not
+vegetate when dropped on grassland. This is one of the very few errors
+of personal observation to be found in that author's writings. There are
+seasons, indeed, when few tree seeds germinate in the meadows and the
+pastures, and years favorable to one species are not always propitious to
+another; but there is no American forest tree known to me which does
+not readily propagate itself by seed in the thickest greensward, if its germs
+are not disturbed by man or animals.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Some years ago I made a collection of weeds in the wheatfields of
+Upper Egypt, and another in the gardens on the Bosphorus. Nearly all
+the plants were identical with those which grow under the same conditions
+in New England. I do not remember to have seen in America the scarlet
+wild poppy so common in European grainfields. I have heard, however,
+that it has lately crossed the Atlantic, and I am not sorry for it. With
+our abundant harvests of wheat, we can well afford to pay now and then
+a loaf of bread for the cheerful radiance of this brilliant flower.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Josselyn, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of the first
+British colony in New England, says that the settlers at Plymouth had observed
+more than twenty English plants springing up spontaneously near
+their improvements.
+</p><p>
+Every country has many plants not now, if ever, made use of by man,
+and therefore not designedly propagated by him, but which cluster around
+his dwelling, and continue to grow luxuriantly on the ruins of his rural
+habitation after he has abandoned it. The site of a cottage, the very foundation
+stones of which have been carried off, may often be recognized,
+years afterward, by the rank weeds which cover it, though no others of
+the same species are found for miles.
+</p><p>
+"Medi&aelig;val Catholicism," says Vaupell, "brought us the red horsehoof&mdash;whose
+reddish-brown flower buds shoot up from the ground when the
+snow melts, and are followed by the large leaves&mdash;<i>l&aelig;gekulsukker</i> and
+snake-root, which grow only where there were convents and other dwellings
+in the Middle Ages."&mdash;<i>B&ouml;gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove</i>, pp. 1, 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Vaupell</span>, <i>B&ouml;gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove</i>, p. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> It is, I believe, nearly certain that the Turks inflicted tobacco upon
+Hungary, and probable that they in some measure compensated the injury
+by introducing maize also, which, as well as tobacco, has been claimed as
+Hungarian by patriotic Magyars.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Accidents sometimes limit, as well as promote, the propagation of
+foreign vegetables in countries new to them. The Lombardy poplar is a
+di&#339;cious tree, and is very easily grown from cuttings. In most of the
+countries into which it has been introduced the cuttings have been taken
+from the male, and as, consequently, males only have grown from them,
+the poplar does not produce seed in those regions. This is a fortunate circumstance,
+for otherwise this most worthless and least ornamental of trees
+would spread with a rapidity that would make it an annoyance to the
+agriculturist. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_10">No. 10</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Tempests, violent enough to destroy all cultivated plants, often spare
+those of spontaneous growth. During the present summer, I have seen in
+Northern Italy, vineyards, maize fields, mulberry and fruit trees completely
+stripped of their foliage by hail, while the forest trees scattered through
+the meadows, and the shrubs and brambles which sprang up by the wayside,
+passed through the ordeal with scarcely the loss of a leaflet.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> The boar spear is provided with a short crossbar, to enable the
+hunter to keep the infuriated animal at bay after he has transfixed him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Some botanists think that a species of water lily represented in many
+Egyptian tombs has become extinct, and the papyrus, which must have
+once been abundant in Egypt, is now found only in a very few localities
+near the mouth of the Nile. It grows very well and ripens its seeds in the
+waters of the Anapus near Syracuse, and I have seen it in garden ponds at
+Messina and in Malta. There is no apparent reason for believing that it
+could not be easily cultivated in Egypt, to any extent, if there were any
+special motive for encouraging its growth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Although it is not known that man has extirpated any vegetable, the
+mysterious diseases which have, for the last twenty years, so injuriously
+affected the potato, the vine, the orange, the olive, and silk husbandry&mdash;whether
+in this case the malady resides in the mulberry or in the insect&mdash;are
+ascribed by some to a climatic deterioration produced by excessive destruction
+of the woods. As will be seen in the next chapter, a retardation
+in the period of spring has been observed in numerous localities in Southern
+Europe, as well as in the United States. This change has been
+thought to favor the multiplication of the obscure parasites which cause
+the injury to the vegetables just mentioned.
+</p><p>
+Babinet supposes the parasites which attack the grape and the potato
+to be animal, not vegetable, and he ascribes their multiplication to excessive
+manuring and stimulation of the growth of the plants on which
+they live. They are now generally, if not universally, regarded as vegetable,
+and if they are so, Babinet's theory would be even more plausible than
+on his own supposition.&mdash;<i>&Eacute;tudes et Lectures</i>, ii, p. 269.
+</p><p>
+It is a fact of some interest in agricultural economy, that the oidium,
+which is so destructive to the grape, has produced no pecuniary loss to the
+proprietors of the vineyards in France. "The price of wine," says Lavergne,
+"has quintupled, and as the product of the vintage has not diminished
+in the same proportion, the crisis has been, on the whole, rather advantageous
+than detrimental to the country."&mdash;<i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale de la
+France</i>, pp. 263, 264.
+</p><p>
+France produces a considerable surplus of wines for exportation, and
+the sales to foreign consumers are the principal source of profit to French
+vinegrowers. In Northern Italy, on the contrary, which exports little
+wine, there has been no such increase in the price of wine as to compensate
+the great diminution in the yield of the vines, and the loss of this harvest
+is severely felt. In Sicily, however, which exports much wine, prices
+have risen as rapidly as in France. Waltershausen informs us that in the
+years 1838-'42, the red wine of Mount Etna sold at the rate of one
+kreuzer and a half, or one cent the bottle, and sometimes even at but two
+thirds that price, but that at present it commands five or six times as
+much.
+</p><p>
+The grape disease has operated severely on small cultivators whose
+vineyards only furnished a supply for domestic use, but Sicily has received
+a compensation in the immense increase which it has occasioned in both
+the product and the profits of the sulphur mines. Flour of sulphur is applied
+to the vine as a remedy against the disease, and the operation is
+repeated from two to three or four&mdash;and even, it is said, eight or ten times&mdash;in
+a season. Hence there is a great demand for sulphur in all the vine-growing
+countries of Europe, and Waltershausen estimates the annual
+consumption of that mineral for this single purpose at 850,000 <i>centner</i>, or
+more than forty thousand tons. The price of sulphur has risen in about
+the same proportion as that of wine.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Waltershausen</span>, <i>Ueber den Sicilianischen
+Ackerbau</i>, pp. 19, 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Some recent observations of the learned traveller Wetzstein are
+worthy of special notice. "The soil of the Haur&acirc;n," he remarks, "produces,
+in its primitive condition, much wild rye, which is not known as a cultivated
+plant in Syria, and much wild barley and oats. These cereals precisely
+resemble the corresponding cultivated plants in leaf, ear, size, and
+height of straw, but their grains are sensibly flatter and poorer in flour."&mdash;<i>Reisebericht
+&uuml;ber Haur&acirc;n und die Trachonen</i>, p. 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> This remark is much less applicable to fruit trees than to garden vegetables
+and the cerealia. The wild orange of Florida, though once considered
+indigenous, is now generally thought by botanists to be descended
+from the European orange introduced by the early colonists. The fig and
+the olive are found growing wild in every country where those trees are
+cultivated. The wild fig differs from the domesticated in its habits, its
+season of fructification, and its insect population, but is, I believe, not
+specifically distinguishable from the garden fig, though I do not know that
+it is reclaimable by cultivation. The wild olive, which is so abundant in
+the Tuscan Maremma, produces good fruit without further care, when
+thinned out and freed from the shade of other trees, and is particularly
+suited for grafting. See <span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>, <i>Memorie sulle Maremme</i>, pp.
+63-73. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_12">No. 12</a>.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Fraas</span>, <i>Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit</i>, pp. 35-38, gives, upon the
+authority of Link and other botanical writers, a list of the native habitats
+of most cereals and of many fruits, or at least of localities where these
+plants are said to be now found wild; but the data do not appear to rest,
+in general, upon very trustworthy evidence. Theoretically, there can be
+little doubt that all our cultivated plants are modified forms of spontaneous
+vegetation, but the connection is not historically shown, nor are we able to
+say that the originals of some domesticated vegetables may not be now extinct
+and unrepresented in the existing wild flora. See, on this subject,
+<span class="smcap">Humboldt</span>, <i>Ansichten der Natur</i>, i, pp. 208, 209. The following are interesting
+incidents: "A negro slave of the great Cortez was the first who
+sowed wheat in New Spain. He found three grains of it among the rice
+which had been brought from Spain as food for the soldiers. In the Franciscan
+monastery at Quito, I saw the earthen pot which contained the first
+wheat sown there by Friar Jodoco Rixi, of Ghent. It was preserved as a
+relic."
+</p><p>
+The Adams of modern botany and zoology have been put to hard shifts in
+finding names for the multiplied organisms which the Creator has brought
+before them, "to see what they would call them;" and naturalists and
+philosophers have shown much moral courage in setting at naught the laws
+of philology in the coinage of uncouth words to express scientific ideas. It
+is much to be wished that some bold neologist would devise English technical
+equivalents for the German <i>verwildert</i>, run-wild, and <i>veredelt</i>, improved
+by cultivation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Could the bones and other relics of the domestic quadrupeds destroyed
+by disease or slaughtered for human use in civilized countries be collected
+into large deposits, as obscure causes have gathered together those of extinct
+animals, they would soon form aggregations which might almost be
+called mountains. There were in the United States, in 1860, as we shall
+see hereafter, nearly one hundred and two millions of horses, black cattle,
+sheep, and swine. There are great numbers of all the same animals in the
+British American Provinces, and in Mexico, and there are large herds of
+wild horses on the plains, and of tamed among the independent Indian
+tribes of North America. It would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose
+that all those cattle may amount to two thirds as many as those of the
+United States, and thus we have in North America a total of 170,000,000
+domestic quadrupeds belonging to species introduced by European colonization,
+besides dogs, cats, and other four-footed household pets and pests,
+also of foreign origin.
+</p><p>
+If we allow half a solid foot to the skeleton and other slowly destructible
+parts of each animal, the remains of these herds would form a cubical
+mass measuring not much short of four hundred and fifty feet to the side,
+or a pyramid equal in dimensions to that of Cheops, and as the average life
+of these animals does not exceed six or seven years, the accumulations of
+their bones, horns, hoofs, and other durable remains would amount to at
+least fifteen times as great a volume in a single century. It is true that
+the actual mass of solid matter, left by the decay of dead domestic quadrupeds
+and permanently added to the crust of the earth, is not so great as
+this calculation makes it. The greatest proportion of the soft parts of domestic
+animals, and even of the bones, is soon decomposed, through direct
+consumption by man and other carnivora, industrial use, and employment
+as manure, and enters into new combinations in which its animal origin is
+scarcely traceable; there is, nevertheless, a large annual residuum, which,
+like decayed vegetable matter, becomes a part of the superficial mould;
+and in any event, brute life immensely changes the form and character of
+the superficial strata, if it does not sensibly augment the quantity of the
+matter composing them.
+</p><p>
+The remains of man, too, add to the earthy coating that covers the
+face of the globe. The human bodies deposited in the catacombs during
+the long, long ages of Egyptian history, would perhaps build as large a
+pile as one generation of the quadrupeds of the United States. In the
+barbarous days of old Moslem warfare, the conquerors erected large pyramids
+of human skulls. The soil of cemeteries in the great cities of Europe
+has sometimes been raised several feet by the deposit of the dead during a
+few generations. In the East, Turks and Christians alike bury bodies but
+a couple of feet beneath the surface. The grave is respected as long as the
+tombstone remains, but the sepultures of the ignoble poor, and of those
+whose monuments time or accident has removed, are opened again and
+again to receive fresh occupants. Hence the ground in Oriental cemeteries
+is pervaded with relics of humanity, if not wholly composed of them; and
+an examination of the soil of the lower part of the <i>Petit Champ des Morts</i>
+at Pera, by the naked eye alone, shows the observer that it consists almost
+exclusively of the comminuted bones of his fellow man.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> It is asserted that the bones of mammoths and mastodons, in many
+instances, appear to have been grazed or cut by flint arrow-heads or other
+stone weapons. These accounts have often been discredited, because it
+has been assumed that the extinction of these animals was more ancient
+than the existence of man. Recent discoveries render it highly probable,
+if not certain, that this conclusion has been too hastily adopted. Lyell
+observes: "These stories * * must in future be more carefully inquired
+into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon in North America lived
+down to a period when the mammoth coexisted with man in Europe."&mdash;<i>Antiquity
+of Man</i>, p. 354.
+</p><p>
+On page 143 of the volume just quoted, the same very distinguished
+writer remarks that man "no doubt played his part in hastening the era
+of the extinction" of the large pachyderms and beasts of prey; but, as
+contemporaneous species of other animals, which man cannot be supposed,
+to have extirpated, have also become extinct, he argues that the disappearance
+of the quadrupeds in question cannot be ascribed to human
+action alone.
+</p><p>
+On this point it may be observed that, as we cannot know what precise
+physical conditions were necessary to the existence of a given extinct organism,
+we cannot say how far such conditions may have been modified
+by the action of man, and he may therefore have influenced the life of
+such organisms in ways, and to an extent, of which we can form no
+just idea.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Evelyn thought the depasturing of grass by cattle serviceable to its
+growth. "The biting of cattle," he remarks, "gives a gentle loosening to
+the roots of the herbage, and makes it to grow fine and sweet, and their
+very breath and treading as well as soil, and the comfort of their warm
+bodies, is wholesome and marvellously cherishing."&mdash;<i>Terra, or Philosophical
+Discourse of Earth</i>, p. 36.
+</p><p>
+In a note upon this passage, Hunter observes: "Nice farmers consider
+the lying of a beast upon the ground, for one night only, as a sufficient
+tilth for the year. The breath of graminivorous quadrupeds does
+certainly enrich the roots of grass; a circumstance worthy of the attention
+of the philosophical farmer."&mdash;<i>Terra</i>, same page.
+</p><p>
+The "philosophical farmer" of the present day will not adopt these
+opinions without some qualification.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> The rat and the mouse, though not voluntarily transported, are passengers
+by every ship that sails from Europe to a foreign port, and several
+species of these quadrupeds have, consequently, much extended their
+range and increased their numbers in modern times. From a story of
+Heliogabalus related by Lampridius, <i>Hist. Aug. Scriptores</i>, ed. Casaubon,
+1690, p. 110, it would seem that mice at least were not very common in
+ancient Rome. Among the capricious freaks of that emperor, it is said
+that he undertook to investigate the statistics of the arachnoid population
+of the capital, and that 10,000 pounds of spiders (or spiders' webs&mdash;for
+aranea is equivocal) were readily collected; but when he got up a mouse
+show, he thought ten thousand mice a very fair number. I believe as
+many might almost be found in a single palace in modern Rome. Rats are
+not less numerous in all great cities, and in Paris, where their skins are
+used for gloves, and their flesh, it is whispered, in some very complex and
+equivocal dishes, they are caught by legions. I have read of a manufacturer
+who contracted to buy of the rat catchers, at a high price, all the
+rat skins they could furnish before a certain date, and failed, within a week,
+for want of capital, when the stock of peltry had run up to 600,000.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Bigelow</span>, <i>Les &Eacute;tats Unis en</i> 1863, pp. 379, 380. In the same paragraph
+this volume states the number of animals slaughtered in the United
+States by butchers, in 1859, at 212,871,653. This is an error of the press.
+Number is confounded with value. A reference to the tables of the census
+shows that the animals slaughtered that year were estimated at 212,871,653
+<i>dollars</i>; the number of head is not given. The wild horses and horned
+cattle of the prairies and the horses of the Indians are not included in
+the returns.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Of this total number, 2,240,000, or nearly nine per cent., are reported
+as working oxen. This would strike European, and especially English
+agriculturists, as a large proportion; but it is explained by the difference
+between a new country and an old, in the conditions which determine the
+employment of animal labor. Oxen are very generally used in the United
+States and Canada for hauling timber and firewood through and from the
+forests; for ploughing in ground still full of rocks, stumps, and roots; for
+breaking up the new soil of the prairies with its strong matting of native
+grasses, and for the transportation of heavy loads over the rough roads of
+the interior. In all these cases, the frequent obstructions to the passage
+of the timber, the plough, and the sled or cart, are a source of constant
+danger to the animals, the vehicles, and the harness, and the slow and
+steady step of the ox is attended with much less risk than the swift and
+sudden movements of the impatient horse. It is surprising to see the
+sagacity with which the dull and clumsy ox&mdash;hampered as he is by the
+rigid yoke, the most absurd implement of draught ever contrived by man&mdash;picks
+his way, when once trained to forest work, among rocks and roots,
+and even climbs over fallen trees, not only moving safely, but drawing
+timber over ground wholly impracticable for the light and agile horse.
+</p><p>
+Cows, so constantly employed for draught in Italy, are never yoked or
+otherwise used for labor in America, except in the Slave States.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> "About five miles from camp we ascended to the top of a high hill,
+and for a great distance ahead every square mile seemed to have a herd of
+buffalo upon it. Their number was variously estimated by the members
+of the party; by some as high as half a million. I do not think it any exaggeration
+to set it down at 200,000."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Stevens's</span> <i>Narrative and Final Report.
+Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Railroad to Pacific</i>, vol. xii,
+book i, 1860.
+</p><p>
+The next day, the party fell in with a "buffalo trail," where at least
+100,000 were thought to have crossed a slough.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> The most zealous and successful New England hunter of whom I have
+any personal knowledge, and who continued to indulge his favorite passion
+much beyond the age which generally terminates exploits in woodcraft,
+lamented on his deathbed that he had not lived long enough to carry up
+the record of his slaughtered deer to the number of one thousand, which
+he had fixed as the limit of his ambition. He was able to handle the rifle,
+for sixty years, at a period when the game was still nearly as abundant as
+ever, but had killed only nine hundred and sixty of these quadrupeds, of
+all species. The exploits of this Nimrod have been far exceeded by prairie
+hunters, but I doubt whether, in the originally wooded territory of the
+Union, any single marksman has brought down a larger number.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> <i>Erdkunde</i>, viii. <i>Asien, 1ste Abtheilung</i>, pp. 660, 758.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> See chapter iii, <i>post</i>; also <span class="smcap">Humboldt</span>, <i>Ansichten der Natur</i>, i, p. 71.
+From the anatomical character of the bones of the urus, or auerochs,
+found among the relics of the lacustrine population of ancient Switzerland,
+and from other circumstances, it is inferred that this animal had been domesticated
+by that people; and it is stated, I know not upon what authority,
+in <i>Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia</i>, that it had been tamed by the Veneti
+also. See <span class="smcap">Lyell</span>, <i>Antiquity of Man</i>, pp. 24, 25, and the last-named work,
+p. 489. This is a fact of much interest, because it is, I believe, the only
+known instance of the extinction of a domestic quadruped, and the extreme
+improbability of such an event gives some countenance to the theory of
+the identity of the domestic ox with, and its descent from, the urus.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> In maintaining the recent existence of the lion in the countries
+named in the text, naturalists have, perhaps, laid too much weight on the
+frequent occurrence of representations of this animal in sculptures apparently
+of a historical character. It will not do to argue, twenty centuries
+hence, that the lion and the unicorn were common in Great Britain in
+Queen Victoria's time, because they are often seen "fighting for the
+crown" in the carvings and paintings of that period.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a>
+</p><p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dar nach sloger schiere, einen wisent bat elch.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Starcher bore biere. but einen grimmen schelch.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 16em;"><i>XVI Auentiure.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+<p>
+The testimony of the <i>Nibelungen-Lied</i> is not conclusive evidence that
+these quadrupeds existed in Germany at the time of the composition of
+that poem. It proves too much; for, a few lines above those just quoted,
+Sigfrid is said to have killed a lion, an animal which the most patriotic
+Teuton will hardly claim as a denizen of medi&aelig;val Germany.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> The wild turkey takes readily to the water, and is able to cross rivers
+of very considerable width by swimming. By way of giving me an idea of
+the former abundance of this bird, an old and highly respectable gentleman
+who was among the early white settlers of the West, told me that he
+once counted, in walking down the northern bank of the Ohio River, within
+a distance of four miles, eighty-four turkeys as they landed singly, or at
+most in pairs, after swimming over from the Kentucky side.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> The wood pigeon has been observed to increase in numbers in Europe
+also, when pains have been taken to exterminate the hawk. The pigeons,
+which migrated in flocks so numerous that they were whole days in passing
+a given point, were no doubt injurious to the grain, but probably less
+so than is generally supposed; for they did not confine themselves exclusively
+to the harvests for their nourishment.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Pigeons were shot near Albany, in New York, a few years ago, with
+green rice in their crops, which it was thought must have been growing, a
+very few hours before, at the distance of seven or eight hundred miles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Professor Treadwell, of Massachusetts, found that a half-grown
+American robin in confinement ate in one day sixty-eight earthworms,
+weighing together nearly once and a half as much as the bird himself, and
+another had previously starved upon a daily allowance of eight or ten
+worms, or about twenty per cent. of his own weight. The largest of these
+numbers appeared, so far as could be judged by watching parent birds of the
+same species, as they brought food to their young, to be much greater than
+that supplied to them when fed in the nest; for the old birds did not return
+with worms or insects oftener than once in ten minutes on an average. If
+we suppose the parents to hunt for food twelve hours in a day, and a nest
+to contain four young, we should have seventy-two worms, or eighteen
+each, as the daily supply of the brood. It is probable enough that some
+of the food collected by the parents may be more nutritious than the earthworms,
+and consequently that a smaller quantity sufficed for the young in
+the nest than when reared under artificial conditions.
+</p><p>
+The supply required by growing birds is not the measure of their wants
+after they have arrived at maturity, and it is not by any means certain
+that great muscular exertion always increases the demand for nourishment,
+either in the lower animals or in man. The members of the English
+Alpine Club are not distinguished for appetites which would make them
+unwelcome guests to Swiss landlords, and I think every man who has had
+the personal charge of field or railway hands, must have observed that
+laborers who spare their strength the least are not the most valiant
+trencher champions. During the period when imprisonment for debt
+was permitted in New England, persons confined in country jails had no
+specific allowance, and they were commonly fed without stint. I have
+often inquired concerning their diet, and been assured by the jailers that
+their prisoners, who were not provided with work or other means of exercise,
+consumed a considerably larger supply of food than common out-door
+laborers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> I hope Michelet has good authority for this statement, but I am unable
+to confirm it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Apropos of the sparrow&mdash;a single pair of which, according to Michelet,
+p. 315, carries to the nest four thousand and three hundred caterpillars
+or coleoptera in a week&mdash;I take from the <i>Record</i>, an English religious
+newspaper, of December 15, 1862, the following article communicated to
+a country paper by a person who signs himself "A real friend to the
+farmer:"
+</p><p>
+"<i>Crawley Sparrow Club.</i>&mdash;The annual dinner took place at the George
+Inn on Wednesday last. The first prize was awarded to Mr. I. Redford,
+Worth, having destroyed within the last year 1,467. Mr. Heayman took
+the second with 1,448 destroyed. Mr. Stone, third, with 982 affixed.
+Total destroyed, 11,944. Old birds, 8,663; young ditto, 722; eggs, 2,556."
+</p><p>
+This trio of valiant fowlers, and their less fortunate&mdash;or rather less
+unfortunate, but not therefore less guilty&mdash;associates, have rescued by their
+prowess, it may be, a score of pecks of grain from being devoured by the
+voracious sparrow, but every one of the twelve thousand hatched and unhatched
+birds, thus sacrificed to puerile vanity and ignorant prejudice,
+would have saved his bushel of wheat by preying upon insects that destroy
+the grain. Mr. Redford, Mr. Heayman, and Mr. Stone ought to contribute
+the value of the bread they have wasted to the fund for the benefit of the
+Lancashire weavers; and it is to be hoped that the next Byron will satirize
+the sparrowcide as severely as the first did the prince of anglers, Walton,
+in the well known lines:
+</p><p class="poem">
+"The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb in his gullet<br />
+Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it."<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>, <i>Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane</i>, p. 143. The country
+about Naples is filled with slender towers fifteen or twenty feet high, which
+are a standing puzzle to strangers. They are the stations of the fowlers
+who watch from them the flocks of small birds and drive them down in
+to the nets by throwing stones over them. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_14">No. 14</a>.
+</p><p>
+Tschudi has collected in his little work, <i>Ueber die Landwirthschaftliche
+Bedeutung der V&ouml;gel</i>, many interesting facts respecting the utility of birds,
+and the wanton destruction of them in Italy and elsewhere. Not only the
+owl, but many other birds more familiarly known as predacious in their
+habits, are useful by destroying great numbers of mice and moles. The
+importance of this last service becomes strikingly apparent when it is
+known that the burrows of the mole are among the most frequent causes
+of rupture in the dikes of the Po, and, consequently, of inundations which
+lay many square miles under water.&mdash;<i>Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847,
+1re s&eacute;mestre, p. 150. See also <span class="smcap">Vogt</span>, <i>N&uuml;tzliche u. sch&auml;dliche Thiere</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a>  Wild birds are very tenacious in their habits. The extension of particular
+branches of agriculture introduces new birds; but unless in the case
+of such changes in physical conditions, particular species seem indissolubly
+attached to particular localities. The migrating tribes follow almost undeviatingly
+the same precise line of flight in their annual journeys, and
+establish themselves in the same breeding places from year to year. The
+stork is a strong-winged bird and roves far for food, but very rarely establishes
+new colonies. He is common in Holland, but unknown in England.
+Not above five or six pairs of storks commonly breed in the suburbs of
+Constantinople along the European shore of the narrow Bosphorus, while&mdash;much
+to the satisfaction of the Moslems, who are justly proud of the
+marked partiality of so orthodox a bird&mdash;dozens of chimneys of the true
+believers on the Asiatic side are crowned with his nests. See <i>App.</i> <a href="#app_15">No. 15</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> It is not the unfledged and the nursing bird alone that are exposed
+to destruction by severe weather. Whole flocks of adult and strong-winged
+tribes are killed by hail. Severe winters are usually followed by
+a sensible diminution in the numbers of the non-migrating birds, and a
+cold storm in summer often proves fatal to the more delicate species. On
+the 10th of June, 184-, five or six inches of snow fell in Northern Vermont.
+The next morning I found a humming bird killed by the cold, and hanging
+by its claws just below a loose clapboard on the wall of a small wooden
+building where it had sought shelter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Lyell</span>, <i>Antiquity of Man</i>, p. 409, observes: "Of birds it is estimated
+that the number of those which die every year equals the aggregate number
+by which the species to which they respectively belong is, on the
+average, permanently represented."
+</p><p>
+A remarkable instance of the influence of new circumstances upon birds
+was observed upon the establishment of a lighthouse on Cape Cod some
+years since. The morning after the lamps were lighted for the first time,
+more than a hundred dead birds of several different species, chiefly water
+fowl, were found at the foot of the tower. They had been killed in the
+course of the night by flying against the thick glass or grating of the
+lantern. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_16">No. 16</a>.
+</p><p>
+Migrating birds, whether for greater security from eagles, hawks, and
+other enemies, or for some unknown reason, perform a great part of their
+annual journeys by night; and it is observed in the Alps that they follow
+the high roads in their passage across the mountains. This is partly
+because the food in search of which they must sometimes descend is principally
+found near the roads. It is, however, not altogether for the sake
+of consorting with man, or of profiting by his labors, that their line of flight
+conforms to the paths he has traced, but rather because the great roads are
+carried through the natural depressions in the chain, and hence the birds
+can cross the summit by these routes without rising to a height where at
+the seasons of migration the cold would be excessive.
+</p><p>
+The instinct which guides migratory birds in their course is not in all
+cases infallible, and it seems to be confounded by changes in the condition
+of the surface. I am familiar with a village in New England, at the junction
+of two valleys, each drained by a mill stream, where the flocks of wild
+geese which formerly passed, every spring and autumn, were very frequently
+lost, as it was popularly phrased, and I have often heard their screams in
+the night as they flew wildly about in perplexity as to the proper course.
+Perhaps the village lights embarrassed them, or perhaps the constant
+changes in the face of the country, from the clearings then going on,
+introduced into the landscape features not according with the ideal map
+handed down in the anserine family, and thus deranged its traditional
+geography.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> The cappercailzie, or tj&auml;der, as he is called in Sweden, is a bird of
+singular habits, and seems to want some of the protective instincts which
+secure most other wild birds from destruction. The younger L&aelig;stadius
+frequently notices the tj&auml;der, in his very remarkable account of the Swedish
+Laplanders&mdash;a work wholly unsurpassed as a genial picture of semi-barbarian
+life, and not inferior in minuteness of detail to Schlatter's
+description of the manners of the Nogai Tartars, or even to Lane's admirable
+and exhaustive work on the Modern Egyptians. The tj&auml;der, though
+not a bird of passage, is migratory, or rather wandering in domicile, and
+appears to undertake very purposeless and absurd journeys. "When he
+flits," says L&aelig;stadius, "he follows a straight course, and sometimes pursues
+it quite out of the country. It is said that, in foggy weather, he sometimes
+flies out to sea, and, when tired, falls into the water and is drowned. It is
+accordingly observed that, when he flies westwardly, toward the mountains,
+he soon comes back again; but when he takes an eastwardly course,
+he returns no more, and for a long time is very scarce in Lapland. From
+this it would seem that he turns back from the bald mountains, when he
+discovers that he has strayed from his proper home, the wood; but when
+he finds himself over the Baltic, where he cannot alight to rest and collect
+himself, he flies on until he is exhausted and falls into the sea."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Petrus
+L&aelig;stadius</span>, <i>Journal af f&ouml;rsta &aring;ret, etc.</i>, p. 325.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> <i>Die Herzogth&uuml;mer Schleswig und Holstein</i>, i, p. 203.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Gulls hover about ships in port, and often far out at sea, diligently
+watching for the waste of the caboose. "While the four great fleets,
+English, French, Turkish, and Egyptian, were lying in the Bosphorus, in
+the summer and autumn of 1853, a young lady of my family called my
+attention to the fact that the gulls were far more numerous about the ships
+of one of the fleets than about the others. This was verified by repeated
+observation, and the difference was owing no doubt to the greater abundance
+of the refuse from the cookrooms of the naval squadron most
+frequented by the birds. Persons acquainted with the economy of the
+navies of the states in question, will be able to conjecture which fleet was
+most favored with these delicate attentions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Birds do not often voluntarily take passage on board ships bound for
+foreign countries, but I can testify to one such case. A stork, which had
+nested near one of the palaces on the Bosphorus, had, by some accident,
+injured a wing, and was unable to join his follows when they commenced
+their winter migration to the banks of the Nile. Before he was able to fly
+again, he was caught, and the flag of the nation to which the palace
+belonged was tied to his leg, so that he was easily identified at a considerable
+distance. As his wing grow stronger, he made several unsatisfactory
+experiments at flight, and at last, by a vigorous effort, succeeded
+in reaching a passing ship bound southward, and perched himself on a
+topsail yard. I happened to witness this movement, and observed him
+quietly maintaining his position as long as I could discern him with a spyglass.
+I suppose he finished the voyage, for he certainly did not return to
+the palace.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> The enthusiasm of naturalists is not always proportioned to the magnitude
+or importance of the organisms they concern themselves with. It
+is not recorded that Adams, who found the colossal antediluvian pachyderm
+in a thick-ribbed mountain of Siberian ice, ran wild over his <i>trouvaille</i>;
+but Schmidl, in describing the natural history of the caves of the
+Karst, speaks of an eminent entomologist as "<i>der gl&uuml;ckliche Entdecker</i>,"
+the <i>happy</i> discoverer of a new coleopteron, in one of those dim caverns.
+How various are the sources of happiness! Think of a learned German
+professor, the bare enumeration of whose Rath-ships and scientific Mitglied-ships
+fills a page, made famous in the annals of science, immortal, happy,
+by the discovery of a beetle! Had that imperial <i>ennuy&eacute;</i>, who offered a
+premium for the invention of a new pleasure, but read Schmidl's <i>H&ouml;hlen
+des Karstes</i>, what splendid rewards would he not have heaped upon Kirby
+and Spence!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> I believe there is no foundation for the supposition that earthworms
+attack the tuber of the potato. Some of them, especially one or two species
+employed by anglers as bait, if natives of the woods, are at least rare
+in shaded grounds, but multiply very rapidly after the soil is brought
+under cultivation. Forty or fifty years ago they were so scarce in the
+newer parts of New England, that the rustic fishermen of every village
+kept secret the few places where they were to be found in their neighborhood,
+as a professional mystery, but at present one can hardly turn over a
+shovelful of rich moist soil anywhere, without unearthing several of them.
+A very intelligent lady, born in the woods of Northern New England, told
+me that, in her childhood, these worms were almost unknown in that
+region, though anxiously sought for by the anglers, but that they increased
+as the country was cleared, and at last became so numerous in some places,
+that the water of springs, and even of shallow wells, which had formerly
+been excellent, was rendered undrinkable by the quantity of dead worms
+that fell into them. The increase of the robin and other small birds which
+follow the settler when he has prepared a suitable home for them, at last
+checked the excessive multiplication of the worms, and abated the nuisance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> I have already remarked that the remains of extant animals are
+rarely, if ever, gathered in sufficient quantities to possess any geographical
+importance by their mere mass; but the decayed exuvi&aelig; of even the
+smaller and humbler forms of life are sometimes abundant enough to
+exercise a perceptible influence on soil and atmosphere. "The plain of
+Cumana," says Humboldt, "presents a remarkable phenomenon, after
+heavy rains. The moistened earth, when heated by the rays of the sun,
+diffuses the musky odor common in the torrid zone to animals of very
+different classes, to the jaguar, the small species of tiger cat, the cabia&iuml;,
+the gallinazo vulture, the crocodile, the viper, and the rattlesnake. The
+gaseous emanations, the vehicles of this aroma, appear to be disengaged in
+proportion as the soil, which contains the remains of an innumerable multitude
+of reptiles, worms, and insects, begins to be impregnated with
+water. Wherever we stir the earth, we are struck with the mass of
+organic substances which in turn are developed and become transformed
+or decomposed. Nature in these climes seems more active, more prolific,
+and so to speak, more prodigal of life."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> It is remarkable that Palissy, to whose great merits as an acute
+observer I am happy to have frequent occasion to bear testimony, had
+noticed that vegetation was necessary to maintain the purity of water in
+artificial reservoirs, though he mistook the rationale of its influence, which
+he ascribed to the elemental "salt" supposed by him to play an important
+part in all the operations of nature. In his treatise upon Waters and
+Fountains, p. 174, of the reprint of 1844, he says: "And in special, thou
+shalt note one point, the which is understood of few: that is to say, that
+the leaves of the trees which fall upon the parterre, and the herbs growing
+beneath, and singularly the fruits, if any there be upon the trees, being
+decayed, the waters of the parterre shall draw unto them the salt of the
+said fruits, leaves, and herbs, the which shall greatly better the water of
+thy fountains, and hinder the putrefaction thereof."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Between the years 1851 and 1853, both inclusive, the United States
+exported 2,665,857 pounds of beeswax, besides a considerable quantity
+employed in the manufacture of candles for exportation. This is an average
+of more than 330,000 pounds per year. The census of 1850 gave the
+total production of wax and honey for that year at 14,853,128 pounds. In
+1860, it amounted to 26,370,813 pounds, the increase being partly due to
+the introduction of improved races of bees from Italy and Switzerland.&mdash;BIGELOW,
+<i>Les &Eacute;tats Unis en 1863</i>, p. 376.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> A few years ago, a laborer, employed at a North American port in
+discharging a cargo of hides from the opposite extremity of the continent,
+was fatally poisoned by the bite or the sting of an unknown insect, which
+ran out from a hide he was handling.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> In many insects, some of the stages of life regularly continue for several
+years, and they may, under peculiar circumstances, be almost indefinitely
+prolonged. Dr. Dwight mentions the following remarkable case of
+this sort, which may be new to many readers: "While I was here [at
+Williamstown, Mass.], Dr. Fitch showed me an insect, about an inch in
+length, of a brown color tinged with orange, with two antenn&aelig;, not unlike
+a rosebug. This insect came out of a tea table, made of the boards of an
+apple tree." Dr. Dwight examined the table, and found the "cavity
+whence the insect had emerged into the light," to be "about two inches
+in length, nearly horizontal, and inclining upward very little, except at the
+mouth. Between the hole, and the outside of the leaf of the table, there
+were forty grains of the wood." It was supposed that the sawyer and the
+cabinet maker must have removed at least thirteen grains more, and the
+table had been in the possession of its proprietor for twenty years.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> It does not appear to be quite settled whether the termites of France
+are indigenous or imported. See <span class="smcap">Quatrefages</span>, <i>Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste</i>,
+ii, pp. 400, 542, 543.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> I have seen the larva of the dragon fly in an aquarium, bite off the
+head of a young fish as long as itself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Insects and fish&mdash;which prey upon and feed each other&mdash;are the only
+forms of animal life that are numerous in the native woods, and their
+range is, of course, limited by the extent of the waters. The great abundance
+of the trout, and of other more or less allied genera in the lakes of
+Lapland, seems to be due to the supply of food provided for them by the
+swarms of insects which in the larva state inhabit the waters, or, in other
+stages of their life, are accidentally swept into them. All travellers in the
+north of Europe speak of the gnat and the mosquito as very serious drawbacks
+upon the enjoyments of the summer tourist, who visits the head of
+the Gulf of Bothnia to see the midnight sun, and the brothers L&aelig;stadius
+regard them as one of the great plagues of sub-Arctic life. "The persecutions
+of these insects," says Lars Levi L&aelig;stadius [<i>Culex pipiens</i>, <i>Culex reptans</i>,
+and <i>Culex pulicaris</i>], "leave not a moment's peace, by day or night,
+to any living creature. Not only man, but cattle, and even birds and wild
+beasts, suffer intolerably from their bite." He adds in a note, "I will not
+affirm that they have ever devoured a living man, but many young cattle,
+such as lambs and calves, have been worried out of their lives by them.
+All the people of Lapland declare that young birds are killed by them, and
+this is not improbable, for birds are scarce after seasons when the midge,
+the gnat, and the mosquito are numerous."&mdash;<i>Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken</i>,
+p. 50.
+</p><p>
+Petrus L&aelig;stadius makes similar statements in his <i>Journal f&ouml;r f&ouml;rsta
+&aring;ret</i>, p. 285.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> It is very questionable whether there is any foundation for the popular
+belief in the hostility of swine and of deer to the rattlesnake, and
+careful experiments as to the former quadruped seem to show that the supposed
+enmity is wholly imaginary. Observing that the starlings, <i>stornelli</i>,
+which bred in an old tower in Piedmont, carried something from their
+nests and dropped it upon the ground, about as often as they brought food
+to their young, I watched their proceedings, and found every day lying
+near the tower numbers of dead or dying slowworms, and, in a few cases,
+small lizards, which had, in every instance, lost about two inches of the
+tail. This part I believe the starlings gave to their nestlings, and threw
+away the remainder.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Russell denies the existence of poisonous snakes in Northern Syria,
+and states that the last instance of death known to have occurred from the
+bite of a serpent near Aleppo took place a hundred years before his time.
+In Palestine, the climate, the thinness of population, the multitude of
+insects and of lizards, all circumstances, in fact, seem very favorable to the
+multiplication of serpents, but the venomous species, at least, are extremely
+rare, if at all known, in that country. I have, however, been assured by
+persons very familiar with Mount Lebanon, that cases of poisoning from
+the bite of snakes had occurred within a few years, near Hasbeiyeh, and at
+other places on the southern declivities of Lebanon and Hermon. In
+Egypt, on the other hand, the cobra, the asp, and the cerastes are as
+numerous as ever, and are much dreaded by all the natives, except the
+professional snake charmers. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_18">No. 18</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> I use <i>whale</i> not in a technical sense, but as a generic term for all the
+large inhabitants of the sea popularly grouped under that name.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> From the narrative of Ohther, introduced by King Alfred into his
+translation of Orosius, it is clear that the Northmen pursued the whale
+fishery in the ninth century, and it appears, both from the poem called
+The Whale, in the Codex Exoniensis, and from the dialogue with the fisherman
+in the Colloquies of Aelfric, that the Anglo-Saxons followed this
+dangerous chase at a period not much later. I am not aware of any evidence
+to show that any of the Latin nations engaged in this fishery until
+a century or two afterward, though it may not be easy to disprove their
+earlier participation in it. In medi&aelig;val literature, Latin and Romance,
+very frequent mention is made of a species of vessel called in Latin, <i>baleneria</i>,
+<i>balenerium</i>, <i>balenerius</i>, <i>balaneria</i>, etc.; in Catalan, <i>balener</i>; in French,
+<i>balenier</i>; all of which words occur in many other forms. The most obvious
+etymology of these words would suggest the meaning, <i>whaler</i>, <i>baleinier</i>;
+but some have supposed that the name was descriptive of the great size
+of the ships, and others have referred it to a different root. From the
+fourteenth century, the word occurs oftener, perhaps, in old Catalan, than
+in any other language; but Capmany does not notice the whale fishery as
+one of the maritime pursuits of the very enterprising Catalan people, nor
+do I find any of the products of the whale mentioned in the old Catalan
+tariffs. The <i>whalebone</i> of the medi&aelig;val writers, which is described as very
+white, is doubtless the ivory of the walrus or of the narwhale.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> In consequence of the great scarcity of the whale, the use of coal gas
+for illumination, the substitution of other fatty and oleaginous substances,
+such as lard, palm oil, and petroleum, for right-whale oil and spermaceti,
+the whale fishery has rapidly fallen off within a few years. The great
+supply of petroleum, which is much used for lubricating machinery as well
+as for numerous other purposes, has produced a more perceptible effect on
+the whale fishery than any other single circumstance. According to Bigelow,
+<i>Les &Eacute;tats Unis en 1863</i>, p. 346, the American whaling fleet was
+diminished by 29 in 1858, 57 in 1860, 94 in 1861, and 65 in 1862. The
+present number of American ships employed in that fishery is 353.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> The Origin and History of the English Language, &amp;c., pp. 423, 424.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Among the unexpected results of human action, the destruction or
+multiplication of fish, as well as of other animals, is a not unfrequent occurrence.
+I shall have occasion to mention on a following page the extermination
+of the fish in a Swedish river by a flood occasioned by the sudden
+discharge of the waters of a pond. Williams, in his <i>History of Vermont</i>,
+i, p. 149, quoted in Thompson's <i>Natural History of Vermont</i>, p. 142,
+records a case of the increase of trout from an opposite cause. In a pond
+formed by damming a small stream to obtain water power for a sawmill,
+and covering one thousand acres of primitive forest, the increased supply
+of food brought within reach of the fish multiplied them to that degree,
+that, at the head of the pond, where, in the spring, they crowded together
+in the brook which supplied it, they were taken by the hands at pleasure,
+and swine caught them without difficulty. A single sweep of a small
+scoopnet would bring up half a bushel, carts were filled with them as fast
+as if picked up on dry land, and in the fishing season they were commonly
+sold at a shilling (eightpence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) a bushel.
+The increase in the size of the trout was as remarkable as the multiplication
+of their numbers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Babinet</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes et Lectures</i>, ii, pp. 108, 110.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Thompson</span>, <i>Natural History of Vermont</i>, p. 38, and Appendix, p. 13.
+There is no reason to believe that the seal breeds in Lake Champlain, but
+the individual last taken there must have been some weeks, at least, in its
+waters. It was killed on the ice in the widest part of the lake, on the 23d
+of February, thirteen days after the surface was entirely frozen, except the
+usual small cracks, and a month or two after the ice closed at all points
+north of the place where the seal was found.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> See page 89, note, <i>ante</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> According to Hartwig, the United Provinces of Holland had, in 1618,
+three thousand herring busses and nine thousand vessels engaged in the
+transport of these fish to market. The whole number of persons employed
+in the Dutch herring fishery was computed at 200,000.
+</p><p>
+In the latter part of the eighteenth century, this fishery was most successfully
+prosecuted by the Swedes, and in 1781, the town of Gottenburg
+alone exported 136,649 barrels, each containing 1,200 herrings, making a
+total of about 164,000,000; but so rapid was the exhaustion of the fish,
+from this keen pursuit, that in 1799 it was found necessary to prohibit the
+exportation of them altogether.&mdash;<i>Das Leben des Meeres</i>, p. 182.
+</p><p>
+In 1855, the British fisheries produced 900,000 barrels, or enough to
+supply a fish to every human inhabitant of the globe.
+</p><p>
+On the shores of Long Island Sound, the white fish, a species of herring
+too bony to be easily eaten, is used as manure in very great quantities.
+Ten thousand are employed as a dressing for an acre, and a single net has
+sometimes taken 200,000 in a day.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Dwight</span>'s <i>Travels</i>, ii, pp. 512, 515.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> The indiscriminate hostility of man to inferior forms of animated life
+is little creditable to modern civilization, and it is painful to reflect that it
+becomes keener and more unsparing in proportion to the refinement of the
+race. The savage slays no animal, not even the rattlesnake, wantonly;
+and the Turk, whom we call a barbarian, treats the dumb beast as gently
+as a child. One cannot live many weeks in Turkey without witnessing
+touching instances of the kindness of the people to the lower animals, and
+I have found it very difficult to induce even the boys to catch lizards and
+other reptiles for preservation as specimens. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_19">No. 19</a>.
+</p><p>
+The fearless confidence in man, so generally manifested by wild animals
+in newly discovered islands, ought to have inspired a gentler treatment of
+them; but a very few years of the relentless pursuit, to which they are
+immediately subjected, suffice to make them as timid as the wildest inhabitants
+of the European forest. This timidity, however, may easily be overcome.
+The squirrels introduced by Mayor Smith into the public parks of
+Boston are so tame as to feed from the hands of passengers, and they not
+unfrequently enter the neighboring houses.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> A fact mentioned by Schubert&mdash;and which in its causes and many of
+its results corresponds almost precisely with those connected with the
+escape of Barton Pond in Vermont, so well known to geological students&mdash;is
+important, as showing that the diminution of the fish in rivers exposed
+to inundations is chiefly to be ascribed to the mechanical action of the
+current, and not mainly, as some have supposed, to changes of temperature
+occasioned by clearing. Our author states that, in 1796, a terrible inundation
+was produced in the Indalself, which rises in the Storsj&ouml; in Jemtland,
+by drawing off into it the waters of another lake near Ragunda. The flood
+destroyed houses and fields; much earth was swept into the channel, and
+the water made turbid and muddy; the salmon and the smaller fish forsook
+the river altogether, and never returned. The banks of the river
+have never regained their former solidity, and portions of their soil are
+still continually falling into the water.&mdash;<i>Resa genom Sverge</i>, ii, p. 51.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Wittwer</span>, <i>Physikalische Geographie</i>, p. 142.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> To vary the phrase, I make occasional use of <i>animalcule</i>, which, as a
+popular designation, embraces all microscopic organisms. The name is
+founded on the now exploded supposition that all of them are animated,
+which was the general belief of naturalists when attention was first drawn
+to them. It was soon discovered that many of them were unquestionably
+vegetable, and there are numerous genera the true classification of which
+is matter of dispute among the ablest observers. There are cases in which
+objects formerly taken for living animalcules turn out to be products of the
+decomposition of matter once animated, and it is admitted that neither
+spontaneous motion nor even apparent irritability are sure signs of animal
+life.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> See an interesting report on the coral fishery, by Sant' Agabio, Italian
+Consul-General at Algiers, in the <i>Bollettino Consolare</i>, published by the
+Department of Foreign Affairs, 1862, pp. 139, 151, and in the <i>Annali di
+Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio</i>, No. ii, pp. 360, 373.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> The fermentation of liquids, and in many cases the decomposition of
+semi-solids, formerly supposed to be owing purely to chemical action, are
+now ascertained to be due to vital processes of living minute organisms
+both vegetable and animal, and consequently to physiological, as well as to
+chemical forces. Even alcohol is stated to be an animal product. See an
+interesting article by Auguste Laugel on the recent researches of Pasteur,
+in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, for September 15th, 1863.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> The recorded evidence in support of the proposition in the text has
+been collected by L. F. Alfred Maury, in his <i>Histoire des grandes For&ecirc;ts de
+la Gaule et de l'ancienne France</i>, and by Becquerel, in his important work,
+<i>Des climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols bois&eacute;s et non bois&eacute;s</i>, livre ii,
+chap. i to iv.
+</p><p>
+We may rank among historical evidences on this point, if not technically
+among historical records, old geographical names and terminations
+etymologically indicating forest or grove, which are so common in many
+parts of the Eastern Continent now entirely stripped of woods&mdash;such as,
+in Southern Europe, Breuil, Broglio, Brolio, Brolo; in Northern, Br&uuml;hl,
+-wald, -wold, -wood, -shaw, -skeg, and -skov.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> The island of Madeira, whose noble forests were devastated by fire
+not long after its colonization by European settlers, derives its name from
+the Portuguese word for wood.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> Browsing animals, and most of all the goat, are considered by foresters
+as more injurious to the growth of young trees, and, therefore, to the reproduction
+of the forest, than almost any other destructive cause. "According
+to Beatson's <i>Saint Helena</i>, introductory chapter, and Darwin's <i>Journal
+of Researches in Geology and Natural History</i>, pp. 582, 583," says Emsmann,
+in the notes to his translation of Foissac, p. 654, "it was the goats which
+destroyed the beautiful forests that, three hundred and fifty years ago,
+covered a continuous surface of not less than two thousand acres in the
+interior of the island [of St. Helena], not to mention scattered groups of
+trees. Darwin observes: 'During our stay at Valparaiso, I was most
+positively assured that sandal wood formerly grew in abundance on the
+island of Juan Fernandez, but that this tree had now become entirely
+extinct there, having been extirpated by the goats which early navigators
+had introduced. The neighboring islands, to which goats have not been
+carried, still abound in sandal wood.'"
+</p><p>
+In the winter, the deer tribe, especially the great American moose
+deer, subsists much on the buds and young sprouts of trees; yet&mdash;though
+from the destruction of the wolves or from some not easily explained
+cause, these latter animals have recently multiplied so rapidly in some
+parts of North America, that, not long since, four hundred of them are
+said to have been killed, in one season, on a territory in Maine not comprising
+more than one hundred and fifty square miles&mdash;the wild browsing
+quadrupeds are rarely, if ever, numerous enough in regions uninhabited
+by man to produce any sensible effect on the condition of the forest. A
+reason why they are less injurious than the goat to young trees may be
+that they resort to this nutriment only in the winter, when the grasses and
+shrubs are leafless or covered with snow, whereas the goat feeds upon buds
+and young shoots principally in the season of growth. However this may
+be, the natural law of consumption and supply keeps the forest growth,
+and the wild animals which live on its products, in such a state of equilibrium
+as to insure the indefinite continuance of both, and the perpetuity
+of neither is endangered until man, who is above natural law, interferes
+and destroys the balance.
+</p><p>
+When, however, deer are bred and protected in parks, they multiply
+like domestic cattle, and become equally injurious to trees. "A few years
+ago," says Clav&eacute;, "there were not less than two thousand deer of different
+ages in the forest of Fontainebleau. For want of grass, they are driven to
+the trees, and they do not spare them. * * It is calculated that the
+browsing of these animals, and the consequent retardation of the growth
+of the wood, diminishes the annual product of the forest to the amount
+of two hundred thousand cubic feet per year, * * and besides this, the
+trees thus mutilated are soon exhausted and die. The deer attack the
+pines, too, tearing off the bark in long strips, or rubbing their heads
+against them when shedding their horns; and sometimes, in groves of
+more than a hundred hectares, not one pine is found uninjured by them."&mdash;<i>Revue
+des Deux Mondes</i>, Mai, 1863, p. 157. See also <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_21">No. 21</a>.
+</p><p>
+Beckstein computes that a park of 2,500 acres, containing 250 acres of
+marsh, 250 of fields and meadows, and the remaining 2,000 of wood, may
+keep 364 deer of different species, 47 wild boars, 200 hares, 100 rabbits,
+and an indefinite number of pheasants. These animals would require, in
+winter, 123,000 pounds of hay, and 22,000 pounds of potatoes, besides
+what they would pick up themselves. The natural forest most thickly
+peopled with wild animals would not, in temperate climates, contain, upon
+the average, one tenth of these numbers to the same extent of surface.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> Even the volcanic dust of Etna remains very long unproductive.
+Near Nicolosi is a great extent of coarse black sand, thrown out in 1669,
+which, for almost two centuries, lay entirely bare, and can be made to
+grow plants only by artificial mixtures and much labor.
+</p><p>
+The increase in the price of wines, in consequence of the diminution of
+the product from the grape disease, however, has brought even these ashes
+under cultivation. "I found," says Waltershausen, referring to the years
+1861-'62, "plains of volcanic sand and half-subdued lava streams, which
+twenty years ago lay utterly waste, now covered with fine vineyards. The
+ashfield of ten square miles above Nicolosi, created by the eruption of 1669,
+which was entirely barren in 1835, is now planted with vines almost to
+the summits of Monte Rosso, at a height of three thousand feet."&mdash;<i>Ueber
+den Sicilianischen Ackerbau</i>, p. 19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> <i>A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom.</i> 1610, lib. 4, p. 260, edition
+of 1627. The testimony of Sandys on this point is confirmed by that of
+Pighio, Braccini, Magliocco, Salimbeni, and Nicola di Rubeo, all cited by
+Roth, <i>Der Vesuv.</i>, p. 9. There is some uncertainty about the date of the
+last eruption previous to the great one of 1631. Ashes, though not lava,
+appear to have been thrown out about the year 1500, and some chroniclers
+have recorded an eruption in the year 1306; but this seems to be an error
+for 1036, when a great quantity of lava was ejected. In 1139, ashes were
+thrown out for many days. I take those dates from the work of Roth
+just cited.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> Except upon the banks of rivers or of lakes, the woods of the interior
+of North America, far from the habitations of man, are almost destitute of
+animal life. Dr. Newberry, describing the vast forests of the yellow pine
+of the West, <i>Pinus ponderosa</i>, remarks: "In the arid and desert regions
+of the interior basin, we made whole days' marches in forests of yellow
+pine, of which neither the monotony was broken by other forms of vegetation,
+nor its stillness by the flutter of a bird or the hum of an insect."&mdash;<i>Pacific
+Railroad Report</i>, vol. vi, 1857. Dr.<span class="smcap"> Newberry</span>'s <i>Report on Botany</i>,
+p. 37.
+</p><p>
+The wild fruit and nut trees, the Canada plum, the cherries, the many
+species of walnut, the butternut, the hazel, yield very little, frequently
+nothing, so long as they grow in the woods; and it is only when the trees
+around them are cut down, or when they grow in pastures, that they become
+productive. The berries, too&mdash;the strawberry, the blackberry, the
+raspberry, the whortleberry, scarcely bear fruit at all except in cleared
+ground.
+</p><p>
+The North American Indians did not inhabit the interior of the forests.
+Their settlements were upon the shores of rivers and lakes, and their
+weapons and other relics are found only in the narrow open grounds
+which they had burned over and cultivated, or in the margin of the woods
+around their villages.
+</p><p>
+The rank forests of the tropics are as unproductive of human aliment as
+the less luxuriant woods of the temperate zone. In Strain's unfortunate
+expedition across the great American isthmus, where the journey lay
+principally through thick woods, several of the party died of starvation,
+and for many days the survivors were forced to subsist on the scantiest
+supplies of unnutritious vegetables perhaps never before employed for
+food by man. See the interesting account of that expedition in <i>Harper's
+Magazine</i> for March, April, and May, 1855.
+</p><p>
+Clav&eacute;, as well as many earlier writers, supposes that primitive man derived
+his nutriment from the spontaneous productions of the wood. "It
+is to the forests," says he, "that man was first indebted for the means of
+subsistence. Exposed alone, without defence, to the rigor of the seasons,
+as well as to the attacks of animals stronger and swifter than himself, he
+found in them his first shelter, drew from them his first weapons. In
+the first period of humanity, they provided for all his wants: they furnished
+him wood for warmth, fruits for food, garments to cover his nakedness,
+arms for his defence."&mdash;<i>&Eacute;tudes sur l'&Eacute;conomie Foresti&egrave;re</i>, p. 13.
+</p><p>
+But the history of savage life, as far as it is known to us, presents man
+in that condition as inhabiting only the borders of the forest and the open
+grounds that skirt the waters and the woods, and as finding only there the
+aliments which make up his daily bread.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> The origin of the great natural meadows, or prairies as they are
+called, of the valley of the Mississippi, is obscure. There is, of course, no
+historical evidence on the subject, and I believe that remains of forest
+vegetation are seldom or never found beneath the surface, even in the
+<i>sloughs</i>, where the perpetual moisture would preserve such remains indefinitely.
+The want of trees upon them has been ascribed to the occasional
+long-continued droughts of summer, and the excessive humidity of the soil
+in winter; but it is, in very many instances, certain that, by whatever
+means the growth of forests upon them was first prevented or destroyed,
+the trees have been since kept out of them only by the annual burning of
+the grass, by grazing animals, or by cultivation. The groves and belts of
+trees which are found upon the prairies, though their seedlings are occasionally
+killed by drought, or by excess of moisture, extend themselves
+rapidly over them when the seeds and shoots are protected against fire,
+cattle, and the plough. The prairies, though of vast extent, must be considered
+as a local, and, so far as our present knowledge extends, abnormal
+exception to the law which clothes all suitable surfaces with forest; for
+there are many parts of the United States&mdash;Ohio, for example&mdash;where the
+physical conditions appear to be nearly identical with those of the States
+lying farther west, but where there were comparatively few natural
+meadows. The prairies were the proper feeding grounds of the bison,
+and the vast number of those animals is connected, as cause or consequence,
+with the existence of those vast pastures. The bison, indeed,
+could not convert the forest into a pasture, but he would do much to prevent
+the pasture from becoming a forest.
+</p><p>
+There is positive evidence that some of the American tribes possessed
+large herds of domesticated bisons. See <span class="smcap">Humboldt</span>, <i>Ansichten der Natur</i>,
+i, pp. 71-73. What authorizes us to affirm that this was simply the wild
+bison reclaimed, and why may we not, with equal probability, believe that
+the migratory prairie buffalo is the progeny of the domestic animal run wild?
+</p><p>
+There are, both on the prairies, as in Wisconsin, and in deep forests, as
+in Ohio, extensive remains of a primitive people, who must have been
+more numerous and more advanced in art than the present Indian tribes.
+There can be no doubt that the woods where such earthworks are found
+in Ohio were cleared by them, and that the vicinity of these fortresses or
+temples was inhabited by a large population. Nothing forbids the supposition
+that the prairies were cleared by the same or a similar people, and
+that the growth of trees upon them has been prevented by fires and
+grazing, while the restoration of the woods in Ohio may be due to the
+abandonment of that region by its original inhabitants. The climatic conditions
+unfavorable to the spontaneous growth of trees on the prairies may
+be an effect of too extensive clearings, rather than a cause of the want of
+woods. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_22">No. 22</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> In many parts of the North American States, the first white settlers
+found extensive tracts of thin woods, of a very park-like character, called
+"oak openings," from the predominance of different species of that tree
+upon them. These were the semi-artificial pasture grounds of the Indians,
+brought into that state, and so kept, by partial clearing, and by the annual
+burning of the grass. The object of this operation was to attract the deer
+to the fresh herbage which sprang up after the fire. The oaks bore the
+annual scorching, at least for a certain time; but if it had been indefinitely
+continued, they would very probably have been destroyed at last. The
+soil would have then been much in the prairie condition, and would have
+needed nothing but grazing for a long succession of years to make the resemblance
+perfect. That the annual fires alone occasioned the peculiar
+character of the oak openings, is proved by the fact, that as soon as the
+Indians had left the country, young trees of many species sprang up and
+grew luxuriantly upon them. See a very interesting account of the oak
+openings in <span class="smcap">Dwight</span>'s <i>Travels</i>, iv, pp. 58-63.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> The practice of burning over woodland, at once to clear and manure
+the ground, is called in Swedish <i>svedjande</i>, a participial noun from the verb
+<i>att svedja</i>, to burn over. Though used in Sweden as a preparation for
+crops of rye or other grain, it is employed in Lapland more frequently to
+secure an abundant growth of pasturage, which follows in two or three
+years after the fire; and it is sometimes resorted to as a mode of driving
+the Laplanders and their reindeer from the vicinity of the Swedish backwoodsman's
+grass grounds and haystacks, to which they are dangerous
+neighbors. The forest, indeed, rapidly recovers itself, but it is a generation
+or more before the reindeer moss grows again. When the forest consists
+of pine, <i>tall</i>, the ground, instead of being rendered fertile by this
+process, becomes hopelessly barren, and for a long time afterward produces
+nothing but weeds and briers.&mdash;<span class="smcap">L&aelig;stadius</span>, <i>Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken</i>,
+p. 15. See also <span class="smcap">Schubert</span>, <i>Resa i Sverge</i>, ii, p. 375.
+</p><p>
+In some parts of France this practice is so general that Clav&eacute; says: "In
+the department of Ardennes it (<i>le sartage</i>) is the basis of agriculture. The
+northern part of the department, comprising the arrondissements of Rocroi
+and M&eacute;zi&egrave;res, is covered by steep wooded mountains with an argillaceous,
+compact, moist and cold soil; it is furrowed by three valleys, or rather
+three deep ravines, at the bottom of which roll the waters of the Meuse,
+the Semoy, and the Sormonne, and villages show themselves wherever the
+walls of the valleys retreat sufficiently from the rivers to give room to
+establish them. Deprived of arable soil, since the nature of the ground
+permits neither regular clearing nor cultivation, the peasant of the Ardennes,
+by means of burning, obtains from the forest a subsistence which,
+without this resource, would fail him. After the removal of the disposable
+wood, he spreads over the soil the branches, twigs, briars, and heath, sets
+fire to them in the dry weather of July and August, and sows in September
+a crop of rye, which he covers by a light ploughing. Thus prepared,
+the ground yields from seventeen to twenty bushels an acre, besides a ton
+and a half or two tons of straw of the best quality for the manufacture of
+straw hats."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Clav&eacute;</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes sur l'&Eacute;conomie Foresti&egrave;re</i>, p. 21.
+</p><p>
+Clav&eacute; does not expressly condemn the <i>sartage</i>, which indeed seems the
+only practicable method of obtaining crops from the soil he describes, but,
+as we shall see hereafter, it is regarded by most writers as a highly pernicious
+practice.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> The remarkable mounds and other earthworks constructed in the valley
+of the Ohio and elsewhere in the territory of the United States, by a people
+apparently more advanced in culture than the modern Indian, were overgrown
+with a dense clothing of forest when first discovered by the whites.
+But though the ground where they were erected must have been occupied
+by a large population for a considerable length of time, and therefore entirely
+cleared, the trees which grew upon the ancient fortresses and the
+adjacent lands were not distinguishable in species, or even in dimensions and
+character of growth, from the neighboring forests, where the soil seemed
+never to have been disturbed. This apparent exception to the law of change
+of crop in natural forest growth was ingeniously explained by General Harrison's
+suggestion, that the lapse of time since the era of the mound
+builders was so great as to have embraced several successive generations of
+trees, and occasioned, by their rotation, a return to the original vegetation.
+</p><p>
+The successive changes in the spontaneous growth of the forest, as
+proved by the character of the wood found in bogs, is not unfrequently
+such as to suggest the theory of a considerable change of climate during
+the human period. But the laws which govern the germination and
+growth of forest trees must be further studied, and the primitive local
+conditions of the sites where ancient woods lie buried must be better
+ascertained, before this theory can be admitted upon the evidence in question.
+In fact, the order of succession&mdash;for a rotation or alternation is not
+yet proved&mdash;may move in opposite directions in different countries with
+the same climate and at the same time. Thus in Denmark and in Holland
+the spike-leaved firs have given place to the broad-leaved beech, while in
+Northern Germany the process has been reversed, and evergreens have
+supplanted the oaks and birches of deciduous foliage. The principal determining
+cause seems to be the influence of light upon the germination of
+the seeds and the growth of the young tree. In a forest of firs, for instance,
+the distribution of the light and shade, to the influence of which
+seeds and shoots are exposed, is by no means the same as in a wood of
+beeches or of oaks, and hence the growth of different species will be
+stimulated in the two forests. See <span class="smcap">Berg</span>, <i>Das Verdr&auml;ngen der Laubw&auml;lder
+im N&ouml;rdlichen Deutschland</i>, 1844. <span class="smcap">Heyer</span>, <i>Das Verhalten der Waldb&auml;ume
+gegen Licht und Schatten</i>, 1852. <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, 1856,
+i, pp. 120-200. <span class="smcap">Vaupell</span>, <i>Om B&ouml;gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove</i>,
+1857. <span class="smcap">Knorr</span>, <i>Studien &uuml;ber die Buchen-Wirthschaft</i>, 1863.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> There are, in Northern Italy and in Switzerland, joint-stock companies
+which insure against damage by hail, as well as by fire and lightning.
+Between the years 1854 and 1861, a single one of these companies, La
+Riunione Adriatica, paid, for damage by hail in Piedmont, Venetian Lombardy,
+and the Duchy of Parma, above 6,500,000 francs, or nearly $200,000
+per year.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> The <i>paragrandine</i>, or, as it is called in French, the <i>paragr&ecirc;le</i>, is a
+species of conductor by which it has been hoped to protect the harvests in
+countries particularly exposed to damage by hail. It was at first proposed
+to employ for this purpose poles supporting sheaves of straw connected
+with the ground by the same material; but the experiment was afterward
+tried in Lombardy on a large scale, with more perfect electrical conductors,
+consisting of poles secured to the top of tall trees and provided
+with a pointed wire entering the ground and reaching above the top of the
+pole. It was at first thought that this apparatus, erected at numerous
+points over an extent of several miles, was of some service as a protection
+against hail, but this opinion was soon disputed, and does not appear to be
+supported by well-ascertained facts. The question of a repetition of the
+experiment over a wide area has been again agitated within a very few
+years in Lombardy; but the doubts expressed by very able physicists as to
+its efficacy, and as to the point whether hail is an electrical phenomenon,
+have discouraged its advocates from attempting it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> <i>Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi</i>, p. 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> <i>Memoria sui Boschi, etc.</i>, p. 44.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> <i>Travels in Italy</i>, chap. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> <i>Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia</i>, i, p. 377.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> "Long before the appearance of man, * * * they [the forests]
+had robbed the atmosphere of the enormous quantity of carbonic acid it
+contained, and thereby transformed it into respirable air. Trees heaped
+upon trees had already filled up the ponds and marshes, and buried with
+them in the bowels of the earth&mdash;to restore it to us after thousands of ages
+in the form of bituminous coal and of anthracite&mdash;the carbon which was
+destined to become, by this wonderful condensation, a precious store of
+future wealth."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Clav&eacute;</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes sur l'&Eacute;conomie Foresti&egrave;re</i>, p. 13.
+</p><p>
+This opinion of the modification of the atmosphere by vegetation is
+contested.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> Schacht ascribes to the forest a specific, if not a measurable, influence
+upon the constitution of the atmosphere. "Plants imbibe from the air
+carbonic acid and other gaseous or volatile products exhaled by animals or
+developed by the natural phenomena of decomposition. On the other
+hand, the vegetable pours into the atmosphere oxygen, which is taken up
+by animals and appropriated by them. The tree, by means of its leaves
+and its young herbaceous twigs, presents a considerable surface for absorption
+and evaporation; it abstracts the carbon of carbonic acid, and solidifies
+it in wood, fecula, and a multitude of other compounds. The result is that
+a forest withdraws from the air, by its great absorbent surface, much more
+gas than meadows or cultivated fields, and exhales proportionally a considerably
+greater quantity of oxygen. The influence of the forests on the
+chemical composition of the atmosphere is, in a word, of the highest importance."&mdash;<i>Les
+Arbres</i>, p. 111. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_23">No. 23</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> Composition, texture and color of soil are important elements to be
+considered in estimating the effects of the removal of the forest upon its
+thermoscopic action. "Experience has proved," says Becquerel, "that
+when the soil is bared, it becomes more or less heated [by the rays of the
+sun] according to the nature and the color of the particles which compose
+it, and according to its humidity, and that, in the refrigeration resulting
+from radiation, we must take into the account the conducting power of
+those particles also. Other things being equal, silicious and calcareous
+sands, compared in equal volumes with different argillaceous earths, with
+calcareous powder or dust, with humus, with arable and with garden earth,
+are the soils which least conduct heat. It is for this reason that sandy
+ground, in summer, maintains a high temperature even during the night.
+We may hence conclude that when a sandy soil is stripped of wood, the
+local temperature will be raised. After the sands follow successively argillaceous,
+arable, and garden ground, then humus, which occupies the
+lowest rank. If we represent the power of calcareous sand to retain
+heat by 100, we have, according to Schubler,
+</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>For [silicious?] sand</td><td align='left'>95.6</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> &nbsp; "  &nbsp; arable calcareous soil  &nbsp;  &nbsp;</td><td align='left'>74.8</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> &nbsp; " &nbsp; argillaceous earth</td><td align='left'>68.4</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> &nbsp; " &nbsp; garden earth</td><td align='left'>64.8</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> &nbsp; " &nbsp; humus</td><td align='left'>49.0</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p>
+"The retentive power of humus, then, is but half as great as that of
+calcareous sand. We will add that the power of retaining heat is proportional
+to the density. It has also a relation to the magnitude of the particles.
+It is for this reason that ground covered with silicious pebbles
+cools more slowly than silicious sand, and that pebbly soils are best suited
+to the cultivation of the vine, because they advance the ripening of the
+grape more rapidly than chalky and clayey earths, which cool quickly.
+Hence we see that in examining the calorific effects of clearing forests, it
+is important to take into account the properties of the soil laid bare."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Becquerel</span>,
+<i>Des Climats et des Sols bois&eacute;s</i>, p. 137.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> "The Washington elm at Cambridge&mdash;a tree of no extraordinary
+size&mdash;was some years ago estimated to produce a crop of seven millions of
+leaves, exposing a surface of two hundred thousand square feet, or about
+five acres of foliage."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gray</span>, <i>First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology</i>,
+as quoted by <span class="smcap">Coultas</span>, <i>What may be learned from a Tree</i>, p. 34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> See, on this particular point, and on the general influence of the
+forest on temperature, <span class="smcap">Humboldt</span>, <i>Ansichten der Natur</i>, i, 158.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> The radiating and refrigerating power of objects by no means depends
+on their form alone. Melloni cut sheets of metal into the shape of leaves
+and grasses, and found that they produced little cooling effect, and were
+not moistened under atmospheric conditions which determined a plentiful
+deposit of dew on the leaves of vegetables.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Becquerel</span>, <i>Des Climats, etc., Discours Pr&eacute;lim.</i> vi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> <i>Travels</i>, i, p. 61.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> <i>Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia</i>, pp. 370, 371.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Bergs&ouml;e</span>, <i>Reventlovs Virksomhed</i>, ii, p. 125.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Becquerel</span>, <i>Des Climats, etc.</i>, p. 179.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> Ibid., p. 116.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> The following well-attested instance of a local change of climate is
+probably to be referred to the influence of the forest as a shelter against
+cold winds. To supply the extraordinary demand for Italian iron occasioned
+by the exclusion of English iron in the time of Napoleon I, the
+furnaces of the valleys of Bergamo were stimulated to great activity.
+"The ordinary production of charcoal not sufficing to feed the furnaces
+and the forges, the woods were felled, the copses cut before their time, and
+the whole economy of the forest was deranged. At Piazzatorre there was
+such a devastation of the woods, and consequently such an increased
+severity of climate, that maize no longer ripened. An association, formed
+for the purpose, effected the restoration of the forest, and maize flourishes
+again in the fields of Piazzatorre."&mdash;Report by <span class="smcap">G. Rosa</span>, in <i>Il Politecnico</i>,
+Dicembre, 1861, p. 614.
+</p><p>
+Similar ameliorations have been produced by plantations in Belgium.
+In an interesting series of articles by Baude, entitled "Les Cotes de la
+Manche," in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, I find this statement: "A spectator
+placed on the famous bell tower of the cathedral of Antwerp, saw,
+not long since, on the opposite side of the Schelde only a vast desert plain;
+now he sees a forest, the limits of which are confounded with the horizon.
+Let him enter within its shade. The supposed forest is but a system of
+regular rows of trees, the oldest of which is not forty years of age. These
+plantations have ameliorated the climate which had doomed to sterility the
+soil where they are planted. While the tempest is violently agitating their
+tops, the air a little below is still, and sands far more barren than the
+plateau of La Hague have been transformed, under their protection, into
+fertile fields."&mdash;<i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, January, 1859, p. 277.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> <i>Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi</i>, p. 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> <i>La Provence au point de vue des Torrents et des Inondations</i>, p. 19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> <i>Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge</i>, p. 28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Becquerel</span>, <i>Des Climats, etc.</i>, p. 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>, <i>Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane</i>, pp.
+xli, 124.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> <i>Il Politecnico, Milano, Aprile e Maggio</i>, 1863, p. 35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>, <i>Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane</i>, pp. 213, 214.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> Except in the seething marshes of the tropics, where vegetable decay
+is extremely rapid, the uniformity of temperature and of atmospheric humidity
+renders all forests eminently healthful. See <span class="smcap">Hohenstein</span>'s observations
+on this subject, <i>Der Wald</i>, p. 41.
+</p><p>
+There is no question that open squares and parks conduce to the salubrity
+of cities, and many observers are of opinion that the trees and other
+vegetables with which such grounds are planted contribute essentially to
+their beneficial influence. See an article in <i>Aus der Natur</i>, xxii, p. 813.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> <i>Memoria sui Boschi di Lombardia</i>, p. 45.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale</i>, i, p. 22.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Rossm&auml;ssler</span>, <i>Der Wald</i>, p. 158.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> Ibid., p. 160.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> The low temperature of air and soil at which, in the frigid zone, as
+well as in warmer latitudes under special circumstances, the processes of
+vegetation go on, seems to necessitate the supposition that all the manifestations
+of vegetable life are attended with an evolution of heat. In the
+United States, it is common to protect ice, in icehouses, by a covering of
+straw, which naturally sometimes contains kernels of grain. These often
+sprout, and even throw out roots and leaves to a considerable length, in a
+temperature very little above the freezing point. Three or four years since,
+I saw a lump of very clear and apparently solid ice, about eight inches long
+by six thick, on which a kernel of grain had sprouted in an icehouse, and
+sent half a dozen or more very slender roots into the pores of the ice and
+through the whole length of the lump. The young plant must have thrown
+out a considerable quantity of heat; for though the ice was, as I have said,
+otherwise solid, the pores through which the roots passed were enlarged to
+perhaps double the diameter of the fibres, but still not so much as to prevent
+the retention of water in them by capillary attraction. See <i>App.</i> 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Becquerel</span>, <i>Des Climats, etc.</i>, pp. 139-141.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> Dr. Williams made some observations on this subject in 1789, and in
+1791, but they generally belonged to the warmer months, and I do not
+know that any extensive series of comparisons between the temperature of
+the ground in the woods and the fields has been attempted in America.
+Dr. Williams's thermometer was sunk to the depth of ten inches, and gave
+the following results:
+</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="" rules="cols">
+<tr><th class="bbt smcap">Time.</th><th class="bbt">Temperature of<br />ground in pasture.</th><th class="bbt">Temperature of<br />ground in woods.</th><th class="bbt">Difference.</th></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>May 23</td><td align='right'> 52</td><td align='right'> 46</td><td align='right'> 6</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> &nbsp; "  &nbsp;&nbsp; 28</td><td align='right'> 57</td><td align='right'> 48</td><td align='right'> 9</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>June 15</td><td align='right'> 64</td><td align='right'> 51</td><td align='right'> 13</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>  &nbsp; "  &nbsp;&nbsp; 27</td><td align='right'> 62</td><td align='right'> 51</td><td align='right'> 11</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>July 16</td><td align='right'> 62</td><td align='right'> 51</td><td align='right'> 11</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>  &nbsp; "&nbsp;&nbsp; 30</td><td align='right'> 65&frac12;</td><td align='right'> 55&frac12;</td><td align='right'> 10</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Aug. 15</td><td align='right'> 68</td><td align='right'> 58</td><td align='right'> 10</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>  &nbsp; "  &nbsp;&nbsp; 31</td><td align='right'> 59&frac12;</td><td align='right'> 55</td><td align='right'> 4&frac12;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sept. 15</td><td align='right'> 59&frac12;</td><td align='right'> 55</td><td align='right'> 4&frac12;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Oct. 1</td><td align='right'> 59&frac12;</td><td align='right'> 55</td><td align='right'> 4&frac12;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>  &nbsp; "&nbsp; 15</td><td align='right'> 49</td><td align='right'> 49</td><td align='right'> 0</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Nov. 1</td><td align='right'> 43</td><td align='right'> 43</td><td align='right'> 0</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> &nbsp; "  &nbsp; 16</td><td align='right'> 43&frac12;</td><td align='right'> 43&frac12;</td><td align='right'> 0</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>
+On the 14th of January, 1791, in a winter remarkable for its extreme
+severity, he found the ground, on a plain open field where the snow had
+been blown away, frozen to the depth of three feet and five inches; in
+the woods where the snow was three feet deep, and where the soil had
+frozen to the depth of six inches before the snow fell, the thermometer,
+at six inches below the surface of the ground, stood at 39&deg;. In consequence
+of the covering of the snow, therefore, the previously frozen ground had
+been thawed and raised to seven degrees above the freezing point.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Williams's</span>
+<i>Vermont</i>, i, p. 74.
+</p><p>
+Bodies of fresh water, so large as not to be sensibly affected by local
+influences of narrow reach or short duration, would afford climatic indications
+well worthy of special observation. Lake Champlain, which forms
+the boundary between the States of New York and Vermont, presents very
+favorable conditions for this purpose. This lake, which drains a basin of
+about 6,000 square miles, covers an area, excluding its islands, of about 500
+square miles. It extends from lat. 43&deg; 30' to 45&deg; 20', in very nearly a
+meridian line, has a mean width of four and a half miles, with an extreme
+breadth, excluding bays almost land-locked, of thirteen miles. Its mean
+depth is not well known. It is, however, 400 feet deep in some places,
+and from 100 to 200 in many, and has few shoals or flats. The climate
+is of such severity that it rarely fails to freeze completely over, and to be
+safely crossed upon the ice, with heavy teams, for several weeks every
+winter. <span class="smcap">Thompson</span> (<i>Vermont</i>, p. 14, and Appendix, p. 9) gives the following
+table of the times of the complete closing and opening of the ice,
+opposite Burlington, about the centre of the lake, and where it is ten
+miles wide.
+</p>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="" rules="cols">
+<tr><th class="bbt">Year.</th><th class="bbt">Closing.</th><th class="bbt">Opening.</th><th class="bbt">Days closed.</th><th class="bbt"></th><th class="bbt">Year.</th><th class="bbt">Closing.</th><th class="bbt">Opening.</th><th class="bbt">Days closed.</th></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1816</td><td align='left'> February 9</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1836</td><td align='left'> January 27</td><td align='left'> April 21</td><td align='right'> 85</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1817</td><td align='left'> January 29</td><td align='left'> April 16</td><td align='right'> 78</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1837</td><td align='left'> January 15</td><td align='left'> April 26</td><td align='right'> 101</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1818</td><td align='left'> February 2</td><td align='left'> April 15</td><td align='right'> 72</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1838</td><td align='left'> February 2</td><td align='left'> April 13</td><td align='right'> 70</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1819</td><td align='left'> March 4</td><td align='left'> April 17</td><td align='right'> 44</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1839</td><td align='left'> January 25</td><td align='left'> April 6</td><td align='right'> 71</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left' rowspan='2'>1820 <span class="ft20">{</span></td><td align='left'> February 3</td><td align='left'> February</td><td align='right' rowspan='2'> <span class="ft20">}</span> 4</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1840</td><td align='left'> January 25</td><td align='left'> February 20</td><td align='right'> 26</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> March 8</td><td align='left'> March 12</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1841</td><td align='left'> February 18</td><td align='left'> April 19</td><td align='right'> 61</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1821</td><td align='left'> January 15</td><td align='left'> April 21</td><td align='right'> 95</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1842</td><td align='left'> not closed</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1822</td><td align='left'> January 24</td><td align='left'> March 30</td><td align='right'> 75</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1843</td><td align='left'> February 16</td><td align='left'> April 22</td><td align='right'> 65</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1823</td><td align='left'> February 7</td><td align='left'> April 5</td><td align='right'> 57</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1844</td><td align='left'> January 25</td><td align='left'> April 11</td><td align='right'> 77</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1824</td><td align='left'> January 22</td><td align='left'> February 11</td><td align='right'> 20</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1845</td><td align='left'> February 3</td><td align='left'> March 26</td><td align='right'> 51</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1825</td><td align='left'> February 9</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1846</td><td align='left'> February 10</td><td align='left'> March 26</td><td align='right'> 44</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1826</td><td align='left'> February 1</td><td align='left'> March 24</td><td align='right'> 51</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1847</td><td align='left'> February 15</td><td align='left'> April 23</td><td align='right'> 68</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1827</td><td align='left'> January 21</td><td align='left'> March 31</td><td align='right'> 68</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1848</td><td align='left'> February 13</td><td align='left'> February 26</td><td align='right'> 13</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1828</td><td align='left'> not closed</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1849</td><td align='left'> February 7</td><td align='left'> March 23</td><td align='right'> 44</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1829</td><td align='left'> January 31</td><td align='left'> April</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1850</td><td align='left'> not closed</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1832</td><td align='left'> February 6</td><td align='left'> April 17</td><td align='right'> 70</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1851</td><td align='left'> February 1</td><td align='left'> March 12</td><td align='right'> 89</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1833</td><td align='left'> February 2</td><td align='left'> April 6</td><td align='right'> 63</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'> 1852</td><td align='left'> January 18</td><td align='left'> April 10</td><td align='right'> 92</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1834</td><td align='left'> February 13</td><td align='left'> February 20</td><td align='right'> 7</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left' rowspan='2'>1835 <span class="ft20">{</span> </td><td align='left'>January 10</td><td align='left'> January 23</td><td align='right'> 18</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>February 7</td><td align='left'> April 12</td><td align='right'> 64</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p>
+In 1847, although, at the point indicated, the ice broke up on the 23d
+of April, it remained frozen much later at the North, and steamers were
+not able to traverse the whole length of the lake until May 6th.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> We are not, indeed, to suppose that condensation of vapor and
+evaporation of water are going on in the same stratum of air at the same
+time, or, in other words, that vapor is condensed into raindrops, and raindrops
+evaporated, under the same conditions; but rain formed in one
+stratum, may fall through another, where vapor would not be condensed.
+Two saturated strata of different temperatures may be brought into contact
+in the higher regions, and discharge large raindrops, which, if not
+divided by some obstruction, will reach the ground, though passing all
+the time through strata which would vaporize them if they were in a state
+of more minute division.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> It is perhaps too much to say that the influence of trees upon the
+wind is strictly limited to the mechanical resistance of their trunks,
+branches, and foliage. So far as the forest, by dead or by living action,
+raises or lowers the temperature of the air within it, so far it creates
+upward or downward currents in the atmosphere above it, and, consequently,
+a flow of air toward or from itself. These air streams have a
+certain, though doubtless a very small influence on the force and direction
+of greater atmospheric movements.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> As a familiar illustration of the influence of the forest in checking
+the movement of winds, I may mention the well-known fact, that the sensible
+cold is never extreme in thick woods, where the motion of the air is
+little felt. The lumbermen in Canada and the Northern United States
+labor in the woods, without inconvenience, when the mercury stands
+many degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit, while in the open grounds,
+with only a moderate breeze, the same temperature is almost insupportable.
+The engineers and firemen of locomotives, employed on railways
+running through forests of any considerable extent, observe that, in very
+cold weather, it is much easier to keep up the steam while the engine is
+passing through the woods than in the open ground. As soon as the train
+emerges from the shelter of the trees the steam gauge falls, and the stoker
+is obliged to throw in a liberal supply of fuel to bring it up again.
+</p><p>
+Another less frequently noticed fact, due, no doubt, in a great measure
+to the immobility of the air, is, that sounds are transmitted to incredible
+distances in the unbroken forest. Many instances of this have fallen under
+my own observation, and others, yet more striking, have been related to
+me by credible and competent witnesses familiar with a more primitive
+condition of the Anglo-American world. An acute observer of natural
+phenomena, whose childhood and youth were spent in the interior of one
+of the newer New England States, has often told me that when he established
+his home in the forest, he always distinctly heard, in still weather,
+the plash of horses' feet, when they forded a small brook nearly seven-eighths
+of a mile from his house, though a portion of the wood that intervened
+consisted of a ridge seventy or eighty feet higher than either the
+house or the ford.
+</p><p>
+I have no doubt that, in such cases, the stillness of the air is the most
+important element in the extraordinary transmissibility of sound; but it
+must be admitted that the absence of the multiplied and confused noises,
+which accompany human industry in countries thickly peopled by man,
+contributes to the same result. We become, by habit, almost insensible to
+the familiar and never-resting voices of civilization in cities and towns;
+but the indistinguishable drone, which sometimes escapes even the ear of
+him who listens for it, deadens and often quite obstructs the transmission
+of sounds which would otherwise be clearly audible. An observer, who
+wishes to appreciate that hum of civic life which he cannot analyze, will
+find an excellent opportunity by placing himself on the hill of Capo di
+Monte at Naples, in the line of prolongation of the street called Spaccanapoli.
+</p><p>
+It is probably to the stillness of which I have spoken, that we are to
+ascribe the transmission of sound to great distances at sea in calm weather.
+In June, 1853, I and my family were passengers on board a ship of war
+bound up the &AElig;gean. On the evening of the 27th of that month, as we
+were discussing, at the tea table, some observations of Humboldt on this
+subject, the captain of the ship told us that he had once heard a single gun
+at sea at the distance of ninety nautical miles. The nest morning, though
+a light breeze had sprung up from the north, the sea was of glassy smoothness
+when we went on deck. As we came up, an officer told us that he
+had heard a gun at sunrise, and the conversation of the previous evening
+suggested the inquiry whether it could have been fired from the combined
+French and English fleet then lying at Beshika Bay. Upon examination
+of our position we were found to have been, at sunrise, ninety sea miles
+from that point. We continued beating up northward, and between sunrise
+and twelve o'clock meridian of the 28th, we had made twelve miles
+northing, reducing our distance from Beshika Bay to seventy-eight sea
+miles. At noon we heard several guns so distinctly that we were able to
+count the number. On the 29th we came up with the fleet, and learned
+from an officer who came on board that a royal salute had been fired at
+noon on the 28th, in honor of the day as the anniversary of the Queen of
+England's coronation. The report at sunrise was evidently the morning
+gun, those at noon the salute.
+</p><p>
+Such cases are rare, because the sea is seldom still, and the &#954;&#965;&#956;&#940;&#964;&#969;&#957;
+&#7936;&#957;&#942;&#961;&#953;&#952;&#956;&#959;&#957;
+&#947;&#941;&#955;&#945;&#963;&#956;&#945; rarely silent, over so great a space as ninety or even
+seventy-eight nautical miles. I apply the epithet <i>silent</i> to &#947;&#941;&#955;&#945;&#963;&#956;&#945; advisedly.
+I am convinced that &AElig;schylus meant the audible laugh of the
+waves, which is indeed of <i>countless</i> multiplicity, not the visible smile of
+the sea, which, belonging to the great expanse as one impersonation, is single,
+though, like the human smile, made up of the play of many features.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> "The presence of watery vapor in the air is general. * * * Vegetable
+surfaces are endowed with the power of absorbing gases, vapors,
+and also, no doubt, the various soluble bodies which are presented to them.
+The inhalation of humidity is carried on by the leaves upon a large scale;
+the dew of a cold summer night revives the groves and the meadows, and
+a single shower of rain suffices to refresh the verdure of a forest which a
+long drought had parched."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Schacht</span>, <i>Les Arbres</i>, ix, p. 340.
+</p><p>
+The absorption of the vapor of water by leaves is disputed. "The
+absorption of watery vapor by the leaves of plants is, according to Unger's
+experiments, inadmissible."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wilhelm</span>, <i>Der Boden und das Wasser</i>, p. 19.
+If this latter view is correct, the apparently refreshing effects of atmospheric
+humidity upon vegetation must be ascribed to moisture absorbed by
+the ground from the air and supplied to the roots. In some recent experiments
+by Dr. Sachs, a porous flower-pot, with a plant growing in it, was
+left unwatered until the earth was dry, and the plant began to languish.
+The pot was then placed in a glass case containing air, which was kept
+always saturated with humidity, but no water was supplied, and the leaves
+of the plant were exposed to the open atmosphere. The soil in the flower
+pot absorbed from the air moisture enough to revive the foliage, and keep
+it a long time green, but not enough to promote development of new leaves.&mdash;Id.,
+ibid., p. 18.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> The experiments of Hales and others, on the absorption and exhalation
+of water by vegetables, are of the highest physiological interest; but
+observations on sunflowers, cabbages, hops, and single branches of isolated
+trees, growing in artificially prepared soils and under artificial conditions,
+furnish no trustworthy data for computing the quantity of water received
+and given off by the natural wood.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> In the primitive forest, except where the soil is too wet for the dense
+growth of trees, the ground is generally too thickly covered with leaves
+to allow much room for ground mosses. In the more open woods of
+Europe, this form of vegetation is more frequent&mdash;as, indeed, are many
+other small plants of a more inviting character&mdash;than in the native American
+forest. See, on the cryptogams and wood plants, <span class="smcap">Rossm&auml;ssler</span>, <i>Der
+Wald</i>, pp. 33 <i>et seqq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> Emerson (<i>Trees of Massachusetts</i>, p. 493) mentions a maple six feet
+in diameter, as having yielded a barrel, or thirty-one and a half gallons
+of sap in twenty-four hours, and another, the dimensions of which are not
+stated, as having yielded one hundred and seventy-five gallons in the course
+of the season. The <i>Cultivator</i>, an American agricultural journal, for June,
+1842, states that twenty gallons of sap were drawn in eighteen hours from
+a single maple, two and a half feet in diameter, in the town of Warner,
+New Hampshire, and the truth of this account has been verified by personal
+inquiry made in my behalf. This tree was of the original forest
+growth, and had been left standing when the ground around it was cleared.
+It was tapped only every other year, and then with six or eight incisions.
+Dr. Williams (<i>History of Vermont</i>, i, p. 91) says: "A man much employed
+in making maple sugar, found that, for twenty-one days together,
+a maple tree discharged seven and a half gallons per day."
+</p><p>
+An intelligent correspondent, of much experience in the manufacture
+of maple sugar, writes me that a second-growth maple, of about two feet
+in diameter, standing in open ground, tapped with four incisions, has, for
+several seasons, generally run eight gallons per day in fair weather. He
+speaks of a very large tree, from which sixty gallons were drawn in the
+course of a season, and of another, something more than three feet through,
+which made forty-two pounds of wet sugar, and must have yielded not
+less than one hundred and fifty gallons.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> "The buds of the maple," says the same correspondent, "do not start
+till toward the close of the sugar season. As soon as they begin to swell,
+the sap seems less sweet, and the sugar made from it is of a darker color,
+and with less of the distinctive maple flavor."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> "In this region, maples are usually tapped with a three-quarter inch
+bit, boring to the depth of one and a half or two inches. In the smaller
+trees, one incision only is made, two in those of eighteen inches in diameter,
+and four in trees of larger size. Two 3/4-inch holes in a tree twenty-two
+inches in diameter = 1/46 of the circumference, and 1/169 of the area
+of section."
+</p><p>
+"Tapping does not check the growth, but does injure the quality of
+the wood of maples. The wood of trees often tapped is lighter and less
+dense than that of trees which have not been tapped, and gives less heat
+in burning. No difference has been observed in the starting of the buds
+of tapped and untapped trees."&mdash;<i>Same correspondent.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> Dr. Rush, in a letter to Jefferson, states the number of maples fit
+for tapping on an acre at from thirty to fifty. "This," observes my correspondent,
+"is correct with regard to the original growth, which is always
+more or less intermixed with other trees; but in second growth, composed
+of maples alone, the number greatly exceeds this. I have had the
+maples on a quarter of an acre, which I thought about an average of
+second-growth 'maple orchards,' counted. The number was found to be
+fifty-two, of which thirty-two were ten inches or more in diameter, and,
+of course, large enough to tap. This gives two hundred and eight trees
+to the acre, one hundred and twenty-eight of which were of proper size
+for tapping."
+</p><p>
+According to the census returns, the quantity of maple sugar made in
+the United States in 1850 was 34,253,436 pounds; in 1860, it was 38,863,884
+pounds, besides 1,944,594 gallons of molasses. The cane sugar made
+in 1850 amounted to 237,133,000 pounds; in 1859, to 302,205,000.&mdash;<i>Preliminary
+Report on the Eighth Census</i>, p. 88.
+</p><p>
+According to Bigelow, <i>Les &Eacute;tats Unis d'Am&eacute;rique en 1863</i>, chap. iv,
+the sugar product of Louisiana alone for 1862 is estimated at 528,321,500
+pounds.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> The correspondent already referred to informs me that a black birch,
+tapped about noon with two incisions, was found the next morning to have
+yielded sixteen gallons. Dr. Williams (<i>History of Vermont</i>, i, p. 91) says:
+"A large birch, tapped in the spring, ran at the rate of five gallons an hour
+when first tapped. Eight or nine days after, it was found to run at the
+rate of about two and a half gallons an hour, and at the end of fifteen
+days the discharge continued in nearly the same quantity. The sap continued
+to flow for four or five weeks, and it was the opinion of the observers
+that it must have yielded as much as sixty barrels [1,890 gallons]."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> "The best state of weather for a good run," says my correspondent,
+"is clear days, thawing fast in the daytime and freezing well at night,
+with a gentle west or northwest wind; though we sometimes have clear,
+fine, thawing days followed by frosty nights, without a good run of sap,
+I have thought it probable that the irregular flow of sap on different days
+in the same season is connected with the variation in atmospheric pressure;
+for the atmospheric conditions above mentioned as those most favorable
+to a free flow of sap are also those in which the barometer usually indicates
+pressure considerably above the mean. With a south or southeast
+wind, and in lowering weather, which causes a fall in the barometer, the
+flow generally ceases, though the sap sometimes runs till after the beginning
+of the storm. With a <i>gentle</i> wind, south of west, maples sometimes
+run all night. When this occurs, it is oftenest shortly before a storm.
+Last spring, the sap of a sugar orchard in a neighboring town flowed the
+greater part of the time for two days and two nights successively, and did
+not cease till after the commencement of a rain storm."
+</p><p>
+The cessation of the flow of sap at night is perhaps in part to be ascribed
+to the nocturnal frost, which checks the melting of the snow, of
+course diminishing the supply of moisture in the ground, and sometimes
+congeals the strata from which the rootlets suck in water. From the facts
+already mentioned, however, and from other well-known circumstances&mdash;such,
+for example, as the more liberal flow of sap from incisions on the
+south side of the trunk&mdash;it is evident that the withdrawal of the stimulating
+influences of the sun's light and heat is the principal cause of the
+suspension of the circulation in the night.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> "The flow ceases altogether soon after the buds begin to swell."&mdash;<i>Letter
+before quoted.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> We might obtain a contribution to an approximate estimate of the
+quantity of moisture abstracted by forest vegetation from the earth and the
+air, by ascertaining, as nearly as possible, the quantity of wood on a given
+area, the proportion of assimilable matter contained in the fluids of the
+tree at different seasons of the year, the ages of the trees respectively, and
+the quantity of leaf and seed annually shed by them. The results would,
+indeed, be very vague, but they might serve to check or confirm estimates
+arrived at by other processes. The following facts are items too loose
+perhaps to be employed as elements in such a computation.
+</p><p>
+Dr. Williams, who wrote when the woods of Northern New England
+were generally in their primitive condition, states the number of trees growing
+on an acre at from one hundred and fifty to six hundred and fifty,
+according to their size and the quality of the soil; the quantity of wood,
+at from fifty to two hundred cords, or from 238 to 952 cubic yards, but
+adds that on land covered with pines, the quantity of wood would be much
+greater. Whether he means to give the entire solid contents of the tree,
+or, as is usual in ordinary estimates in New England, the marketable wood
+only, the trunks and larger branches, does not appear. Next to the pine,
+the maple would probably yield a larger amount to a given area than any
+of the other trees mentioned by Dr. Williams, but mixed wood, in general,
+measures most. In a good deal of observation on this subject, the largest
+quantity of marketable wood I have ever known cut on an acre of virgin
+forest was one hundred and four cords, or 493 cubic yards, and half that
+amount is considered a very fair yield. The smaller trees, branches, and
+twigs would not increase the quantity more than twenty-five per cent.,
+and if we add as much more for the roots, we should have a total of about
+750 cubic yards. I think Dr. Williams's estimate too large, though it
+would fall much below the product of the great trees of the Mississippi
+Valley, of Oregon, and of California. It should be observed that these
+measurements are those of the wood as it lies when 'corded' or piled up
+for market, and exceed the real solid contents by not less than fifteen per
+cent.
+</p><p>
+"In a soil of medium quality," says Clav&eacute;, quoting the estimates of
+Pfeil, for the climate of Prussia, "the volume of a hectare of pines twenty
+years old, would exceed 80 cubic m&egrave;tres [42&frac12; cubic yards to the acre]; it
+would amount to but 24 in a meagre soil. This tree attains its maximum
+of mean growth at the age of seventy-five years. At that age, in the
+sandy earth of Prussia, it produces annually about 5 cubic m&egrave;tres, with a
+total volume of 311 cubic m&egrave;tres per hectare [166 cubic yards per acre].
+After this age the volume increases, but the mean rate of growth diminishes.
+At eighty years, for instance, the volume is 335 cubic m&egrave;tres, the
+annual production 4 only. The beech reaches its maximum of annual
+growth at one hundred and twenty years. It then has a total volume of
+633 cubic m&egrave;tres to the hectare [335 cubic yards to the acre], and produces
+5 cubic m&egrave;tres per year."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Clav&eacute;</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes</i>, p. 151.
+</p><p>
+These measures, I believe, include the entire ligneous product of the
+tree, exclusive of the roots, and express the actual solid contents. The
+specific gravity of maple wood is stated to be 75. Maple sap yields sugar
+at the rate of about one pound <i>wet</i> sugar to three gallons of sap, and wet
+sugar is to dry sugar in about the proportion of nineteen to sixteen. Besides
+the sugar, there is a small residuum of "sand," composed of phosphate
+of lime, with a little silex, and it is certain that by the ordinary hasty
+process of manufacture, a good deal of sugar is lost; for the drops, condensed
+from the vapor of the boilers on the rafters of the rude sheds
+where the sap is boiled, have a decidedly sweet taste.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> "The elaborated sap, passing out of the leaves, is received into the
+inner bark, * * * and a part of what descends finds its way even to
+the ends of the roots, and is all along diffused laterally into the stem,
+where it meets and mingles with the ascending crude sap or raw material.
+So there is no separate circulation of the two kinds of sap; and no crude
+sap exists separately in any part of the plant. Even in the root, where it
+enters, this mingles at once with some elaborated sap already there."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Gray</span>,
+<i>How Plants Grow</i>, &sect; 273.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> Ward's tight glazed cases for raising, and especially for transporting
+plants, go far to prove that water only circulates through vegetables, and
+is again and again absorbed and transpired by organs appropriated to these
+functions. Seeds, growing grasses, shrubs, or trees planted in proper earth,
+moderately watered and covered with a glass bell or close frame of glass,
+live for months and even years, with only the original store of air and
+water. In one of Ward's early experiments, a spire of grass and a fern,
+which sprang up in a corked bottle containing a little moist earth introduced
+as a bed for a snail, lived and flourished for eighteen years without
+a new supply of either fluid. In these boxes the plants grow till the enclosed
+air is exhausted of the gaseous constituents of vegetation, and till
+the water has yielded up the assimilable matter it held in solution, and dissolved
+and supplied to the roots the nutriment contained in the earth in
+which they are planted. After this, they continue for a long time in a
+state of vegetable sleep, but if fresh air and water be introduced into the
+cases, or the plants be transplanted into open ground, they rouse themselves
+to renewed life, and grow vigorously, without appearing to have suffered
+from their long imprisonment. The water transpired by the leaves
+is partly absorbed by the earth directly from the air, partly condensed on
+the glass, along which it trickles down to the earth, enters the roots again,
+and thus continually repeats the circuit. See <i>Aus der Natur</i>, 21, B. S. 537.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Wilhelm</span>, <i>Der Boden und das Wasser</i>, p. 18. It is not ascertained in
+what proportions the dew is evaporated, and in what it is absorbed by the
+earth, in actual nature, but there can be no doubt that the amount of water
+taken up by the ground, both from vapor suspended in the air and from
+dew, is large. The annual fall of dew in England is estimated at five
+inches, but this quantity is much exceeded in many countries with a
+clearer sky. "In many of our Algerian campaigns," says Babinet, "when
+it was wished to punish the brigandage of the unsubdued tribes, it was impossible
+to set their grain fields on fire until a late hour of the day; for
+the plants were so wet with the night dew that it was necessary to wait
+until the sun had dried them."&mdash;<i>&Eacute;tudes et Lectures</i>, ii, p. 212.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> "It has been concluded that the dry land occupies about 49,800,000
+square statute miles. This does not include the recently discovered tracts
+of land in the vicinity of the poles, and allowing for yet undiscovered land
+(which, however, can only exist in small quantity), if we assign 51,000,000
+to the land, there will remain about 146,000,000 of square miles for the
+extent of surface occupied by the ocean."&mdash;Sir <span class="smcap">J. F. W. Herschel</span>, <i>Physical
+Geography</i>, 1861, p. 19.
+</p><p>
+It does not appear to which category Herschel assigns the inland seas
+and the fresh-water lakes and rivers of the earth; and Mrs. Somerville,
+who states that the "dry land occupies an area of 38,000,000 of square
+miles," and that "the ocean covers nearly three fourths of the surface of
+the globe," is equally silent on this point.&mdash;<i>Physical Geography</i>, fifth
+edition, p. 30. On the following page, Mrs. Somerville, in a note, cites
+Mr. Gardner as her authority, and says that, "according to his computation,
+the extent of land is about 37,673,000 square British miles, independently
+of Victoria Continent; and the sea occupies 110,849,000. Hence
+the land is to the sea as 1 to 4 nearly." Sir John F. W. Herschel makes
+the area of dry land and ocean together 197,000,000 square miles; Mrs.
+Somerville, or rather Mr. Gardner, 148,522,000. I suppose Sir John
+Herschel includes the islands in his aggregate of the "dry land," and the
+inland waters under the general designation of the "ocean," and that Mrs.
+Somerville excludes both.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> It has been observed in Sweden that the spring, in many districts
+where the forests have been cleared off, now comes on a fortnight later
+than in the last century.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Asbj&ouml;rnsen</span>, <i>Om Skovene i Norge</i>, p. 101.
+</p><p>
+The conclusion arrived at by Noah Webster, in his very learned and
+able paper on the supposed change in the temperature of winter, read before
+the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799, was as follows:
+"From a careful comparison of these facts, it appears that the
+weather, in modern winters, in the United States, is more inconstant than
+when the earth was covered with woods, at the first settlement of Europeans
+in the country; that the warm weather of autumn extends further
+into the winter months, and the cold weather of winter and spring encroaches
+upon the summer; that, the wind being more variable, snow is
+less permanent, and perhaps the same remark may be applicable to the ice
+of the rivers. These effects seem to result necessarily from the greater
+quantity of heat accumulated in the earth in summer since the ground
+has been cleared of wood and exposed to the rays of the sun, and to the
+greater depth of frost in the earth in winter by the exposure of its uncovered
+surface to the cold atmosphere."&mdash;<i>Collection of Papers by</i> <span class="smcap">Noah
+Webster</span>, p. 162.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> I have seen, in Northern New England, the surface of the open
+ground frozen to the depth of twenty-two inches, in the month of November,
+when in the forest earth no frost was discoverable; and later in the
+winter, I have known an exposed sand knoll to remain frozen six feet
+deep, after the ground in the woods was completely thawed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a>
+</p><p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&mdash;&mdash;Det golde Str&ouml;g i Afrika,</span><br />
+Der Intet voxe kan, da ei det regner,<br />
+Og, omvendt, ingen Regn kan falde, da<br />
+Der Intet voxer.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Paludan-M&uuml;ller</span>, <i>Adam Homo</i>, ii, 408.</span><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a>
+</p><p class="poem">
+Und St&uuml;rme brausen um die Wette<br />
+Vom Meer aufs Land, vom Land aufs Meer.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Goethe</span>, <i>Faust, Song of the Archangels</i>.</span><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tudes sur l'&Eacute;conomie Foresti&egrave;re</i>, pp. 45, 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> I am not aware of any evidence to show that Malta had any woods
+of importance at any time since the cultivation of cotton was introduced
+there; and if it is true, as has been often asserted, that its present soil was
+imported from Sicily, it can certainly have possessed no forests since a very
+remote period. In Sandys's time, 1611, there were no woods in the island,
+and it produced little cotton. He describes it as "a country altogether
+champion, being no other than a rocke couered ouer with earth, but two
+feete deepe where the deepest; hauing but few trees but such as beare
+fruite. * * * So that their wood they haue from Sicilia." They have
+"an indifferent quantity of cotton wooll, but that the best of all other."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sandys</span>,
+<i>Travels</i>, p. 228.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Schacht</span>, <i>Les Arbres</i>, p. 412.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> <i>What may be learned from a Tree</i>, p. 117.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> <i>Der Wald</i>, p. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> <i>Om Skovene og deres Forhold til National&#339;conomien</i>, pp. 131-133.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> <i>Om Skovene og om et ordnet Skovbrug i Norge</i>, p. 106.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tudes et Lectures</i>, iv. p. 114.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> The supposed increase in the frequency and quantity of rain in Lower
+Egypt is by no means established. I have heard it disputed on the spot
+by intelligent Franks, whose residence in that country began before the
+plantations of Mehemet Aali and Ibrahim Pacha, and I have been assured
+by them that meteorological observations, made at Alexandria about the
+beginning of this century, show an annual fall of rain as great as is usual
+at this day. The mere fact, that it did not rain during the French occupation,
+is not conclusive. Having experienced a gentle shower of nearly
+twenty-four hours' duration in Upper Egypt, I inquired of the local governor
+in relation to the frequency of this phenomenon, and was told by
+him that not a drop of rain had fallen at that point for more than two
+years previous.
+</p><p>
+The belief in the increase of rain in Egypt rests almost entirely on the
+observations of Marshal Marmont, and the evidence collected by him in
+1836. His conclusions have been disputed, if not confuted, by Jomard
+and others, and are probably erroneous. See, <span class="smcap">Foissac</span>, <i>M&eacute;t&eacute;orologie</i>, German
+translation, pp. 634-639.
+</p><p>
+It certainly sometimes rains briskly at Cairo, but evaporation is exceedingly
+rapid in Egypt&mdash;as any one, who ever saw a Fellah woman wash a
+napkin in the Nile, and dry it by shaking it a few moments in the air, can
+testify; and a heap of grain, wet a few inches below the surface, would
+probably dry again without injury. At any rate, the Egyptian Government
+often has vast quantities of wheat stored at Boulak, in uncovered
+yards through the winter, though it must be admitted that the slovenliness
+and want of foresight in Oriental life, public and private, are such that we
+cannot infer the safety of any practice followed in the East, merely from
+its long continuance.
+</p><p>
+Grain, however, may be long kept in the open air in climates much
+less dry than that of Egypt, without injury, except to the superficial
+layers; for moisture does not penetrate to a great depth in a heap of grain
+once well dried, and kept well aired. When Louis IX was making his
+preparations for his campaign in the East, he had large quantities of wine
+and grain purchased in the Island of Cyprus, and stored up, for two years,
+to await his arrival. "When we were come to Cyprus," says Joinville,
+<i>Histoire de Saint Louis</i>, &sect;&sect; 72, 73, "we found there greate foison of the
+Kynge's purveyance. * * The wheate and the barley they had piled
+up in greate heapes in the feeldes, and to looke vpon, they were like vnto
+mountaynes; for the raine, the whyche hadde beaten vpon the wheate now
+a longe whyle, had made it to sproute on the toppe, so that it seemed as
+greene grasse. And whanne they were mynded to carrie it to Egypte,
+they brake that sod of greene herbe, and dyd finde under the same the
+wheate and the barley, as freshe as yf menne hadde but nowe thrashed it."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tude sur les Eaux au point de vue des Inondations</i>, p. 91.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale</i>, ii, chap. xx, &sect; 4, pp. 756-759. See also p. 733.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> Jacini, speaking of the great Italian lakes, says: "A large proportion
+of the water of the lakes, instead of discharging itself by the Ticino, the
+Adda, the Oglio, the Mincio, filters through the silicious strata which
+underlie the hills, and follows subterranean channels to the plain, where
+it collects in the <i>fontanili</i>, and being thence conducted into the canals of
+irrigation, becomes a source of great fertility."&mdash;<i>La Propriet&agrave; Fondiaria,
+etc.</i>, p. 144.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> <i>M&eacute;t&eacute;orologie</i>, German translation by <span class="smcap">Emsmann</span>, p. 605.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> <i>Handbuch der Physischen Geographie</i>, p. 658.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> <i>Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1854, 1st s&eacute;mestre, pp. 21 <i>et seqq.</i>
+See the comments of <span class="smcap">Vall&egrave;s</span> on these observations, in his <i>&Eacute;tudes sur les
+Inondations</i>, pp. 441 <i>et seqq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> The passage in Pliny is as follows: "Nascuntur fontes, decisis
+plerumque silvis, quos arborum alimenta consumebant, sicut in H&aelig;mo,
+obsidente Gallos Cassandro, quum valli gratia cecidissent. Plerumque
+vero damnosi torrentes corrivantur, detracta collibus silva continere
+nimbos ac digerere consueta."&mdash;<i>Nat. Hist.</i>, xxxi, 30.
+</p><p>
+Seneca cites this case, and another similar one said to have been observed
+at Magnesia, from a passage in Theophrastus, not to be found in the
+extant works of that author; but he adds that the stories are incredible,
+because shaded grounds abound most in water: fer&egrave; aquosissima sunt
+qu&aelig;cumque umbrosissima.&mdash;<i>Qu&aelig;st. Nat.</i>, iii, 11. <i>See Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_26">No. 26</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> "Why go so far for the proof of a phenomenon that is repeated every
+day under our own eyes, and of which every Parisian may convince himself,
+without venturing beyond the Bois de Boulogne or the forest of
+Meudon? Let him, after a few rainy days, pass along the Chevreuse road,
+which is bordered on the right by the wood, on the left by cultivated
+fields. The fall of water and the continuance of the rain have been the same
+on both sides; but the ditch on the side of the forest will remain filled
+with water proceeding from the infiltration through the wooded soil,
+long after the other, contiguous to the open ground, has performed its
+office of drainage and become dry. The ditch on the left will have discharged
+in a few hours a quantity of water, which the ditch on the right
+requires several days to receive and carry down to the valley."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Clav&eacute;</span>,
+<i>&Eacute;tudes, etc.</i>, pp. 53, 54.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Vall&egrave;s</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes sur les Inondations</i>, p. 472.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale</i>, p. 730.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> <i>Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge</i>, pp. 20 <i>et seqq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> <i>Physische Geographie</i>, p. 32.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> <i>The Trees of America</i>, pp. 50, 51.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Thompson</span>'s <i>Vermont</i>, appendix, p. 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> <i>Trees of America</i>, p. 48.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> Dumont, following Dansse, gives an interesting extract from the
+Misopogon of the Emperor Julian, showing that, in the fourth century, the
+Seine&mdash;the level of which now varies to the extent of thirty feet between
+extreme high and extreme low water mark&mdash;was almost wholly exempt
+from inundations, and flowed with a uniform current through the whole
+year. "Ego olim eram in hibernis apud caram Lutetiam, [sic] enim Galli
+Parisiorum oppidum appellant, qu&aelig; insula est non magna, in fluvio sita, qui
+eam omni ex parte eingit. Pontes sublicii utrinque ad eam ferunt, rar&ograve;que
+fluvius minuitur ae crescit; sed qualis &aelig;state, talis esse solet hyeme."&mdash;<i>Des
+Travaux Publics dans leur Rapports avec l'Agriculture</i>, p. 361, note.
+</p><p>
+As Julian was six years in Gaul, and his principal residence was at
+Paris, his testimony as to the habitual condition of the Seine, at a period
+when the provinces where its sources originate were well wooded, is very
+valuable.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> Almost every narrative of travel in those countries which were the
+earliest seats of civilization, contains evidence of the truth of these general
+statements, and this evidence is presented with more or less detail in most
+of the special works on the forest which I have occasion to cite. I may
+refer particularly to <span class="smcap">Hohenstein</span>, <i>Der Wald</i>, 1860, as full of important
+facts on this subject. See also <span class="smcap">Caimi</span>, <i>Cenni sulla Importanza dei Boschi</i>,
+for some statistics not readily found elsewhere, on this and other topics
+connected with the forest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> Stanley, citing <span class="smcap">Selden</span>, <i>De Jure Naturali</i>, book vi, and <span class="smcap">Fabricius</span>,
+<i>Cod. Pseudap.</i> V. T., i, 874, mentions a remarkable Jewish tradition of uncertain
+but unquestionably ancient date, which is among the oldest evidences
+of public respect for the woods, and of enlightened views of their
+importance and proper treatment:
+</p><p>
+"To Joshua a fixed Jewish tradition ascribed ten decrees, laying down
+precise rules, which were instituted to protect the property of each tribe
+and of each householder from lawless depredation. Cattle, of a smaller
+kind, were to be allowed to graze in thick woods, not in thin woods; in
+woods, no kind of cattle without the owner's consent. Sticks and branches
+might be gathered by any Hebrew, but not cut. * * * Woods might be
+pruned, provided they were not olives or fruit trees, and that there was
+sufficient shade in the place."&mdash;<i>Lectures on the History of the Jewish
+Church</i>, part i, p. 271.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> There seems to have been a tendency to excessive clearing in Central
+and Western, earlier than in Southeastern France. Wise and good
+Bernard Palissy&mdash;one of those persecuted Protestants of the sixteenth
+century, whose heroism, virtue, refinement, and taste shine out in such
+splendid contrast to the brutality, corruption, grossness, and barbarism of
+their oppressors&mdash;in the <i>Recepte V&eacute;ritable</i>, first printed in 1563, thus complains:
+"When I consider the value of the least clump of trees, or even of
+thorns, I much marvel at the great ignorance of men, who, as it seemeth,
+do nowadays study only to break down, fell, and waste the fair forests
+which their forefathers did guard so choicely. I would think no evil of
+them for cutting down the woods, did they but replant again some part of
+them; but they care nought for the time to come, neither reck they of the
+great damage they do to their children which shall come after them."&mdash;<i>&#338;uvres
+Compl&egrave;tes de Bernard Palissy</i>, 1844, p. 88.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> The great naval and commercial marines of Venice and of Genoa must
+have occasioned an immense consumption of lumber in the Middle Ages,
+and the centuries immediately succeeding those commonly embraced in
+that designation. The marine construction of that period employed larger
+timbers than the modern naval architecture of most commercial countries,
+but apparently without a proportional increase of strength. The old
+modes of ship building have been, to a considerable extent, handed down
+to the present day in the Mediterranean, and an American or an Englishman
+looks with astonishment at the huge beams and thick planks so often
+employed in the construction of very small vessels navigating that sea.
+According to Hummel, the desolation of the Karst, the high plateau lying
+north of Trieste, now one of the most parched and barren districts in
+Europe, is owing to the felling of its woods to build the navies of Venice.
+"Where the miserable peasant of the Karst now sees nothing but bare
+rock swept and scoured by the raging Bora, the fury of this wind was
+once subdued by mighty firs, which Venice recklessly cut down to build
+her fleets."&mdash;<i>Physische Geographie</i>, p. 32. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_27">No. 27</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> <i>Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia</i>, i, p. 367.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> See the periodical <i>Politecnico</i>, published at Milan, for the month of
+May, 1862, p. 234.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> <i>Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio</i>, vol. i, p. 77.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Holinshed</span>, reprint of 1807, i, pp. 357, 358. It is evident from this
+passage, and from another on page 397 of the same volume, that, though
+sea coal was largely exported to the Continent, it had not yet come into general
+use in England. It is a question of much interest, when coal was first
+employed in England for fuel. I can find no evidence that it was used as a
+combustible until more than a century after the Norman conquest. It has
+been said that it was known to the Anglo-Saxon population, but I am acquainted
+with no passage in the literature of that people which proves
+this. The dictionaries explain the Anglo-Saxon word <i>gr&aelig;fa</i> by sea coal.
+I have met with this word in no Anglo-Saxon work, except in the <i>Chronicle</i>,
+<span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 852, from a manuscript certainly not older than the twelfth century,
+and in that passage it may as probably mean peat as coal, and quite
+as probably something else as either. Coal is not mentioned in King Alfred's
+Bede, in Glanville, or in Robert of Gloucester, though all these
+writers speak of jet as found in England, and are full in their enumeration
+of the mineral products of the island.
+</p><p>
+England was anciently remarkable for its forests, but C&aelig;sar says it
+wanted the <i>fagus</i> and the <i>abies</i>. There can be no doubt that <i>fagus</i> means
+the beech, which, as the remains in the Danish peat mosses show, is a tree
+of late introduction into Denmark, where it succeeded the fir, a tree not now
+native to that country. The succession of forest crops seems to have been
+the same in England; for Harrison, p. 359, speaks of the "great store of
+firre" found lying "at their whole lengths" in the "fens and marises"
+of Lancashire and other counties, where not even bushes grew in his time.
+We cannot be sure what species of evergreen C&aelig;sar intended by <i>abies</i>.
+The popular designations of spike-leaved trees are always more vague and
+uncertain in their application than those of broad-leaved trees. <i>Pinus</i>,
+<i>pine</i>, has been very loosely employed even in botanical nomenclature, and
+<i>Kiefer</i>, <i>Fichte</i>, and <i>Tanne</i> are often confounded in German.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Rossm&auml;ssler</span>,
+<i>Der Wald</i>, pp. 256, 289, 324. If it were certain that the <i>abies</i> of C&aelig;sar
+was the fir formerly and still found in peat mosses, and that he was right
+in denying the existence of the beech in England in his time, the observation
+would be very important, because it would fix a date at which the fir
+had become extinct, and the beech had not yet appeared in the island.
+</p><p>
+The English oak, though strong and durable, was not considered generally
+suitable for finer work in the sixteenth century. There were, however, exceptions. "Of all in Essex," observes <span class="smcap">Harrison</span>, <i>Holinshed</i>, i, p.
+357, "that growing in Bardfield parke is the finest for ioiners craft: for
+oftentimes haue I seene of their workes made of that oke so fine and faire,
+as most of the wainescot that is brought hither out of Danske; for our
+wainescot is not made in England. Yet diuerse haue assaied to deale
+without [with our] okes to that end, but not with so good successe as
+they haue hoped, bicause the ab or iuice will not so soone be remoued
+and cleane drawne out, which some attribute to want of time in the salt
+water."
+</p><p>
+This passage is also of interest as showing that soaking in salt water, as
+a mode of seasoning, was practised in Harrison's time.
+</p><p>
+But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and
+otherwise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced three
+centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the <i>Liber Albus</i>&mdash;a
+book which could have been far more valuable if the editor had given us
+the texts, with his learned notes, instead of a translation&mdash;mention is made
+of "squared oak timber," brought in from the country by carts, and of
+course of domestic growth, as free of city duty or octroi, and of "planks
+of oak" coming in in the same way as paying one plank a cartload. But
+in the chapter on the "Customs of Billyngesgate," pp. 208, 209, relating to
+goods imported from foreign countries, a duty of one halfpenny is imposed
+on every hundred of boards called "weynscotte," and of one penny
+on every hundred of boards called "Rygholt." The editor explains
+"Rygholt" as "wood of Riga." This was doubtless pine or fir. The
+year in which these provisions were made does not appear, but they
+belong to the reign of Henry III.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> In a letter addressed to the Minister of Public Works, after the
+terrible inundations of 1857, the Emperor thus happily expressed himself:
+"Before we seek the remedy for an evil, we inquire into its cause.
+Whence come the sudden floods of our rivers? From the water which
+falls on the mountains, not from that which falls on the plains. The
+waters which fall on our fields produce but few rivulets, but those which
+fall on our roofs and are collected in the gutters, form small streams at
+once. Now, the roofs are mountains&mdash;the gutters are valleys."
+</p><p>
+"To continue the comparison," observes D'H&eacute;ricourt, "roofs are
+smooth and impermeable, and the rain water pours rapidly off from their
+surfaces; but this rapidity of flow would be greatly diminished if the roofs
+were carpeted with mosses and grasses; more still, if they were covered
+with dry leaves, little shrubs, strewn branches, and other impediments&mdash;in
+short, if they were wooded."&mdash;<i>Annales Foresti&egrave;res, D&eacute;c.</i>, 1857, p. 311.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> "The roots of vegetables," says D'H&eacute;ricourt, "perform the office of
+a perpendicular drainage analogous to that which has been practised with
+success in Holland and in some parts of the British Islands. This system
+consists in driving down three or four thousand stakes upon a hectare;
+the rain water filters down along the stakes, and, in certain cases, as
+favorable results are obtained by this method as by horizontal drains."&mdash;<i>Annales
+Foresti&egrave;res</i>, 1857, p. 312.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> The productiveness of Egypt has been attributed too exclusively to the
+fertilizing effects of the slime deposited by the inundations of the Nile;
+for in that climate a liberal supply of water would produce good crops on
+almost any ordinary sand, while, without water, the richest soil would
+yield nothing. The sediment deposited annually is but a very small fraction
+of an inch in thickness. It is alleged that in quantity it would be
+hardly sufficient for a good top dressing, and that in quality it is not chemically
+distinguishable from the soil inches or feet below the surface. But
+to deny, as some writers have done, that the slime has any fertilizing properties
+at all, is as great an error as the opposite one of ascribing all the
+agricultural wealth of Egypt to that single cause of productiveness. Fine
+soils deposited by water are almost uniformly rich in all climates; those
+brought down by rivers, carried out into salt water, and then returned
+again by the tide, seem to be more permanently fertile than any others.
+The polders of the Netherland coast are of this character, and the meadows
+in Lincolnshire, which have been covered with slime by <i>warping</i>, as it is
+called, or admitting water over them at high tide, are remarkably productive.
+See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_28">No. 28</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> "The laws against clearing have never been able to prevent these operations
+when the proprietor found his advantage in them, and the long
+series of royal ordinances and decrees of parliaments, proclaimed from
+the days of Charlemagne to our own, with a view of securing forest property,
+have served only to show the impotence of legislative notion on this
+subject."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Clav&eacute;</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes sur l'&Eacute;conomie Foresti&egrave;re</i>, p. 32.
+</p><p>
+"A proprietor can always contrive to clear his woods, whatever may
+be done to prevent him; it is a mere question of time, and a few imprudent
+cuttings, a few abuses of the right of pasturage, suffice to destroy a
+forest in spite of all regulations to the contrary."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Dunoyer</span>, <i>De la Libert&eacute;
+du Travail</i>, ii, p. 452, as quoted by Clav&eacute;, p. 353.
+</p><p>
+Both authors agree that the preservation of the forests in France is
+practicable only by their transfer to the state, which alone can protect
+them and secure their proper treatment. It is much to be feared that
+even this measure would be inadequate to save the forests of the American
+Union. There is little respect for public property in America, and the
+Federal Government, certainly, would not be the proper agent of the
+nation for this purpose. It proved itself unable to protect the live-oak
+woods of Florida, which were intended to be preserved for the use of the
+navy, and it more than once paid contractors a high price for timber stolen
+from its own forests. The authorities of the individual States might be
+more efficient.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> See the lively account of the sale of a communal wood in <span class="smcap">Berlepsch</span>,
+<i>Die Alpen, Holzschl&auml;ger und Fl&ouml;sser</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> Streffleur (<i>Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildb&auml;che</i>, p. 3)
+maintains that all the observations and speculations of French authors
+on the nature of torrents had been anticipated by Austrian writers. In
+proof of this assertion he refers to the works of Franz von Zallinger, 1778,
+Von Arretin, 1808, Franz Duile, 1826, all published at Innsbruck, and
+<span class="smcap">Hagen</span>'s <i>Beschreibung neuerer Wasserbauwerke</i>, K&ouml;nigsberg, 1826, none of
+which works are known to me. It is evident, however, that the conclusions
+of Surell and other French writers whom I cite, are original results
+of personal investigation, and not borrowed opinions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> Whether Palissy was acquainted with this ancient practice, or
+whether it was one of those original suggestions of which his works are
+so full, I know not; but in his treatise, <i>Des Eaux et Fontaines</i>, he thus
+recommends it, by way of reply to the objections of "Th&eacute;orique," who
+had expressed the fear that "the waters which rush violently down from
+the heights of the mountain would bring with them much earth, sand, and
+other things," and thus spoil the artificial fountain that "Practique" was
+teaching him to make: "And for hindrance of the mischiefs of great
+waters which may be gathered in few hours by great storms, when thou
+shalt have made ready thy parterre to receive the water, thou must lay
+great stones athwart the deep channels which lead to thy parterre. And
+so the force of the rushing currents shall be deadened, and thy water shall
+flow peacefully into his cisterns."&mdash;<i>&#338;uvres Compl&egrave;tes</i>, p. 173.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> Ladoucette says the peasant of D&eacute;voluy "often goes a distance of
+five hours over rocks and precipices for a single [man's] load of wood;"
+and he remarks on another page, that "the justice of peace of that canton
+had, in the course of forty-three years, but once heard the voice of the
+nightingale."&mdash;<i>Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes</i>, pp. 220, 434.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> The valley of Embrun, now almost completely devastated, was once
+remarkable for its fertility. In 1806, H&eacute;ricart de Thury said of it: "In
+this magnificent valley nature had been prodigal of her gifts. Its inhabitants
+have blindly revelled in her favors, and fallen asleep in the midst of
+her profusion."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Becquerel</span>, <i>Des Climats, etc.</i>, p. 314.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> In the days of the Roman empire the Durance was a navigable river,
+with a commerce so important that the boatmen upon it formed a distinct
+corporation.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ladoucette</span>, <i>Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes</i>, p. 354.
+</p><p>
+Even as early as 1789, the Durance was computed to have already
+covered with gravel and pebbles not less than 130,000 acres, "which, but
+for its inundations, would have been the finest land in the province."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Arthur
+Young</span>, <i>Travels in France</i>, vol. i, ch. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> Between 1851 and 1856 the population of Languedoc and Provence
+had increased by 101,000 souls. The augmentation, however, was wholly
+in the provinces of the plains, where all the principal cities are found. In
+these provinces the increase was 204,000, while in the mountain provinces
+there was a diminution of 103,000. The reduction of the area of arable
+land is perhaps even more striking. In 1842, the department of the Lower
+Alps possessed 99,000 hectares, or nearly 245,000 acres, of cultivated soil.
+In 1852, it had but 74,000 hectares. In other words, in ten years 25,000
+hectares, or 61,000 acres, had been washed away or rendered worthless
+for cultivation, by torrents and the abuses of pasturage.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Clav&eacute;</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes</i>,
+pp. 66, 67.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> The Skal&auml;ra-Tobel, for instance, near Coire. See the description in
+<span class="smcap">Berlepsch</span>, <i>Die Alpen</i>, pp. 169 <i>et seqq</i>, or in Stephen's English translation.
+</p><p>
+The recent change in the character of the Mella&mdash;a river anciently so
+remarkable for the gentleness of its current that it was specially noticed
+by Catullus as flowing <i>molli flumine</i>&mdash;deserves more than a passing
+remark. This river rises in the mountain chain east of Lake Iseo, and
+traversing the district of Brescia, empties into the Oglio after a course of
+about seventy miles. The iron works in the upper valley of the Mella had
+long created a considerable demand for wood, but their operations were
+not so extensive as to occasion any very sudden or general destruction of
+the forests, and the only evil experienced from the clearings was the gradual
+diminution of the volume of the river. Within the last twenty years,
+the superior quality of the arms manufactured at Brescia has greatly enlarged
+the sale of them, and very naturally stimulated the activity of both
+the forges and of the colliers who supply them, and the hillsides have been
+rapidly stripped of their timber. Up to 1850, no destructive inundation
+of the Mella had been recorded. Buildings in great numbers had been
+erected upon its margin, and its valley was conspicuous for its rural
+beauty and its fertility. But when the denudation of the mountains had
+reached a certain point, avenging nature began the work of retribution.
+In the spring and summer of 1850 several new torrents were suddenly
+formed in the upper tributary valleys, and on the 14th and 15th of August
+in that year, a fall of rain, not heavier than had been often experienced,
+produced a flood which not only inundated much ground never before
+overflowed, but destroyed a great number of bridges, dams, factories, and
+other valuable structures, and, what was a far more serious evil, swept
+off from the rocks an incredible extent of soil, and converted one of the
+most beautiful valleys of the Italian Alps into a ravine almost as bare and
+as barren as the savagest gorge of Southern France. The pecuniary
+damage was estimated at many millions of francs, and the violence of the
+catastrophe was deemed so extraordinary, even in a country subject to
+similar visitations, that the sympathy excited for the sufferers produced, in
+five months, voluntary contributions for their relief to the amount of
+nearly $200,000&mdash;<i>Delle Inondazioni del Mella, etc., nella notte del 14 al 15
+Agosto</i>, 1850.
+</p><p>
+The author of this remarkable pamphlet has chosen as a motto a passage
+from the Vulgate translation of Job, which is interesting as showing
+accurate observation of the action of the torrent: "Mons cadens definit,
+et saxum transfertur de loco suo; lapides excavant aqu&aelig; et alluvione paullatim
+terra consumitur."&mdash;<i>Job</i> xiv, 18, 19.
+</p><p>
+The English version is much less striking, and gives a different sense.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> Streffleur quotes from Duile the following observations: "The channel
+of the Tyrolese brooks is often raised much above the valleys through
+which they flow. The bed of the Fersina is elevated high above the city
+of Trient, which lies near it. The Villerbach flows at a much more
+elevated level than that of the market place of Neumarkt and Vill, and
+threatens to overwhelm both of them with its waters. The Talfer at
+Botzen is at least even with the roofs of the adjacent town, if not above
+them. The tower steeples of the villages of Schlanders, Kortsch, and
+Laas, are lower than the surface of the Gadribach. The Saldurbach at
+Schluderns menaces the far lower village with destruction, and the chief
+town, Schwaz, is in similar danger from the Lahnbach."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Streffleur</span>,
+<i>Ueber die Wildb&auml;che, etc.</i>, p. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> The snow drifts into the ravines and accumulates to incredible depths,
+and the water resulting from its dissolution and from the deluging rains
+which fall in spring, and sometimes in the summer, being confined by
+rocky walls on both sides, rises to a very great height, and of course
+acquires an immense velocity and transporting power in its rapid descent
+to its outlet from the mountain. In the winter of 1842&mdash;'3, the valley of
+the Doveria, along which the Simplon road passes, was filled with solid
+snowdrifts to the depth of a hundred feet above the carriage road, and the
+sledge track by which passengers and the mails were carried ran at that
+height.
+</p><p>
+Other things being equal, the transporting power of the water is greatest
+where its flow is most rapid. This is usually in the direction of the
+axis of the ravine. As the current pours out of the gorge and escapes
+from the lateral confinement of its walls, it spreads and divides itself into
+numerous smaller streams, which shoot out from the mouth of the valley,
+as from a centre, in different directions, like the ribs of a fan from the
+pivot, each carrying with it its quota of stones and gravel. The plain
+below the point of issue from the mountain is rapidly raised by newly
+formed torrents, the elevation depending on the inclination of the bed and
+the form and weight of the matter transported. Every flood both increases
+the height of this central point and extends the entire circumference of
+the deposit. The stream retaining most nearly the original direction moves
+with the greatest momentum, and consequently transports the solid matter
+with which it is charged to the greatest distance.
+</p><p>
+The untravelled reader will comprehend this the better when he is informed
+that the southern slope of the Alps generally rises suddenly out of
+the plain, with no intervening hill to break the abruptness of the transition,
+except those consisting of comparatively small heaps of its own debris
+brought down by ancient glaciers or recent torrents. The torrents do not
+wind down valleys gradually widening to the rivers or the sea, but leap at
+once from the flanks of the mountains upon the plains below. This arrangement
+of surfaces naturally facilitates the formation of vast deposits at
+their points of emergence, and the centre of the accumulation in the case
+of very small torrents is not unfrequently a hundred feet high, and sometimes
+very much more.
+</p><p>
+Torrents and the rivers that receive them transport mountain debris to
+almost incredible distances. Lorentz, in an official report on this subject,
+as quoted by Marschand from the Memoirs of the Agricultural Society of
+Lyons, says: "The felling of the woods produces torrents which cover
+the cultivated soil with pebbles and fragments of rock, and they do not
+confine their ravages to the vicinity of the mountains, but extend them
+into the fertile fields of Provence and other departments, to the distance
+of forty or fifty leagues."&mdash;<i>Entwaldung der Gebirge</i>, p. 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> The precipitous walls of the Val de Lys, and more especially of the
+Val Doveria, though here and there shattered, show in many places a
+smoothness of face over a large vertical plane, at the height of hundreds
+of feet above the bottom of the valley, which no known agency but glacier
+ice is capable of producing, and of course they can have undergone no sensible
+change at those points for a vast length of time. The beds of the
+rivers which flow through those valleys suffer lateral displacement occasionally,
+where there is room for the shifting of the channel; but if any elevation
+or depression takes place in them, it is too slow to be perceptible
+except in case of some merely temporary obstruction.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> Lombardini found, twenty years ago, that the mineral matter brought
+down to the Po by its tributaries was, in general, comminuted to about the
+same degree of fineness as the sands of its bed at their points of discharge.
+In the case of the Trebbia, which rises high in the Apennines and empties
+into the Po at Piacenza, it was otherwise, that river rolling pebbles and
+coarse gravel into the channel of the principal stream. The banks of the
+other affluents&mdash;excepting some of those which discharge their waters into
+the great lakes&mdash;then either retained their woods, or had been so long
+clear of them, that the torrents had removed most of the disintegrated
+and loose rock in their upper basins. The valley of the Trebbia had been
+recently cleared, and all the forces which tend to the degradation and
+transportation of rock were in full activity.&mdash;<i>Notice sur les Rivi&egrave;res de la
+Lombardie, Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847, 1er s&eacute;mestre, p. 131.
+</p><p>
+Since the date of Lombardini's observations, many Alpine valleys have
+been stripped of their woods. It would be interesting to know whether
+any sensible change has been produced in the character or quantity of the
+matter transported by them to the Po.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> In proportion as the dikes are improved, and breaches and the escape
+of the water through them are less frequent, the height of the annual inundations
+is increased. Many towns on the banks of the river, and of course
+within the system of parallel embankments, were formerly secure from
+flood by the height of the artificial mounds on which they were built; but
+they have recently been obliged to construct ring dikes for their protection.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Baumgarten</span>,
+after <span class="smcap">Lombardini</span>, in the paper last quoted, pp. 141, 147.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> Three centuries ago, when the declivities of the mountains still retained
+a much larger proportion of their woods, the moderate annual floods
+of the Po were occasioned by the melting of the snows, and, as appears by
+a passage of Tasso quoted by Castellani (<i>Dell' Influenza delle Selve</i>, i, p. 58,
+note), they took place in May. The much more violent inundations of the
+present century are due to rains, the waters of which are no longer retained
+by a forest soil, but conveyed at once to the rivers&mdash;and they occur almost
+uniformly in the autumn or late summer. Castellani, on the page just
+quoted, says that even so late as about 1780, the Po required a heavy rain
+of a week to overflow its banks, but that forty years later, it was sometimes
+raised to full flood in a single day.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> This change of coast line cannot be ascribed to upheaval, for a comparison
+of the level of old buildings&mdash;as, for instance, the church of San
+Vitale and the tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna&mdash;with that of the sea, tends
+to prove a depression rather than an elevation of their foundations.
+</p><p>
+A computation by a different method makes the deposits at the mouth
+of the Po 2,123,000 m&egrave;tres less; but as both of them omit the gravel and
+silt rolled, if not floated, down at ordinary and low water, we are safe in
+assuming the larger quantity.&mdash;<i>Article last quoted</i>, p. 174. (See note, p. 329)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> Mengotti estimated the mass of solid matter annually "united
+to the waters of the Po" at 822,000,000 cubic m&egrave;tres, or nearly twenty
+times as much as, according to Lombardini, that river delivers into the
+Adriatic. Castellani supposes the computation of Mengotti to fall much
+below the truth, and there can be no doubt that a vastly larger quantity
+of earth and gravel is washed down from the Alps and the Apennines than
+is carried to the sea.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Castellani</span>, <i>Dell' Immediata Influenza delle Selve
+sul corso delle Acque</i>, i, pp. 42, 43.
+</p><p>
+I have contented myself with assuming less than one fifth of Mengotti's
+estimate.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Baumgarten</span>, <i>An. des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847, 1er s&eacute;mestre, p. 175.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> The total superficies of the basin of the Po, down to Ponte Lagoscuro
+[Ferrara]&mdash;a point where it has received all its affluents&mdash;is 6,938,200 hectares,
+that is, 4,105,600 in mountain lands, 2,832,600 in plain lands.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Dumont</span>,
+<i>Travaux Publics, etc.</i>, p. 272.
+</p><p>
+These latter two quantities are equal respectively to 10,145,348, and
+6,999,638 acres, or 15,852 and 10,937 square miles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> I do not use the numbers I have borrowed or assumed as factors the
+value of which is precisely ascertained; nor, for the purposes of the
+present argument, is quantitative exactness important. I employ numerical
+statements simply as a means of aiding the imagination to form a
+general and certainly not extravagant idea of the extent of geographical
+revolutions which man has done much to accelerate, if not, strictly speaking,
+to produce.
+</p><p>
+There is an old proverb, <i>Dolus latet in generalibus</i>, and Arthur Young
+is not the only public economist who has warned his readers against the
+deceitfulness of round numbers. I think, on the contrary, that vastly
+more error has been produced by the affectation of precision in cases where
+precision is impossible. In all the great operations of terrestrial nature,
+the elements are so numerous and so difficult of exact appreciation, that,
+until the means of scientific observation and measurement are much more
+perfected than they now are, we must content ourselves with general approximations.
+I say <i>terrestrial</i> nature, because in cosmical movements we
+have fewer elements to deal with, and may therefore arrive at much more
+rigorous accuracy in determination of time and place than we can in fixing
+and predicting the quantities and the epochs of variable natural phenomena
+on the earth's surface.
+</p><p>
+The value of a high standard of accuracy in scientific observation can
+hardly be overrated; but habits of rigorous exactness will never be formed
+by an investigator who allows himself to trust implicitly to the numerical
+precision of the results of a few experiments. The wonderful accuracy of
+geodetic measurements in modern times is, in general, attained by taking
+the mean of a great number of observations at every station, and this
+final precision is but the mutual balance and compensation of numerous
+errors.
+</p><p>
+Travellers are often misled by local habits in the use of what may be
+called representative numbers, where a definite is put for an indefinite
+quantity. A Greek, who wished to express the notion of a great, but undetermined
+number, used "myriad, or ten thousand;" a Roman, "six
+hundred;" an Oriental, "forty," or, at present, very commonly, "fifteen
+thousand." Many a tourist has gravely repeated, as an ascertained fact,
+the vague statement of the Arabs and the monks of Mount Sinai, that the
+ascent from the convent of St. Catherine to the summit of Gebel Moosa
+counts "fifteen thousand" steps, though the difference of level is barely
+two thousand feet, and the "Forty" Thieves, the "forty" martyr monks
+of the convent of El Arbain&mdash;not to speak of a similar use of this numeral
+in more important cases&mdash;have often been understood as expressions of a
+known number, when in fact they mean simply <i>many</i>. The number
+"fifteen thousand" has found its way to Rome, and De Quincey seriously
+informs us, on the authority of a lady who had been at much pains to
+ascertain the <i>exact</i> truth, that, including closets large enough for a bed, the
+Vatican contains fifteen thousand rooms. Any one who has observed the
+vast dimensions of most of the apartments of that structure will admit that
+we make a very small allowance of space when we assign a square rod,
+sixteen and a half feet square, to each room upon the average. On an
+acre, there might be one hundred and sixty such rooms, including partition
+walls; and, to contain fifteen thousand of them, a building must
+cover more than nine acres, and be ten stories high, or possess other
+equivalent dimensions, which, as every traveller knows, many times exceeds
+the truth.
+</p><p>
+That most entertaining writer, About, reduces the number of rooms in
+the Vatican, but he compensates this reduction by increased dimensions,
+for he uses the word <i>salle</i>, which cannot be applied to closets barely large
+enough to contain a bed. According to him, there are in that "presbyt&egrave;re,"
+as he irreverently calls it, twelve thousand large rooms [<i>salles</i>],
+thirty courts, and three hundred staircases.&mdash;<i>Rome Contemporaire</i>, p. 68.
+</p><p>
+The pretended exactness of statistical tables is generally little better
+than an imposture; and those founded not on direct estimation by competent
+observers, but on the report of persons who have no particular interest
+in knowing, but often have a motive for distorting, the truth&mdash;such as
+census returns&mdash;are commonly to be regarded as but vague guesses at the
+actual fact.
+</p><p>
+Fuller, who, for the combination of wit, wisdom, fancy, and personal
+goodness, stands first in English literature, thus remarks on the pretentious
+exactness of historical and statistical writers: "I approve the plain,
+country By-word, as containing much Innocent Simplicity therein,
+</p><p class="poem">
+<i>'Almost and very nigh<br />
+Have saved many a Lie.'</i><br />
+</p>
+<p>
+So have the Latines their <i>prope</i>, <i>fere</i>, <i>juxta</i>, <i>circiter</i>, <i>plus minus</i>, used
+in matters of fact by the most authentic Historians. Yea, we may observe
+that the Spirit of Truth itself, where <i>Numbers</i> and <i>Measures</i> are concerned,
+in Times, Places, and Persons, useth the aforesaid Modifications, save in
+such cases where some mystery contained in the number requireth a particular
+specification thereof:
+</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="" rules="cols">
+<tr><td align='center'>In Times.</td><td align='center'> In Places.</td><td align='center'> In Person.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Daniel, 5:33.</td><td align='left'> Luke, 24:13.</td><td align='left'> Exodus, 12:37.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Luke, &nbsp; 3:23.</td><td align='left'> John, &nbsp; 6:19.</td><td align='left'> Acts,  &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 2:41.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p>
+None therefore can justly find fault with me, if, on the like occasion, I
+have secured myself with the same Qualifications. Indeed, such Historians
+who grind their Intelligence to the <i>powder of fraction</i>, pretending to <i>cleave
+the pin</i>, do sometimes <i>misse the But</i>. Thus, one reporteth, how in the
+Persecution under <i>Dioeletian</i>, there were neither under nor over, but just
+<i>nine hundred ninety-nine</i> martyrs. Yea, generally those that trade in
+such <i>Retail-ware</i>, and deal in such small parcells, may by the ignorant be
+commended for their <i>care</i>, but condemned by the judicious for their
+ridiculous <i>curiosity</i>."&mdash;<i>The History of the Worthies of England</i>,
+i, p. 59.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Surell</span>, <i>Les Torrents des Hautes Alpes</i>, chap. xxiv. In such cases,
+the clearing of the ground, which, in consequence of a temporary diversion
+of the waters, or from some other cause, has become rewooded, sometimes
+renews the ravages of the torrent. Thus, on the left bank of the
+Durance, a wooded declivity had been formed by the debris brought down
+by torrents, which had extinguished themselves after having swept off
+much of the superficial strata of the mountain of Morgon. "All this district
+was covered with woods, which have now been thinned out and are
+perishing from day to day; consequently, the torrents have recommenced
+their devastations, and if the clearings continue, this declivity, now fertile,
+will be ruined, like so many others."&mdash;Id., p. 155.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> Where a torrent has not been long in operation, and earth still remains
+mixed with the rocks and gravel it heaps up at its point of eruption,
+vegetation soon starts up and prospers, if protected from encroachment.
+In Provence, "several communes determined, about ten years ago, to
+reserve the soils thus wasted, that is, to abandon them for a certain time,
+to spontaneous vegetation, which was not slow in making its appearance."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Becquerel</span>,
+<i>Des Climats</i>, p. 315.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> Rock is permeable by water to a greater extent than is generally supposed.
+Freshly quarried marble, and even granite, as well as most other
+stones, are sensibly heavier, as well as softer and more easily wrought,
+than after they are dried and hardened by air-seasoning. Many sandstones
+are porous enough to serve as filters for liquids, and much of that
+of Upper Egypt and Nubia hisses audibly when thrown into water, from
+the escape of the air forced out of it by hydrostatic pressure and the
+capillary attraction of the pores for water. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_29">No. 29</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> Palissy had observed the action of frost in disintegrating rock, and he
+thus describes it, in his essay on the formation of ice: "I know that the
+stones of the mountains of Ardennes be harder than marble. Nevertheless,
+the people of that country do not quarry the said stones in winter, for
+that they be subject to frost; and many times the rocks have been seen to
+fall without being cut, by means whereof many people have been killed,
+when the said rocks were thawing." Palissy was ignorant of the expansion
+of water in freezing&mdash;in fact he supposed that the mechanical force
+exerted by freezing water was due to compression, not dilatation&mdash;and
+therefore he ascribes to thawing alone effects resulting not less from congelation.
+</p><p>
+Various forces combine to produce the stone avalanches of the higher
+Alps, the fall of which is one of the greatest dangers incurred by the adventurous
+explorers of those regions&mdash;the direct action of the sun upon
+the stone, the expansion of freezing water, and the loosening of masses
+of rock by the thawing of the ice which supported them or held them
+together.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Wessely</span>, <i>Die Oesterreichischen Alpenl&auml;nder und ihre Forste</i>, pp. 125,
+126. Wessely records several other more or less similar occurrences in
+the Austrian Alps. Some of them, certainly, are not to be ascribed to the
+removal of the woods, but in most cases they are clearly traceable to that
+cause.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Bianchi</span>, Appendix to the Italian translation of Mrs. <span class="smcap">Somerville</span>'s
+<i>Physical Geography</i>, p. xxxvi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> See in <span class="smcap">Kohl</span>, <i>Alpenreisen</i>, i, 120, an account of the ruin of fields and
+pastures, and even of the destruction of a broad belt of forest, by the fall
+of rocks in consequence of cutting a few large trees. Cattle are very often
+killed in Switzerland by rock avalanches, and their owners secure themselves
+from loss by insurance against this risk as against damage by fire
+or hail.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> <i>Entwaldung der Gebirge</i>, p. 41.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> The importance of the wood in preventing avalanches is well illustrated
+by the fact that, where the forest is wanting, the inhabitants of
+localities exposed to snow slides often supply the place of the trees by
+driving stakes through the snow into the ground, and thus checking its
+propensity to slip. The woods themselves are sometimes thus protected
+against avalanches originating on slopes above them, and as a further
+security, small trees are cut down along the upper line of the forest, and
+laid against the trunks of larger trees, transversely to the path of the
+slide, to serve as a fence or dam to the motion of an incipient avalanche,
+which may by this means be arrested before it acquires a destructive
+velocity and force.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> The tide rises at Quebec to the height of twenty-five feet, and when
+it is aided by a northeast wind, it flows with almost irresistible violence.
+Rafts containing several hundred thousand cubic feet of timber are often
+caught by the flood tide, torn to pieces, and dispersed for miles along the
+shores.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> One of these, the Baron of Renfrew&mdash;so named from one of the titles
+of the kings of England&mdash;built thirty or forty years ago, measured 5,000
+tons. They were little else than rafts, being almost solid masses of timber
+designed to be taken to pieces and sold as lumber on arriving at their port
+of destination.
+</p><p>
+The lumber trade at Quebec is still very large. According to a recent
+article in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, that city exported, in 1860, 30,000,000
+cubic feet of squared timber, and 400,000,000 square feet of "planches."
+The thickness of the boards is not stated, but I believe they are generally
+cut an inch and a quarter thick for the Quebec trade, and as they shrink
+somewhat in drying, we may estimate ten square for one cubic foot
+of boards. This gives a total of 70,000,000 cubic feet. The specific
+gravity of white pine is .554, and the weight of this quantity of lumber,
+very little of which is thoroughly seasoned, would exceed a million of tons,
+even supposing it to consist wholly of wood as light as pine. New Brunswick,
+too, exports a large amount of lumber.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a> This name, from the French <i>chantier</i>, which has a wider meaning, is
+applied in America to temporary huts or habitations erected for the convenience
+of forest life, or in connection with works of material improvement.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> Trees differ much in their power of resisting the action of forest fires.
+Different woods vary greatly in combustibility, and even when their bark
+is scarcely scorched, they are, partly in consequence of physiological character,
+and partly from the greater or less depth at which their roots habitually
+lie below the surface, very differently affected by running fires. The
+white pine, <i>Pinus strobus</i>, as it is the most valuable, is also perhaps the
+most delicate tree of the American forest, while its congener, the Northern
+pitch pine, <i>Pinus rigida</i>, is less injured by fire than any other tree of that
+country. I have heard experienced lumbermen maintain that the growth
+of this pine was even accelerated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all
+other trees, and I have myself seen it still flourishing after a conflagration
+which had left not a green leaf but its own in the wood, and actually
+throwing out fresh foliage, when the old had been quite burnt off and the
+bark almost converted into charcoal. The wood of the pitch pine is of
+comparatively little value for the joiner, but it is useful for very many purposes.
+Its rapidity of growth in even poor soils, its hardihood, and its
+abundant yield of resinous products, entitle it to much more consideration,
+as a plantation tree, than it has hitherto received in Europe or America.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> Between fifty and sixty years ago, a steep mountain with which I am
+very familiar, composed of metamorphic rock, and at that time covered
+with a thick coating of soil and a dense primeval forest, was accidentally
+burnt over. The fire took place in a very dry season, the slope of the
+mountain was too rapid to retain much water, and the conflagration was
+of an extraordinarily fierce character, consuming the wood almost entirely,
+burning the leaves and combustible portion of the mould, and in many
+places cracking and disintegrating the rock beneath. The rains of the following
+autumn carried off much of the remaining soil, and the mountain
+side was nearly bare of wood for two or three years afterward. At
+length, a new crop of trees sprang up and grew vigorously, and the mountain
+is now thickly covered again. But the depth of mould and earth is
+too small to allow the trees to reach maturity. When they attain to the
+diameter of about six inches, they uniformly die, and this they will no
+doubt continue to do until the decay of leaves and wood on the surface,
+and the decomposition of the subjacent rock, shall have formed, perhaps
+hundreds of years hence, a stratum of soil thick enough to support a full-grown
+forest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> The growth of the white pine, on a good soil and in open ground, is
+rather rapid until it reaches the diameter of a couple of feet, after which it
+is much slower. The favorite habitat of this tree is light sandy earth. On
+this soil, and in a dense wood, it requires a century to attain the diameter
+of a yard. Emerson (<i>Trees of Massachusetts</i>, p. 65), says that a pine of this
+species, near Paris, "thirty years planted, is eighty feet high, with a diameter
+of three feet." He also states that ten white pines planted at Cambridge,
+Massachusetts, in 1809 or 1810, exhibited, in the winter of 1841 and 1842,
+an average of twenty inches diameter at the ground, the two largest
+measuring, at the height of three feet, four feet eight inches in circumference;
+and he mentions another pine growing in a rocky swamp, which,
+at the age of thirty-two years, "gave seven feet in circumference at the
+but, with a height of sixty-two feet six inches." This latter I suppose to
+be a seedling, the others <i>transplanted</i> trees, which might have been some
+years old when placed where they finally grew.
+</p><p>
+The following case came under my own observation: In 1824, a pine
+tree, so small that a young lady, with the help of a lad, took it up from
+the ground and carried it a quarter of a mile, was planted near a house
+in a town in Vermont. It was occasionally watered, but received no
+other special treatment. I measured this tree in 1860, and found it, at
+four feet from the ground, and entirely above the spread of the roots, two
+feet and four inches in diameter. It could not have been more than three
+inches through when transplanted, and must have increased its diameter
+twenty-five inches in thirty-six years.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Williams</span>, <i>History of Vermont</i>, ii, p. 53. <span class="smcap">Dwight</span>'s <i>Travels</i>, iv, p. 21,
+and iii, p. 36. <span class="smcap">Emerson</span>, <i>Trees of Massachusetts</i>, p. 61. <span class="smcap">Parish</span>, <i>Life of
+President Wheelock</i>, p. 56.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> The forest trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme longevity
+in the dense woods. Dr. Williams found that none of the huge
+pines, the age of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty
+or four hundred years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had
+noticed trees considerably older. The oak lives longer than the pine, and
+the hemlock spruce is perhaps equally long lived. A tree of this latter
+species, cut within my knowledge in a thick wood, counted four hundred and
+eighty-six, or, according to another observer, five hundred annual circles.
+</p><p>
+Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly
+accompanied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not
+found in the crowded city; and in the tropics, where life is prolific and
+precocious, it is also short. The most ancient forest trees of which we
+have accounts have not been those growing in thick woods, but isolated
+specimens, with no taller neighbor to intercept the light and heat and air,
+and no rival to share the nutriment afforded by the soil.
+</p><p>
+The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near
+the boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. "Long
+experience has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may
+be cut at sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same
+species, reared in the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We
+have often remarked, in our Alps, that the trunk of trees upon the border
+of a grove is most developed or enlarged upon the outer or open side,
+where the branches extend themselves farthest, while the concentric
+circles of growth are most uniform in those entirely surrounded by other
+trees, or standing entirely alone."&mdash;A. and G. <span class="smcap">Villa</span>, <i>Necessit&agrave; dei Boschi</i>,
+pp. 17, 18.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> Caimi states that "a single flotation in the Valtelline in 1839, caused
+damages alleged to amount to more than $800,000, and actually appraised
+at $250,000."&mdash;<i>Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi</i>, p. 65.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> Most physicists who have investigated the laws of natural hydraulics
+maintain that, in consequence of direct obstruction and frictional resistance
+to the flow of the water of rivers along their banks, there is both an increased
+rapidity of current and an elevation of the water in the middle of
+the channel, so that a river presents always a convex surface. The lumbermen
+deny this. They affirm that, while rivers are rising, the water is
+highest in the middle of the channel, and tends to throw floating objects
+shoreward; while they are falling, it is lowest in the middle, and floating
+objects incline toward the centre. Logs, they say, rolled into the water
+during the rise, are very apt to lodge on the banks, while those set afloat
+during the falling of the waters keep in the current, and are carried
+without hindrance to their destination.
+</p><p>
+Foresters and lumbermen, like sailors and other persons whose daily
+occupations bring them into contact, and often, into conflict, with great
+natural forces, have many peculiar opinions, not to say superstitions. In
+one of these categories we must rank the universal belief of lumbermen,
+that with a given head of water, and in a given number of hours, a sawmill
+cuts more lumber by night than by day. Having been personally
+interested in several sawmills, I have frequently conversed with sawyers
+on this subject, and have always been assured by them that their uniform
+experience established the fact that, other things being equal, the action
+of the machinery of sawmills is more rapid by night than by day. I am
+sorry&mdash;perhaps I ought to be ashamed&mdash;to say that my scepticism has
+been too strong to allow me to avail myself of my opportunities of testing
+this question by passing a night, watch in hand, counting the strokes of a
+millsaw. More unprejudiced, and I must add, very intelligent and credible
+persons have informed me that they have done so, and found the
+report of the sawyers abundantly confirmed. A land surveyor, who was
+also an experienced lumberman, sawyer, and machinist, a good mathematician
+and an exact observer, has repeatedly told me, that he had very often
+"timed" sawmills, and found the difference in favor of night work above
+thirty per cent. <i>Sed qu&aelig;re.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> For many instances of this sort, see <span class="smcap">Becquerel</span>, <i>Des Climats, etc.</i>, pp.
+301-303. In 1664, the Swedes made an incursion into Jutland and felled a
+considerable extent of forest. After they retired, a survey of the damage was
+had, and the report is still extant. The number of trees cut was found to
+be 120,000, and as an account was kept of the numbers of each species of
+tree, the document is of interest in the history of the forest, as showing
+the relative proportions between the different trees which composed the
+wood. See <span class="smcap">Vaupell</span>. <i>B&ouml;gens Indvandring</i>, p. 35, and <i>Notes</i>, p. 55.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> Since writing this paragraph, I have fallen upon&mdash;and that in a Spanish
+author&mdash;one of those odd coincidences of thought which every man
+of miscellaneous reading so often meets with. Antonio Ponz (<i>Viage de
+Espa&ntilde;a</i>, i, pr&oacute;logo, p. lxiii), says: "Nor would this be so great an evil,
+were not some of them declaimers against <i>trees</i>, thereby proclaiming themselves,
+in some sort, enemies of the works of God, who gave us the leafy
+abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even now sojourning,
+but for the first sin, which expelled us from it."
+</p><p>
+I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their
+woods, but the Spaniard's proverbial "hatred of a tree" is of long standing.
+Herrera vigorously combats this foolish prejudice; and Ponz, in the
+prologue to the ninth volume of his journey, says that many carried it so
+far as wantonly to destroy the shade and ornamental trees planted by the
+municipal authorities. "Trees," they contended, and still believe, "breed
+birds, and birds eat up the grain." Our author argues against the supposition
+of the "breeding of birds by trees," which, he says, is as absurd as
+to believe that an elm tree can yield pears; and he charitably suggests that
+the expression is, perhaps, a <i>mani&egrave;re de dire</i>, a popular phrase, signifying
+simply that trees harbor birds.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> Religious intolerance had produced similar effects in France at an
+earlier period. "The revocation of the edict of Nantes and the dragonnades
+occasioned the sale of the forests of the unhappy Protestants, who
+fled to seek in foreign lands the liberty of conscience which was refused
+to them in France. The forests were soon felled by the purchasers, and
+the soil in part brought under cultivation."'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Becquerel</span>, <i>Des Climats, etc.</i>,
+p. 303.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> The American reader must be reminded that, in the language of the
+chase and of the English law, a "forest" is not necessarily a wood. Any
+large extent of ground, withdrawn from cultivation, reserved for the
+pleasures of the chase, and allowed to clothe itself with a spontaneous
+growth, serving as what is technically called "cover" for wild animals,
+is, in the dialects I have mentioned, a forest. When, therefore, the
+Norman kings afforested the grounds referred to in the text, it is not
+to be supposed that they planted them with trees, though the protection
+afforded to them by the game laws would, if cattle had been kept out,
+soon have converted them into real woods.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> <i>Histoire des Paysans</i>, ii, p. 190. The work of Bonnem&egrave;re is of great
+value to those who study the history of medi&aelig;val Europe from a desire to
+know its real character, and not in the hope of finding apparent facts to
+sustain a false and dangerous theory. Bonnem&egrave;re is one of the few writers
+who, like Michelet, have been honest enough and bold enough to speak
+the truth with regard to the relations between the church and the people
+in the Middle Ages.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> It is painful to add that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very few
+years ago, in one of the European states, by a prince of a family now dethroned.
+In this case, however, the prince killed the trespasser with his
+own hand, his sergeants refusing to execute his mandate.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Guillaume de Nangis</span>, as quoted in the notes to <span class="smcap">Joinville</span>, <i>Nouvelle
+Collection des M&eacute;moires, etc.</i>, par Michaud et Poujoulat, premi&egrave;re s&eacute;rie, i,
+p. 335.
+</p><p>
+Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the medi&aelig;val
+clergy will hardly need to be informed that the ten thousand livres never
+found their way to the royal exchequer. It was easy to prove to the
+simple-minded king that, as the profits of sin were a monopoly of the
+church, he ought not to derive advantage from the commission of a crime
+by one of his subjects; and the priests were cunning enough both to secure
+to themselves the amount of the fine, and to extort from Louis large additional
+grants to carry out the purposes to which they devoted the money.
+"And though the king did take the moneys," says the chronicler, "he put
+them not into his treasury, but turned them into good works; for he
+builded therewith the maison-Dieu of Pontoise, and endowed the same
+with rents and lands; also the schools and the dormitory of the friars
+preachers of Paris, and the monastery of the Minorite friars."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> <i>Histoire des Paysans</i>, ii, p. 200.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a> The following details from Bonnem&egrave;re will serve to give a more complete
+idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of France.
+The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling up of thistles
+and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before St. John's day
+[24th June], in order that the nests of game birds might not be disturbed.
+It was unlawful to fence-in any grounds in the plains where royal residences
+were situated; thorns were ordered to be planted in all fields of
+wheat, barley, or oats, to prevent the use of ground nets for catching the
+birds which consumed, or were believed to consume, the grain, and it was
+forbidden to cut or pull stubble before the first of October, lest the partridge
+and the quail might be deprived of their cover. For destroying the
+eggs of the quail, a fine of one hundred livres was imposed for the first
+offence, double that amount for the second, and for the third the culprit
+was flogged and banished for five years to a distance of six leagues from
+the forest.&mdash;<i>Histoire des Paysans</i>, ii, p. 202, text and notes.
+</p><p>
+Neither these severe penalties, nor any provisions devised by the ingenuity
+of modern legislation, have been able effectually to repress poaching.
+"The game laws," says Clav&eacute;, "have not delivered us from the poachers,
+who kill twenty times as much game as the sportsmen. In the forest of
+Fontainebleau, as in all those belonging to the state, poaching is a very
+common and a very profitable offence. It is in vain that the gamekeepers
+are on the alert night and day, they cannot prevent it. Those who follow
+the trade begin by carefully studying the habits of the game. They will
+lie motionless on the ground, by the roadside or in thickets, for whole
+days, watching the paths most frequented by the animals," &amp;c.&mdash;<i>Revue des
+Deux Mondes</i>, Mai, 1863, p. 160.
+</p><p>
+The writer adds many details on this subject, and it appears that, as
+there are "beggars on horseback" in South America, there are poachers
+in carriages in France.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> "Whole trees were sacrificed for the most insignificant purposes; the
+peasants would cut down two firs to make a single pair of wooden shoes."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Michelet</span>,
+as quoted by <span class="smcap">Clav&eacute;</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes</i>, p. 24.
+</p><p>
+A similar wastefulness formerly prevailed in Russia, though not from
+the same cause. In St. Pierre's time, the planks brought to St. Petersburg
+were not sawn, but hewn with the axe, and a tree furnished but a single
+plank.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> "A hundred and fifty paces from my house is a hill of drift sand, on
+which stood a few scattered pines. <i>Pinus sylvestris</i>, and <i>Sempervivum tectorum</i>
+in abundance, <i>Statice armeria</i>, <i>Ammone vernalis</i>, <i>Dianthus carthusianorum</i>,
+with other sand plants, were growing there. I planted the hill
+with a few birches, and all the plants I have mentioned completely disappeared,
+though there were many naked spots of sand between the trees.
+It should be added, however, that the hillock is more thickly wooded than
+before. * * * It seems then that <i>Sempervivum tectorum</i>, &amp;c., will not
+bear the neighborhood of the birch, though growing well near the <i>Pinus
+sylvestris</i>. I have found the large red variety of <i>Agaricus deliciosus</i> only
+among the roots of the pine; the greenish-blue <i>Agaricus deliciosus</i> among
+alder roots, but not near any other tree. Birds have their partialities
+among trees and shrubs. The <i>Silvi&aelig;</i> prefer the <i>Pinus Larix</i> to other trees.
+In my garden this <i>Pinus</i> is never without them, but I never saw a bird
+perch on <i>Thuja occidenialis</i> or <i>Juniperus sabina</i>, although the thick foliage
+of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the loose leafage of
+other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one of them. Perhaps
+the scent of the <i>Thuja</i> and the <i>Juniperus</i> is offensive to them. I have
+spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the bushes. It formerly bore
+grass four feet high, because many umbelliferous plants, such as <i>Heracleum
+spondylium</i>, <i>Spir&aelig;a ulmaria</i>, <i>Laserpitium latifolia</i>, &amp;c., grew in it. Under
+the shelter of the bushes these plants ripened and bore seed, but they gradually
+disappeared as the shrubs were extirpated, and the grass now does
+not grow to the height of more than two feet, because it is no longer
+obliged to keep pace with the umbellifera which flourished among it." See
+a paper by J. G. <span class="smcap">B&uuml;ttner</span>, of Kurland, in <span class="smcap">Berghaus</span>' <i>Geographisches Jahrbuch</i>,
+1852, No. 4, pp. 14, 15.
+</p><p>
+These facts are interesting as illustrating the multitude of often obscure
+conditions upon which the life or vigorous growth of smaller organisms
+depends. Particular species of truffles and of mushrooms are found associated
+with particular trees, without being, as is popularly supposed, parasites
+deriving their nutriment from the dying or dead roots of those trees.
+The success of Rousseau's experiments seem decisive on this point, for he
+obtains larger crops of truffles from ground covered with young seedling
+oaks than from that filled with roots of old trees. See an article on Mont
+Ventoux, by Charles Martins, in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, Avril, 1863,
+p. 626.
+</p><p>
+It ought to be much more generally known than it is that most, if not,
+all mushrooms, even of the species reputed poisonous, may be rendered
+harmless and healthful as food by soaking them for two hours in acidulated
+or salt water. The water requires two or three spoonfuls of vinegar or
+two spoonfuls of gray salt to the quart, and a quart of water is enough for
+a pound of sliced mushrooms. After thus soaking, they are well washed
+in fresh water, thrown into cold water, which is raised to the boiling point,
+and, after remaining half an hour, taken out and again washed. G&eacute;rard,
+to prove that "crumpets is wholesome," ate one hundred and seventy-five
+pounds of the most poisonous mushrooms thus prepared, in a single month,
+fed his family <i>ad libitum</i> with the same, and finally administered them, in
+heroic doses, to the members of a committee appointed by the Council of
+Health of the city of Paris. See <span class="smcap">Figuier</span>, <i>L'Ann&eacute;e Scientifique</i>, 1862, pp.
+353, 384. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_31">No. 31</a>.
+</p><p>
+It has long been known that the Russian peasantry eat, with impunity,
+mushrooms of species everywhere else regarded as very poisonous. Is it
+not probable that the secret of rendering them harmless&mdash;which was
+known to Pliny, though since forgotten in Italy&mdash;is possessed by the
+rustic Muscovites?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> <i>Physikalische Geographie</i>, p. 486.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> <i>Origin of Species</i>, American edition, p. 69.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where
+seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases, mentioned
+by Dr. Dwight (<i>Travels</i>, ii, pp. 438, 439), may be new to many
+readers:
+</p><p>
+"The lands [in Panton, Vermont], which have here been once cultivated,
+and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and
+fine growth of hickory [<i>Carya porcina</i>]. Of this wood there is not, I believe,
+a single tree in any original forest within fifty miles from this spot.
+The native growth was here white pine, of which I did not see a single stem
+in a whole grove of hickory."
+</p><p>
+The hickory is a walnut, bearing a fruit too heavy to be likely to be
+carried fifty miles by birds, and besides, I believe it is not eaten by any
+bird indigenous to Vermont.
+</p><p>
+"A field, about five miles from Northampton, on an eminence called
+Rail Hill, was cultivated about a century ago. The native growth here,
+and in all the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, &amp;c. As the
+field belonged to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning
+its history. It contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular
+parallelogram. As the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was
+given up. On this ground there sprang up a grove of white pines covering
+the field and retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there
+was not in it a single oak or chestnut tree. * * * There was not a single
+pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently
+near to have been planted on this spot. The fact that these white pines
+covered this field exactly, so as to preserve both its extent and its figure,
+and that there were none in the neighborhood, are decisive proofs that cultivation
+brought up the seeds of a former forest within the limits of vegetation,
+and gave them an opportunity to germinate."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a> Quaint old Valvasor had observed the subduing influence of nature's
+solitudes. In describing the lonely Canker-Thal, which, though rocky,
+was in his time well wooded with "fir, larches, beeches, and other trees,"
+he says: "Gladsomeness and beauty, which dwell in many valleys, may
+not be looked for there. The journey through it is cheerless, melancholy,
+wearisome, and serveth to temper and mortify over-joyousness of thought.
+* * * In sum it is a very wild, wherein the wildness of human pride
+doth grow tame."&mdash;<i>Ehre der Crain</i>, i, p. 136, b.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> Valvasor says, in the same paragraph from which I have just quoted,
+"In my many journeys through this valley, I did never have sight of so
+much as a single bird."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a> Smela, in the government of Kiew, has, for some years, not suffered
+at all from the locusts, which formerly came every year in vast swarms,
+and the curculio, so injurious to the turnip crops, is less destructive there
+than in other parts of the province. This improvement is owing partly to
+the more thorough cultivation of the soil, partly to the groves which are
+interspersed among the plough lands. * * * When in the midst of the
+plains woods shall be planted and filled with insectivorous birds, the locusts
+will cease to be a plague and a terror to the farmer.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Rentzsch</span>, <i>Der Wald</i>,
+pp. 45, 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a> England is, I believe, the only country where private enterprise has
+pursued sylviculture on a really great scale, though admirable examples
+have been set in many others on both sides of the Atlantic. In England
+the law of primogeniture, and other institutions and national customs
+which tend to keep large estates long undivided and in the same line of
+inheritance, the wealth of the landholders, and the difficulty of finding safe
+and profitable investments of capital, combine to afford encouragements
+for the plantation of forests, which nowhere else exist in the same degree.
+The climate of England, too, is very favorable to the growth of forest trees,
+though the character of surface secures a large part of the island from the
+evils which have resulted from the destruction of the woods elsewhere,
+and therefore their restoration is a matter of less geographical importance
+in England than on the Continent.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> The preservation of the woods on the eastern frontier of France, as
+a kind of natural abattis, is also recognized by the Government of that
+country as an important measure of military defence, though there have
+been conflicting opinions on the subject.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> Let us take the supply of timber for railroad ties. According to
+Clav&eacute; (p. 248), France has 9,000 kilom&egrave;tres of railway in operation, 7,000
+in construction, half of which is built with a double track. Adding turnouts
+and extra tracks at stations, the number of ties required for a single
+track is stated at 1,200 to the kilom&egrave;tre, or, as Clav&eacute; computes, for the
+entire network of France, 58,000,000. As the schoolboys say, "this sum
+does not prove;" for 16,000 + 8,000 for the double track halfway =
+24,000, and 24,000 &times; 1,200 = 28,800,000. According to Bigelow (<i>Les &Eacute;tats
+Unis en 1863</i>, p. 439), the United States had in operation or construction
+on the first of January, 1862, 51,000 miles, or about 81,000 kilom&egrave;tres of
+railroad, and the military operations of the present civil war are rapidly
+extending the system. Allowing the same proportion as in France, the
+American railroads required 97,200,000 ties in 1862. The consumption of
+timber in Europe and America during the present generation, occasioned
+by this demand, has required the sacrifice of many hundred thousand acres
+of forest, and if we add the quantity employed for telegraph posts, we have
+an amount of destruction, for entirely new purposes, which is really appalling.
+</p><p>
+The consumption of wood for lucifer matches is enormous, and I have
+heard of several instances where tracts of pine forest, hundreds and even
+thousands of acres in extent, have been purchased and felled, solely to
+supply timber for this purpose.
+</p><p>
+The demand for wood for small carvings and for children's toys is incredibly
+large. Rentzsch states the export of such objects from the town
+of Sonneberg alone to have amounted, in 1853, to 60,000 centner, or three
+thousand tons' weight.&mdash;<i>Der Wald</i>, p. 68. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_33">No. 33</a>.
+</p><p>
+The importance of so managing the forest that it may continue indefinitely
+to furnish an adequate supply of material for naval architecture is
+well illustrated by some remarks of the same author in the valuable little
+work just cited. He suggests that the prosperity of modern England is
+due, in no small degree, to the supplies of wood and other material for
+building and equipping ships, received from the forests of her colonies and
+of other countries with which she has maintained close commercial relations,
+and he adds: "Spain, which by her position seemed destined for
+universal power, and once, in fact, possessed it, has lost her political rank,
+because during the unwise administration of the successors of Philip II,
+the empty exchequer could not furnish the means of building new fleets;
+for the destruction of the forests had raised the price of timber above the
+resources of the state."&mdash;<i>Der Wald</i>, p. 63.
+</p><p>
+The market price of timber, like that of all other commodities, may be
+said, in a general way, to be regulated by the laws of demand and supply,
+but it is also controlled by those seemingly unrelated accidents which so
+often disappoint the calculations of political economists in other branches
+of commerce. A curious case of this sort is noticed by <span class="smcap">Cerini</span>, <i>Dell'
+Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi</i>, p. 17: "In the mountains on the
+Lago Maggiore, in years when maize is cheap, the woodcutters can provide
+themselves with corn meal enough for a week by three days' labor,
+and they refuse to work the remaining four. Hence the dealers in wood,
+not being able to supply the demand, for want of laborers, are obliged to
+raise the price for the following season, both for timber and for firewood;
+so that a low price of grain occasions a high price of building lumber and
+of fuel. The consequence is, that though the poor have supplied themselves
+cheaply with food, they must pay dear for firewood, and they cannot
+get work, because the high price of lumber has discouraged repairs
+and building, the expense of which landed proprietors cannot undertake
+when their incomes have been reduced by sales of grain at low rates, and
+hence there is not demand enough for lumber to induce the timber merchants
+to furnish employment to the woodmen."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a> Besides the substitution of iron for wood, a great saving of consumption
+of this latter material has been effected by the revival of ancient
+methods of increasing its durability, and the invention of new processes
+for the same purpose. The most effectual preservative yet discovered for
+wood employed on land, is sulphate of copper, a solution of which is
+introduced into the pores of the wood while green, by soaking, by forcing-pumps,
+or, most economically, by the simple pressure of a column of the
+fluid in a small pipe connected with the end of the piece of timber subjected
+to the treatment. Clav&eacute; (<i>&Eacute;tudes Foresti&egrave;res</i>, pp. 240-249) gives an
+interesting account of the various processes employed for rendering wood
+imperishable, and states that railroad ties injected with sulphate of copper
+in 1846, were found absolutely unaltered in 1855; and telegraphic posts
+prepared two years earlier, are now in a state of perfect preservation.
+</p><p>
+For many purposes, the method of injection is too expensive, and some
+simpler process is much to be desired. The question of the proper time
+of felling timber is not settled, and the best modes of air, water, and steam
+seasoning are not yet fully ascertained. Experiments on these subjects
+would be well worth the patronage of governments in new countries,
+where they can be very easily made, without the necessity of much waste
+of valuable material, and without expensive arrangements for observation.
+</p><p>
+The practice of stripping living trees of their bark some years before
+they are felled, is as old as the time of Vitruvius, but is much less followed
+than it deserves, partly because the timber of trees so treated inclines to
+crack and split, and partly because it becomes so hard as to be wrought
+with considerable difficulty.
+</p><p>
+In America, economy in the consumption of fuel has been much promoted
+by the substitution of coal for wood, the general use of stoves both
+for wood and coal, and recently by the employment of anthracite in the
+furnaces of stationary and locomotive steam-engines. All the objections
+to the use of anthracite for this latter purpose appear to have been overcome,
+and the improvements in its combustion have been attended with
+a great pecuniary saving, and with much advantage to the preservation of
+the woods.
+</p><p>
+The employment of coal has produced a great reduction in the consumption
+of fire wood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of fire wood for the
+city required 1,200,000 st&egrave;res, or cubic m&egrave;tres; in 1859, it had fallen to
+501,805, while, in the mean time, the consumption of coal had risen from
+600,000 to 432,000,000 metrical quintals. See <span class="smcap">Clav&eacute;</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes</i>, p. 212.
+</p><p>
+I think there must be some error in this last sum, as 432 millions
+of metrical quintals would amount to 43 millions of tons, a quantity which
+it is difficult to suppose could be consumed in the city of Paris. The price
+of fire wood has scarcely advanced at all in Paris for half a century, though
+that of timber generally has risen enormously.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a>  In the first two years of the present civil war in the United States,
+twenty-eight thousand walnut trees were felled to supply a single European
+manufactory of gunstocks for the American market.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of
+extensive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact, that wolves were
+abundant, not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are now
+neither wolves nor woods to shelter them. Arthur Young more than once
+speaks of the "innumerable multitudes" of these animals which infested
+France in 1789, and George Sand states, in the <i>Histoire de ma Vie</i>, that
+some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased travellers
+on horseback in the Southern provinces, and literally knocked at the doors
+of her father-in-law's country seat.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> In the <i>Recepte V&eacute;ritable</i>, Palissy having expressed his indignation at
+the folly of men in destroying the woods, his interlocutor defends the
+policy of felling them, by citing the example of "divers bishops, cardinals,
+priors, abbots, monkeries, and chapters, which, by cutting their woods,
+have made three profits," the sale of the timber, the rent of the ground,
+and the "good portion" they received of the grain grown by the peasants
+upon it. To this argument, Palissy replies: "I cannot enough detest this
+thing, and I call it not an error, but a curse and a calamity to all France;
+for when forests shall be cut, all arts shall cease, and they which practise
+them shall be driven out to eat grass with Nebuchadnezzar and the beasts
+of the field. I have divers times thought to set down in writing the arts
+which shall perish when there shall be no more wood; but when I had
+written down a great number, I did perceive that there could be no end
+of my writing, and having diligently considered, I found there was not
+any which could be followed without wood." * * "And truly I could
+well allege to thee a thousand reasons, but 'tis so cheap a philosophy, that
+the very chamber wenches, if they do but think, may see that without
+wood, it is not possible to exercise any manner of human art or cunning."&mdash;<i>&#338;uvres
+de</i> <span class="smcap">Bernard Palissy</span>, p. 89.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> Since writing the above paragraph, I have found the view I have
+taken of this point confirmed by the careful investigations of Rentzsch,
+who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire surface at
+twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes that near
+the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation from
+the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See Rentzsch's
+very valuable prize essay, <i>Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der
+Volkswirthschaft</i>, cap. viii.
+</p><p>
+The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the
+German States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any
+growth but that of wood, because the form and geological character of her
+mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and
+because at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited both
+by extreme drought and by deluging rains.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tudes sur l'&Eacute;conomie Foresti&egrave;re</i>, p. 261. Clav&eacute; adds (p. 262): "The
+Russian forests are very unequally distributed through the territory of this
+vast empire. In the north they form immense masses, and cover whole
+provinces, while in the south they are so completely wanting that
+the inhabitants have no other fuel than straw, dung, rushes, and heath."
+* * * "At Moscow, firewood costs thirty per cent. more than at
+Paris, while, at the distance of a few leagues, it sells for a tenth of that
+price."
+</p><p>
+This state of things is partly due to the want of facilities of transportation,
+and some parts of the United States are in a similar condition.
+During a severe winter, six or seven years ago, the sudden freezing of the
+canals and rivers, before a large American town had received its usual
+supply of fuel, occasioned an enormous rise in the price of wood and coal,
+and the poor suffered severely for want of it. Within a few hours of the
+city were large forests and an abundant stock of firewood felled and prepared
+for burning. This might easily have been carried to town by the
+railroads which passed through the woods; but the managers of the roads
+refused to receive it as freight, because the opening of a new market
+for wood might raise the price of the fuel they employed for their locomotives.
+</p><p>
+Hohenstein, who was long professionally employed as a forester in Russia,
+describes the consequences of the general war upon the woods in that
+country as already most disastrous, and as threatening still more ruinous
+evils. The river Volga, the life artery of Russian internal commerce, is
+drying up from this cause, and the great Muscovite plains are fast advancing
+to a desolation like that of Persia.&mdash;<i>Der Wald</i>, p. 223.
+</p><p>
+The level of the Caspian Sea is eighty-three feet lower than that of the
+Sea of Azoff, and the surface of Lake Aral is fast sinking. Von Baer
+maintains that the depression of the Caspian was produced by a sudden
+subsidence, from geological causes, and not gradually by excess of evaporation
+over supply. See <i>Kaspische Studien</i>, p. 25. But this subsidence
+diminished the area and consequently the evaporation of that sea, and the
+rivers which once maintained its ancient equilibrium ought to raise it to
+its former level, if their own flow had not been diminished. It is, indeed,
+not proved that the laying bare of a wooded country diminishes the total
+annual precipitation upon it; but it is certain that the summer evaporation
+from the surface of a champaign region, like that through which the
+Volga, its tributaries, and the feeders of Lake Aral flow, is increased by
+the removal of its woods. Hence, though as much rain may still fall in
+the valleys of those rivers as when their whole surface was covered with
+forests, a less quantity of water may be delivered by them since their
+basins were cleared, and therefore the present condition of the inland
+waters in question may be due to the removal of the forests in their
+basins.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> Rentzsch <i>(Der Wald, etc.</i>, pp. 123, 124) states the proportions of
+woodland in different European countries as follows:
+</p>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="" rules="cols">
+<tr><th class="bbt"></th><th class="bbt">Per cent.</th><th class="bbt">Acres per head<br />of population.</th><th class="bbt"></th><th class="bbt"></th><th class="bbt">Per cent.</th><th class="bbt">Acres per head<br />of population.</th></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Germany</td><td align='left'> 26.58</td><td align='left'> 0.6638</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'> Switzerland</td><td align='left'> 15.</td><td align='left'> 0.396</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Great Britain</td><td align='left'> &nbsp; 5.</td><td align='left'> 0.1</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'> Holland</td><td align='left'> &nbsp; 7.10</td><td align='left'> 0.12</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>France</td><td align='left'> 16.79</td><td align='left'> 0.3766</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'> Belgium</td><td align='left'> 18.52</td><td align='left'> 0.186</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Russia</td><td align='left'> 30.90</td><td align='left'> 4.28</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'> Spain</td><td align='left'> &nbsp; 5.52</td><td align='left'> 0.291</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sweden</td><td align='left'> 60.</td><td align='left'> 8.55</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'> Portugal</td><td align='left'> &nbsp; 4.40</td><td align='left'> 0.182</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Norway</td><td align='left'> 66.</td><td align='left'> 24.61</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'> Sardinia</td><td align='left'> 12.29</td><td align='left'> 0.223</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Denmark</td><td align='left'> &nbsp; 5.50</td><td align='left'> 0.22</td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'> Naples</td><td align='left'> &nbsp; 9.43</td><td align='left'> 0.138</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td><td class="bb"></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p>
+Probably no European countries can so well dispense with the forests,
+in their capacity of conservative influences, as England and Ireland. Their
+insular position and latitude secure an abundance of atmospheric moisture,
+and the general inclination of surface is not such as to expose it to special
+injury from torrents. The due proportion of woodland in England and
+Ireland is, therefore, almost purely an economical question, to be decided
+by the comparative direct pecuniary return from forest growth, pasturage,
+and plough land.
+</p><p>
+In Scotland, where the country is for the most part more broken and
+mountainous, the general destruction of the forests has been attended with
+very serious evils, and it is in Scotland that many of the most extensive
+British forest plantations have now been formed. But although the inclination
+of surface in Scotland is rapid, the geological constitution of the soil
+is not of a character to promote such destructive degradation by running
+water as in Southern France, and it has not to contend with the parching
+droughts by which the devastations of the torrents are rendered more injurious
+in that part of the French empire.
+</p><p>
+In giving the proportion of woodland to population, I compute
+Rentzsch's Morgen at .3882 of an English acre, because I find, by Alexander's
+most accurate and valuable Dictionary of Weights and Measures,
+that this is the value of the Dresden Morgen, and Rentzsch is a Saxon
+writer. In the different German States, there are more than twenty different
+land measures known by the name of Morgen, varying from about
+one third of an acre to more than three acres in value. When will the
+world be wise enough to unite in adopting the French metrical and monetary
+systems? As to the latter, never while Christendom continues to be
+ruled by money changers, who can compel you to part with your sovereigns
+in France at twenty-five francs, and in England to accept fifteen shillings
+for your napoleons. I speak as a sufferer. <i>Experto crede Roberto.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> According to the maxims of English jurisprudence, the common law
+consists of general customs so long established that "the memory of man
+runneth not to the contrary." In other words, long custom makes law.
+In new countries, the change of circumstances creates new customs, and,
+in time, new law, without the aid of legislation. Had the American colonists
+observed a more sparing economy in the treatment of their woods, a
+new code of customary forest law would have sprung up and acquired the
+force of a statute. Popular habit was fast elaborating the fundamental
+principles of such a code, when the rapid increase in the value of timber,
+in consequence of the reckless devastation of the woodlands, made it the
+interest of the proprietors to interfere with this incipient system of forest
+jurisprudence, and appeal to the rules of English law for the protection
+of their woods. The courts have sustained these appeals, and forest property
+is now legally as inviolable as any other, though common opinion
+still combats the course of judicial decision on such questions.
+</p><p>
+In the United States, swarms of honey bees, on leaving the parent
+hive, often take up their quarters in hollow trees in the neighboring
+woods. By the early customs of New England, the finder of a "bee tree"
+on the land of another owner was regarded as entitled to the honey by
+right of discovery; and as a necessary incident of that right, he might cut
+the tree, at the proper season, without asking permission of the proprietor
+of the soil. The quantity of "wild honey" in a tree was often large, and
+"bee hunting" was so profitable that it became almost a regular profession.
+The "bee hunter" sallied forth with a small box containing
+honey and a little vermilion. The bees which were attracted by the
+honey marked themselves with the vermilion, and hence were more
+readily followed in their homeward flight, and recognized when they returned
+a second time for booty. When loaded with spoil, this insect returns
+to his hive by the shortest route, and hence a straight line is popularly
+called in America a "bee line." By such a line, the hunter followed
+the bees to their sylvan hive, marked the tree with his initials, and returned
+to secure his prize in the autumn. When the right of the "bee
+hunter" was at last disputed by the land proprietors, it was with difficulty
+that judgments could be obtained, in inferior courts, in favor of the latter,
+and it was only after repeated decisions of the higher legal tribunals that
+the superior right of the owner of the soil was at last acquiesced in.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes</i>, p. 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> "In America," says Clav&eacute; (p. 124, 125), "where there is a vast extent
+of land almost without pecuniary value, but where labor is dear and
+the rate of interest high, it is profitable to till a large surface at the least
+possible cost; <i>extensive</i> cultivation is there the most advantageous. In
+England, France, and Germany, where every corner of soil is occupied,
+and the least bit of ground is sold at a high price, but where labor and
+capital are comparatively cheap, it is wisest to employ <i>intensive</i> cultivation.
+* * * All the efforts of the cultivator ought to be directed to
+the obtaining of a given result with the least sacrifice, and there is equally
+a loss to the commonwealth if the application of improved agricultural
+processes be neglected where they are advantageous, or if they be employed
+where they are not required. * * *  In this point of view,
+sylviculture must follow the same laws as agriculture, and, like it, be
+modified according to the economical conditions of different states. In
+countries abounding in good forests, and thinly peopled, elementary and
+cheap methods must be pursued; in civilized regions, where a dense population
+requires that the soil shall be made to produce all it can yield, the
+regular artificial forest, with all the processes that science teaches, should
+be cultivated. It would be absurd to apply to the endless woods of Brazil
+and of Canada the method of the Spessart by "double stages," and not
+less so in our country, where every yard of ground has a high value, to
+leave to nature the task of propagating trees, and to content ourselves
+with cutting, every twenty or twenty-five years, the meagre growths that
+chance may have produced."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> It is often laid down as a universal law, that the wood of trees of
+slow vegetation is superior to that of quick growth. This is one of those
+commonplaces by which men love to shield themselves from the labor of
+painstaking observation. It has, in fact, so many exceptions, that it may
+be doubted whether it is in any sense true. Most of the cedars are slow
+of growth; but while the timber of some of them is firm and durable, that
+of others is light, brittle, and perishable. The hemlock spruce is slower
+of growth than the pines, but its wood is of very little value. The pasture
+oak and beech show a breadth of grain&mdash;and, of course, an annual increment&mdash;twice
+as great as trees of the same species grown in the woods; and
+the American locust, <i>Robinia pseudacacia</i>, the wood of which is of extreme
+toughness and durability, is, of all trees indigenous to Northeastern
+America, by far the most rapid in growth.
+</p><p>
+As an illustration of the mutual interdependence of the mechanic arts,
+I may mention that in Italy, where stone, brick, and plaster are almost the
+only materials used in architecture, and where the "hollow ware" kitchen
+implements are of copper or of clay, the ordinary tools for working wood
+are of a very inferior description, and the locust timber is found too hard
+for their temper. Southey informs us, in "Espriella's Letters," that when a
+small quantity of mahogany was brought to England, early in the last
+century, the cabinetmakers were unable to use it, from the defective temper
+of their tools, until the demand for furniture from the new wood compelled
+them to improve the quality of their implements. In America, the
+cheapness of wood long made it the preferable material for almost all purposes
+to which it could by any possibility be applied. The mechanical
+cutlery and artisans' tools of the United States are of admirable temper,
+finish, and convenience, and no wood is too hard, or otherwise too refractory,
+to be wrought with great facility, both by hand tools and by the
+multitude of ingenious machines which the Americans have invented for
+this purpose.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tudes Foresti&egrave;res</i>, p. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tudes Foresti&egrave;res</i>, p. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> For very full catalogues of American forest trees, and remarks on
+their geographical distribution, consult papers on the subject by Dr. J. G.
+Cooper, in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1858, and the
+Report of the United States Patent Office, Agricultural Division, for 1860.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> Although Spenser's catalogue of trees occurs in the first canto of the
+first book of the "Fa&euml;ry Queene"&mdash;the only canto of that exquisite poem
+actually read by most students of English literature&mdash;it is not so generally
+familiar as to make the quotation of it altogether superfluous:
+</p><p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">VII.</span><br />
+<br />
+Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand,<br />
+A shadie grove not farr away they spide,<br />
+That promist ayde the tempest to withstand;<br />
+Whose loftie trees, yelad with sommers pride,<br />
+Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide,<br />
+Not perceable with power of any starr:<br />
+And all within were pathes and alleies wide,<br />
+With footing worne, and leading inward farr;<br />
+Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entred ar.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">VIII.</span><br />
+<br />
+And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led,<br />
+Joying to heare the birdes sweete harmony,<br />
+Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred,<br />
+Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky.<br />
+Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy,<br />
+The sayling pine; the cedar stout and tall;<br />
+The vine-propp elm; the poplar never dry;<br />
+The builder oake, sole king of forrests all;<br />
+The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall;<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">IX.</span><br />
+<br />
+The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours<br />
+And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still;<br />
+The willow, worne of forlorn paramours;<br />
+The eugh, obedient to the benders will;<br />
+The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill;<br />
+The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound;<br />
+The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill;<br />
+The fruitfull olive; and the platane round;<br />
+The carver holme; the maple seeldom inward sound.
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> The walnut is a more valuable tree than is generally supposed. It
+yields one third of the oil produced in France, and in this respect occupies
+an intermediate position between the olive of the south, and the oleaginous
+seeds of the north. A hectare (about two and a half acres), will produce
+nuts to the value of five hundred francs a year, which cost nothing but
+the gathering. Unfortunately, its maturity must be long waited for, and
+more nut-trees are felled than planted. The demand for its wood in
+cabinet work is the principal cause of its destruction. See <span class="smcap">Lavergne</span>,
+<i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale de la France</i>, p. 253.
+</p><p>
+According to Cosimo Ridolfi (Lezioni Orali, ii. p. 424), France obtains
+three times as much oil from the walnut as from the olive, and nearly as
+much as from all oleaginous seeds together. He states that the walnut bears
+nuts at the age of twenty years, and yields its maximum product at seventy,
+and that a hectare of ground, with thirty trees, or twelve to the acre, is
+equal to a capital of twenty-five hundred francs.
+</p><p>
+The nut of this tree is known in the United States as the "English
+walnut." The fruit and the wood much resemble those of the American
+black walnut, <i>Juglans nigra</i>, but for cabinet work the American is the
+more beautiful material, especially when the large knots are employed.
+The timber of the European species, when straight grained, and <i>clear</i>, or
+free from knots, is, for ordinary purposes, better than that of the American
+black walnut, but bears no comparison with the wood of the hickory, when
+strength combined with elasticity is required, and its nut is very inferior
+in taste to that of the shagbark, as well as to the butternut, which it somewhat
+resembles.
+</p><p>
+"The chestnut is more valuable still, for it produces on a sterile soil,
+which, without it, would yield only ferns and heaths, an abundant nutriment
+for man."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lavergne</span>, <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale de la France</i>, p. 253.
+</p><p>
+I believe the varieties developed by cultivation are less numerous in
+the walnut than in the chestnut, which latter tree is often grafted in
+Southern Europe.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> This fir is remarkable for its tendency to cicatrize or heal over its
+stumps, a property which it possesses in common with some other firs, the
+maritime pine, and the European larch. When these trees grow in thick
+clumps, their roots are apt to unite by a species of natural grafting, and
+if one of them be felled, although its own proper rootlets die, the stump
+may continue, sometimes for a century, to receive nourishment from the
+radicles of the surrounding trees, and a dome of wood and bark of considerable
+thickness be formed over it. The cicatrization is, however, only
+apparent, for the entire stump, except the outside ring of annual growth,
+soon dies, and even decays within its covering, without sending out new
+shoots.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> At the age of twelve or fifteen years, the cork tree is stripped of its
+outer bark for the first time. This first yield is of inferior quality, and is
+employed for floats for nets and buoys, or burnt for lampblack. After this,
+a new layer of cork, an inch or an inch and a quarter in thickness, is formed
+about once in ten years, and is removed in large sheets without injury to
+the tree, which lives a hundred and fifty years or more. According to
+Clav&eacute; (p. 252), the annual product of a forest of cork oaks is calculated at
+about 660 kilogrammes, worth 150 francs, to the hectare, which, deducting
+expenses, leaves a profit of 100 francs. This is about equal to 250 pound
+weight, and eight dollars profit to the acre. The cork oaks of the national
+domain in Algeria cover about 500,000 acres, and are let to individuals at
+rates which are expected, when the whole is rented, to yield to the state
+a revenue of about $2,000,000.
+</p><p>
+George Sand, in the <i>Histoire de ma Vie</i>, speaks of the cork forests in
+Southern France as among the most profitable of rural possessions, and
+states, what I do not remember to have seen noticed elsewhere, that Russia
+is the best customer for cork. The large sheets taken from the trees are
+slit into thin plates, and used to line the walls of apartments in that cold
+climate.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> The walnut, the chestnut, the apple, and the pear are common to
+the border between the countries I have mentioned, but the range of the
+other trees is bounded by the Alps, and by a well-defined and sharply
+drawn line to the west of those mountains. I cannot give statistical details
+as to the number of any of the trees in question, or as to the area they
+would cover if brought together in a given country. From some peculiarity
+in the sky of Europe, cultivated plants will thrive, in Northern Italy,
+in Southern France, and even in Switzerland, under a depth of shade
+where no crop, not even grass, worth harvesting, would grow in the
+United States with an equally high summer temperature. Hence the
+cultivation of all these trees is practicable in Europe to a greater extent
+than would be supposed reconcilable with the interests of agriculture.
+Some idea of the importance of the olive orchards may be formed from
+the fact that Sicily alone, an island scarcely exceeding 10,000 square miles
+in area, of which one third at least is absolutely barren, has exported to
+the single port of Marseilles more than 2,000,000 pounds weight of olive
+oil per year, for the last twenty years.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292"></a><a href="#FNanchor_292_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a> It is hard to say how far the peculiar form of the graceful crown of
+this pine is due to pruning. It is true that the extremities of the topmost
+branches are rarely lopped, but the lateral boughs are almost uniformly
+removed to a very considerable height, and it is not improbable that the
+shape of the top is thereby affected.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293"></a><a href="#FNanchor_293_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a> Besides this, in a country so diversified in surface&mdash;I wish we could
+with the French say <i>accidented</i>&mdash;as Italy with the exception of the
+champaign region drained by the Po, every new field of view requires
+either an extraordinary <i>coup d'&#339;il</i> in the spectator, or a long study, in
+order to master its relief, its plans, its salient and retreating angles. In
+summer, the universal greenery confounds light and shade, distance and
+foreground; and though the impression upon a traveller, who journeys for
+the sake of "sensations," may be strengthened by the mysterious annihilation
+of all standards for the measurement of space, yet the superior
+intelligibility of the winter scenery of Italy is more profitable to those
+who see with a view to analyze.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294"></a><a href="#FNanchor_294_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a> Copse, or coppice, from the French <i>couper</i>, to cut, signifies properly
+a wood the trees of which are cut at certain periods of immature growth,
+and allowed to shoot up again from the roots; but it has come to signify,
+very commonly, a young wood, grove, or thicket, without reference to its
+origin, or to its character of a forest crop.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295"></a><a href="#FNanchor_295_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a> It has been recently stated, upon the evidence of the Government
+foresters of Greece, and of the queen's gardener, that a large wood has
+been discovered in Arcadia, consisting of a fir which has the property of
+sending up both vertical and lateral shoots from the stump of felled trees
+and forming a new crown. It was at first supposed that this forest grew
+only on the "mountains," of which the hero of About's most amusing story,
+<i>Le Roi des Montagnes</i>, was "king;" but it is now said that small stumps,
+with the shoots attached, have been sent to Germany, and recognized by
+able botanists as true natural products.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a> Natural forests are rarely, if ever, composed of trees of a single
+species, and experience has shown that oaks and other broad-leaved trees,
+planted as artificial woods, require to be mixed, or associated with others
+of different habits.
+</p><p>
+In the forest of Fontainebleau, "oaks, mingled with beeches in due
+proportion," says Clav&eacute;, "may arrive at the age of five or six hundred
+years in full vigor, and attain dimensions which I have never seen surpassed;
+when, however, they are wholly unmixed with other trees, they
+begin to decay and die at the top, at the age of forty or fifty years, like
+men, old before their time, weary of the world, and longing only to quit
+it. This has been observed in most of the oak plantations of which I have
+spoken, and they have not been able to attain to full growth. When the
+vegetation was perceived to languish, they were cut, in the hope that this
+operation would restore their vigor, and that the new shoots would succeed
+better than the original trees; and, in fact, they seemed to be recovering
+for the first few years. But the shoots were soon attacked by the
+same decay, and the operation had to be renewed at shorter and shorter
+intervals, until at last it was found necessary to treat as coppices plantations
+originally designed for the full-growth system. Nor was this all:
+the soil, periodically bared by these cuttings, became impoverished, and
+less and less suited to the growth of the oak. * * * It was then proposed
+to introduce the pine and plant with it the vacancies and glades.
+* * * By this means, the forest was saved from the ruin which threatened
+it, and now more than 10,000 acres of pines, from fifteen to thirty
+years old, are disseminated at various points, sometimes intermixed with
+broad-leaved trees, sometimes forming groves by themselves."&mdash;<i>Revue des
+Deux Mondes</i>, Mai, 1863, pp. 153, 154.
+</p><p>
+The forests of Denmark, which, in modern times, have been succeeded
+by the beech&mdash;a species more inclined to be exclusive than any other
+broad-leaved tree&mdash;were composed of birches, oaks, firs, aspens, willows,
+hazel, and maple, the first three being the leading species. At present,
+the beech greatly predominates.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Vaupell</span>, <i>B&ouml;gens Indvandring</i>, pp. 19, 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tudes Foresti&egrave;res</i>, p. 89.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298"></a><a href="#FNanchor_298_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a> The grounds which it is most important to clothe with wood as a
+conservative influence, and which, also, can best be spared from agricultural
+use, are steep hillsides. But the performance of all the offices of the
+forester to the tree&mdash;seeding, planting, thinning, and finally felling and removing
+for consumption&mdash;is more laborious upon a rapid declivity than on
+a level soil, and at the same time it is difficult to apply irrigation or
+manures to trees so situated. Experience has shown that there is great
+advantage in terracing the face of a hill before planting it, both as preventing
+the wash of the earth by checking the flow of water down its
+slope, and as presenting a surface favorable for irrigation, as well as for
+manuring and cultivating the tree. But even without so expensive a process,
+very important results have been obtained by simply ditching declivities.
+"In order to hasten the growth of wood on the flanks of a mountain,
+Mr. Eug&egrave;ne Chevandier divided the slope into zones forty or fifty
+feet wide, by horizontal ditches closed at both ends, and thereby obtained,
+from firs of different ages, shoots double the dimensions of those which
+grew on a dry soil of the same character, where the water was allowed to
+run off without obstruction."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Dumont</span>, <i>Des Travaux Publics, etc.</i>, pp.
+94-96.
+</p><p>
+The ditches were about two feet and a half deep, and three feet and a
+half wide, and they cost about forty francs the hectare, or three dollars the
+acre. This extraordinary growth was produced wholly by the retention
+of the rain water in the ditches, whence it filtered through the whole soil
+and supplied moisture to the roots of the trees. It may be doubted
+whether in a climate cold enough to freeze the entire contents of the
+ditches in winter, it would not be expedient to draw off the water in the
+autumn, as the presence of so large a quantity of ice in the soil might prove
+injurious to trees too young and small to shelter the ground effectually
+against frost.
+</p><p>
+Chevandier computes that, if the annual growth of the pine in the
+marshy soil of the Vosges be represented by one, it will equal two in dry
+ground, four or five on slopes so ditched or graded as to retain the water
+flowing upon them from roads or steep declivities, and six where the
+earth is kept constantly moist by infiltration from running brooks.&mdash;<i>Comptes
+Rendus &agrave; l'Acad&eacute;mie des Sciences</i>&mdash;t. xix, Juillet, Dec., 1844,
+p. 167.
+</p><p>
+The effect of accidental irrigation is well shown in the growth of the
+trees planted along the canals of irrigation which traverse the fields in
+many parts of Italy. They flourish most luxuriantly, in spite of continual
+lopping, and yield a very important contribution to the stock of fuel for
+domestic use; while trees, situated so far from canals as to be out of the
+reach of infiltration from them, are of much slower growth, under circumstances
+otherwise equally favorable.
+</p><p>
+In other experiments of Chevandier, under better conditions, the yield
+of wood was increased, by judicious irrigation, in the ratio of seven to one,
+the profits in that of twelve to one. At the Exposition of 1855, Chambrelent
+exhibited young trees, which, in four years from the seed, had grown
+to the height of sixteen and twenty feet, and the diameter of ten and
+twelve inches. Chevandier experimented with various manures, and
+found that some of them might be profitably applied to young, but not
+to old trees, the quantity required in the latter case being too great.
+Wood ashes and the refuse of soda factories are particularly recommended.
+I have seen an extraordinary growth produced in fir trees by the application
+of soapsuds.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299"></a><a href="#FNanchor_299_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a> Although the economy of the forest has received little attention in
+the United States, no lover of American nature can have failed to observe
+a marked difference between a native wood from which cattle are excluded
+and one where they are permitted to browse. A few seasons suffice for
+the total extirpation of the "underbrush," including the young trees on
+which alone the reproduction of the forest depends, and all the branches
+of those of larger growth which hang within reach of the cattle are
+stripped of their buds and leaves, and soon wither and fall off. These
+effects are observable at a great distance, and a wood pasture is recognized,
+almost as far as it can be seen, by the regularity with which its lower
+foliage terminates at what Ruskin somewhere calls the "cattle line." This
+always runs parallel to the surface of the ground, and is determined by the
+height to which domestic quadrupeds can reach to feed upon the leaves.
+In describing a visit to the grand-ducal farm of San Rossore near Pisa,
+where a large herd of camels is kept, Chateauvieux says: "In passing
+through a wood of evergreen oaks, I observed that all the twigs and
+foliage of the trees were clipped up to the height of about twelve feet
+above the ground, without leaving a single spray below that level. I was
+informed that the browsing of the camels had trimmed the trees as high
+as they could reach."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lullin de Chateauvieux</span>, <i>Lettres sur l'Italie</i>, p. 113.
+</p><p>
+The removal of the shelter afforded by the brushwood and the pendulous
+branches of trees permits drying and chilling winds to parch and cool
+the ground, and of course injuriously affects the growth of the wood. But
+this is not all. The tread of quadrupeds exposes and bruises the roots of
+the trees, which often die from this cause, as any one may observe by following
+the paths made by cattle through woodlands.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_300_300" id="Footnote_300_300"></a><a href="#FNanchor_300_300"><span class="label">[300]</span></a> I have remarked elsewhere that most insects which deposit and hatch
+their eggs in the wood of the natural forest confine themselves to dead
+trees. Not only is this the fact, but it is also true that many of the borers
+attack only freshly cut timber. Their season of labor is a short one, and
+unless the tree is cut during this period, it is safe from them. In summer
+you may hear them plying their augers in the wood of a young pine with
+soft green bark, as you sit upon its trunk, within a week after it has been
+felled, but the windfalls of the winter lie uninjured by the worm and even
+undecayed for centuries. In the pine woods of New England, after the
+regular lumberman has removed the standing trees, these old trunks are
+hauled out from the mosses and leaves which half cover them, and often
+furnish excellent timber. The slow decay of such timber in the woods, it
+may be remarked, furnishes another proof of the uniformity of temperature
+and humidity in the forest, for the trunk of a tree lying on grass or
+plough land, and of course exposed to all the alternations of climate, hardly
+resists complete decomposition for a generation. The forests of Europe
+exhibit similar facts. Wessely, in a description of the primitive wood of
+Neuwald in Lower Austria, says that the windfalls required from 150 to
+200 years for entire decay.-<i>-Die Oesterreichischen Alpenl&auml;nder und ihre
+Forste</i>, p. 312.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301_301" id="Footnote_301_301"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301_301"><span class="label">[301]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Vaupell</span>, <i>B&ouml;gens Indvandring i de Danske Skove</i>, pp. 29, 46. Vaupell
+further observes, on the page last quoted: "The removal of leaves is injurious
+to the forest, not only because it retards the growth of trees, but
+still more because it disqualifies the soil for the production of particular
+species. When the beech languishes, and the development of its branches
+is less vigorous and its crown less spreading, it becomes unable to resist
+the encroachments of the fir. This latter tree thrives in an inferior soil,
+and being no longer stifled by the thick foliage of the beech, it spreads
+gradually through the wood, while the beech retreats before it and finally
+perishes."
+</p><p>
+The study of the natural order of succession in forest trees is of the
+utmost importance in sylviculture, because it guides us in the selection of
+the species to be employed in planting a new or restoring a decayed forest.
+When ground is laid bare both of trees and of vegetable mould, and left
+to the action of unaided and unobstructed nature, she first propagates trees
+which germinate and grow only under the influence of a full supply of
+light and air, and then, in succession, other species, according to their
+ability to bear the shade and their demand for more abundant nutriment.
+In Northern Europe, the larch, the white birch, the aspen, first appear;
+then follow the maple, the alder, the ash, the fir; then the oak and the
+linden; and then the beech. The trees called by these respective names
+in the United States are not specifically the same as their European namesakes,
+nor are they always even the equivalents of these latter, and therefore
+the order of succession in America would not be precisely as indicated
+by the foregoing list, but it nevertheless very nearly corresponds to it.
+</p><p>
+It is thought important to encourage the growth of the beech in Denmark
+and Northern Germany, because it upon the whole yields better
+returns than other trees, and particularly because it appears not to
+exhaust, but on the contrary to enrich the soil; for by shedding its leaves
+it returns to it most of the nutriment it has drawn from it, and at the same
+time furnishes a solvent which aids materially in the decomposition of its
+mineral constituents.
+</p><p>
+When the forest is left to itself, the order of succession is constant, and
+its occasional inversion is always explicable by some human interference.
+It is curious that the trees which require most light are content with the
+poorest soils, and <i>vice versa</i>. The trees which first appear are also those
+which propagate themselves farthest to the north. The birch, the larch,
+and the fir bear a severer climate than the oak, the oak than the beech.
+"These parallelisms," says Vaupell, "are very interesting, because they
+are entirely independent of each other," and each prescribes the same
+order of succession.&mdash;<i>B&ouml;gens Indvandring</i>, p. 42.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_302_302" id="Footnote_302_302"></a><a href="#FNanchor_302_302"><span class="label">[302]</span></a> When vigorous young locusts, of two or three inches in diameter, are
+polled, they throw out a great number of very thick-leaved shoots, which
+arrange themselves in a globular head, so unlike the natural crown of the
+acacia, that persons familiar only with the untrained tree often take them
+for a different species.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_303_303" id="Footnote_303_303"></a><a href="#FNanchor_303_303"><span class="label">[303]</span></a> The two ideas expressed in the text are not exactly equivalent,
+because, though the consumption of animal food diminishes the amount of
+vegetable aliment required for human use, yet the animals themselves consume
+a great quantity of grain and roots grown on ground ploughed and
+cultivated as regularly and as laboriously as any other.
+</p><p>
+The 170,000,000 bushels of oats raised in the United States in 1860,
+and fed to the 6,000,000 horses, the potatoes, the turnips, and the maize
+employed in fattening the oxen, the sheep, and the swine slaughtered
+the same year, occupied an extent of ground which, cultivated by hand
+labor and with Chinese industry and skill, would probably have produced
+a quantity of vegetable food equal in alimentary power to the flesh of the
+quadrupeds killed for domestic use. Hence, so far as the naked question of
+<i>amount</i> of aliment is concerned, the meadows and the pastures might as
+well have remained in the forest condition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304_304" id="Footnote_304_304"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304_304"><span class="label">[304]</span></a> According to Clav&eacute; (<i>&Eacute;tudes</i>, p. 159), the net revenue from the forests
+of the state in France, making no allowance for interest on the capital
+represented by the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it is about
+the same, though the cost of administration is twice as much as in France;
+in W&uuml;rtemberg it is about a dollar an acre; and in Prussia, where half the
+income is consumed in the expenses of administration, it sinks to less than
+half a dollar. This low rate in Prussia is partly explained by the fact that
+a considerable proportion of the annual product of wood is either conceded
+to persons claiming prescriptive rights, or sold, at a very small price, to
+the poor. Taking into account the capital invested in forest land, and
+adding interest upon it, Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with
+a view to felling it when eighty years old, would yield only one eighth of
+one per cent. annual profit; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one sixth of
+one per cent.; a beech wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one fourth
+of one per cent. The same author (p. 335) gives the net income of the
+New forest in England, over and above expenses, interest not computed, at
+twenty-five cents per acre only. In America, where no expense is bestowed
+upon the woods, the annual growth would generally be estimated
+much higher.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305_305" id="Footnote_305_305"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305_305"><span class="label">[305]</span></a> It is rare that a middle-aged American dies in the house where he
+was born, or an old man even in that which he has built; and this is
+scarcely less true of the rural districts, where every man owns his habitation,
+than of the city, where the majority live in hired houses. This life
+of incessant flitting is unfavorable for the execution of permanent improvements
+of every sort, and especially of those which, like the forest, are
+slow in repaying any part of the capital expended in them. It requires a
+very generous spirit in a landholder to plant a wood on a farm he expects
+to sell, or which he knows will pass out of the hands of his descendants
+at his death. But the very fact of having begun a plantation would attach
+the proprietor more strongly to the soil for which he had made such a
+sacrifice; and the paternal acres would have a greater value in the eyes of
+a succeeding generation, if thus improved and beautified by the labors of
+those from whom they were inherited. Landed property, therefore, the
+transfer of which is happily free from every legal impediment or restriction
+in the United States, would find, in the feelings thus prompted, a
+moral check against a too frequent change of owners, and would tend to
+remain long enough in one proprietor or one family to admit of gradual
+improvements which would increase its value both to the possessor and to
+the state.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306_306" id="Footnote_306_306"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306_306"><span class="label">[306]</span></a> It has been often asserted by eminent writers that a part of the fens
+in Lincolnshire was reclaimed by sea dikes under the government of the
+Romans. I have found no ancient authority in support of this allegation,
+nor can I refer to any passage in Roman literature in which sea dikes are
+expressly mentioned otherwise than as walls or piers, except that in Pliny
+(<i>Hist. Nat.</i> xxxvi, 24), where it is said that the Tyrrhenian sea was excluded
+from the Lucrine lake by dikes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_307_307" id="Footnote_307_307"></a><a href="#FNanchor_307_307"><span class="label">[307]</span></a> A friend has recently suggested to me an interesting illustration of
+the applicability of military instrumentalities to pacific art. The sale of
+gunpowder in the United States, he informs me, is smaller since the commencement
+of the present rebellion than before, because the war has
+caused the suspension of many public and private improvements, in the
+execution of which great quantities of powder were used for blasting.
+</p><p>
+It is alleged that the same observation was made in France during the
+Crimean war, and that, in general, not ten per cent. of the powder manufactured
+on either side of the Atlantic is employed for military purposes.
+</p><p>
+It is a fact not creditable to the moral sense of modern civilization, that
+very many of the most important improvements in machinery and the
+working of metals have originated in the necessities of war, and that
+man's highest ingenuity has been shown, and many of his most remarkable
+triumphs over natural forces achieved, in the contrivance of engines for
+the destruction of his fellow man. The military material employed by the
+first Napoleon has become, in less than two generations, nearly as obsolete
+as the sling and stone of the shepherd, and attack and defence now begin
+at distances to which, half a century ago, military reconnoissances hardly
+extended. Upon a partial view of the subject, the human race seems destined
+to become its own executioner&mdash;on the one hand, exhausting the capacity
+of the earth to furnish sustenance to her taskmaster; on the other,
+compensating diminished production by inventing more efficient methods
+of exterminating the consumer.
+</p><p>
+But war develops great civil virtues, and brings into action a degree
+and kind of physical energy which seldom fails to awaken a new intellectual
+life in a people that achieves great moral and political results through
+great heroism and endurance and perseverance. Domestic corruption has
+destroyed more nations than foreign invasion, and a people is rarely conquered
+till it has deserved subjugation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308_308" id="Footnote_308_308"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308_308"><span class="label">[308]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, <i>Voormaals en Thans</i>, p. 150.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_309_309" id="Footnote_309_309"></a><a href="#FNanchor_309_309"><span class="label">[309]</span></a> Idem, p. 163. Much the largest proportion of the lands so reclaimed,
+though for the most part lying above low-water tidemark, are at a lower
+level than the Lincolnshire fens, and more subject to inundation from the
+irruptions of the sea.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_310_310" id="Footnote_310_310"></a><a href="#FNanchor_310_310"><span class="label">[310]</span></a> <i>Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogth&uuml;mer Schleswig und Holstein</i>,
+iii, p. 151.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_311_311" id="Footnote_311_311"></a><a href="#FNanchor_311_311"><span class="label">[311]</span></a> The purely agricultural island of Pelworm, off the coast of Schleswig,
+containing about 10,000 acres, annually expends for the maintenance of its
+dikes not less than &pound;6,000 sterling, or nearly $30,000.&mdash;<span class="smcap">J. G. Kohl</span>, <i>Inseln
+und Marschen Schleswig's und Holstein's</i>, ii, p. 394.
+</p><p>
+The original cost of the dikes of Pelworm is not stated.
+</p><p>
+"The greatest part of the province of Zeeland is protected by dikes
+measuring 250 miles in length, the maintenance of which costs, in ordinary
+years, more than a million guilders [above $400,000]. * * * The annual
+expenditure for dikes and hydraulic works in Holland is from five to
+seven million guilders" [$2,000,000 to $2,800,000].&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wild</span>, <i>Die Niederlande</i>,
+i, p. 62.
+</p><p>
+One is not sorry to learn that the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands
+had some compensations. The great chain of ring dikes which surrounds
+a large part of Zeeland is due to the energy of Caspar de Robles, the
+Spanish governor of that province, who in 1570 ordered the construction
+of these works at the public expense, as a substitute for the private embankments
+which had previously partially served the same purpose.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wild</span>,
+<i>Die Niederlande</i>, i, p. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312_312" id="Footnote_312_312"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312_312"><span class="label">[312]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, <i>Voormaals en Thans</i>, p. 163.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313_313" id="Footnote_313_313"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313_313"><span class="label">[313]</span></a> <i>Voormaals en Thans</i>, pp. 150, 151.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314_314" id="Footnote_314_314"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314_314"><span class="label">[314]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, <i>Voormaals en Thans</i>, p. 152. Kohl states that the peninsula
+of Diksand on the coast of Holstein consisted, at the close of the last century,
+of several islands measuring together less than five thousand acres.
+In 1837 they had been connected with the mainland, and had nearly
+doubled in area.&mdash;<i>Inseln u. Marschen Schlesw. Holst.</i>, iii, p. 262.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_315_315" id="Footnote_315_315"></a><a href="#FNanchor_315_315"><span class="label">[315]</span></a> The most instructive and entertaining of tourists, J. G. Kohl&mdash;so
+aptly characterized by Davies as the "Herodotus of modern Europe"&mdash;furnishes
+a great amount of interesting information on the dikes of the Low
+German seacoast, in his <i>Inseln und Marschen der Herzogth&uuml;mer Schleswig
+und Holstein</i>. I am acquainted with no popular work on this subject
+which the reader can consult with greater profit. See also <span class="smcap">Staring</span>,
+<i>Voormaals en Thans</i>, and <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, on the dikes of the
+Netherlands.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_316_316" id="Footnote_316_316"></a><a href="#FNanchor_316_316"><span class="label">[316]</span></a> The inclination varies from one foot rise in four of base to one foot
+in fourteen.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Kohl</span>, iii, p. 210.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_317_317" id="Footnote_317_317"></a><a href="#FNanchor_317_317"><span class="label">[317]</span></a> The dikes are sometimes founded upon piles, and sometimes protected
+by one or more rows of piles driven deeply down into the bed of the sea
+in front of them. "Triple rows of piles of Scandinavian pine," says Wild,
+"have been driven down along the coast of Friesland, where there are no
+dunes, for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. The piles are bound
+together by strong cross timbers and iron clamps, and the interstices filled
+with stones. The ground adjacent to the piling is secured with fascines,
+and at exposed points heavy blocks of stone are heaped up as an additional
+protection. The earth dike is built behind the mighty bulwark of this
+breakwater, and its foot also is fortified with stones." * * * "The
+great Helder dike is about five miles long and forty feet wide at the top,
+along which runs a good road. It slopes down two hundred feet into the
+sea, at an angle of forty degrees. The highest waves do not reach the
+summit, the lowest always cover its base. At certain distances, immense
+buttresses, of a height and width proportioned to those of the dike, and
+even more strongly built, run several hundred feet out into the rolling sea.
+This gigantic artificial coast is entirely composed of Norwegian granite."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wild</span>,
+<i>Die Niederlande</i>, i, pp. 61, 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_318_318" id="Footnote_318_318"></a><a href="#FNanchor_318_318"><span class="label">[318]</span></a> The shaking of the ground, even when loaded with large buildings,
+by the passage of heavy carriages or artillery, or by the march of a body
+of cavalry or even infantry, shows that such causes may produce important
+mechanical effects on the condition of the soil. The bogs in the Netherlands,
+as in most other countries, contain large numbers of fallen trees,
+buried to a certain depth by earth and vegetable mould. When the bogs
+are dry enough to serve as pastures, it is observed that trunks of these ancient
+trees rise of themselves to the surface. Staring ascribes this singular
+phenomenon to the agitation of the ground by the tread of cattle. "When
+roadbeds," observes he, "are constructed of gravel and pebbles of different
+sizes, and these latter are placed at the bottom without being broken
+and rolled hard together, they are soon brought to the top by the effect of
+travel on the road. Lying loosely, they undergo some motion from the
+passage of every wagon wheel and the tread of every horse that passes
+over them. This motion is an oscillation or partial rolling, and as one
+side of a pebble is raised, a little fine sand or earth is forced under it, and
+the frequent repetition of this process by cattle or carriages moving in
+opposite directions brings it at last to the surface. We may suppose that
+a similar effect is produced on the stems of trees in the bogs by the tread
+of animals."&mdash;<i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, i, pp. 75, 76.
+</p><p>
+It is observed in the Northern United States, that when soils containing
+pebbles are cleared and cultivated, and the stones removed from the surface,
+new pebbles, and even bowlders of many pounds weight, continue to
+show themselves above the ground, every spring, for a long series of years.
+In clayey soils the fence posts are thrown up in a similar way, and it is not
+uncommon to see the lower rail of a fence thus gradually raised a foot or
+even two feet above the ground. This rising of stones and fences is popularly
+ascribed to the action of the severe frosts of that climate. The
+expansion of the ground, in freezing, it is said, raises its surface, and, with
+the surface, objects lying near or connected with it. When the soil thaws
+in the spring, it settles back again to its former level, while the pebbles
+and posts are prevented from sinking as low as before by loose earth which
+has fallen under them. The fact that the elevation spoken of is observed
+only in the spring, gives countenance to this theory, which is perhaps
+applicable also to the cases stated by Staring, and it is probable that the
+two causes above assigned concur in producing the effect.
+</p><p>
+The question of the subsidence of the Netherlandish coast has been
+much discussed. Not to mention earlier geologists, Venema, in several
+essays, and particularly in <i>Het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van
+ons Land</i>, 1854, adduces many facts and arguments to prove a slow sinking
+of the northern provinces of Holland. Laveleye (<i>Affaissement du sol et
+envasement des fleuves survenus dans les temps historiques</i>, 1859), upon a
+still fuller investigation, arrives at the same conclusion. The eminent
+geologist Staring, however, who briefly refers to the subject in <i>De Bodem
+van Nederland</i>, i, p. 356 <i>et seqq.</i>, does not consider the evidence sufficient
+to prove anything more than the sinking of the surface of the polders
+from drying and consolidation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_319_319" id="Footnote_319_319"></a><a href="#FNanchor_319_319"><span class="label">[319]</span></a> The elevation of the lands enclosed by dikes&mdash;or <i>polders</i>, as they are
+called in Holland&mdash;above low water mark, depends upon the height of the
+tides, or, in other words, upon, the difference between ebb and flood. The
+tide cannot deposit earth higher than it flows, and after the ground is once
+enclosed, the decay of the vegetables grown upon it and the addition of
+manures do not compensate the depression occasioned by drying and consolidation.
+On the coast of Zeeland and the islands of South Holland, the
+tides, and of course the surface of the lands deposited by them, are so high
+that the polders can be drained by ditching and sluices, but at other points,
+as in the enclosed grounds of North Holland on the Zuiderzee, where the
+tide rises but three feet or even less, pumping is necessary from the beginning.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Staring</span>,
+<i>Voormaals en Thans</i>, p. 152.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_320_320" id="Footnote_320_320"></a><a href="#FNanchor_320_320"><span class="label">[320]</span></a> The principal engine&mdash;called the Leeghwater, from the name of an
+engineer who had proposed the draining of the lake in 1641&mdash;was of 500
+horse power, and drove eleven pumps making six strokes per minute.
+Each pump raised six cubic m&egrave;tres, or nearly eight cubic yards of water to
+the stroke, amounting in all to 23,760 cubic m&egrave;tres, or above 31,000 cubic
+yards, the hour.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wild</span>, <i>Die Niederlande</i>, i, p. 87.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_321_321" id="Footnote_321_321"></a><a href="#FNanchor_321_321"><span class="label">[321]</span></a> In England and New England, where the marshes have been already
+drained or are of comparatively small extent, the existence of large floating
+islands seems incredible, and has sometimes been treated as a fable, but no
+geographical fact is better established. Kohl (<i>Inseln und Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins</i>,
+iii, p. 309) reminds us that Pliny mentions among the
+wonders of Germany the floating islands, covered with trees, which met
+the Roman fleets at the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. Our author
+speaks also of having visited, in the territory of Bremen, floating moors,
+bearing not only houses but whole villages. At low stages of the water
+these moors rest upon a bed of sand, but are raised from six to ten feet by
+the high water of spring, and remain afloat until, in the course of the summer,
+the water beneath is exhausted by evaporation and drainage, when
+they sink down upon the sand again. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_40">No. 40</a>.
+</p><p>
+Staring explains, in an interesting way, the whole growth, formation, and
+functions of floating fens or bogs, in his very valuable work, <i>De Bodem van</i>
+<i>Nederland</i>, i, pp. 36-43. The substance of his account is as follows: The
+first condition for the growth of the plants which compose the substance
+of turf and the surface of the fens, is stillness of the water. Hence they
+are not found in running streams, nor in pools so large as to be subject to
+frequent agitation by the wind. For example, not a single plant grew in
+the open part of the Lake of Haarlem, and fens cease to form in all pools
+as soon as, by the cutting of the turf for fuel or other purposes, their area
+is sufficiently enlarged to be much acted on by wind. When still water
+above a yard deep is left undisturbed, aquatic plants of various genera,
+such us Nuphar, Nymph&aelig;a, Limnanthemum, Stratiotes, Polygonum, and
+Potamogeton, fill the bottom with roots and cover the surface with leaves.
+Many of the plants die every year, and prepare at the bottom a soil fit for
+the growth of a higher order of vegetation, Phragmites, Acorus, Sparganium,
+Rumex, Lythrum, Pedicularis, Spir&aelig;a, Polystichum, Comarum,
+Caltha, &amp;c., &amp;c. In the course of twenty or thirty years the muddy
+bottom is filled with roots of aquatic and marsh plants, which are lighter
+than water, and if the depth is great enough to give room for detaching
+this vegetable network, a couple of yards for example, it rises to the surface,
+bearing with it, of course, the soil formed above it by decay of stems
+and leaves. New genera now appear upon the mass, such as Carex, Menyanthes,
+and others, and soon thickly cover it. The turf has now acquired
+a thickness of from two to four feet, and is called in Groningen <i>lad</i>; in
+Friesland, <i>til</i>, <i>tilland</i>, or <i>drijftil</i>; in Overijssel, <i>krag</i>; and in Holland,
+<i>rietzod</i>. It floats about as driven by the wind, gradually increasing in
+thickness by the decay of its annual crops of vegetation, and in about half
+a century reaches the bottom and becomes fixed. If it has not been invaded
+in the mean time by men or cattle, trees and arborescent plants,
+Alnus, Salix, Myrica, &amp;c. appear, and these contribute to hasten the attachment
+of the turf to the bottom, both by their weight and by sending their
+roots quite through into the ground.
+</p><p>
+This is the regular method employed by nature for the gradual filling
+up of shallow lakes and pools, and converting them first into morass and
+then into dry land. Whenever therefore man removes the peat or turf, he
+exerts an injurious geographical agency, and, as I have already said, there
+is no doubt that the immense extension of the inland seas of Holland in
+modern times is owing to this and other human imprudences. "Hundreds
+of hectares of floating pastures," says our author, "which have nothing in
+their appearance to distinguish them from grass lands resting on solid bog,
+are found in Overijssel, in North Holland and near Utrecht. In short, they
+occur in all deep bogs, and wherever deep water is left long undisturbed."
+</p><p>
+In one case, a floating island, which had attached itself to the shore,
+continued to float about for a long time after it was torn off by a flood,
+and was solid enough to keep a pond of fresh water upon it sweet, though
+the water in which it was swimming had become brackish from the irruption
+of the sea. After the hay is cut, cattle are pastured upon those
+islands, and they sometimes have large trees growing upon them.
+</p><p>
+When the turf or peat has been cut, leaving water less than a yard
+deep, Equisetum limosum grows at once, and is followed by the second
+class of marsh plants mentioned above. Their roots do not become detached
+from the bottom in such shallow water, but form ordinary turf or
+peat. These processes are so rapid that a thickness of from three to six
+feet of turf is formed in half a century, and many men have lived to mow
+grass where they had fished in their boyhood, and to cut turf twice in the
+same spot.
+</p><p>
+Captain Gilliss says that before Lake Taguataga in Chili was drained,
+there were in it islands composed of dead plants matted together to a
+thickness of from four to six feet, and with trees of medium size growing
+upon them. These islands floated before the wind "with their trees and
+browsing cattle."&mdash;<i>United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to the
+Southern Hemisphere</i>, i, pp. 16, 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_322_322" id="Footnote_322_322"></a><a href="#FNanchor_322_322"><span class="label">[322]</span></a> A considerable work of this character is mentioned by Captain Gilliss
+as having been executed in Chili, a country to which we should have
+hardly looked for an improvement of such a nature. The Lake Taguataga
+was partially drained by cutting through a narrow ridge of land, not at the
+natural outlet, but upon one side of the lake, and eight thousand acres of
+land covered by it were gained for cultivation.&mdash;<i>U. S. Naval Astronomical
+Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere</i>, i, pp. 16, 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_323_323" id="Footnote_323_323"></a><a href="#FNanchor_323_323"><span class="label">[323]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale de la France</i>, p. 289.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_324_324" id="Footnote_324_324"></a><a href="#FNanchor_324_324"><span class="label">[324]</span></a> In a note on a former page of this volume I noticed an observation
+of Jacini, to the effect that the great Italian lakes discharge themselves
+partly by infiltration beneath the hills which bound them. The amount
+of such infiltration must depend much upon the hydrostatic pressure on
+the walls of the lake basins, and, of course, the lowering of the surface of
+these lakes, by diminishing that pressure, would diminish also the infiltration.
+It is now proposed to lower the level of the Lake of Como some
+feet by deepening its outlet. It is possible that the effect of this may
+manifest itself in a diminution of the water in springs and <i>fontanili</i> or
+artesian wells in Lombardy. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_43">No. 43</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_325_325" id="Footnote_325_325"></a><a href="#FNanchor_325_325"><span class="label">[325]</span></a> Simonde, speaking of the Tuscan canals, observes: "But inundations
+are not the only damage caused by the waters to the plains of Tuscany.
+Raised, as the canals are, above the soil, the water percolates through
+their banks, penetrates every obstruction, and, in spite of all the efforts
+of industry, sterilizes and turns to morasses fields which nature and the
+richness of the soil seemed to have designed for the most abundant harvests.
+In ground thus pervaded with moisture, or rendered <i>cold</i>, as the
+Tuscans express it, by the filtration of the canal water, the vines and the
+mulberries, after having for a few years yielded fruit of a saltish taste, rot
+and perish. The wheat decays in the ground, or dies as soon as it sprouts.
+Winter crops are given up, and summer cultivation tried for a time; but
+the increasing humidity, and the saline matter communicated to the earth&mdash;which affects the taste of all its products, even to the grasses, which the
+cattle refuse to touch&mdash;at last compel the husbandman to abandon his
+fields, and leave uncultivated a soil that no longer repays his labor."&mdash;<i>Tableau
+de l'Agriculture Toscane.</i> pp. 11, 12.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_326_326" id="Footnote_326_326"></a><a href="#FNanchor_326_326"><span class="label">[326]</span></a> <i>Physikalische Geographie</i>, p. 288. Draining by driving down stakes,
+mentioned in a note in a chapter on the woods, <i>ante</i>, is a process of the
+same nature.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_327_327" id="Footnote_327_327"></a><a href="#FNanchor_327_327"><span class="label">[327]</span></a> "The simplest backwoodsman knows by experience that all cultivation
+is impossible in the neighborhood of bogs and marshes. Why is a
+crop near the borders of a marsh cut off by frost, while a field upon a
+hillock, a few stone's throws from it, is spared?"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lars Levi L&aelig;stadius</span>,
+<i>Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken</i>, pp. 69, 74.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_328_328" id="Footnote_328_328"></a><a href="#FNanchor_328_328"><span class="label">[328]</span></a> Babinet condemns even the general draining of marshes. "Draining,"
+says he, "has been much in fashion for some years. It has been a
+special object to dry and fertilize marshy grounds. My opinion has always
+been that excessive dryness is thus produced, and that other soils in the
+neighborhood are sterilized in proportion."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_329_329" id="Footnote_329_329"></a><a href="#FNanchor_329_329"><span class="label">[329]</span></a>  I ought perhaps to except the Mexicans and the Peruvians, whose
+arts and institutions are not yet shown to be historically connected with
+those of any more ancient people. The lamentable destruction of so many
+memorials of these tribes, by the ignorance and bigotry of the so-called
+Christian barbarians who conquered them, has left us much in the dark as
+to many points of their civilization; but they seem to have reached that
+stage where continued progress in knowledge and in power over nature is
+secure, and a few more centuries of independence might have brought
+them to originate for themselves most of the great inventions which the
+last four centuries have bestowed upon man.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_330_330" id="Footnote_330_330"></a><a href="#FNanchor_330_330"><span class="label">[330]</span></a> The necessity of irrigation in the great alluvial plain of Northern
+Italy is partly explained by the fact that the superficial stratum of fine
+earth and vegetable mould is very extensively underlaid by beds of pebbles
+and gravel brought down by mountain torrents at a remote epoch. The
+water of the surface soil drains rapidly down into these loose beds, and
+passes off by subterranean channels to some unknown point of discharge;
+but this circumstance alone is not a sufficient solution. Is it not possible
+that the habits of vegetables, grown in countries where irrigation has been
+immemorially employed, have been so changed that they require water
+under conditions of soil and climate where their congeners, which have
+not been thus indulgently treated, do not?
+</p><p>
+There are some atmospheric phenomena in Northern Italy, which an
+American finds it hard to reconcile with what he has observed in the
+United States. To an American eye, for instance, the sky of Piedmont,
+Lombardy, and the northern coast of the Mediterranean, is always whitish
+and curdled, and it never has the intensity and fathomless depth of the
+blue of his native heavens. And yet the heat of the sun's rays, as measured
+by sensation, and, at the same time, the evaporation, are greater than
+they would be with the thermometer at the same point in America. I
+have frequently felt in Italy, with the mercury below 60&deg; Fahrenheit, and
+with a mottled and almost opaque sky, a heat of solar irradiation which
+I can compare to nothing but the scorching sensation experienced in
+America at a temperature twenty degrees higher, during the intervals between
+showers, or before a rain, when the clear blue of the sky seems
+infinite in depth and transparency. Such circumstances may create a
+necessity for irrigation where it would otherwise be superfluous, if not
+absolutely injurious.
+</p><p>
+In speaking of the superior apparent clearness of the <i>sky</i> in America, I
+confine myself to the concave vault of the heavens, and do not mean to
+assert that terrestrial objects are generally visible at greater distances in
+the United States than in Italy. Indeed I am rather disposed to maintain
+the contrary; for though I know that the lower strata of the atmosphere
+in Europe never equal in transparency the air near the earth in New
+Mexico, Peru, and Chili, yet I think the accidents of the coast line of the
+Riviera, as, for example, between Nice and La Spezia, and those of the incomparable
+Alpine panorama seen from Turin, are distinguishable at greater
+distances than they would be in the United States.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_331_331" id="Footnote_331_331"></a><a href="#FNanchor_331_331"><span class="label">[331]</span></a> In Egypt, evaporation and absorption by the earth are so rapid, that
+all annual crops require irrigation during the whole period of their growth.
+As fast as the water retires by the subsidence of the annual inundation, the
+seed is sown upon the still moist uncovered soil, and irrigation begins at
+once. Upon the Nile, you hear the creaking of the water wheels, and
+sometimes the movement of steam pumps, through the whole night, while
+the poorer cultivators unceasingly ply the simple <i>shadoof</i>, or bucket-and-sweep,
+laboriously raising the water from trough to trough by as many as
+six or seven stages when the river is low. The bucket is of flexible leather,
+with a stiff rim, and is emptied into the trough, not by inverting it like a
+wooden bucket, but by putting the hand beneath and pushing the bottom
+up till the water all runs out over the brim, or, in other words, by turning
+the vessel inside out.
+</p><p>
+The quantity of water thus withdrawn from the Nile is enormous.
+Most of this is evaporated directly from the surface or the superficial
+strata, but some moisture percolates down and oozes through the banks
+into the river again, while a larger quantity sinks till it joins the slow current
+of infiltration by which the Nile water pervades the earth of the
+valley to the distance, at some points, of not less than fifty miles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_332_332" id="Footnote_332_332"></a><a href="#FNanchor_332_332"><span class="label">[332]</span></a> "Forests," "woods," and "groves," are very frequently mentioned
+in the Old Testament as existing at particular places, and they are often
+referred to by way of illustration, as familiar objects. "Wood" is twice
+spoken of as a material in the New Testament, but otherwise&mdash;at least according
+to Cruden&mdash;not one of the above words occurs in that volume.
+</p><p>
+This interesting fact, were other evidence wanting, would go far to
+prove that a great change had taken place in this respect between the
+periods when the Old Testament and the New were respectively composed;
+for the scriptural writers, and the speakers introduced into their
+narratives, are remarkable for their frequent allusions to the natural
+objects and the social and industrial habits which characterized their ages
+and their country. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_44">No. 44</a>.
+</p><p>
+Solomon anticipated Chevandier in the irrigation of forest trees: "I
+made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth
+trees."&mdash;<i>Ecclesiastes</i> ii, 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_333_333" id="Footnote_333_333"></a><a href="#FNanchor_333_333"><span class="label">[333]</span></a> One of these, upon Mount Hor, two stories in height, is still in such
+preservation that I found not less than ten feet of water in it in the month
+of June, 1851.
+</p><p>
+The brook Ain Musa, which runs through the city of Petra and finally
+disappears in the sands of Wadi el Araba, is a considerable river in winter,
+and the inhabitants of that town were obliged to excavate a tunnel through
+the rock near the right bank, just above the upper entrance of the Sik, to
+discharge a part of its swollen current. The sagacity of Dr. Robinson
+detected the necessity of this measure, though the tunnel, the mouth of
+which was hidden by brushwood, was not discovered till some time after
+his visit. I even noticed unequivocal remains of a sluice by which the
+water was diverted to the tunnel near the arch that crosses the Sik. Immense
+labor was also expended in widening the natural channel at several
+points below the town, to prevent the damming up and setting back of the
+water&mdash;a fact I believe not hitherto noticed by travellers.
+</p><p>
+The Fellahheen above Petra still employ the waters of Ain Musa for
+irrigation, and in summer the superficial current is wholly diverted from
+its natural channel for that purpose. At this season, the bed of the brook,
+which is composed of pebbles, gravel, and sand, is dry in the Sik and
+through the town; but the infiltration is such that water is generally
+found by digging to a small depth in the channel. Observing these facts
+in a visit to Petra in the summer, I was curious to know whether the subterranean
+waters escaped again to daylight, and I followed the ravine
+below the town for a long distance. Not very far from the upper entrance
+of the ravine, arborescent vegetation appeared upon its bottom, and as soon
+as the ground was well shaded, a thread of water burst out. This was
+joined by others a little lower down, and, at the distance of a mile from the
+town, a strong current was formed and ran down toward Wadi el Araba.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_334_334" id="Footnote_334_334"></a><a href="#FNanchor_334_334"><span class="label">[334]</span></a> The authorities differ as to the extent of the cultivable and the cultivated
+soil of Egypt. Lippincott's, or rather Thomas and Baldwin's, <i>Gazetteer</i>&mdash;a
+work of careful research&mdash;estimates "the whole area comprised
+in the valley [below the first cataract] and delta," at 11,000 square miles.
+Smith's <i>Dictionary of the Bible</i>, article "Egypt," says: "Egypt has a
+superficies of about 9,582 square geographical miles of soil, which the Nile
+either does or can water and fertilize. This computation includes the
+river and lakes as well as sundry tracts which can be inundated, and the
+whole space either cultivated or fit for cultivation is no more than about
+5,626 square miles." By geographical mile is here meant, I suppose, the
+nautical mile of sixty to an equatorial degree, or about 2,025 yards. The
+whole area, then, by this estimate, is 12,682 square statute or English
+miles, that of the space "cultivated or fit for cultivation," 7,447. Smith's
+<i>Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography</i>, article "&AElig;gyptus," gives
+2,255 square miles as the area of the valley between Syene and the bifurcation
+of the Nile, exclusive of the Fayoom, which is estimated at 340.
+The area of the Delta is stated at 1,976 square miles between the main
+branches of the river, and, including the irrigated lands east and west of
+those branches, at 4,500 square miles. This latter work does not inform us
+whether these are statute or nautical miles, but nautical miles must be
+intended.
+</p><p>
+Other writers give estimates differing considerably from those just
+cited. The latest computations I have seen are those in the first volume
+of Kremer's <i>&AElig;gypten</i>, 1863. This author (pp. 6, 7) assigns to the Delta an
+area of 200 square German geographical miles (fifteen to the degree); to all
+Lower Egypt, including, of course, the Delta, 400 such miles. These numbers
+are equal, respectively, to 4,239 and 8,478 square statute miles, and
+the great lagoons are embraced in the areas computed. Upper Egypt
+(above Cairo) is said (p. 11) to contain 4,000,000 feddan of <i>culturfl&auml;che</i>, or
+cultivable land. The feddan is stated (p. 37) to contain 7,333 square piks,
+the pik being 75 centim&egrave;tres, and it therefore corresponds almost exactly
+to the English acre. Hence, according to Kremer, the cultivable soil of
+Upper Egypt is 6,250 square statute miles, or twice as much as the whole
+area of the valley between Syene and the bifurcation of the Nile, according
+to Smith's <i>Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography</i>. I suspect that
+4,000,000 feddan is erroneously given as the cultivable area of Upper
+Egypt alone, when in fact it should be taken for the arable surface of both
+Lower and Upper Egypt; for from the statistical tables in the same volume,
+it appears that 3,317,125 feddan, or 5,253 square statute miles, were
+cultivated, in both geographical divisions, in the year referred to in the
+tables, the date of which is not stated.
+</p><p>
+The area which the Nile would now cover at high water, if left to itself,
+is greater than in ancient times, because the bed of the river has been elevated,
+and consequently the lateral spread of the inundation increased. See
+SMITH'S <i>Dictionary of Geography</i>, article "&AElig;gyptus." But the industry
+of the Egyptians in the days of the Pharaohs and the Ptolomies carried
+the Nile-water to large provinces which have now been long abandoned
+and have relapsed into the condition of a desert. "Anciently," observes
+the writer of the article "Egypt" in Smith's <i>Dictionary of the Bible</i>,
+"2,735 square miles more [about 3,700 square statute miles] may have
+been cultivated. In the best days of Egypt, probably all the land was
+cultivated that could be made available for agricultural purposes, and
+hence we may estimate the ancient arable area of that country at not less
+than 11,000 square statute miles, or fully double its present extent."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_335_335" id="Footnote_335_335"></a><a href="#FNanchor_335_335"><span class="label">[335]</span></a> A canal has been constructed, and new ones are in progress, to convey
+water from the Nile to the city of Suez, and to various points on the
+line of the ship canal, with the double purpose of supplying fresh water to
+the inhabitants and laborers, and of irrigating the adjacent soil. The area
+of land which may be thus reclaimed and fertilized is very large, but the
+actual quantity which it will be found economically expedient to bring
+under cultivation cannot now be determined.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_336_336" id="Footnote_336_336"></a><a href="#FNanchor_336_336"><span class="label">[336]</span></a> The so-called spring at Heliopolis is only a thread of water infiltrated
+from the Nile or the canals.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_337_337" id="Footnote_337_337"></a><a href="#FNanchor_337_337"><span class="label">[337]</span></a> The date and the doum palm, the <i>sont</i> and many other acacias, the
+caroub, the sycamore, and other trees, grow well in Egypt without irrigation,
+and would doubtless spread through the entire valley in a few
+years.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_338_338" id="Footnote_338_338"></a><a href="#FNanchor_338_338"><span class="label">[338]</span></a> Wilkinson has shown that the cultivable soil of Egypt has not been
+diminished by encroachment of the desert sands, or otherwise, but that, on
+the contrary, it must have been increased since the age of the Pharaohs.
+The Gotha <i>Almanac</i> for 1862 states the population of Egypt in 1859 at
+5,125,000 souls; but this must be a great exaggeration, even supposing the
+estimate to include the inhabitants of Nubia, and of much other territory
+not geographically belonging to Egypt. In general, the population of that
+country has been estimated at something more than three millions, or
+about six hundred to the square mile; but with a better government and
+better social institutions, the soil would sustain a much greater number,
+and in fact it is believed that in ancient times its inhabitants were twice,
+perhaps even thrice, as numerous as at present.
+</p><p>
+Wilkinson (<i>Handbook for Travellers in Egypt</i>, p. 10) observes that the
+total population, which two hundred years ago was estimated at 4,000,000,
+amounted till lately only to about 1,800,000 souls, having been reduced
+since 1800 from 2,500,000 to that number.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_339_339" id="Footnote_339_339"></a><a href="#FNanchor_339_339"><span class="label">[339]</span></a> Ritter supposes Egypt to have been a sandy desert when it was first
+occupied by man. "The first inhabitant of the sandy valley of the Nile was
+a desert dweller, as his neighbors right and left, the Libyan, the nomade
+Arab, still are. But the civilized people of Egypt transformed, by canals,
+the waste into the richest granary of the world; they liberated themselves
+from the shackles of the rock and sand desert, in the midst of which, by a
+wise distribution of the fluid through the solid geographical form, by irrigation
+in short, they created a region of culture most rich in historical
+monuments."&mdash;<i>Einleitung zur allgemeinen vergleichenden Geographie</i>, pp.
+165, 166.
+</p><p>
+This view seems to me highly improbable; for though, by canals and
+embankments, man has done much to modify the natural distribution of
+the waters of the Nile, and possibly has even transferred its channel from
+one side of the valley to the other, yet the annual inundation is not his
+work, and the river must have overflowed its banks and carried spontaneous
+vegetation with its waters, as well before as since Egypt was first
+occupied by the human family. There is, indeed, some reason to suppose
+that man lived upon the banks of the Nile when its channel was much
+lower, and the spread of its inundations much narrower than at present;
+but wherever its flood reached, there the forest would propagate itself,
+and its shores are much more likely to have been morasses than sands.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_340_340" id="Footnote_340_340"></a><a href="#FNanchor_340_340"><span class="label">[340]</span></a> <i>Memorie sui progetti per l'estensione dell' Irrigazione, etc., il Politecnico</i>,
+for January, 1863, p. 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_341_341" id="Footnote_341_341"></a><a href="#FNanchor_341_341"><span class="label">[341]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Niel</span>, <i>L'Agriculture des &Eacute;tats Sardes</i>, p. 232.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_342_342" id="Footnote_342_342"></a><a href="#FNanchor_342_342"><span class="label">[342]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Niel</span>, <i>Agriculture des &Eacute;tats Sardes</i>, p. 237. Lombardini's computation
+just given allows eighty-one cubic m&egrave;tres per day to the hectare,
+which, supposing the season of irrigation to be one hundred days, is equal
+to a precipitation of thirty-two inches. But in Lombardy, water is applied
+to some crops during a longer period than one hundred days; and in the
+<i>marcite</i> it flows over the ground even in winter.
+</p><p>
+According to Boussingault (<i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale</i>, ii, p. 246) grass grounds
+ought to receive, in Germany, twenty-one centim&egrave;tres of water per week,
+and with less than half that quantity it is not advisable to incur the expense
+of supplying it. The ground is irrigated twenty-five or thirty times, and
+if the full quantity of twenty-one centim&egrave;tres is applied, it receives about
+two hundred inches of water, or six times the total amount of precipitation.
+Puvis, quoted by Boussingault, after much research comes to the conclusion
+that a proper quantity is twenty centim&egrave;tres applied twenty-five or
+thirty times, which corresponds with the estimate just stated. Puvis
+adds&mdash;and, as our author thinks, with reason&mdash;that this amount might be
+doubled without disadvantage.
+</p><p>
+Boussingault observes that rain water is vastly more fertilizing than the
+water of irrigating canals, and therefore the supply of the latter must be
+greater. This is explained partly by the different character of the substances
+held in solution or suspension by the waters of the earth and of the
+sky, partly by the higher temperature of the latter, and, possibly, partly
+also by the mode of application&mdash;the rain being finely divided in its fall or
+by striking plants on the ground, river water flowing in a continuous sheet.
+</p><p>
+The temperature of the water is thought even more important than its
+composition. The sources which irrigate the <i>marcite</i> of Lombardy&mdash;meadows
+so fertile that less than an acre furnishes grass for a cow the
+whole year&mdash;are very warm. The ground watered by them never freezes,
+and a first crop, for soiling, is cut from it in January or February. The
+Canal Cavour, just now commenced&mdash;which is to take its supply from the
+Po at Chivasso, fourteen or fifteen miles below Turin&mdash;will furnish water
+of much higher fertilizing power than that derived from the Dora Baltea
+and the Sesia, both because it is warmer, and because it transports a more
+abundant and a richer sediment than the latter streams, which are fed by
+Alpine icefields and melting snows, and which flow, for long distances, in
+channels ground smooth and bare by ancient glaciers, and not now contributing
+much vegetable mould or fine slime to their waters.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_343_343" id="Footnote_343_343"></a><a href="#FNanchor_343_343"><span class="label">[343]</span></a> It belongs rather to agriculture than to geography to discuss the
+quality of the crops obtained by irrigation, or the permanent effects produced
+by it on the productiveness of the soil. There is no doubt, however,
+that all crops which can be raised without watering are superior in
+flavor and in nutritive power to those grown by the aid of irrigation.
+Garden vegetables, particularly, profusely watered, are so insipid as to be
+hardly eatable. Wherever irrigation is practised, there is an almost irresistible
+tendency, especially among ignorant cultivators, to carry it to
+excess; and in Piedmont and Lombardy, if the supply of water is abundant,
+it is so liberally applied as sometimes not only to injure the quality of the
+product, but to drown the plants and diminish the actual weight of
+the crop.
+</p><p>
+Professor Liebig, in his <i>Modern Agriculture</i>, says: "There is not to be
+found in chemistry a more wonderful phenomenon, one which more confounds
+all human wisdom, than is presented by the soil of a garden or field.
+By the simplest experiment, any one may satisfy himself that rain water
+filtered through field or garden soil does not dissolve out a trace of potash,
+silicic acid, ammonia, or phosphoric acid. The soil does not give up to the
+water one particle of the food of plants which it contains. The most continuous
+rains cannot remove from the field, except mechanically, any of
+the essential constituents of its fertility."
+</p><p>
+"The soil not only retains firmly all the food of plants which is actually
+in it, but its power to preserve all that may be useful to them extends
+much farther. If rain or other water holding in solution ammonia, potash,
+and phosphoric and silicic acids, be brought in contact with soil, these
+substances disappear almost immediately from the solution; the soil withdraws
+them from the water. Only such substances are completely withdrawn
+by the soil as are indispensable articles of food for plants; all others
+remain wholly or in part in solution."
+</p><p>
+The first of the paragraphs just quoted is not in accordance with the
+alleged experience of agriculturists in those parts of Italy where irrigation
+is most successfully applied. They believe that the constituents of vegetable
+growth are washed out of the soil by excessive and long-continued
+watering. They consider it also established as a fact of observation, that
+water which has flowed through or over rich ground is far more valuable
+for irrigation than water from the same source, which has not been impregnated
+with fertilizing substances by passing through soils containing
+them; and, on the other hand, that water, rich in the elements of vegetation,
+parts with them in serving to irrigate a poor soil, and is therefore
+less valuable as a fertilizer of lower grounds to which it may afterward be
+conducted.
+</p><p>
+The practice of irrigation&mdash;except in mountainous countries where
+springs and rivulets are numerous&mdash;is attended with very serious economical,
+social, and political evils. The construction of canals and their
+immensely ramified branches, and the grading and scarping of the ground
+to be watered, are always expensive operations, and they very often require
+an amount of capital which can be commanded only by the state, by
+moneyed corporations, or by very wealthy proprietors; the capacity of
+the canals must be calculated with reference to the area intended to be
+irrigated, and when they and their branches are once constructed, it is
+very difficult to extend them, or to accommodate any of their original arrangements
+to changes in the condition of the soil, or in the modes or
+objects of cultivation; the flow of the water being limited by the abundance
+of the source or the capacity of the canals, the individual proprietor
+cannot be allowed to withdraw water at will, according to his own private
+interest or convenience, but both the time and the quantity of supply must
+be regulated by a general system applicable, as far as may be, to the whole
+area irrigated by the same canal, and every cultivator must conform his
+industry to a plan which may be quite at variance with his special objects
+or with his views of good husbandry. The clashing interests and the
+jealousies of proprietors depending on the same means of supply are a
+source of incessant contention and litigation, and the caprices or partialities
+of the officers who control, or of contractors who farm the canals,
+lead not unfrequently to ruinous injustice toward individual landholders.
+These circumstances discourage the division of the soil into small properties,
+and there is a constant tendency to the accumulation of large estates
+of irrigated land in the hands of great capitalists, and consequently to the
+dispossession of the small cultivators, who pass from the condition of
+owners of the land to that of hireling tillers. The farmers are no longer
+yeomen, but peasants. Having no interest in the soil which composes
+their country, they are virtually expatriated, and the middle class, which
+ought to constitute the real physical and moral strength of the land, ceases
+to exist as a rural estate, and is found only among the professional, the
+mercantile, and the industrial population of the cities.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_344_344" id="Footnote_344_344"></a><a href="#FNanchor_344_344"><span class="label">[344]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Boussingault</span>, <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale</i>, ii, pp. 248, 249.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_345_345" id="Footnote_345_345"></a><a href="#FNanchor_345_345"><span class="label">[345]</span></a> The cultivation of rice is so prejudicial to health everywhere that
+nothing but the necessities of a dense population can justify the sacrifice
+of life it costs in countries where it is pursued.
+</p><p>
+It has been demonstrated by actual experiment, that even in Mississippi,
+cotton can be advantageously raised by the white man without
+danger to health; and in fact, a great deal of the cotton brought to the
+Vicksburg market for some years past has been grown exclusively by
+white labor. There is no reason why the cultivation of cotton should be
+a more unhealthy occupation in America than it is in other countries
+where it was never dreamed of as dangerous, and no well-informed
+American, in the Slave States or out of them, believes that the abolition
+of slavery in the South would permanently diminish the cotton crop of
+those States.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_346_346" id="Footnote_346_346"></a><a href="#FNanchor_346_346"><span class="label">[346]</span></a>  <i>L'Italie &agrave; propos de l'Exposition de Paris</i>, p. 92.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_347_347" id="Footnote_347_347"></a><a href="#FNanchor_347_347"><span class="label">[347]</span></a>  The very valuable memoirs of Lombardini, <i>Cenni idrografi sulla
+Lombardia, Intorno al sistema idraulico del Po</i>, and other papers on similar
+subjects, were published in periodicals little known out of Italy; and the
+<i>Idraulica Pratica</i> of Mari has not, I believe, been translated into French
+or English. These works, and other sources of information equally inaccessible
+out of Italy, have been freely used by Baumgarten, in a memoir
+entitled <i>Notice sur les Rivi&egrave;res de la Lombardie</i>, in the <i>Annales des Ponts
+et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847, 1er s&eacute;mestre, pp. 129 <i>et seqq.</i>, and by Dumont, <i>Des
+Travaux Publics dans leurs Rapports avec l'Agriculture</i>, note, viii, pp. 269
+<i>et seqq.</i> For the convenience of my readers, I shall use these two articles
+instead of the original authorities on which they are founded.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_348_348" id="Footnote_348_348"></a><a href="#FNanchor_348_348"><span class="label">[348]</span></a>  Sir John F. W. Herschel, citing Talabot as his authority, <i>Physical
+Geography</i> (24).
+</p><p>
+In an elaborate paper on "Irrigation," printed in the <i>United States
+Patent Report</i> for 1860, p. 169, it is stated that the volume of water poured
+into the Mediterranean by the Nile in twenty-four hours, at low water, is
+150,566,392,368 cubic m&egrave;tres; at high water, 705,514,667,440 cubic m&egrave;tres.
+Taking the mean of these two numbers, the average daily delivery of the
+Nile would be 428,081,059,808 cubic m&egrave;tres, or more than 550,000,000,000
+cubic yards. There is some enormous mistake, probably a typographical
+error, in this statement, which makes the delivery of the Nile seventeen
+hundred times as great as computed by Talabot, and many times more
+than any physical geographer has ever estimated the quantity supplied by
+all the rivers on the face of the globe.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_349_349" id="Footnote_349_349"></a><a href="#FNanchor_349_349"><span class="label">[349]</span></a>  The Drac, a torrent emptying into the Is&egrave;re a little below Grenoble,
+has discharged 5,200, the Is&egrave;re, which receives it, 7,800 cubic yards, and
+the Durance an equal quantity, per second.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Montluisant</span>, <i>Note sur les
+Dess&eacute;chements, etc., Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1833, 2me s&eacute;mestre,
+p. 288.
+</p><p>
+The floods of some other French rivers scarcely fall behind those of the
+Rhone. The Loire, above Roanne, has a basin of 2,471 square miles, or
+about twice and a half the area of that of the Ard&egrave;che. In some of its
+inundations it has delivered above 9,500 cubic yards per second.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Belgrand</span>,
+<i>De l'Influence des For&ecirc;ts, etc., Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1854,
+1er s&eacute;mestre, p. 15, note.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_350_350" id="Footnote_350_350"></a><a href="#FNanchor_350_350"><span class="label">[350]</span></a>  The original forests in which the basin of the Ard&egrave;che was rich have
+been rapidly disappearing, for many years, and the terrific violence of the
+inundations which are now laying it waste is ascribed, by the ablest investigators,
+to that cause. In an article inserted in the <i>Annales Foresti&egrave;res</i>
+for 1843, quoted by Hohenstein, <i>Der Wald</i>, p. 177, it is said that about one
+third of the area of the department had already become absolutely barren,
+in consequence of clearing, and that the destruction of the woods was still
+going on with great rapidity. New torrents were constantly forming, and
+they were estimated to have covered more than 70,000 acres of good land,
+or one eighth of the surface of the department, with sand and gravel.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_351_351" id="Footnote_351_351"></a><a href="#FNanchor_351_351"><span class="label">[351]</span></a> "There is no example of a coincidence between great floods of the
+Ard&egrave;che and of the Rhone, all the known inundations of the former having
+taken place when the latter was very low."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Mardigny</span>, <i>M&eacute;moire sur
+les Inondations des Rivi&egrave;res de l'Ard&egrave;che</i>, p. 26.
+</p><p>
+I take this occasion to acknowledge myself indebted to the interesting
+memoir just quoted for all the statements I make respecting the floods of
+the Ard&egrave;che, except the comparison of the volume of its waters with that
+of the Nile, and the computation with respect to the capacity required for
+reservoirs to be constructed in its basin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_352_352" id="Footnote_352_352"></a><a href="#FNanchor_352_352"><span class="label">[352]</span></a> In some cases where the bed of rapid Alpine streams is composed of
+very hard rock&mdash;as is the case in many of the valleys once filled by ancient
+glaciers&mdash;and especially where they are fed by glaciers not overhung by
+crumbling cliffs, the channel may remain almost unchanged for centuries.
+This is observable in many of the tributaries of the Dora Baltea, which
+drains the valley of the Aosta. Several of these small rivers are spanned
+by more or less perfect Roman bridges&mdash;one of which, that over the Lys at
+Pont St. Martin, is still in good repair and in constant use. An examination
+of the rocks on which the abutments of this and some other similar structures
+are founded, and of the channels of the rivers they cross, shows that
+the beds of the streams cannot have been much elevated or depressed since
+the bridges were built. In other cases, as at the outlet of the Val Tournanche
+at Chatillon, where a single rib of a Roman bridge still remains, there is
+nothing to forbid the supposition that the deep excavation of the channel
+may have been partly effected at a much later period. See <i>App.</i>, <a href="#app_47">No. 47</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_353_353" id="Footnote_353_353"></a><a href="#FNanchor_353_353"><span class="label">[353]</span></a> <i>M&eacute;moire sur les Inondations des Rivi&egrave;res de l'Ard&egrave;che</i>, p. 16. "The
+terrific roar, the thunder of the raging torrents proceeds principally from
+the stones which are rolled along in the bed of the stream. This movement
+is attended with such powerful attrition that, in the Southern Alps,
+the atmosphere of valleys where the limestone contains bitumen, has, at
+the time of floods, the marked bituminous smell produced by rubbing
+pieces of such limestone together."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wessely</span>, <i>Die Oesterreichischien Alpenl&auml;nder</i>,
+i, p. 113. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_48">No. 48</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_354_354" id="Footnote_354_354"></a><a href="#FNanchor_354_354"><span class="label">[354]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Frisi</span>, <i>Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti</i>, pp. 4-19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_355_355" id="Footnote_355_355"></a><a href="#FNanchor_355_355"><span class="label">[355]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Surell</span>, <i>&Eacute;tude sur les Torrents</i>, pp. 31-36.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_356_356" id="Footnote_356_356"></a><a href="#FNanchor_356_356"><span class="label">[356]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Champion</span>, <i>Les Inondations en France</i>, iii, p. 156, note.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_357_357" id="Footnote_357_357"></a><a href="#FNanchor_357_357"><span class="label">[357]</span></a>  Notwithstanding this favorable circumstance, the damage done by
+the inundation of 1840 in the valley of the Rhone was estimated at seventy-two
+millions of francs.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Champion</span>, <i>Les Inondations en France</i>, iv, p. 124.
+</p><p>
+Several smaller floods of the Rhone, experienced at a somewhat earlier
+season of the year in 1846, occasioned a loss of forty-five millions of francs.
+"What if," says Dumont, "instead of happening in October, that is between
+harvest and seedtime, they had occurred before the crops were secured?
+The damage would have been counted by hundreds of millions."&mdash;<i>Des
+Travaux Publics</i>, p. 99, note.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_358_358" id="Footnote_358_358"></a><a href="#FNanchor_358_358"><span class="label">[358]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Troy</span>, <i>&Eacute;tude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes</i>, &sect;&sect; 6, 7, 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359_359" id="Footnote_359_359"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359_359"><span class="label">[359]</span></a> For accounts of damage from the bursting of reservoirs, see <span class="smcap">Vall&eacute;e</span>,
+<i>M&eacute;moire sur les Reservoirs d'Alimentation des Canaux, Annales des Ponts et
+Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1833, 1er s&eacute;mestre, p. 261.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_360_360" id="Footnote_360_360"></a><a href="#FNanchor_360_360"><span class="label">[360]</span></a> Some geographical writers apply the term <i>bifurcation</i> exclusively to
+this intercommunication of rivers; others, with more etymological propriety,
+use it to express the division of great rivers into branches at the
+head of their deltas. A technical term is wanting to designate the phenomenon
+mentioned in the text.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_361_361" id="Footnote_361_361"></a><a href="#FNanchor_361_361"><span class="label">[361]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Mardigny</span>, <i>M&eacute;moire sur les Inondations de l'Ard&egrave;che</i>, p. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_362_362" id="Footnote_362_362"></a><a href="#FNanchor_362_362"><span class="label">[362]</span></a> In the case of rivers flowing through wide alluvial plains and much
+inclined to shift their beds, like the Po, the embankments often leave a
+very wide space between them. The dikes of the Po are sometimes three
+or four miles apart.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Baumgarten</span>, after <span class="smcap">Lombardini</span>, <i>Annales des Ponts et
+Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847, 1er s&eacute;mestre, p. 149.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_363_363" id="Footnote_363_363"></a><a href="#FNanchor_363_363"><span class="label">[363]</span></a> It appears from the investigations of Lombardini that the rate of elevation
+of the bed of the Po has been much exaggerated by earlier writers,
+and in some parts of its course the change is so slow that its level may be
+regarded as nearly constant.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Baumgarten</span>, volume before cited, pp. 175,
+et seqq. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_49">No. 49</a>.
+</p><p>
+If the western coast of the Adriatic is undergoing a secular depression,
+as many circumstances concur to prove, the sinking of the plain near the
+coast may both tend to prevent the deposit of sediment in the river bed by
+increasing the velocity of its current, and compensate the elevation really
+produced by deposits, so that no sensible elevation would result, though
+much gravel and slime might be let fall.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_364_364" id="Footnote_364_364"></a><a href="#FNanchor_364_364"><span class="label">[364]</span></a> To secure the city of Sacramento in California from the inundations
+to which it is subject, a dike or lev&eacute;e was built upon the bank of the river
+and raised to an elevation above that of the highest known floods, and it
+was connected, below the town, with grounds lying considerably above the
+river. On one occasion a breach in the dike occurred above the town at
+a very high stage of the flood. The water poured in behind it, and overflowed
+the lower part of the city, which remained submerged for some
+time after the river had retired to its ordinary level, because the dike,
+which had been built to keep the water <i>out</i>, now kept it <i>in</i>.
+</p><p>
+According to Arthur Young, on the lower Po, where the surface of the
+river has been elevated much above the level of the adjacent fields by
+diking, the peasants in his time frequently endeavored to secure their
+grounds against threatened devastation through the bursting of the dikes,
+by crossing the river when the danger became imminent and opening a
+cut in the opposite bank, thus saving their own property by flooding their
+neighbors'. He adds, that at high water the navigation of the river was
+absolutely interdicted, except to mail and passenger boats, and that the
+guards fired upon all others; the object of the prohibition being to prevent
+the peasants from resorting to this measure of self-defence.&mdash;<i>Travels in
+Italy and Spain</i>, Nov. 7, 1789.
+</p><p>
+In a flood of the Po in 1839, a breach of the embankment took place at
+Bonizzo. The water poured through and inundated 116,000 acres, or 181
+square miles, of the plain, to the depth of from twenty to twenty-three feet
+in its lower parts.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Baumgarten</span>, after <span class="smcap">Lombardini</span>, volume before cited,
+p. 152.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_365_365" id="Footnote_365_365"></a><a href="#FNanchor_365_365"><span class="label">[365]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Moyens</span> <i>de forcer les Torrents de rendre une partie du sol qu'ils ravagent,
+et d'emp&ecirc;cher les grandes Inondations</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_366_366" id="Footnote_366_366"></a><a href="#FNanchor_366_366"><span class="label">[366]</span></a> The effect of trees and other detached obstructions in checking the
+flow of water is particularly noticed by Palissy in his essay on <i>Waters and
+Fountains</i>, p. 173, edition of 1844. "There be," says he, "in divers parts
+of France, and specially at Nantes, wooden bridges, where, to break the
+force of the waters and of the floating ice, which might endamage the piers
+of the said bridges, they have driven upright timbers into the bed of the
+rivers above the said piers, without the which they should abide but little.
+And in like wise, the trees which be planted along the mountains do much
+deaden the violence of the waters that flow from them."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_367_367" id="Footnote_367_367"></a><a href="#FNanchor_367_367"><span class="label">[367]</span></a> I do not mean to say that all rivers excavate their own valleys, for I
+have no doubt that in the majority of cases such depressions of the surface
+originate in higher geological causes, and hence the valley makes the river,
+not the river the valley. But even if we suppose a basin of the hardest rock
+to be elevated at once, completely formed, from the submarine abyss where
+it was fashioned, the first shower of rain that falls upon it after it rises to
+the air, while its waters will follow the lowest lines of the surface, will
+cut those lines deeper, and so on with every successive rain. The disintegrated
+rock from the upper part of the basin forms the lower by alluvial
+deposit, which is constantly transported farther and farther until the resistance
+of gravitation and cohesion balances the mechanical force of the
+running water. Thus plains, more or less steeply inclined, are formed, in
+which the river is constantly changing its bed, according to the perpetually
+varying force and direction of its currents, modified as they are by ever-fluctuating
+conditions. Thus the Po is said to have long inclined to move
+its channel southward in consequence of the superior mechanical force of
+its northern affluents. A diversion of these tributaries from their present
+beds, so that they should enter the main stream at other points and in different
+directions, might modify the whole course of that great river. But
+the mechanical force of the tributary is not the only element of its influence
+on the course of the principal stream. The deposits it lodges in the
+bed of the latter, acting as simple obstructions or causes of diversion, are
+not less important agents of change.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_368_368" id="Footnote_368_368"></a><a href="#FNanchor_368_368"><span class="label">[368]</span></a> The distance to which a new obstruction to the flow of a river,
+whether by a dam or by a deposit in its channel, will retard its current,
+or, in popular phrase, "set back the water," is a problem of more difficult
+practical solution than almost any other in hydraulics. The elements&mdash;such
+as straightness or crookedness of channel, character of bottom and
+banks, volume and previous velocity of current, mass of water far above
+the obstruction, extraordinary drought or humidity of seasons, relative
+extent to which the river may be affected by the precipitation in its own
+basin, and by supplies received through subterranean channels from sources
+so distant as to be exposed to very different meteorological influences, effects
+of clearing and other improvements always going on in new countries&mdash;are
+all extremely difficult, and some of them impossible, to be known and
+measured. In the American States, very numerous watermills have been
+erected within a few years, and there is scarcely a stream in the settled
+portion of the country which has not several milldams upon it. When a
+dam is raised&mdash;a process which the gradual diminution of the summer currents
+renders frequently necessary&mdash;or when a new dam is built, it often
+happens that the meadows above are flowed, or that the retardation of the
+stream extends back to the dam next above. This leads to frequent lawsuits.
+From the great uncertainty of the facts, the testimony is more conflicting
+in these than in any other class of cases, and the obstinacy with
+which "water causes" are disputed has become proverbial.
+</p><p>
+The subterranean courses of the waters form a subject very difficult of
+investigation, and it is only recently that its vast importance has been
+recognized. The interesting observations of Schmidt on the caves of the
+Karst and their rivers throw much light on the underground hydrography
+of limestone districts, and serve to explain how, in the low peninsula of
+Florida, rivers, which must have their sources in mountains a hundred or
+more miles distant, can pour out of the earth in currents large enough to
+admit of steamboat navigation to their very basins of eruption. Artesian
+wells are revealing to us the existence of subterranean lakes and rivers
+sometimes superposed one above another in successive sheets; but the still
+more important subject of the absorption of water by earth and its transmission
+by infiltration is yet wrapped in great obscurity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_369_369" id="Footnote_369_369"></a><a href="#FNanchor_369_369"><span class="label">[369]</span></a> The sediment of the Po has filled up some lagoons and swamps in its
+delta, and converted them into comparatively dry land; but, on the other
+hand, the retardation of the current from the lengthening of its course, and
+the diminution of its velocity by the deposits at its mouth, have forced its
+waters at some higher points to spread in spite of embankments, and thus
+fertile fields have been turned into unhealthy and unproductive marshes.&mdash;See
+<span class="smcap">Botter</span>, <i>Sulla condizione dei Terreni Maremmani nel Ferrarese. Annali
+di Agricoltura, etc.</i>, Fasc. v, 1863.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_370_370" id="Footnote_370_370"></a><a href="#FNanchor_370_370"><span class="label">[370]</span></a> Deep borings have not detected any essential difference in the quantity
+or quality of the deposits of the Nile for forty or fifty, or, as some
+compute, for a hundred centuries. From what vast store of rich earth
+does this river derive the three or four inches of fertilizing material which
+it spreads over the soil of Egypt every hundred years? Not from the
+White Nile, for that river drops nearly all its suspended matter in the
+broad expansions and slow current of its channel south of the tenth degree
+of north latitude. Nor does it appear that much sediment is contributed
+by the Bahr-el-Azrek, which flows through forests for a great part of its
+course. I have been informed by an old European resident of Egypt who
+is very familiar with the Upper Nile, that almost the whole of the earth
+with which its waters are charged is brought down by the Takazz&eacute;.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_371_371" id="Footnote_371_371"></a><a href="#FNanchor_371_371"><span class="label">[371]</span></a> It is very probably true that, as Lombardini supposes, the plain of
+Lombardy was anciently covered with forests and morasses (Baumgarten,
+l. c. p. 156); but, had the Po remained unconfined, its deposits would have
+raised its banks as fast as its bed, and there is no obvious reason why this
+plain should be more marshy than other alluvial flats traversed by great
+rivers. Its lower course would possibly have become more marshy than
+at present, but the banks of its middle and upper course would have been
+in a better condition for agricultural use than they now are.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_372_372" id="Footnote_372_372"></a><a href="#FNanchor_372_372"><span class="label">[372]</span></a> From daily measurements during a period of fourteen years&mdash;1827 to
+1840&mdash;the mean delivery of the Po at Ponte Lagoscuro, below the entrance
+of its last tributary, is found to be 1,720 cubic m&egrave;tres, or 60,745 cubic feet,
+per second. Its smallest delivery is 186 cubic m&egrave;tres, or 6,569 cubic feet,
+its greatest 5,156 cubic m&egrave;tres, or 182,094 cubic feet.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Baumgarten</span>, following
+<span class="smcap">Lombardini</span>, volume before cited, p. 159.
+</p><p>
+The average delivery of the Nile being 101,000 cubic feet per second, it
+follows that the Po contributes to the Adriatic six tenths as much water as
+the Nile to the Mediterranean&mdash;a result which will surprise most readers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_373_373" id="Footnote_373_373"></a><a href="#FNanchor_373_373"><span class="label">[373]</span></a> We are quite safe in supposing that the valley of the Nile has been
+occupied by man at least 5,000 years. The dates of Egyptian chronology
+are uncertain, but I believe no inquirer estimates the age of the great pyramids
+at less than forty centuries, and the construction of such works implies
+an already ancient civilization.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_374_374" id="Footnote_374_374"></a><a href="#FNanchor_374_374"><span class="label">[374]</span></a> There are many dikes in Egypt, but they are employed in but a very
+few cases to exclude the waters of the inundation. Their office is to retain
+the water received at high Nile into the inclosures formed by them until it
+shall have deposited its sediment or been drawn out for irrigation; and
+they serve also as causeways for interior communication during the floods.
+The Egyptian dikes, therefore, instead of forcing the river, like those of
+the Po, to transport its sediment to the sea, help to retain the slime, which,
+if the flow of the current over the land were not obstructed, might be carried
+back into the channel, and at last to the Mediterranean.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_375_375" id="Footnote_375_375"></a><a href="#FNanchor_375_375"><span class="label">[375]</span></a> The Mediterranean front of the Delta may be estimated at one hundred
+and fifty miles in length. Two cubic miles of earth would more than
+fill up the lagoons on the coast, and the remaining ten, even allowing the
+mean depth of the water to be twenty fathoms, which is beyond the truth,
+would have been sufficient to extend the coast line about three miles farther
+seaward, and thus, including the land gained by the filling up of the
+lagoons, to add more than five hundred square miles to the area of Egypt.
+Nor is this all; for the retardation of the current, by lengthening the
+course and consequently diminishing the inclination of the channel, would
+have increased the deposit of suspended matter, and proportionally augmented
+the total effect of the embankment.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_376_376" id="Footnote_376_376"></a><a href="#FNanchor_376_376"><span class="label">[376]</span></a> For the convenience of navigation, and to lessen the danger of inundation
+by giving greater directness, and, of course, rapidity to the current,
+bends in rivers are sometimes cut off and winding channels made straight.
+This process has the same general effects as diking, and therefore cannot
+be employed without many of the same results.
+</p><p>
+This practice has often been resorted to on the Mississippi with advantage
+to navigation, but it is quite another question whether that advantage
+has not been too dearly purchased by the injury to the banks at lower
+points. If we suppose a river to have a navigable course of 1,600 miles
+as measured by its natural channel, with a descent of 800 feet, we shall
+have a fall of six inches to the mile. If the length of channel be reduced
+to 1,200 miles by cutting off bends, the fall is increased to eight inches per
+mile. The augmentation of velocity consequent upon this increase of inclination
+is not computable without taking into account other elements,
+such as depth and volume of water, diminution of direct resistance, and
+the like, but in almost any supposable case, it would be sufficient to
+produce great effects on the height of floods, the deposit of sediment in
+the channel, on the shores, and at the outlet, the erosion of banks and
+other points of much geographical importance.
+</p><p>
+The Po, in those parts of its course where the embankments leave
+a wide space between, often cuts off bends in its channel and straightens
+its course. These short cuts are called <i>salti</i>, or leaps, and sometimes
+reduce the distance between their termini by several miles. In 1777, the
+salto of Cottaro shortened a distance of 7,000 m&egrave;tres by 5,000, or, in other
+words, reduced the length of the channel more than three miles; and in
+1807 and 1810 the two salti of Mezzanone effected a reduction of distance
+to the amount of between seven and eight miles.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Baumgarten</span>, l. c. p. 38.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_377_377" id="Footnote_377_377"></a><a href="#FNanchor_377_377"><span class="label">[377]</span></a> The fact, that the mixing of salt and fresh water in coast marshes and
+lagoons is deleterious to the sanitary condition of the vicinity, seems almost
+universally admitted, though the precise reason why a mixture of both
+should be more injurious than either alone, is not altogether clear. It has
+been suggested that the admission of salt water to the lagoons and rivers
+kills many fresh water plants and animals, while the fresh water is equally
+fatal to many marine organisms, and that the decomposition of the remains
+originates poisonous miasmata. Other theories however have been proposed.
+The whole subject is fully and ably discussed by Dr. Salvagnoli
+Marchetti in the appendix to his valuable <i>Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle
+Maremme Toscane</i>. See also the <i>Memorie Economico-Statistiche sulle Maremme
+Toscane</i>, of the same author.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_378_378" id="Footnote_378_378"></a><a href="#FNanchor_378_378"><span class="label">[378]</span></a> This curious fact is thus stated in the preface to Fossombroni
+(<i>Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana</i>, edition of 1835, p. xiii), from which
+also I borrow most of the data hereafter given with respect to that valley:
+"It is perhaps not universally known, that the swallows, which come from
+the north [south] to spend the summer in our climate, do not frequent
+marshy districts with a malarious atmosphere. A proof of the restoration
+of salubrity in the Val di Chiana is furnished by these aerial visitors, which
+had never before been seen in those low grounds, but which have appeared
+within a few years at Forano and other points similarly situated."
+</p><p>
+Is the air of swamps destructive to the swallows, or is their absence in
+such localities merely due to the want of human habitations, near which
+this half-domestic bird loves to breed, perhaps because the house fly and
+other insects which follow man are found only in the vicinity of his
+dwellings?
+</p><p>
+In almost all European countries, the swallow is protected, by popular
+opinion or superstition, from the persecution to which almost all other birds
+are subject. It is possible that this respect for the swallow is founded
+upon ancient observation of the fact just stated on the authority of Fossombroni.
+Ignorance mistakes the effect for the cause, and the absence of
+this bird may have been supposed to be the occasion, not the consequence,
+of the unhealthiness of particular localities. This opinion once adopted,
+the swallow would become a sacred bird, and in process of time fables and
+legends would be invented to give additional sanction to the prejudices
+which protected it. The Romans considered the swallow as consecrated
+to the Penates, or household gods, and according to Peretti (<i>Le Serate del
+Villaggio</i>, p. 168) the Lombard peasantry think it a sin to kill them, because
+they are <i>le gallinelle del Signore</i>, the chickens of the Lord.
+</p><p>
+The following little Tuscan <i>rispetto</i> from Gradi (<i>Racconti Popolari</i>, p.
+33) well expresses the feeling of the peasantry toward this bird:
+</p><p class="poem">
+O rondinella che passi lo mare<br />
+Torna 'ndietro, vo' dirti du' parole;<br />
+Dammi 'na penna delle tue bell' ale,<br />
+Vo' scrivere 'na lettera al mi' amore;<br />
+E quando l' avr&ograve; scritta 'n carta bella,<br />
+Ti render&ograve; la penna, o rondinella;<br />
+E quando l' avr&ograve; scritta 'n carta bianca,<br />
+Ti render&ograve; la penna che ti manca;<br />
+E quando l' avr&ograve; scritta in carta d' oro,<br />
+Ti render&ograve; la penna al tuo bel volo.<br />
+<br />
+O swallow, that fliest beyond the sea,<br />
+Turn back! I would fain have a word with thee.<br />
+A feather oh grant, from thy wing so bright!<br />
+For I to my sweetheart a letter would write;<br />
+And when it is written on paper fine<br />
+I'll give thee, O swallow, that feather of thine;<br />
+&mdash;On paper so white, and I'll give thee back,<br />
+O pretty swallow, the pen thou dost lack;<br />
+&mdash;On paper of gold, and then I'll restore<br />
+To thy beautiful pinion the feather once more.<br />
+</p><p>
+Popular traditions and superstitions are so closely connected with localities,
+that, though an emigrant people may carry them to a foreign land,
+they seldom survive a second generation. The swallow, however, is still
+protected in New England by prejudices of transatlantic origin; and I
+remember hearing, in my childhood, that if the swallows were killed, the
+cows would give bloody milk.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_379_379" id="Footnote_379_379"></a><a href="#FNanchor_379_379"><span class="label">[379]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Morozzi</span>, <i>Dello stato antico e moderno del fiume Arno</i>, ii, p. 42.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_380_380" id="Footnote_380_380"></a><a href="#FNanchor_380_380"><span class="label">[380]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Morozzi</span>, <i>Dello stato, etc., dell' Arno</i>, ii, pp. 39, 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_381_381" id="Footnote_381_381"></a><a href="#FNanchor_381_381"><span class="label">[381]</span></a> Torricelli thus expressed himself on this point: "If we content ourselves
+with what nature has made practicable to human industry, we shall
+endeavor to control, as far as possible, the outlets of these streams, which,
+by raising the bed of the valley with their deposits, will realize the fable
+of the Tagus and the Pactolus, and truly roll golden sands for him that is
+wise enough to avail himself of them."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Fossombroni</span>, <i>Memorie sopra la
+Val di Chiana</i>, p. 219.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_382_382" id="Footnote_382_382"></a><a href="#FNanchor_382_382"><span class="label">[382]</span></a> Arrian observes that at the junction of the Hydaspes and the Acesines,
+both of which are described as wide streams, "one very narrow river is
+formed of two confluents, and its current is very swift."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Arrian</span>, <i>Alex.
+Anab.</i>, vi, 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_383_383" id="Footnote_383_383"></a><a href="#FNanchor_383_383"><span class="label">[383]</span></a> This difficulty has been remedied as to one important river of the
+Maremma, the Pecora, by clearings recently executed along its upper
+course. "The condition of this marsh and of its affluents are now, November,
+1859, much changed, and it is advisable to prosecute its improvement
+by deposits. In consequence of the extensive felling of the woods
+upon the plains, hills, and mountains of the territory of Massa and Scarlino,
+within the last ten years, the Pecora and other affluents of the marsh
+receive, during the rains, water abundantly charged with slime, so that
+the deposits within the first division of the marsh are already considerable,
+and we may now hope to see the whole marsh and pond filled up in a much
+shorter time than we had a right to expect before 1850. This circumstance
+totally changes the terms of the question, because the filling of the marsh
+and pond, which then seemed almost impossible on account of the small
+amount of sediment deposited by the Pecora, has now become practicable."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>,
+<i>Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane</i>, pp.
+li, lii.
+</p><p>
+The annual amount of sediment brought down by the rivers of the
+Maremma is computed at more than 12,000,000 cubic yards, or enough to
+raise an area of four square miles one yard. Between 1830 and 1859 more
+than three times that quantity was deposited in the marsh and shoal water
+lake of Castiglione alone.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>, <i>Raccolta di Documenti</i>, pp. 74, 75.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_384_384" id="Footnote_384_384"></a><a href="#FNanchor_384_384"><span class="label">[384]</span></a> The tide rises ten inches on the coast of Tuscany. See Memoir by
+<span class="smcap">Fantoni</span>, in the appendix to <span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>, <i>Rapporto</i>, p. 189.
+</p><p>
+On the tides of the Mediterranean, see <span class="smcap">B&ouml;ttger</span>, <i>Das Mittelmeer</i>, p. 190.
+Not having Admiral Smyth's Mediterranean&mdash;on which B&ouml;ttger's work is
+founded&mdash;at hand, I do not know how far credit is due to the former author
+for the matter contained in the chapter referred to.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_385_385" id="Footnote_385_385"></a><a href="#FNanchor_385_385"><span class="label">[385]</span></a> In Catholic countries, the discipline of the church requires a <i>meagre</i>
+diet at certain seasons, and as fish is not flesh, there is a great demand for
+that article of food at those periods. For the convenience of monasteries
+and their patrons, and as a source of pecuniary emolument to ecclesiastical
+establishments and sometimes to lay proprietors, great numbers of artificial
+fish ponds were created during the Middle Ages. They were generally
+shallow pools formed by damming up the outlet of marshes, and they were
+among the most fruitful sources of endemic disease, and of the peculiar
+malignity of the epidemics which so often ravaged Europe in those centuries.
+These ponds, in religious hands, were too sacred to be infringed
+upon for sanitary purposes, and when belonging to powerful lay lords they
+were almost as inviolable. The rights of fishery were a standing obstacle
+to every proposal of hydraulic improvement, and to this day large and
+fertile districts in Southern Europe remain sickly and almost unimproved
+and uninhabited, because the draining of the ponds upon them would
+reduce the income of proprietors who derive large profits by supplying the
+faithful, in Lent, with fish, and with various species of waterfowl which,
+though very fat, are, ecclesiastically speaking, meagre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_386_386" id="Footnote_386_386"></a><a href="#FNanchor_386_386"><span class="label">[386]</span></a> Macchiavelli advised the Government of Tuscany "to provide that
+men should restore the wholesomeness of the soil by cultivation, and
+purify the air by fires."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>, <i>Memorie</i>, p. 111.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_387_387" id="Footnote_387_387"></a><a href="#FNanchor_387_387"><span class="label">[387]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Giorgini</span>, <i>Sur les causes de l'Insalubrit&eacute; de l'air dans le voisinage des
+marais, etc., lue &agrave; l'Acad&eacute;mie des Sciences &agrave; Paris</i>, le 12 Juillet, 1825. Reprinted
+in <span class="smcap">Salvagnoli</span>, <i>Rapporto, etc.</i>, appendice, p. 5, <i>et seqq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_388_388" id="Footnote_388_388"></a><a href="#FNanchor_388_388"><span class="label">[388]</span></a> See the careful estimates of <span class="smcap">Roset</span>, <i>Moyens de forcer les Torrents, etc.</i>,
+pp. 42, 44.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_389_389" id="Footnote_389_389"></a><a href="#FNanchor_389_389"><span class="label">[389]</span></a> Rivers which transport sand, gravel, pebbles, heavy mineral matter
+in short, tend to raise their own beds; those charged only with fine, light
+earth, to cut them deeper. The prairie rivers of the West have deep
+channels, because the mineral matter they carry down is not heavy enough
+to resist the impulse of even a moderate current, and those tributaries of
+the Po which deposit their sediment in the lakes&mdash;the Ticino, the Adda,
+the Oglio, and the Mincio&mdash;flow, in deep cuts, for the same reason.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Baumgarten</span>,
+l. c., p. 132.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_390_390" id="Footnote_390_390"></a><a href="#FNanchor_390_390"><span class="label">[390]</span></a> "The stream carries this mud, &amp;c., at first farther to the east, and
+only lets it fall where the force of the current becomes weakened. This
+explains the continual advance of the land seaward along the Syrian coast,
+in consequence of which Tyre and Sidon no longer lie on the shore, but
+some distance inland. That the Nile contributes to this deposit may easily
+be seen, even by the unscientific observer, from the stained and turbid
+character of the water for many miles from its mouths. A somewhat
+alarming phenomenon was observed in this neighborhood in 1801, on board
+the English frigate Romulus, Captain Culverhouse, on a voyage from Acre
+to Abukir. Dr. E. D. Clarke, who was a passenger on board this ship,
+thus describes it:
+</p><p>
+"'26th July.&mdash;To-day, Sunday, we accompanied the captain to the
+wardroom to dine, as usual, with his officers. While we were at table,
+we heard the sailors who were throwing the lead suddenly cry out:
+"Three and a half!" The captain sprang up, was on deck in an instant,
+and, almost at the same moment, the ship slackened her way, and veered
+about. Every sailor on board supposed she would ground at once. Meanwhile,
+however, as the ship came round, the whole surface of the water
+was seen to be covered with thick, black mud, which extended so far that
+it appeared like an island. At the same time, actual land was nowhere to
+be seen&mdash;not even from the masthead&mdash;nor was any notice of such a shoal
+to be found on any chart on board. The fact is, as we learned afterward,
+that a stratum of mud, stretching from the mouths of the Nile for many
+miles out into the open sea, forms a movable deposit along the Egyptian
+coast. If this deposit is driven forward by powerful currents, it sometimes
+rises to the surface, and disturbs the mariner by the sudden appearance
+of shoals where the charts lead him to expect a considerable depth
+of water. But these strata of mud are, in reality, not in the least dangerous.
+As soon as a ship strikes them they break up at once, and a frigate may
+hold her course in perfect safety where an inexperienced pilot, misled by
+his soundings, would every moment expect to be stranded.'"&mdash;<span class="smcap">B&ouml;ttger</span>,
+<i>Das Mittelmeer</i>, pp. 188, 189.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_391_391" id="Footnote_391_391"></a><a href="#FNanchor_391_391"><span class="label">[391]</span></a> The caves of Carniola receive considerable rivers from the surface of
+the earth, which cannot, in all cases, be identified with streams flowing out
+of them at other points, and like phenomena are not uncommon in other
+limestone countries.
+</p><p>
+The cases are certainly not numerous where marine currents are known
+to pour continuously into cavities beneath the surface of the earth, but
+there is at least one well-authenticated instance of this sort&mdash;that of the
+mill streams at Argostoli in the island of Cephalonia. It had been long
+observed that the sea water flowed into several rifts and cavities in the
+limestone rocks of the coast, but the phenomenon has excited little attention
+until very recently. In 1833, three of the entrances were closed, and
+a regular channel, sixteen feet long and three feet wide, with a fall of three
+feet, was cut into the mouth of a larger cavity. The sea water flowed into
+this canal, and could be followed eighteen or twenty feet beyond its inner
+terminus, when it disappeared in holes and clefts in the rock.
+</p><p>
+In 1858, the canal had been enlarged to the width of five feet and a
+half, and a depth of a foot. The water pours rapidly through the canal
+into an irregular depression and forms a pool, the surface of which is three
+or four feet below the adjacent soil, and about two and a half or three feet
+below the level of the sea. From this pool it escapes through several
+holes and clefts in the rock, and has not yet been found to emerge elsewhere.
+</p><p>
+There is a tide at Argostoli of about six inches in still weather, but it is
+considerably higher with a south wind. I do not find it stated whether
+water flows through the canal into the cavity at low tide, but it distinctly
+appears that there is no refluent current, as of course there could not be
+from a basin so much below the sea. Mousson found the delivery through
+the canal to be at the rate of 24.88 cubic feet to the second; at what stage
+of the tide does not appear. Other mills of the same sort have been
+erected, and there appear to be several points on the coast where the sea
+flows into the land.
+</p><p>
+Various hypotheses have been suggested to explain this phenomenon,
+some of which assume that the water descends to a great depth beneath
+the crust of the earth, but the supposition of a difference of level in the
+surface of the sea on the opposite sides of the island, which seems confirmed
+by other circumstances, is the most obvious method of explaining
+these singular facts. If we suppose the level of the water on one side of
+the island to be raised by the action of currents three or four feet higher
+than on the other, the existence of cavities and channels in the rock would
+easily account for a subterranean current beneath the island, and the apertures
+of escape might be so deep or so small as to elude observation. See
+<i>Aus der Natur</i>, vol. 19, pp. 129, <i>et seqq.</i> See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_53">No. 53</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_392_392" id="Footnote_392_392"></a><a href="#FNanchor_392_392"><span class="label">[392]</span></a> "The affluents received by the Seine below Rouen are so inconsiderable,
+that the augmentation of the volume of that river must be ascribed
+principally to springs rising in its bed. This is a point of which engineers
+now take notice, and M. Belgrand, the able officer charged with the improvement
+of the navigation of the Seine between Paris and Rouen, has
+devoted much attention to it."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Babinet</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes et Lectures</i>, iii, p. 185.
+</p><p>
+On page 232 of the volume just quoted, the same author observes: "In
+the lower part of its course, from the falls of the Oise, the Seine receives
+so few important affluents, that evaporation alone would suffice to exhaust
+all the water which passes under the bridges of Paris."
+</p><p>
+This supposes a much greater amount of evaporation than has been
+usually computed, but I believe it is well settled that the Seine conveys to
+the sea much more water than is discharged into it by all its superficial
+branches.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_393_393" id="Footnote_393_393"></a><a href="#FNanchor_393_393"><span class="label">[393]</span></a> Girard and Duchatelet maintain that the subterranean waters of
+Paris are absolutely stagnant. See their report on drainage by artesian
+wells, <i>Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1833, 2me s&eacute;mestre, pp. 313, <i>et seqq.</i>
+</p><p>
+This opinion, if locally true, cannot be generally so, for it is inconsistent
+with the well-known fact that the very first eruption of water from a boring
+often brings up leaves and other objects which must have been carried into
+the underground reservoirs by currents.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_394_394" id="Footnote_394_394"></a><a href="#FNanchor_394_394"><span class="label">[394]</span></a> <i>Physikalische Geographie</i>, p. 286. It does not appear whether this
+inference is Mariotte's or Wittwer's. I suppose it is a conclusion of the
+latter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_395_395" id="Footnote_395_395"></a><a href="#FNanchor_395_395"><span class="label">[395]</span></a> <i>Physical Geography of the Sea.</i> Tenth edition. London, 1861, &sect; 274.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_396_396" id="Footnote_396_396"></a><a href="#FNanchor_396_396"><span class="label">[396]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Paramelle</span>, <i>Quellenkunde, mit einem Vorwort von</i> <span class="smcap">B. Cotta</span>, 1856.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_397_397" id="Footnote_397_397"></a><a href="#FNanchor_397_397"><span class="label">[397]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tudes et Lectures</i>, vi, p. 118.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_398_398" id="Footnote_398_398"></a><a href="#FNanchor_398_398"><span class="label">[398]</span></a> "The area of soil dried by draining is constantly increasing, and the
+water received by the surface from atmospheric precipitation is thereby
+partly conducted into new channels, and, in general, carried off more
+rapidly than before. Will not this fact exert an influence on the condition
+of many springs, whose basin of supply thus undergoes a partial or complete
+transformation? I am convinced that it will, and it is important to collect
+data for solving the question." <span class="smcap">Bernhard Cotta</span>, Preface to <span class="smcap">Paramelle</span>,
+<i>Quellenkunde</i> (German translation), pp. vii, viii. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_54">No. 54</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_399_399" id="Footnote_399_399"></a><a href="#FNanchor_399_399"><span class="label">[399]</span></a> See the interesting observations of <span class="smcap">Kriegk</span> on this subject, <i>Schriften
+zur allgemeinen Erdkunde</i>, cap. iii, &sect; 6, and especially the passages in
+<span class="smcap">Ritter's</span> <i>Erdkunde</i>, vol. i, there referred to.
+</p><p>
+Laurent, (<i>M&eacute;moires sur le Sahara Oriental</i>, pp. 8, 9), in speaking of a
+river at El-Faid, "which, like all those of the desert, is, most of the time,
+without water," observes, that many wells are dug in the bed of the river
+in the dry season, and that the subterranean current thus reached appears
+to extend itself laterally, at about the same level, at least a kilom&egrave;tre from
+the river, as water is found by digging to the depth of twelve or fifteen
+m&egrave;tres at a village situated at that distance from the bank.
+</p><p>
+The most remarkable case of infiltration known to me by personal
+observation is the occurrence of fresh water in the beach sand on the
+eastern side of the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. If you
+dig a cavity in the beach near the sea level, it soon fills with water so fresh
+as not to be undrinkable, though the sea water two or three yards from it
+contains even more than the average quantity of salt. It cannot be maintained
+that this is sea water freshened by filtration through a few feet or
+inches of sand, for salt water cannot be deprived of its salt by that process.
+It can only come from the highlands of Arabia, and it would seem that
+there must exist some large reservoir in the interior to furnish a supply
+which, in spite of evaporation, holds out for months after the last rains of
+winter, and perhaps even through the year. I observed the fact in the
+month of June.
+</p><p>
+The precipitation in the mountains that border the Red Sea is not
+known by pluviometric measurement, but the mass of debris brought
+down the ravines by the torrents proves that their volume must be large.
+The proportion of surface covered by sand and absorbent earth, in Arabia
+Petr&aelig;a and the neighboring countries, is small, and the mountains drain
+themselves rapidly into the wadies or ravines where the torrents are
+formed; but the beds of earth and disintegrated rock at the bottom of the
+valleys are of so loose and porous texture, that a great quantity of water
+is absorbed in saturating them before a visible current is formed on their
+surface. In a heavy thunder storm, accompanied by a deluging rain,
+which I witnessed at Mount Sinai in the month of May, a large stream of
+water poured, in an almost continuous cascade, down the steep ravine
+north of the convent, by which travellers sometimes descend from the
+plateau between the two peaks, but after reaching the foot of the mountain,
+it flowed but a few yards before it was swallowed up in the sands.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_400_400" id="Footnote_400_400"></a><a href="#FNanchor_400_400"><span class="label">[400]</span></a> It is conceivable that in large and shallow subterranean basins the
+superincumbent earth may rest upon the water and be partly supported by
+it. In such case the weight of the earth would be an additional, if not the
+sole, cause of the ascent of the water through the tubes of artesian wells.
+The elasticity of gases in the cavities may also aid in forcing up water.
+</p><p>
+A French engineer, M. Mullot, invented a simple method of bringing
+to the surface water from any one of several successive accumulations at
+different depths, or of raising it, unmixed, from two or more of them at
+once. It consists in employing concentric tubes, one within the other,
+leaving a space for the rise of water between them, and reaching each to
+the sheet from which it is intended to draw.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_401_401" id="Footnote_401_401"></a><a href="#FNanchor_401_401"><span class="label">[401]</span></a> Many more or less probable conjectures have been made on this subject,
+but thus far I am not aware that any of the apprehended results have
+been actually shown to have happened. In an article in the <i>Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i> for July and August, 1839, p. 131, it was suggested that
+the sinking of the piers of a bridge at Tours in France was occasioned by
+the abstraction of water from the earth by artesian wells, and the consequent
+withdrawal of the mechanical support it had previously given to the
+strata containing it. A reply to this article will be found in <span class="smcap">Violett</span>,
+<i>Th&eacute;orie des Puits Art&eacute;siens</i>, p. 217.
+</p><p>
+In some instances the water has rushed up with a force which seemed
+to threaten the inundation of the neighborhood, and even the washing
+away of much soil; but in those cases the partial exhaustion of the supply,
+or the relief of hydrostatic or elastic pressure, has generally produced a
+diminution of the flow in a short time, and I do not know that any serious
+evil has ever been occasioned in this way.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_402_402" id="Footnote_402_402"></a><a href="#FNanchor_402_402"><span class="label">[402]</span></a> See a very interesting account of these wells, and of the workmen
+who clean them out when obstructed by sand brought up with the water,
+in Laurent's memoir on the artesian wells recently bored by the French
+Government in the Algerian desert, <i>M&eacute;moire sur le Sahara Oriental, etc.</i>,
+pp. 19, <i>et seqq.</i> Some of the men remained under water from two minutes
+to two minutes and forty seconds. Several officers are quoted as having
+observed immersions of three minutes' duration, and M. Berbrugger alleges
+that he witnessed one of five minutes and fifty-five seconds. The shortest
+of these periods is longer than the best pearl diver can remain below the
+surface of salt water. The wells of the Sahara are from twenty to eighty
+m&egrave;tres deep.
+</p><p>
+It has often been asserted that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted
+with the art of boring artesian wells. Parthey, describing the Little Oasis,
+mentions ruins of a Roman aqueduct, and observes: "It appears from the
+recent researches of Aim, a French engineer, that these aqueducts are connected
+with old artesian wells, the restoration of which would render it
+practicable to extend cultivation much beyond its present limits. This
+agrees with ancient testimony. It is asserted that the inhabitants of the
+oases sunk wells to the depth of 200, 300, and even 500 ells, from which
+affluent streams of water poured out. See <span class="smcap">Olympiodorus</span> in <i>Photii Bibl.</i>,
+cod. 80, p. 61, l. 17, ed. Bekk."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Parthey</span>, <i>Wanderungen</i>, ii, p. 528.
+</p><p>
+In a paper entitled, <i>Note relative &agrave; l'execution d'un Puits Art&eacute;sien en
+Egypte sous la XVIII dynastie</i>, presented to the Acad&eacute;mie des Inscriptions
+et Belles Lettres, on the 12th of November, 1852, M. Lenormant endeavors
+to show that a hieroglyphic inscription found at Contrapscelcis
+proves the execution of a work of this sort in the Nubian desert, at the
+period indicated in the title to his paper. The interpretation of the inscription
+is a question for Egyptologists; but if wells were actually bored
+through the rock by the Egyptians after the Chinese or the European
+fashion, it is singular that among the numerous and minute representations of
+their industrial operations, painted or carved on the walls of
+their tombs, no trace of the processes employed for so remarkable and important
+a purpose should have been discovered. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_56">No. 56</a>.
+</p><p>
+It is certain that artesian wells have been common in China from a
+very remote antiquity, and the simple method used by the Chinese&mdash;where
+the borer is raised and let fall by a rope, instead of a rigid rod&mdash;has been
+lately been employed in Europe with advantage. Some of the Chinese
+wells are said to be 3,000 feet deep; that of Neusalzwerk in Silesia&mdash;the
+deepest in Europe&mdash;is 2,300. A well was bored at St. Louis, in Missouri,
+a few years ago, to supply a sugar refinery, to the depth of 2,199 feet.
+This was executed by a private firm in three years, at the expense of only
+$10,000. Another has since been bored at the State capitol at Columbus,
+Ohio, 2,500 feet deep, but without obtaining the desired supply of water.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_403_403" id="Footnote_403_403"></a><a href="#FNanchor_403_403"><span class="label">[403]</span></a> "In the anticipation of our success at Oum-Thiour, every thing had
+been prepared to take advantage of this new source of wealth without a
+moment's delay. A division of the tribe of the Selmia, and their sheikh,
+A&iuml;ssa ben Sh&acirc;, laid the foundation of a village as soon as the water flowed,
+and planted twelve hundred date palms, renouncing their wandering life to
+attach themselves to the soil. In this arid spot, life had taken the place
+of solitude, and presented itself, with its smiling images, to the astonished
+traveller. Young girls were drawing water at the fountain; the flocks, the
+great dromedaries with their slow pace, the horses led by the halter, were
+moving to the watering trough; the hounds and the falcons enlivened the
+group of party-colored tents, and living voices and animated movement
+had succeeded to silence and desolation."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Laurent</span>, <i>M&eacute;moires sur le Sahara</i>,
+p. 85.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_404_404" id="Footnote_404_404"></a><a href="#FNanchor_404_404"><span class="label">[404]</span></a> The variety of hues and tones in the local color of the desert is, I
+think, one of the phenomena which most surprise and interest a stranger
+to those regions. In England and the United States, rock is so generally
+covered with moss or earth, and earth with vegetation, that untravelled
+Englishmen and Americans are not very familiar with naked rock as a conspicuous
+element of landscape. Hence, in their conception of a bare cliff
+or precipice, they hardly ascribe definite color to it, but depict it to their
+imagination as wearing a neutral tint not assimilable to any of the hues
+with which nature tinges her atmospheric or paints her organic creations.
+There are certainly extensive desert ranges, chiefly limestone formations,
+where the surface is either white, or has weathered down to a dull uniformity
+of tone which can hardly be called color at all; and there are
+sand plains and drifting hills of wearisome monotony of tint. But the
+chemistry of the air, though it may tame the glitter of the limestone to a
+dusky gray, brings out the green and brown and purple of the igneous
+rocks, and the white and red and blue and violet and yellow of the sandstone.
+Many a cliff in Arabia Petr&aelig;a is as manifold in color as the rainbow,
+and the veins are so variable in thickness and inclination, so contorted
+and involved in arrangement, as to bewilder the eye of the spectator like a
+disk of party-colored glass in rapid revolution.
+</p><p>
+In the narrower wadies, the mirage is not common; but on broad expanses,
+as at many points between Cairo and Suez, and in Wadi el Araba,
+it mocks you with lakes and land-locked bays, studded with islands and
+fringed with trees, all painted with an illusory truth of representation
+absolutely indistinguishable from the reality. The checkered earth, too, is
+canopied with a heaven as variegated as itself. You see, high up in the
+sky, rosy clouds at noonday, colored probably by reflection from the ruddy
+mountains, while near the horizon float cumuli of a transparent ethereal
+blue, seemingly balled up out of the clear cerulean substance of the firmament,
+and detached from the heavenly vault, not by color or consistence,
+but solely by the light and shade of their prominences.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_405_405" id="Footnote_405_405"></a><a href="#FNanchor_405_405"><span class="label">[405]</span></a> <i>&#338;uvres de Palissy, Des Eaux et Fontaines</i>, p. 157.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_406_406" id="Footnote_406_406"></a><a href="#FNanchor_406_406"><span class="label">[406]</span></a> Id., p. 166. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_57">No. 57</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_407_407" id="Footnote_407_407"></a><a href="#FNanchor_407_407"><span class="label">[407]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Babinet</span>, <i>&Eacute;tudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Observation</i>, ii, p. 225.
+Our author precedes his account of his method with a complaint which
+most men who indulge in thinking have occasion to repeat many times in
+the course of their lives. "I will explain to my readers the construction
+of artificial fountains according to the plan of the famous Bernard de Palissy,
+who, a hundred and fifty [three hundred] years ago, came and took
+away from me, a humble academician of the nineteenth century, this discovery
+which I had taken a great deal of pains to make. It is enough to
+discourage all invention when one finds plagiarists in the past as well as in
+the future!" (P. 224.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_408_408" id="Footnote_408_408"></a><a href="#FNanchor_408_408"><span class="label">[408]</span></a> <span class="smcap">M. G. Dumas</span>, <i>La Science des Fontaines</i>, 1857.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_409_409" id="Footnote_409_409"></a><a href="#FNanchor_409_409"><span class="label">[409]</span></a> In the curiously variegated sandstone of Arabia Petr&aelig;a&mdash;which is
+certainly a reaggregation of loose sand derived from particles of older
+rocks&mdash;the contiguous veins frequently differ very widely in color, but not
+sensibly in specific gravity or in texture; and the singular way in which
+they are now alternated, now confusedly intermixed, must be explained
+otherwise than by the weight of the respective grains which compose
+them. They seem, in fact, to have been let fall by water in violent ebullition
+or tumultuous mechanical agitation, or by a succession of sudden
+aquatic or aerial currents flowing in different directions and charged with
+differently colored matter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_410_410" id="Footnote_410_410"></a><a href="#FNanchor_410_410"><span class="label">[410]</span></a> <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, i, pp. 243, 246-377, <i>et seqq.</i> See also the
+arguments of Br&eacute;montier as to the origin of the dune sands of Gascony,
+<i>Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1833, 1er s&eacute;mestre, pp. 158, 161. Br&eacute;montier
+estimates the sand annually thrown up on that coast at five cubic
+toises and two feet to the running toise (ubi supra, p. 162), or rather more
+than two hundred and twenty cubic feet to the running foot. Laval, upon
+observations continued through seven years, found the quantity to be
+twenty-five m&egrave;tres per running m&egrave;tre, which is equal to two hundred and
+sixty-eight cubic feet to the running foot.&mdash;<i>Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>,
+1842, 2me s&eacute;mestre, p. 229. These computations make the proportion of
+sand deposited on the coast of Gascony three or four times as great as that
+observed by Andresen on the shores of Jutland. Laval estimates the total
+quantity of sand annually thrown up on the coast of Gascony at 6,000,000
+cubic m&egrave;tres, or more than 7,800,000 cubic yards.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_411_411" id="Footnote_411_411"></a><a href="#FNanchor_411_411"><span class="label">[411]</span></a> <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, i, p. 339.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_412_412" id="Footnote_412_412"></a><a href="#FNanchor_412_412"><span class="label">[412]</span></a> The conditions favorable to the production of sand from disintegrated
+rock, by causes now in action, are perhaps nowhere more perfectly realized
+than in the Sinaitic Peninsula. The mountains are steep and lofty, unprotected
+by vegetation or even by a coating of earth, and the rocks which
+compose them are in a shattered and fragmentary condition. They are
+furrowed by deep and precipitous ravines, with beds sufficiently inclined
+for the rapid flow of water, and generally without basins in which the
+larger blocks of stone rolled by the torrents can be dropped and left in
+repose; there are severe frosts and much snow on the higher summits and
+ridges, and the winter rains are abundant and heavy. The mountains are
+principally of igneous formation, but many of the less elevated peaks are
+capped with sandstone, and on the eastern slope of the peninsula you may
+sometimes see, at a single glance, several lofty pyramids of granite, separated
+by considerable intervals, and all surmounted by horizontally stratified
+deposits of sandstone often only a few yards square, which correspond
+to each other in height, are evidently contemporaneous in origin, and were
+once connected in continuous beds. The degradation of the rock on which
+this formation rests is constantly bringing down masses of it, and mingling
+them with the basaltic, porphyritic, granitic, and calcareous fragments
+which the torrents carry down to the valleys, and, through them, in a
+state of greater or less disintegration, to the sea. The quantity of sand
+annually washed into the Red Sea by the larger torrents of the Lesser
+Peninsula, is probably at least equal to that contributed to the ocean by
+any streams draining basins of no greater extent. Absolutely considered,
+then, the mass may be said to be large, but it is apparently very small as
+compared with the sand thrown up by the German Ocean and the Atlantic
+on the coasts of Denmark and of France. There are, indeed, in Arabia
+Petr&aelig;a, many torrents with very short courses, for the sea waves in many
+parts of the peninsular coast wash the base of the mountains. In these
+cases, the debris of the rocks do not reach the sea in a sufficiently comminuted
+condition to be entitled to the appellation of sand, or even in the
+form of well-rounded pebbles. The fragments retain their angular shape,
+and, at some points on the coast, they become cemented together by lime
+or other binding substances held in solution or mechanical suspension in
+the sea water, and are so rapidly converted into a singularly heterogeneous
+conglomerate, that one deposit seems to be consolidated into a breccia
+before the next winter's torrents cover it with another.
+</p><p>
+In the northern part of the peninsula there are extensive deposits of
+sand intermingled with agate pebbles and petrified wood, but these are
+evidently neither derived from the Sinaitic group, nor products of local
+causes known to be now in action.
+</p><p>
+I may here notice the often repeated but mistaken assertion, that the
+petrified wood of the Western Arabian desert consists wholly of the stems
+of palms, or at least of endogenous vegetables. This is an error. I have
+myself picked up in that desert, within the space of a very few square
+yards, fragments both of fossil palms, and of at least two petrified trees
+distinctly marked as of exogenous growth both by annular structure and
+by knots. In ligneous character, one of these almost precisely resembles
+the grain of the extant beech, and this specimen was wormeaten before it
+was converted into silex.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_413_413" id="Footnote_413_413"></a><a href="#FNanchor_413_413"><span class="label">[413]</span></a> <span class="smcap">B&ouml;ttger</span>, <i>Das Mittelmeer</i>, p. 128.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_414_414" id="Footnote_414_414"></a><a href="#FNanchor_414_414"><span class="label">[414]</span></a> The testimony of divers and of other observers on this point is conflicting,
+as might be expected from the infinite variety of conditions by
+which the movement of water is affected. It is generally believed that
+the action of the wind upon the water is not perceptible at greater depths
+than from fifteen feet in ordinary, to eighty or ninety in extreme cases;
+but these estimates are probably very considerably below the truth. Andresen
+quotes Br&eacute;montier as stating that the movement of the waves sometimes
+extends to the depth of five hundred feet, and he adds that others
+think it may reach to six or even seven hundred feet below the surface.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Andresen</span>,
+<i>Om Klitformationen</i>, p. 20.
+</p><p>
+Many physicists now suppose that the undulations of great bodies of
+water reach even deeper. But a movement of undulation is not necessarily
+a movement of translation, and besides, there is very frequently an
+undertow, which tends to carry suspended bodies out to sea as powerfully
+as the superficial waves to throw them on shore. Sandbanks sometimes
+recede from the coast, instead of rolling toward it. Reclus informs us
+that the Mauvaise, a sandbank near the Point de Grave, on the Atlantic
+coast of France, has moved five miles to the west in less than a century.&mdash;<i>Revue
+des Deux Mondes</i>, for December, 1862, p. 905.
+</p><p>
+The action of currents may, in some cases, have been confounded with
+that of the waves. Sea currents, strong enough, possibly, to transport
+sand for some distance, flow far below the surface in parts of the open
+ocean, and in narrow straits they have great force and velocity. The
+divers employed at Constantinople in 1853 found in the Bosphorus, at the
+depth of twenty-five fathoms and at a point much exposed to the wash
+from Galata and Pera, a number of bronze guns supposed to have belonged
+to a ship of war blown up about a hundred and fifty years before. These
+guns were not covered by sand or slime, though a crust of earthy matter,
+an inch in thickness, adhered to their upper surfaces, and the bottom of the
+strait appeared to be wholly free from sediment. The current was so powerful
+at this depth that the divers were hardly able to stand, and a keg of
+nails, purposely dropped into the water, in order that its movements might
+serve as a guide in the search for a bag of coin accidentally lost overboard
+from a ship in the harbor, was rolled by the stream several hundred yards
+before it stopped.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_415_415" id="Footnote_415_415"></a><a href="#FNanchor_415_415"><span class="label">[415]</span></a> Few seas have thrown up so much sand as the shallow German
+Ocean; but there is some reason to think that the amount of this material
+now cast upon its northern shores is less than at some former periods,
+though no extensive series of observations on this subject has been recorded.
+On the Spit of Agger, at the present outlet of the Liimfjord,
+Andresen found the quantity during ten years, on a beach about five hundred
+and seventy feet broad, equal to an annual deposit of an inch and a
+half over the whole surface.&mdash;<i>Om Klitformationen</i>, p. 56.
+</p><p>
+This gives seventy-one and a quarter cubic feet to the running foot&mdash;a
+quantity certainly much smaller than that cast up by the same sea on the
+shores of the Dano-German duchies and of Holland, and, as we have
+seen, scarcely one fourth of that deposited by the Atlantic on the coast of
+Gascony. See <i>ante</i>, p. 453, note.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_416_416" id="Footnote_416_416"></a><a href="#FNanchor_416_416"><span class="label">[416]</span></a> Sand heaps, three and even six hundred feet high, are indeed formed
+by the wind, but this is effected by driving the particles up an inclined
+plane, not by lifting them. Br&eacute;montier, speaking of the sand hills on the
+western coast of France, says: "The particles of sand composing them
+are not large enough to resist wind of a certain force, nor small enough to
+be taken up by it, like dust; they only roll along the surface from which
+they are detached, and, though moving with great velocity, they rarely
+rise to a greater height than three or four inches."&mdash;<i>M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes,
+Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1833, 1er s&eacute;mestre, p. 148.
+</p><p>
+Andresen says that a wind, having a velocity of forty feet per second,
+is strong enough to raise particles of sand as high as the face and eyes of a
+man, but that, in general, it rolls along the ground, and is scarcely ever
+thrown more than to the height of a couple of yards from the surface.
+Even in these cases, it is carried forward by a hopping, not a continuous,
+motion; for a very narrow sheet or channel of water stops the drift entirely,
+all the sand dropping into it until it is filled up.
+</p><p>
+The character of the motion of sand drifts is well illustrated by an interesting
+fact not much noticed hitherto by travellers in the East. In
+situations where the sand is driven through depressions in rock beds, or
+over deposits of silicious pebbles, the surface of the stone is worn and
+smoothed much more effectually than it could be by running water, and
+you may pick up, in such localities, rounded, irregularly broken fragments
+of agate, which have received from the attrition of the sand as fine a polish
+as could be given them by the wheel of the lapidary.
+</p><p>
+Very interesting observations on the polishing of hard stones by drifting
+sand will be found in the Geological Report of William P. Blake: <i>Pacific
+Railroad Report</i>, vol. v, pp. 92, 230, 231. The same geologist observes,
+p. 242, that the sand of the Colorado desert does not rise high in the air,
+but bounds along on the surface or only a few inches above it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_417_417" id="Footnote_417_417"></a><a href="#FNanchor_417_417"><span class="label">[417]</span></a> Wilkinson says that, in much experience in the most sandy parts of
+the Libyan desert, and much inquiry of the best native sources, he never
+saw or heard of any instance of danger to man or beast from the mere
+accumulation of sand transported by the wind. Chesney's observations in
+Arabia, and the testimony of the Bedouins he consulted, are to the same
+purpose. The dangers of the simoom are of a different character, though
+they are certainly aggravated by the blinding effects of the light particles
+of dust and sand borne along by it, and by that of the inhalation of them
+upon the respiration.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_418_418" id="Footnote_418_418"></a><a href="#FNanchor_418_418"><span class="label">[418]</span></a> In the narrow valley of the Nile, bounded as it is, above the Delta, by
+high cliffs, all air currents from the northern quarter become north winds,
+though, of course varying in partial direction, in conformity with the sinuosities
+of the valley. Upon the desert plateau they incline westward, and
+have already borne into the valley the sands of the eastern banks, and
+driven those of the western quite out of the Egyptian portion of the Nile
+basin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_419_419" id="Footnote_419_419"></a><a href="#FNanchor_419_419"><span class="label">[419]</span></a> "The North African desert falls into two divisions: the Sahel, or
+western, and the Sahar, or eastern. The sands of the Sahar were, at a
+remote period, drifted to the west. In the Sahel, the prevailing east
+winds drive the sand-ocean with a progressive westward motion. The
+eastern half of the desert is swept clean."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Naumann</span>, <i>Geognosie</i>, ii, p. 1173.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_420_420" id="Footnote_420_420"></a><a href="#FNanchor_420_420"><span class="label">[420]</span></a> In parts of the Algerian desert, some efforts are made to retard the
+advance of sand dunes which threaten to overwhelm villages. "At Debila,"
+says Laurent, "the lower parts of the lofty dunes are planted with palms,
+* * * but they are constantly menaced with burial by the sands. The
+only remedy employed by the natives consists in little dry walls of crystallized
+gypsum, built on the crests of the dunes, together with hedges of
+dead palm leaves. These defensive measures are aided by incessant labor;
+for every day the people take up in baskets the sand blown over to them
+the night before and carry it back to the other side of the dune."&mdash;<i>M&eacute;moires
+sur le Sahara</i>, p. 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_421_421" id="Footnote_421_421"></a><a href="#FNanchor_421_421"><span class="label">[421]</span></a> Organic constituents, such as comminuted shells, and silicious and
+calcareous exuvi&aelig; of infusorial animals and plants, are sometimes found
+mingled in considerable quantities with mineral sands. These are usually
+the remains of aquatic vegetables or animals, but not uniformly so, for the
+microscopic organisms, whose flinty cases enter so largely into the sandbeds
+of the Mark of Brandenburg, are still living and prolific in the dry
+earth. See <span class="smcap">Wittwer</span>, <i>Physikalische Geographie</i>, p. 142.
+</p><p>
+The desert on both sides of the Nile is inhabited by a land snail, and
+thousands of its shells are swept along and finally buried in the drifts by
+every wind. Every handful of the sand contains fragments of them.
+<span class="smcap">Forchhammer</span>, in <span class="smcap">Leonhard</span> Und <span class="smcap">Bronn</span>'s <i>Jahrbuch</i>, 1841, p. 8, says of the
+sand hills of the Danish coast: "It is not rare to find, high in the knolls,
+marine shells, and especially those of the oyster. They are due to the
+oyster eater [<i>H&aelig;malopus ostralegus</i>], which carries his prey to the top of
+the dunes to devour it." See also <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, <i>De Bodem van</i>, N. I. p. 321.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_422_422" id="Footnote_422_422"></a><a href="#FNanchor_422_422"><span class="label">[422]</span></a> There are various reasons why the formation of dunes is confined to
+low shores, and this law is so universal, that when bluffs are surmounted
+by them, there is always cause to suspect upheaval, or the removal of a
+sloping beach in front of the bluff, after the dunes were formed. Bold
+shores are usually without a sufficient beach for the accumulation of large
+deposits; they are commonly washed by a sea too deep to bring up sand
+from its bottom; their abrupt elevation, even if moderate in amount,
+would still be too great to allow ordinary winds to lift the sand above
+them; and their influence in deadening the wind which blows toward
+them would even more effectually prevent the raising of sand from the
+beach at their foot.
+</p><p>
+Forchhammer, describing the coast of Jutland, says that, in high winds,
+"one can hardly stand upon the dunes, except when they are near the
+water line and have been cut down perpendicularly by the waves. Then
+the wind is little or not at all felt&mdash;a fact of experience very common on
+our coasts, observed on all the steep shore bluffs of two hundred feet in
+height, and, in the Faroe Islands, on precipices two thousand feet high. In
+heavy gales in those islands, the cattle fly to the very edge of the cliffs for
+shelter, and frequently fall over. The wind, impinging against the vertical
+wall, creates an ascending current which shoots somewhat past the crest
+of the rock, and thus the observer or the animal is protected against the
+tempest by a barrier of air."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Leonhard</span> und <span class="smcap">Bronn</span>, <i>Jahrbuch</i>, 1841, p. 3.
+</p><p>
+The calming, or rather diversion, of the wind by cliffs extends to a considerable
+distance in front of them, and no wind would have sufficient
+force to raise the sand vertically, parallel to the face of a bluff, even to the
+height of twenty feet.
+</p><p>
+It is very commonly believed that it is impossible to grow forest trees
+on sea-shore bluffs, or points much exposed to strong winds. The observations
+just cited tend to show that it would not be difficult to protect trees
+from the mechanical effect of the wind, by screens much lower than the
+height to which they are expected to grow. Recent experiments confirm
+this, and it is found that, though the outer row or rows may suffer from
+the wind, every tree shelters a taller one behind it. Extensive groves have
+thus been formed in situations where an isolated tree would not grow at all.
+</p><p>
+Piper, in his <i>Trees of America</i>, p. 19, gives an interesting account of Mr.
+Tudor's success in planting trees on the bleak and barren shore of Nahant.
+"Mr. Tudor," observes he, "has planted more than ten thousand trees at
+Nahant, and, by the results of his experiments, has fully demonstrated that
+trees, properly cared for in the beginning, may be made to grow up to the
+very bounds of the ocean, exposed to the biting of the wind and the spray
+of the sea. The only shelter they require is, at first, some interruption to
+break the current of the wind, such as fences, houses, or other trees."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_423_423" id="Footnote_423_423"></a><a href="#FNanchor_423_423"><span class="label">[423]</span></a> The careful observations of Colonel J. D. Graham, of the United States
+Army, show a tide of about three inches in Lake Michigan. See "A Lunar
+Tidal Wave in the North American Lakes," demonstrated by Lieut.-Colonel
+J. D. Graham, in the fourteenth volume of the <i>Proceedings of the American
+Association for the Advancement of Science</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_424_424" id="Footnote_424_424"></a><a href="#FNanchor_424_424"><span class="label">[424]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, i, p. 327, note.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_425_425" id="Footnote_425_425"></a><a href="#FNanchor_425_425"><span class="label">[425]</span></a> The principal special works and essays on this subject known to me are:
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Br&eacute;montier</span>, <i>M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes, etc.</i>, 1790, reprinted in <i>Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1833, 1er s&eacute;mestre, pp. 145-186.
+</p><p>
+<i>Rapport sur les differents M&eacute;moires de M. Br&eacute;montier</i>, par <span class="smcap">Laumont</span> et
+autres, 1806, same volume, pp. 192, 224.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Lefort</span>, <i>Notice sur les Travaux de Fixation des Dunes, Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1831, 2me s&eacute;mestre, pp. 320-332.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Forchhammer</span>, <i>Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer</i>, in <span class="smcap">Leonhard</span>
+und <span class="smcap">Bronn</span>, <i>Jahrbuch, etc.</i>, 1841, pp. 1, 38.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">J. G. Kohl</span>, <i>Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogth&uuml;mer Schleswig und
+Holstein</i>, 1846, vol. ii, pp. 112-162, 193-204.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Laval</span>, <i>M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts
+et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847, 2me s&eacute;mestre, pp. 218-268.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">G. C. A. Krause</span>, <i>Der D&uuml;nenbau auf den Ostsee-K&uuml;sten West-Preussens</i>,
+1850, 1 vol. 8vo.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">W. C. H. Staring</span>, <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, 1856, vol. i, pp. 310-341,
+and 424-431.
+</p><p>
+Same author, <i>Voormaals en Thans</i>, 1858, pages cited.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">C. C. Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationen og Klittens Behandling og Bestyrelse</i>,
+1861, 1 vol. 8vo, x, 392 pp., much the most complete treatise on the
+subject.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Andresen</span> cites, upon the origin of the dunes: <span class="smcap">Hull</span>, <i>Over den Oorsprong
+en de Geschiedenis der Hollandsche Duinen</i>, 1838, and <span class="smcap">Gross</span>'s <i>Veiledning
+ved Behandlingen af Sandflugtstr&aelig;kningerne</i>, 1847; and upon the improvement
+of sand plains by planting, <span class="smcap">Pannewitz</span>, <i>Anleitung zum Anbau der
+Sandfl&auml;chen</i>, 1832. I am not acquainted with either of the latter two
+works but I have consulted with advantage, on this subject, <span class="smcap">Delamarre</span>,
+<i>Historique de la Cr&eacute;ation d'une Richesse millionaire par la culture des
+Pins</i>, 1827; <span class="smcap">Boitel</span>, <i>Mise en valeur des terres pauvres par le Pin maritime</i>,
+1857; and <span class="smcap">Brincken</span>, <i>Ansichten &uuml;ber die Bewaldung der Steppen des Europ&auml;ischen
+Russlands</i>, 1854.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_426_426" id="Footnote_426_426"></a><a href="#FNanchor_426_426"><span class="label">[426]</span></a> "Dunes are always full of water, from the action of capillary attraction.
+Upon the summits, one seldom needs to dig more than a foot to find
+the sand moist, and in the depressions, fresh water is met with near the
+surface."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Forchhammer</span>, in <span class="smcap">Leonhard</span> und <span class="smcap">Bronn</span>, for 1841, p. 5, note.
+</p><p>
+On the other hand, Andresen, who has very carefully investigated this
+as well as all other dune phenomena, maintains that the humidity of the
+sand ridges cannot be derived from capillary attraction. He found by
+experiment that drift sand was not moistened to a greater height than
+eight and a half inches, after standing a whole night in water. He
+states the minimum of water contained by the sand of the dunes, one foot
+below the surface, after a long drought, at two per cent., the maximum,
+after a rainy month, at four per cent. At greater depths the quantity is
+larger. The hygroscopicity of the sand of the coast of Jutland he found
+to be thirty-three per cent. by measure, or 21.5 by weight. The annual
+precipitation on that coast is twenty-seven inches, and, as the evaporation
+is about the same, he argues that rain water does not penetrate far beneath
+the surface of the dunes, and concludes that their humidity can be explained
+only by evaporation from below.&mdash;<i>Om Klitformationen</i>, pp. 106-110.
+</p><p>
+In the dunes of Algeria, water is so abundant that wells are constantly
+dug in them at high points on their surface. They are sunk to the depth
+of three or four m&egrave;tres only, and the water rises to the height of a m&egrave;tre
+in them.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Laurent</span>, <i>M&eacute;moire sur le Sahara</i>, pp. 11, 12, 13.
+</p><p>
+The same writer observes (p. 14) that the hollows in the dunes are
+planted with palms which find moisture enough a little below the surface.
+It would hence seem that the proposal to fix the dunes which are supposed
+to threaten the Suez Canal, by planting the maritime pine and other trees
+upon them, is not altogether so absurd as it is thought to be by some of
+those disinterested philanthropists of other nations who are distressed with
+fears that French capitalists will lose the money they have invested in that
+great undertaking.
+</p><p>
+Ponds of water are often found in the depressions between the sand
+hills of the dune chains in the North American desert.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_427_427" id="Footnote_427_427"></a><a href="#FNanchor_427_427"><span class="label">[427]</span></a> According to the French authorities, the dunes of France are not
+always composed of quartzose sand. "The dune sands" of different
+characters, says Br&eacute;montier, "partake of the nature of the different materials
+which compose them. At certain points on the coast of Normandy
+they are found to be purely calcareous; they are of mixed composition on
+the shores of Brittany and Saintonge, and generally quartzose between the
+mouth of the Gironde and that of the Adour."&mdash;<i>M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes,
+Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, t. vii, 1833, 1er s&eacute;mestre, p. 146.
+</p><p>
+In the dunes of Long Island and of Jutland, there are considerable
+veins composed almost wholly of garnet. For a very full examination of
+the mechanical and chemical composition of the dune sands of Jutland, see
+<span class="smcap">Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationen</i>, p. 110.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_428_428" id="Footnote_428_428"></a><a href="#FNanchor_428_428"><span class="label">[428]</span></a> <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, i, p. 323.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_429_429" id="Footnote_429_429"></a><a href="#FNanchor_429_429"><span class="label">[429]</span></a> <span class="smcap">J. G. Kohl</span>, <i>Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogth&uuml;mer Schleswig und
+Holstein</i>, ii, p. 200.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_430_430" id="Footnote_430_430"></a><a href="#FNanchor_430_430"><span class="label">[430]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, i, p. 317. See also, <span class="smcap">Bergs&ouml;e</span>,
+<i>Reventov's Virksomhed</i>, ii, p. 11.
+</p><p>
+"In the sand-hill ponds mentioned in the text, there is a vigorous
+growth of bog plants accompanied with the formation of peat, which goes
+on regularly as long as the dune sand does not drift. But if the surface of
+the dunes is broken, the sand blows into the ponds, covers the peat, and
+puts an end to its formation. When, in the course of time, marine currents
+cut away the coast, the dunes move landward and fill up the ponds, and
+thus are formed the remarkable strata of fossile peat called Mart&ouml;rv, which
+appears to be unknown to the geologists of other parts of Europe."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Forchhammer</span>,
+in <span class="smcap">Leonhard</span> und <span class="smcap">Bronn</span>, 1841, p. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_431_431" id="Footnote_431_431"></a><a href="#FNanchor_431_431"><span class="label">[431]</span></a> The lower strata must be older than the superficial layers, and the
+particles which compose them may in time become more disintegrated, and
+therefore finer than those deposited later and above them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_432_432" id="Footnote_432_432"></a><a href="#FNanchor_432_432"><span class="label">[432]</span></a> "On the west coast of Africa the dunes are drifting seawards, and
+always receiving new accessions from the Sahara. They are constantly
+advancing out into the sea." See <i>ante</i>, p. 16, note.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Naumann</span>, <i>Geognosie</i>,
+ii, p. 1172. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_58">No. 58</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_433_433" id="Footnote_433_433"></a><a href="#FNanchor_433_433"><span class="label">[433]</span></a> Forchhammer, after pointing out the coincidence between the inclined
+stratification of dunes and the structure of ancient tilted rocks,
+says: "But I am not able to point out a sandstone formation corresponding
+to the dunes. Probably most ancient dunes have been destroyed by
+submersion before the loose sand became cemented to solid stone, but we
+may suppose that circumstances have existed somewhere which have preserved
+the characteristics of this formation."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Leonhard</span> und <span class="smcap">Bronn</span>,
+1841, p. 8, 9.
+</p><p>
+Such formations, however, certainly exist. I find from Laurent (<i>M&eacute;moire
+sur le Sahara, etc.</i>, p. 12), that in the Algerian desert there exist
+"sandstone formations" not only "corresponding to the dunes," but actually
+consolidated within them. "A place called El-Mouia-Tadjer presents
+a repetition of what we saw at El-Baya; one of the funnels formed
+in the middle of the dunes contains wells from two m&egrave;tres to two and a
+half in depth, dug in a sand which pressure, and probably the presence of
+certain salts, have cemented so as to form true sandstone, soft indeed, but
+which does not yield except to the pickaxe. These sandstones exhibit an
+inclination which seems to be the effect of wind; for they conform to the
+direction of the sands which roll down a scarp occasioned by the primitive
+obstacle." See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_59">No. 59</a>.
+</p><p>
+The dunes near the mouth of the Nile, the lower sands of which have
+been cemented together by the infiltration of Nile water, would probably
+show a similar stratification in the sandstone which now forms their base.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_434_434" id="Footnote_434_434"></a><a href="#FNanchor_434_434"><span class="label">[434]</span></a> Forchhammer ascribes the resemblance between the furrowing of the
+dune sands and the beach ripples, not to the similarity of the effect of wind
+and water upon sand, but wholly to the action of the former fluid; in the
+first instance, directly, in the latter, through the water. "The wind ripples
+on the surface of the dunes precisely resemble the water ripples of
+sand flats occasionally overflowed by the sea; and with the closest scrutiny,
+I have never been able to detect the slightest difference between them.
+This is easily explained by the fact, that the water ripples are produced by
+the action of light wind on the water which only transmits the air waves
+to the sand."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Leonhard</span> und <span class="smcap">Bronn</span>, 1841, pp. 7, 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_435_435" id="Footnote_435_435"></a><a href="#FNanchor_435_435"><span class="label">[435]</span></a> American observers do not agree in their descriptions of the form and
+character of the sand grains which compose the interior dunes of the North
+American desert. C. C. Parry, geologist to the Mexican Boundary Commission,
+in describing the dunes near the station at a spring thirty-two
+miles west from the Rio Grande at El Paso, says: "The separate grains
+of the sand composing the sand hills are seen under a lens to be angular, and
+not rounded, as would be the case in regular beach deposits."&mdash;<i>U. S. Mexican
+Boundary Survey, Report of</i>, vol. i, <i>Geological Report of C. C. Parry</i>, p. 10.
+</p><p>
+In the general description of the country traversed, same volume, p.
+47, Colonel Emory says that on an "examination of the sand with a
+microscope of sufficient power," the grains are seen to be angular, not
+rounded by rolling in water.
+</p><p>
+On the other hand, Blake, in <i>Geological Report, Pacific Railroad Rep.</i>,
+vol. v, p. 119, observes that the grains of the dune sand, consisting of
+quartz, chalcedony, carnelian, agate, rose quartz, and probably chrysolite,
+were much rounded; and on page 241, he says that many of the sand grains
+of the Colorado desert are perfect spheres.
+</p><p>
+On page 20 of a report in vol. ii of the <i>Pacific Railroad Report</i>, by the
+same observer, it is said that an examination of dune sands brought from
+the Llano Estacado by Captain Pope, showed the grains to be "much
+rounded by attrition."
+</p><p>
+The sands described by Mr. Parry and Colonel Emory are not from the
+same localities as those examined by Mr. Blake, and the difference in their
+character may denote a difference of origin or of age.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_436_436" id="Footnote_436_436"></a><a href="#FNanchor_436_436"><span class="label">[436]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Laurent</span> (<i>M&eacute;moire sur le Sahara</i>, pp. 11, 12, and elsewhere) speaks
+of a funnel-shaped depression at a high point in the dunes, as a characteristic
+feature of the sand hills of the Algerian desert. This seems to be an
+approximation to the crescent form noticed by Meyen and P&ouml;ppig in the
+inland dunes of Peru.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_437_437" id="Footnote_437_437"></a><a href="#FNanchor_437_437"><span class="label">[437]</span></a> <i>Travels in Peru</i>, New York, 1848, chap. ix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_438_438" id="Footnote_438_438"></a><a href="#FNanchor_438_438"><span class="label">[438]</span></a> Notwithstanding the general tendency of isolated coast dunes and
+of the peaks of the sand ridges to assume a conical form, Andresen states
+that the hills of the inner or landward rows are sometimes <i>bow-shaped</i>,
+and sometimes undulating in outline.&mdash;<i>Om Klitformationen</i>, p. 84. He
+says further that: "Before an obstruction, two or three feet high and considerably
+longer, lying perpendicularly to the direction of the wind, the
+sand is deposited with a windward angle of from 6&deg; to 12&deg;, and the bank
+presents a concave face to the wind, while, behind the obstruction, the
+outline is convex;" and he lays it down as a general rule, that a slope,
+<i>from</i> which sand is blown, is left with a concavity of about one inch of
+depth to four feet of distance; a slope, <i>upon</i> which sand is dropped by the
+wind, is convex. It appears from Andresen's figures, however, that the
+concavity and convexity referred to, apply, not to the <i>horizontal longitudinal</i>
+section of the sand bank, as his language unexplained by the
+drawings might be supposed to mean, but to the <i>vertical cross-section</i>, and
+hence the dunes he describes, with the exception above noted, do not correspond
+to those of the American deserts.&mdash;<i>Om Klitformationen</i>, p. 86.
+</p><p>
+The dunes of Gascony, which sometimes exceed three hundred feet in
+height, present the same concavity and convexity of <i>vertical</i> cross-section.
+The slopes of these dunes are much steeper than those of the Netherlands
+and the Danish coast; for while all observers agree in assigning to the seaward
+and landward faces of those latter, respectively, angles of from 5&deg;
+to 12&deg;, and 30&deg; with the horizon, the corresponding faces of the dunes
+of Gascony present angles of from 10&deg; to 25&deg;, and 50&deg; to 60&deg;.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Laval</span>,
+<i>M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847,
+2me s&eacute;mestre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_439_439" id="Footnote_439_439"></a><a href="#FNanchor_439_439"><span class="label">[439]</span></a> Krause, speaking of the dunes on the coast of Prussia, says: "Their
+origin belongs to three different periods, in which important changes in
+the relative level of sea and land have unquestionably taken place. * * *
+Except in the deep depressions between them, the dunes are everywhere
+sprinkled, to a considerable height, with brown oxydulated iron, which has
+penetrated into the sand to the depth of from three to eighteen inches, and
+colored it red. * * * Above the iron is a stratum of sand differing in
+composition from ordinary sea sand, and on this, growing woods are always
+found. * * * The gradually accumulated forest soil occurs in beds of
+from one to three feet thick, and changes, proceeding upward, from gray
+sand to black humus." Even on the third or seaward range, the sand
+grasses appear and thrive luxuriantly, at least on the west coast, though.
+Krause doubts whether the dunes of the east coast were ever thus protected.&mdash;<i>Der
+D&uuml;nenbau</i>, pp. 8, 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_440_440" id="Footnote_440_440"></a><a href="#FNanchor_440_440"><span class="label">[440]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Laval</span>, <i>M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et
+Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847, 2me s&eacute;mestre, p. 231. The same opinion had been expressed
+by <span class="smcap">Br&eacute;montier</span>, <i>Annales des Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1833, 1er s&eacute;mestre,
+p. 185.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_441_441" id="Footnote_441_441"></a><a href="#FNanchor_441_441"><span class="label">[441]</span></a> "In the Middle Ages," says Willibald Alexis, as quoted by M&uuml;ller,
+<i>Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt</i> i, p. 16, "the Nehrung was extending itself
+further, and the narrow opening near Lochstadt had filled itself up with
+sand. A great pine forest bound with its roots the dune sand and the
+heath uninterruptedly from Danzig to Pillau. King Frederick William I
+was once in want of money. A certain Herr von Korff promised to procure
+it for him, without loan or taxes, if he could be allowed to remove
+something quite useless. He thinned out the forests of Prussia, which
+then, indeed, possessed little pecuniary value; but he felled the entire
+woods of the Frische Nehrung, so far as they lay within the Prussian territory.
+The financial operation was a success. The king had money, but
+in the elementary operation which resulted from it, the state received irreparable
+injury. The sea winds rush over the bared hills; the Frische Haff
+is half-choked with sand; the channel between Elbing, the sea, and K&ouml;nigsberg
+is endangered, and the fisheries in the Haff injured. The operation
+of Herr von Korff brought the king 200,000 thalers. The state would
+now willingly expend millions to restore the forests again."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_442_442" id="Footnote_442_442"></a><a href="#FNanchor_442_442"><span class="label">[442]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, <i>Voormaals en Thans</i>, p. 231. Had the dunes of the Netherlandish
+and French coasts, at the period of the Roman invasion, resembled
+the moving sand hills of the present day, it is inconceivable that they
+could have escaped the notice of so acute a physical geographer as Strabo;
+and the absolute silence of C&aelig;sar, Ptolemy, and the encyclop&aelig;dic Pliny,
+respecting them, would be not less inexplicable.
+</p><p>
+The Old Northern language, the ancient tongue of Denmark, though
+rich in terms descriptive of natural scenery, had no name for dune, nor do
+I think the sand hills of the coast are anywhere noticed in Icelandic literature.
+The modern Icelanders, in treating of the dunes of Jutland, call
+them <i>klettr</i>, hill, cliff, and the Danish <i>klit</i> is from that source. The word
+D&uuml;ne is also of recent introduction into German. Had the dunes been
+distinguished from other hillocks, in ancient times, by so remarkable a
+feature as the propensity to drift, they would certainly have acquired a
+specific name in both Old Northern and German. So long as they were
+wooded knolls, they needed no peculiar name; when they became formidable,
+from the destruction of the woods which confined them, they
+acquired a designation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_443_443" id="Footnote_443_443"></a><a href="#FNanchor_443_443"><span class="label">[443]</span></a> The sands of Cape Cod were partially, if not completely, covered
+with vegetation by nature. Dr. Dwight, describing the dunes as they
+were in 1800, says: "Some of them are covered with beach grass; some
+fringed with whortleberry bushes; and some tufted with a small and singular
+growth of oaks. * * * The parts of this barrier, which are covered
+with whortleberry bushes and with oaks, have been either not at all,
+or very little blown. The oaks, particularly, appear to be the continuation
+of the forests originally formed on this spot. * * * They wore all the
+marks of extreme age; were, in some instances, already decayed, and in
+others decaying; were hoary with moss, and were deformed by branches,
+broken and wasted, not by violence, but by time."&mdash;<i>Travels</i>, iii, p. 91.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_444_444" id="Footnote_444_444"></a><a href="#FNanchor_444_444"><span class="label">[444]</span></a> Bergs&ouml;e (<i>Reventlovs Virksomhed</i>, ii, 3) states that the dunes on the
+west coast of Jutland were stationary before the destruction of the forests
+to the east of them. The felling of the tall trees removed the resistance
+to the lower currents of the westerly winds, and the sands have since
+buried a great extent of fertile soil. See also same work, ii, p. 124.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_445_445" id="Footnote_445_445"></a><a href="#FNanchor_445_445"><span class="label">[445]</span></a> "We must, therefore, not be surprised to see the people here deal as
+gingerly with their dunes, as if treading among eggs. He who is lucky
+enough to own a molehill of dune pets it affectionately, and spends his
+substance in cherishing and fattening it. That fair, fertile, rich province,
+the peninsula of Eiderst&auml;dt in the south of Friesland, has, on the point
+toward the sea, only a tiny row of dunes, some six miles long or so; but
+the people talk of their fringe of sand hills as if it were a border set with
+pearls. They look upon it as their best defence against Neptune. They
+have connected it with their system of dikes, and for years have kept sentries
+posted to protect it against wanton injury."&mdash;<span class="smcap">J. G. Kohl</span>, <i>Die Inseln
+u. Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins</i>, ii, p. 115.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_446_446" id="Footnote_446_446"></a><a href="#FNanchor_446_446"><span class="label">[446]</span></a> Sand banks sometimes connect themselves with the coast at both
+ends, and thus cut off a portion of the sea. In this case, as well as when
+salt water is enclosed by sea dikes, the water thus separated from the
+ocean gradually becomes fresh, or at least brackish. The Haffs, or large
+expanses of fresh water in Eastern Prussia&mdash;which are divided from the
+Baltic by narrow sand banks called Nehrungen, or, at sheltered points of
+the coast, by fluviatile deposits called Werders&mdash;all have one or more open
+passages, through which the water of the rivers that supply them at last
+finds its way to the sea.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_447_447" id="Footnote_447_447"></a><a href="#FNanchor_447_447"><span class="label">[447]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationen</i>, pp. 68-72.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_448_448" id="Footnote_448_448"></a><a href="#FNanchor_448_448"><span class="label">[448]</span></a> Id., pp. 231, 232. Andresen's work, though printed in 1861, was finished
+in 1859. Lyell (<i>Antiquity of Man</i>, 1863, p. 14) says: "Even in the course
+of the present century, the salt waters have made one eruption into the
+Baltic by the Liimfjord, although they have been now again excluded."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_449_449" id="Footnote_449_449"></a><a href="#FNanchor_449_449"><span class="label">[449]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Forchhammer</span>, <i>Geognostische Studien am Meeres-Ufer</i>. <span class="smcap">Leonhard</span> und
+<span class="smcap">Bronn</span>, <i>Jahrbuch</i>, 1841, pp. 11, 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_450_450" id="Footnote_450_450"></a><a href="#FNanchor_450_450"><span class="label">[450]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationen</i>, pp. 68, 72.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_451_451" id="Footnote_451_451"></a><a href="#FNanchor_451_451"><span class="label">[451]</span></a> <i>Voormaals en Thans</i>, pp. 126, 170.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_452_452" id="Footnote_452_452"></a><a href="#FNanchor_452_452"><span class="label">[452]</span></a> See a very interesting article entitled "Le Littoral de la France," by
+<span class="smcap">&Eacute;lis&eacute;e Reclus</span>, in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, for December, 1862, pp.
+901, 936.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_453_453" id="Footnote_453_453"></a><a href="#FNanchor_453_453"><span class="label">[453]</span></a> <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, i, p. 425. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_60">No. 60</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_454_454" id="Footnote_454_454"></a><a href="#FNanchor_454_454"><span class="label">[454]</span></a> The movement of the dunes has been hardly less destructive on the
+north side of the Gironde. Sea the valuable article of <span class="smcap">&Eacute;lis&eacute;e Reclus</span>
+already referred to, in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, for December, 1862,
+entitled "Le Littoral de la France."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_455_455" id="Footnote_455_455"></a><a href="#FNanchor_455_455"><span class="label">[455]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Laval</span>, <i>M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des
+Ponts et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847, p. 223. The author adds, as a curious and unexplained
+fact, that some of these pools, though evidently not original formations
+but mere accumulations of water dammed up by the dunes, have,
+along their western shore, near the base of the sand hills, a depth of more
+than one hundred and thirty feet, and hence their bottoms are not less
+than eighty feet below the level of the lowest tides. Their western banks
+descend steeply, conforming nearly to the slope of the dunes, while on the
+northeast and south the inclination of their beds is very gradual. The
+greatest depth of these pools corresponds to that of the sea ten miles from
+the shore. Is it possible that the weight of the sands has pressed together
+the soil on which they rest, and thus occasioned a subsidence of the surface
+extending beyond their base? See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_61">No. 61</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_456_456" id="Footnote_456_456"></a><a href="#FNanchor_456_456"><span class="label">[456]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationem</i>, pp. 56, 79, 82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_457_457" id="Footnote_457_457"></a><a href="#FNanchor_457_457"><span class="label">[457]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, <i>De Bodem van Nederland</i>, i, pp. 329-331. Id., <i>Voormaals
+en Thans</i>, p. 163. <span class="smcap">Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationen</i>, pp. 280, 295.
+</p><p>
+The creation of new dunes, by the processes mentioned in the text,
+seems to be much older in Europe than the adoption of measures for securing
+them by planting. Dr. Dwight mentions a case in Massachusetts,
+where a beach was restored, and new dunes formed, by planting beach
+grass. "Within the memory of my informant, the sea broke over the
+beach which connects Truro with Province Town, and swept the body of
+it away for some distance. The beach grass was immediately planted on
+the spot; in consequence of which the beach was again raised to a sufficient
+height, and in various places into hills."&mdash;<i>Dwight's Travels</i>, iii, p. 93.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_458_458" id="Footnote_458_458"></a><a href="#FNanchor_458_458"><span class="label">[458]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Staring</span>, i, pp. 310, 332.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_459_459" id="Footnote_459_459"></a><a href="#FNanchor_459_459"><span class="label">[459]</span></a> There is some confusion in the popular use of these names, and in
+the scientific designations of sand plants, and they are possibly applied to
+different plants in different places. Some writers style the gourbet <i>Calamagrostis
+arenaria</i>, and distinguish it from the Danish Klittetag or Hjelme.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_460_460" id="Footnote_460_460"></a><a href="#FNanchor_460_460"><span class="label">[460]</span></a> Bread, not indeed very palatable, has been made of the seeds of the
+arundo, but the quantity which can be gathered is not sufficient to form an
+important economical resource.&mdash;&mdash;<span class="smcap">Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationen</i>, p. 160.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_461_461" id="Footnote_461_461"></a><a href="#FNanchor_461_461"><span class="label">[461]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Bergs&ouml;e</span>, <i>Reventlovs Virksomhed</i>, ii, p. 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_462_462" id="Footnote_462_462"></a><a href="#FNanchor_462_462"><span class="label">[462]</span></a> Measures were taken for the protection of the dunes of Cape Cod, in
+Massachusetts, during the colonial period, though I believe they are now
+substantially abandoned. A hundred years ago, before the valley of the
+Mississippi, or even the rich plains of Central and Western New York,
+were opened to the white settler, the value of land was relatively much
+greater in New England than it is at present, and consequently some rural
+improvements were then worth making, which would not now yield sufficient
+returns to tempt the investment of capital. The money and the time
+required to subdue and render productive twenty acres of sea sand on Cape
+Cod, would buy a "section" and rear a family in Illinois. The son of the
+Pilgrims, therefore, abandons the sand hills, and seeks a better fortune on
+the fertile prairies of the West.
+</p><p>
+Dr. Dwight, who visited Cape Cod in the year 1800, after describing
+the "beach grass, a vegetable bearing a general resemblance to sedge, but
+of a light bluish-green, and of a coarse appearance," which "flourishes
+with a strong and rapid vegetation on the sands," observes that he received
+"from a Mr. Collins, formerly of Truro, the following information:"
+"When he lived at Truro, the inhabitants were, under the authority of
+law, regularly warned in the month of April, yearly, to plant beach grass,
+as, in other towns of New England, they are warned to repair highways.
+It was required by the laws of the State, and under the proper penalties
+for disobedience; being as regular a public tax as any other. The people,
+therefore, generally attended and performed the labor. The grass was dug
+in bunches, as it naturally grows; and each bunch divided into a number
+of smaller ones. These were set out in the sand at distances of three feet.
+After one row was set, others were placed behind it in such a manner as to
+shut up the interstices; or, as a carpenter would say, so as to break the
+joints. * * * When it is once set, it grows and spreads with rapidity.
+* * * The seeds are so heavy that they bend down the heads of the
+grass; and when ripe, drop directly down by its side, where they immediately
+vegetate. Thus in a short time the ground is covered.
+</p><p>
+"Where this covering is found, none of the sand is blown. On the
+contrary, it is accumulated and raised continually as snow gathers and
+rises among bushes, or branches of trees cut and spread upon the earth.
+Nor does the grass merely defend the surface on which it is planted; but
+rises, as that rises by new accumulations; and always overtops the sand,
+however high that may be raised by the wind."&mdash;<i>Dwight's Travels in New
+England and New York</i>, ii, p. 92, 93.
+</p><p>
+This information was received in 1800, and it relates to a former state
+of things, probably more than twenty years previous, and earlier than
+1779, when the Government of Denmark first seriously attempted the conquest
+of the dunes.
+</p><p>
+The depasturing of the beach grass&mdash;a plant allied in habits, if not in
+botanical character, to the arundo&mdash;has been attended with very injurious
+effects in Massachusetts. Dr. Dwight, after referring to the laws for its
+propagation, already cited, says: "The benefit of this useful plant, and of
+these prudent regulations, is, however, in some measure lost. There are in
+Province Town, as I was informed, one hundred and forty cows. These
+animals, being stinted in their means of subsistence, are permitted to
+wander, at times, in search of food. In every such case, they make depredations
+on the beach grass, and prevent its seeds from being formed. In
+this manner the plant is ultimately destroyed."&mdash;<i>Travels</i>, iii, p. 94.
+</p><p>
+On page 101 of the same volume, the author mentions an instance of
+great injury from this cause. "Here, about one thousand acres were
+entirely blown away to the depth, in many places, of ten feet. * * *
+Not a green thing was visible except the whortleberries, which tufted a
+few lonely hillocks rising to the height of the original surface and prevented
+by this defence from being blown away also. These, although they varied
+the prospect, added to the gloom by their strongly picturesque appearance,
+by marking exactly the original level of the plain, and by showing us in
+this manner the immensity of the mass which had been thus carried away
+by the wind. The beach grass had been planted here, and the ground had
+been formerly enclosed; but the gates had been left open, and the cattle
+had destroyed this invaluable plant."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_463_463" id="Footnote_463_463"></a><a href="#FNanchor_463_463"><span class="label">[463]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationen</i>, pp. 237, 240.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_464_464" id="Footnote_464_464"></a><a href="#FNanchor_464_464"><span class="label">[464]</span></a> "These plantations, perseveringly continued from the time of Br&eacute;montier
+now cover more than 40,000 hectares, and compose forests which
+are not only the salvation of the department, but constitute its wealth."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Clav&eacute;</span>,
+<i>&Eacute;tudes Foresti&egrave;res</i>, p. 254.
+</p><p>
+Other authors have stated the plantations of the French dunes to be
+much more extensive.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_465_465" id="Footnote_465_465"></a><a href="#FNanchor_465_465"><span class="label">[465]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Kruse</span>, <i>D&uuml;nenbau</i>, pp. 34, 38, 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_466_466" id="Footnote_466_466"></a><a href="#FNanchor_466_466"><span class="label">[466]</span></a> These processes are substantially similar to those employed in the
+pineries of the Carolinas, but they are better systematized and more
+economically conducted in France. In the latter country, all the products
+of the pine, even to the cones, find a remunerating market, while, in
+America, the price of resin is so low, that in the fierce steamboat races
+on the great rivers, large quantities of it are thrown into the furnaces to
+increase the intensity of the fires. In a carefully prepared article on the
+Southern pineries published in an American magazine&mdash;I think Harper's&mdash;a
+few years ago, it was stated that the resin from the turpentine distilleries
+was sometimes allowed to run to waste; and the writer, in one instance,
+observed a mass, thus rejected as rubbish, which was estimated to amount
+to two thousand barrels. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_62">No. 62</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_467_467" id="Footnote_467_467"></a><a href="#FNanchor_467_467"><span class="label">[467]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationen</i>, pp. 78, 262, 275.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_468_468" id="Footnote_468_468"></a><a href="#FNanchor_468_468"><span class="label">[468]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Laval</span>, <i>M&eacute;moire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts
+et Chauss&eacute;es</i>, 1847, 2me s&eacute;mestre, p. 261. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_63">No. 63</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_469_469" id="Footnote_469_469"></a><a href="#FNanchor_469_469"><span class="label">[469]</span></a> There are extensive ranges of dunes on various parts of the coasts of
+the British Islands, but I find no estimate of their area. Pannewitz (<i>Anleitung
+zam Anbau der Sandfl&auml;chen</i>), as cited by Andresen (<i>Om Klitformationen</i>,
+p. 45), states that the drifting sands of Europe, including, of
+course, sand plains as well as dunes, cover an extent of 21,000 square miles.
+This is, perhaps, an exaggeration, though there is, undoubtedly, much more
+desert land of this description on the European continent than has been
+generally supposed. There is no question that most of this waste is capable
+of reclamation by simple planting, and no mode of physical improvement
+is better worth the attention of civilized Governments than this.
+</p><p>
+There are often serious objections to extensive forest planting on soils
+capable of being otherwise made productive, but they do not apply to sand
+wastes, which, until covered by woods, are not only a useless incumbrance,
+but a source of serious danger to all human improvements in the neighborhood
+of them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_470_470" id="Footnote_470_470"></a><a href="#FNanchor_470_470"><span class="label">[470]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Boitel</span>, <i>Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres par le Pin maritime</i>, pp.
+212, 218.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_471_471" id="Footnote_471_471"></a><a href="#FNanchor_471_471"><span class="label">[471]</span></a> See <i>Appendix</i>, No. &nbsp; &nbsp;.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_472_472" id="Footnote_472_472"></a><a href="#FNanchor_472_472"><span class="label">[472]</span></a> For details, consult <span class="smcap">Andresen</span>, <i>Om Klitformationen</i>, pp. 223, 236.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_473_473" id="Footnote_473_473"></a><a href="#FNanchor_473_473"><span class="label">[473]</span></a> When the deposit is not very deep, and the adjacent land lying to the
+leeward of the prevailing winds is covered with water, or otherwise worthless,
+the surface is sometimes freed from the drifts by repeated harrowings,
+which loosen the sand, so that the wind takes it up and transports it to
+grounds where accumulations of it are less injurious.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_474_474" id="Footnote_474_474"></a><a href="#FNanchor_474_474"><span class="label">[474]</span></a> <i>Travels and Researches in Chald&aelig;a</i>, chap. ix.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_475_475" id="Footnote_475_475"></a><a href="#FNanchor_475_475"><span class="label">[475]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;tudes Foresti&egrave;res</i>, p. 253.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_476_476" id="Footnote_476_476"></a><a href="#FNanchor_476_476"><span class="label">[476]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Lavergne</span>, <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale de la France</i>, p. 300, estimates the area
+of the Landes of Gascony at 700,000 hectares, or about 1,700,000 acres.
+The same author states (p. 304), that when the Moors were driven from
+Spain by the blind cupidity and brutal intolerance of the age, they demanded
+permission to establish themselves in this desert; but political
+and religious prejudices prevented the granting of this liberty. At this
+period the Moors were a far more cultivated people than their Christian
+persecutors, and they had carried many arts, that of agriculture especially,
+to a higher pitch than any other European nation. But France was not
+wise enough to accept what Spain had cast out, and the Landes remained
+a waste for three centuries longer. See <i>Appendix</i>, <a href="#app_64">No. 64</a>.
+</p><p>
+The forest of Fontainebleau, which contains above 40,000 acres, is not
+a plain, but its soil is composed almost wholly of sand, interspersed with
+ledges of rock. The sand forms not less than ninety-eight per cent. of the
+earth, and, as it is almost without water, it would be a drifting desert but
+for the artificial propagation of forest trees upon it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_477_477" id="Footnote_477_477"></a><a href="#FNanchor_477_477"><span class="label">[477]</span></a> <i>&Eacute;conomie Rurale de la Belgique, par</i> <span class="smcap">Emile de Laveleye</span>, <i>Revue des
+Deux Mondes</i>, Juin, 1861, pp. 617-644.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_478_478" id="Footnote_478_478"></a><a href="#FNanchor_478_478"><span class="label">[478]</span></a> <i>Geognosie</i>, ii, p. 1173.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_479_479" id="Footnote_479_479"></a><a href="#FNanchor_479_479"><span class="label">[479]</span></a> According to <span class="smcap">Hohenstein</span>, <i>Der Wald</i>, pp. 228, 229, an extensive plantation
+of pines&mdash;a tree new to Southern Russia&mdash;was commenced in 1842,
+on the barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisabethgrod, and has
+met with very flattering success. Other experiments in sylviculture at different
+points on the steppes promise valuable results.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_480_480" id="Footnote_480_480"></a><a href="#FNanchor_480_480"><span class="label">[480]</span></a> "Sixteen years ago," says an Odessa landholder, "I attempted to fix
+the sand of the steppes, which covers the rocky ground to the depth of a
+foot, and forms moving hillocks with every change of wind. I tried
+acacias and pines in vain; nothing would grow in such a soil. At length
+I planted the varnish tree, or <i>ailanthus</i>, which succeeded completely in
+binding the sand." This result encouraged the proprietor to extend his
+plantations over both dunes and sand steppes, and in the course of sixteen
+years this rapidly growing tree had formed real forests. Other landowners
+have imitated his example with great advantage.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Rentsch</span>, <i>Der Wald</i>, p.
+44, 45.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_481_481" id="Footnote_481_481"></a><a href="#FNanchor_481_481"><span class="label">[481]</span></a> <i>Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste</i>, i, pp. 204 <i>et seqq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_482_482" id="Footnote_482_482"></a><a href="#FNanchor_482_482"><span class="label">[482]</span></a> "If we suppose the narrow isthmus of Central America to be sunk in
+the ocean, the warm equatorial current would no longer follow its circuitous
+route around the Gulf of Mexico, but pour itself through the new opening
+directly into the Pacific. We should then lose the warmth of the Gulf
+Stream, and cold polar currents flowing farther southward would take its
+place and be driven upon our coasts by the western winds. The North
+Sea would resemble Hudson's Bay, and its harbors be free from ice at best
+only in summer. The power and prosperity of its coasts would shrivel under
+the breath of winter, as a medusa thrown on shore shrinks to an insignificant
+film under the influence of the destructive atmosphere. Commerce,
+industry, fertility of soil, population, would disappear, and the vast
+waste&mdash;a new Labrador&mdash;would become a worthless appendage of some
+clime more favored by nature."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hartwig</span>, <i>Das Leben des Meeres</i>, p. 70.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_483_483" id="Footnote_483_483"></a><a href="#FNanchor_483_483"><span class="label">[483]</span></a> I know nothing of Captain Allen's work but its title and its subject.
+Very probably he may have anticipated many of the following speculations,
+and thrown light on points upon which I am ignorant.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_484_484" id="Footnote_484_484"></a><a href="#FNanchor_484_484"><span class="label">[484]</span></a> "Some haue writt&#275;, that by certain kings inhabiting aboue, the <i>Nilus</i>
+should there be stopped; &amp; at a time prefixt, let loose vpon a certaine
+tribute payd them by the <i>Aegyptians</i>. The error springing perhaps fr&#333; a
+truth (as all wandring reports for the most part doe) in that the <i>Sultan</i>
+doth pay a certaine annuall summe to the <i>Abissin</i> Emperour for not diuerting
+the course of the Riuer, which (they say) he may, or impouerish it at
+the least."&mdash;<span class="smcap">George Sandys</span>, <i>A Relation of a Journey, etc.</i>, p. 98.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_485_485" id="Footnote_485_485"></a><a href="#FNanchor_485_485"><span class="label">[485]</span></a> The Recca, a river with a considerable current, has been satisfactorily
+identified with a stream flowing through the cave of Trebich, and with the
+Timavo&mdash;the Timavus of Virgil and the ancient geographers&mdash;which empties
+through several mouths into the Adriatic between Trieste and Aquileia.
+The distance from Trieste to a suitable point in the grotto of Trebich is
+thought to be less than three miles, and the difficulties in the way of constructing
+a tunnel do not seem formidable. The works of Schmidl, <i>Die
+H&ouml;hlen des Karstes</i>, and <i>Der unterirdische Lauf der Recca</i>, are not common
+out of Germany, but the reader will find many interesting facts derived
+from them in two articles entitled <i>Der unterirdische Lauf der Recca</i>, in
+<i>Aus der Natur</i>, xx, pp. 250-254, 263-266.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_486_486" id="Footnote_486_486"></a><a href="#FNanchor_486_486"><span class="label">[486]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Barth</span>, <i>Wanderungen durch die K&uuml;sten des Mittelmeeres</i>, i, p. 353.
+In a note on page 380, of the same volume, Barth cites Strabo as asserting
+that a similar practice prevailed in Iapygia; but it may be questioned
+whether the epithet &#964;&#961;&#945;&#967;&#949;&#8150;&#945;, applied by Strabo to the original surface, necessarily
+implies that it was covered with a continuous stratum of rock.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_487_487" id="Footnote_487_487"></a><a href="#FNanchor_487_487"><span class="label">[487]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Parthey</span>, <i>Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante</i>, i, p. 404.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_488_488" id="Footnote_488_488"></a><a href="#FNanchor_488_488"><span class="label">[488]</span></a> <i>Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer</i>, <span class="smcap">Leonhard</span> und <span class="smcap">Bronn</span>, <i>Jahrbuch</i>,
+1841, pp. 25, 26.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_489_489" id="Footnote_489_489"></a><a href="#FNanchor_489_489"><span class="label">[489]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Kohl</span>, <i>Schleswig-Holstein</i>, ii, p. 45.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_490_490" id="Footnote_490_490"></a><a href="#FNanchor_490_490"><span class="label">[490]</span></a> <i>Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante</i>, i, p. 406.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_491_491" id="Footnote_491_491"></a><a href="#FNanchor_491_491"><span class="label">[491]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Landgrebe</span>, <i>Naturgeschichte der Vulkane</i>, ii, pp. 19, 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_492_492" id="Footnote_492_492"></a><a href="#FNanchor_492_492"><span class="label">[492]</span></a> Soon after the current issues from the volcano, it is covered above
+and at its sides, and finally in front, with scori&aelig;, formed by the cooling of
+the exposed surface, which bury and conceal the fluid mass. The stream
+rolls on under the coating, and between the walls of scori&aelig;, and it was the
+lateral crust which was broken through by the workmen mentioned in
+the text.
+</p><p>
+The distance to which lava flows, before its surface begins to solidify,
+depends on its volume, its composition, its temperature and that of the air,
+the force with which it is ejected, and the inclination of the declivity over
+which it runs. In most cases it is difficult to approach the current at points
+where it is still entirely fluid, and hence opportunities of observing it in
+that condition are not very frequent. In the eruption of February, 1850,
+on the east side of Vesuvius, I went quite up to one of the outlets. The
+lava shot out of the orifice upward with great velocity, like the water
+from a spring, in a stream eight or ten feet in diameter, throwing up occasionally
+volcanic bombs, but it immediately spread out on the declivity
+down which it flowed, to the width of several yards. It continued red hot
+in broad daylight, and without a particle of scori&aelig; on its surface, for a
+course of at least one hundred yards. At this distance, the suffocating,
+sulphurous vapors became so dense that I could follow the current no farther.
+The undulations of the surface were like those of a brook swollen
+by rain. I estimated the height of the waves at five or six inches by a
+breadth of eighteen or twenty. To the eye, the fluidity of the lava seemed
+as perfect as that of water, but masses of cold lava weighing ten or fifteen
+pounds floated upon it like cork.
+</p><p>
+The heat emitted by lava currents seems extremely small when we consider
+the temperature required to fuse such materials and the great length
+of time they take in cooling. I saw at Nicolosi ancient oil jars, holding a
+hundred gallons or more, which had been dug out from under a stream of
+old lava above that town. They had been very slightly covered with volcanic
+ashes before the lava flowed over them, but the lead with which
+holes in them had been plugged was not melted. The current that buried
+Mompiliere in 1669 was thirty-five feet thick, but marble statues, in a
+church over which the lava formed an arch, were found uncalcined and
+uninjured in 1704. See <span class="smcap">Scrope</span>, <i>Volcanoes</i>, chap. VI. &sect; 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_493_493" id="Footnote_493_493"></a><a href="#FNanchor_493_493"><span class="label">[493]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Ferrara</span>, <i>Descrizione dell' Etna</i>, p. 108.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_494_494" id="Footnote_494_494"></a><a href="#FNanchor_494_494"><span class="label">[494]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Langrebe</span>, <i>Naturgeschichte der Vulkane</i>, ii, p. 82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_495_495" id="Footnote_495_495"></a><a href="#FNanchor_495_495"><span class="label">[495]</span></a> <i>Physikalische Geographie</i>, p. 168. Beds of peat, accidentally set on
+fire, sometimes continue to burn for months. I take the following account
+of a case of this sort from a recent American journal:
+</p><p>
+"<span class="smcap">A Curious Phenomenon.</span>&mdash;When the track of the railroad between
+Brunswick and Bath was being graded, in crossing a meadow near the
+populous portion of the latter city, the 'dump' suddenly took on a sinking
+symptom, and down went the twenty feet fill of gravel, clay, and
+broken rocks, out of sight, and it was a long, <i>long</i> time before dirt trains
+could fill the capacious stomach that seemed ready to receive all the solid
+material that could be turned into it. The difficulty was at length overcome,
+but all along the side of the sinkage the earth was thrown up, broken
+into yawning chasms, and the surface was thus elevated above its old watery
+level. Since that time this ground, thus slightly elevated, has been cultivated,
+and has yielded enormously of whatever the owner seemed disposed
+to plant upon it. Some three months ago, by some means unknown to us,
+the underlying peat took fire, and for weeks, as we had occasion to pass it,
+we noticed the smoke arising from the smouldering combustion beneath
+the surface. Rains fell, but the fire burned, and the smoke continued to
+arise. Monday we had occasion to pass the spot, and though nearly a
+week's rain had been drenching the ground, and though the surface was
+whitened with snow, and though pools of water were standing upon the
+surface in the immediate neighborhood, still the everlasting subterranean
+fire was burning, and the smoke arising through the snow."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_496_496" id="Footnote_496_496"></a><a href="#FNanchor_496_496"><span class="label">[496]</span></a> One of the sublimest, and at the same time most fearful suggestions
+that have been prompted by the researches of modern science, was made
+by Babbage in the ninth chapter of his <i>Ninth Bridgewater Treatise</i>. I
+have not the volume at hand, but the following explanation will recall to the
+reader, if it does not otherwise make intelligible, the suggestion I refer to.
+</p><p>
+No atom can be disturbed in place, or undergo any change of temperature,
+of electrical state, or other material condition, without affecting, by
+attraction or repulsion or other communication, the surrounding atoms.
+These, again, by the same law, transmit the influence to other atoms, and
+the impulse thus given extends through the whole material universe.
+Every human movement, every organic act, every volition, passion, or
+emotion, every intellectual process, is accompanied with atomic disturbance,
+and hence every such movement, every such act or process affects all the
+atoms of universal matter. Though action and reaction are equal, yet reaction
+does not restore disturbed atoms to their former place and condition,
+and consequently the effects of the least material change are never cancelled,
+but in some way perpetuated, so that no action can take place in
+physical, moral, or intellectual nature, without leaving all matter in a different
+state from what it would have been if such action had not occurred.
+Hence, to use language which I have employed on another occasion: there
+exists, not alone in the human conscience or in the omniscience of the
+Creator, but in external material nature, an ineffaceable, imperishable
+record, possibly legible even to created intelligence, of every act done,
+every word uttered, nay, of every wish and purpose and thought conceived
+by mortal man, from the birth of our first parent to the final extinction of
+our race; so that the physical traces of our most secret sins shall last until
+time shall be merged in that eternity of which not science, but religion
+alone, assumes to take cognizance.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">[Pg 551]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><a name="app_1" id="app_1"></a>No. 1 (<a href="#Footnote_11_11">page 19, <i>note</i></a>). It may be said that the cases referred to in the
+note on p. 19&mdash;and indeed all cases of a supposed acclimation consisting in
+physiological changes&mdash;are instances of the origination of new varieties by
+natural selection, the hardier maize, tomato, and other vegetables of the
+North, being the progeny of seeds of individuals endowed, exceptionally,
+with greater power of resisting cold than belongs in general to the species
+which produced them. But, so far as the evidence of change of climate,
+from a difference in vegetable growth, is concerned, it is immaterial whether
+we adopt this view or maintain the older and more familiar doctrine
+of a local modification of character in the plants in question.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_2" id="app_2"></a>No. 2 (<a href="#Footnote_15_15">page 24, <i>note</i></a>). The adjectives of direction in <i>-erly</i> are not unfrequently
+used to indicate, in a loose way, the course of winds blowing from
+unspecified points between N.E. and S.E.; S.E. and S.W.; S.W. and
+N.W. or N.W. and N.E. If the employment of these words were understood
+to be limited to thus expressing a direction nearer to the cardinal
+point from whose name the adjective is taken than to any other cardinal
+point, they would be valuable elements of English meteorological nomenclature.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_3" id="app_3"></a>No. 3 (<a href="#Page_31">page 31</a>). I find a confirmation of my observations on the habits
+of the beaver as a geographical agency, in a report of the proceedings of
+the British Association, in the London Athen&aelig;um of October 8, 1864, p.
+469. It is there stated that Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle, in an expedition
+across the Rocky Mountains by the Yellow Head, or Leather Pass,
+observed that "a great portion of the country to the east of the mountains"
+had been "completely changed in character by the agency of the
+beaver, which formerly existed here in enormous numbers. The shallow
+valleys were formerly traversed by rivers and chains of lakes which, dammed
+up along their course at numerous points, by the work of those animals,
+have become a series of marshes in various stages of consolidation.
+So complete has this change been, that hardly a stream is found for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">[Pg 552]</a></span>
+distance of two hundred miles, with the exception of the large rivers. The
+animals have thus destroyed, by their own labors, the waters necessary
+to their own existence."</p>
+
+<p>When the process of "consolidation" shall have been completed, and
+the forest re&euml;stablished upon the marshes, the water now diffused through
+them will be collected in the lower or more yielding portions, cut new
+channels for their flow, become running brooks, and thus restore the ancient
+aspect of the surface.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_4" id="app_4"></a>No. 4 (<a href="#Footnote_22_22">page 33, <i>note</i></a>). The lignivorous insects that attack living trees
+almost uniformly confine their ravages to trees already unsound or diseased
+in growth from the depredations of leaf-eaters, such as caterpillars
+and the like, or from other causes. The decay of the tree, therefore, is the
+cause not the consequence of the invasions of the borer. This subject has
+been discussed by Perris in the <i>Annales de la Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Entomologique de la
+France</i>, for 1851 (?), and his conclusions are confirmed by the observations
+of Samanos, who quotes, at some length, the views of Perris. "Having,
+for fifteen years," says the latter author, "incessantly studied the habits
+of lignivorous insects in one of the best wooded regions of France, I have
+observed facts enough to feel myself warranted in expressing my conclusions,
+which are: that insects in general&mdash;I am not speaking of those
+which confine their voracity to the leaf&mdash;do not attack trees in sound
+health, and they assail those only whose normal conditions and functions
+have been by some cause impaired."</p>
+
+<p>See, more fully, Samanos, <i>Trait&eacute; de la Culture du Pin Maritime</i>, Paris,
+1864, pp. 140-145.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_5" id="app_5"></a>No. 5 (<a href="#Footnote_23_23">page 34, <i>note</i></a>). Very interesting observations, on the agency of
+the squirrel and other small animals in planting and in destroying nuts and
+other seeds of trees, may be found in a paper on the Succession of Forests
+in Thoreau's <i>Excursions</i>, pp. 135 <i>et seqq.</i></p>
+
+<p>I once saw several quarts of beech-nuts taken from the winter quarters
+of a family of flying squirrels in a hollow tree. The kernels were neatly
+stripped of their shells and carefully stored in a dry cavity.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_6" id="app_6"></a>No. 6 (<a href="#Footnote_25_25">page 40, <i>note</i></a>). Schroeder van der Kolk, in <i>Het Verschil tusschen
+den Psychischen Aanleg van het Dier en van den Mensch</i>, cites from Burdach
+and other authorities many interesting facts respecting instincts lost, or
+newly developed and become hereditary, in the lower animals, and he
+quotes Aristotle and Pliny as evidence that the common quadrupeds and
+fowls of our fields and our poultry yards were much less perfectly domesticated
+in their times than long, long ages of servitude have now made
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the half-wild character ascribed by P. L&aelig;stadius and other
+Swedish writers to the reindeer of Lapland, may be in some degree due to
+the comparative shortness of the period during which he has been partially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">[Pg 553]</a></span>
+tamed. The domestic swine bred in the woods of Hungary and the buffaloes
+of Southern Italy are so wild and savage as to be very dangerous to
+all but their keepers. The former have relapsed into their original condition,
+the latter have not yet been reclaimed from it.</p>
+
+<p>Among other instances of obliterated instincts, Schroeder van der Kolk
+states that in Holland, where, for centuries, the young of the cow has
+been usually taken from the dam at birth and fed by hand, calves, even if
+left with the mother, make no attempt to suck; while in England, where
+calves are not weaned until several weeks old, they resort to the udder as
+naturally as the young of wild quadrupeds.&mdash;<i>Ziel en Ligchaam</i>, p. 128, <i>n.</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_7" id="app_7"></a>No. 7 (<a href="#Footnote_39_39">page 60, <i>first note</i></a>). At Pi&egrave; di Mulera, at the outlet of the Val
+Anzasca, near the principal hotel, is a vine measuring thirty-one inches in
+circumference. The door of the chapter-hall in the cloister of the church
+of San Giovanni, at Saluzzo, is of vine wood, and the boards of which the
+panels were made could not have been less than ten inches wide. Statues
+and other objects of considerable dimensions, of vine wood, are mentioned
+by ancient writers.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_8" id="app_8"></a>No. 8 (<a href="#Footnote_44_44">page 63, <i>second note</i></a>). Cartier, <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1535-'6, mentions "vines,
+great melons, cucumbers, gourds [courges], pease, beans of various colors,
+but not like ours," as common among the Indians of the banks of the St.
+Lawrence.&mdash;<i>Bref Recit</i>, etc., reprint. Paris, 1863, pp. 13, a; 14, b; 20,
+b; 31, a.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_8_1" id="app_8_1"></a>No. 8 (<a href="#Page_65_2">page 65, <i>second paragraph</i></a>). It may be considered very highly
+probable, if not certain, that the undiscriminating herbalists of the sixteenth
+century must have overlooked many plants native to this island.
+An English botanist, in an hour's visit to Aden, discovered several species
+of plants on rocks always reported, even by scientific travellers, as absolutely
+barren. But after all, it appears to be well established that the
+original flora of St. Helena was extremely limited, though now counting
+hundreds of species.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_9" id="app_9"></a>No. 9 (<a href="#Footnote_47_47">page 66, <i>first note</i></a>). Although the vine <i>genus</i> is very catholic and
+cosmopolite in its habits, yet particular <i>varieties</i> are extremely fastidious
+and exclusive in their requirements as to soil and climate. The stocks of
+many celebrated vineyards lose their peculiar qualities by transplantation,
+and the most famous wines are capable of production only in certain well-defined,
+and for the most part narrow districts. The Ionian vine which
+bears the little stoneless grape known in commerce as the Zante currant,
+has resisted almost all efforts to naturalize it elsewhere, and is scarcely
+grown except in two or three of the Ionian islands and in a narrow territory
+on the northern shores of the Morea.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_10" id="app_10"></a>No. 10 (<a href="#Footnote_52_52">page 68, <i>first note</i></a>). In most of the countries of Southern
+Europe, sheep and beeves are wintered upon the plains, but driven in the
+summer to mountain pastures at many days' distance from the homesteads<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">[Pg 554]</a></span>
+of their owners. They transport seeds in their coats in both directions,
+and hence Alpine plants often shoot up at the foot of the mountains, the
+grasses of the plain on the borders of the glaciers; but in both cases, they
+usually fail to propagate themselves by ripening their seed. This explains
+the scattered tufts of common clover, with pale and flaccid blossoms, which
+are sometimes seen at heights exceeding 7,000 feet above the sea.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_11" id="app_11"></a>No. 11 (<a href="#Page_73_2">page 73, <i>last paragraph</i></a>). The poisonous wild parsnip, which
+is very common in New England, is popularly believed to be identical with
+the garden parsnip, and differenced only by conditions of growth, a richer
+soil depriving it, it is said, of its noxious properties. Many wild medicinal
+plants, such as pennyroyal for example, are so much less aromatic and
+powerful, when cultivated in gardens, than when self-sown on meagre soils,
+as to be hardly fit for use.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_12" id="app_12"></a>No. 12 (<a href="#Footnote_58_58">page 74, <i>second note</i></a>). See in Thoreau's <i>Excursions</i>, an interesting
+description of the wild apple-trees of Massachusetts.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_13" id="app_13"></a>No. 13 (<a href="#Page_86">page 86, <i>first paragraph</i></a>). It is said at Courmayeur that a
+very few ibexes of a larger variety than those of the Cogne mountains, still
+linger about the Grande Jorasse.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_14" id="app_14"></a>No. 14 (<a href="#Footnote_77_77">page 92, <i>first note</i></a>). In Northern and Central Italy, one often
+sees hillocks crowned with grove-like plantations of small trees, much resembling
+large arbors. These serve to collect birds, which are entrapped in
+nets in great numbers. These plantations are called <i>ragnaje</i>, and the
+reader will find, in Bindi's edition of Davanzati, a very pleasant description
+of a ragnaja, though its authorship is not now ascribed to that eminent
+writer.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_15" id="app_15"></a>No. 15 (<a href="#Footnote_78_78">page 93, <i>second note</i></a>). The appearance of the dove-like grouse,
+<i>Tetrao paradoxus</i>, or <i>Syrrhaptes Pallasii</i>, in various parts of Europe, in
+1859 and the following years, is a noticeable exception to the law of
+regularity which seems to govern the movements and determine the habitat
+of birds. The proper home of this bird is the steppes of Tartary, and it is
+not recorded to have been observed in Europe, or at least west of Russia,
+until the year abovementioned, when many flocks of twenty or thirty, and
+even a hundred individuals, were seen in Bohemia, Germany, Holland,
+Denmark, England, Ireland, and France. A considerable flock frequented
+the Frisian island of Borkum for more than five months. It was hoped they
+would breed and remain permanently in the island, but this expectation
+has been disappointed, and the steppe-grouse seems to have disappeared
+again altogether.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_16" id="app_16"></a>No. 16 (<a href="#Footnote_80_80">page 94, <i>note</i></a>). From an article by A. Esquiros, in the <i>Revue
+des Deux Mondes</i> for Sept. 1, 1864, entitled, <i>La vie Anglaise</i>, p. 119, it
+appears that such occurrences as that stated in the note are not unfrequent
+on the British coast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">[Pg 555]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_17" id="app_17"></a>No. 17 (<a href="#Page_100">page 100, <i>first paragraph</i></a>). I cannot learn that caprification is
+now practised in Italy, but it is still in use in Greece.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_18" id="app_18"></a>No. 18 (<a href="#Footnote_96_96">page 112, <i>first note</i></a>). The recent great multiplication of vipers
+in some parts of France, is a singular and startling fact.</p>
+
+<p>Toussenel, quoting from official documents, states, that upon the offer
+of a reward of fifty centimes, or ten cents, a head, <i>twelve thousand</i> vipers
+were brought to the prefect of a single department, and that in 1859 fifteen
+hundred snakes and twenty quarts of snakes' eggs were found under a
+farm-house hearthstone. The granary, the stables, the roof, the very beds
+swarmed with serpents, and the family were obliged to abandon its habitation.
+Dr. Viaugrandmarais, of Nantes, reported to the prefect of his department
+more than two hundred recent cases of viper bites, twenty-four
+of which proved fatal.&mdash;<i>Tristia</i>, p. 176 <i>et seqq.</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_19" id="app_19"></a>No. 19 (<a href="#Footnote_106_106">page 121, <i>first note</i></a>). The Beduins are little given to the chase,
+and seldom make war on the game birds and quadrupeds of the desert.
+Hence the wild animals of Arabia are less timid than those of Europe. On
+one occasion, when I was encamped during a sand storm of some violence
+in Arabia Petr&aelig;a, a wild pigeon took refuge in one of our tents which had
+not been blown down, and remained quietly perched on a boy in the midst
+of four or five persons, until the storm was over, and then took his departure,
+<i>insalutato hospite</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_20" id="app_20"></a>No. 20 (<a href="#Page_122">page 122</a>). It is possible that time may modify the habits of
+the fresh water fish of the North American States, and accommodate them
+to the now physical conditions of their native waters. Hence it may be
+hoped that nature, even unaided by art, will do something toward restoring
+the ancient plenty of our lakes and rivers. The decrease of our fresh
+water fish cannot be ascribed alone to exhaustion by fishing, for in the
+waters of the valleys and flanks of the Alps, which have been inhabited
+and fished ten times as long by a denser population, fish are still very
+abundant, and they thrive and multiply under circumstances where no
+American species could live at all. On the southern slope of those mountains,
+trout are caught in great numbers, in the swift streams which rush
+from the glaciers, and where the water is of icy coldness, and so turbid
+with particles of fine-ground rock, that you cannot see an inch below the
+surface. The glacier streams of Switzerland, however, are less abundant
+in fish.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_21" id="app_21"></a>No. 21 (<a href="#Footnote_114_114">page 131, <i>note</i></a>). Vaupell, though agreeing with other writers
+as to the injury done to the forest by most domestic animals&mdash;which he
+illustrates in an interesting way in his posthumous work, <i>The Danish
+Woods</i>&mdash;thinks, nevertheless, that at the season when the mast is falling
+swine are rather useful than otherwise to forests of beech and oak, by
+treading into the ground and thus sowing beechnuts and acorns, and by
+destroying moles and mice.&mdash;<i>De Danske Skore</i>, p. 12.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_556" id="Page_556">[Pg 556]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_22" id="app_22"></a>No. 22 (<a href="#Footnote_118_118">page 135, <i>note</i></a>). The able authors of Humphreys and Abbot's
+most valuable Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi,
+conclude that the delta of that river began its encroachments on the Gulf
+of Mexico not more than 4,400 years ago, before which period they suppose
+the Mississippi to have been "a comparatively clear stream," conveying
+very little sediment to the sea. The present rate of advance of the
+delta is 262 feet a year, and there are reasons for thinking that the amount
+of deposit has long been approximately constant.&mdash;<i>Report</i>, pp. 435, 436.</p>
+
+<p>The change in the character of the river must, if this opinion is well
+founded, be due to some geological revolution, or at least convulsion, and
+the hypothesis of the former existence of one or more great lakes in its
+upper valley, whose bottoms are occupied by the present prairie region,
+has been suggested. The shores of these supposed lakes have not, I believe,
+been traced, or even detected, and we cannot admit the truth of this
+hypothesis without supposing changes much more extensive than the mere
+bursting of the barrier which confined the waters.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_23" id="app_23"></a>No. 23 (<a href="#Footnote_129_129">page 143, <i>note</i></a>). See on this subject a paper by J. Jamin, in the
+<i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> for Sept. 15, 1864; and, on the effects of human
+industry on the atmosphere, an article in <i>Aus der Natur</i>, vol. 29, 1864, pp.
+443, 449, 465 <i>et seqq.</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_24" id="app_24"></a>No. 24 (<a href="#Page_159_2">page 159, <i>second paragraph</i></a>). All evergreens, even the broad-leaved
+trees, resist frosts of extraordinary severity better than the deciduous
+trees of the same climates. Is not this because the vital processes
+of trees of persistent foliage are less interrupted during winter than those
+of trees which annually shed their leaves, and therefore more organic heat
+is developed?</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_25" id="app_25"></a>No. 25 (<a href="#Page_191">page 191, <i>first paragraph</i></a>). In discussing the influence of
+mountains on precipitation, meteorologists have generally treated the
+popular belief, that mountains "attract" to them clouds floating within a
+certain distance from them, as an ignorant prejudice, and they ascribe the
+appearance of clouds about high peaks solely to the condensation of the
+humidity of the air carried by atmospheric currents up the slopes of the
+mountain to a colder temperature. But if mountains do not really draw
+clouds and invisible vapors to them, they are an exception to the universal
+law of attraction. The attraction of the small Mount Shehallien was found
+sufficient to deflect from the perpendicular, by a measurable quantity, a
+plummet weighing but a few ounces. Why, then, should not greater masses
+attract to them volumes of vapor weighing hundreds of tons, and floating
+freely in the atmosphere within moderate distances of the mountains?</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_26" id="app_26"></a>No. 26 (<a href="#Footnote_193_193">page 198, <i>note</i></a>). &Eacute;lis&eacute;e Redus ascribes the diminution of the
+ponds which border the dunes of Gascony to the absorption of their water
+by the trees which have been planted upon the sands.&mdash;<i>Revue des Deux
+Mondes</i>, 1 Aug., 1863, p. 694.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[Pg 557]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_27" id="app_27"></a>No. 27 (<a href="#Footnote_206_206">page 219, <i>note</i></a>). The waste of wood in European carpentry was
+formerly enormous, the beams of houses being both larger and more
+numerous than permanence or stability required. In examining the construction
+of the houses occupied by the eighty families which inhabit the
+village of Faucigny, in Savoy, in 1834, the forest inspector found that <i>fifty
+thousand</i> trees had been employed in building them. The builders "seemed,"
+says Hudry-Menos, "to have tried to solve the problem of piling upon
+the walls the largest quantity of timber possible without crushing them."&mdash;<i>Revue
+des Deux Mondes</i>, 1 June, 1864, p. 601.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_28" id="app_28"></a>No. 28 (<a href="#Footnote_213_213">page 231, <i>note</i></a>). In a remarkable pamphlet, to which I shall
+have occasion to refer more than once hereafter, entitled <i>Avant-projet pour
+la cr&eacute;ation d'un sol fertile &agrave; la surface des Landes de Gascogne</i>, Duponchel
+argues with much force, that the fertilizing properties of river-slime are
+generally due much more to its mineral than to its vegetable constituents.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_29" id="app_29"></a>No. 29 (<a href="#Footnote_236_236">page 265, <i>note</i></a>). Even the denser silicious stones are penetrable
+by fluids and the coloring matter they contain, to such an extent
+that agates and other forms of silex may be artificially stained through
+their substance. This art was known to and practised by the ancient lapidaries,
+and it has been revived in recent times.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_30" id="app_30"></a>No. 30 (<a href="#Page_268">page 268</a>). There is good reason for thinking that many of the
+earth and rock slides in the Alps occurred at an earlier period than the
+origin of the forest vegetation which, in later ages, covered the flanks of
+those mountains. See <i>Bericht &uuml;ber die Untersuchung der Schweizerischen
+Hochgebirgswaldungen</i>. 1862. P. 61.</p>
+
+<p>Where more recent slides have been again clothed with woods, the
+trees, shrubs, and smaller plants which spontaneously grow upon them
+are usually of different species from those observed upon soil displaced at
+remote periods. This difference is so marked that the site of a slide can
+often be recognized at a great distance by the general color of the foliage
+of its vegetation.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_31" id="app_31"></a>No. 31 (<a href="#Footnote_263_263">page 286, <i>note</i></a>). It should have been observed that the venomous
+principle of poisonous mushrooms is not decomposed and rendered
+innocent by the process described in the <i>note</i>. It is merely extracted by
+the acidulated or saline water employed for soaking the plants, and care
+should be taken that this water be thrown away out of the reach of mischief.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_32" id="app_32"></a>No. 32 (<a href="#Footnote_272_272">page 293, <i>note</i></a>). Gaudry estimates the ties employed in the
+railways of France at thirty millions, to supply which not less than two
+millions of large trees have been felled. These ties have been, upon the
+average, at least once renewed, and hence we must double the number
+of ties and of trees required to furnish them.&mdash;<i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 15
+July, 1863, p. 425.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_33" id="app_33"></a>No. 33 (<a href="#Footnote_272_272">page 294, <i>second paragraph of note</i></a>). After all, the present con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[Pg 558]</a></span>sumption
+of wood and timber for fuel and other domestic and rural purposes,
+in many parts of Europe, seems incredibly small to an American. In
+rural Switzerland, the whole supply of firewood, fuel for small smitheries,
+dairies, breweries, brick and lime kilns, distilleries, fences, furniture, tools,
+and even house building&mdash;exclusive of the small quantity derived from the
+trimmings of fruit trees, grape vines and hedges, and from decayed fences
+and buildings&mdash;does not exceed an average of <i>two hundred and thirty cubic
+feet</i>, or less than two cords, a year per household. The average consumption
+of wood in New England for domestic fuel alone, is from five to ten
+times as much as Swiss families require for all the uses above enumerated.
+But the existing habitations of Switzerland are sufficient for a population
+which increases but slowly, and in the peasants' houses but a single room
+is usually heated. See <i>Bericht &uuml;ber die Untersuchung der Schweiz. Hochgebirgswaldungen</i>,
+pp. 85-89.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_34" id="app_34"></a>No. 34 (<a href="#Page_304">page 304</a>). Among more recent manuals may be mentioned:
+<i>Les &Eacute;tudes de Maitre Pierre.</i> Paris, 1864. 12mo; <span class="smcap">Bazelaire</span>, <i>Trait&eacute; de
+Reboisement</i>. 2d edition, Paris, 1864; and, in Italian, <span class="smcap">Siemoni</span>, <i>Manuale
+teorico-pratico d'arte Forestale</i>. Firenze, 1864. 8vo. A very important
+work has lately been published in France by Viscount de Courval, which
+is known to me only by a German translation published at Berlin, in 1864,
+under the title, <i>Das Auf&auml;sten der Waldb&auml;ume</i>. The principal feature of
+De Courval's very successful system of sylviculture, is a mode of trimming
+which compels the tree to develop the stem by reducing the lateral ramification.
+Beginning with young trees, the buds are rubbed off from the
+stems, and superfluous lateral shoots are pruned down to the trunk. When
+large trees are taken in hand, branches which can be spared, and whose
+removal is necessary to obtain a proper length of stem, are very smoothly
+cut off quite close to the trunk, and the exposed surface is <i>immediately</i>
+brushed over with mineral-coal tar. When thus treated, it is said that the
+healing of the wound is perfect, and without any decay of the tree.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_35" id="app_35"></a>No. 35 (<a href="#Page_313">page 313</a>). The most gorgeous autumnal coloring I have observed
+in the vegetation of Europe, has been in the valleys of the Durance
+and its tributaries in Dauphiny. I must admit that neither in variety nor
+in purity and brilliancy of tint, does this coloring fall much, if at all, short
+of that of the New England woods. But there is this difference: in
+Dauphiny, it is only in small shrubs that this rich painting is seen, while
+in North America the foliage of large trees is dyed in full splendor.
+Hence the American woodland has fewer broken lights and more of what
+painters call breadth of coloring. Besides this, the arrangement of the
+leafage in large globular or conical masses, affords a wider scale of light
+and shade, thus aiding now the gradation, now the contrast of tints, and
+gives the American October landscape a softer and more harmonious tone
+than marks the humble shrubbery of the forest hill-sides of Dauphiny.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[Pg 559]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thoreau&mdash;who was not, like some very celebrated landscape critics of
+the present day, an outside spectator of the action and products of natural
+forces, but, in the old religious sense, an <i>observer</i> of organic nature, living,
+more than almost any other descriptive writer, among and with her children&mdash;has
+a very eloquent paper on the "Autumnal Tints" of the New
+England landscape.&mdash;See his <i>Excursions</i>, pp. 215 <i>et seqq.</i></p>
+
+<p>Few men have personally noticed so many facts in natural history accessible
+to unscientific observation as Thoreau, and yet he had never seen
+that very common and striking spectacle, the phosphorescence of decaying
+wood, until, in the latter years of his life, it caught his attention in a
+bivouac in the forests of Maine. He seems to have been more excited by
+this phenomenon than by any other described in his works. It must be a
+capacious eye that takes in all the visible facts in the history of the most
+familiar natural object.&mdash;<i>The Maine Woods</i>, p. 184.</p>
+
+<p>"The luminous appearance of bodies projected against the sky adjacent
+to the rising" or setting sun, so well described in Professor Necker's Letter
+to Sir David Brewster, is, as Tyndall observes, "hardly ever seen by
+either guides or travellers, though it would seem, <i>prima facie</i>, that it must
+be of frequent occurrence." See <span class="smcap">Tyndall</span>, <i>Glaciers of the Alps</i>. Part I.
+Second ascent of Mont Blanc.</p>
+
+<p>Judging from my own observation, however, I should much doubt
+whether this brilliant phenomenon can be so often seen in perfection as
+would be expected; for I have frequently sought it in vain at the foot
+of the Alps, under conditions apparently otherwise identical with those
+where, in the elevated Alpine valleys, it shows itself in the greatest
+splendor.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_36" id="app_36"></a>No. 36 (<a href="#Page_314">page 314</a>). European poets, whose knowledge of the date palm
+is not founded on personal observation, often describe its trunk as not only
+slender, but particularly <i>straight</i>. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
+When the Orientals compare the form of a beautiful girl to the stem of the
+palm, they do not represent it as rigidly straight, but on the contrary as
+made up of graceful curves, which seem less like permanent outlines than
+like flowing motion. In a palm grove, the trunks, so far from standing
+planted upright like the candles of a chandelier, bend in a vast variety of
+curves, now leaning towards, now diverging from, now crossing, each
+other, and among a hundred you will hardly see two whose axes are
+parallel.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_37" id="app_37"></a>No. 37 (<a href="#Footnote_295_295">page 316, <i>first note</i></a>). Charles Martin ascribes the power of reproduction
+by shoots from the stump to the cedar of Mount Atlas, which
+appears to be identical with the cedar of Lebanon.&mdash;<i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>,
+15 July, 1864, p. 315.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_38" id="app_38"></a>No. 38 (<a href="#Page_332">page 332</a>). In an interesting article on recent internal improvements
+in England, in the London Quarterly Review for January, 1858, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[Pg 560]</a></span>
+is related that in a single rock cutting on the Liverpool and Manchester
+railway, 480,000 cubic yards of stone were removed; that the earth excavated
+and removed in the construction of English railways up to that
+date, amounted to a hundred and fifty million cubic yards, and that at the
+Round Down Cliff, near Dover, a single blast of nineteen thousand pounds
+of powder blew down a thousand million tons of chalk, and covered
+fifteen acres of land with the fragments.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_39" id="app_39"></a>No. 39 (<a href="#Page_339">page 339</a>). According to Reventlov, whose work is one of the
+best sources of information on the subject of diking-in tide-washed flats,
+<i>Salicornia herbacea</i> appears as soon as the flat is raised high enough to be
+dry for three hours at ordinary ebb tide, or, in other words, where the
+ordinary flood covers it to a depth of not more than two feet. At a flood
+depth of one foot, the <i>Salicornia</i> dies and is succeeded by various sand
+plants. These are followed by <i>Poa distans</i> and <i>Poa maritima</i> as the
+ground is raised by further deposits, and these plants finally by common
+grasses. The <i>Salicornia</i> is preceded by <i>conferv&aelig;</i>, growing in deeper water,
+which spread over the bottom, and when covered by a fresh deposit of
+slime reappear above it, and thus vegetable and alluvial strata alternate
+until the flat is raised sufficiently high for the growth of <i>Salicornia</i>.&mdash;<i>Om
+Marskdannelsen paa Vestkysten af Hertugd&ouml;mmet Slesvig</i>, pp. 7, 8.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_40" id="app_40"></a>No. 40 (<a href="#Footnote_321_321">page 348, <i>note</i></a>). The drijftil employed for the ring dike of the
+Lake of Haarlem, was in part cut in sections fifty feet long by six or seven
+wide, and these were navigated like rafts to the spot where they were
+sunk to form the dike.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Emile de Laveleye</span>, <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 15
+Sept., 1863, p. 285.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_41" id="app_41"></a>No. 41 (<a href="#Page_352_2">page 352, <i>last paragraph</i></a>). See on the influence of the improvements
+in question on tidal and other marine currents, Staring, <i>De Bodem
+van Nederland</i>, I. p. 279.</p>
+
+<p>Although the dikes of the Netherlands and the adjacent states have
+protected a considerable extent of coast from the encroachments of the
+sea, and have won a large tract of cultivable land from the dominion of
+the waters, it has been questioned whether a different method of accomplishing
+these objects might not have been adopted with advantage. It
+has been suggested that a system of inland dikes and canals, upon the principle
+of those which, as will be seen in a subsequent part of the chapter on
+the waters, have been so successfully employed in the Val di Chiana and in
+Egypt, might have elevated the low grounds above the ocean tides, by
+spreading over them the sediment brought down by the Rhine, the Maes,
+and the Scheld. If this process had been introduced in the Middle Ages
+and constantly pursued to our times, the superficial and coast geography,
+as well as the hydrography of the countries in question, would undoubtedly
+have presented an aspect very different from their present condition;
+and by combining the process with a system of maritime dikes, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[Pg 561]</a></span>
+would have been necessary, both to resist the advance of the sea and to
+retain the slime deposited by river overflows, it is possible that the territory
+of those states would have been as extensive as it now is, and, at the
+same time, more elevated by several feet. But it must be borne in mind
+that we do not know the proportions in which the marine deposits that
+form the polders have been derived from materials brought down by these
+rivers or from other more remote sources. Much of the river slime has no
+doubt been transported by marine currents quite beyond the reach of returning
+streams, and it is uncertain how far this loss has been balanced
+by earth washed by the sea from distant shores and let fall on the coasts
+of the Netherlands and other neighboring countries.</p>
+
+<p>We know little or nothing of the quantity of solid matter brought down
+by the rivers of Western Europe in early ages, but, as the banks of those
+rivers are now generally better secured against wash and abrasion than in
+former centuries, the sediment transported by them must be less than at
+periods nearer the removal of the primitive forests of their valleys. Kl&ouml;den
+states the quantity of sedimentary matter now annually brought down by
+the Rhine at Bonn to be sufficient only to cover a square English mile to
+the depth of a little more than a foot.&mdash;<i>Erdkunde</i>, I. p. 384.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_42" id="app_42"></a>No. 42 (<a href="#Page_358">page 358, <i>first paragraph</i></a>). Meteorological observations have
+been regularly recorded at Zwanenburg, near the north end of the Lake of
+Haarlem, for more than a century, and since 1845 a similar register has
+been kept at the Helder, forty or fifty miles farther north. In comparing
+these two series of observations, it is found that about the end of the year
+1852, when the drawing off of the waters of the Lake of Haarlem was
+completed, and the preceding summer had dried the grounds laid bare so
+as greatly to reduce the evaporable surface, a change took place in the
+relative temperature of the two stations. Taking the mean of every successive
+period of five days from 1845 to 1852, the temperature at Zwanenburg
+was thirty-three hundredths of a centigrade degree <i>lower</i> than at the
+Helder. Since the end of 1852, the thermometer at Zwanenburg has stood,
+from the 11th of April to the 20th of September inclusive, twenty-two
+hundredths of a degree <i>higher</i> than at the Helder, but from the 14th of
+October to the 17th of March, it has averaged one-tenth of a degree <i>lower</i>
+than its mean between the same dates before 1853.</p>
+
+<p>There is no reasonable doubt that these differences are due to the draining
+of the lake. There has been less refrigeration from evaporation in
+summer, and the ground has absorbed more solar heat at the same period,
+while in the winter it has radiated more warmth then when it was covered
+with water. Doubtless the quantity of humidity contained in the
+atmosphere has also been affected by the same cause, but observations do
+not appear to have been made on that point. See <span class="smcap">Krecke</span>, <i>Het Klimaat
+van Nederland</i>, II. 64.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[Pg 562]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_43" id="app_43"></a>No. 43 (<a href="#Footnote_324_324">page 358, <i>note</i></a>). In the course of the present year (1864), there
+have been several land slips on the borders of the Lake of Como, and in
+one instance the grounds of a villa lying upon the margin of the water
+suffered a considerable displacement. If the lake should be lowered to
+any considerable extent, in pursuance of the plan mentioned in the note on
+page 358, there is ground to fear that the steep shores of the lake might,
+at some points, be deprived of a lateral pressure requisite to their stability,
+and slide into the water as on the Lake of Lungern. See p. 356.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_44" id="app_44"></a>No. 44 (<a href="#Footnote_332_332">page 369, <i>last paragraph but one of note</i></a>). In like manner,
+while the box, the cedar, the fir, the oak, the pine, "beams," and "timber,"
+are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, not one of these
+words is found in the New, <i>except</i> the case of the "beam in the eye," in
+the parable in Matthew and Luke.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_45" id="app_45"></a>No. 45 (<a href="#Footnote_339_339">page 375, <i>note</i></a>). In all probability, the real change effected by
+human art in the superficial geography of Egypt, is the conversion of pools
+and marshes into dry land, by a system of transverse dikes, which compelled
+the flood water to deposit its sediment on the banks of the river instead
+of carrying it to the sea. The <i>colmate</i> of modern Italy were thus anticipated
+in ancient Egypt.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_46" id="app_46"></a>No. 46 (<a href="#Page_378">page 378</a>). We have seen in <i>Appendix</i>, No. 42, <i>ante</i>, that the
+mean temperature of a station on the borders of the Lake of Haarlem&mdash;a
+sheet of water formerly covering sixty-two and a half square English
+miles&mdash;for the period between the 11th of April and the 20th of September,
+had been raised not less than a degree of Fahrenheit by the draining
+of that lake; or, to state the case more precisely, that the formation of the
+lake, which was a consequence of man's improvidence, had reduced the
+temperature one degree F. below the natural standard. The artificially
+irrigated lands of France, Piedmont, and Lombardy, taken together, are
+fifty times as extensive as the Lake of Haarlem, and they are situated in
+climates where evaporation is vastly more rapid than in the Netherlands.
+They must therefore, no doubt, affect the local climate to a far greater
+extent than has been observed in connection with the draining of the lake
+in question. I do not know that special observations have been made with
+a view to measure the climatic effects of irrigation, but in the summer I
+have often found the <i>morning</i> temperature, when the difference would
+naturally be least perceptible, on the watered plains of Piedmont, nine
+miles south of Turin, several degrees lower than that recorded at an observatory
+in the city.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_47" id="app_47"></a>No. 47 (<a href="#Footnote_352_352">page 391, <i>note</i></a>). The Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du
+Gard, near Nismes, was built, in all probability, nineteen centuries ago.
+The bed of the river Gardon, a rather swift stream, which flows beneath
+it, can have suffered but a slight depression since the piers of the aqueduct
+were founded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[Pg 563]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_48" id="app_48"></a>No. 48 (<a href="#Footnote_353_353">page 393, <i>first note</i></a>). Duponchel makes the following remarkable
+statement: "The river Herault rises in a granitic region, but soon
+reaches calcareous formations, which it traverses for more than sixty
+kilometres, rolling through deep and precipitous ravines, into which the
+torrents are constantly discharging enormous masses of pebbles belonging
+to the hardest rocks of the Jurassian period. These debris, continually
+renewed, compose, even below the exit of the gorge where the river enters
+into a regular channel cut in a tertiary deposit, broad beaches, prodigious
+accumulations of rolled pebbles, extending several kilometres down the
+stream, but they diminish in size and weight so rapidly that above the
+mouth of the river, which is at a distance of thirty or thirty-five kilometres
+from the gorge, every trace of calcareous matter has disappeared from the
+sands of the bottom, which are exclusively silicious."&mdash;<i>Avant-projet pour
+la cr&eacute;ation d'un sol fertile</i>, etc., p. 20.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_49" id="app_49"></a>No. 49 (<a href="#Footnote_363_363">page 404, <i>first paragraph of second note</i></a>). The length of the
+lower course of the Po having been considerably increased by the filling
+up of the Adriatic with its deposits, the velocity of the current ought,
+<i>prima facie</i>, to have been diminished and its bed raised in proportion.
+There are grounds for believing that this has happened in the case of the
+Nile, and one reason why the same effect has not been more sensibly perceptible
+in the Po is, that the confinement of the current by continuous
+embankments gives it a high-water velocity sufficient to sweep out deposits
+let fall at lower stages and slower movements of the water. Torrential
+streams tend first to excavate, then to raise, their beds. No general
+law on this point can be stated in relation to the middle and lower course
+of rivers. The conditions which determine the question of the depression
+or elevation of a river bed are too multifarious, variable, and complex to be
+subjected to formul&aelig;, and they can scarcely even be enumerated. See,
+however, note on p. 431.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_50" id="app_50"></a>No. 50 (<a href="#Page_406">page 406, <i>first paragraph</i></a>). The system proposed in the text is
+substantially the Egyptian method, the Nile dikes having been constructed
+rather to retain than to exclude the water. The waters of rivers which
+flow down planes of gentle inclination, deposit in their inundations the
+largest proportion of their sediment as soon as, by overflowing their banks,
+they escape from the swift current of the channel, and consequently the
+immediate banks of such rivers become higher than the grounds lying
+farther from the stream. In the "intervals," or "bottoms," of the great
+North American rivers, the alluvial banks are elevated and dry, the flats
+more remote from the river lower and swampy. This is generally observable
+in Egypt, though less so than in the valley of the Mississippi, where,
+below Cape Girardeau, the alluvial banks constitute natural glacis descending
+as you recede from the river, at an average of seven feet in the first
+mile.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Humphreys and Abbot's</span> <i>Report</i>, pp. 96, 97.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[Pg 564]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian crossdikes, by retaining the water of the inundations,
+compel it to let fall its remaining slime, and hence the elevation of the
+remoter land goes on at a rate not very much slower than that of the immediate
+banks. Probably transverse embankments would produce the
+same effect in the Mississippi valley. In the great floods of this river, it is
+observed that, at a certain distance from the channel, the bottoms, though
+lower than the banks, are flooded to a less depth. See cross sections in
+Plate IV. of Humphreys and Abbot's Report. This apparently anomalous
+fact is due, I suppose, to the greater swiftness of the current of the
+overflowing water in the low grounds, which are often drained through the
+channels of rivers whose beds lie at a lower level than that of the Mississippi,
+or by the bayous which are so characteristic a feature of the geography
+of that valley. A judicious use of dikes would probably convert
+the swamps of the lower Mississippi valley into a region like Egypt.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_51" id="app_51"></a>No. 51 (<i>second note</i>). The mean discharge of the Mississippi is 675,000
+cubic feet per second, and, accordingly, that river contributes to the sea about
+eleven times as much water as the Po, and more than sis and a half times
+as much as the Nile. The discharge of the Mississippi is estimated at one-fourth
+of the precipitation in its basin, certainly a very large proportion,
+when we consider the rapidity of evaporation in many parts of the basin, and
+the probable loss by infiltration.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Humphreys and Abbot's</span> <i>Report</i>, p. 93.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_52" id="app_52"></a>No. 52 (<a href="#Page_423">page 423, <i>first paragraph</i></a>). Artificially directed currents of
+water have been advantageously used in civil engineering for displacing
+and transporting large quantities of earth, and there is no doubt that this
+agency might be profitably employed to a far greater extent than has yet
+been attempted. Some of the hydraulic works in California for washing
+down masses of auriferous earth are on a scale stupenduous enough to produce
+really important topographical changes.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_53" id="app_53"></a>No. 53 (<a href="#Footnote_391_391">page 435, <i>first note</i></a>). I have lately been informed by a resident
+of the Ionian Islands, who is familiar with this phenomenon, that the sea
+flows uninterruptedly into the sub-insular cavities, at all stages of the tide.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_54" id="app_54"></a>No. 54 (<a href="#Footnote_398_398">page 438, <i>note</i></a>). It is observed in Cornwall that deep mines are
+freer from water in artificially well-drained, than in undrained agricultural
+districts.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Esquiros</span>, <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, Nov. 15, 1863, p. 430.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_55" id="app_55"></a>No. 55 (<a href="#Page_441">page 441</a>). See, on the Artesian wells of the Sahara, and especially
+on the throwing up of living fish by them, an article entitled, <i>Le
+Sahara</i>, etc., by Charles Martins, in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> for August
+1, 1864, pp. 618, 619.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_56" id="app_56"></a>No. 56 (<a href="#Footnote_402_402">page 444, <i>first note</i></a>). From the article in the <i>Rev. des Deux
+Mondes</i>, referred to in the preceding note, it appears that the wells discovered
+by Ayme were truly artesian. They were bored in rock, and
+provided at the outlet with a pear-shaped valve of stone, by which the
+orifice could be closed or opened at pleasure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_565" id="Page_565">[Pg 565]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_57" id="app_57"></a>No. 57 (<a href="#Footnote_406_406">page 447, <i>second note</i></a>). Hull ingeniously suggests that, besides
+other changes, fine sand intermixed with or deposited above a coarser
+stratum, as well as the minute particles resulting from the disintegration
+of the latter, may be carried by rain in the case of dunes, or by the ordinary
+action of sea water in that of subaqueous sandbanks, down through
+the interstices in the coarser layer, and thus the relative position of fine
+sand and gravel may be more or less changed.&mdash;<i>Oorsprong der Hollandsche
+Duinen</i>, p. 103.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_58" id="app_58"></a>No. 58 (<a href="#Page_479">page 479</a>). It appears from Laurent, that marine shells, of extant
+species, are found in the sands of the Sahara, far from the sea, and
+even at considerable depths below the surface.&mdash;<i>M&eacute;moires sur le Sahara
+Oriental</i>, p. 62.</p>
+
+<p>This observation has been confirmed by late travellers, and is an important
+link in the chain of evidence which tends to prove that the upheaval
+of the Libyan desert is of comparatively recent date.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_59" id="app_59"></a>No. 59 (<a href="#Footnote_433_433">p. 480</a>). "At New Quay [in England] the dune sands are converted
+to stone by an oxyde of iron held in solution by the water which
+pervades them. This stone, which is formed, so to speak, under our eye,
+has been found solid enough to be employed for building."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Esquiros</span>,
+<i>L'Angleterre et la vie Anglaise</i>, <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 1 March, 1864, pp.
+44, 45.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_60" id="app_60"></a>No. 60 (<a href="#Page_496">page 496, <i>first paragraph</i></a>). In Ditmarsh, the breaking of the
+surface by the man&#339;uvering of a corps of cavalry let loose a sand-drift
+which did serious injury before it was subdued.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Kohl</span>, <i>Inseln u. Marschen.</i>
+etc., III. p. 282.</p>
+
+<p>Similar cases have occurred in Eastern Massachusetts, from equally
+slight causes.&mdash;See <span class="smcap">Thoreau</span>, <i>A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers</i>,
+pp. 151-208.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_61" id="app_61"></a>No. 61 (<a href="#Footnote_455_455">page 497, <i>last note</i></a>). A more probable explanation of the fact
+stated in the note is suggested by &Egrave;lis&eacute;e Reclus, in an article entitled, <i>Le
+Littoral de la France</i>, in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> for Sept. 1, 1864, pp.
+193, 194. This able writer believes such pools to be the remains of ancient
+maritime bays, which have been cut off from the ocean by gradually accumulated
+sand banks raised by the waves and winds to the character of
+dunes.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_62" id="app_62"></a>No. 62 (<a href="#Footnote_466_466">page 506, <i>note</i></a>). The statement in the note is confirmed by
+Olmsted: "There is not a sufficient demand for rosin, except of the first
+qualities, to make it worth transporting from the inland distilleries; it is
+ordinarily, therefore, conducted off to a little distance, in a wooden trough,
+and allowed to flow from it to waste upon the ground. At the first distillery
+I visited, which had been in operation but one year, there lay a congealed
+pool of rosin, estimated to contain over three thousand barrels."&mdash;<i>A
+Journey in the Seaboard Slave States</i>, 1863, p. 345.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_566" id="Page_566">[Pg 566]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="app_63" id="app_63"></a>No. 63 (<a href="#Page_507">page 507</a>). In an article on the dunes of Europe, in Vol. 29
+(1864) of <i>Aus der Natur</i>, p. 590, the dunes are estimated to cover, on the
+islands and coasts of Schleswig Holstein, in Northwest Germany, Denmark,
+Holland, and France, one hundred and eighty-one German, or nearly four
+thousand English square miles; in Scotland, about ten German, or two
+hundred and ten English miles; in Ireland, twenty German, or four hundred
+and twenty English miles; and in England, one hundred and twenty
+German, or more than twenty-five hundred English miles.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_64" id="app_64"></a>No. 64 (<a href="#Page_512_2">page 512, <i>last paragraph</i></a>). For a brilliant account of the
+improvement of the Landes, see Edmond About, <i>Le Progr&egrave;s</i>, Chap, VII.</p>
+
+<p>In the memoir referred to in <i>Appendix</i>, No. 48, <i>ante</i>, Duponchel proposes
+the construction of artificial torrents to grind calcareous rock to
+slime by rolling and attrition in its bed, and, at the same time, the washing
+down of an argillaceous deposit which is to be mixed with the calcareous
+slime and distributed over the Landes by watercourses constructed for the
+purpose. By this means, he supposes that a highly fertile soil could be
+formed on the surface, which would also be so raised by the process as to
+admit of freer drainage. That nothing may be wanting to recommend this
+project, Duponchel suggests that, as some of the rivers of Western France
+are auriferous, it is probable that gold enough may be collected from the
+washings to reduce the cost of the operations materially.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_65" id="app_65"></a>No. 65 (<a href="#Page_528">page 528, <i>first paragraph</i></a>). The opening of a channel across
+Cape Cod would have, though perhaps to a smaller extent, the same
+effects in interchanging the animal life of the southern and northern shores
+of the isthmus, as in the case of the Suez canal; for although the breadth
+of Cape Cod does not anywhere exceed twenty miles, and is in some places
+reduced to one, it appears from the official reports on the Natural History
+of Massachusetts, that the population of the opposite waters differs widely
+in species.</p>
+
+<p>Not having the original documents at hand, I quote an extract from the
+<i>Report on the Invertebrate Animals of Mass.</i>, given by Thoreau, <i>Excursions</i>,
+p. 69: "The distribution of the marine shells is well worthy of
+notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the Commonwealth,
+reaches out into the ocean some fifty or sixty miles. It is nowhere
+many miles wide; but this narrow point of land has hitherto proved a
+barrier to the migration of many species of mollusca. Several genera and
+numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of only a few
+miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the Cape, and do
+not pass from one side to the other * * * * Of the one hundred and
+ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to the south shore,
+and fifty are not found on the north shore of the Cape."</p>
+
+<p>Probably the distribution of the species of mollusks is affected by unknown
+local conditions, and therefore an open canal across the Cape might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[Pg 567]</a></span>
+not make every species that inhabits the waters on one side common to
+those of the other; but there can be no doubt that there would be a considerable
+migration in both directions.</p>
+
+<p>The fact stated in the report may suggest an important caution in
+drawing conclusions upon the relative age of formations from the character
+of their fossils. Had a geological movement or movements upheaved to
+different levels the bottoms of waters thus separated by a narrow isthmus,
+and dislocated the connection between those bottoms, naturalists, in after
+ages, reasoning from the character of the fossil faunas, might have assigned
+them to different, and perhaps very widely distant, periods.</p>
+
+<p><a name="app_66" id="app_66"></a>No. 66 (<a href="#Page_548">page 548, <i>first paragraph</i></a>). To the geological effects of the
+thickening of the earth's crust in the Bay of Bengal, are to be added those
+of thinning it on the highlands where the Ganges rises. The same action
+may, as a learned friend suggests to me, even have a cosmical influence.
+The great rivers of the earth, taken as a whole, transport sediment from
+the polar regions in an equatorial direction, and hence tend to increase the
+equatorial diameter, and at the same time, by their inequality of action, to
+a continual displacement of the centre of gravity, of the earth. The motion
+of the globe and of all bodies affected by its attraction, is modified by
+every change of its form, and in this case we are not authorized to say that
+such effects are in any way compensated.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 80%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[Pg 568]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+Abbeys of St. Germain and St. Denis, revenues of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Adirondack forest, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lakes of, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Ailanthus glandulosa, <a href="#Page_515">515</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Akaba, gulf of, infiltration of fresh water in, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Albano, lake of, artificial lowering of, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Algeria, deserts of, artesian wells in, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_463">463</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">consolidated dunes, <a href="#Page_480">480</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Alpaca, South American, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Amazon, Indians of, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ameland, island of, <a href="#Page_499">499</a>.<br />
+<br />
+America, North, primitive physical condition of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">forests of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">possibility of noting its physical changes, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">by scientific observation, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">forest trees of, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_469">469</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">proposed changes in hydrography of, <a href="#Page_532">532</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Animal life, sympathy of ruder races with, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">instinct, fallibility of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">hostility of civilized man to inferior forms of, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Animals, wild, action of on vegetation, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Aphis, the European, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Apennines, effects of felling the woods on, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Appian way, the, <a href="#Page_542">542</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Aqueducts, geographical and climatic effects of, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Arabia Petr&aelig;a, surface drainage of, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sandstone of, <a href="#Page_452">452</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sands and petrified wood of, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">wadies of, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Aragua, valley of, Venezuela, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ararat, Mt., phenomenon of vegetation on, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ard&egrave;che, l', department of, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destruction of forests in, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+&mdash; river and basin, floods of, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>;<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[Pg 569]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">supply of water to the Rhone, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">violence of inundations of, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">damage done by, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect on river beds, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">force of its affluents, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Argostoli, Cephalonia, millstreams of, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Armenia, ancient irrigation of, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Arno, the river, deposits of, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">upper course of in the Val di Chiana, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Artesian wells, their sources, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">usual objects, <a href="#Page_442">442</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">occasional effects, <a href="#Page_442">442</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">employment in the Algerian desert, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">by the French Government, <a href="#Page_444">444</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">success and probable results of, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">known to the ancients, <a href="#Page_443">443</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">depth of, <a href="#Page_444">444</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Arundo arenaria, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ascension, island of, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Auk, the wingless, extirpation of, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Australia a field of physical observation, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Avalanches, Alpine, various causes of, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">by felling trees, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Azoff, sea of, proposed changes, <a href="#Page_531">531</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Babinet, plan for artificial springs, by, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Baikal Lake, the fish of, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Baltic Sea, sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_467">467</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Barcelonette, valley of, former fertility, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">present degradation of, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Bavaria, scarcity of fuel in, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bear, the mythical character of, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Beaver, the, agency in forming bogs, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">cause of its increased numbers, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Bee, the honey, products of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">introduction in United States, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Belgium, effect of plantations in, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Campine of, <a href="#Page_513">513</a>.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[Pg 570]</a></span><br />
+Ben G&acirc;si, district of, rock formation in, <a href="#Page_537">537</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bergamo, change of climate in the valley of, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bibliographical list of authorities, vii.<br />
+<br />
+Birch tree (black and yellow), produce of, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Birds, number of, in United States, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the turkey, dove, pigeon, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as sowers and consumers of seeds, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as destroyers of insects, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">injurious extirpation of, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">wanton destruction of, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">weakness of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">instinct of migratory, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extinction of species, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">commercial value of, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">introduction of species, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Bison, the American, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">number and migrations of, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">domesticated, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Blackbird, the proscription of, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bogs, formation and nomenclature of, <a href="#Page_29">29-32</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of New England, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">repositories of fuel, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Br&eacute;montier, system of dune plantations of, <a href="#Page_503">503</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">a benefactor to his race, <a href="#Page_515">515</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Breton, Cap, dune vineyards of, <a href="#Page_508">508</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Busbequius' letters, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Camel, the, transfer and migrations of, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">injurious to vegetation, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Campine of Belgium, <a href="#Page_513">513</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Canada thistle, the, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Canals, geographic and climatic effects of, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">injurious effects of Tuscan, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">projected, Suez, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Isthmus of Darien, <a href="#Page_522">522</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">to the Dead Sea, <a href="#Page_524">524</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">maritime, in Greece, <a href="#Page_526">526</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Saros, <a href="#Page_527">527</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cape Cod, <a href="#Page_528">528</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Don and the Volga, <a href="#Page_531">531</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lake Erie and the Genesee, <a href="#Page_532">532</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, <a href="#Page_533">533</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Cape Cod, sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_487">487</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">legislative protection of, <a href="#Page_502">502</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">vegetation of, <a href="#Page_503">503</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">projected canal through, <a href="#Page_528">528</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Cappercailzie, the, extinction of, in Britain, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Carniola, caves of, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Caspian Sea, proposed changes in its basin, <a href="#Page_531">531</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Catania, lava streams of, <a href="#Page_544">544</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Catavothra of Greece, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>.<br />
+<br />
+C&eacute;vennes, effects of clearing the, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Champlain, lake, dates of its congelation, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cherbourg, breakwater of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chiana, Val di, description and character of, <a href="#Page_417">417-420</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">plans for its restoration, <a href="#Page_420">420</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">artificial drainage of, attempted, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">successfully executed, <a href="#Page_423">423</a>.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[Pg 571]</a></span><br />
+Clergy, medi&aelig;val, their character, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Climatic change, discussions of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">how tested, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">causes producing, in New England, Africa, Arabia Petr&aelig;a, <a href="#Page_20">20-22</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">man's action on, difficult to ascertain, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">deterioration, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Coal mines, combustion of, <a href="#Page_546">546</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Coal, sea, early use of, for fuel, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">increased use of, in Paris, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Coast line, change of, from natural causes, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">subject to human guidance, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Cochineal insect transferred to Spain, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cochituate Aqueduct, Boston, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Col Isoard, valley of, devastated, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Commerce, modern, on what dependent, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Como, lake of, proposed lowering of, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Constance, lake of, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cork-oak tree, yield of, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Corporations, social and political, influence of, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cosmical influences, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cotton, early cultivation of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">can be raised by white labor, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Crawley Sparrow Club, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Currents, sea, strength of, <a href="#Page_456">456</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in the Bosphorus, <a href="#Page_457">457</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Cuyahoga river, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cypress tree, its beauty, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Darien, Isthmus of, proposed canal across, <a href="#Page_522">522</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conjectural effects of, <a href="#Page_523">523</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Dead Sea, projected canals to, <a href="#Page_524">524</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">possible results of, <a href="#Page_525">525</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Deer, numbers of, in United States; 82;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tame, injurious to trees, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Denmark, peat mosses of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dunes of, <a href="#Page_497">497</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent and movement of, <a href="#Page_498">498</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">legislative protection of, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>, <a href="#Page_504">504</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Desert, the, richness of local color, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mirage in, <a href="#Page_446">446</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Des Plaines river, <a href="#Page_533">533</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Despotism a cause of physical decay, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dikes, recovery of land by, in the Netherlands, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">early usage and immense extent of, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">encouraged by the Spaniards, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">details of their construction and effect on the land gained, <a href="#Page_340">340-345</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Egypt, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Dinornis, or moa, recent extirpation of, in New Zealand, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dodo, the, extirpation of, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Domestic animals, action of, on vegetation, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">origin and transfer of, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">injurious to the forest growth, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[Pg 572]</a></span><br />
+Don river, proposed diversion of, <a href="#Page_531">531</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Draining a geographical element, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">superficial, its necessity in forest lands, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect on temperature, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">underground, <i>ib.</i>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extensive use of, in England, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">affects the atmosphere, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">disturbs the equilibrium of river supply, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">by boring, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in France, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_362">362</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Paris, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Drance, Switzerland, glacier lake of, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dry land and water, relative extent of, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dwight, Dr., Travels in the United States, characterized, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Earth, fertile, below the rock, <a href="#Page_537">537</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">transported to cover rocky surfaces, <a href="#Page_537">537</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Earthquakes, effects of, <a href="#Page_542">542</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">causes and possible prevention of, <a href="#Page_543">543</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Lisbon, <a href="#Page_544">544</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Earthworm, utility of, in agriculture, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">multiplication of, in New England, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Egypt, catacombs, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">papyrus or water lily, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">poisonous snakes of, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">supposed increase of rain in, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">productiveness of, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">necessity and extent of irrigation in, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">cultivated soil of, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">population of, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">amount of water used for irrigation, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">saline deposits, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">artificial river courses of, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">cultivated area of, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sands of, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their prevalence and extent, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">source of, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">action on the Delta and cultivated land, <a href="#Page_462">462</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect of the diversion of the Nile on, <a href="#Page_529">529</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">refuse heaps near Cairo, <a href="#Page_541">541</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Eland, the, preserved in Prussia, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Elm, the Washington, Cambridge, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Elsineur, artificial formation in harbor of, <a href="#Page_539">539</a>.<br />
+<br />
+England, forest economy of, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">large extent of ornamental plantations, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Forests of, described by C&aelig;sar, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">private enterprise in sylviculture, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Enguerrand de Coucy, cruelty of, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Erie Canal, the, influence on the fauna and flora of its region, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lake, depth and level of, <a href="#Page_532">532</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">proposed canal from, <a href="#Page_532">532</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Espy's theories of artificial rain, <a href="#Page_547">547</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Etna, volcanic lava and dust, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Euphrates, sand plains in the valley of, <a href="#Page_511">511</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Eye, cultivation of the, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">control of the limbs by, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">trained by the study of physical geography, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[Pg 573]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Feudalism, pernicious influence of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fir tree, the, its products, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fire weed, in burnt forests of the United States, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fish, destruction of, by man, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">voracity of, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">introduction and breeding of foreign, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">naturalization of, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">inferiority of the artificially fattened, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Fish, shell, extensive remains of, in United States, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Indian origin, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Fish ponds of Catholic countries, <a href="#Page_426">426</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fontainebleau, forest of, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">poaching in, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its renovation, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">soil of, <a href="#Page_513">513</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Food, ancient arts of preservation of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Forest, the, influence of, on the humidity of air, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. of earth, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as organic, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">balance of conflicting influences in, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence on temperature, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on precipitation, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in South America, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Canary Islands and Asia Minor, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peru, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Palestine, Southern France, Scotland and Egypt, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of, on humidity of soil, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on springs, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Venezuela, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">New Granada, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Switzerland and France, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">United States, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in winter, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">general consequences of its destruction, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on the earth, springs, rivers, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">literature of, in France, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Germany, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Italy, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">England, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence of, on inundations, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in North America, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">disputed effects of, in Europe, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">principal causes of its destruction, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in British America, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Europe, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">royal forests, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effects of the Revolution on, in France, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">utility of, for the preservation of smaller plants, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. of birds, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">economic utility of, and necessity for its restoration, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent of, in Europe, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">proportion in different countries of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the United States and Canada, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">economy of, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">management of, in France, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">European forests, all of artificial growth, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">artificial and natural, their respective advantages, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">American do., their peculiar characteristics, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">economic action of cattle on, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">duty of preserving, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">average revenue from, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">regulated by laws in France, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">See <i>Trees</i>, <i>Woods</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Forests of North America, balance of geographical elements in, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[Pg 574]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">agency of quadrupeds and insects in, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">injury to, by insects, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">meteorological importance of, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Forest laws, medi&aelig;val, character of, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. Jewish, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">severity of, in France and England, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">under Louis IX., <a href="#Page_281">281</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of America, created by circumstances, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+France, forest literature and economy of, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">legislation on forests, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</span><br />
+<br />
+&mdash; Southeastern, former physical state of, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">altered condition of, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">royal forests of, and forest laws, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent of, in, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ancient lakes of, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">inundations of 1856 in, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">remedies against inundations in, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sand dunes of Western, <a href="#Page_485">485</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">encroachments of the sea on, <a href="#Page_494">494</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+French peasantry, described by La Bruyere, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. Arthur Young, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Chambord, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Friesland, sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_489">489</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fucinus Lake (Lago di Celano), drainage of, by the Romans, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">moderns, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Game Laws, effect on the numbers of birds in France, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in England and Italy, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">severity of, in France, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">unable to stop poaching, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Ganges, valley of the, <a href="#Page_548">548</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gascony, coast sands of, <a href="#Page_453">453</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dunes of, <a href="#Page_496">496</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent and advance of, <a href="#Page_497">497</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">fixing and reclaiming of, <a href="#Page_504">504</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Landes of, <a href="#Page_511">511</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their reclamation, <a href="#Page_512">512</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Geological influences, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Geographers, new school of, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Geographical influence of changes produced by man, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Geography, modern, improved form of, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.<br />
+<br />
+German Ocean, sands of, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_457">457</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Germany, extent of forests in, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Glacier lakes in Switzerland, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Goat, the Cashmere or Thibet, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gold fish, the migration from China, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Goldau, Switzerland, destruction of, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Grape disease, its economic effect in France, Italy, Sicily, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Grasshopper, the rapid increase in America, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gravedigger beetle, the, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Greece, proposed maritime canals in, through the Corinthian Isthmus, <a href="#Page_526">526</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mount Athos, <a href="#Page_527">527</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">subterranean waters of, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Gulls, sea, habits of, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gulf stream, the, <a href="#Page_523">523</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gunpowder chiefly used for industrial purposes, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>.<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[Pg 575]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Haarlem Lake, origin and extent of, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">reasons for draining it, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">means employed, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">successful results, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Hauran, the productions of, its soil, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Heilbronn, springs at, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Herring fishery, produce of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hessian fly, introduction of in the United States, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Honey bee, the wild, New England, legal usage, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Humid air, movement of, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hunter in New England, exploits of, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ibex, the Alpine, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.<br />
+<br />
+India, saline efflorescence of its soil, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">natural connection of rivers in, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Insects, injurious to vegetable life, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">utility of, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">agency in the fertilization of orchids, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mass of their exuvi&aelig; in South America, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">introduction of injurious species, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ravages of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tenacity of life in, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the carnivorous, useful to man, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destruction of, by fish, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">abundance of, in Northern Europe, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destruction of, by birds, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. quadrupeds, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. reptiles, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do not multiply in the forest, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">confine themselves to dead trees, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Inundations, influence of the forest on, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the German Ocean, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">means for obviating, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of 1856 in France, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">remedies against, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">legislative regulation of the woodlands in France for prevention of, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">proposed basins of reception, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. in Peru and Spain, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rozet's plan for diminishing, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Irrigation, remote date of in ancient nations, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">among Mexicans and Peruvians, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its necessity in hot climates, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Europe, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Palestine, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Idum&aelig;a, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Egypt, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quantity of water so applied, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent of lands irrigated, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effects of, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on river supply, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on human health, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">saline deposits from, in India and Egypt, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect of, on vegetable crops, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on the soil, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">economic evils of, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Islands, floating, in Holland and South America, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ijssel river, Holland, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Italy, effects of the denudation of its forests, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">political condition adverse to their preservation, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[Pg 576]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">beauty of its winter scenery, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent of irrigation in, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">atmospheric phenomena of Northern, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Jupiter, satellites of, visible to the eye, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jutland, effects of felling the woods in, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destruction of forests in, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">encroachments of the sea on, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Kander river, Switzerland, artificial course of, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Karst, the subterranean waters of, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kj&ouml;kkenm&ouml;ddinger in Denmark, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their extent, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Kohl, J. G., "the Herodotus of modern Europe," <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">on dune sand, <a href="#Page_475">475</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Labrugui&egrave;re, commune of, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.<br />
+<br />
+L&aelig;stadius, account of the Swedish Laplanders, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lakes, draining of, by steam hydraulic engines, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">natural process of filling up by aquatic vegetation, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lowering of, in ancient and modern times, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Italy, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Switzerland, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">inconvenient consequences of, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mountain, their disappearance, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Landscape beauty, insensibility of the ancients to, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the oasis and the desert, <a href="#Page_445">445</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Lava currents, diversion of their course, <a href="#Page_544">544</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">from Vesuvius, phenomena of, <a href="#Page_545">545</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">heat emitted by, <a href="#Page_545">545</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Life, balance of animal and vegetable, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Liimfjord, the, irruption of the sea into, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">aquatic vegetation of, <a href="#Page_492">492</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">original state of, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Lion, an inhabitant of Europe, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lisbon, earthquake of, <a href="#Page_544">544</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Locust, the, does not multiply in woods, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tree and insect, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Lombardy, statistics of irrigation in, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Louis IX., of France, clemency of, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lower Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lumber trade of Quebec, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of United States, 1850-'60, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Lungern, lake of, lowering of, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Madagascar, gigantic bird of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the ai-ai of, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Madder, early cultivation of, in Europe, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Madeira, named from its forests, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Maize, early cultivation of, law of its acclimation, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">native country of, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_577" id="Page_577">[Pg 577]</a></span><br />
+Malta, transported soil of, <a href="#Page_538">538</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">salt works at, <a href="#Page_540">540</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Man, reaction of, on nature, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">insufficiency of data, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">geographical influence of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">physical revolutions wrought by, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">unpremeditated results of conscious action, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ancient relics of, in old geological formations, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mechanical effects of, on the earth's surface, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destructiveness of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in animal life and inorganic nature, <a href="#Page_36">36-39</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character of his action compared with that of brutes, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">subversive of the balance of nature, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sometimes exercised for good, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">present limits to, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">transfer of vegetable life by, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">remains of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">contemporary with the mammoth, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">agency in the extermination of birds, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. introduction of species, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">increase of insect life, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">introduction of new forms of do. by, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destruction of fish by, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extirpation of aquatic animals by, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">possible control of minute organisms, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his first physical conquest, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his action on land and the waters, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">possible geographical changes by, <a href="#Page_517">517</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">incidental effects of his action, <a href="#Page_539">539</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">illimitable and ever enduring do., <a href="#Page_548">548</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Maremme of Tuscany, ancient and medi&aelig;val state of, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent of, <a href="#Page_427">427</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">inhabitants, <a href="#Page_428">428</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">improvement of, <a href="#Page_429">429</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sedimentary deposits of, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>, <a href="#Page_430">430</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Marine isthmuses, cutting of, <a href="#Page_517">517</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its difficulties, <a href="#Page_518">518</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sometimes done by nature, <a href="#Page_519">519</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Marmato in Popayan, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Marshes, climatic effects of draining, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">insalubrity of mixture of fresh and salt water in, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Mechanic arts, illustration of their mutual interdependence, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Medanos of the South American desert, <a href="#Page_482">482</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mediterranean Sea, tides of, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_467">467</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">poor in organic life, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Mella, the river, Italy, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Meteorology, uncertainty and late rise of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">varying nomenclature of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">precipitation and evaporation, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Michigan, lake, sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_467">467</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">originally wooded, <a href="#Page_487">487</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">proposed diversion of its waters, <a href="#Page_532">532</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Mining excavations, effects of, <a href="#Page_545">545</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Minute organisms, their offices, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">universal diffusion and products of, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_578" id="Page_578">[Pg 578]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">possible control of their agency by man, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the coral insect, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the diatomace&aelig;, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Miramichi, great fire of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mistral in France, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mississippi river, "cut offs" and their effect, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">precipitation in the valley of, <a href="#Page_436">436</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">projected canal to, <a href="#Page_533">533</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Mountain slides, their cause, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their frequency in the Alps, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Mountainous countries, their liability to physical degradation, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Monte Testaccio, Rome, <a href="#Page_541">541</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Moose deer, the American, rapid multiplication of, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mushrooms, poisonous, how to render harmless, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Natural forces, accumulation of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">resistance to, <a href="#Page_542">542</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Nature, man's reaction on, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">observation of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">stability of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">restoration of disturbed harmonies of, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">nothing small in, <a href="#Page_548">548</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Naturalists, enthusiasm of, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Netherlands, ancient inundations of, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">recovery of land by diking, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the practice derived from the Romans, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent of land gained from the sea, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. lost by incursions of do., <a href="#Page_337">337</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character of lands gained, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">natural process of recovery, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">grandeur of the dike system of, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">method of their construction in, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">modes of protection, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">various uses of, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect on the level of the land, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">drainage of do., <a href="#Page_345">345</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">primitive condition of, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effects on the social, moral, and economic interests of the people of, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">encroachments of the sea on, <a href="#Page_494">494</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">artificial dunes in, <a href="#Page_499">499</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">protection of dunes in, <a href="#Page_500">500</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">removal of do., <a href="#Page_509">509</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Nile, the river, valley of, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its ancient state, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">inundations of, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">water delivery of, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">artificial mouths of, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">consequences of diking, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">richness of its deposits, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent of do., <a href="#Page_412">412</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mud banks caused by its deposits, <a href="#Page_433">433</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sand dunes at its mouths, <a href="#Page_468">468</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conduits for irrigation, <a href="#Page_521">521</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">proposed diversion of, <a href="#Page_528">528</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">not impossible, <a href="#Page_529">529</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effects of, <a href="#Page_530">530</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ceramic banks of, <a href="#Page_541">541</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Northmen in New England, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Nubians, Nile boats of the, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Numbers, the frequent error in too definite statements of, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">oriental and Italian usage of, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_579" id="Page_579">[Pg 579]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Oak, the English, early uses in the arts, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"openings" of North America, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Ohio, mounds of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">remains of a primitive people in, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">apple trees of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Old World, former populousness of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">physical decay of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">present desolation of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its causes, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ancient climate of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">physical restoration of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Olive tree, the wild, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">importance of, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Orange tree known to the ancients, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the wild, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Orchids, fertilization of, by insects, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Organic life embraced in modern geography, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its geological agency, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">geographical importance of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">bones and relics of, human and animal, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Ostrich, the, diminution of its numbers, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ottaquechee river, Vermont, transporting power of, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Otter, the American, voracity of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Oxen, agricultural uses of, in United States, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Oyster, the, transplantation of, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Palestine, ancient terrace culture and irrigation of, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">disastrous effects of its neglect, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Palissy, Bernard, character of, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">plan for artificial springs, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Paragrandini of Lombardy, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Paramelle, the Abb&eacute;, on fountains, <a href="#Page_437">437</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Peat beds, accidental burning of, <a href="#Page_546">546</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&mdash; mosses of Denmark, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Pecora, river of the Maremma, its deposits, <a href="#Page_425">425</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Peru, ancient progress in the arts, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">basins of reception in, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Petra, in Idum&aelig;a, ancient irrigation at, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Phosphorescence of the sea unknown to the ancients, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Physical decay of the earth's surface, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its causes, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">arrest of, in new countries, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">forms and formations predisposing to, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Physical geography, study of recommended, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">restoration of the earth, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">importance and possibility of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of disturbed harmonies, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Old World, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Pine, the American, former ordinary dimensions of, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">how affected by the accidents of its growth, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_580" id="Page_580">[Pg 580]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">the maritime, on dune sands in France, <a href="#Page_506">506</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the pitch, hardihood of, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">umbrella, the, most elegant of trees, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the white, rapidity of its growth, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Pinus cembra of Switzerland, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pisciculture, its valuable results, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Plants, cultivated, uncertain identity of ancient and modern, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. of wild and domestic species, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">changes of habit by domestication, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">geographical influence of, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">foreign, grown in United States, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">American, grown in Europe, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">modes of introduction, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">accidental do., <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">power of accommodation of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">how affected by transfer, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tenacity of life in wild species, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extirpation of, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">domestic origin of, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">species employed for protection of sand dunes, <a href="#Page_500">500</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Pliny, the elder, theory of springs, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Po, river, ancient state of its basin, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">modern changes, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its floods, tributaries, and deposits, <a href="#Page_256">256-261</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">embankments of, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sediment of, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">age and consequences of its embankments, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mean delivery of, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>salti</i> of, <a href="#Page_415">415</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Poland, sand plains of, <a href="#Page_514">514</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Poplar, the Lombardy, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">characterized, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Potato, native country of, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Prairies, conjectural origin of, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Provence, physical structure of, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ancient state of, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destructive action of torrents on, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Alps of, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Prussia, sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_485">485</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">drifting of, <a href="#Page_498">498</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">measures for reclaiming of, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Quadrupeds, number in United States, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extirpation of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Quebec, high tides of, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lumber trade of, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Railways, scientific uses of, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rain water, its absorption and infiltration, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">economizing its precipitation, <a href="#Page_449">449</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Ravenna, cathedral of, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">pine woods of, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Red Sea, richness of, in organic life, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">diversion of the Nile to, its effects, <a href="#Page_530">530</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Reindeer, the, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Reservoirs, geographic and climatic effects of, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Reventlov's organization of dune economy in Denmark, <a href="#Page_504">504</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">a benefactor to his race, <a href="#Page_515">515</a>.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_581" id="Page_581">[Pg 581]</a></span><br />
+Rhine, river, proposed diversion of, <a href="#Page_533">533</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rice, cultivation of, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rivers, transporting power of, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Vermont, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their origin, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">injury to their banks by lumbermen, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conditions of their rise and fall, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mutual action of rivers and valleys, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect of obstructions in, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">subterranean course of, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">confluences of, effect on the current below, <a href="#Page_424">424</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sediment of, its extent, <a href="#Page_547">547</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+River beds, natural change of, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">artificial do. in Egypt, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Italy and Switzerland, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+River deposits, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Nile, <a href="#Page_410">410</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Po, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Tuscan rivers, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+River embankments, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their use, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">disadvantages, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">transverse do., superiority of, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effects of, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+River mouths, obstructions of, <a href="#Page_430">430</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">by sand banks, <a href="#Page_431">431</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">accelerated by man's influence, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect of tidal movements, <a href="#Page_432">432</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Robin, the American, voracity of, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rock generally permeable by water, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Roman empire, natural advantages of its territory, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">increased by intelligent labor, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">physical decay of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">present desolation, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">caused by its despotism and oppression, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Rozet's plan for diminishing inundations, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rude tribes, continuity of arts among, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">commerce of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">relations to organic life, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and to nature, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Russia, diminution of forests in, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effects of, on rivers and lakes, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sand drifts of the steppes of, <a href="#Page_514">514</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">attempts to reclaim them, <a href="#Page_515">515</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Sacramento City, California, effect of river dike at, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sand, its composition and origin, <a href="#Page_452">452</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">action of rivers, <a href="#Page_453">453</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ancient deposits of, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>, <a href="#Page_456">456</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">amount of, carried to the Mediterranean, <a href="#Page_455">455</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Egypt, <a href="#Page_458">458</a>, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">movement of, by the wind, <a href="#Page_459">459</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">drifts of, from the sea, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dangers of accumulation of, <a href="#Page_463">463</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">two forms of deposit, <a href="#Page_463">463</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">drifting of dune, <a href="#Page_495">495</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Sand banks, aquatic, <a href="#Page_468">468</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">movement of, <a href="#Page_469">469</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">connect themselves with the coast, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Sand dunes, how formed, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">utilization of, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">inland, of the South American desert, <a href="#Page_482">482</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their peculiarities, <a href="#Page_483">483</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">age, character, and permanence of, <a href="#Page_484">484</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">naturally wooded, <a href="#Page_486">486</a>;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_582" id="Page_582">[Pg 582]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">not noticed by ancient writers, <a href="#Page_487">487</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">management of, <a href="#Page_488">488</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">coast, sources of supply, <a href="#Page_465">465</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">law of their formation, <a href="#Page_466">466</a>, <a href="#Page_471">471</a>, <a href="#Page_483">483</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Mediterranean, <a href="#Page_467">467</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Lake Michigan, <a href="#Page_467">467</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Nile mouths, <a href="#Page_468">468</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of America, <a href="#Page_469">469</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Western Europe, <a href="#Page_470">470</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">literature of, <a href="#Page_471">471</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">height of, <a href="#Page_472">472</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">humidity of, <a href="#Page_473">473</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Cape Cod, <a href="#Page_487">487</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">character of their sand, <a href="#Page_474">474</a>, <a href="#Page_481">481</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">concretion within, <a href="#Page_476">476</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">interior structure of, <a href="#Page_477">477</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">general form of, <a href="#Page_478">478</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">geological importance of, <a href="#Page_479">479</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">composition of sandstone, <a href="#Page_481">481</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as barriers against the sea, <a href="#Page_489">489</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Western Europe, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extent of, <a href="#Page_507">507</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Gascony, <a href="#Page_496">496</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Denmark, <a href="#Page_497">497</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Prussia, <a href="#Page_497">497</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">artificial formation of, in Holland, <a href="#Page_499">499</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">protection of, <a href="#Page_500">500</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">by vegetation, <a href="#Page_501">501</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">trees adapted to, <a href="#Page_505">505</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">removal of, <a href="#Page_509">509</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Sand-dune vineyard of Cap Breton, <a href="#Page_508">508</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sand plains, mode of deposit, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">constituent parts, <a href="#Page_464">464</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">inland, of Europe, <a href="#Page_509">509</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">landes of Gascony, <a href="#Page_511">511</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Belgium, <a href="#Page_513">513</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Eastern Europe, <a href="#Page_513">513</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">advantages of reclaiming, <a href="#Page_515">515</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">private and public enterprise, <a href="#Page_516">516</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Sand springs, <a href="#Page_511">511</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sandal wood extirpated in Juan Fernandez, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Saros, projected canal of, <a href="#Page_527">527</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sawmills, action of their machinery more rapid by night, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Schelk, the extirpation of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Schleswig-Holstein, encroachments of the sea on, <a href="#Page_493">493</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Scientific observation, practical lessons of, <a href="#Page_54">54-56</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sea, the, exclusion of, by dikes, in Lincolnshire, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">encroachments of, <a href="#Page_490">490</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">coast, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the Liimfjord, <a href="#Page_491">491</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Schleswig-Holstein, <a href="#Page_493">493</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Holland, <a href="#Page_494">494</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">France, <a href="#Page_494">494</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Sea cow, Steller's, extirpation of, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Seal, the, in Lake Champlain, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">voracity of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Seeds, vitality of, as preserved by the forest, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Seine river, ancient level of, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">affluents of, <a href="#Page_435">435</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Ship building of the middle ages, Venice and Genoa, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Siberia, ice ravine in, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sicily, stone weapons found in, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sulphur mines of, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">olive oil crop of, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Silkworm, introduction in South America, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_583" id="Page_583">[Pg 583]</a></span><br />
+Sinai, Mt., rain torrent at, <a href="#Page_441">441</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">production of sand in peninsula of, <a href="#Page_454">454</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">garden of monastery at, <a href="#Page_537">537</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Snakes, destructive to insects, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tenacity of species, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">number of, in Palestine and Egypt, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Snow, action of the woods on, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">experiments on, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Soils, amount of thermoscopic action on various, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mechanical effects of shaking in the Netherlands, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect of frost on, in United States, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Solar heat, economic employment of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Solitary, the, extirpation of, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sound, transmission of, in still air, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Springs, artificial, proposed by Palissy, <a href="#Page_447">447</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">by Babinet, <a href="#Page_448">448</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Spain, neglect of forest culture in, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Squirrel, the, destructiveness of, in forests, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Boston, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+St. Helena, flora of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destruction of its forests, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Staffordshire, phenomena of vegetation in, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Starlings, habits of, in Piedmont, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Stork, the, geographical range of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">anecdote of a, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Subterranean waters, their origin, <a href="#Page_434">434</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sources of supply, <a href="#Page_435">435</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">reservoirs and currents of, <a href="#Page_438">438</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">diffusion of, in the soil, <a href="#Page_439">439</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">importance, <a href="#Page_440">440</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of the Karst, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of Greece, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Suez canal, the, danger from sand drifts, <a href="#Page_461">461</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect on the Mediterranean and Red Sea basins, <a href="#Page_520">520</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Sugar cane, culture of, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sugar-maple tree, produce of, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Summer dikes of Holland, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sunflowers, effect of plantations of, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Swallow, the, popular superstitions respecting, <a href="#Page_418">418</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Switzerland, ancient lacustrine habitations of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sylt Island, sand dunes of, <a href="#Page_474">474</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">encroachments of the sea on, <a href="#Page_493">493</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Sylviculture, best manuals of practice of, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">when and how profitable, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its methods, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the <i>taillis</i> treatment, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the <i>futaie</i> do., <a href="#Page_317">317</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">beneficial effects of irrigation, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">exclusion of animals, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">removal of leaves, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_322">322</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">topping and trimming, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Taguataga Lake, Chili, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tea plant, the, cultivated in America, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Temperature, general law of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Teredo, the general diffusion of, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_584" id="Page_584">[Pg 584]</a></span><br />
+Termite, or white ant, ravages of, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Teverone, cascade of, Tivoli, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Timber, general superiority of cultivated, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">slow decay of, in forest, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Tobacco an American plant, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">introduction in Hungary, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Tocat, Asia Minor, oak woods of, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tomato, the, introduction to New England, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Torricelli, successful plan for draining the Val di Chiana, <a href="#Page_421">421</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Torrents, destructive action of, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">means of prevention, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ravages of, in Southeastern France, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Provence, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upper Alps, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lower Alps, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">action of, in elevating the beds of mainland streams, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in excavating ravines, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">transporting power of, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">signs of, extinguished, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">crushing force of, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Trees, as organisms, specific temperature of, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">moisture given out by, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">total influence on temperature, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">absorption of water by, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">flow of sap, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">absorption of moisture by foliage of, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">exhalation of do., <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">consequent refrigeration, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">amount of ligneous products of, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">protection against avalanches afforded by, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">power of resisting the action of fire, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">American forest trees, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their dimensions, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">change in relative proportions of height and diameter, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">comparative longevity of, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">European and American compared, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">species more numerous in America, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Spenser's catalogue of, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">interchange of European and American species, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">species of Southern Europe and their extent, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">natural order of succession in, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">See <i>Forest</i>, <i>Woods</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Trieste, proposed supply of water to, <a href="#Page_536">536</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Trout, the American, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Tuscany, rivers of, their deposits, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">physical restoration in, <a href="#Page_416">416</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">improvements in Val di Chiana, <a href="#Page_417">417</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do. in the Maremma, <a href="#Page_424">424</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Tyrolese rivers, elevation of their beds, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ubate, lakes of, New Granada, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Undulation of water, <a href="#Page_456">456</a>.<br />
+<br />
+United States, foreign plants grown in, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">weight of annual harvest in, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">number of quadrupeds in, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of birds, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_585" id="Page_585">[Pg 585]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect of felling woods on its climate, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">forests of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">instability of life in, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Upper Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Urus, or auerochs, domesticated by man, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extirpation of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Val de Lys, evidence of glacier action in, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Vegetable life, transfer by man's action, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Velino, cascade of, Tivoli, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Vesuvius, vegetation on, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">eruption of February, 1851, <a href="#Page_544">544</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Volcanic action, resistance to, <a href="#Page_544">544</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">matter, vegetation in, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Volga river, proposed diversion of, <a href="#Page_531">531</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Walcheren, formation of the island, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wallenstadt, lake of, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Walnut tree, consumption of, for gun stocks, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">oil yielded by, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Ward's cases for plants, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Waste products, utilization of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Weeds common to Old and New World, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extirpated in China, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Whale, the, food of, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destruction of, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Whale fishery, date of its commencement unknown, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in the middle ages, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">American, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Wheat, its asserted origin, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">introduction to America, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Wild animals, number of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wild organisms, vegetable and animal, tenacity of life in, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Willow, the weeping, introduction in Europe, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wolf, increase of the, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">prevalence in forests of France, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Wolf Spring, Soubey, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wood, increased demand for, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ship building, railroads, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">market price of, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">replaced by iron in the arts, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">means of increasing its durability, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">how affected by rapid growth, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">facilities for working, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Woods, habitable earth originally covered by, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conditions of their propagation, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destructive agency of man and domestic animals, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">do not furnish food for man, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">first removal of, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">burning of, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Sweden and France, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">effect on the soil, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destruction of, its effect, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">electrical influence of, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_586" id="Page_586">[Pg 586]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">chemical influence of, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">influence on temperature, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">absorbing and emitting surface of, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in summer and winter, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dead products of, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as a shelter, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in France, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">New England, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Italy and Jutland, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as a protection against malaria, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tend to mitigate extremes of temperature, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">See <i>Forest</i>, <i>Trees</i>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Wood mosses and fungi, absorbent of moisture, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Woodpecker, the, destroyer of insects, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Yak, or Tartary ox, the, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Yew tree, geographical range of, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Zeeland, province, formation of, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Zostera marina, <a href="#Page_492">492</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Zuiderzee, proposed drainage of, <a href="#Page_534">534</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">means of, and geographical results, <a href="#Page_535">535</a>.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<h5>THE END.</h5>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_587" id="Page_587">[Pg 587]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 100%;" />
+<h4>FORSYTH'S "CICERO."</h4>
+
+<h3><big>A New Life of Cicero.</big></h3>
+
+<h4>BY WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C.</h4>
+
+<p class="center">With Twenty Illustrations. 2 vols. crown octavo. Printed on tinted and laid
+paper. Price, $5.00.</p>
+
+
+<p>The object of this work is to exhibit Cicero not merely as a Statesman and
+an Orator, but as he was at home in the relations of private life, as a Husband,
+a Father, a Brother, and a Friend. His letters are full of interesting details,
+which enable us to form a vivid idea of how the old Romans lived 2,000 years
+ago; and the Biography embraces not only a History of Events, as momentous
+as any in the annals of the world, but a large amount of Anecdote and Gossip,
+which amused the generation that witnessed the downfall of the Republic.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The <i>London Athen&aelig;uem</i> says: "Mr. Forsyth has rightly aimed to set before
+us a portrait of Cicero in the modern style of biography, carefully gleaning
+from his extensive correspondence all those little traits of character and habit
+which marked his private and domestic life. These volumes form a very
+acceptable addition to the classic library. The style is that of a scholar and a
+man of taste."</p>
+
+<p>From the <i>Saturday Review</i>:&mdash;"Mr. Forsyth has discreetly told his story,
+evenly and pleasantly supplied it with apt illustrations from modern law,
+eloquence, and history, and brought Cicero as near to the present time as the
+differences of age and manners warrant. * * * These volumes we heartily
+recommend as both a useful and agreeable guide to the writings and character
+of one who was next in intellectual and political rank to the foremost man of all
+the world, at a period when there were many to dispute with him the triple
+crown of forensic, philosophic, and political composition."</p>
+
+<p>"A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, Mr. Forsyth
+seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the precise attitude which it behoves
+a biographer to take when narrating the life, the personal life, of Cicero. Mr.
+Forsyth produces what we venture to say will become one of <i>the classics of
+English biographical literature</i>, and will be welcomed by readers of all ages and
+both sexes, of all professions and of no profession at all."&mdash;<i>London Quarterly.</i></p>
+
+<p>"This book is a valuable contribution to our Standard Literature. It is a
+work which will aid our progress towards the truth; it lifts a corner of the veil
+which has hung over the scenes and actors of times so full of ferment, and
+allows us to catch a glimpse of the stage upon which the great drama was
+played."&mdash;<i>North American Review.</i></p></div>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price.</i><br />
+</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_589" id="Page_589">[Pg 589]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 100%;" />
+<h4>LORD DERBY'S "HOMER."</h4>
+
+<h3><big>The Iliad of Homer.</big></h3>
+
+<h4>RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE BY EDWARD, EARL OF DERBY.</h4>
+
+<p class="center">From the fifth London Edition.<br />
+
+Two volumes, royal octavo, on tinted paper. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Price $7.50 per vol.</p>
+
+
+<h4>Extracts from Notices and Reviews from the English Quarterlies, &amp;c.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"The merits of Lord Derby's translation may be summed up in one word: "it is
+eminently attractive; it is instinct with life; it may be read with fervent interest; it is immeasurably
+nearer than Pope to the text of the original. * * * We think that Lord Derby's
+translation will not only be read, but read over and over again. * * * Lord Derby has given
+to England a version far more closely allied to the original, and superior to any that has
+yet been attempted in the blank verse of our language."&mdash;<i>Edinburgh Review, January
+1865.</i></p>
+
+<p>"As often as we return from even the best of them (other translations) to the translation
+before us, we find ourselves in a purer atmosphere of taste. We find more spirit, more
+tact in avoiding either trivial or conceited phrases, and altogether a presence of merits, and
+an absence of defects which continues, as we read, to lengthen more and more the distance
+between Lord Derby and the foremost of his competitors."&mdash;<i>London Quarterly Review,
+January, 1865.</i></p>
+
+<p>"While the versification of Lord Derby is such as Pope himself would have admired,
+his Iliad is in all other essentials superior to that of his great rival. For the rest, if Pope is
+dethroned what remains? * * * It is the Iliad we would place in the hands of English
+readers as the truest counterpart of the original, the nearest existing approach to a reproduction
+of that original's matchless feature."&mdash;<i>Saturday Review.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Among those curiosities of literature which are also its treasures, Lord Derby's translation
+of Homer must occupy a very conspicuous place. * * * Lord Derby's work is, on the
+whole, more remarkable for the constancy of its excellence and the high level which it
+maintains throughout, than for its special bursts of eloquence. It is uniformly worthy of
+itself and its author."&mdash;<i>The Reader.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Whatever may be the ultimate fate of this poem&mdash;whether it take sufficient hold of
+the public mind to satisfy that demand for a translation of Homer which we have alluded
+to, and thus become a permanent classic of the language, or whether it give place to the still
+more perfect production of some yet unknown poet&mdash;it must equally be considered a
+splendid performance; and for the present we have no hesitation in saying that it is by
+far the best representation of Homer's Iliad in the English language."</p>
+</div>
+
+<h4>AMERICAN NOTICES.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>The <i>Publishers Circular</i> says:&mdash;At the advanced age of sixty-five, the Earl of Derby,
+leader of the Tory party in England, has published a translation of Homer, in blank
+verse. Nearly all the London critics unite in declaring, with <i>The Times</i>, "that it is by
+far the best representation of Homer's 'Iliad' in the English language." His purpose
+was to produce a translation, and not a paraphrase&mdash;fairly and honestly giving the sense
+of every passage and of every line. Without doubt the greatest of all living British orators,
+he has now shown high poetic power as well as great scholarship.</p>
+
+<p>From the <i>New York World</i>:&mdash;"The reader of English, who seeks to know what
+Homer really was, and in what fashion he thought and felt and wrote, will owe to
+Lord Derby his first honest opportunity of doing so. The Earl's translation is devoid alike of
+pretension and of prettiness. It is animated in movement, simple and representative
+to phraseology, breezy in atmosphere, if we may so speak, and pervaded by a refinement
+of taste which is as far removed from daintiness or effeminacy as can well be imagined."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Nature, by George P. Marsh
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND NATURE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 37957-h.htm or 37957-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/9/5/37957/
+
+Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/37957.txt b/37957.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d313fc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/37957.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,24784 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Nature, by George P. Marsh
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man and Nature
+       or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action
+
+Author: George P. Marsh
+
+Release Date: November 9, 2011 [EBook #37957]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND NATURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MAN AND NATURE;
+
+OR,
+
+PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
+
+
+AS MODIFIED BY HUMAN ACTION.
+
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE P. MARSH.
+
+
+"Not all the winds, and storms, and earthquakes, and seas, and seasons
+of the world, have done so much to revolutionize the earth as MAN, the
+power of an endless life, has done since the day he came forth upon it,
+and received dominion over it."--H. BUSHNELL, _Sermon on the Power of an
+Endless Life_.
+
+
+NEW YORK:
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., No. 654 BROADWAY.
+
+1867.
+
+
+
+
+ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
+
+CHARLES SCRIBNER,
+
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
+Southern District of New York.
+
+
+JOHN F. TROW & CO.
+
+PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER,
+
+46, 48, & 50 Greene St., New York.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The object of the present volume is: to indicate the character and,
+approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in the
+physical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of
+imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a
+large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic
+or the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance of
+the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of
+waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate the
+doctrine, that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher
+order than any of the other forms of animated life, which, like him, are
+nourished at the table of bounteous nature.
+
+In the rudest stages of life, man depends upon spontaneous animal and
+vegetable growth for food and clothing, and his consumption of such
+products consequently diminishes the numerical abundance of the species
+which serve his uses. At more advanced periods, he protects and
+propagates certain esculent vegetables and certain fowls and
+quadrupeds, and, at the same time, wars upon rival organisms which prey
+upon these objects of his care or obstruct the increase of their
+numbers. Hence the action of man upon the organic world tends to subvert
+the original balance of its species, and while it reduces the numbers of
+some of them, or even extirpates them altogether, it multiplies other
+forms of animal and vegetable life.
+
+The extension of agricultural and pastoral industry involves an
+enlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment upon the
+forests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surface
+otherwise adapted to his occupation. The felling of the woods has been
+attended with momentous consequences to the drainage of the soil, to the
+external configuration of its surface, and probably, also, to local
+climate; and the importance of human life as a transforming power is,
+perhaps, more clearly demonstrable in the influence man has thus exerted
+upon superficial geography than in any other result of his material
+effort.
+
+Lands won from the woods must be both drained and irrigated; river banks
+and maritime coasts must be secured by means of artificial bulwarks
+against inundation by inland and by ocean floods; and the needs of
+commerce require the improvement of natural, and the construction of
+artificial channels of navigation. Thus man is compelled to extend over
+the unstable waters the empire he had already founded upon the solid
+land.
+
+The upheaval of the bed of seas and the movements of water and of wind
+expose vast deposits of sand, which occupy space required for the
+convenience of man, and often, by the drifting of their particles,
+overwhelm the fields of human industry with invasions as disastrous as
+the incursions of the ocean. On the other hand, on many coasts, sand
+hills both protect the shores from erosion by the waves and currents,
+and shelter valuable grounds from blasting sea winds. Man, therefore,
+must sometimes resist, sometimes promote, the formation and growth of
+dunes, and subject the barren and flying sands to the same obedience to
+his will to which he has reduced other forms of terrestrial surface.
+
+Besides these old and comparatively familiar methods of material
+improvement, modern ambition aspires to yet grander achievements in the
+conquest of physical nature, and projects are meditated which quite
+eclipse the boldest enterprises hitherto undertaken for the modification
+of geographical surface.
+
+The natural character of the various fields where human industry has
+effected revolutions so important, and where the multiplying population
+and the impoverished resources of the globe demand new triumphs of mind
+over matter, suggests a corresponding division of the general subject,
+and I have conformed the distribution of the several topics to the
+chronological succession in which man must be supposed to have extended
+his sway over the different provinces of his material kingdom. I have,
+then, in the Introductory chapter, stated, in a comprehensive way, the
+general effects and the prospective consequences of human action upon
+the earth's surface and the life which peoples it. This chapter is
+followed by four others in which I have traced the history of man's
+industry as exerted upon Animal and Vegetable Life, upon the Woods,
+upon the Waters, and upon the Sands; and to these I have added a
+concluding chapter upon Probable and Possible Geographical Revolutions
+yet to be effected by the art of man.
+
+I have only to add what, indeed, sufficiently appears upon every page of
+the volume, that I address myself not to professed physicists, but to
+the general intelligence of educated, observing, and thinking men; and
+that my purpose is rather to make practical suggestions than to indulge
+in theoretical speculations properly suited to a different class from
+that to which those for whom I write belong.
+
+                                                      GEORGE P. MARSH.
+
+_December 1, 1863._
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST
+
+OF WORKS CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME.
+
+
+_Amersfoordt, J. P._ Het Haarlemmermeer, Oorsprong, Geschiedenis,
+Droogmaking. Haarlem, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Andresen, C. C._ Om Klitformationen og Klittens Behandling og
+Bestyrelse. Kjoebenhavn, 1861. 8vo.
+
+Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio. Pubblicati per cura del
+Ministero d'Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio. Fasc i-v. Torino,
+1862-'3. 8vo.
+
+_Arago, F._ Extracts from, in Becquerel, Des Climats.
+
+_Arriani_, Opera. Lipsiae, 1856. 2 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Asbjoernsen, P. Chr._ Om Skovene og om et ordnet Skovbrug i Norge.
+Christiania, 1855. 12mo.
+
+Aus der Natur. Die neuesten Entdeckungen auf dem Gebiete der
+Naturwissenschaften. Leipzig, various years. 20 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Ave-Lallemant, K. C. B._ Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom in
+der Oekonomie der Indier. Hamburg, 1861. 18mo.
+
+_Babinet._ Etudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Observation. Paris,
+1855-1863. 7 vols. 18mo.
+
+_Baer, von._ Kaspische Studien. St. Petersburg, 1855-1859. 8vo.
+
+_Barth, Heinrich._ Wanderungen durch die Kuestenlaender des Mittelmeeres.
+V. i. Berlin, 1849. 8vo.
+
+_Barth, J. B._ Om Skovene i deres Forhold til National[oe]conomien.
+Christiania, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Baude, J. J._ Les Cotes de la Manche, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15
+Janvier, 1859.
+
+_Baumgarten._ Notice sur les Rivieres de la Lombardie; in Annales des
+Ponts et Chaussees, 1847, 1er semestre, pp. 129-199.
+
+_Beckwith, Lieut._ Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. ii.
+
+_Becquerel._ Des Climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols boises
+et non-boises. Paris, 1853. 8vo.
+
+---- Elements de Physique Terrestre et de Meteorologie. Paris, 1847.
+8vo.
+
+_Belgrand._ De l'Influence des Forets sur l'ecoulement des Eaux
+Pluviales; in Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1854, 1er semestre, pp. 1,
+27.
+
+_Berg, Edmund von._ Das Verdraengen der Laubwaelder im Noerdlichen
+Deutschlande durch die Fichte und die Kiefer. Darmstadt, 1844. 8vo.
+
+_Bergsoee, A. F._ Greve Ch. Ditlev Frederik Reventlovs Virksomhed som
+Kongens Embedsmand og Statens Borger. Kjoebenhavn, 1837. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Berlepsch, H._ Die Alpen in Natur- und Lebensbildern. Leipzig, 1862.
+8vo.
+
+_Bianchi, Celestino._ Compendio di Geografia Fisica Speciale d'Italia.
+Appendice alla traduzione Italiana della Geog.-Fisica di Maria
+Somerville. Firenze, 1861. (2d vol. of translation.)
+
+_Bigelow, John._ Les Etats Unis d'Amerique en 1863. Paris, 1863. 8vo.
+
+_Blake, Wm. P._ Reports in Pacific Railroad Report, vols. ii and v.
+
+_Blanqui._ Memoire sur les Populations des Hautes Alpes; in Memoires de
+l'Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 1843.
+
+---- Voyage en Bulgarie. Paris, 1843. 12mo.
+
+---- Precis Elementaire d'Economie Politique, suivi du Resume de
+l'Histoire du Commerce et de l'Industrie. Paris, 1857. 12mo.
+
+_Boitel, Amedee._ Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres par le Pin Maritime.
+2d edition. Paris, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Bonnemere, Eugene._ Histoire des Paysans depuis la fin du Moyen Age
+jusqu'a nos jours. Paris, 1856. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Boettger, C._ Das Mittelmeer. Leipzig, 1859.
+
+_Boussingault, J. B._ Economie Rurale consideree dans ses Rapports avec
+la Chimie, la Physique, et la Meteorologie. 2d edition. Paris, 1851. 2
+vols. 8vo.
+
+_Bremontier, N. T._ Memoire sur les Dunes; in Annales des Ponts et
+Chaussees, 1833, 1er semestre, pp. 145, 223.
+
+_Brincken, J. von den._ Ansichten ueber die Bewaldung der Steppen des
+Europaeischen Russland. Braunschweig, 1854. 4to.
+
+_Buettner, J. G._ Zur Physikalischen Geographie; in Berghaus,
+Geographisches Jahrbuch, No. iv, 1852, pp. 9-19.
+
+_Caimi, Pietro._ Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi. Milano,
+1857. 8vo.
+
+_Cantegril, and others._ Extracts in Comptes Rendus a l'Academie des
+Sciences. Paris, 1861.
+
+_Castellani._ Dell' immediata influenza delle Selve sul corso delle
+acque. Torino, 1818, 1819. 2 vols. 4to.
+
+Census of the United States for 1860. Preliminary Report on, Washington,
+1862. 8vo.
+
+_Cerini, Giuseppe._ Dell' Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi. Milano,
+1844. 8vo.
+
+_Champion, Maurice._ Les Inondations en France depuis le VIme Siecle
+jusqu'a nos jours. Paris, 1858, 1862. Vols. i-iv, 8vo.
+
+_Chateauvieux, F. Lullin de._ Lettres sur l'Italie. Seconde edition,
+Geneve, 1834. 8vo.
+
+_Chevandier._ Extracts in Comptes Rendus a l'Academie des Sciences.
+Juillet-Decembre, 1844. Paris.
+
+_Clave, Jules._ Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere. Paris, 1862. 12mo.
+
+---- La Foret de Fontainebleau; Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Mai, 1863.
+
+_Cooper, J. G._ The Forests and Trees of Northern America; in Report of
+the Commissioner of Patents for the year 1860, pp. 416-445.
+
+_Cotta, Bernhard._ Deutschlands Boden. Leipzig, 1858. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+---- Vorwort zu Paramelle's Quellenkunde. See _Paramelle_.
+
+---- Die Alpen. Leipzig, 1851. 8vo.
+
+_Coultas, Harland._ What may be Learned from a Tree. New York, 1860.
+8vo.
+
+_Courier, Paul-Louis._ [OE]uvres Completes. Bruxelles, 1833. 8vo.
+
+_Dana, James D._ Manual of Geology. Philadelphia, 1863. 8vo.
+
+_Delamarre, L. G._ Historique de la Creation d'une Richesse Millionaire
+par la culture des Pins. Paris, 1827. 8vo.
+
+_D. Hericourt, A. F._ Les Inondations et le livre de M. Valles; Annales
+Forestieres, December, 1857, pp. 310, 321. Paris.
+
+_Diggelen, B. P. G. van._ Groote Werken in Nederland. Zwolle, 1855. 8vo.
+
+_Dumas, M. J._ La Science des Fontaines. 2me edition, Paris, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Dumont, Aristide._ Des Travaux Publics dans leurs Rapports avec
+l'Agriculture. Paris, 1847. 8vo.
+
+_Dwight, Timothy._ Travels in New England and New York. New Haven, 1821.
+4 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Emerson, George B._ A Report on the Trees and Shrubs growing naturally
+in Massachusetts. Boston, 1850. 8vo.
+
+_Emory, Wm. H., Col._ Report of Commissioners of the United States and
+Mexican Boundary Survey, vol. i, 1857.
+
+_Escourrou-Miliago, A._ L'Italie a propos de l'Exposition Universelle de
+Paris. Paris, 1856. 8vo.
+
+_Evelyn, John._ Silva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees. With Notes by A.
+Hunter. York, 1786. 2 vols. 4to.
+
+---- Terra, a Philosophical Discourse of Earth. York, 1786. 4to. in vol.
+ii of Silva.
+
+_Feraud-Giraud, L. J. D._ Police des Bois, Defrichements et Reboisements
+Commentaire pratique sur les lois promulguees en 1859 et 1860. Paris,
+1861. 8vo.
+
+_Ferrara, Francesco._ Descrizione dell' Etna. Palermo, 1818. 8vo.
+
+_Feuillide, C. de._ L'Algerie Francaise. Paris, 1856. 8vo.
+
+_Figuier, Louis._ L'Annee Scientifique et Industrielle. Paris, 1862-'3.
+12mo.
+
+Finnboga Saga hins rama. Kaupmannahoefn, 1812. 4to.
+
+_Foissac, P._ Meteorologie mit Ruecksicht auf die Lehre vom Kosmos,
+Deutsch von A. H. Emsmann. Leipzig, 1859. 8vo.
+
+_Forchhammer, G._ Geognostische Studien am Meeres-Ufer; in Leonhard und
+Bronn's Neues Jahrbuch fuer Mineralogie, Geognosie, Geologie, etc.
+Jahrgang, 1841, pp. 1-38.
+
+_Fossombroni, Vittorio._ Memorie Idraulico-Storiche sopra la
+Val-di-Chiana. Montepulciano, 3za edizione, 1835. 8vo.
+
+_Fraas, C._ Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit. Landshut, 1847. 8vo.
+
+_Frisi, Paolo._ Del Modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti. Lucca, 1762.
+4to.
+
+_Fuller, Thomas._ The History of the Worthies of England. London, 1662.
+Folio.
+
+_Gilliss, J. M., Capt._ United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to
+the Southern Hemisphere. Washington, 1855. 2 vols. 4to.
+
+_Giorgini._ Paper by; in Salvagnoli-Marchetti, Rapporto sul
+Bonificamento delle Maremme, App. v.
+
+_Girard et Parent-Duchatelet._ Rapport sur les Puits fores dits
+Artesiens; Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1833, 2me semestre, 313-344.
+
+_Graham, J. D., Lieut.-Col._ A Lunar Tidal Wave in the North American
+Lakes demonstrated. Cambridge, 1861. 8vo. _pamphlet_. Also in vol. xiv,
+Proc. Am. Ass. for Adv. of Science for 1860.
+
+_Hakluyt, Richard._ The Principal Navigations, Voyages, &c., of the
+English Nation. London, 1598-'9. 3 vols. folio.
+
+_Harrison, W._ An Historicall Description of the Iland of Britaine; in
+Holinshed's Chronicles. Reprint of 1807, vol. i.
+
+_Hartwig, G._ Das Leben des Meeres. Frankfurt, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Haxthausen, August von._ Transkaukasia. Leipzig, 1856. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Henry, Prof. Joseph._ Paper on Meteorology in its connection with
+Agriculture; in United States Patent Office Report for 1857, pp.
+419-550.
+
+_Herschel, Sir J. F. W._ Physical Geography. Edinburgh, 1861. 12mo.
+
+_Heyer, Gustav._ Das Verhalten der Waldbaeume gegen Licht und Schatten.
+Erlangen, 1852. 8vo.
+
+_Hohenstein, Adolph._ Der Wald sammt dessen wichtigem Einfluss auf das
+Klima, &c. Wien, 1860. 8vo.
+
+_Humboldt, Alexander von._ Ansichten der Natur. Dritte Ausgabe,
+Stuttgart und Tuebingen, 1849. 2 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Hummel, Karl._ Physische Geographie. Graz, 1855. 8vo.
+
+_Hunter, A._ Notes to Evelyn, Silva, and Terra. York, 1786. See
+_Evelyn_.
+
+_Jacini, Stefano._ La Proprieta Fondiaria e le Popolazioni agricole in
+Lombardia. Milano e Verona, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Joinville._ Histoire de Saint-Louis. Nouvelle Collection des Memoires
+pour servir a l'Histoire de France, par Michaud et Poujoulat. Tome i.
+Paris, 1836. 8vo.
+
+_Josselyn, John._ New England Rarities. London, 1672. 12mo.
+
+_Knorr, E. A._ Studien ueber die Buchen-Wirthschaft. Nordhausen, 1863.
+8vo.
+
+_Kohl, J. G._ Alpenreisen. Dresden und Leipzig, 1849. 3 vols. 8vo.
+
+---- Die Marschen und Inseln der Herzogthuemer Schleswig und Holstein.
+Dresden und Leipzig, 1846. 3 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Kramer, Gustav._ Der Fuciner-See. Berlin, 1839. 4to.
+
+_Krause, G. C. A._ Der Duenenbau auf den Ostsee-Kuesten West-Preussens.
+1850. 8vo.
+
+_Kremer, Alfred von._ AEgypten, Forschungen ueber Land und Volk. Leipzig,
+1863. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Kriegk, G. L._ Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkunde. Leipzig, 1840. 8vo.
+
+_Ladoucette, J. C. F._ Histoire, Topographie, Antiquites, Usages,
+Dialectes des Hautes Alpes. Seconde edition, 1834. 1 vol. 8vo. and
+Atlas.
+
+_Lastadius, Lars Levi._ Om Moejligheten och Foerdelen af allmaenna
+Uppodlingar i Lappmarken. Stockholm, 1824. 12mo.
+
+_Laestadius, Petrus._ Journal foer foersta aret af hans Tjenstgoering sasom
+Missionaire i Lappmarken. Stockholm, 1831. 8vo.
+
+---- Fortsaettning af Journalen oefver Missions-Resor i Lappmarken.
+Stockholm, 1833. 8vo.
+
+_Lampridius._ Vita Elagabali in Script. Hist., August.
+
+_Landgrebe, Georg._ Naturgeschichte der Vulcane. Gotha, 1855. 2 vols.
+8vo.
+
+_Laurent, Ch._ Memoires sur le Sahara Oriental au point de vue des Puits
+Artesiens. Paris, 1859. 8vo. _pamphlet_. Also, in Mem de la Soc. des
+Ingenieurs Civils, and the Bulletin de la Soc. Geologique de France.
+
+_Laval._ Memoire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne; in Annales des
+Ponts et Chaussees, 1847, 2me semestre, pp. 218-268.
+
+_Lavergne, M. L. de._ Economie Rurale de la France, depuis 1789. 2me
+edition, Paris, 1861. 12mo.
+
+Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia. Parte 1er, vol. 1er. Torino, 1845. 8vo.
+
+_Lefort._ Notice sur les travaux de Fixation des Dunes; in Annales des
+Ponts et Chaussees, 1831, 2me semestre, pp. 320-332.
+
+_Lenormant._ Note relative a l'Execution d'un Puits Artesien en
+Egypte sous la XVIII^{me} Dynastie; Academie des Inscriptions et
+Belles-Lettres, 12 Novembre, 1852.
+
+Liber Albus: The White Book of the City of London. London, 1861. 4to.
+
+_Loftus, W. K._ Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana. New York,
+1857. 8vo.
+
+_Lombardini._ Cenni Idrografi sulla Lombardia; Intorno al Sistema
+Idraulico del Po; epitomized by Baumgarten in Annales des Ponts et
+Chaussees, 1847, 1er semestre, pp. 129, 199; and in Dumont, Des Travaux
+Publics, pp. 268, 335.
+
+---- Sui progetti intesi ad estendere l'irrigazione della Pianura del
+Po. Politecnico. Gennajo, 1863, pp. 5-50.
+
+_Lorentz._ Cours Elementaire de Culture des Bois, complete et publie par
+A. Parade, 4me edition. Paris et Nancy, 1860. 8vo.
+
+_Lyell, Sir Charles._ The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man.
+London, 1863. 8vo. Principles of Geology. New York, 1862. 8vo.
+
+_Mardigny, M. de._ Memoire sur les Inondations des Rivieres de
+l'Ardeche. Paris, 1860. 8vo.
+
+_Marschand, A._ Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge. Bern, 1849. 12mo.
+_pamphlet_.
+
+_Martineau._ Endeavors after the Christian Life. Boston, 1858.
+
+_Martins._ Revue des Deux Mondes, Avril, 1863.
+
+_Maury, M. F._ The Physical Geography of the Sea. Tenth edition. London,
+1861. 8vo.
+
+_Medlicott, Dr._ Observations of, quoted from London Athenaeum, 1863.
+
+_Meguscher, Francesco._ Memorie sulla migliore maniera per rimettere i
+Boschi della Lombardia, etc. Milano, 1859. 8vo.
+
+_Mejdell, Th._ Om Foranstaltninger til Behandling af Norges Skove.
+Christiania, 1858. 8vo.
+
+_Mella._ Delle Inondazioni del Mella nella notto del 14 al 15 Agosto,
+1850. Brescia, 1851. 8vo.
+
+_Meyer, J._ Physik der Schweiz. Leipzig, 1854. 8vo.
+
+_Michelet, J._ L'Insecte, 4me edition. Paris, 1860. 12mo.
+
+---- L'Oiseau, 7me edition. Paris, 1861. 12mo.
+
+_Monestier-Savignat, A._ Etude sur les Phenomenes, l'Amenagement et la
+Legislation des Eaux au point de vue des Inondations. Paris, 1858. 8vo.
+
+_Montluisant._ Note sur les Dessechements, les Endiguements et les
+Irrigations; in Annales des Ponts et Chaussees, 1833, 2me semestre, pp.
+281-294.
+
+_Morozzi, Ferdinando._ Dello Stato Antico e Moderno del Fiume Arno.
+Firenze, 1762. 4to.
+
+_Mueller, K._ Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt. Leipzig, 1857. 2 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Nangis, Guillaume de._ Extracts from, in Nouvelle Collection des
+Memoires pour servir par Michaud et Poujoulat. Vol. i. Paris, 1836.
+
+_Nanquette, Henri._ Cours d'Amenagement des Forets. Paris et Nancy,
+1860. 8vo.
+
+_Newberry, Dr._ Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. vi.
+
+Niebelunge-Lied, Der. Abdruck der Handschrift von Joseph von Lassberg.
+Leipzig, 1840. Folio.
+
+_Niel._ L'Agriculture des Etats Sardes. Turin, 1857. 8vo.
+
+Pacific Railroad Report. Reports of Explorations and Surveys for a
+Railroad Route to the Pacific. Washington, various years. 12 vols. 4to.
+
+_Palissy, Bernard._ [OE]uvres Completes, avec des Notes, etc., par
+Paul-Antoine Cap. Paris, 1844. 12mo.
+
+_Parade, A._ See _Lorentz_.
+
+_Paramelle, Abbe._ Quellenkunde, Lehre von der Bildung und Auffindung
+der Quellen; mit einem Vorwort von B. Cotta. Leipzig, 1856. 12mo.
+
+_Parish, Dr._ Life of Dr. Eleazer Wheelock. 8vo.
+
+_Parry, C. C._ Report in United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, vol.
+i.
+
+_Parthey, G._ Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante. Berlin, 1834.
+2 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Piper, R. U._ The Trees of America. Boston, 1858, Nos. i-iv. 4to.
+
+_Plinii, Historia Naturalis_, ed. Hardouin. Paris, 1723. 3 vols. folio.
+
+_Ponz, Antonio._ Viage de Espana. Madrid, 1788, etc. 18 vols. 12mo.
+
+_Quatrefages, A. de._ Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste. Paris, 1854. 2 vols.
+12mo.
+
+_Reclus, Elisee._ Le Littoral de la France; Revue des Deux Mondes, 15
+Decembre, 1862.
+
+_Rentzsch, Hermann._ Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der
+Volkswirthschaft. Leipzig, 1862. 8vo.
+
+_Ribbe, Charles de_. La Provence au point de vue des Bois, des Torrents
+et des Inondations. Paris, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Ridolfi, Cosimo._ Lezioni Orali. Firenze, 1862. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Ritter, Carl._ Einleitung zur allgemeinen vergleichenden Geographie.
+Berlin, 1852. 8vo.
+
+---- Die Erdkunde im Verhaeltniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des
+Menschen. Berlin, various years. 19 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Rosa, G._ Le Condizioni de' boschi, de' fiumi e de' torrenti nella
+provincia di Bergamo. Politecnico, Dicembre, 1861, pp. 606, 621.
+
+---- Studii sui Boschi. Politecnico, Maggio, 1862, pp. 232, 238.
+
+_Rossmaessler, C. A._ Der Wald. Leipzig und Heidelberg, 1863. 8vo.
+
+_Roth, J._ Der Vesuv und die Umgebung von Neapel. Berlin, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Rozet, M._ Moyens de forcer les Torrents des Montagnes de rendre une
+partie du sol qu'ils ravagent. Paris, 1856. 8vo. _pamphlet_.
+
+_Salvagnoli-Marchetti, Antonio._ Memorie Economico-Statistiche sulle
+Maremme Toscane. Firenze, 1846. 8vo.
+
+---- Raccolta di Documenti sul Bonificamento delle Maremmo Toscane.
+Firenze, 1861. 8vo.
+
+---- Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremmo Toscane. Firenze, 1859.
+8vo.
+
+---- Rapporto sulle Operazioni Idrauliche ed Economiche eseguite nel
+1859-'60 nelle Maremmo Toscane. Firenze, 1860. 8vo.
+
+_Sandys, George._ A Relation of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610. London,
+1627. Folio.
+
+_Schacht, H._ Les Arbres, Etudes sur leur Structure et leur Vegetation,
+traduit par E. Morren. Bruxelles et Leipzig, 1862. 8vo.
+
+_Schleiden, M. J._ Die Landenge von Sues. Leipzig, 1858. 8vo.
+
+---- Die Pflanze und ihr Leben. Leipzig, 1848. 8vo.
+
+_Schubert, W. von._ Resa genom Sverige, Norrige, Lappland, etc.
+Stockholm, 1823. 3 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Seneca, L. A._ Opera Omnia quae supersunt, ex rec. Ruhkopf. Aug.
+Taurinorum, 1831. 6 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Simonde, J. E. L._ Tableau de l'Agriculture Toscane. Geneve, 1801. 8vo.
+
+_Smith, Dr. William._ A Dictionary of the Bible. London, 1860. 3 vols.
+8vo.
+
+---- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. London, 1854, 1857. 2
+vols. 8vo.
+
+_Smith, John._ Historie of Virginia. London, 1624. Folio.
+
+_Somerville, Mary._ Physical Geography. Fifth edition. London, 1862.
+12mo.
+
+_Springer, John S._ Forest-Life and Forest-Trees. New York, 1851. 12mo.
+
+_Stanley, Dr._ Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. London,
+1863. 8vo.
+
+_Staring, W. H._ De Bodem van Nederland. Haarlem, 1856. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+---- Voormaals en Thans. Haarlem, 1858. 8vo.
+
+_Stevens, Gov._ Report in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. xii.
+
+_Strain, Lieut. I. C._ Darien Exploring Expedition, by J. T. Headley, in
+Harper's Magazine. New York, March, April, and May, 1855.
+
+_Streffleur, V._ Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildbaeche. Sitz.
+Ber. der M. N. W. Classe der Kaiserl. Akad. der Wis. February, 1852,
+viii, p. 248.
+
+_Stroem, Isr._ Om Skogarnas Vard och Skoetsel. Upsala, 1853. _Pamphlet._
+
+_Surell, Alexandre._ Etude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes. Paris,
+1844. 4to.
+
+_Tartini, Ferdinando._ Memorie sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane.
+Firenze, 1838. Folio.
+
+_Thomas and Baldwin._ Gazetteer. Philadelphia, 1855. 1 vol. 8vo.
+
+_Thompson, Z._ History of Vermont, Natural, Civil, and Statistical.
+Burlington, 1842. 8vo.
+
+---- Appendix to History of Vermont. Burlington, 1853. 8vo.
+
+_Titcomb, Timothy._ Lessons in Life. New York, 1861. 12mo.
+
+_Treadwell, Dr._ Observations of, quoted from Report of Commissioner of
+Patents.
+
+_Troy, Paul._ Etude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes. Paris et Toulouse,
+1861. 8vo. _pamphlet_.
+
+_Tschudi, Friedrich von._ Ueber die Landwirthschaftliche Bedeutung der
+Voegel. St. Gallen, 1854. 12mo.
+
+_Tschudi, J. J. von._ Travels in Peru. New York, 1848. 8vo.
+
+_Valles, M. F._ Etudes sur les Inondations, leurs causes et leurs
+effets. Paris, 1857. 8vo.
+
+_Valvasor, Johann Weichard._ Die Ehre des Herzogthums Crain. Laybach,
+1689. 4 vols. folio.
+
+_Van Lennep._ Extracts from Journal of, in the Missionary Herald.
+
+_Vaupell, Chr._ Boegens Indvandring i de Danske Skove. Kjoebenhavn, 1857.
+8vo.
+
+---- De Nordsjaellandske Skovmoser. Kjoebenhavn, 1851. 4to. _pamphlet_.
+
+_Venema, G. A._ Over het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons
+Land. Groningen, 1854. 8vo.
+
+_Villa, Antonio Giovanni Batt._ Necessita dei Boschi nella Lombardia.
+Milano, 1850. 4to.
+
+_Viollet, J. B._ Theorie des Puits Artesiens. Paris, 1840. 8vo.
+
+_Walterhausen, W. Sartorius von._ Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau.
+Goettingen, 1863.
+
+_Webster, Noah._ A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and
+Moral Subjects. New York, 1843. 8vo.
+
+_Wessely, Joseph._ Die Oesterreichischen Alpenlaender und ihre Forste.
+Wien, 1853. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Wetzstein, J. G._ Reisebericht ueber Hauran und die Trachonen. Berlin,
+1860. 8vo.
+
+_Wild, Albert._ Die Niederlande. Leipzig, 1862. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Wilhelm, Gustav._ Der Boden und das Wasser. Wien, 1861. 8vo.
+
+_Williams, Dr._ History of Vermont. 2 vols. 8vo.
+
+_Wittwer, W. C._ Die Physikalische Geographie. Leipzig, 1855. 8vo.
+
+_Young, Arthur._ Voyages en France, pendant les annees 1787, 1788, 1789,
+precedee d'une introduction par Lavergne. Paris, 1860. 2 vols. 12mo.
+
+---- Voyages en Italie et en Espagne, pendant les annees 1787, 1789.
+Paris, 1860. 1 vol. 12mo.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+  Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire--Physical
+  Decay of that Territory and of other parts of the Old World--
+  Causes of the Decay--New School of Geographers--Reaction of
+  Man upon Nature--Observation of Nature--Cosmical and Geological
+  Influences--Geographical Influence of Man--Uncertainty of our
+  Meteorological Knowledge--Mechanical Effects produced by Man on
+  the surface of the Earth--Importance and Possibility of Physical
+  Restoration--Stability of Nature--Restoration of Disturbed
+  Harmonies--Destructiveness of Man--Physical Improvement--Human
+  and Brute Action Compared--Forms and Formations most liable to
+  Physical Degradation--Physical Decay of New Countries--Corrupt
+  Influence of Private Corporations, _Note_,                         1
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND OF ANIMAL
+SPECIES.
+
+  Modern Geography embraces Organic Life--Transfer of Vegetable
+  Life--Foreign Plants grown in the United States--American
+  Plants grown in Europe--Modes of Introduction of Foreign
+  Plants--Vegetables, how affected by transfer to Foreign
+  Soils--Extirpation of Vegetables--Origin of Domestic Plants--
+  Organic Life as a Geological and Geographical Agency--Origin
+  and Transfer of Domestic Animals--Extirpation of Animals--
+  Numbers of Birds in the United States--Birds as Sowers and
+  Consumers of Seeds, and as Destroyers of Insects--Diminution
+  and Extirpation of Birds--Introduction of Birds--Utility of
+  Insects and Worms--Introduction of Insects--Destruction of
+  Insects--Reptiles--Destruction of Fish--Introduction and
+  Breeding of Fish--Extirpation of Aquatic Animals--Minute
+  Organisms,                                                        57
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE WOODS.
+
+  The Habitable Earth originally Wooded--The Forest does not
+  furnish Food for Man--First Removal of the Woods--Effects
+  of Fire on Forest Soil--Effects of the Destruction of the
+  Forest--Electrical Influence of Trees--Chemical Influence
+  of the Forest.
+
+  Influence of the Forest, considered as Inorganic Matter, on
+  Temperature: _a_, Absorbing and Emitting Surface; _b_, Trees
+  as Conductors of Heat; _c_, Trees in Summer and in Winter;
+  _d_, Dead Products of Tree; _e_, Trees as a Shelter to Grounds
+  to the leeward of them; _f_, Trees as a Protection against
+  Malaria--The Forest, as Inorganic Matter, tends to mitigate
+  extremes.
+
+  Trees as Organisms: Specific Temperature--Total Influence of
+  the Forest on Temperature.
+
+  Influence of Forests on the Humidity of the Air and the Earth:
+  _a_, as Inorganic Matter; _b_, as Organic--Wood Mosses and
+  Fungi--Flow of Sap--Absorption and Exhalation of Moisture by
+  Trees--Balance of Conflicting Influences--Influence of the
+  Forest on Temperature and Precipitation--Influence of the
+  Forest on the Humidity of the Soil--Its Influence on the 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 of
+  the Forest--American Forest Trees--Special Causes of the
+  Destruction of European Woods--Royal Forests and Game Laws--
+  Small Forest Plants, Vitality of Seeds--Utility of the
+  Forest--The Forests of Europe--Forests of the United States
+  and Canada--The Economy of the Forest--European and American
+  Trees Compared--Sylviculture--Instability of American Life,      128
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WATERS.
+
+  Land artificially won from the Waters: _a_, Exclusion of the Sea
+  by Diking; _b_, Draining of Lakes and Marshes; _c_, Geographical
+  Influence of such Operations--Lowering of Lakes--Mountain Lakes--
+  Climatic Effects of Draining Lakes and Marshes.
+
+  Geographical and Climatic Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs,
+  and Canals--Surface and Underdraining, and their Climatic and
+  Geographical Effects--Irrigation and its Climatic and Geographical
+  Effects.
+
+  Inundations and Torrents: _a_, River Embankments; _b_, Floods of
+  the Ardeche; _c_, Crushing Force of Torrents; _d_, Inundations of
+  1856 in France; _e_, Remedies against Inundations--Consequences
+  if the Nile had been confined by Lateral Dikes.
+
+  Improvements in the Val di Chiana--Improvements in the Tuscan
+  Maremme--Obstruction of River Mouths--Subterranean Waters--
+  Artesian Wells--Artificial Springs--Economizing Precipitation,   330
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SANDS.
+
+  Origin of Sand--Sand now carried down to the Sea--The Sands of
+  Egypt and the adjacent Desert--The Suez Canal--The Sands of
+  Egypt--Coast Dunes and Sand Plains--Sand Banks--Dunes on Coast of
+  America--Dunes of Western Europe--Formation of Dunes--Character of
+  Dune Sand--Interior Structure of Dunes--Form of Dunes--Geological
+  Importance of Dunes--Inland Dunes--Age, Character, and Permanence
+  of Dunes--Use of Dunes as Barrier against the Sea--Encroachments
+  of the Sea--The Luemfjord--Encroachments of the Sea--Drifting
+  of Dune Sands--Dunes of Gascony--Dunes of Denmark--Dunes of
+  Prussia--Artificial Formation of Dunes--Trees suitable for Dune
+  Plantations--Extent of Dunes in Europe--Dune Vineyards of Cape
+  Breton--Removal of Dunes--Inland Sand Plains--The Landes of
+  Gascony--The Belgian Campine--Sands and Steppes of Eastern
+  Europe--Advantages of Reclaiming Dunes--Government Works of
+  Improvement,                                                     451
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PROJECTED OR POSSIBLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES BY MAN.
+
+  Cutting of Marine Isthmuses--The Suez Canal--Canal across Isthmus
+  of Darien--Canals to the Dead Sea--Maritime Canals in Greece--
+  Canal of Saros--Cape Cod Canal--Diversion of the Nile--Changes
+  in the Caspian--Improvements in North American Hydrography--
+  Diversion of the Rhine--Draining of the Zuiderzee--Waters of
+  the Karst--Subterranean Waters of Greece--Soil below Rock--
+  Covering Rocks with Earth--Wadies of Arabia Petraea--Incidental
+  Effects of Human Action--Resistance to great Natural Forces--
+  Effects of Mining--Espy's Theories--River Sediment--Nothing
+  small in Nature,                                                 517
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF THE TERRITORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE--PHYSICAL
+DECAY OF THAT TERRITORY AND OF OTHER PARTS OF THE OLD WORLD--CAUSES
+OF THE DECAY--NEW SCHOOL OF GEOGRAPHERS--REACTION OF MAN UPON NATURE--
+OBSERVATION OF NATURE--COSMICAL AND GEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES--GEOGRAPHICAL
+INFLUENCE OF MAN--UNCERTAINTY OF OUR METEOROLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE--
+MECHANICAL EFFECTS PRODUCED BY MAN ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH--
+IMPORTANCE AND POSSIBILITY OF PHYSICAL RESTORATION--STABILITY OF
+NATURE--RESTORATION OF DISTURBED HARMONIES--DESTRUCTIVENESS OF MAN--
+PHYSICAL IMPROVEMENT--HUMAN AND BRUTE ACTION COMPARED--FORMS AND
+FORMATIONS MOST LIABLE TO PHYSICAL DEGRADATION--PHYSICAL DECAY OF NEW
+COUNTRIES--CORRUPT INFLUENCE OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS, _note_.
+
+
+_Natural Advantages of the Territory of the Roman Empire._
+
+The Roman Empire, at the period of its greatest expansion, comprised the
+regions of the earth most distinguished by a happy combination of
+physical advantages. The provinces bordering on the principal and the
+secondary basins of the Mediterranean enjoyed a healthfulness and an
+equability of climate, a fertility of soil, a variety of vegetable and
+mineral products, and natural facilities for the transportation and
+distribution of exchangeable commodities, which have not been possessed
+in an equal degree by any territory of like extent in the Old World or
+the New. The abundance of the land and of the waters adequately supplied
+every material want, ministered liberally to every sensuous enjoyment.
+Gold and silver, indeed, were not found in the profusion which has
+proved so baneful to the industry of lands richer in veins of the
+precious metals; but mines and river beds yielded them in the spare
+measure most favorable to stability of value in the medium of exchange,
+and, consequently, to the regularity of commercial transactions. The
+ornaments of the barbaric pride of the East, the pearl, the ruby, the
+sapphire, and the diamond--though not unknown to the luxury of a people
+whose conquests and whose wealth commanded whatever the habitable world
+could contribute to augment the material splendor of their social
+life--were scarcely native to the territory of the empire; but the
+comparative rarity of these gems in Europe, at somewhat earlier periods,
+was, perhaps, the very circumstance that led the cunning artists of
+classic antiquity to enrich softer stones with engravings, which invest
+the common onyx and carnelian with a worth surpassing, in cultivated
+eyes, the lustre of the most brilliant oriental jewels.
+
+Of these manifold blessings the temperature of the air, the distribution
+of the rains, the relative disposition of land and water, the plenty of
+the sea, the composition of the soil, and the raw material of some of
+the arts, were wholly gratuitous gifts. Yet the spontaneous nature of
+Europe, of Western Asia, of Libya, neither fed nor clothed the civilized
+inhabitants of those provinces. Every loaf was eaten in the sweat of the
+brow. All must be earned by toil. But toil was nowhere else rewarded by
+so generous wages; for nowhere would a given amount of intelligent labor
+produce so abundant, and, at the same time, so varied returns of the
+good things of material existence. The luxuriant harvests of cereals
+that waved on every field from the shores of the Rhine to the banks of
+the Nile, the vines that festooned the hillsides of Syria, of Italy, and
+of Greece, the olives of Spain, the fruits of the gardens of the
+Hesperides, the domestic quadrupeds and fowls known in ancient rural
+husbandry--all these were original products of foreign climes,
+naturalized in new homes, and gradually ennobled by the art of man,
+while centuries of persevering labor were expelling the wild vegetation,
+and fitting the earth for the production of more generous growths.
+
+Only for the sense of landscape beauty did unaided nature make
+provision. Indeed, the very commonness of this source of refined
+enjoyment seems to have deprived it of half its value; and it was only
+in the infancy of lands where all the earth was fair, that Greek and
+Roman humanity had sympathy enough with the inanimate world to be alive
+to the charms of rural and of mountain scenery. In later generations,
+when the glories of the landscape had been heightened by plantation, and
+decorative architecture, and other forms of picturesque improvement, the
+poets of Greece and Rome were blinded by excess of light, and became, at
+last, almost insensible to beauties that now, even in their degraded
+state, enchant every eye, except, too often, those which a lifelong
+familiarity has dulled to their attractions.
+
+
+_Physical Decay of the Territory of the Roman Empire, and of other parts
+of the Old World._
+
+If we compare the present physical condition of the countries of which I
+am speaking, with the descriptions that ancient historians and
+geographers have given of their fertility and general capability of
+ministering to human uses, we shall find that more than one half of
+their whole extent--including the provinces most celebrated for the
+profusion and variety of their spontaneous and their cultivated
+products, and for the wealth and social advancement of their
+inhabitants--is either deserted by civilized man and surrendered to
+hopeless desolation, or at least greatly reduced in both productiveness
+and population. Vast forests have disappeared from mountain spurs and
+ridges; the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the trees by the decay
+of leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the alpine pastures which
+skirted and indented the woods, and the mould of the upland fields, are
+washed away; meadows, once fertilized by irrigation, are waste and
+unproductive, because the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the
+ancient canals are broken, or the springs that fed them dried up; rivers
+famous in history and song have shrunk to humble brooklets; the willows
+that ornamented and protected the banks of the lesser watercourses are
+gone, and the rivulets have ceased to exist as perennial currents,
+because the little water that finds its way into their old channels is
+evaporated by the droughts of summer, or absorbed by the parched earth,
+before it reaches the lowlands; the beds of the brooks have widened into
+broad expanses of pebbles and gravel, over which, though in the hot
+season passed dryshod, in winter sealike torrents thunder; the entrances
+of navigable streams are obstructed by sandbars, and harbors, once marts
+of an extensive commerce, are shoaled by the deposits of the rivers at
+whose mouths they lie; the elevation of the beds of estuaries, and the
+consequently diminished velocity of the streams which flow into them,
+have converted thousands of leagues of shallow sea and fertile lowland
+into unproductive and miasmatic morasses.
+
+Besides the direct testimony of history to the ancient fertility of the
+regions to which I refer--Northern Africa, the greater Arabian
+peninsula, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia and many other provinces of Asia
+Minor, Greece, Sicily, and parts of even Italy and Spain--the multitude
+and extent of yet remaining architectural ruins, and of decayed works of
+internal improvement, show that at former epochs a dense population
+inhabited those now lonely districts. Such a population could have been
+sustained only by a productiveness of soil of which we at present
+discover but slender traces; and the abundance derived from that
+fertility serves to explain how large armies, like those of the ancient
+Persians, and of the Crusaders and the Tartars in later ages, could,
+without an organized commissariat, secure adequate supplies in long
+marches through territories which, in our times, would scarcely afford
+forage for a single regiment.
+
+It appears, then, that the fairest and fruitfulest provinces of the
+Roman Empire, precisely that portion of terrestrial surface, in short,
+which, about the commencement of the Christian era, was endowed with the
+greatest superiority of soil, climate, and position, which had been
+carried to the highest pitch of physical improvement, and which thus
+combined the natural and artificial conditions best fitting it for the
+habitation and enjoyment of a dense and highly refined and cultivated
+population, is now completely exhausted of its fertility, or so
+diminished in productiveness, as, with the exception of a few favored
+oases that have escaped the general ruin, to be no longer capable of
+affording sustenance to civilized man. If to this realm of desolation we
+add the now wasted and solitary soils of Persia and the remoter East,
+that once fed their millions with milk and honey, we shall see that a
+territory larger than all Europe, the abundance of which sustained in
+bygone centuries a population scarcely inferior to that of the whole
+Christian world at the present day, has been entirely withdrawn from
+human use, or, at best, is thinly inhabited by tribes too few in
+numbers, too poor in superfluous products, and too little advanced in
+culture and the social arts, to contribute anything to the general moral
+or material interests of the great commonwealth of man.
+
+
+_Causes of this Decay._
+
+The decay of these once flourishing countries is partly due, no doubt,
+to that class of geological causes, whose action we can neither resist
+nor guide, and partly also to the direct violence of hostile human
+force; but it is, in a far greater proportion, either the result of
+man's ignorant disregard of the laws of nature, or an incidental
+consequence of war, and of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny and misrule.
+Next to ignorance of these laws, the primitive source, the _causa
+causarum_, of the acts and neglects which have blasted with sterility
+and physical decrepitude the noblest half of the empire of the Caesars,
+is, first, the brutal and exhausting despotism which Rome herself
+exercised over her conquered kingdoms, and even over her Italian
+territory; then, the host of temporal and spiritual tyrannies which she
+left as her dying curse to all her wide dominion, and which, in some
+form of violence or of fraud, still brood over almost every soil subdued
+by the Roman legions.[1] Man cannot struggle at once against crushing
+oppression and the destructive forces of inorganic nature. When both are
+combined against him, he succumbs after a shorter or a longer struggle,
+and the fields he has won from the primeval wood relapse into their
+original state of wild and luxuriant, but unprofitable forest growth,
+or fall into that of a dry and barren wilderness.
+
+Rome imposed on the products of agricultural labor in the rural
+districts taxes which the sale of the entire harvest would scarcely
+discharge; she drained them of their population by military
+conscription; she impoverished the peasantry by forced and unpaid labor
+on public works; she hampered industry and internal commerce by absurd
+restrictions and unwise regulations. Hence, large tracts of land were
+left uncultivated, or altogether deserted, and exposed to all the
+destructive forces which act with such energy on the surface of the
+earth when it is deprived of those protections by which nature
+originally guarded it, and for which, in well-ordered husbandry, human
+ingenuity has contrived more or less efficient substitutes.[2] Similar
+abuses have tended to perpetuate and extend these evils in later ages,
+and it is but recently that, even in the most populous parts of Europe,
+public attention has been half awakened to the necessity of restoring
+the disturbed harmonies of nature, whose well-balanced influences are so
+propitious to all her organic offspring, of repaying to our great mother
+the debt which the prodigality and the thriftlessness of former
+generations have imposed upon their successors--thus fulfilling the
+command of religion and of practical wisdom, to use this world as not
+abusing it.
+
+
+_New School of Geographers._
+
+The labors of Humboldt, of Ritter, of Guyot and their followers, have
+given to the science of geography a more philosophical, and, at the same
+time, a more imaginative character than it had received from the hands
+of their predecessors. Perhaps the most interesting field of
+speculation, thrown open by the new school to the cultivators of this
+attractive study, is the inquiry: how far external physical conditions,
+and especially the configuration of the earth's surface, and the
+distribution, outline, and relative position of land and water, have
+influenced the social life and social progress of man.
+
+
+_Reaction of Man on Nature._
+
+But, as we have seen, man has reacted upon organized and inorganic
+nature, and thereby modified, if not determined, the material structure
+of his earthly home. The measure of that reaction manifestly constitutes
+a very important element in the appreciation of the relations between
+mind and matter, as well as in the discussion of many purely physical
+problems. But though the subject has been incidentally touched upon by
+many geographers, and treated with much fulness of detail in regard to
+certain limited fields of human effort, and to certain specific effects
+of human action, it has not, as a whole, so far as I know, been made
+matter of special observation, or of historical research by any
+scientific inquirer.[3] Indeed, until the influence of physical
+geography upon human life was recognized as a distinct branch of
+philosophical investigation, there was no motive for the pursuit of such
+speculations; and it was desirable to inquire whether we have or can
+become the architects of our own abiding place, only when it was known
+how the mode of our physical, moral, and intellectual being is affected
+by the character of the home which Providence has appointed, and we have
+fashioned, for our material habitation.[4]
+
+It is still too early to attempt scientific method in discussing this
+problem, nor is our present store of the necessary facts by any means
+complete enough to warrant me in promising any approach to fulness of
+statement respecting them. Systematic observation in relation to this
+subject has hardly yet begun,[5] and the scattered data which have
+chanced to be recorded have never been collected. It has now no place in
+the general scheme of physical science, and is matter of suggestion and
+speculation only, not of established and positive conclusion. At
+present, then, all that I can hope is to excite an interest in a topic
+of much economical importance, by pointing out the directions and
+illustrating the modes in which human action has been or may be most
+injurious or most beneficial in its influence upon the physical
+conditions of the earth we inhabit.
+
+
+_Observation of Nature._
+
+In these pages, as in all I have ever written or propose to write, it is
+my aim to stimulate, not to satisfy, curiosity, and it is no part of my
+object to save my readers the labor of observation or of thought. For
+labor is life, and
+
+  Death lives where power lives unused.[6]
+
+Self is the schoolmaster whose lessons are best worth his wages; and
+since the subject I am considering has not yet become a branch of formal
+instruction, those whom it may interest can, fortunately, have no
+pedagogue but themselves. To the natural philosopher, the descriptive
+poet, the painter, and the sculptor, as well as to the common observer,
+the power most important to cultivate, and, at the same time, hardest to
+acquire, is that of seeing what is before him. Sight is a faculty;
+seeing, an art. The eye is a physical, but not a self-acting apparatus,
+and in general it sees only what it seeks. Like a mirror, it reflects
+objects presented to it; but it may be as insensible as a mirror, and it
+does not necessarily perceive what it reflects.[7] It is disputed
+whether the purely material sensibility of the eye is capable of
+improvement and cultivation. It has been maintained by high authority,
+that the natural acuteness of none of our sensuous faculties can be
+heightened by use, and hence that the minutest details of the image
+formed on the retina are as perfect in the most untrained, as in the
+most thoroughly disciplined organ. This may well be doubted, and it is
+agreed on all hands that the power of multifarious perception and rapid
+discrimination may be immensely increased by well-directed practice.[8]
+This exercise of the eye I desire to promote, and, next to moral and
+religious doctrine, I know no more important practical lessons in this
+earthly life of ours--which, to the wise man, is a school from the
+cradle to the grave--than those relating to the employment of the sense
+of vision in the study of nature.
+
+The pursuit of physical geography, embracing actual observation of
+terrestrial surface, affords to the eye the best general training that
+is accessible to all. The majority of even cultivated men have not the
+time and means of acquiring anything beyond a very superficial
+acquaintance with any branch of physical knowledge. Natural science has
+become so vastly extended, its recorded facts and its unanswered
+questions so immensely multiplied, that every strictly scientific man
+must be a specialist, and confine the researches of a whole life within
+a comparatively narrow circle. The study I am recommending, in the view
+I propose to take of it, is yet in that imperfectly developed state
+which allows its votaries to occupy themselves with such broad and
+general views as are attainable by every person of culture, and it does
+not now require a knowledge of special details which only years of
+application can master. It may be profitably pursued by all; and every
+traveller, every lover of rural scenery, every agriculturist, who will
+wisely use the gift of sight, may add valuable contributions to the
+common stock of knowledge on a subject which, as I hope to convince my
+readers, though long neglected, and now inartificially presented, is not
+only a very important, but a very interesting field of inquiry.
+
+
+_Cosmical and Geological Influences._
+
+The revolutions of the seasons, with their alternations of temperature
+and of length of day and night, the climates of different zones, and the
+general condition and movements of the atmosphere and the seas, depend
+upon causes for the most part cosmical, and, of course, wholly beyond
+our control. The elevation, configuration, and composition of the great
+masses of terrestrial surface, and the relative extent and distribution
+of land and water, are determined by geological influences equally
+remote from our jurisdiction. It would hence seem that the physical
+adaptation of different portions of the earth to the use and enjoyment
+of man is a matter so strictly belonging to mightier than human powers,
+that we can only accept geographical nature as we find her, and be
+content with such soils and such skies as she spontaneously offers.
+
+
+_Geographical Influence of Man._
+
+But it is certain that man has done much to mould the form of the
+earth's surface, though we cannot always distinguish between the results
+of his action and the effects of purely geological causes; that the
+destruction of the forests, the drainage of lakes and marshes, and the
+operations of rural husbandry and industrial art have tended to produce
+great changes in the hygrometric, thermometric, electric, and chemical
+condition of the atmosphere, though we are not yet able to measure the
+force of the different elements of disturbance, or to say how far they
+have been compensated by each other, or by still obscurer influences;
+and, finally, that the myriad forms of animal and vegetable life, which
+covered the earth when man first entered upon the theatre of a nature
+whose harmonies he was destined to derange, have been, through his
+action, greatly changed in numerical proportion, sometimes much modified
+in form and product, and sometimes entirely extirpated.
+
+The physical revolutions thus wrought by man have not all been
+destructive to human interests. Soils to which no nutritious vegetable
+was indigenous, countries which once brought forth but the fewest
+products suited for the sustenance and comfort of man--while the
+severity of their climates created and stimulated the greatest number
+and the most imperious urgency of physical wants--surfaces the most
+rugged and intractable, and least blessed with natural facilities of
+communication, have been made in modern times to yield and distribute
+all that supplies the material necessities, all that contributes to the
+sensuous enjoyments and conveniences of civilized life. The Scythia, the
+Thule, the Britain, the Germany, and the Gaul which the Roman writers
+describe in such forbidding terms, have been brought almost to rival the
+native luxuriance and easily won plenty of Southern Italy; and, while
+the fountains of oil and wine that refreshed old Greece and Syria and
+Northern Africa have almost ceased to flow, and the soils of those fair
+lands are turned to thirsty and inhospitable deserts, the hyperborean
+regions of Europe have conquered, or rather compensated, the rigors of
+climate, and attained to a material wealth and variety of product that,
+with all their natural advantages, the granaries of the ancient world
+can hardly be said to have enjoyed.
+
+These changes for evil and for good have not been caused by great
+natural revolutions of the globe, nor are they by any means attributable
+wholly to the moral and physical action or inaction of the peoples, or,
+in all cases, even of the races that now inhabit these respective
+regions. They are products of a complication of conflicting or
+coincident forces, acting through a long series of generations; here,
+improvidence, wastefulness, and wanton violence; there, foresight and
+wisely guided persevering industry. So far as they are purely the
+calculated and desired results of those simple and familiar operations
+of agriculture and of social life which are as universal as
+civilization--the removal of the forests which covered the soil required
+for the cultivation of edible fruits, the drying of here and there a few
+acres too moist for profitable husbandry, by draining off the surface
+waters, the substitution of domesticated and nutritious for wild and
+unprofitable vegetable growths, the construction of roads and canals and
+artificial harbors--they belong to the sphere of rural, commercial, and
+political economy more properly than to geography, and hence are but
+incidentally embraced within the range of our present inquiries, which
+concern physical, not financial balances. I propose to examine only the
+greater, more permanent, and more comprehensive mutations which man has
+produced, and is producing, in earth, sea, and sky, sometimes, indeed,
+with conscious purpose, but for the most part, as unforeseen though
+natural consequences of acts performed for narrower and more immediate
+ends.
+
+The exact measurement of the geographical changes hitherto thus effected
+is, as I have hinted, impracticable, and we possess, in relation to
+them, the means of only qualitative, not quantitative analysis. The fact
+of such revolutions is established partly by historical evidence, partly
+by analogical deduction from effects produced in our own time by
+operations similar in character to those which must have taken place in
+more or less remote ages of human action. Both sources of information
+are alike defective in precision; the latter, for general reasons too
+obvious to require specification; the former, because the facts to which
+it bears testimony occurred before the habit or the means of rigorously
+scientific observation upon any branch of physical research, and
+especially upon climatic changes, existed.
+
+
+_Uncertainty of our Meteorological Knowledge._
+
+The invention of measures of heat, and of atmospheric moisture,
+pressure, and precipitation, is extremely recent. Hence, ancient
+physicists have left us no thermometric or barometric records, no tables
+of the fall, evaporation, and flow of waters, and even no accurate maps
+of coast lines and the course of rivers. Their notices of these
+phenomena are almost wholly confined to excessive and exceptional
+instances of high or of low temperatures, extraordinary falls of rain
+and snow, and unusual floods or droughts. Our knowledge of the
+meteorological condition of the earth, at any period more than two
+centuries before our own time, is derived from these imperfect details,
+from the vague statements of ancient historians and geographers in
+regard to the volume of rivers and the relative extent of forest and
+cultivated land, from the indications furnished by the history of the
+agriculture and rural economy of past generations, and from other almost
+purely casual sources of information.
+
+Among these latter we must rank certain newly laid open fields of
+investigation, from which facts bearing on the point now under
+consideration have been gathered. I allude to the discovery of
+artificial objects in geological formations older than any hitherto
+recognized as exhibiting traces of the existence of man; to the ancient
+lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, containing the implements of the
+occupants, remains of their food, and other relics of human life; to the
+curious revelations of the Kjoekkenmoeddinger, or heaps of kitchen refuse,
+in Denmark, and of the peat mosses in the same and other northern
+countries; to the dwellings and other evidences of the industry of man
+in remote ages sometimes laid bare by the movement of sand dunes on the
+coasts of France and of the North Sea; and to the facts disclosed on the
+shores of the latter, by excavations in inhabited mounds which were,
+perhaps, raised before the period of the Roman Empire. These remains are
+memorials of races which have left no written records, because they
+perished before the historical period of the countries they occupied
+began. The plants and animals that furnished the relics found in the
+deposits were certainly contemporaneous with man; for they are
+associated with his works, and have evidently served his uses. In some
+cases, the animals belonged to species well ascertained to be now
+altogether extinct; in some others, both the animals and the vegetables,
+though extant elsewhere, have ceased to inhabit the regions where their
+remains are discovered. From the character of the artificial objects, as
+compared with others belonging to known dates, or at least to known
+periods of civilization, ingenious inferences have been drawn as to
+their age; and from the vegetation, remains of which accompany them, as
+to the climates of Central and Northern Europe at the time of their
+production.
+
+There are, however, sources of error which have not always been
+sufficiently guarded against in making these estimates. When a boat,
+composed of several pieces of wood fastened together by pins of the same
+material, is dug out of a bog, it is inferred that the vessel, and the
+skeletons and implements found with it, belong to an age when the use of
+iron was not known to the builders. But this conclusion is not warranted
+by the simple fact that metals were not employed in its construction;
+for the Nubians at this day build boats large enough to carry half a
+dozen persons across the Nile, out of small pieces of acacia wood pinned
+together entirely with wooden bolts. Nor is the occurrence of flint
+arrow heads and knives, in conjunction with other evidences of human
+life, conclusive proof as to the antiquity of the latter. Lyell informs
+us that some Oriental tribes still continue to use the same stone
+implements as their ancestors, "after that mighty empires, where the use
+of metals in the arts was well known, had flourished for three thousand
+years in their neighborhood;"[9] and the North American Indians now
+manufacture and use weapons of stone, and even of glass, chipping them
+in the latter case out of the bottoms of thick bottles, with great
+facility.[10]
+
+We may also be misled by our ignorance of the commercial relations
+existing between savage tribes. Extremely rude nations, in spite of
+their jealousies and their perpetual wars, sometimes contrive to
+exchange the products of provinces very widely separated from each
+other. The mounds of Ohio contain pearls, thought to be marine, which
+must have come from the Gulf of Mexico, or perhaps even from California,
+and the knives and pipes found in the same graves are often formed of
+far-fetched material, that was naturally paid for by some home product
+exported to the locality whence the material was derived. The art of
+preserving fish, flesh, and fowl by drying and smoking is widely
+diffused, and of great antiquity. The Indians of Long Island Sound are
+said to have carried on a trade in dried shell fish with tribes residing
+very far inland. From the earliest ages, the inhabitants of the Faroe
+and Orkney Islands, and of the opposite mainland coasts, have smoked
+wild fowl and other flesh. Hence it is possible that the animal and the
+vegetable food, the remains of which are found in the ancient deposits I
+am speaking of, may sometimes have been brought from climates remote
+from that where it was consumed.
+
+The most important, as well as the most trustworthy conclusions with
+respect to the climate of ancient Europe and Asia, are those drawn from
+the accounts given by the classical writers of the growth of cultivated
+plants; but these are by no means free from uncertainty, because we can
+seldom be sure of an identity of species, almost never of an identity of
+race or variety, between vegetables known to the agriculturists of
+Greece and Rome and those of modern times which are thought most nearly
+to resemble them. Besides this, there is always room for doubt whether
+the habits of plants long grown in different countries may not have been
+so changed by domestication that the conditions of temperature and
+humidity which they required twenty centuries ago were different from
+those at present demanded for their advantageous cultivation.[11]
+
+Even if we suppose an identity of species, of race, and of habit to be
+established between a given ancient and modern plant, the negative fact
+that the latter will not grow now where it flourished two thousand years
+ago does not in all cases prove a change of climate. The same result
+might follow from the exhaustion of the soil,[12] or from a change in
+the quantity of moisture it habitually contains. After a district of
+country has been completely or even partially cleared of its forest
+growth, and brought under cultivation, the drying of the soil, under
+favorable circumstances, goes on for generations, perhaps for ages.[13]
+In other cases, from injudicious husbandry, or the diversion or choking
+up of natural watercourses, it may become more highly charged with
+humidity. An increase or diminution of the moisture of a soil almost
+necessarily supposes an elevation or a depression of its winter or its
+summer heat, and of its extreme, if not of its mean annual temperature,
+though such elevation or depression may be so slight as not sensibly to
+raise or lower the mercury in a thermometer exposed to the open air. Any
+of these causes, more or less humidity, or more or less warmth of soil,
+would affect the growth both of wild and of cultivated vegetation, and
+consequently, without any appreciable change in atmospheric temperature,
+precipitation, or evaporation, plants of a particular species might
+cease to be advantageously cultivated where they had once been easily
+reared.[14] We are very imperfectly acquainted with the present mean
+and extreme temperature, or the precipitation and the evaporation of any
+extensive region, even in countries most densely peopled and best
+supplied with instruments and observers. The progress of science is
+constantly detecting errors of method in older observations, and many
+laboriously constructed tables of meteorological phenomena are now
+thrown aside as fallacious, and therefore worse than useless, because
+some condition necessary to secure accuracy of result was neglected, in
+obtaining the data on which they were founded.
+
+To take a familiar instance: it is but recently that attention has been
+drawn to the great influence of slight changes of station upon the
+results of observations of temperature and precipitation. A thermometer
+removed but a few hundred yards from its first position differs not
+unfrequently five, sometimes even ten degrees in its readings; and when
+we are told that the annual fall of rain on the roof of the observatory
+at Paris is two inches less than on the ground by the side of it, we may
+see that the level of the rain-gauge is a point of much consequence in
+making estimates from its measurements. The data from which results have
+been deduced with respect to the hygrometrical and thermometrical
+conditions, the climate in short, of different countries, have very
+often been derived from observations at single points in cities or
+districts separated by considerable distances. The tendency of errors
+and accidents to balance each other authorizes us, indeed, to entertain
+greater confidence than we could otherwise feel in the conclusions drawn
+from such tables; but it is in the highest degree probable that they
+would be much modified by more numerous series of observations, at
+different stations within narrow limits.[15]
+
+There is one branch of research which is of the utmost importance in
+reference to these questions, but which, from the great difficulty of
+direct observation upon it, has been less successfully studied than
+almost any other problem of physical science. I refer to the proportions
+between precipitation, superficial drainage, absorption, and
+evaporation. Precise actual measurement of these quantities upon even a
+single acre of ground is impossible; and in all cabinet experiments on
+the subject, the conditions of the surface observed are so different
+from those which occur in nature, that we cannot safely reason from one
+case to the other. In nature, the inclination of the ground, the degree
+of freedom or obstruction of the surface, the composition and density of
+the soil, upon which its permeability by water and its power of
+absorbing and retaining or transmitting moisture depend, its
+temperature, the dryness or saturation of the subsoil, vary at
+comparatively short distances; and though the precipitation upon and the
+superficial flow from very small geographical basins may be estimated
+with an approach to precision, yet even here we have no present means
+of knowing how much of the water absorbed by the earth is restored to
+the atmosphere by evaporation, and how much carried off by infiltration
+or other modes of underground discharge. When, therefore, we attempt to
+use the phenomena observed on a few square or cubic yards of earth, as a
+basis of reasoning upon the meteorology of a province, it is evident
+that our data must be insufficient to warrant positive general
+conclusions. In discussing the climatology of whole countries, or even
+of comparatively small local divisions, we may safely say that none can
+tell what percentage of the water they receive from the atmosphere is
+evaporated; what absorbed by the ground and conveyed off by subterranean
+conduits; what carried down to the sea by superficial channels; what
+drawn from the earth or the air by a given extent of forest, of short
+pasture vegetation, or of tall meadow-grass; what given out again by
+surfaces so covered, or by bare ground of various textures and
+composition, under different conditions of atmospheric temperature,
+pressure, and humidity; or what is the amount of evaporation from water,
+ice, or snow, under the varying exposures to which, in actual nature,
+they are constantly subjected. If, then, we are so ignorant of all these
+climatic phenomena in the best-known regions inhabited by man, it is
+evident that we can rely little upon theoretical deductions applied to
+the former more natural state of the same regions--less still to such as
+are adopted with respect to distant, strange, and primitive countries.
+
+
+_Mechanical Effects produced by Man on the Surface of the Earth more
+easily ascertainable._
+
+In investigating the mechanical effects of human action on superficial
+geography, we are treading on safer ground, and dealing with much less
+subtile phenomena, less intractable elements. Great physical changes
+can, in some cases, be positively shown, in some almost certainly
+inferred, to have been produced by the operations of rural industry, and
+by the labors of man in other spheres of material effort; and hence, in
+this most important part of our subject, we can arrive at many positive
+generalizations, and obtain practical results of no small economical
+value.
+
+
+_Importance and Possibility of Physical Restoration._
+
+Many circumstances conspire to invest with great present interest the
+questions: how far man can permanently modify and ameliorate those
+physical conditions of terrestrial surface and climate on which his
+material welfare depends; how far he can compensate, arrest, or retard
+the deterioration which many of his agricultural and industrial
+processes tend to produce; and how far he can restore fertility and
+salubrity to soils which his follies or his crimes have made barren or
+pestilential. Among these circumstances, the most prominent, perhaps, is
+the necessity of providing new homes for a European population which is
+increasing more rapidly than its means of subsistence, new physical
+comforts for classes of the people that have now become too much
+enlightened and have imbibed too much culture to submit to a longer
+deprivation of a share in the material enjoyments which the privileged
+ranks have hitherto monopolized.
+
+To supply new hives for the emigrant swarms, there are, first, the vast
+unoccupied prairies and forests of America, of Australia, and of many
+other great oceanic islands, the sparsely inhabited and still
+unexhausted soils of Southern and even Central Africa, and, finally, the
+impoverished and half-depopulated shores of the Mediterranean, and the
+interior of Asia Minor and the farther East. To furnish to those who
+shall remain after emigration shall have conveniently reduced the too
+dense population of many European states, those means of sensuous and of
+intellectual well-being which are styled "artificial wants" when
+demanded by the humble and the poor, but are admitted to be
+"necessaries" when claimed by the noble and the rich, the soil must be
+stimulated to its highest powers of production, and man's utmost
+ingenuity and energy must be tasked to renovate a nature drained, by
+his improvidence, of fountains which a wise economy would have made
+plenteous and perennial sources of beauty, health, and wealth.
+
+In those yet virgin lands which the progress of modern discovery in both
+hemispheres has brought and is still bringing to the knowledge and
+control of civilized man, not much improvement of great physical
+conditions is to be looked for. The proportion of forest is indeed to be
+considerably reduced, superfluous waters to be drawn off, and routes of
+internal communication to be constructed; but the primitive geographical
+and climatic features of these countries ought to be, as far as
+possible, retained.
+
+
+_Stability of Nature._
+
+Nature, left undisturbed, so fashions her territory as to give it almost
+unchanging permanence of form, outline, and proportion, except when
+shattered by geologic convulsions; and in these comparatively rare cases
+of derangement, she sets herself at once to repair the superficial
+damage, and to restore, as nearly as practicable, the former aspect of
+her dominion. In new countries, the natural inclination of the ground,
+the self-formed slopes and levels, are generally such as best secure the
+stability of the soil. They have been graded and lowered or elevated by
+frost and chemical forces and gravitation and the flow of water and
+vegetable deposit and the action of the winds, until, by a general
+compensation of conflicting forces, a condition of equilibrium has been
+reached which, without the action of man, would remain, with little
+fluctuation, for countless ages.
+
+We need not go far back to reach a period when, in all that portion of
+the North American continent which has been occupied by British
+colonization, the geographical elements very nearly balanced and
+compensated each other. At the commencement of the seventeenth century,
+the soil, with insignificant exceptions, was covered with forests;[16]
+and whenever the Indian, in consequence of war or the exhaustion of the
+beasts of the chase, abandoned the narrow fields he had planted and the
+woods he had burned over, they speedily returned, by a succession of
+herbaceous, arborescent, and arboreal growths, to their original state.
+Even a single generation sufficed to restore them almost to their
+primitive luxuriance of forest vegetation.[17] The unbroken forests had
+attained to their maximum density and strength of growth, and, as the
+older trees decayed and fell, they were succeeded by new shoots or
+seedlings, so that from century to century no perceptible change seems
+to have occurred in the wood, except the slow, spontaneous succession of
+crops. This succession involved no interruption of growth, and but
+little break in the "boundless contiguity of shade;" for, in the
+husbandry of nature, there are no fallows. Trees fall singly, not by
+square roods, and the tall pine is hardly prostrate, before the light
+and heat, admitted to the ground by the removal of the dense crown of
+foliage which had shut them out, stimulate the germination of the seeds
+of broad-leaved trees that had lain, waiting this kindly influence,
+perhaps for centuries. Two natural causes, destructive in character,
+were, indeed, in operation in the primitive American forests, though, in
+the Northern colonies, at least, there were sufficient compensations;
+for we do not discover that any considerable permanent change was
+produced by them. I refer to the action of beavers and of fallen trees
+in producing bogs,[18] and of smaller animals, insects, and birds, in
+destroying the woods. Bogs are less numerous and extensive in the
+Northern States of the American union, because the natural inclination
+of the surface favors drainage; but they are more frequent, and cover
+more ground, in the Southern States, for the opposite reason.[19] They
+generally originate in the checking of watercourses by the falling of
+timber, or of earth and rocks, across their channels. If the impediment
+thus created is sufficient to retain a permanent accumulation of water
+behind it, the trees whose roots are overflowed soon perish, and then by
+their fall increase the obstruction, and, of course, occasion a still
+wider spread of the stagnating stream. This process goes on until the
+water finds a new outlet, at a higher level, not liable to similar
+interruption. The fallen trees not completely covered by water are soon
+overgrown with mosses; aquatic and semi-aquatic plants propagate
+themselves, and spread until they more or less completely fill up the
+space occupied by the water, and the surface is gradually converted from
+a pond to a quaking morass.[20] The morass is slowly solidified by
+vegetable production and deposit, then very often restored to the
+forest condition by the growth of black ashes, cedars, or, in southern
+latitudes, cypresses, and other trees suited to such a soil, and thus
+the interrupted harmony of nature is at last reestablished.
+
+I am disposed to think that more bogs in the Northern States owe their
+origin to beavers than to accidental obstructions of rivulets by
+wind-fallen or naturally decayed trees; for there are few swamps in
+those States, at the outlets of which we may not, by careful search,
+find the remains of a beaver dam. The beaver sometimes inhabits natural
+lakelets, but he prefers to owe his pond to his own ingenuity and toil.
+The reservoir once constructed, its inhabitants rapidly multiply, and as
+its harvests of pond lilies, and other aquatic plants on which this
+quadruped feeds in winter, become too small for the growing population,
+the beaver metropolis sends out expeditions of discovery and
+colonization. The pond gradually fills up, by the operation of the same
+causes as when it owes its existence to an accidental obstruction, and
+when, at last, the original settlement is converted into a bog by the
+usual processes of vegetable life, the remaining inhabitants abandon it
+and build on some virgin brooklet a new city of the waters.
+
+In countries somewhat further advanced in civilization than those
+occupied by the North American Indians, as in mediaeval Ireland, the
+formation of bogs may be commenced by the neglect of man to remove, from
+the natural channels of superficial drainage, the tops and branches of
+trees felled for the various purposes to which wood is applicable in
+his rude industry; and, when the flow of the water is thus checked,
+nature goes on with the processes I have already described. In such
+half-civilized regions, too, windfalls are more frequent than in those
+where the forest is unbroken, because, when openings have been made in
+it, for agricultural or other purposes, the entrance thus afforded to
+the wind occasions the sudden overthrow of hundreds of trees which might
+otherwise have stood for generations, and thus have fallen to the
+ground, only one by one, as natural decay brought them down.[21] Besides
+this, the flocks bred by man in the pastoral state, keep down the
+incipient growth of trees on the half-dried bogs, and prevent them from
+recovering their primitive condition.
+
+Young trees in the native forest are sometimes girdled and killed by the
+smaller rodent quadrupeds, and their growth is checked by birds which
+feed on the terminal bud; but these animals, as we shall see, are
+generally found on the skirts of the wood only, not in its deeper
+recesses, and hence the mischief they do is not extensive. The insects
+which damage primitive forests by feeding upon products of trees
+essential to their growth, are not numerous, nor is their appearance, in
+destructive numbers, frequent; and those which perforate the stems and
+branches, to deposit and hatch their eggs, more commonly select dead
+trees for that purpose, though, unhappily, there are important
+exceptions to this latter remark.[22] I do not know that we have any
+evidence of the destruction or serious injury of American forests by
+insects, before or even soon after the period of colonization; but since
+the white man has laid bare a vast proportion of the earth's surface,
+and thereby produced changes favorable, perhaps, to the multiplication
+of these pests, they have greatly increased in numbers, and, apparently,
+in voracity also. Not many years ago, the pines on thousands of acres of
+land in North Carolina, were destroyed by insects not known to have ever
+done serious injury to that tree before. In such cases as this and
+others of the like sort, there is good reason to believe that man is the
+indirect cause of an evil for which he pays so heavy a penalty. Insects
+increase whenever the birds which feed upon them disappear. Hence, in
+the wanton destruction of the robin and other insectivorous birds, the
+_bipes implumis_, the featherless biped, man, is not only exchanging the
+vocal orchestra which greets the rising sun for the drowsy beetle's
+evening drone, and depriving his groves and his fields of their fairest
+ornament, but he is waging a treacherous warfare on his natural
+allies.[23]
+
+In fine, in countries untrodden by man, the proportions and relative
+positions of land and water, the atmospheric precipitation and
+evaporation, the thermometric mean, and the distribution of vegetable
+and animal life, are subject to change only from geological influences
+so slow in their operation that the geographical conditions may be
+regarded as constant and immutable. These arrangements of nature it is,
+in most cases, highly desirable substantially to maintain, when such
+regions become the seat of organized commonwealths. It is, therefore, a
+matter of the first importance, that, in commencing the process of
+fitting them for permanent civilized occupation, the transforming
+operations should be so conducted as not unnecessarily to derange and
+destroy what, in too many cases, it is beyond the power of man to
+rectify or restore.
+
+
+_Restoration of Disturbed Harmonies._
+
+In reclaiming and reoccupying lands laid waste by human improvidence or
+malice, and abandoned by man, or occupied only by a nomade or thinly
+scattered population, the task of the pioneer settler is of a very
+different character. He is to become a co-worker with nature in the
+reconstruction of the damaged fabric which the negligence or the
+wantonness of former lodgers has rendered untenantable. He must aid her
+in reclothing the mountain slopes with forests and vegetable mould,
+thereby restoring the fountains which she provided to water them; in
+checking the devastating fury of torrents, and bringing back the surface
+drainage to its primitive narrow channels; and in drying deadly morasses
+by opening the natural sluices which have been choked up, and cutting
+new canals for drawing off their stagnant waters. He must thus, on the
+one hand, create new reservoirs, and, on the other, remove mischievous
+accumulations of moisture, thereby equalizing and regulating the sources
+of atmospheric humidity and of flowing water, both which are so
+essential to all vegetable growth, and, of course, to human and lower
+animal life.
+
+
+_Destructiveness of Man._
+
+Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct
+alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste. Nature has
+provided against the absolute destruction of any of her elementary
+matter, the raw material of her works; the thunderbolt and the tornado,
+the most convulsive throes of even the volcano and the earthquake, being
+only phenomena of decomposition and recomposition. But she has left it
+within the power of man irreparably to derange the combinations of
+inorganic matter and of organic life, which through the night of aeons
+she had been proportioning and balancing, to prepare the earth for his
+habitation, when, in the fulness of time, his Creator should call him
+forth to enter into its possession.
+
+Apart from the hostile influence of man, the organic and the inorganic
+world are, as I have remarked, bound together by such mutual relations
+and adaptations as secure, if not the absolute permanence and
+equilibrium of both, a long continuance of the established conditions of
+each at any given time and place, or at least, a very slow and gradual
+succession of changes in those conditions. But man is everywhere a
+disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature
+are turned to discords. The proportions and accommodations which insured
+the stability of existing arrangements are overthrown. Indigenous
+vegetable and animal species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of
+foreign origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and
+the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new and
+reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes of animal
+life. These intentional changes and substitutions constitute, indeed,
+great revolutions; but vast as is their magnitude and importance, they
+are, as we shall see, insignificant in comparison with the contingent
+and unsought results which have flowed from them.
+
+The fact that, of all organic beings, man alone is to be regarded as
+essentially a destructive power, and that he wields energies to resist
+which, nature--that Nature whom all material life and all inorganic
+substance obey--is wholly impotent, tends to prove that, though living
+in physical nature, he is not of her, that he is of more exalted
+parentage, and belongs to a higher order of existences than those born
+of her womb and submissive to her dictates.
+
+There are, indeed, brute destroyers, beasts and birds and insects of
+prey--all animal life feeds upon, and, of course, destroys other
+life,--but this destruction is balanced by compensations. It is, in
+fact, the very means by which the existence of one tribe of animals or
+of vegetables is secured against being smothered by the encroachments of
+another; and the reproductive powers of species, which serve as the food
+of others, are always proportioned to the demand they are destined to
+supply. Man pursues his victims with reckless destructiveness; and,
+while the sacrifice of life by the lower animals is limited by the
+cravings of appetite, he unsparingly persecutes, even to extirpation,
+thousands of organic forms which he cannot consume.[24]
+
+The earth was not, in its natural condition, completely adapted to the
+use of man, but only to the sustenance of wild animals and wild
+vegetation. These live, multiply their kind in just proportion, and
+attain their perfect measure of strength and beauty, without producing
+or requiring any change in the natural arrangements of surface, or in
+each other's spontaneous tendencies, except such mutual repression of
+excessive increase as may prevent the extirpation of one species by the
+encroachments of another. In short, without man, lower animal and
+spontaneous vegetable life would have been constant in type,
+distribution, and proportion, and the physical geography of the earth
+would have remained undisturbed for indefinite periods, and been subject
+to revolution only from possible, unknown cosmical causes, or from
+geological action.
+
+But man, the domestic animals that serve him, the field and garden
+plants the products of which supply him with food and clothing, cannot
+subsist and rise to the full development of their higher properties,
+unless brute and unconscious nature be effectually combated, and, in a
+great degree, vanquished by human art. Hence, a certain measure of
+transformation of terrestrial surface, of suppression of natural, and
+stimulation of artificially modified productivity becomes necessary.
+This measure man has unfortunately exceeded. He has felled the forests
+whose network of fibrous roots bound the mould to the rocky skeleton of
+the earth; but had he allowed here and there a belt of woodland to
+reproduce itself by spontaneous propagation, most of the mischiefs which
+his reckless destruction of the natural protection of the soil has
+occasioned would have been averted. He has broken up the mountain
+reservoirs, the percolation of whose waters through unseen channels
+supplied the fountains that refreshed his cattle and fertilized his
+fields; but he has neglected to maintain the cisterns and the canals of
+irrigation which a wise antiquity had constructed to neutralize the
+consequences of its own imprudence. While he has torn the thin glebe
+which confined the light earth of extensive plains, and has destroyed
+the fringe of semi-aquatic plants which skirted the coast and checked
+the drifting of the sea sand, he has failed to prevent the spreading of
+the dunes by clothing them with artificially propagated vegetation. He
+has ruthlessly warred on all the tribes of animated nature whose spoil
+he could convert to his own uses, and he has not protected the birds
+which prey on the insects most destructive to his own harvests.
+
+Purely untutored humanity, it is true, interferes comparatively little
+with the arrangements of nature,[25] and the destructive agency of man
+becomes more and more energetic and unsparing as he advances in
+civilization, until the impoverishment, with which his exhaustion of the
+natural resources of the soil is threatening him, at last awakens him to
+the necessity of preserving what is left, if not of restoring what has
+been wantonly wasted. The wandering savage grows no cultivated
+vegetable, fells no forest, and extirpates no useful plant, no noxious
+weed. If his skill in the chase enables him to entrap numbers of the
+animals on which he feeds, he compensates this loss by destroying also
+the lion, the tiger, the wolf, the otter, the seal, and the eagle, thus
+indirectly protecting the feebler quadrupeds and fish and fowls, which
+would otherwise become the booty of beasts and birds of prey. But with
+stationary life, or rather with the pastoral state, man at once
+commences an almost indiscriminate warfare upon all the forms of animal
+and vegetable existence around him, and as he advances in civilization,
+he gradually eradicates or transforms every spontaneous product of the
+soil he occupies.[26]
+
+
+_Human and Brute Action Compared._
+
+It has been maintained by authorities as high as any known to modern
+science, that the action of man upon nature, though greater in _degree_,
+does not differ in _kind_, from that of wild animals. It appears to me
+to differ in essential character, because, though it is often followed
+by unforeseen and undesired results, yet it is nevertheless guided by a
+self-conscious and intelligent will aiming as often at secondary and
+remote as at immediate objects. The wild animal, on the other hand, acts
+instinctively, and, so far as we are able to perceive, always with a
+view to single and direct purposes. The backwoodsman and the beaver
+alike fell trees; the man that he may convert the forest into an olive
+grove that will mature its fruit only for a succeeding generation, the
+beaver that he may feed upon their bark or use them in the construction
+of his habitation. Human differs from brute action, too, in its
+influence upon the material world, because it is not controlled by
+natural compensations and balances. Natural arrangements, once disturbed
+by man, are not restored until he retires from the field, and leaves
+free scope to spontaneous recuperative energies; the wounds he inflicts
+upon the material creation are not healed until he withdraws the arm
+that gave the blow. On the other hand, I am not aware of any evidence
+that wild animals have ever destroyed the smallest forest, extirpated
+any organic species or modified its natural character, occasioned any
+permanent change of terrestrial surface, or produced any disturbance of
+physical conditions which nature has not, of herself, repaired without
+the expulsion of the animal that had caused it.[27]
+
+The form of geographical surface, and very probably the climate of a
+given country, depend much on the character of the vegetable life
+belonging to it. Man has, by domestication, greatly changed the habits
+and properties of the plants he rears; he has, by voluntary selection,
+immensely modified the forms and qualities of the animated creatures
+that serve him; and he has, at the same time, completely rooted out many
+forms of animal if not of vegetable being.[28] What is there, in the
+influence of brute life, that corresponds to this? We have no reason to
+believe that in that portion of the American continent which, though
+peopled by many tribes of quadruped and fowl, remained uninhabited by
+man, or only thinly occupied by purely savage tribes, any sensible
+geographical change had occurred within twenty centuries before the
+epoch of discovery and colonization, while, during the same period, man
+had changed millions of square miles, in the fairest and most fertile
+regions of the Old World, into the barrenest deserts.
+
+The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the
+balance which nature had established between her organized and her
+inorganic creations; and she avenges herself upon the intruder, by
+letting loose upon her defaced provinces destructive energies hitherto
+kept in check by organic forces destined to be his best auxiliaries, but
+which he has unwisely dispersed and driven from the field of action.
+When the forest is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in
+its vegetable mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain
+to wash away the parched dust into which that mould has been converted.
+The well-wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which
+encumbers the low grounds and chokes the watercourses with its debris,
+and--except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain
+through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination of
+surface--the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical
+degradation to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains,
+of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains. There are
+parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine
+Europe, where the operation of causes set in action by man has brought
+the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the
+moon; and though, within that brief space of time which we call "the
+historical period," they are known to have been covered with luxuriant
+woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows, they are now too far
+deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted
+for human use, except through great geological changes, or other
+mysterious influences or agencies of which we have no present knowledge,
+and over which we have no prospective control. The earth is fast
+becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and another era of
+equal human crime and human improvidence, and of like duration with that
+through which traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would
+reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of
+shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation,
+barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.[29]
+
+
+_Physical Improvement._
+
+True, there is a partial reverse to this picture. On narrow theatres,
+new forests have been planted; inundations of flowing streams restrained
+by heavy walls of masonry and other constructions; torrents compelled to
+aid, by depositing the slime with which they are charged, in filling up
+lowlands, and raising the level of morasses which their own overflows
+had created; ground submerged by the encroachments of the ocean, or
+exposed to be covered by its tides, has been rescued from its dominion
+by diking;[30] swamps and even lakes have been drained, and their beds
+brought within the domain of agricultural industry; drifting coast dunes
+have been checked and made productive by plantation; seas and inland
+waters have been repeopled with fish, and even the sands of the Sahara
+have been fertilized by artesian fountains. These achievements are more
+glorious than the proudest triumphs of war, but, thus far, they give but
+faint hope that we shall yet make full atonement for our spendthrift
+waste of the bounties of nature.
+
+It is, on the one hand, rash and unphilosophical to attempt to set
+limits to the ultimate power of man over inorganic nature, and it is
+unprofitable, on the other, to speculate on what may be accomplished by
+the discovery of now unknown and unimagined natural forces, or even by
+the invention of new arts and new processes. But since we have seen
+aerostation, the motive power of elastic vapors, the wonders of modern
+telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gunpowder, and even of a
+substance so harmless, unresisting, and inert as cotton, nothing in the
+way of mechanical achievement seems impossible, and it is hard to
+restrain the imagination from wandering forward a couple of generations
+to an epoch when our descendants shall have advanced as far beyond us in
+physical conquest, as we have marched beyond the trophies erected by our
+grandfathers.
+
+I must therefore be understood to mean only, that no agencies now known
+to man and directed by him seem adequate to the reducing of great Alpine
+precipices to such slopes as would enable them to support a vegetable
+clothing, or to the covering of large extents of denuded rock with
+earth, and planting upon them a forest growth. But among the mysteries
+which science is yet to reveal, there may be still undiscovered methods
+of accomplishing even grander wonders than these. Mechanical
+philosophers have suggested the possibility of accumulating and
+treasuring up for human use some of the greater natural forces, which
+the action of the elements puts forth with such astonishing energy.
+Could we gather, and bind, and make subservient to our control, the
+power which a West Indian hurricane exerts through a small area in one
+continuous blast, or the momentum expended by the waves, in a
+tempestuous winter, upon the breakwater at Cherbourg,[31] or the lifting
+power of the tide, for a month, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, or the
+pressure of a square mile of sea water at the depth of five thousand
+fathoms, or a moment of the might of an earthquake or a volcano, our
+age--which moves no mountains and casts them into the sea by faith
+alone--might hope to scarp the rugged walls of the Alps and Pyrenees and
+Mount Taurus, robe them once more in a vegetation as rich as that of
+their pristine woods, and turn their wasting torrents into refreshing
+streams.[32]
+
+Could this old world, which man has overthrown, be rebuilded, could
+human cunning rescue its wasted hillsides and its deserted plains from
+solitude or mere nomade occupation, from barrenness, from nakedness, and
+from insalubrity, and restore the ancient fertility and healthfulness of
+the Etruscan sea coast, the Campagna and the Pontine marshes, of
+Calabria, of Sicily, of the Peloponnesus and insular and continental
+Greece, of Asia Minor, of the slopes of Lebanon and Hermon, of
+Palestine, of the Syrian desert, of Mesopotamia and the delta of the
+Euphrates, of the Cyrenaica, of Africa proper, Numidia, and Mauritania,
+the thronging millions of Europe might still find room on the Eastern
+continent, and the main current of emigration be turned toward the
+rising instead of the setting sun.
+
+But changes like these must await great political and moral revolutions
+in the governments and peoples by whom those regions are now possessed,
+a command of pecuniary and of mechanical means not at present enjoyed by
+those nations, and a more advanced and generally diffused knowledge of
+the processes by which the amelioration of soil and climate is possible,
+than now anywhere exists. Until such circumstances shall conspire to
+favor the work of geographical regeneration, the countries I have
+mentioned, with here and there a local exception, will continue to sink
+into yet deeper desolation, and in the mean time, the American
+continent, Southern Africa, Australia, and the smaller oceanic islands,
+will be almost the only theatres where man is engaged, on a great scale,
+in transforming the face of nature.
+
+
+_Arrest of Physical Decay of New Countries._
+
+Comparatively short as is the period through which the colonization of
+foreign lands by European emigrants extends, great, and, it is to be
+feared, sometimes irreparable, injury has been already done in the
+various processes by which man seeks to subjugate the virgin earth; and
+many provinces, first trodden by the _homo sapiens Europae_ within the
+last two centuries, begin to show signs of that melancholy dilapidation
+which is now driving so many of the peasantry of Europe from their
+native hearths. It is evidently a matter of great moment, not only to
+the population of the states where these symptoms are manifesting
+themselves, but to the general interests of humanity, that this decay
+should be arrested, and that the future operations of rural husbandry
+and of forest industry, in districts yet remaining substantially in
+their native condition, should be so conducted as to prevent the
+widespread mischiefs which have been elsewhere produced by thoughtless
+or wanton destruction of the natural safeguards of the soil. This can be
+done only by the diffusion of knowledge on this subject among the
+classes that, in earlier days, subdued and tilled ground in which they
+had no vested rights, but who, in our time, own their woods, their
+pastures, and their ploughlands as a perpetual possession for them and
+theirs, and have, therefore, a strong interest in the protection of
+their domain against deterioration.
+
+
+_Forms and Formations most liable to Physical Degradation._
+
+The character and extent of the evils under consideration depend very
+much on climate and the natural forms and constitution of surface. If
+the precipitation, whether great or small in amount, be equally
+distributed through the seasons, so that there are neither torrential
+rains nor parching droughts, and if, further, the general inclination of
+ground be moderate, so that the superficial waters are carried off
+without destructive rapidity of flow, and without sudden accumulation in
+the channels of natural drainage, there is little danger of the
+degradation of the soil in consequence of the removal of forest or other
+vegetable covering, and the natural face of the earth may be considered
+as substantially permanent. These conditions are well exemplified in
+Ireland, in a great part of England, in extensive districts in Germany
+and France, and, fortunately, in an immense proportion of the valley of
+the Mississippi and the basin of the great American lakes, as well as in
+many parts of the continents of South America and of Africa.
+
+Destructive changes are most frequent in countries of irregular and
+mountainous surface, and in climates where the precipitation is confined
+chiefly to a single season, and where the year is divided into a wet and
+a dry period, as is the case throughout a great part of the Ottoman
+empire, and, more or less strictly, the whole Mediterranean basin. It is
+partly, though by no means entirely, owing to topographical and climatic
+causes that the blight, which has smitten the fairest and most fertile
+provinces of Imperial Rome, has spared Britannia, Germania, Pannonia,
+and M[oe]sia, the comparatively inhospitable homes of barbarous races,
+who, in the days of the Caesars, were too little advanced in civilized
+life to possess either the power or the will to wage that war against
+the order of nature which seems, hitherto, an almost inseparable
+condition precedent of high social culture, and of great progress in
+fine and mechanical art.[33]
+
+In mountainous countries, on the other hand, various causes combine to
+expose the soil to constant dangers. The rain and snow usually fall in
+greater quantity, and with much inequality of distribution; the snow on
+the summits accumulates for many months in succession, and then is not
+unfrequently almost wholly dissolved in a single thaw, so that the
+entire precipitation of months is in a few hours hurried down the flanks
+of the mountains, and through the ravines that furrow them; the natural
+inclination of the surface promotes the swiftness of the gathering
+currents of diluvial rain and of melting snow, which soon acquire an
+almost irresistible force, and power of removal and transportation; the
+soil itself is less compact and tenacious than that of the plains, and
+if the sheltering forest has been destroyed, it is confined by few of
+the threads and ligaments by which nature had bound it together, and
+attached it to the rocky groundwork. Hence every considerable shower
+lays bare its roods of rock, and the torrents sent down by the thaws of
+spring, and by occasional heavy discharges of the summer and autumnal
+rains, are seas of mud and rolling stones that sometimes lay waste, and
+bury beneath them acres, and even miles, of pasture and field and
+vineyard.[34]
+
+
+_Physical Decay of New Countries._
+
+I have remarked that the effects of human action on the forms of the
+earth's surface could not always be distinguished from those resulting
+from geological causes, and there is also much uncertainty in respect to
+the precise influence of the clearing and cultivating of the ground,
+and of other rural operations, upon climate. It is disputed whether
+either the mean or the extremes of temperature, the periods of the
+seasons, or the amount or distribution of precipitation and of
+evaporation, in any country whose annals are known, have undergone any
+change during the historical period. It is, indeed, impossible to doubt
+that many of the operations of the pioneer settler tend to produce great
+modifications in atmospheric humidity, temperature, and electricity; but
+we are at present unable to determine how far one set of effects is
+neutralized by another, or compensated by unknown agencies. This
+question scientific research is inadequate to solve, for want of the
+necessary data; but well conducted observation, in regions now first
+brought under the occupation of man, combined with such historical
+evidence as still exists, may be expected at no distant period to throw
+much light on this subject.
+
+Australia is, perhaps, the country from which we have a right to expect
+the fullest elucidation of these difficult and disputable problems. Its
+colonization did not commence until the physical sciences had become
+matter of almost universal attention, and is, indeed, so recent that the
+memory of living men embraces the principal epochs of its history; the
+peculiarities of its fauna, its flora, and its geology are such as to
+have excited for it the liveliest interest of the votaries of natural
+science; its mines have given its people the necessary wealth for
+procuring the means of instrumental observation, and the leisure
+required for the pursuit of scientific research; and large tracts of
+virgin forest and natural meadow are rapidly passing under the control
+of civilized man. Here, then, exist greater facilities and stronger
+motives for the careful study of the topics in question than have ever
+been found combined in any other theatre of European colonization.
+
+In North America, the change from the natural to the artificial
+condition of terrestrial surface began about the period when the most
+important instruments of meteorological observation were invented. The
+first settlers in the territory now constituting the United States and
+the British American provinces had other things to do than to tabulate
+barometrical and thermometrical readings, but there remain some
+interesting physical records from the early days of the colonies,[35]
+and there is still an immense extent of North American soil where the
+industry and the folly of man have as yet produced little appreciable
+change. Here, too, with the present increased facilities for scientific
+observation, the future effects, direct and contingent, of man's labors,
+can be measured, and such precautions taken in those rural processes
+which we call improvements, as to mitigate evils, perhaps, in some
+degree, inseparable from every attempt to control the action of natural
+laws.
+
+In order to arrive at safe conclusions, we must first obtain a more
+exact knowledge of the topography, and of the present superficial and
+climatic condition of countries where the natural surface is as yet more
+or less unbroken. This can only be accomplished by accurate surveys, and
+by a great multiplication of the points of meteorological registry,[36]
+already so numerous; and as, moreover, considerable changes in the
+proportion of forest and of cultivated land, or of dry and wholly or
+partially submerged surface, will often take place within brief periods,
+it is highly desirable that the attention of observers, in whose
+neighborhood the clearing of the soil, or the drainage of lakes and
+swamps, or other great works of rural improvement, are going on or
+meditated, should be especially drawn not only to revolutions in
+atmospheric temperature and precipitation, but to the more easily
+ascertained and perhaps more important local changes produced by these
+operations in the temperature and the hygrometric state of the
+superficial strata of the earth, and in its spontaneous vegetable and
+animal products.
+
+The rapid extension of railroads, which now everywhere keeps pace with,
+and sometimes even precedes, the occupation of new soil for agricultural
+purposes, furnishes great facilities for enlarging our knowledge of the
+topography of the territory they traverse, because their cuttings reveal
+the composition and general structure of surface, and the inclination
+and elevation of their lines constitute known hypsometrical sections,
+which give numerous points of departure for the measurement of higher
+and lower stations, and of course for determining the relief and
+depression of surface, the slope of the beds of watercourses, and many
+other not less important questions.[37]
+
+The geological, hydrographical, and topographical surveys, which almost
+every general and even local government of the civilized world is
+carrying on, are making yet more important contributions to our stock of
+geographical and general physical knowledge, and, within a comparatively
+short space, there will be an accumulation of well established constant
+and historical facts, from which we can safely reason upon all the
+relations of action and reaction between man and external nature.
+
+But we are, even now, breaking up the floor and wainscoting and doors
+and window frames of our dwelling, for fuel to warm our bodies and
+seethe our pottage, and the world cannot afford to wait till the slow
+and sure progress of exact science has taught it a better economy. Many
+practical lessons have been learned by the common observation of
+unschooled men; and the teachings of simple experience, on topics where
+natural philosophy has scarcely yet spoken, are not to be despised.
+
+In these humble pages, which do not in the least aspire to rank among
+scientific expositions of the laws of nature, I shall attempt to give
+the most important practical conclusions suggested by the history of
+man's efforts to replenish the earth and subdue it; and I shall aim to
+support those conclusions by such facts and illustrations only as
+address themselves to the understanding of every intelligent reader, and
+as are to be found recorded in works capable of profitable perusal, or
+at least consultation, by persons who have not enjoyed a special
+scientific training.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+TRANSFER, MODIFICATION, AND EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLE AND OF ANIMAL
+SPECIES.
+
+MODERN GEOGRAPHY EMBRACES ORGANIC LIFE--TRANSFER OF VEGETABLE LIFE--
+FOREIGN PLANTS GROWN IN THE UNITED STATES--AMERICAN PLANTS GROWS IN
+EUROPE--MODES OF INTRODUCTION OF FOREIGN PLANTS--VEGETABLES, HOW
+AFFECTED BY TRANSFER TO FOREIGN SOILS--EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLES--
+ORIGIN OF DOMESTIC PLANTS--ORGANIC LIFE AS A GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL
+AGENCY--ORIGIN AND TRANSFER OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS--EXTIRPATION OF
+ANIMALS--NUMBERS OF BIRDS IN THE UNITED STATES--BIRDS AS SOWERS AND
+CONSUMERS OF SEEDS, AND AS DESTROYERS OF INSECTS--DIMINUTION AND
+EXTIRPATION OF BIRDS--INTRODUCTION OF BIRDS--UTILITY OF INSECTS AND
+WORMS--INTRODUCTION OF INSECTS--DESTRUCTION OF INSECTS--REPTILES--
+DESTRUCTION OF FISH--INTRODUCTION AND BREEDING OF FISH--EXTIRPATION
+OF AQUATIC ANIMALS--MINUTE ORGANISMS.
+
+
+_Modern Geography embraces Organic Life._
+
+It was a narrow view of geography which confined that science to
+delineation of terrestrial surface and outline, and to description of
+the relative position and magnitude of land and water. In its improved
+form, it embraces not only the globe itself, but the living things which
+vegetate or move upon it, the varied influences they exert upon each
+other, the reciprocal action and reaction between them and the earth
+they inhabit. Even if the end of geographical studies were only to
+obtain a knowledge of the external forms of the mineral and fluid masses
+which constitute the globe, it would still be necessary to take into
+account the element of life; for every plant, every animal, is a
+geographical agency, man a destructive, vegetables, and even wild
+beasts, restorative powers. The rushing waters sweep down earth from the
+uplands; in the first moment of repose, vegetation seeks to reestablish
+itself on the bared surface, and, by the slow deposit of its decaying
+products, to raise again the soil which the torrent had lowered. So
+important an element of reconstruction is this, that it has been
+seriously questioned whether, upon the whole, vegetation does not
+contribute as much to elevate, as the waters to depress, the level of
+the surface.
+
+Whenever man has transported a plant from its native habitat to a new
+soil, he has introduced a new geographical force to act upon it, and
+this generally at the expense of some indigenous growth which the
+foreign vegetable has supplanted. The new and the old plants are rarely
+the equivalents of each other, and the substitution of an exotic for a
+native tree, shrub, or grass, increases or diminishes the relative
+importance of the vegetable element in the geography of the country to
+which it is removed. Further, man sows that he may reap. The products of
+agricultural industry are not suffered to rot upon the ground, and thus
+raise it by an annual stratum of new mould. They are gathered,
+transported to greater or less distances, and after they have served
+their uses in human economy, they enter, on the final decomposition of
+their elements, into new combinations, and are only in small proportion
+returned to the soil on which they grew. The roots of the grasses, and
+of many other cultivated plants, however, usually remain and decay in
+the earth, and contribute to raise its surface, though certainly not in
+the same degree as the forest.
+
+The vegetables, which have taken the place of trees, unquestionably
+perform many of the same functions. They radiate heat, they condense the
+humidity of the atmosphere, they act upon the chemical constitution of
+the air, their roots penetrate the earth to greater depths than is
+commonly supposed, and form an inextricable labyrinth of filaments which
+bind the soil together and prevent its erosion by water. The
+broad-leaved annuals and perennials, too, shade the ground, and prevent
+the evaporation of moisture from its surface by wind and sun.[38] At a
+certain stage of growth, grass land is probably a more energetic
+radiator and condenser than even the forest, but this powerful action is
+exerted, in its full intensity, for a few days only, while trees
+continue such functions, with unabated vigor, for many months in
+succession. Upon the whole, it seems quite certain, that no cultivated
+ground is as efficient in tempering climatic extremes, or in
+conservation of geographical surface and outline, as is the soil which
+nature herself has planted.
+
+
+_Transfer of Vegetable Life._
+
+It belongs to vegetable and animal geography, which are almost sciences
+of themselves, to point out in detail what man has done to change the
+distribution of plants and of animated life and to revolutionize the
+aspect of organic nature; but some of the more important facts bearing
+on this subject may pertinently be introduced here. Most of the fruit
+trees grown in Europe and the United States are believed, and--if the
+testimony of Pliny and other ancient naturalists is to be depended
+upon--many of them are historically known, to have originated in the
+temperate climates of Asia. The wine grape has been thought to be truly
+indigenous only in the regions bordering on the eastern end of the Black
+Sea, where it now, particularly on the banks of the Rion, the ancient
+Phasis, propagates itself spontaneously, and grows with unexampled
+luxuriance.[39] But, some species of the vine seem native to Europe, and
+many varieties of grape have been too long known as common to every part
+of the United States to admit of the supposition that they were all
+introduced by European colonists.[40]
+
+It is an interesting fact that the commerce--or at least the maritime
+carrying trade--and the agricultural and mechanical industry of the
+world are, in very large proportion, dependent on vegetable and animal
+products little or not at all known to ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish
+civilization. In many instances, the chief supply of these articles
+comes from countries to which they are probably indigenous, and where
+they are still almost exclusively grown; but in many others, the plants
+or animals from which they are derived have been introduced by man into
+the regions now remarkable for their most successful cultivation, and
+that, too, in comparatively recent times, or, in other words, within two
+or three centuries.
+
+
+_Foreign Plants grown in the United States._
+
+According to Bigelow, the United States had, on the first of June, 1860,
+in round numbers, 163,000,000 acres of improved land, the quantity
+having been increased by 50,000,000 acres within the ten years next
+preceding.[41] Not to mention less important crops, this land produced,
+in the year ending on the day last mentioned, in round numbers,
+171,000,000 bushels of wheat, 21,000,000 bushels of rye, 172,000,000
+bushels of oats, 15,000,000 bushels of pease and beans, 16,000,000
+bushels of barley, orchard fruits to the value of $20,000,000, 900,000
+bushels of cloverseed, 900,000 bushels of other grass seed, 104,000 tons
+of hemp, 4,000,000 pounds of flax, and 600,000 pounds of flaxseed. These
+vegetable growths were familiar to ancient European agriculture, but
+they were all introduced into North America after the close of the
+sixteenth century.
+
+Of the fruits of agricultural industry unknown to the Greeks and Romans,
+or too little employed by them to be of any commercial importance, the
+United States produced, in the same year, 187,000,000 pounds of rice,
+18,000,000 bushels of buckwheat, 2,075,000,000 pounds of ginned
+cotton,[42] 302,000,000 pounds of cane sugar, 16,000,000 gallons of
+cane molasses, 7,000,000 gallons of sorghum molasses, all yielded by
+vegetables introduced into that country within two hundred years,
+and--with the exception of buckwheat, the origin of which is uncertain,
+and of cotton--all, directly or indirectly, from the East Indies;
+besides, from indigenous plants unknown to ancient agriculture,
+830,000,000 bushels of Indian corn or maize, 429,000,000 pounds of
+tobacco, 110,000,000 bushels of potatoes, 42,000,000 bushels of sweet
+potatoes, 39,000,000 pounds of maple sugar, and 2,000,000 gallons of
+maple molasses. To all this we are to add 19,000,000 tons of hay,
+produced partly by new, partly by long known, partly by exotic, partly
+by native herbs and grasses, an incalculable quantity of garden
+vegetables, chiefly of European or Asiatic origin, and many minor
+agricultural products.
+
+The weight of this harvest of a year would be not less than 60,000,000
+tons--which is eleven times the tonnage of all the shipping of the
+United States at the close of the year 1861--and, with the exception of
+the maple sugar, the maple molasses, and the products of the Western
+prairie lands and some small Indian clearings, it was all grown upon
+lands wrested from the forest by the European race within little more
+than two hundred years. The wants of Europe have introduced into the
+colonies of tropical America the sugar cane, the coffee plant, the
+orange and the lemon,[43] all of Oriental origin, have immensely
+stimulated the cultivation of the former two in the countries of which
+they are natives, and, of course, promoted agricultural operations which
+must have affected the geography of those regions to an extent
+proportionate to the scale on which they have been pursued.
+
+
+_American Plants grown in Europe._
+
+America has partially repaid her debt to the Eastern continent. Maize
+and the potato are very valuable additions to the field agriculture of
+Europe and the East, and the tomato is no mean gift to the kitchen
+gardens of the Old World, though certainly not an adequate return for
+the multitude of esculent roots and leguminous plants which the European
+colonists carried with them.[44] I wish I could believe, with some, that
+America is not alone responsible for the introduction of the filthy
+weed, tobacco, the use of which is the most vulgar and pernicious habit
+engrafted by the semi-barbarism of modern civilization upon the less
+multifarious sensualism of ancient life;[45] but the alleged occurrence
+of pipe-like objects in Sclavonic, and, it has been said, in Hungarian
+sepulchres, is hardly sufficient evidence to convict those races of
+complicity in this grave offence against the temperance and the
+refinement of modern society.
+
+
+_Modes of Introduction of Foreign Plants._
+
+Besides the vegetables I have mentioned, we know that many plants of
+smaller economical value have been the subjects of international
+exchange in very recent times. Busbequius, Austrian ambassador at
+Constantinople about the middle of the sixteenth century--whose letters
+contain one of the best accounts of Turkish life which have appeared
+down to the present day--brought home from the Ottoman capital the lilac
+and the tulip. The Belgian Clusius about the same time introduced from
+the East the horse chestnut, which has since wandered to America. The
+weeping willows of Europe and the United States are said to have sprung
+from a slip received from Smyrna by the poet Pope, and planted by him in
+an English garden; and the Portuguese declare that the progenitor of all
+the European and American oranges was an Oriental tree transplanted to
+Lisbon, and still living in the last generation.[46] The present
+favorite flowers of the parterres of Europe have been imported from
+America, Japan and other remote Oriental countries, within a century and
+a half, and, in fine, there are few vegetables of any agricultural
+importance, few ornamental trees or decorative plants, which are not now
+common to the three civilized continents.
+
+The statistics of vegetable emigration exhibit numerical results quite
+surprising to those not familiar with the subject. The lonely island of
+St. Helena is described as producing, at the time of its discovery in
+the year 1501, about sixty vegetable species, including some three or
+four known to grow elsewhere also. At the present time its flora numbers
+seven hundred and fifty species. Humboldt and Bonpland found, among the
+unquestionably indigenous plants of tropical America, monocotyledons
+only, all the dicotyledons of those extensive regions having been
+probably introduced after the colonization of the New World by Spain.
+
+The faculty of spontaneous reproduction and perpetuation necessarily
+supposes a greater power of accommodation, within a certain range, than
+we find in most domesticated plants, for it would rarely happen that the
+seed of a wild plant would fall into ground as nearly similar, in
+composition and condition, to that where its parent grew, as the soils
+of different fields artificially prepared for growing a particular
+vegetable are to each other. Accordingly, though every wild species
+affects a habitat of a particular character, it is found that, if
+accidentally or designedly sown elsewhere, it will grow under conditions
+extremely unlike those of its birthplace.[47] Cooper says: "We cannot
+say positively that _any_ plant is _uncultivable_ anywhere until it has
+been tried;" and this seems to be even more true of wild than of
+domesticated vegetation.
+
+The seven hundred new species which have found their way to St. Helena
+within three centuries and a half, were certainly not all, or even in
+the largest proportion, designedly planted there by human art, and if we
+were well acquainted with vegetable emigration, we should probably be
+able to show that man has intentionally transferred fewer plants than he
+has accidentally introduced into countries foreign to them. After the
+wheat, follow the tares that infest it. The weeds that grow among the
+cereal grains, the pests of the kitchen garden, are the same in America
+as in Europe.[48] The overturning of a wagon, or any of the thousand
+accidents which befall the emigrant in his journey across the Western
+plains, may scatter upon the ground the seeds he designed for his
+garden, and the herbs which fill so important a place in the rustic
+materia medica of the Eastern States, spring up along the prairie paths
+but just opened by the caravan of the settler.[49] The hortus siccus of
+a botanist may accidentally sow seeds from the foot of the Himalayas on
+the plains that skirt the Alps; and it is a fact of very familiar
+observation, that exotics, transplanted to foreign climates suited to
+their growth, often escape from the flower garden and naturalize
+themselves among the spontaneous vegetation of the pastures. When the
+cases containing the artistic treasures of Thorvaldsen were opened in
+the court of the museum where they are deposited, the straw and grass
+employed in packing them were scattered upon the ground, and the next
+season there sprang up from the seeds no less than twenty-five species
+of plants belonging to the Roman campagna, some of which were preserved
+and cultivated as a new tribute to the memory of the great Scandinavian
+sculptor, and at least four are said to have spontaneously naturalized
+themselves about Copenhagen.[50] In the campaign of 1814, the Russian
+troops brought, in the stuffing of their saddles and by other accidental
+means, seeds from the banks of the Dnieper to the valley of the Rhine,
+and even introduced the plants of the steppes into the environs of
+Paris. The Turkish armies, in their incursions into Europe, brought
+Eastern vegetables in their train, and left the seeds of Oriental wall
+plants to grow upon the ramparts of Buda and Vienna.[51] The Canada
+thistle, _Erigeron Canadense_, is said to have sprung up in Europe, two
+hundred years ago, from a seed which dropped out of the stuffed skin of
+a bird.[52]
+
+
+_Vegetables, how affected by Transfer to Foreign Soils._
+
+Vegetables, naturalized abroad either by accident or design, sometimes
+exhibit a greatly increased luxuriance of growth. The European cardoon,
+an esculent thistle, has broken out from the gardens of the Spanish
+colonies on the La Plata, acquired a gigantic stature, and propagated
+itself, in impenetrable thickets, over hundreds of leagues of the
+Pampas; and the _Anacharis alsinastrum_, a water plant not much inclined
+to spread in its native American habitat, has found its way into English
+rivers, and extended itself to such a degree as to form a serious
+obstruction to the flow of the current, and even to navigation.
+
+Not only do many wild plants exhibit a remarkable facility of
+accommodation, but their seeds usually possess great tenacity of life,
+and their germinating power resists very severe trials. Hence, while the
+seeds of very many cultivated vegetables lose their vitality in two or
+three years, and can be transported safely to distant countries only
+with great precautions, the weeds that infest those vegetables, though
+not cared for by man, continue to accompany him in his migrations, and
+find a new home on every soil he colonizes. Nature fights in defence of
+her free children, but wars upon them when they have deserted her
+banners and tamely submitted to the dominion of man.[53]
+
+Not only is the wild plant much hardier than the domesticated vegetable,
+but the same law prevails in animated brute and even human life. The
+beasts of the chase are more capable of endurance and privation and more
+tenacious of life, than the domesticated animals which most nearly
+resemble them. The savage fights on, after he has received half a dozen
+mortal wounds, the least of which would have instantly paralyzed the
+strength of his civilized enemy, and, like the wild boar,[54] he has
+been known to press forward along the shaft of the spear which was
+transpiercing his vitals, and to deal a deathblow on the soldier who
+wielded it.
+
+True, domesticated plants can be gradually acclimatized to bear a degree
+of heat or of cold, which, in their wild state, they would not have
+supported; the trained English racer outstrips the swiftest horse of the
+pampas or prairies, perhaps even the less systematically educated
+courser of the Arab; the strength of the European, as tested by the
+dynamometer, is greater than that of the New Zealander. But all these
+are instances of excessive development of particular capacities and
+faculties at the expense of general vital power. Expose untamed and
+domesticated forms of life, together, to an entire set of physical
+conditions equally alien to the former habits of both, so that every
+power of resistance and accommodation shall be called into action, and
+the wild plant or animal will live, while the domesticated will perish.
+
+The saline atmosphere of the sea is specially injurious both to seeds
+and to very many young plants, and it is only recently that the
+transportation of some very important vegetables across the ocean has
+been made practicable, through the invention of Ward's airtight glass
+cases. It is by this means that large numbers of the trees which produce
+the Jesuit's bark have been successfully transplanted from America to
+the British possessions in the East, where it is hoped they will become
+fully naturalized.
+
+
+_Extirpation of Vegetables._
+
+Lamentable as are the evils produced by the too general felling of the
+woods in the Old World, I believe it does not satisfactorily appear that
+any species of native forest tree has yet been extirpated by man on the
+Eastern continent. The roots, stumps, trunks, and foliage found in bogs
+are recognized as belonging to still extant species. Except in some few
+cases where there is historical evidence that foreign material was
+employed, the timber of the oldest European buildings, and even of the
+lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, is evidently the product of trees
+still common in or near the countries where such architectural remains
+are found; nor have the Egyptian catacombs themselves revealed to us the
+former existence of any woods not now familiar to us as the growth of
+still living trees.[55] It is, however, said that the yew tree, _Taxus
+baccata_, formerly very common in England, Germany, and--as we are
+authorized to infer from Theophrastus--in Greece, has almost wholly
+disappeared from the latter country, and seems to be dying out in
+Germany. The wood of the yew surpasses that of any other European tree
+in closeness and fineness of grain, and it is well known for the
+elasticity which of old made it so great a favorite with the English
+archer. It is much in request among wood carvers and turners, and the
+demand for it explains, in part, its increasing scarcity. It is also
+worth remarking that no insect depends upon it for food or shelter, or
+aids in its fructification, no bird feeds upon its berries--the latter a
+circumstance of some importance, because the tree hence wants one means
+of propagation or diffusion common to so many other plants. But it is
+alleged that the reproductive power of the yew is exhausted, and that it
+can no longer be readily propagated by the natural sowing of its seeds,
+or by artificial methods. If further investigation and careful
+experiment should establish this fact, it will go far to show that a
+climatic change, of a character unfavorable to the growth of the yew,
+has really taken place in Germany, though not yet proved by instrumental
+observation, and the most probable cause of such change would be found
+in the diminution of the area covered by the forests.
+
+The industry of man is said to have been so successful in the local
+extirpation of noxious or useless vegetables in China, that, with the
+exception of a few water plants in the rice grounds, it is sometimes
+impossible to find a single weed in an extensive district; and the late
+eminent agriculturist, Mr. Coke, is reported to have offered in vain a
+considerable reward for the detection of a weed in a large wheatfield on
+his estate in England. In these cases, however, there is no reason to
+suppose that diligent husbandry has done more than to eradicate the
+pests of agriculture within a comparatively limited area, and the cockle
+and the darnel will probably remain to plague the slovenly cultivator as
+long as the cereal grains continue to bless him.[56]
+
+
+_Origin of Domestic Plants._
+
+One of the most important, and, at the same time, most difficult
+questions connected with our subject is: how far we are to regard our
+cereal grains, our esculent bulbs and roots, and the multiplied tree
+fruits of our gardens, as artificially modified and improved forms of
+wild, self-propagating vegetation. The narratives of botanical
+travellers have often announced the discovery of the original form and
+habitat of domesticated plants, and scientific journals have described
+the experiments by which the identity of particular wild and cultivated
+vegetables has been thought to be established. It is confidently
+affirmed that maize and the potato--which we must suppose to have been
+first cultivated at a much later period than the breadstuffs and most
+other esculent vegetables of Europe and the East--are found wild and
+self-propagating in Spanish America, though in forms not recognizable by
+the common observer as identical with the familiar corn and tuber of
+modern agriculture. It was lately asserted, upon what seemed very strong
+evidence, that the _AEgilops ovata_, a plant growing wild in Southern
+France, had been actually converted into common wheat; but, upon a
+repetition of the experiments, later observers have declared that the
+apparent change was only a case of temporary hybridation or fecundation
+by the pollen of true wheat, and that the grass alleged to be
+transformed into wheat could not be perpetuated as such from its own
+seed.
+
+The very great modifications which cultivated plants are constantly
+undergoing under our eyes, and the numerous varieties and races which
+spring up among them, certainly countenance the doctrine, that every
+domesticated vegetable, however dependent upon human care for growth and
+propagation in its present form, may have been really derived, by a long
+succession of changes, from some wild plant not now much resembling it.
+But it is, in every case, a question of evidence. The only satisfactory
+proof that a given wild plant is identical with a given garden or field
+vegetable, is the test of experiment, the actual growing of the one from
+the seed of the other, or the conversion of the one into the other by
+transplantation and change of conditions. It is hardly contended that
+any of the cereals or other plants important as human aliment, or as
+objects of agricultural industry, exist and propagate themselves
+uncultivated in the same form and with the same properties as when sown
+and reared by human art.[57] In fact, the cases are rare where the
+identity of a wild with a domesticated plant is considered by the best
+authorities as conclusively established, and we are warranted in
+affirming of but few of the latter, as a historically known or
+experimentally proved fact, that they ever did exist, or could exist,
+independently of man.[58]
+
+
+_Organic Life as a Geological and Geographical Agency._
+
+The quantitative value of organic life, as a geological agency, seems to
+be inversely as the volume of the individual organism; for nature
+supplies by numbers what is wanting in the bulk of the plant or animal
+out of whose remains or structures she forms strata covering whole
+provinces, and builds up from the depths of the sea large islands, if
+not continents. There are, it is true, near the mouths of the great
+Siberian rivers which empty themselves into the Polar Sea, drift islands
+composed, in an incredibly large proportion, of the bones and tusks of
+elephants, mastodons, and other huge pachyderms, and many extensive
+caves in various parts of the world are half filled with the skeletons
+of quadrupeds, sometimes lying loose in the earth, sometimes cemented
+together into an osseous breccia by a calcareous deposit or other
+binding material. These remains of large animals, though found in
+comparatively late formations, generally belong to extinct species, and
+their modern congeners or representatives do not exist in sufficient
+numbers to be of sensible importance in geology or in geography by the
+mere mass of their skeletons.[59] But the vegetable products found with
+them, and, in rare cases, in the stomachs of some of them, are those of
+yet extant plants; and besides this evidence, the recent discovery of
+works of human art, deposited in juxtaposition with fossil bones, and
+evidently at the same time and by the same agency which buried these
+latter--not to speak of alleged human bones found in the same
+strata--proves that the animals whose former existence they testify were
+contemporaneous with man, and possibly even extirpated by him.[60] I do
+not propose to enter upon the thorny question, whether the existing
+races of man are genealogically connected with these ancient types of
+humanity, and I advert to these facts only for the sake of the
+suggestion that man, in his earliest known stages of existence, was
+probably a destructive power upon the earth, though perhaps not so
+emphatically as his present representatives.
+
+The larger wild animals are not now numerous enough in any one region to
+form extensive deposits by their remains; but they have, nevertheless, a
+certain geographical importance. If the myriads of large browsing and
+grazing quadrupeds which wander over the plains of Southern Africa--and
+the slaughter of which by thousands is the source of a ferocious
+pleasure and a brutal triumph to professedly civilized hunters--if the
+herds of the American bison, which are numbered by hundreds of
+thousands, do not produce visible changes in the forms of terrestrial
+surface, they have at least an immense influence on the growth and
+distribution of vegetable life, and, of course, indirectly upon all the
+physical conditions of soil and climate between which and vegetation a
+mutual interdependence exists.
+
+The influence of wild quadrupeds upon vegetable life has been little
+studied, and not many facts bearing upon it have been recorded, but, so
+far as it is known, it appears to be conservative rather than
+pernicious.[61] Few if any of them depend for their subsistence on
+vegetable products obtainable only by the destruction of the plant, and
+they seem to confine their consumption almost exclusively to the annual
+harvest of leaf or twig, or at least of parts of the vegetable easily
+reproduced. If there are exceptions to this rule, they are in cases
+where the numbers of the animal are so proportioned to the abundance of
+the vegetable, that there is no danger of the extermination of the plant
+from the voracity of the quadruped, or of the extinction of the
+quadruped from the scarcity of the plant. In diet and natural wants the
+bison resembles the ox, the ibex and the chamois assimilate themselves
+to the goat and the sheep; but while the wild animal does not appear to
+be a destructive agency in the garden of nature, his domestic congeners
+are eminently so. This is partly from the change of habits resulting
+from domestication and association with man, partly from the fact that
+the number of reclaimed animals is not determined by the natural
+relation of demand and spontaneous supply which regulates the
+multiplication of wild creatures, but by the convenience of man, who is,
+in comparatively few things, amenable to the control of the merely
+physical arrangements of nature. When the domesticated animal escapes
+from human jurisdiction, as in the case of the ox, the horse, the goat,
+and perhaps the ass--which, so far as I know, are the only
+well-authenticated instances of the complete emancipation of household
+quadrupeds--he becomes again an unresisting subject of nature, and all
+his economy is governed by the same laws as that of his fellows which
+have never been enslaved by man; but, so long as he obeys a human lord,
+he is an auxiliary in the warfare his master is ever waging against all
+existences except those which he can tame to a willing servitude.
+
+
+_Number of Quadrupeds in the United States._
+
+Civilization is so intimately associated with, if not dependent upon,
+certain inferior forms of animal life, that cultivated man has never
+failed to accompany himself, in all his migrations, with some of these
+humble attendants. The ox, the horse, the sheep, and even the
+comparatively useless dog and cat, as well as several species of
+poultry, are voluntarily transported by every emigrant colony, and they
+soon multiply to numbers very far exceeding those of the wild genera
+most nearly corresponding to them.[62] According to the census of the
+United States for 1860,[63] the total number of horses in all the
+States of the American Union, was, in round numbers, 7,300,000; of asses
+and mules, 1,300,000; of the ox tribe, 29,000,000;[64] of sheep,
+25,000,000; and of swine, 39,000,000. The only North American quadruped
+sufficiently gregarious in habits, and sufficiently multiplied in
+numbers, to form really large herds, is the bison, or, as he is commonly
+called in America, the buffalo; and this animal is confined to the
+prairie region of the Mississippi basin and Northern Mexico. The
+engineers sent out to survey railroad routes to the Pacific estimated
+the number of a single herd of bisons seen within the last ten years on
+the great plains near the Upper Missouri, at not less than 200,000, and
+yet the range occupied by this animal is now very much smaller in area
+than it was when the whites first established themselves on the
+prairies.[65] But it must be remarked that the American buffalo is a
+migratory animal, and that, at the season of his annual journeys, the
+whole stock of a vast extent of pasture ground is collected into a
+single army, which is seen at or very near any one point only for a few
+days during the entire season. Hence there is risk of great error in
+estimating the numbers of the bison in a given district from the
+magnitude of the herds seen at or about the same time at a single place
+of observation; and, upon the whole, it is neither proved nor probable
+that the bison was ever, at any one time, as numerous in North America
+as the domestic bovine species is at present. The elk, the moose, the
+musk ox, the caribou, and the smaller quadrupeds popularly embraced
+under the general name of deer,[66] though sufficient for the wants of a
+sparse savage population, were never numerically very abundant, and the
+carnivora which fed upon them were still less so. It is almost needless
+to add that the Rocky Mountain sheep and goat must always have been very
+rare.
+
+Summing up the whole, then, it is evident that the wild quadrupeds of
+North America, even when most numerous, were few compared with their
+domestic successors, that they required a much less supply of vegetable
+food, and consequently were far less important as geographical elements
+than the many millions of hoofed and horned cattle now fed by civilized
+man on the same continent.
+
+
+_Origin and Transfer of Domestic Quadrupeds._
+
+Of the origin of our domestic animals, we know historically nothing,
+because their domestication belongs to the ages which preceded written
+history; but though they cannot all be specifically identified with now
+extant wild animals, it is presumable that they have been reclaimed from
+an originally wild state. Ancient annalists have preserved to us fewer
+data respecting the introduction of domestic animals into new countries
+than respecting the transplantation of domestic vegetables. Ritter, in
+his learned essay on the camel, has shown that this animal was not
+employed by the Egyptians until a comparatively late period in their
+history; that he was unknown to the Carthaginians until after the
+downfall of their commonwealth; and that his first appearance in Western
+Africa is more recent still. The Bactrian camel was certainly brought
+from Asia Minor to the Northern shores of the Black Sea, by the Goths,
+in the third or fourth century.[67] The Arabian single-humped camel, or
+dromedary, has been carried to the Canary Islands, partially introduced
+into Australia, Greece, Spain, and even Tuscany, experimented upon to
+little purpose in Venezuela, and finally imported by the American
+Government into Texas and New Mexico, where it finds the climate and the
+vegetable products best suited to its wants, and promises to become a
+very useful agent in the promotion of the special civilization for which
+those regions are adapted. America had no domestic quadruped but a
+species of dog, the lama tribe, and, to a certain extent, the bison or
+buffalo.[68] Of course, it owes the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep,
+the goat, and the swine, as does also Australia, to European
+colonization. Modern Europe has, thus far, not accomplished much in the
+way of importation of new animals, though some interesting essays have
+been made. The reindeer was successfully introduced into Iceland about a
+century ago, while similar attempts failed, about the same time, in
+Scotland. The Cashmere or Thibet goat was brought to France a generation
+since, and succeeds well. The same or an allied species and the Asiatic
+buffalo were carried to South Carolina about the year 1850, and the
+former, at least, is thought likely to prove of permanent value in the
+United States. The yak, or Tartary ox, seems to thrive in France, and
+success has attended the recent efforts to introduce the South American
+alpaca into Europe.
+
+
+_Extirpation of Quadrupeds._
+
+Although man never fails greatly to diminish, and is perhaps destined
+ultimately to exterminate, such of the larger wild quadrupeds as he
+cannot profitably domesticate, yet their numbers often fluctuate, and
+even after they seem almost extinct, they sometimes suddenly increase,
+without any intentional steps to promote such a result on his part.
+During the wars which followed the French Revolution, the wolf
+multiplied in many parts of Europe, partly because the hunters were
+withdrawn from the woods to chase a nobler game, and partly because the
+bodies of slain men and horses supplied this voracious quadruped with
+more abundant food. The same animal became again more numerous in Poland
+after the general disarming of the rural population by the Russian
+Government. On the other hand, when the hunters pursue the wolf, the
+graminivorous wild quadrupeds increase, and thus in turn promote the
+multiplication of their great four-footed destroyer by augmenting the
+supply of his nourishment. So long as the fur of the beaver was
+extensively employed as a material for fine hats, it bore a very high
+price, and the chase of this quadruped was so keen that naturalists
+feared its speedy extinction. When a Parisian manufacturer invented the
+silk hat, which soon came into almost universal use, the demand for
+beavers' fur fell off, and this animal--whose habits, as we have seen,
+are an important agency in the formation of bogs and other modifications
+of forest nature--immediately began to increase, reappeared in haunts
+which he had long abandoned, and can no longer be regarded as rare
+enough to be in immediate danger of extirpation. Thus the convenience or
+the caprice of Parisian fashion has unconsciously exercised an influence
+which may sensibly affect the physical geography of a distant continent.
+
+Since the invention of gunpowder, some quadrupeds have completely
+disappeared from many European and Asiatic countries where they were
+formerly numerous. The last wolf was killed in Great Britain two hundred
+years ago, and the bear was extirpated from that island still earlier.
+The British wild ox exists only in a few English and Scottish parks,
+while in Irish bogs, of no great apparent antiquity, are found antlers
+which testify to the former existence of a stag much larger than any
+extant European species. The lion is believed to have inhabited Asia
+Minor and Syria, and probably Greece and Sicily also, long after the
+commencement of the historical period, and he is even said to have been
+not yet extinct in the first-named two of these countries at the time of
+the first Crusades.[69] Two large graminivorous or browsing quadrupeds,
+the ur and the schelk, once common in Germany, are utterly extinct, the
+eland and the auerochs nearly so. The Nibelungen-Lied, which, in the
+oldest form preserved to us, dates from about the year 1,200, though its
+original composition no doubt belongs to an earlier period, thus sings:
+
+  Then slowe the dowghtie Sigfrid a wisent and an elk,
+  He smote four stoute uroxen and a grim and sturdie schelk.[70]
+
+Modern naturalists identify the elk with the eland, the wisent with the
+auerochs. The period when the ur and the schelk became extinct is not
+known. The auerochs survived in Prussia until the middle of the last
+century, but unless it is identical with a similar quadruped said to be
+found on the Caucasus, it now exists only in the Russian imperial forest
+of Bialowitz, where about a thousand are still preserved, and in some
+great menageries, as for example that at Schoenbrunn, near Vienna, which,
+in 1852, had four specimens. The eland, which is closely allied to the
+American wapiti, if not specifically the same animal, is still kept in
+the royal preserves of Prussia, to the number of four or five hundred
+individuals. The chamois is becoming rare, and the ibex or steinbock,
+once common in all the high Alps, is now believed to be confined to the
+Cogne mountains in Piedmont, between the valleys of the Dora Baltea and
+the Orco.
+
+
+_Number of Birds in the United States._
+
+The tame fowls play a much less conspicuous part in rural life than the
+quadrupeds, and, in their relations to the economy of nature, they are
+of very much less moment than four-footed animals, or than the
+undomesticated birds. The domestic turkey[71] is probably more numerous
+in the territory of the United States than the wild bird of the same
+species ever was, and the grouse cannot, at the period of their greatest
+abundance, have counted as many as we now number of the common hen. The
+dove, however, must fall greatly short of the wild pigeon in multitude,
+and it is hardly probable that the flocks of domestic geese and ducks
+are as numerous as once were those of their wild congeners. The pigeon,
+indeed, seems to have multiplied immensely, for some years after the
+first clearings in the woods, because the settlers warred unsparingly
+upon the hawk, while the crops of grain and other vegetable growths
+increased the supply of food within the reach of the young birds, at the
+age when their power of flight is not yet great enough to enable them
+to seek it over a wide area.[72] The pigeon is not described by the
+earliest white inhabitants of the American States as filling the air
+with such clouds of winged life as astonish naturalists in the
+descriptions of Audubon, and, at the present day, the net and the gun
+have so reduced its abundance, that its appearance in large numbers is
+recorded only at long intervals, and it is never seen in the great
+flocks remembered by many still living observers as formerly very
+common.
+
+
+_Birds as Sowers and Consumers of Seeds, and as Destroyers of Insects._
+
+Wild birds form of themselves a very conspicuous and interesting feature
+in the _staffage_, as painters call it, of the natural landscape, and
+they are important elements in the view we are taking of geography,
+whether we consider their immediate or their incidental influence. Birds
+affect vegetation directly by sowing seeds and by consuming them; they
+affect it indirectly by destroying insects injurious, or, in some cases,
+beneficial to vegetable life. Hence, when we kill a seed-sowing bird, we
+check the dissemination of a plant; when we kill a bird which digests
+the seed it swallows, we promote the increase of a vegetable. Nature
+protects the seeds of wild, much more effectually than those of
+domesticated plants. The cereal grains are completely digested when
+consumed by birds, but the germ of the smaller stone fruits and of very
+many other wild vegetables is uninjured, perhaps even stimulated to more
+vigorous growth, by the natural chemistry of the bird's stomach. The
+power of flight and the restless habits of the bird enable it to
+transport heavy seeds to far greater distances than they could be
+carried by the wind. A swift-winged bird may drop cherry stones a
+thousand miles from the tree they grow on; a hawk, in tearing a pigeon,
+may scatter from its crop the still fresh rice it had swallowed at a
+distance of ten degrees of latitude,[73] and thus the occurrence of
+isolated plants in situations where their presence cannot otherwise well
+be explained, is easily accounted for. There is a large class of seeds
+apparently specially fitted by nature for dissemination by animals. I
+refer to those which attach themselves, by means of hooks, or by viscous
+juices, to the coats of quadrupeds and the feathers of birds, and are
+thus transported wherever their living vehicles may chance to wander.
+Some birds, too, deliberately bury seeds, not indeed with a foresight
+aiming directly at the propagation of the plant, but from apparently
+purposeless secretiveness, or as a mode of preserving food for future
+use.
+
+An unfortunate popular error greatly magnifies the injury done to the
+crops of grain and leguminous vegetables by wild birds. Very many of
+those generally supposed to consume large quantities of the seeds of
+cultivated plants really feed almost exclusively upon insects, and
+frequent the wheatfields, not for the sake of the grain, but for the
+eggs, larvae, and fly of the multiplied tribes of insect life which are
+so destructive to the harvests. This fact has been so well established
+by the examination of the stomachs of great numbers of birds in Europe
+and New England, at different seasons of the year, that it is no longer
+open to doubt, and it appears highly probable that even the species
+which consume more or less grain generally make amends, by destroying
+insects whose ravages would have been still more injurious.[74] On this
+subject, we have much other evidence besides that derived from
+dissection. Direct observation has shown, in many instances, that the
+destruction of wild birds has been followed by a great multiplication of
+noxious insects, and, on the other hand, that these latter have been
+much reduced in numbers by the protection and increase of the birds that
+devour them. Many interesting facts of this nature have been collected
+by professed naturalists, but I shall content myself with a few taken
+from familiar and generally accessible sources. The following extract is
+from Michelet, _L'Oiseau_ pp. 169, 170:
+
+"The _stingy_ farmer--an epithet justly and feelingly bestowed by
+Virgil. Avaricious, blind, indeed, who proscribes the birds--those
+destroyers of insects, those defenders of his harvests. Not a grain for
+the creature which, during the rains of winter, hunts the future insect,
+finds out the nests of the larvae, examines, turns over every leaf, and
+destroys, every day, thousands of incipient caterpillars. But sacks of
+corn for the mature insect, whole fields for the grasshoppers, which the
+bird would have made war upon. With eyes fixed upon his furrow, upon the
+present moment only, without seeing and without foreseeing, blind to the
+great harmony which is never broken with impunity, he has everywhere
+demanded or approved laws for the extermination of that necessary ally
+of his toil--the insectivorous bird. And the insect has well avenged the
+bird. It has become necessary to revoke in haste the proscription. In
+the Isle of Bourbon, for instance, a price was set on the head of the
+martin; it disappeared, and the grasshoppers took possession of the
+island, devouring, withering, scorching with a biting drought all that
+they did not consume. In North America it has been the same with the
+starling, the protector of Indian corn.[75] Even the sparrow, which
+really does attack grain, but which protects it still more, the
+pilferer, the outlaw, loaded with abuse and smitten with curses--it has
+been found in Hungary that they were likely to perish without him, that
+he alone could sustain the mighty war against the beetles and the
+thousand winged enemies that swarm in the lowlands; they have revoked
+the decree of banishment, recalled in haste this valiant militia, which,
+though deficient in discipline, is nevertheless the salvation of the
+country.[76]
+
+"Not long since, in the neighborhood of Rouen and in the valley of
+Monville, the blackbird was for some time proscribed. The beetles
+profited well by this proscription; their larvae, infinitely multiplied,
+carried on their subterranean labors with such success, that a meadow
+was shown me, the surface of which was completely dried up, every
+herbaceous root was consumed, and the whole grassy mantle, easily
+loosened, might have been rolled up and carried away like a carpet."
+
+
+_Diminution and Extirpation of Birds._
+
+The general hostility of the European populace to the smaller birds is,
+in part, the remote effect of the reaction created by the game laws.
+When the restrictions imposed upon the chase by those laws were suddenly
+removed in France, the whole people at once commenced a destructive
+campaign against every species of wild animal. Arthur Young, writing in
+Provence, on the 30th of August, 1789, soon after the National Assembly
+had declared the chase free, thus complains of the annoyance he
+experienced from the use made by the peasantry of their newly won
+liberty. "One would think that every rusty firelock in all Provence was
+at work in the indiscriminate destruction of all the birds. The wadding
+buzzed by my ears, or fell into my carriage, five or six times in the
+course of the day." * * "The declaration of the Assembly that every man
+is free to hunt on his own land * * has filled all France with an
+intolerable cloud of sportsmen. * * The declaration speaks of
+compensations and indemnities [to the _seigneurs_], but the ungovernable
+populace takes advantage of the abolition of the game laws and laughs at
+the obligation imposed by the decree."
+
+The French Revolution removed similar restrictions, with similar
+results, in other countries. The habits then formed have become
+hereditary on the Continent, and though game laws still exist in
+England, there is little doubt that the blind prejudices of the ignorant
+and half-educated classes in that country against birds are, in some
+degree, at least, due to a legislation, which, by restricting the chase
+of all game worth killing, drives the unprivileged sportsman to
+indemnify himself by slaughtering all wild life which is not reserved
+for the amusement of his betters. Hence the lord of the manor buys his
+partridges and his hares by sacrificing the bread of his tenants, and so
+long as the farmers of Crawley are forbidden to follow higher game, they
+will suicidally revenge themselves by destroying the sparrows which
+protect their wheatfields.
+
+On the Continent, and especially in Italy, the comparative scarcity and
+dearness of animal food combine with the feeling I have just mentioned
+to stimulate still further the destructive passions of the fowler. In
+the Tuscan province of Grosseto, containing less than 2,000 square
+miles, nearly 300,000 thrushes and other small birds are annually
+brought to market.[77]
+
+Birds are less hardy in constitution, they possess less facility of
+accommodation,[78] and they are more severely affected by climatic
+excess than quadrupeds. Besides, they generally want the means of
+shelter against the inclemency of the weather and against pursuit by
+their enemies, which holes and dens afford to burrowing animals and to
+some larger beasts of prey. The egg is exposed to many dangers before
+hatching, and the young bird is especially tender, defenceless, and
+helpless. Every cold rain, every violent wind, every hailstorm during
+the breeding season, destroys hundreds of nestlings, and the parent
+often perishes with her progeny while brooding over it in the vain
+effort to protect it.[79] The great proportional numbers of birds, their
+migratory habits, and the ease with which they may escape most dangers
+that beset them, would seem to secure them from extirpation, and even
+from very great numerical reduction. But experience shows that when not
+protected by law, by popular favor or superstition, or by other special
+circumstances, they yield very readily to the hostile influences of
+civilization, and, though the first operations of the settler are
+favorable to the increase of many species, the great extension of rural
+and of mechanical industry is, in a variety of ways, destructive even to
+tribes not directly warred upon by man.[80]
+
+Nature sets bounds to the disproportionate increase of birds, while at
+the same time, by the multitude of their resources, she secures them
+from extinction through her own spontaneous agencies. Man both preys
+upon them and wantonly destroys them. The delicious flavor of game
+birds, and the skill implied in the various arts of the sportsman who
+devotes himself to fowling, make them favorite objects of the chase,
+while the beauty of their plumage, as a military and feminine
+decoration, threatens to involve the sacrifice of the last survivor of
+many once numerous species. Thus far, but few birds described by ancient
+or modern naturalists are known to have become absolutely extinct,
+though there are some cases in which they are ascertained to have
+utterly disappeared from the face of the earth in very recent times. The
+most familiar instances are those of the dodo, a large bird peculiar to
+the Mauritius or Isle of France, exterminated about the year 1690, and
+now known only by two or three fragments of skeletons, and the solitary,
+which inhabited the islands of Bourbon and Rodriguez, but has not been
+seen for more than a century. A parrot and some other birds of the
+Norfolk Island group are said to have lately become extinct. The
+wingless auk, _Alca impennis_, a bird remarkable for its excessive
+fatness, was very abundant two or three hundred years ago in the Faroe
+Islands, and on the whole Scandinavian seaboard. The early voyagers
+found either the same or a closely allied species, in immense numbers,
+on all the coasts and islands of Newfoundland. The value of its flesh
+and its oil made it one of the most important resources of the
+inhabitants of those sterile regions, and it was naturally an object of
+keen pursuit. It is supposed to be now completely extinct, and few
+museums can show even its skeleton.
+
+There seems to be strong reason to believe that our boasted modern
+civilization is guiltless of one or two sins of extermination which have
+been committed in recent ages. New Zealand formerly possessed three
+species of dinornis, one of which, called _moa_ by the islanders, was
+much larger than the ostrich. The condition in which the bones of these
+birds have been found and the traditions of the natives concur to prove
+that, though the aborigines had probably extirpated them before the
+discovery of New Zealand by the whites, they still existed at a
+comparatively late period. The same remarks apply to a winged giant the
+eggs of which have been brought from Madagascar. This bird must have
+much exceeded the dimensions of the moa, at least so far as we can judge
+from the egg, which is eight times as large as the average size of the
+ostrich egg, or about one hundred and fifty times that of the hen.
+
+But though we have no evidence that man has exterminated many species of
+birds, we know that his persecutions have caused their disappearance
+from many localities where they once were common, and greatly diminished
+their numbers in others. The cappercailzie, _Tetrao urogallus_, the
+finest of the grouse family, formerly abundant in Scotland, had become
+extinct in Great Britain, but has been reintroduced from Sweden.[81] The
+ostrich is mentioned by all the old travellers, as common on the
+Isthmus of Suez down to the middle of the seventeenth century. It
+appears to have frequented Syria and even Asia Minor at earlier periods,
+but is now found only in the seclusion of remoter deserts.
+
+The modern increased facilities of transportation have brought distant
+markets within reach of the professional hunter, and thereby given a new
+impulse to his destructive propensities. Not only do all Great Britain
+and Ireland contribute to the supply of game for the British capital,
+but the canvas-back duck of the Potomac, and even the prairie hen from
+the basin of the Mississippi, may be found at the stalls of the London
+poulterer. Kohl[82] informs us that on the coasts of the North Sea,
+twenty thousand wild ducks are usually taken in the course of the season
+in a single decoy, and sent to the large maritime towns for sale. The
+statistics of the great European cities show a prodigious consumption of
+game birds, but the official returns fall far below the truth, because
+they do not include the rural districts, and because neither the poacher
+nor his customers report the number of his victims. Reproduction, in
+cultivated countries, cannot keep pace with this excessive destruction,
+and there is no doubt that all the wild birds which are chased for their
+flesh or their plumage are diminishing with a rapidity which justifies
+the fear that the last of them will soon follow the dodo and the
+wingless auk.
+
+Fortunately the larger birds which are pursued for their flesh or for
+their feathers, and those the eggs of which are used as food, are, so
+far as we know the functions appointed to them by nature, not otherwise
+specially useful to man, and, therefore, their wholesale destruction is
+an economical evil only in the same sense in which all waste of
+productive capital is an evil. If it were possible to confine the
+consumption of game fowl to a number equal to the annual increase, the
+world would be a gainer, but not to the same extent as it would be by
+checking the wanton sacrifice of millions of the smaller birds, which
+are of no real value as food, but which, as we have seen, render a most
+important service by battling, in our behalf, as well as in their own,
+against the countless legions of humming and of creeping things, with
+which the prolific powers of insect life would otherwise cover the
+earth.
+
+
+_Introduction of Birds._
+
+Man has undesignedly introduced into new districts perhaps fewer species
+of birds than of quadrupeds; but the distribution of birds is very much
+influenced by the character of his industry, and the transplantation of
+every object of agricultural production is, at a longer or shorter
+interval, followed by that of the birds which feed upon its seeds, or
+more frequently upon the insects it harbors. The vulture, the crow, and
+other winged scavengers, follow the march of armies as regularly as the
+wolf. Birds accompany ships on long voyages, for the sake of the offal
+which is thrown overboard, and, in such cases, it might often happen
+that they would breed and become naturalized in countries where they had
+been unknown before.[83] There is a familiar story of an English bird
+which built its nest in an unused block in the rigging of a ship, and
+made one or two short voyages with the vessel while hatching its eggs.
+Had the young become fledged while lying in a foreign harbor, they would
+of course have claimed the rights of citizenship in the country where
+they first took to the wing.[84]
+
+Some enthusiastic entomologist will, perhaps, by and by discover that
+insects and worms are as essential as the larger organisms to the proper
+working of the great terraqueous machine, and we shall have as eloquent
+pleas in defence of the mosquito, and perhaps even of the tzetze fly, as
+Toussenel and Michelet have framed in behalf of the bird.[85] The
+silkworm and the bee need no apologist; a gallnut produced by the
+puncture of an insect on a Syrian oak is a necessary ingredient in the
+ink I am writing with, and from my windows I recognize the grain of the
+kermes and the cochineal in the gay habiliments of the holiday groups
+beneath them. But agriculture, too, is indebted to the insect and the
+worm. The ancients, according to Pliny, were accustomed to hang
+branches of the wild fig upon the domestic tree, in order that the
+insects which frequented the former might hasten the ripening of the
+cultivated fig by their punctures--or, as others suppose, might fructify
+it by transporting to it the pollen of the wild fruit--and this process,
+called caprification, is not yet entirely obsolete. The earthworms long
+ago made good their title to the respect and gratitude of the farmer as
+well as of the angler. The utility of the earthworms has been pointed
+out in many scientific as well as in many agricultural treatises. The
+following extract, cut from a newspaper, will answer my present purpose:
+
+"Mr. Josiah Parkes, the consulting engineer of the Royal Agricultural
+Society of England, says that worms are great assistants to the drainer,
+and valuable aids to the farmer in keeping up the fertility of the soil.
+He says they love moist, but not wet soils; they will bore down to, but
+not into water; they multiply rapidly on land after drainage, and prefer
+a deeply dried soil. On examining with Mr. Thomas Hammond, of Penhurst,
+Kent, part of a field which he had deeply drained, after long-previous
+shallow drainage, he found that the worms had greatly increased in
+number, and that their bores descended quite to the level of the pipes.
+Many worm bores were large enough to receive the little finger. Mr.
+Henry Handley had informed him of a piece of land near the sea in
+Lincolnshire, over which the sea had broken and killed all the
+worms--the field remained sterile until the worms again inhabited it. He
+also showed him a piece of pasture land near to his house, in which
+worms were in such numbers that he thought their casts interfered too
+much with its produce, which induced him to have it rolled at night in
+order to destroy the worms. The result was, that the fertility of the
+field greatly declined, nor was it restored until they had recruited
+their numbers, which was aided by collecting and transporting multitudes
+of worms from the fields.
+
+"The great depth into which worms will bore, and from which they push up
+fine fertile soil, and cast it on the surface, has been admirably traced
+by Mr. C. Darwin, of Down, Kent, who has shown that in a few years they
+have actually elevated the surface of fields by a large layer of rich
+mould, several inches thick--thus affording nourishment to the roots of
+grasses, and increasing the productiveness of the soil."
+
+It should be added that the writer quoted, and others who have discussed
+the subject, have overlooked one very important element in the
+fertilization produced by earthworms. I refer to the enrichment of the
+soil by their excreta during life, and by the decomposition of their
+remains when they die. The manure thus furnished is as valuable as the
+like amount of similar animal products derived from higher organisms,
+and when we consider the prodigious numbers of these worms found on a
+single square yard of some soils, we may easily see that they furnish no
+insignificant contribution to the nutritive material required for the
+growth of plants.[86]
+
+The perforations of the earthworm mechanically affect the texture of the
+soil and its permeability by water, and they therefore have a certain
+influence on the form and character of surface. But the geographical
+importance of insects proper, as well as of worms, depends principally
+on their connection with vegetable life as agents of its fecundation,
+and of its destruction.[87] I am acquainted with no single fact so
+strikingly illustrative of this importance, as the following statement
+which I take from a notice of Darwin's volume, On Various Contrivances
+by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects, in the
+_Saturday Review_, of October 18, 1862: "The net result is, that some
+six thousand species of orchids are absolutely dependent upon the agency
+of insects for their fertilization. That is to say, were those plants
+unvisited by insects, they would all rapidly disappear." What is true of
+the orchids is more or less true of many other vegetable families. We do
+not know the limits of this agency, and many of the insects habitually
+regarded as unqualified pests, may directly or indirectly perform
+functions as important to the most valuable plants as the services
+rendered by certain tribes to the orchids. I say directly or indirectly,
+because, besides the other arrangements of nature for checking the undue
+multiplication of particular species, she has established a police among
+insects themselves, by which some of them keep down or promote the
+increase of others; for there are insects, as well as birds and beasts,
+of prey. The existence of an insect which fertilizes a useful vegetable
+may depend on that of another, which constitutes his food in some stage
+of his life, and this other again may be as injurious to some plant as
+his destroyer is beneficial to another. The equation of animal and
+vegetable life is too complicated a problem for human intelligence to
+solve, and we can never know how wide a circle of disturbance we produce
+in the harmonies of nature when we throw the smallest pebble into the
+ocean of organic life.
+
+This much, however, we seem authorized to conclude: as often as we
+destroy the balance by deranging the original proportions between
+different orders of spontaneous life, the law of self-preservation
+requires us to restore the equilibrium, by either directly returning the
+weight abstracted from one scale, or removing a corresponding quantity
+from the other. In other words, destruction must be either repaired by
+reproduction, or compensated by new destruction in an opposite quarter.
+
+The parlor aquarium has taught even those to whom it is but an amusing
+toy, that the balance of animal and vegetable life must be preserved,
+and that the excess of either is fatal to the other, in the artificial
+tank as well as in natural waters. A few years ago, the water of the
+Cochituate aqueduct at Boston became so offensive in smell and taste as
+to be quite unfit for use. Scientific investigation found the cause in
+the too scrupulous care with which aquatic vegetation had been excluded
+from the reservoir, and the consequent death and decay of the animalculae
+which could not be shut out, nor live in the water without the vegetable
+element.[88]
+
+
+_Introduction of Insects._
+
+The general tendency of man's encroachments upon spontaneous nature has
+been to increase insect life at the expense of vegetation and of the
+smaller quadrupeds and birds. Doubtless there are insects in all woods,
+but in temperate climates they are comparatively few and harmless, and
+the most numerous tribes which breed in the forest, or rather in its
+waters, and indeed in all solitudes, are those which little injure
+vegetation, such as mosquitoes, gnats, and the like. With the cultivated
+plants of man come the myriad tribes which feed or breed upon them, and
+agriculture not only introduces new species, but so multiplies the
+number of individuals as to defy calculation. Newly introduced
+vegetables frequently escape for years the insect plagues which had
+infested them in their native habitat; but the importation of other
+varieties of the plant, the exchange of seed, or some mere accident, is
+sure in the long run to carry the egg, the larva, or the chrysalis to
+the most distant shores where the plant assigned to it by nature as its
+possession has preceded it. For many years after the colonization of the
+United States, few or none of the insects which attack wheat in its
+different stages of growth, were known in America. During the
+Revolutionary war, the Hessian fly, _Cecidomyia destructor_, made its
+appearance, and it was so called because it was first observed in the
+year when the Hessian troops were brought over, and was popularly
+supposed to have been accidentally imported by those unwelcome
+strangers. Other destroyers of cereal grains have since found their way
+across the Atlantic, and a noxious European aphis has first attacked the
+American wheatfields within the last four or five years. Unhappily, in
+these cases of migration, the natural corrective of excessive
+multiplication, the parasitic or voracious enemy of the noxious insect,
+does not always accompany the wanderings of its prey, and the bane long
+precedes the antidote. Hence, in the United States, the ravages of
+imported insects injurious to cultivated crops, not being checked by the
+counteracting influences which nature had provided to limit their
+devastations in the Old World, are much more destructive than in Europe.
+It is not known that the wheat midge is preyed upon in America by any
+other insect, and in seasons favorable to it, it multiplies to a degree
+which would prove almost fatal to the entire harvest, were it not that,
+in the great territorial extent of the United States, there is room for
+such differences of soil and climate as, in a given year, to present in
+one State all the conditions favorable to the increase of a particular
+insect, while in another, the natural influences are hostile to it. The
+only apparent remedy for this evil is, to balance the disproportionate
+development of noxious foreign species by bringing from their native
+country the tribes which prey upon them. This, it seems, has been
+attempted. The United States' Census Report for 1860, p. 82, states that
+the New York Agricultural Society "has introduced into this country from
+abroad certain parasites which Providence has created to counteract the
+destructive powers of some of these depredators."
+
+This is, however, not the only purpose for which man has designedly
+introduced foreign forms of insect life. The eggs of the silkworm are
+known to have been brought from the farther East to Europe in the sixth
+century, and new silk spinners which feed on the castor oil bean and the
+ailanthus, have recently been reared in France and in South America with
+promising success. The cochineal, long regularly bred in aboriginal
+America, has been transplanted to Spain, and both the kermes insect and
+the cantharides have been transferred to other climates than their own.
+The honey bee must be ranked next to the silkworm in economical
+importance.[89] This useful creature was carried to the United States
+by European colonists, in the latter part of the seventeenth century; it
+did not cross the Mississippi till the close of the eighteenth, and it
+is only within the last five or six years that it has been transported
+to California, where it was previously unknown. The Italian stingless
+bee has very lately been introduced into the United States.
+
+The insects and worms intentionally transplanted by man bear but a small
+proportion to those accidentally introduced by him. Plants and animals
+often carry their parasites with them, and the traffic of commercial
+countries, which exchange their products with every zone and every stage
+of social existence, cannot fail to transfer in both directions the
+minute organisms that are, in one way or another, associated with almost
+every object important to the material interests of man.[90]
+
+The tenacity of life possessed by many insects, their prodigious
+fecundity, the length of time they often remain in the different phases
+of their existence,[91] the security of the retreats into which their
+small dimensions enable them to retire, are all circumstances very
+favorable not only to the perpetuity of their species, but to their
+transportation to distant climates and their multiplication in their new
+homes. The teredo, so destructive to shipping, has been carried by the
+vessels whose wooden walls it mines to almost every part of the globe.
+The termite, or white ant, is said to have been brought to Rochefort by
+the commerce of that port a hundred years ago.[92] This creature is more
+injurious to wooden structures and implements than any other known
+insect. It eats out almost the entire substance of the wood, leaving
+only thin partitions between the galleries it excavates in it; but as it
+never gnaws through the surface to the air, a stick of timber may be
+almost wholly consumed without showing any external sign of the damage
+it has sustained. The termite is found also in other parts of France,
+and particularly at Rochelle, where, thus far, its ravages are confined
+to a single quarter of the city. A borer, of similar habits, is not
+uncommon in Italy, and you may see in that country, handsome chairs and
+other furniture which have been reduced by this insect to a framework of
+powder of post, covered, and apparently held together, by nothing but
+the varnish.
+
+The carnivorous, and often the herbivorous insects render an important
+service to man by consuming dead and decaying animal and vegetable
+matter, the decomposition of which would otherwise fill the air with
+effluvia noxious to health. Some of them, the grave-digger beetle, for
+instance, bury the small animals in which they lay their eggs, and
+thereby prevent the escape of the gases disengaged by putrefaction. The
+prodigious rapidity of development in insect life, the great numbers of
+the individuals in many species, and the voracity of most of them while
+in the larva state, justify the appellation of nature's scavengers which
+has been bestowed upon them, and there is very little doubt that, in
+warm countries, they consume a much larger quantity of putrescent
+organic material than the quadrupeds and the birds which feed upon such
+aliment.
+
+
+_Destruction of Insects._
+
+It is well known to naturalists, but less familiarly to common
+observers, that the aquatic larvae of some insects constitute, at certain
+seasons, a large part of the food of fresh-water fish, while other
+larvae, in their turn, prey upon the spawn and even the young of their
+persecutors.[93] The larvae of the mosquito and the gnat are the favorite
+food of the trout in the wooded regions where those insects abound.[94]
+Earlier in the year the trout feeds on the larvae of the May fly, which
+is itself very destructive to the spawn of the salmon, and hence, by a
+sort of house-that-Jack-built, the destruction of the mosquito, that
+feeds the trout that preys on the May fly that destroys the eggs that
+hatch the salmon that pampers the epicure, may occasion a scarcity of
+this latter fish in waters where he would otherwise be abundant. Thus
+all nature is linked together by invisible bonds, and every organic
+creature, however low, however feeble, however dependent, is necessary
+to the well-being of some other among the myriad forms of life with
+which the Creator has peopled the earth.
+
+I have said that man has promoted the increase of the insect and the
+worm, by destroying the bird and the fish which feed upon them. Many
+insects, in the four different stages of their growth, inhabit in
+succession the earth, the water, and the air. In each of these elements
+they have their special enemies, and, deep and dark as are the minute
+recesses in which they hide themselves, they are pursued to the
+remotest, obscurest corners by the executioners that nature has
+appointed to punish their delinquencies, and furnished with cunning
+contrivances for ferreting out the offenders and dragging them into the
+light of day. One tribe of birds, the woodpeckers, seems to depend for
+subsistence almost wholly on those insects which breed in dead or dying
+trees, and it is, perhaps, needless to say that the injury these birds
+do the forest is imaginary. They do not cut holes in the trunk of the
+tree to prepare a lodgment for a future colony of boring larvae, but to
+extract the worm which has already begun his mining labors. Hence these
+birds are not found where the forester removes trees as fast as they
+become fit habitations for such insects. In clearing new lands in the
+United States, dead trees, especially of the spike-leaved kinds, too
+much decayed to serve for timber, and which, in that state, are worth
+little for fuel, are often allowed to stand until they fall of
+themselves. Such _stubs_, as they are popularly called, are filled with
+borers, and often deeply cut by the woodpeckers, whose strong bills
+enable them to penetrate to the very heart of the tree and drag out the
+lurking larvae. After a few years, the stubs fall, or, as wood becomes
+valuable, are cut and carried off for firewood, and, at the same time,
+the farmer selects for felling, in the forest he has reserved as a
+permanent source of supply of fuel and timber, the decaying trees which,
+like the dead stems in the fields, serve as a home for both the worm and
+his pursuer. We thus gradually extirpate this tribe of insects, and,
+with them, the species of birds which subsist principally upon them.
+Thus the fine, large, red-headed woodpecker, _Picus erythrocephalus_,
+formerly very common in New England, has almost entirely disappeared
+from those States, since the dead trees are gone, and the apples, his
+favorite vegetable food, are less abundant.
+
+There are even large quadrupeds which feed almost exclusively upon
+insects. The ant bear is strong enough to pull down the clay houses
+built by the species of termites that constitute his ordinary diet, and
+the curious ai-ai, a climbing quadruped of Madagascar--of which I
+believe only a single specimen, secured by Mr. Sandwith, has yet reached
+Europe--is provided with a very slender, hook-nailed finger, long enough
+to reach far into a hole in the trunk of a tree, and extract the worm
+which bored it.
+
+
+_Reptiles._
+
+But perhaps the most formidable foes of the insect, and even of the
+small rodents, are the reptiles. The chameleon approaches the insect
+perched upon the twig of a tree, with an almost imperceptible slowness
+of motion, until, at the distance of a foot, he shoots out his long,
+slimy tongue, and rarely fails to secure the victim. Even the slow toad
+catches the swift and wary housefly in the same manner; and in the warm
+countries of Europe, the numerous lizards contribute very essentially to
+the reduction of the insect population, which they both surprise in the
+winged state upon walls and trees, and consume as egg, worm, and
+chrysalis, in their earlier metamorphoses. The serpents feed much upon
+insects, as well as upon mice, moles, and small reptiles, including also
+other snakes. The disgust and fear with which the serpent is so
+universally regarded expose him to constant persecution by man, and
+perhaps no other animal is so relentlessly sacrificed by him. In
+temperate climates, snakes are consumed by scarcely any beast or bird of
+prey except the stork, and they have few dangerous enemies but man,
+though in the tropics other animals prey upon them.[95] It is doubtful
+whether any species of serpent has been exterminated within the human
+period, and even the dense population of China has not been able
+completely to rid itself of the viper. They have, however, almost
+entirely disappeared from particular localities. The rattlesnake is now
+wholly unknown in many large districts where it was extremely common
+half a century ago, and Palestine has long been, if not absolutely free
+from venomous serpents, at least very nearly so.[96]
+
+
+_Destruction of Fish._
+
+The inhabitants of the waters seem comparatively secure from human
+pursuit or interference by the inaccessibility of their retreats, and by
+our ignorance of their habits--a natural result of the difficulty of
+observing the ways of creatures living in a medium in which we cannot
+exist. Human agency has, nevertheless, both directly and incidentally,
+produced great changes in the population of the sea, the lakes, and the
+rivers, and if the effects of such revolutions in aquatic life are
+apparently of small importance in general geography, they are still not
+wholly inappreciable. The great diminution in the abundance of the
+larger fish employed for food or pursued for products useful in the arts
+is familiar, and when we consider how the vegetable and animal life on
+which they feed must be affected by the reduction of their numbers, it
+is easy to see that their destruction may involve considerable
+modifications in many of the material arrangements of nature. The whale
+does not appear to have been an object of pursuit by the ancients, for
+any purpose, nor do we know when the whale fishery first commenced.[97]
+It was, however, very actively prosecuted in the Middle Ages, and the
+Biscayans seem to have been particularly successful in this as indeed in
+other branches of nautical industry.[98] Five hundred years ago, whales
+abounded in every sea. They long since became so rare in the
+Mediterranean as not to afford encouragement for the fishery as a
+regular occupation; and the great demand for oil and whalebone for
+mechanical and manufacturing purposes, in the present century, has
+stimulated the pursuit of the "hugest of living creatures" to such
+activity, that he has now almost wholly disappeared from many favorite
+fishing grounds, and in others is greatly diminished in numbers.
+
+What special functions, besides his uses to man, are assigned to the
+whale in the economy of nature, we do not know; but some considerations,
+suggested by the character of the food upon which certain species
+subsist, deserve to be specially noticed. None of the great mammals
+grouped under the general name of whale are rapacious. They all live
+upon small organisms, and the most numerous species feed almost wholly
+upon the soft gelatinous mollusks in which the sea abounds in all
+latitudes. We cannot calculate even approximately the number of the
+whales, or the quantity of organic nutriment consumed by an individual,
+and of course we can form no estimate of the total amount of animal
+matter withdrawn by them, in a given period, from the waters of the sea.
+It is certain, however, that it must have been enormous when they were
+more abundant, and that it is still very considerable. A very few years
+since, the United States had more than six hundred whaling ships
+constantly employed in the Pacific, and the product of the American
+whale fishery for the year ending June 1st, 1860, was seven millions and
+a half of dollars.[99] The mere bulk of the whales destroyed in a single
+year by the American and the European vessels engaged in this fishery
+would form an island of no inconsiderable dimensions, and each one of
+those taken must have consumed, in the course of his growth, many times
+his own weight of mollusks. The destruction of the whales must have been
+followed by a proportional increase of the organisms they feed upon, and
+if we had the means of comparing the statistics of these humble forms of
+life, for even so short a period as that between the years 1760 and
+1860, we should find a difference sufficient, possibly, to suggest an
+explanation of some phenomena at present unaccounted for.
+
+For instance, as I have observed in another work,[100] the
+phosphorescence of the sea was unknown to ancient writers, or at least
+scarcely noticed by them, and even Homer--who, blind as tradition makes
+him when he composed his epics, had seen, and marked, in earlier life,
+all that the glorious nature of the Mediterranean and its coasts
+discloses to unscientific observation--nowhere alludes to this most
+beautiful and striking of maritime wonders. In the passage just referred
+to, I have endeavored to explain the silence of ancient writers with
+respect to this as well as other remarkable phenomena on psychological
+grounds; but is it not possible that, in modern times, the animalculae
+which produce it may have immensely multiplied, from the destruction of
+their natural enemies by man, and hence that the gleam shot forth by
+their decomposition, or by their living processes, is both more frequent
+and more brilliant than in the days of classic antiquity?
+
+Although the whale does not prey upon smaller creatures resembling
+himself in form and habits, yet true fishes are extremely voracious, and
+almost every tribe devours unsparingly the feebler species, and even
+the spawn and young of its own. The enormous destruction of the pike,
+the trout family, and other ravenous fish, as well as of the fishing
+birds, the seal, and the otter, by man, would naturally have occasioned
+a great increase in the weaker and more defenceless fish on which they
+feed, had he not been as hostile to them also as to their persecutors.
+We have little evidence that any fish employed as human food has
+naturally multiplied in modern times, while all the more valuable tribes
+have been immensely reduced in numbers.[101] This reduction must have
+affected the more voracious species not used as food by man, and
+accordingly the shark, and other fish of similar habits, though not
+objects of systematic pursuit, are now comparatively rare in many waters
+where they formerly abounded. The result is, that man has greatly
+reduced the numbers of all larger marine animals, and consequently
+indirectly favored the multiplication of the smaller aquatic organisms
+which entered into their nutriment. This change in the relations of the
+organic and inorganic matter of the sea must have exercised an influence
+on the latter. What that influence has been, we cannot say, still less
+can we predict what it will be hereafter; but its action is not for that
+reason the less certain.
+
+
+_Introduction and Breeding of Fish._
+
+The introduction and successful breeding of fish of foreign species
+appears to have been long practised in China and was not unknown to the
+Greeks and Romans. This art has been revived in modern times, but thus
+far without any important results, economical or physical, though there
+seems to be good reason to believe it may be employed with advantage on
+an extended scale. As in the case of plants, man has sometimes
+undesignedly introduced new species of aquatic animals into countries
+distant from their birthplace. The accidental escape of the Chinese
+goldfish from ponds where they were bred as a garden ornament, has
+peopled some European, and it is said American streams with this
+species. Canals of navigation and irrigation interchange the fish of
+lakes and rivers widely separated by natural barriers, as well as the
+plants which drop their seeds into the waters. The Erie Canal, as
+measured by its own channel, has a length of about three hundred and
+sixty miles, and it has ascending and descending locks in both
+directions. By this route, the fresh-water fish of the Hudson and the
+Upper Lakes, and some of the indigenous vegetables of these respective
+basins, have intermixed, and the fauna and flora of the two regions have
+now more species common to both than before the canal was opened. Some
+accidental attraction not unfrequently induces fish to follow a vessel
+for days in succession, and they may thus be enticed into zones very
+distant from their native habitat. Several years ago, I was told at
+Constantinople, upon good authority, that a couple of fish, of a species
+wholly unknown to the natives, had just been taken in the Bosphorus.
+They were alleged to have followed an English ship from the Thames, and
+to have been frequently observed by the crew during the passage, but I
+was unable to learn their specific character.
+
+Many of the fish which pass the greater part of the year in salt water
+spawn in fresh, and some fresh-water species, the common brook trout of
+New England for instance, which, under ordinary circumstances, never
+visit the sea, will, if transferred to brooks emptying directly into the
+ocean, go down into the salt water after spawning time, and return again
+the next season. Sea fish, the smelt among others, are said to have been
+naturalized in fresh water, and some naturalists have argued from the
+character of the fish of Lake Baikal, and especially from the existence
+of the seal in that locality, that all its inhabitants were originally
+marine species, and have changed their habits with the gradual
+conversion of the saline waters of the lake--once, as is assumed, a
+maritime bay--into fresh.[102] The presence of the seal is hardly
+conclusive on this point, for it is sometimes seen in Lake Champlain at
+the distance of some hundreds of miles from even brackish water. One of
+these animals was killed on the ice in that lake in February, 1810,
+another in February, 1846,[103] and remains of the seal have been found
+at other times in the same waters.
+
+The remains of the higher orders of aquatic animals are generally so
+perishable that, even where most abundant, they do not appear to be now
+forming permanent deposits of any considerable magnitude; but it is
+quite otherwise with shell fish, and, as we shall see hereafter, with
+many of the minute limeworkers of the sea. There are, on the southern
+coast of the United States, beds of shells so extensive that they were
+formerly supposed to have been naturally accumulated, and were appealed
+to as proofs of an elevation of the coast by geological causes; but they
+are now ascertained to have been derived from oysters, consumed in the
+course of long ages by the inhabitants of Indian towns. The planting of
+a bed of oysters in a new locality might, very probably, lead, in time,
+to the formation of a bank, which, in connection with other deposits,
+might perceptibly affect the line of a coast, or, by changing the course
+of marine currents, or the outlet of a river, produce geographical
+changes of no small importance. The transplantation of oysters to
+artificial ponds has long been common, and it appears to have recently
+succeeded well on a large scale in the open sea on the French coast. A
+great extension of this fishery is hoped for, and it is now proposed to
+introduce upon the same coast the American soft clam, which is so
+abundant in the tide-washed beach sands of Long Island Sound as to form
+an important article in the diet of the neighboring population.
+
+The intentional naturalization of foreign fish, as I have said, has not
+thus far yielded important fruits; but though this particular branch of
+what is called, not very happily, _pisciculture_, has not yet
+established its claims to the attention of the physical geographer or
+the political economist, the artificial breeding of domestic fish has
+already produced very valuable results, and is apparently destined to
+occupy an extremely conspicuous place in the history of man's efforts to
+compensate his prodigal waste of the gifts of nature. The restoration of
+the primitive abundance of salt and fresh water fish, is one of the
+greatest material benefits that, with our present physical resources,
+governments can hope to confer upon their subjects. The rivers, lakes,
+and seacoasts once restocked, and protected by law from exhaustion by
+taking fish at improper seasons, by destructive methods, and in
+extravagant quantities, would continue indefinitely to furnish a very
+large supply of most healthful food, which, unlike all domestic and
+agricultural products, would spontaneously renew itself and cost nothing
+but the taking. There are many sterile or wornout soils in Europe so
+situated that they might, at no very formidable cost, be converted into
+permanent lakes, which would serve not only as reservoirs to retain the
+water of winter rains and snow, and give it out in the dry season for
+irrigation, but as breeding ponds for fish, and would thus, without
+further cost, yield a larger supply of human food than can at present be
+obtained from them even at a great expenditure of capital and labor in
+agricultural operations. The additions which might be made to the
+nutriment of the civilized world by a judicious administration of the
+resources of the waters, would allow some restriction of the amount of
+soil at present employed for agricultural purposes, and a corresponding
+extension of the area of the forest, and would thus facilitate a return
+to primitive geographical arrangements which it is important partially
+to restore.
+
+
+_Extirpation of Aquatic Animals._
+
+It does not seem probable that man, with all his rapacity and all his
+enginery, will succeed in totally extirpating any salt-water fish, but
+he has already exterminated at least one marine warm-blooded
+animal--Steller's sea cow--and the walrus, the sea lion, and other large
+amphibia, as well as the principal fishing quadrupeds, are in imminent
+danger of extinction. Steller's sea cow, _Rhytina Stelleri_, was first
+seen by Europeans in the year 1741, on Bering's Island. It was a huge
+amphibious mammal, weighing not less than eight thousand pounds, and
+appears to have been confined exclusively to the islands and coasts in
+the neighborhood of Bering's Strait. Its flesh was very palatable, and
+the localities it frequented were easily accessible from the Russian
+establishments in Kamtschatka. As soon as its existence and character,
+and the abundance of fur animals in the same waters, were made known to
+the occupants of those posts by the return of the survivors of Bering's
+expedition, so active a chase was commenced against the amphibia of that
+region, that, in the course of twenty-seven years, the sea cow,
+described by Steller as extremely numerous in 1741, is believed to have
+been completely extirpated, not a single individual having been seen
+since the year 1768. The various tribes of seals in the Northern and
+Southern Pacific, the walrus and the sea otter, are already so reduced
+in numbers that they seem destined soon to follow the sea cow, unless
+protected by legislation stringent enough, and a police energetic
+enough, to repress the ardent cupidity of their pursuers.
+
+The seals, the otter tribe, and many other amphibia which feed almost
+exclusively upon fish, are extremely voracious, and of course their
+destruction or numerical reduction must have favored the multiplication
+of the species of fish principally preyed upon by them. I have been
+assured by the keeper of several tamed seals that, if supplied at
+frequent intervals, each seal would devour not less than fourteen pounds
+of fish, or about a quarter of his own weight, in a day.[104] A very
+intelligent and observing hunter, who has passed a great part of his
+life in the forest, after carefully watching the habits of the
+fresh-water otter of the Northern American States, estimates their
+consumption of fish at about four pounds per day.
+
+Man has promoted the multiplication of fish by making war on their brute
+enemies, but he has by no means thereby compensated his own greater
+destructiveness.[105] The bird and beast of prey, whether on land or in
+the water, hunt only as long as they feel the stimulus of hunger, their
+ravages are limited by the demands of present appetite, and they do not
+wastefully destroy what they cannot consume. Man, on the contrary,
+angles to-day that he may dine to-morrow; he takes and dries millions of
+fish on the banks of Newfoundland, that the fervent Catholic of the
+shores of the Mediterranean may have wherewithal to satisfy the cravings
+of the stomach during next year's Lent, without imperilling his soul by
+violating the discipline of the papal church; and all the arrangements
+of his fisheries are so organized as to involve the destruction of many
+more fish than are secured for human use, and the loss of a large
+proportion of the annual harvest of the sea in the process of curing, or
+in transportation to the places of its consumption.[106]
+
+Fish are more affected than quadrupeds by slight and even imperceptible
+differences in their breeding places and feeding grounds. Every river,
+every brook, every lake stamps a special character upon its salmon, its
+shad, and its trout, which is at once recognized by those who deal in or
+consume them. No skill can give the fish fattened by food selected and
+prepared by man the flavor of those which are nourished at the table of
+nature, and the trout of the artificial ponds in Germany and Switzerland
+are so inferior to the brook fish of the same species and climate, that
+it is hard to believe them identical. The superior sapidity of the
+American trout to the European species, which is familiar to every one
+acquainted with both continents, is probably due less to specific
+difference than to the fact that, even in the parts of the New World
+which have been longest cultivated, wild nature is not yet tamed down to
+the character it has assumed in the Old, and which it will acquire in
+America also when her civilization shall be as ancient as is now that of
+Europe.
+
+Man has hitherto hardly anywhere produced such climatic or other changes
+as would suffice of themselves totally to banish the wild inhabitants of
+the dry land, and the disappearance of the native birds and quadrupeds
+from particular localities is to be ascribed quite as much to his direct
+persecutions as to the want of forest shelter, of appropriate food, or
+of other conditions indispensable to their existence. But almost all the
+processes of agriculture, and of mechanical and chemical industry, are
+fatally destructive to aquatic animals within reach of their influence.
+When, in consequence of clearing the woods, the changes already
+described as thereby produced in the beds and currents of rivers, are in
+progress, the spawning grounds of fish are exposed from year to year to
+a succession of mechanical disturbances; the temperature of the water is
+higher in summer, colder in winter, than when it was shaded and
+protected by wood; the smaller organisms, which formed the sustenance of
+the young fry, disappear or are reduced in numbers, and new enemies are
+added to the old foes that preyed upon them; the increased turbidness of
+the water in the annual inundations chokes the fish; and, finally, the
+quickened velocity of its current sweeps them down into the larger
+rivers or into the sea, before they are yet strong enough to support so
+great a change of circumstances.[107] Industrial operations are not
+less destructive to fish which live or spawn in fresh water. Milldams
+impede their migrations, if they do not absolutely prevent them, the
+sawdust from lumber mills clogs their gills, and the thousand
+deleterious mineral substances, discharged into rivers from
+metallurgical, chemical, and manufacturing establishments, poison them
+by shoals.
+
+
+_Minute Organisms._
+
+Besides the larger creatures of the land and of the sea, the quadrupeds,
+the reptiles, the birds, the amphibia, the crustacea, the fish, the
+insects, and the worms, there are other countless forms of vital being.
+Earth, water, the ducts and fluids of vegetable and of animal life, the
+very air we breathe, are peopled by minute organisms which perform most
+important functions in both the living and the inanimate kingdoms of
+nature. Of the offices assigned to these creatures, the most familiar to
+common observation is the extraction of lime, and more rarely, of silex,
+from the waters inhabited by them, and the deposit of these minerals in
+a solid form, either as the material of their habitations or as the
+exuviae of their bodies. The microscope and other means of scientific
+observation assure us that the chalk beds of England and of France, the
+coral reefs of marine waters in warm climates, vast calcareous and
+silicious deposits in the sea and in many fresh-water ponds, the common
+polishing earths and slates, and many species of apparently dense and
+solid rock, are the work of the humble organisms of which I speak,
+often, indeed, of animalculae so small as to become visible only by the
+aid of lenses magnifying a hundred times the linear measures. It is
+popularly supposed that animalculae, or what are commonly embraced under
+the vague name of infusoria, inhabit the water alone, but the
+atmospheric dust transported by every wind and deposited by every calm
+is full of microscopic life or of its relics. The soil on which the city
+of Berlin stands, contains at the depth of ten or fifteen feet below the
+surface, living elaborators of silex;[108] and a microscopic examination
+of a handful of earth connected with the material evidences of guilt has
+enabled the naturalist to point out the very spot where a crime was
+committed. It has been computed that one sixth part of the solid matter
+let fall by great rivers at their outlets consists of still recognizable
+infusory shells and shields, and, as the friction of rolling water must
+reduce much of these fragile structures to a state of comminution which
+even the microscope cannot resolve into distinct particles and identify
+as relics of animal or of vegetable life, we must conclude that a
+considerably larger proportion of river deposits is really the product
+of animalcules.[109]
+
+It is evident that the chemical, and in many cases the mechanical
+character of a great number of the objects important in the material
+economy of human life, must be affected by the presence of so large an
+organic element in their substance, and it is equally obvious that all
+agricultural and all industrial operations tend to disturb the natural
+arrangements of this element, to increase or to diminish the special
+adaptation of every medium in which it lives to the particular orders
+of being inhabited by it. The conversion of woodland into pasturage, of
+pasture into plough land, of swamp or of shallow sea into dry ground,
+the rotations of cultivated crops, must prove fatal to millions of
+living things upon every rood of surface thus deranged by man, and must,
+at the same time, more or less fully compensate this destruction of life
+by promoting the growth and multiplication of other tribes equally
+minute in dimensions.
+
+I do not know that man has yet endeavored to avail himself, by
+artificial contrivances, of the agency of these wonderful architects and
+manufacturers. We are hardly well enough acquainted with their natural
+economy to devise means to turn their industry to profitable account,
+and they are in very many cases too slow in producing visible results
+for an age so impatient as ours. The over-civilization of the nineteenth
+century cannot wait for wealth to be amassed by infinitesimal gains, and
+we are in haste to _speculate_ upon the powers of nature, as we do upon
+objects of bargain and sale in our trafficking one with another. But
+there are still some cases where the little we know of a life, whose
+workings are invisible to the naked eye, suggests the possibility of
+advantageously directing the efforts of troops of artisans that we
+cannot see. Upon coasts occupied by the corallines, the reef-building
+animalcule does not work near the mouth of rivers. Hence the change of
+the outlet of a stream, often a very easy matter, may promote the
+construction of a barrier to coast navigation at one point, and check
+the formation of a reef at another, by diverting a current of fresh
+water from the former and pouring it into the sea at the latter. Cases
+may probably be found in tropical seas, where rivers have prevented the
+working of the coral animalcules in straits separating islands from each
+other or from the mainland. The diversion of such streams might remove
+this obstacle, and reefs consequently be formed which should convert an
+archipelago into a single large island, and finally join that to the
+neighboring continent.
+
+Quatrefages proposed to destroy the teredo in harbors by impregnating
+the water with a mineral solution fatal to them. Perhaps the labors of
+the coralline animals might be arrested over a considerable extent of
+sea coast by similar means. The reef builders are leisurely architects,
+but the precious coral is formed so rapidly that the beds may be
+refished advantageously as often as once in ten years.[110] It does not
+seem impossible that this coral might be transplanted to the American
+coast, where the Gulf stream would furnish a suitable temperature beyond
+the climatic limits that otherwise confine its growth; and thus a new
+source of profit might perhaps be added to the scanty returns of the
+hardy fisherman.
+
+In certain geological formations, the diatomaceae deposit, at the bottom
+of fresh-water ponds, beds of silicious shields, valuable as a material
+for a species of very light firebrick, in the manufacture of water glass
+and of hydraulic cement, and ultimately, doubtless, in many yet
+undiscovered industrial processes. An attentive study of the conditions
+favorable to the propagation of the diatomaceae might perhaps help us to
+profit directly by the productivity of this organism, and, at the same
+time, disclose secrets of nature capable of being turned to valuable
+account in dealing with silicious rocks, and the metal which is the base
+of them. Our acquaintance with the obscure and infinitesimal life of
+which I have now been treating is very recent, and still very imperfect.
+We know that it is of vast importance in the economy of nature, but we
+are so ambitious to grasp the great, so little accustomed to occupy
+ourselves with the minute, that we are not yet prepared to enter
+seriously upon the question how far we can control and direct the
+operations, not of unembodied physical forces, but of beings, in popular
+apprehension, almost as immaterial as they.
+
+Nature has no unit of magnitude by which she measures her works. Man
+takes his standards of dimension from himself. The hair's breadth was
+his minimum until the microscope told him that there are animated
+creatures to which one of the hairs of his head is a larger cylinder
+than is the trunk of the giant California redwood to him. He borrows his
+inch from the breadth of his thumb, his palm and span from the width of
+his hand and the spread of his fingers, his foot from the length of the
+organ so named; his cubit is the distance from the tip of his middle
+finger to his elbow, and his fathom is the space he can measure with his
+outstretched arms. To a being who instinctively finds the standard of
+all magnitudes in his own material frame, all objects exceeding his own
+dimensions are absolutely great, all falling short of them absolutely
+small. Hence we habitually regard the whale and the elephant as
+essentially large and therefore important creatures, the animalcule as
+an essentially small and therefore unimportant organism. But no
+geological formation owes its origin to the labors or the remains of the
+huge mammal, while the animalcule composes, or has furnished, the
+substance of strata thousands of feet in thickness, and extending, in
+unbroken beds, over many degrees of terrestrial surface. If man is
+destined to inhabit the earth much longer, and to advance in natural
+knowledge with the rapidity which has marked his progress in physical
+science for the last two or three centuries, he will learn to put a
+wiser estimate on the works of creation, and will derive not only great
+instruction from studying the ways of nature in her obscurest, humblest
+walks, but great material advantage from stimulating her productive
+energies in provinces of her empire hitherto regarded as forever
+inaccessible, utterly barren.[111]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE WOODS.
+
+THE HABITABLE EARTH ORIGINALLY WOODED--THE FOREST DOES NOT FURNISH
+FOOD FOR MAN--FIRST REMOVAL OF THE WOODS--EFFECTS OF FIRE ON FOREST
+SOIL--EFFECTS OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST--ELECTRICAL INFLUENCE
+OF TREES--CHEMICAL INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST.
+
+INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST, CONSIDERED AS INORGANIC MATTER, ON TEMPERATURE:
+_a_, ABSORBING AND EMITTING SURFACE; _b_, TREES AS CONDUCTORS OF HEAT;
+_c_, TREES IN SUMMER AND IN WINTER; _d_, DEAD PRODUCTS OF TREES; _e_,
+TREES AS A SHELTER TO GROUNDS TO THE LEEWARD OF THEM; _f_, TREES AS A
+PROTECTION AGAINST MALARIA--THE FOREST, AS INORGANIC MATTER, TENDS TO
+MITIGATE EXTREMES.
+
+TREES AS ORGANISMS: SPECIFIC TEMPERATURE--TOTAL INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST
+ON TEMPERATURE.
+
+INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE AIR AND THE EARTH:
+_a_, AS INORGANIC MATTER; _b_, AS ORGANIC--WOOD MOSSES AND FUNGI--
+FLOW OF SAP--ABSORPTION AND EXHALATION OF MOISTURE BY TREES--BALANCE
+OF CONFLICTING INFLUENCES--INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON TEMPERATURE AND
+PRECIPITATION--INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE SOIL--
+ITS INFLUENCE ON THE 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 OF THE FOREST--AMERICAN
+FOREST TREES--SPECIAL CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN WOODS--
+ROYAL FORESTS AND GAME LAWS--SMALL FOREST PLANTS, VITALITY OF SEEDS--
+UTILITY OF THE FOREST--THE FORESTS OF EUROPE--FORESTS OF THE UNITED
+STATES AND CANADA--THE ECONOMY OF THE FOREST--EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN
+TREES COMPARED--SYLVICULTURE--INSTABILITY OF AMERICAN LIFE.
+
+
+_The Habitable Earth Originally Wooded._
+
+There is good reason to believe that the surface of the habitable earth,
+in all the climates and regions which have been the abodes of dense and
+civilized populations, was, with few exceptions, already covered with a
+forest growth when it first became the home of man. This we infer from
+the extensive vegetable 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 that large provinces, where the
+earth has long been wholly bare of trees, were clothed with vast and
+almost unbroken woods when first made known to Greek and Roman
+civilization;[112] and from the state of much of North and of South
+America when they were discovered and colonized by the European
+race.[113]
+
+These evidences are strengthened by observation of the natural economy
+of our own time; for, whenever a tract of country, once inhabited and
+cultivated by man, is abandoned by him and by domestic animals,[114] and
+surrendered to the undisturbed influences of spontaneous nature, its
+soil sooner or later clothes itself with herbaceous and arborescent
+plants, and at no long interval, with a dense forest growth. Indeed,
+upon surfaces of a certain stability, and not absolutely precipitous
+inclination, the special conditions required for the spontaneous
+propagation of trees may all be negatively 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,
+in decomposing the surface of the rocks they cover; they arrest and
+confine the dust which the wind scatters over them, and their final
+decay adds new material to the soil already half formed beneath and upon
+them. A very thin stratum of mould is sufficient for the germination of
+seeds of the hardy evergreens and birches, the roots of which are often
+found in immediate contact with the rock, supplying their trees with
+nourishment from a soil derived from the decomposition of their own
+foliage, or sending out long rootlets into the surrounding earth in
+search of juices to feed them.
+
+The eruptive matter of volcanoes, forbidding as is its aspect, does not
+refuse nutriment to the woods. The refractory lava of Etna, it is true,
+remains long barren, and that of the great eruption of 1669 is still
+almost wholly devoid of vegetation.[115] But the cactus is making
+inroads even here, while the volcanic 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 to
+this," he continues, "the matter thrown up is ruddy, light, and soft:
+more removed, blacke and ponderous: the uttermost brow, that declineth
+like the seates in a theater, flourishing with trees and excellent
+pasturage. The midst of the hill is shaded with chestnut trees, and
+others bearing sundry fruits."[116]
+
+I am convinced that forests would soon cover many parts of the Arabian
+and African deserts, if man and domestic animals, especially the goat
+and the camel, were banished from them. The hard palate and tongue and
+strong teeth and jaws of this latter quadruped enable him to break off
+and masticate tough and thorny branches as large as the finger. He is
+particularly fond of the smaller twigs, leaves, and seedpods 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 routes of travel. In the
+shade of these trees, annual grasses and perennial shrubs shoot up, but
+are mown down by the hungry cattle of the Bedouin, as fast as they grow.
+A few years of undisturbed vegetation would suffice to cover such points
+with groves, and these would gradually extend themselves over soils
+where now scarcely any green thing but the bitter colocynth and the
+poisonous foxglove is ever seen.
+
+
+_The Forest does not Furnish Food for Man._
+
+In a region absolutely covered with trees, human life could not long be
+sustained, for want of animal and vegetable food. The depths of the
+forest seldom furnish 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 here only grow the shrubs and grasses,
+and here only are found the seeds and insects, which form the sustenance
+of the non-carnivorous birds and quadrupeds.[117]
+
+
+_First Removal of the Forest._
+
+As soon as multiplying man had filled the open grounds along the margin
+of the rivers, the lakes, and the sea, and sufficiently peopled the
+natural meadows 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 forest that hemmed him in. The destruction
+of the woods, then, was man's first geographical conquest, his first
+violation of the harmonies of inanimate nature.
+
+Primitive man had little occasion to fell trees for fuel, or, for the
+construction of dwellings, boats, and the implements of his rude
+agriculture and handicrafts. Windfalls would furnish a thin population
+with a sufficient supply of such material, and if occasionally a growing
+tree was cut, the injury to the forest would be too insignificant to be
+at all appreciable.
+
+The accidental escape and spread of fire, or, possibly, the combustion
+of forests by lightning, must have first suggested the advantages to be
+derived from the removal of too abundant and extensive woods, and, at
+the same time, have pointed out a means by which a large tract of
+surface could readily be cleared of much of this natural incumbrance. As
+soon as agriculture had commenced at all, it would be observed that the
+growth of cultivated plants, as well as of many species of wild
+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 ground would be
+abandoned for new fields won from the forest by the same means, and the
+deserted plain or hillock would soon clothe itself anew with shrubs and
+trees, to be again subjected to the same destructive process, and again
+surrendered to the restorative powers of vegetable nature.[119] This
+rude economy would be continued for generations, and wasteful as it is,
+is still largely pursued in Northern Sweden, Swedish Lapland, and
+sometimes even in France and the United States.[120]
+
+
+_Effects of Fire on Forest Soil._
+
+Aside from the mechanical and chemical effects of the disturbance of the
+soil by agricultural operations, and of the freer admission of sun,
+rain, and air to the ground, the fire of itself exerts an important
+influence on its texture and condition. It consumes a portion of the
+half-decayed vegetable mould which served to hold its mineral particles
+together and to retain the water of precipitation, and thus loosens,
+pulverizes, 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 which had spontaneously covered it. These new
+conditions help to explain the natural succession of forest crops, so
+generally observed in all woods cleared by fire and then abandoned.
+There is no doubt, however, that other influences contribute to the same
+result, because effects more or less analogous follow when the trees are
+destroyed by other causes, as by high winds, by the woodman's axe, and
+even by natural decay.[121]
+
+
+_Effects of Destruction of the Forest._
+
+The physico-geographical effects of the destruction of the forests may
+be divided into two great classes, each having an important influence on
+vegetable and on animal life in all 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 meteorology
+of the countries exposed to the action of these influences; the second,
+their superficial geography, or, in other words, configuration,
+consistence, and clothing of surface.
+
+For reasons assigned in the first chapter, the meteorological or
+climatic branch of the subject is the most obscure, and the conclusions
+of physicists respecting it are, in a great degree, inferential only,
+not founded on experiment or direct observation. They are, as might be
+expected, somewhat discordant, though certain general results are almost
+universally accepted, and seem indeed too well supported to admit of
+serious question.
+
+
+_Electrical Influence of Trees._
+
+The properties of trees, singly and in groups, as exciters or conductors
+of electricity, and their consequent influence upon the electrical state
+of the atmosphere, do not appear to have been much investigated; and the
+conditions of the forest itself are so variable and so complicated, that
+the solution of any general problem respecting its electrical influence
+would be a matter of extreme difficulty. It is, indeed, impossible to
+suppose that a dense cloud, a sea of vapor, can pass over miles of
+surface bristling with good conductors, without undergoing some change
+of electrical condition. Hypothetical cases may be put in which the
+character of the change could be deduced from the known laws of
+electrical action. But in actual nature, the elements are too numerous
+for us to seize. The true electrical condition of neither cloud nor
+forest could be known, and it could seldom be predicted whether the
+vapors would be dissolved as they floated over the wood, or discharged
+upon it in a deluge of rain. With regard to possible electrical
+influences of the forest, wider still in their range of action, the
+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.[122] The _paragrandini_,[123] which the learned curate of
+Rivolta advised to erect, with sheaves of straw set up vertically, over
+a great extent of cultivated country, are but a Liliputian image of the
+vast paragrandini, pines, larches, firs, which nature had planted by
+millions on the crests and ridges of the Alps and the Apennines."[124]
+"Electrical action being diminished," says Meguscher, "and the rapid
+congelation of vapors by the abstraction of heat being impeded by the
+influence of the woods, it is rare that hail or waterspouts are
+produced, within the precincts of a large forest when it is assailed by
+the tempest."[125] Arthur Young was told that since the forests which
+covered the mountains between the Riviera and the county of Montferrat
+had disappeared, hail had become more destructive in the district of
+Acqui,[126] and it appears upon good authority, that a similar increase
+in the frequency and violence of hail storms in the neighborhood of
+Saluzzo and Mondovi, the lower part of the Valtelline, and the territory
+of Verona and Vicenza, is probably to be ascribed to a similar
+cause.[127]
+
+
+_Chemical Influence of the Forest._
+
+We know that the air in a close apartment is appreciably affected
+through the inspiration and expiration of gases by plants growing in it.
+The same operations are performed on a gigantic scale by the forest, and
+it has even been supposed that the absorption of carbon, by the rank
+vegetation of earlier geological periods, occasioned a permanent change
+in the constitution of the terrestrial atmosphere.[128] To the effects
+thus produced, are to be added those of the ultimate gaseous
+decomposition of the vast vegetable mass annually shed by trees, 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 little trace the influence
+of the woods in the analysis of the atmosphere, as we can prove that the
+mineral ingredients of land springs sensibly affect the chemistry of
+the sea. I may, then, properly dismiss the chemical, as I have done the
+electrical influences of the forest, and treat them both alike, if not
+as unimportant agencies, at least as quantities of unknown value in our
+meteorological equation.[129] Our inquiries upon this branch of the
+subject will accordingly be limited to the thermometrical and
+hygrometrical influences of the woods.
+
+
+_Influence of the Forest, considered as Inorganic Matter, on
+Temperature._
+
+The evaporation of fluids, and the condensation and expansion of vapors
+and gases, are attended with changes of temperature; and the quantity of
+moisture which the air is capable of containing, and, of course, the
+evaporation, rise and fall with the thermometer. The hygroscopical 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 reference to
+its living processes of absorption and exhalation of water and gases,
+has, as an absorbent, a radiator and a conductor of heat, and as a mere
+covering of the ground, an influence on the temperature of the air and
+the earth, which may be considered by itself.
+
+
+a. _Absorbing and Emitting Surface._
+
+A given area of ground, as estimated by the every-day rule of
+measurement in yards or acres, presents always the same apparent
+quantity of absorbing, radiating, and reflecting surface; but the real
+extent of that surface is very variable, depending, as it does, upon its
+configuration, and the bulk and form of the adventitious objects it
+bears upon it; and, besides, the true superficies remaining the same,
+its power of absorption, radiation, reflection, and conduction of heat
+will be much affected by its consistence, its greater or less humidity,
+and its color, as well as by its inclination of plane 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 covered, and would add to
+the field on which it stood so much surface capable of receiving and
+emitting heat, though, in consequence of obliquity and direction of
+plane, its actual absorption and emission of heat might not be so great
+as that of an additional quantity of level ground containing four times
+the area of its base. The lesser inequalities which always occur in the
+surface of ordinary earth affect in the same way its quantity of
+superficies acting upon the temperature of the atmosphere, and acted on
+by it, though the amount of this action and reaction is not susceptible
+of measurement.
+
+Analogous effects are produced by other objects, of whatever form or
+character, standing or lying upon the earth, and no solid can be placed
+upon a flat piece of ground, without itself exposing a greater surface
+than it covers. This applies, of course, to forest trees and their
+leaves, and indeed to all vegetables, as well as to other prominent
+bodies. If we suppose forty trees to be planted on an acre, one being
+situated in the centre of every square of two rods the side, and to grow
+until their branches and leaves 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 disposition of the
+foliage interferes with that free communication between sun and sky
+above, and leaf surface below, on which the amount of radiation and
+absorption of heat depends. From all these considerations, it appears
+that though the effective thermoscopic surface of a forest in full leaf
+does not exceed that of bare ground in the same proportion as does its
+measured superficies, yet the actual quantity of area capable of
+receiving and emitting heat must be greater in the former than in the
+latter case.[132]
+
+It must further be remembered that the form and texture of a given
+surface are important elements in determining its thermoscopic
+character. Leaves are porous, and admit air and light more or less
+freely into their substance; they are generally smooth and even glazed
+on one surface; they are usually covered on one or both sides with
+spiculae, and they very commonly present one or more acuminated points 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 together. But the
+frigorific effect of leafy structure is well observed in the deposit of
+dew and the occurrence of hoarfrost on the foliage of grasses and other
+small vegetables, and on other objects of similar form and consistence,
+when the temperature of the air a few yards above has not been brought
+down to the dew point, still less to 32 deg., the degree of cold required to
+congeal dew to frost.[133]
+
+
+b. _Trees as Conductors of Heat._
+
+We are also to take into account the action of the forest as a conductor
+of heat between the atmosphere and the earth. In the most important
+countries of America and Europe, and especially in those which have
+suffered most from the destruction of the woods, the superficial strata
+of the earth are colder in winter, 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. As
+conductors, they convey the heat of the atmosphere to the earth when the
+earth is colder than the air, and transmit it in the contrary direction
+when the temperature of the earth is higher than that of the atmosphere.
+Of course, then, as conductors, they tend to equalize the temperature of
+the earth and the air.
+
+
+c. _Trees in Summer and Winter._
+
+In countries where the questions I am considering have the greatest
+practical importance, a very large proportion, if not a majority, of the
+trees are of deciduous foliage, 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 ground
+or the radiation from it; whereas, in the former, they often interpose a
+complete canopy between the ground and the sky, and materially
+interfere with both processes.
+
+
+d. _Dead Products of Trees._
+
+Besides this various action of standing trees considered as inorganic
+matter, the forest exercises, by the annual moulting of its foliage,
+still another influence on the temperature of the earth, and,
+consequently, of the atmosphere which rests upon it. If you examine the
+constitution of the superficial soil in a primitive or an old and
+undisturbed artificially planted wood, you find, first, a deposit of
+undecayed leaves, twigs, and seeds, lying in loose layers on the
+surface; then, more compact beds of the same materials in incipient,
+and, as you descend, more and more advanced stages of decomposition;
+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 forest, it would act upon the temperature of the
+atmosphere, and be acted on by it, in a very different way from the
+leaves and mould which rest upon it. Leaves, still entire, or partially
+decayed, are very indifferent conductors of heat, and, therefore, though
+they diminish the warming influence of the summer sun on the soil below
+them, they, on the other hand, prevent the escape of heat from that soil
+in winter, and, consequently, in cold climates, even when the ground is
+not covered by a protecting mantle of snow, the earth does not freeze to
+as great a depth in the wood as in the open field.
+
+
+e. _Trees as a Shelter to Ground to the Leeward._
+
+The action of the forest, considered merely as a mechanical shelter to
+grounds lying to the leeward of it, would seem to be an influence of too
+restricted a character to deserve much notice; but many facts concur to
+show that it is an important element in local climate, and that it is
+often a valuable means of defence against the spread of miasmatic
+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 from
+the west, to the mild breezes of the sea. Hence a decrease of the cold
+of winter. If a similar forest were to be cleared on the eastern border
+of France, the glacial east wind would prevail with greater strength,
+and the winters would become more severe. Thus the removal of a belt of
+wood would produce opposite effects in the two regions."[134]
+
+This opinion receives confirmation from an observation of Dr. Dwight,
+who remarks, in reference to the woods of New England: "Another effect
+of removing the forest will be the free passage of the winds, and among
+them of the southern 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 ocean, and imparted their warmth
+frequently, and in such degrees as, forty years since, were in the same
+places very little known. This fact, also, contributes to lengthen the
+summer, and to shorten the winter-half of the year."[135]
+
+It is thought in Italy that the clearing of the Apennines has very
+materially affected the climate of the valley of the Po. It is asserted
+in Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia that: "In consequence of the felling of
+the woods on the Apennines, the sirocco prevails greatly on the right
+bank of the 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 formerly straw roofs resisted the force of the winds,
+tiles are now hardly sufficient; in others, where tiles answered for
+roofs, large slabs of stone are now ineffectual; and in many neighboring
+communes the grapes and the grain are swept off by the blasts of the
+south and southwest winds."
+
+On the other hand, according to the same authority, the pinery of Porto,
+near Ravenna--which is 33 kilometres long, and is one of the oldest pine
+woods in Italy--having been replanted with resinous trees after it was
+unfortunately cut, has relieved the city from the sirocco to which it
+had become exposed, and in a great degree restored its ancient
+climate.[136]
+
+The felling of the woods on the Atlantic coast of Jutland has exposed
+the soil not only to drifting sands, but to sharp sea winds, that have
+exerted a sensible deteriorating effect on the climate of that
+peninsula, which has no mountains to serve at once as a barrier to the
+force of the winds, and as a storehouse of moisture received by
+precipitation or condensed from atmospheric vapors.[137]
+
+It is evident that the effect of the forest, as a mechanical impediment
+to the passage of the wind, would extend to a very considerable distance
+above its own height, and hence protect while standing, or lay open when
+felled, a much larger surface than might at first thought be supposed.
+The atmosphere, movable as are its particles, and light and elastic as
+are its masses, is nevertheless held together as a continuous whole by
+the gravitation of its atoms and their consequent pressure on each
+other, if not by attraction between them, and, therefore, an obstruction
+which mechanically impedes the movement of a given stratum of air, will
+retard the passage of the strata above and below it. To this effect may
+often be added that of an ascending current from the forest itself,
+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 metres 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 metres in height, is a
+sufficient protection for a distance of twenty-two metres."[139] The
+mechanical shelter acts, no doubt, chiefly as a defence against the
+mechanical force of the wind, but its uses are by no means limited to
+this effect. If the current of air which it resists moves horizontally,
+it would prevent the access of cold or parching blasts to the ground for
+a great distance; and did the wind even descend at a large angle with
+the surface, still a considerable extent of ground would be protected by
+a forest to the windward of it. If we suppose the trees of a wood to
+have a mean height of only twenty yards, they would often beneficially
+affect the temperature or the moisture of a belt of land two or three
+hundred yards in width, and thus perhaps rescue valuable crops from
+destruction.[140]
+
+The local retardation of spring so much complained of in Italy, France,
+and Switzerland, and the increased frequency of late frosts at that
+season, appear to be ascribable to the admission of cold blasts to the
+surface, by the felling of the forests 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 vegetation,
+and that, in consequence of "the usurpation of winter on the domain of
+spring," the district of Mugello has lost all its mulberries, except the
+few which find in the lee of buildings a protection like that once
+furnished by the forest.[141]
+
+"It is proved," says Clave, "Etudes," p. 44, "that the department of
+Ardeche, which now contains not a single considerable wood, has
+experienced within thirty years a climatic disturbance, of which the
+late frosts, formerly unknown in the country, are one of the most
+melancholy effects. Similar results have been observed in the plain of
+Alsace, in consequence of the denudation of several of the crests of the
+Vosges."
+
+Dussard, as quoted by Ribbe,[142] maintains that even the _mistral_, or
+northwest wind, whose chilling blasts are so fatal to tender vegetation
+in the spring, "is the child of man, the result of his devastations."
+"Under the reign of Augustus," continues he, "the forests which
+protected the Cevennes were felled, or destroyed by fire, in mass. A
+vast country, before covered with impenetrable woods--powerful obstacles
+to the movement and even to the formation of hurricanes--was suddenly
+denuded, swept bare, stripped, and soon after, a scourge hitherto
+unknown struck terror over the land from Avignon to the Bouches du
+Rhone, thence to Marseilles, and then extended its 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 crops, were not then exposed to the loss of their
+harvests by tempests, cold, or drought. The deterioration was rapid in
+its progress. Under the Consulate, the clearings had exerted so
+injurious an effect upon the climate, that the cultivation of the olive
+had retreated several leagues, and since the winters and springs of 1820
+and 1836, this branch of rural industry has been abandoned in a great
+number of localities where it was advantageously pursued before. The
+orange now flourishes only at a few sheltered points of the coast, and
+it is threatened even at Ilyeres, where the clearing of the hills near
+the town has proved very prejudicial to this valuable tree.
+
+Marchand informs us that, since the felling of the woods, late spring
+frosts are more frequent in many localities north of the Alps; that
+fruit trees thrive well no longer, and that it is difficult to raise
+young trees.[143]
+
+
+f. _Trees as a Protection against Malaria._
+
+The influence of forests in preventing the diffusion of miasmatic vapors
+is a matter of less familiar observation, and perhaps does not come
+strictly within the sphere of the present inquiry, but its importance
+will justify me in devoting some space to the subject. "It has been
+observed" (I quote again from Becquerel) "that humid air, charged with
+miasmata, is deprived of them in passing through the forest. Rigaud de
+Lille observed localities in Italy where the interposition of a screen
+of trees preserved everything beyond it, while the unprotected grounds
+were subject to fevers."[144] Few European countries present better
+opportunities for observation on this point than Italy, because in that
+kingdom the localities exposed 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 believed that
+a few rows of sunflowers, planted between the Washington Observatory and
+the marshy banks of the Potomac, had saved the inmates of that
+establishment from the intermittent fevers to which they had been
+formerly liable. Maury's experiments have been repeated in Italy. Large
+plantations of sunflowers have been made upon the alluvial deposits of
+the Oglio, above its entrance into the Lake of Iseo near Pisogne, and it
+is said with favorable results to the health of the neighborhood.[146]
+In fact, the generally beneficial effects of a forest wall or other
+vegetable screen, as a protection against noxious exhalations from
+marshes or other sources of disease situated to the windward of them,
+are very commonly admitted.
+
+It is argued that, in these cases, the foliage of trees and of other
+vegetables exercises a chemical as well as a mechanical effect upon the
+atmosphere, and some, who allow that forests may intercept the
+circulation of the miasmatic effluvia of swampy soils, or even render
+them harmless by decomposing them, contend, 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
+appear to be generally the case.[147] It is, at all events, well known
+that the great swamps of Virginia and the Carolinas, in climates nearly
+similar to that of Italy, are healthy even to the white man, so long as
+the forests in and around them remain, but become very insalubrious when
+the woods are felled.[148]
+
+
+_The Forest, as Inorganic Matter, tends to mitigate Extremes._
+
+The surface which trees and leaves present augments the general
+superficies of the earth exposed to the absorption of heat, and
+increases the radiating and reflecting area in the same proportion. It
+is impossible to measure the relative value of these two
+elements--increase of absorbing and increase of emitting surface--as
+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 surface acted on by it.
+But it seems probable that its greatest influence in this respect is due
+to its character of a screen, or mechanical obstacle to the transmission
+of heat between the earth and the air; and this is equally true of the
+standing tree and of the dead foliage which it deposits in successive
+layers at its foot.
+
+The complicated action of trees and their products, as dead absorbents,
+radiators, reflectors, and conductors of heat, and as interceptors of
+its transmission, is so intimately 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 the latter class of
+influences; but upon the whole, the forest must thus far be regarded as
+tending to mitigate extremes, and, therefore, as an equalizer of
+temperature.
+
+
+TREES AS ORGANISMS.
+
+_Specific Heat._
+
+Trees, considered as organisms, produce in themselves, or in the air, a
+certain amount of heat, by absorbing and condensing atmospheric vapor,
+and they exert an opposite influence by absorbing water and exhaling it
+in the form of vapor; but there is still another 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 own, an organic power of generating heat,
+like that with which the warm-blooded animals are gifted, though by a
+different process, a certain amount of weight is to be ascribed to this
+element, in estimating the action of the forest upon atmospheric
+temperature.
+
+"Observation shows," says Meguscher, "that the wood of a living tree
+maintains a temperature of +12 deg. or 13 deg. Cent. [= 54 deg., 56 deg. Fahr.] when the
+temperature of the air stands at 3 deg., 7 deg., and 8 deg. [=37 deg., 46 deg., 47 deg. F.]
+above zero, and that the internal warmth of the tree does not rise and
+fall in proportion to that of the atmosphere. So long as the latter is
+below 18 deg. [= 67 deg. Fahr.], that of the tree is always the highest; but if
+the temperature of the air rises to 18 deg., that of the vegetable growth is
+the lowest. Since, then, trees maintain at all seasons a constant mean
+temperature of 12 deg. [= 54 deg. Fahr.], it is easy to see why the air in
+contact with the forest must be warmer in winter, cooler in summer, than
+in situations where it is deprived of that influence."[149]
+
+Boussingault remarks: "In many flowers there has been observed a very
+considerable evolution of heat, at the approach of fecundation. In
+certain _arums_ the temperature rises to 40 deg. or 50 deg. Cent. [= 104 deg. or
+122 deg. Fahr.]. It is very probable that this phenomenon is general, and
+varies only in the intensity with which it is manifested."[150]
+
+If we suppose the fecundation of the flowers of forest trees to be
+attended with a tenth only of this calorific power, they could not fail
+to exert an important influence on the warmth of the atmospheric strata
+in contact with them.
+
+In a paper on Meteorology by Professor Henry, published in the United
+States Patent Office Report for 1857, p. 504, that distinguished
+physicist observes: "As a general deduction from chemical and mechanical
+principles, we think no change of temperature is ever produced where the
+actions belonging to one or both of 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
+point, we think, have been directed by a false analogy. During the
+active circulation of the sap and the production of new tissue,
+variations of temperature belonging exclusively to the plant may be
+observed; but it is inconsistent with general principles that heat
+should be generated where no change is taking place."
+
+There can be no doubt that moisture is given out by trees and evaporated
+in extremely cold winter-weather, and unless new fluid were supplied
+from the roots, the tree would be exhausted of its juices before winter
+was over. But this is not observed to be the fact, and, though the point
+is disputed, respectable authorities declare that "wood felled in the
+depth of winter is the heaviest and fullest of sap."[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 and developed its leaves while the
+rest of the tree in the external air remained in its winter sleep."[152]
+The roots of forest trees in temperate climates, remain, for the most
+part, in a moist soil, of a temperature not much below the annual mean,
+through the whole winter; and we cannot account for the uninterrupted
+moisture of the tree, unless we suppose that the roots furnish a
+constant supply of water.
+
+Atkinson describes a ravine in a valley in Siberia, which was filled
+with ice to the depth of twenty-five feet. Poplars were growing in this
+ice, which was thawed to the distance of some inches from the stem. But
+the surface of the soil 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 thawed the thick
+covering of earth above them, the trunks must have melted the ice in
+contact with them. The trees, when observed by Atkinson, were in full
+leaf, but it does not appear at what period the ice around their stems
+had melted.
+
+From these facts, and others of the like sort, it would seem that "all
+vegetable functions are" not absolutely "dormant" in winter, and,
+therefore, that trees may give out _some_ heat 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 be sufficiently affected by heat evolved in the
+vital processes of vegetation, to raise the thermometric mean of wooded
+countries for that season, and, of course, for the year.[153]
+
+
+_Total Influence of the Forest on Temperature._
+
+It has not yet been found practicable to measure, sum up, and equate the
+total influence of the forest, its processes and its products, dead and
+living, upon temperature, and investigators differ much in their
+conclusions on this subject. It seems probable that in every particular
+case the result is, if not determined, at least so much modified by
+local conditions which are infinitely varied, that no general formula is
+applicable to the question.
+
+In the report to which I referred on page 149, Gay-Lussac says: "In my
+opinion we have not yet any positive proof that the forest has, in
+itself, any real influence on the climate 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
+advantage; but these questions are so complicated when they are examined
+in a climatological point of view, that the solution of them is very
+difficult, not to say impossible."
+
+Becquerel, on the other hand, considers it certain that in tropical
+climates, the destruction of the forests is accompanied with an
+elevation of the mean temperature, and he thinks it highly probable that
+it has the same effect in the temperate zones. The following is the
+substance of his remarks on this subject:--
+
+"Forests act as frigorific causes in three ways:
+
+"1. They shelter the ground against solar irradiation and maintain a
+greater humidity.
+
+"2. They produce a cutaneous transpiration by the leaves.
+
+"3. They multiply, by the expansion of their branches, the surfaces
+which are cooled by radiation.
+
+"These three causes acting with greater or less force, we must, in the
+study of the climatology of a country, take into account the proportion
+between the area of the forests and the surface which is bared of trees
+and covered with herbs and grasses.
+
+"We should be inclined to believe _a priori_, according to the foregoing
+considerations, that the clearing of the woods, by raising the
+temperature and increasing the dryness of the air, ought to react on
+climate. There is no doubt that, if the vast 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 deg. Fahr.]. In that case, the
+ascending currents of warm air would cease, or be less warm, and would
+not contribute, by descending in our latitudes, to soften the climate of
+Western Europe. Thus the clearing of a great country may react on the
+climates of regions more or less remote from it.
+
+"The observations by Boussingault leave no doubt on this point. This
+writer determined the mean temperature of wooded and of cleared points,
+under the same latitude, 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 the portion of the tropics
+nearest to the equator, and where radiation tends powerfully during the
+night to lower the temperature under a sky without clouds."[154]
+
+The result of these observations, which has been pretty generally
+adopted by physicists, is that the mean temperature of cleared land in
+the tropics appears to be about one degree centigrade, or a little less
+than two degrees of Fahrenheit, above that of the forest. On page 147 of
+the volume just cited, Becquerel argues that, 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 are so different in the two regions compared, that I think we
+cannot, with entire confidence, reason from the one to the other, and it
+is much to be desired that observations be made on the summer and winter
+temperature of both the air and the ground in the depths of the North
+American forests, before it is too late.[155]
+
+
+INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON THE HUMIDITY OF THE AIR AND THE EARTH.
+
+
+a. _As Inorganic Matter._
+
+The most important influence of the forest on climate is, no doubt, that
+which it exercises on the humidity of the air and the earth, and this
+climatic action it exerts partly as dead, partly as living matter. By
+its interposition as a curtain between the sky and the ground, it
+intercepts a large proportion of the dew and the lighter showers, which
+would otherwise moisten the surface of the soil, and restores it to the
+atmosphere by evaporation; while in heavier rains, the large drops which
+fall upon the leaves and branches 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 from it.[157] In the forest, the air is almost quiescent, and
+moves only as local changes of temperature affect the specific gravity
+of its particles. Hence there is often a dead calm in the woods when a
+furious blast is raging in the open country at a few yards' distance.
+The denser the forest--as for example, where it consists of spike-leaved
+trees, or is thickly intermixed with them--the more obvious is its
+effect, and no one can have passed from the field to the wood in cold,
+windy weather, without having remarked it.[158]
+
+The vegetable mould, resulting from the decomposition of leaves and of
+wood, carpets the ground with a spongy covering which obstructs the
+evaporation from the mineral earth below, drinks up the rains and
+melting snows 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, penetrate far below the superficial soil, conduct the
+water along their surface to the lower depths to which they reach, and
+thus serve to drain the superior strata and remove the moisture out of
+the reach of evaporation.
+
+
+b. _The Forest as Organic._
+
+These are the principal modes in which the humidity of the atmosphere is
+affected by the forest regarded as lifeless matter. Let us inquire how
+its organic processes act upon this meteorological element.
+
+The commonest observation shows that the wood and bark of living trees
+are always more or less pervaded with watery and other fluids, one of
+which, the sap, is very abundant in trees of deciduous foliage when the
+buds begin to swell and the leaves to develop themselves in the spring.
+The outer bark of most trees is of a corky character, not admitting the
+absorption of much moisture from the atmosphere through its pores, and
+we can hardly suppose that the buds are able to extract from the air a
+much larger supply. The obvious conclusion as to the source from which
+the extraordinary quantity of sap at this season is derived, is that to
+which scientific investigation leads us, namely, that it is absorbed
+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 organs.[159]
+The amount of water taken up by the roots, however, is vastly greater
+than that imbibed through the leaves, especially at the season when the
+juices are most abundant, and when, as we have seen, the leaves are yet
+in embryo. The quantity of water thus received from the air and the
+earth, in a single year, by a wood of even a hundred acres, is very
+great, though experiments are wanting to furnish the data for even an
+approximate estimate of its measure; for only the vaguest conclusions
+can be drawn from the observations which have been made on the
+imbibition and exhalation of water by trees and other plants reared in
+artificial conditions diverse from those of the natural forest.[160]
+
+
+_Wood Mosses and Fungi._
+
+Besides the water drawn by the roots from the earth and the vapor
+absorbed by the leaves from the air, the wood mosses and fungi, which
+abound in all dense forests, take up a great quantity of moisture from
+the atmosphere when it is charged with humidity, and exhale it again
+when the air is dry. These humble organizations, which play a more
+important part in regulating the humidity 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 pasturage, or
+deserted. These mosses discharge a portion of the functions appropriated
+to the wood, and while they render the soil of improved lands much less
+fit for agricultural use, they, at the same time, prepare it for the
+growth of a new harvest of trees, when the infertility they produce
+shall have driven man to abandon it and suffer it to relapse into the
+hands of nature.[161]
+
+
+_Flow of Sap._
+
+The amount of sap which can be withdrawn from living trees furnishes,
+not indeed a measure of the quantity of water sucked up by their roots
+from the ground--for we cannot extract from a tree its whole
+moisture--but numerical data which may aid the imagination to form a
+general notion of the powerful action of the forest as an absorbent of
+humidity from the earth.
+
+The only forest tree known to Europe and North America, the sap of which
+is largely enough applied to economical uses to have made the amount of
+its flow a matter of practical importance and popular observation, is
+the sugar maple, _Acer saccharinum_, of the Anglo-American Provinces and
+States. In the course of a single "sugar season," which lasts ordinarily
+from twenty-five to thirty days, a sugar maple two feet in diameter will
+yield not less than twenty gallons of sap, and sometimes much more.[162]
+This, however, is but a trifling proportion of the water 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 fifty,[165] and of course
+the quantity of moisture abstracted from the soil by this tree alone is
+measured by thousands of gallons to the acre. The sugar orchards, as
+they are called, contain also many young maples too small for tapping,
+and numerous other trees--two of which, at least, the black birch,
+_Betula lenta_, and yellow birch, _Betula excelsa_, both very common in
+the same climate, are far more abundant in sap than the maple[166]--are
+scattered among the sugar trees; for the North American native forests
+are remarkable for the mixture of their crops.
+
+The sap of the maple, and of other trees with deciduous leaves which
+grow in the same climate, flows most freely in the early spring, and
+especially in clear weather, when the nights are frosty and the days
+warm; for it is then that the melting snows supply the earth with
+moisture in the justest proportion, and that the absorbent power of the
+roots is stimulated to its highest activity.[167]
+
+When the buds are ready to burst, and the green leaves begin to show
+themselves beneath their scaly covering, the ground has become drier,
+the thirst of the roots is quenched, and the flow of sap from them to
+the stem is greatly diminished.[168]
+
+
+_Absorption and Exhalation of Moisture._
+
+The leaves now commence the process of absorption, and imbibe both
+uncombined gases and an unascertained but perhaps considerable quantity
+of watery vapor from the humid atmosphere of spring which bathes them.
+
+The organic action of the tree, as thus far described, tends to the
+desiccation of air and earth; but when we consider what volumes of water
+are daily absorbed by a large tree, and how small a proportion of the
+weight of this fluid consists of matter which enters into new
+combinations, and becomes a part of the solid framework of the
+vegetable, or a component of its deciduous products, it is evident that
+the superfluous moisture must somehow be carried off almost as rapidly
+as it flows into the tree.[169] At the very commencement of vegetation
+in spring, some of this fluid certainly escapes through the buds, the
+nascent foliage, and the pores of the barb, and vegetable 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 the air. In any event, all the water derived by the
+growing tree from the atmosphere and the ground is returned again by
+transpiration or exudation, after having surrendered to the plant the
+small proportion of matter required for vegetable growth which it held
+in solution or suspension.[171] The hygrometrical equilibrium is then
+restored, so far as this: the tree yields up again the moisture it had
+drawn from the earth and the air, though it does not return it each to
+each; for the vapor carried off by transpiration greatly exceeds the
+quantity of water absorbed by the foliage from the atmosphere, and the
+amount, if any, carried back to the ground by the roots.
+
+The evaporation of the juices of the plant, by whatever process
+effected, takes up atmospheric heat and produces refrigeration. This
+effect is not less real, though much less sensible, in the forest than
+in meadow or pasture land, and it cannot be doubted that the local
+temperature is considerably affected by it. But the evaporation that
+cools the air diffuses through it, at the same time, a medium which
+powerfully resists the escape of heat from the earth by 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 less resistance to the
+transmission of direct solar heat, and indeed the beams of the sun seem
+more scorching when received through clear air charged with uncondensed
+moisture than after passing through a dry atmosphere. Hence the
+reduction of temperature by the evaporation of moisture from vegetation,
+though sensible, is less than it would be if water in the gaseous state
+were as impervious to heat given out by the sun as to that emitted by
+terrestrial objects.
+
+The hygroscopicity of vegetable mould is much greater than that of any
+mineral earth, and therefore the soil of the forest absorbs more
+atmospheric moisture than the open ground. The condensation 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 deg. to 27 deg. centigrade, making a difference of
+nearly thirteen degrees of Fahrenheit, and that of soil rich in humus
+from 20 deg. to 31 deg. centigrade, a difference of almost twenty degrees of
+Fahrenheit.[172]
+
+
+_Balance of Conflicting Influences._
+
+We have shown that the forest, considered as dead matter, tends to
+diminish the moisture of the air, by preventing the sun's rays from
+reaching the ground and evaporating the water that falls upon the
+surface, and also by spreading over the earth a spongy mantle which
+sucks up and retains the humidity it receives from the atmosphere,
+while, at the same time, this covering 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 the air by absorbing
+moisture from it, and, on the other, to increase that humidity by
+pouring out into the atmosphere, in a vaporous form, the water it draws
+up through its roots. This last operation, at the same time, lowers the
+temperature of the air in contact with or proximity to the wood, by the
+same law as in other cases of the conversion of water into vapor.
+
+As I have repeatedly said, we cannot measure the value of any one of
+these elements of climatic disturbance, raising or lowering of
+temperature, increase or diminution of humidity, nor can we say that in
+any one season, any one year, or any one fixed cycle, however long or
+short, they balance and compensate each other. They 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, moisture and drought. They serve as
+equalizers of temperature and humidity, and it is highly probable that,
+in analogy with most other works and workings of nature, they, at
+certain or uncertain periods, restore the equilibrium which, whether as
+lifeless masses or as living organisms, they may have temporarily
+disturbed.
+
+When, therefore, man destroyed these natural harmonizers of climatic
+discords, he sacrificed an important conservative power, though it is
+far from certain that he has thereby affected the mean, however much he
+may have exaggerated the extremes of atmospheric temperature and
+humidity, or, in other words, may have increased the range and
+lengthened the scale of thermometric and hygrometric variation.
+
+
+_Influence of the Forest on Temperature and Precipitation._
+
+Aside from the question of compensation, it does not seem probable that
+the forests sensibly affect the total quantity of precipitation, or the
+general mean of atmospheric temperature of the globe, or even that they
+had this influence when their extent was vastly greater than at present.
+The waters cover about three fourths of the face of the earth,[173] and
+if we deduct the frozen zones, the peaks and crests of lofty mountains
+and their craggy slopes, the Sahara and other great African and Asiatic
+deserts, and all such other portions of the solid surface as are
+permanently unfit for the growth of wood, we shall 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--enormously preponderate. It is, upon the whole, not
+probable that so small an extent of forest, so situated, could produce
+an appreciable influence on the _general_ climate of the globe, though
+it might appreciably affect the local action of all climatic elements.
+The total annual amount of solar heat absorbed and radiated by the
+earth, and the sum of terrestrial evaporation and atmospheric
+precipitation must be supposed constant; but the distribution of heat
+and of humidity is exposed to disturbance in both time and place, by a
+multitude of local causes, among which the presence or absence of the
+forest is doubtless one.
+
+So far as we are able to sum up the general results, it would appear
+that, in countries in the temperate zone still chiefly covered with
+wood, the summers would be cooler, moister, shorter, 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, though there is some conflict of testimony and of opinion on
+this point, and some apparently well-established exceptions to
+particular branches of what appears to be the general law.
+
+One of these occurs both in climates where the cold of winter is severe
+enough to freeze the ground to a considerable depth, as in Sweden and
+the Northern States of the American Union, and in milder zones, where
+the face of the earth is exposed to cold mountain winds, as in some
+parts of Italy and of France; for there, as we have seen, the winter is
+believed to extend itself into the months which belong to the spring,
+later than at periods when the forest covered the greater part of the
+ground.[174] More causes than one doubtless contribute to this result;
+but in the case of Sweden and the United States, the most obvious
+explanation of the fact is to be found in the loss of the shelter
+afforded to the ground by the thick coating of leaves which the forest
+sheds 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 half thawed, several times during the winter. The water from the
+melting snow runs into the depressions, and when, after a day or two of
+warm sunshine or tepid rain, the cold returns, it is consolidated to
+ice, and the bared ridges and swells of earth are deeply frozen.[175] It
+requires many days of mild weather to raise the temperature of soil in
+this condition, and of the air in contact with it, to that of the earth
+in the forests of the same climatic region. Flora is already plaiting
+her sylvan wreath before the corn flowers which are to deck the garland
+of Ceres have waked from their winter's sleep; and it is not a popular
+error to believe that, where man has substituted his artificial crops
+for the spontaneous harvest of nature, spring delays her coming.
+
+In many cases, the apparent change in the period of the seasons is a
+purely local phenomenon, which is probably compensated by a higher
+temperature in other months, without any real disturbance of the average
+thermometrical equilibrium. We may easily suppose that there are
+analogous partial deviations from the general law of precipitation; and,
+without 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 even the mean temperature of the forest is below
+that of the open country in the same latitude. If the air in a wood is
+cooler than that around it, it must reduce the temperature of the
+atmospheric stratum immediately above it, and, of course, whenever a
+saturated current sweeps over it, it must produce precipitation which
+would fall upon or near it.
+
+But the subject is so exceedingly complex and difficult, that it is
+safer to regard it as a historical problem, or at least as what lawyers
+call a mixed question of law and fact, than to attempt to decide it upon
+_a priori_ grounds. Unfortunately the evidence 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 followed by a diminution in the annual quantity of rain
+and dew. Indeed, it has long been a popularly settled belief that
+vegetation and the condensation and fall of atmospheric moisture are
+reciprocally necessary to each other, and even the poets sing of
+
+      Afric's barren sand,
+  Where nought can grow, because it raineth not,
+  And where no rain can fall to bless the land,
+  Because nought grows there.[176]
+
+Before stating the evidence on the general question and citing the
+judgments of the learned upon it, however, it is well to remark that the
+comparative variety or frequency of inundations in earlier and later
+centuries is not necessarily, 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 precipitation in its valley, than
+upon the rapidity with which it is conducted, on or under the surface of
+the ground, to the central artery that drains the basin. But this point
+will be more fully discussed in a subsequent chapter.
+
+There is another important observation which may properly be introduced
+here. It is not universally, or even generally true, that the atmosphere
+returns its humidity to the local source from which it receives it. The
+air is constantly in motion,
+
+  ----howling tempests scour amain
+  From sea to land, from land to sea;[177]
+
+and, therefore, it is always probable that the evaporation drawn up by
+the atmosphere from a given river, or sea, or forest, or meadow, will be
+discharged by precipitation, not at or near the point where it rose, but
+at a distance of miles, leagues, or even degrees. The currents of the
+upper air are invisible, and they leave behind them no landmark to
+record their track. We know not whence they come, or whither they go. We
+have a certain rapidly increasing acquaintance 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 waste square miles of fertile corn land; nor do we know
+whether the rain which feeds our brooklets is due to the transpiration
+from a neighboring forest, or to the evaporation from a far-off sea. If,
+therefore, it were proved that the annual quantity of rain and dew is
+now as great on the plains of Castile, for example, as it was when they
+were covered with the native forest, it would by no means follow that
+those woods did not augment the amount of precipitation elsewhere.
+
+But I return to the question. Beginning with the latest authorities, I
+cite a passage from Clave.[178] After arguing that we cannot reason from
+the climatic effects of the forest in tropical and sub-tropical
+countries as to its influence in temperate latitudes, the author
+proceeds: "The action of the forests on rain, a consequence of that
+which they exercise on temperature, is difficult to estimate in our
+climate, but is very pronounced in hot countries, and is established by
+numerous examples. 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 deg. 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 drop of rain had fallen for three years.[179] The terrible
+droughts which desolate the Cape Verd Islands must also be attributed to
+the destruction of the forests. In the Island of St. Helena, where the
+wooded surface has considerably extended within a few years, it has been
+observed that the rain has increased in the same proportion. It is now
+in quantity double what it was during the residence of Napoleon. In
+Egypt, recent plantations have caused rains, which hitherto were almost
+unknown."
+
+Schacht[180] observes: "In wooded countries, the atmosphere is generally
+humid, and rain and dew fertilize the soil. As the lightning rod
+abstracts the electric fluid from the stormy sky, so the forest attracts
+to itself the rain from the clouds, which, in falling, refreshes not it
+alone, but extends its benefits to the neighboring fields. * * The
+forest, presenting a considerable surface for evaporation, gives to its
+own soil and to all the adjacent ground an abundant and enlivening dew.
+There falls, it is true, less dew on a tall and thick wood than on the
+surrounding meadows, which, 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 coasts:
+both water the soil and thereby insure its fertility." In a note upon
+this passage, quoting as authority the _Historia de la Conquista de las
+siete islas de Gran Canaria, de Juan de Abreu Galindo_, 1632, p. 47, he
+adds: "Old historians relate that a celebrated laurel in Ferro formerly
+furnished drinkable water to the inhabitants of the island. The water
+flowed from its foliage, uninterruptedly, drop by drop, and was
+collected in cisterns. Every morning the sea breeze drove a cloud toward
+the wonderful tree, which attracted it to its huge top," where it was
+condensed to a liquid form.
+
+In a number of the _Missionary Herald_, published at Boston, the date of
+which I have mislaid, the Rev. Mr. Van Lennep, well known as a competent
+observer, gives the following remarkable account of a similar fact
+witnessed by him in an excursion to the east of Tocat in Asia Minor:
+
+"In this region, some 3,000 feet above the sea, the trees are mostly
+oak, and attain a large size. I noticed an illustration of the influence
+of trees in general in collecting moisture. Despite the fog, of a week's
+duration, the ground was everywhere perfectly dry. The dry oak leaves,
+however, had gathered the water, and the branches and trunks of the
+trees were more or less wet. In many cases the water had run down the
+trunk and moistened the soil around the roots of the tree. In two
+places, 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 as it reached the ground. This is a most striking
+illustration of the acknowledged influence of trees in collecting
+moisture; and one cannot for a moment doubt, that the parched regions
+which commence at Sivas, and extend in one direction to the Persian
+Gulf, and in another to the Red Sea, were once a fertile garden, teeming
+with a prosperous population, before the forests which covered the
+hillsides were cut down--before the cedar and the fir tree were rooted
+up from the sides of Lebanon.
+
+"As we now descended the northern side of the watershed, we passed
+through the grove of walnut, oak, and black mulberry trees, which shade
+the village of Oktab, whose houses, cattle, and ruddy children were
+indicative of prosperity."
+
+Coultas thus argues: "The ocean, winds, and woods may be regarded as the
+several parts of a grand distillatory apparatus. The sea is the boiler
+in which vapor 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 naturally condenses the vapor, and showers of
+rain are thus distilled from the cloud masses which float in the
+atmosphere, by the woods beneath them."[181]
+
+Sir John F. W. Herschel enumerates among "the influences unfavorable to
+rain," "absence of vegetation in warm climates, and especially of trees.
+This is, no doubt," continues 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 injured by denudation
+(Earl of Lovelace on Climate, etc.), and, on the other hand, rain has
+become more frequent in Egypt since the more vigorous cultivation of the
+palm tree."
+
+Hohenstein remarks: "With respect to the temperature in the forest, I
+have already observed that, at certain times of the day and of the year,
+it is less than in the open field. Hence the woods may, in the daytime,
+in summer and toward the end of winter, tend to increase the fall of
+rain; but it is otherwise 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 to deposit their water.
+These considerations render it probable that the forest increases the
+quantity of rain; but they do not establish the certainty of this
+conclusion, because we have no positive numerical data to produce on the
+depression of temperature, and the humidity of the air in the
+woods."[182]
+
+Barth presents the following view of the subject: "The ground in the
+forest, as well as the atmospheric stratum over it, continues humid
+after the woodless districts have lost their moisture; and the air,
+charged with the humidity drawn from them, is usually carried away by
+the winds before it has deposited itself in a condensed form on the
+earth. Trees constantly transpire through their leaves a great quantity
+of moisture, which they partly absorb again by the same organs, while
+the greatest part of their supply is pumped up through their widely
+ramifying roots from considerable depths in the ground. Thus a constant
+evaporation is produced, which keeps the forest atmosphere moist even in
+long droughts, when all other sources of humidity in the forest itself
+are dried up. * * * Little is required to compel the stratum 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 follows that wooded
+districts have both more frequent and more abundant rain, and in general
+are more humid, than woodless regions; for what is true of the woods
+themselves, in this respect, is true also of their treeless
+neighborhood, which, in consequence of the ready mobility of the air and
+its constant changes, receives a share of the characteristics of the
+forest atmosphere, coolness and moisture. * * * When the districts
+stripped of trees have long been deprived of rain and dew, * * * and the
+grass and the fruits of the field are ready to wither, the grounds which
+are surrounded by woods are green and flourishing. By night they are
+refreshed with dew, which is never wanting in the moist air of the
+forest, and in due season they are watered by a beneficent shower, or a
+mist which rolls slowly over them."[183]
+
+Asbjoernsen, after adducing the familiar theoretical arguments on this
+point, adds: "The rainless territories in Peru and North Africa
+establish this conclusion, and numerous other examples show that woods
+exert an influence in producing rain, and that rain fails where they are
+wanting; for many countries have, by the destruction of the forests,
+been deprived of rain, moisture, springs, and watercourses, which are
+necessary for vegetable growth. * * * The narratives of travellers show
+the deplorable consequences of felling the woods in the Island of
+Trinidad, Martinique, San Domingo, and indeed, in almost the entire
+West Indian group. * * * In Palestine and many other parts of Asia and
+Northern Africa, which in ancient times 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 planted with
+trees, this effect has been manifest, and similar observations have been
+made in several places in Southern France. In Lower Egypt, both at Cairo
+and near Alexandria, rain rarely fell in considerable quantity--for
+example, during the French occupation of Egypt, about 1798, it did not
+rain for sixteen months--but since Mehemet Aali and Ibrahim Pacha
+executed their vast plantations (the former alone having planted more
+than twenty millions of olive and fig trees, cottonwood, oranges,
+acacias, planes, &c.), there now falls a good deal of rain, especially
+along the coast, in the months of November, December, and January; and
+even at Cairo it rains both oftener and more abundantly, so that real
+showers are no rarity."[184]
+
+Babinet, in one of his lectures,[185] cites the supposed fact of the
+increase of rain in Egypt in consequence of the planting of trees, and
+thus remarks upon it: "A few years ago it never rained in Lower Egypt.
+The constant north winds, which almost exclusively prevail there, passed
+without obstruction over a surface bare of vegetation. Grain was kept
+on the roofs in Alexandria, without 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 Meuse, which is as remarkable for its volume as for the small extent
+of its basin. With respect to the retardation of the atmospheric
+currents, and the effects of that retardation, one of my illustrious
+colleagues, M. Mignet, who is not less a profound thinker than an
+eloquent writer, suggested to me that, to produce rain, a forest was as
+good as a mountain, and this is literally true."
+
+Monestier-Savignat arrives at this conclusion: "Forests on the one hand
+diminish evaporation; on the other, they act on the atmosphere as
+refrigerating causes. The second scale of the balance predominates over
+the other, for it is established that in wooded countries it rains
+oftener, and that, the quantity of rain being equal, they are more
+humid."[187]
+
+Boussingault--whose observations on the drying up of lakes and springs,
+from the destruction of the woods, in tropical America, have often been
+cited as a conclusive proof that the quantity of rain 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 on a subsequent page, he
+concludes that, "arguing from meteorological facts collected in the
+equinoctial regions, there is reason to presume that clearings diminish
+the annual fall of rain."[188]
+
+The same eminent author proposes series of observations on the level of
+natural lakes, especially on those without outlet, as a means of
+determining the increase or diminution of precipitation in their basins,
+and, of course, of measuring the effect of clearing when such
+operations take place within those basins. But it must be observed that
+lakes without a visible outlet are of very rare occurrence, and besides,
+where no superficial 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 of a lake is to be ascribed to infiltration, to
+percolation, or to evaporation.[189] Further, we are, in general, as
+little able to affirm that a given lake derives all its water from the
+fall of rain within its geographical basin, or that it receives all the
+water that falls in that basin except what evaporates from the ground,
+as we are to show that all its superfluous water is carried off by
+visible channels and by evaporation.
+
+Suppose the strata of the mountains on two sides of a lake, east and
+west, to be tilted in the same direction, and that those of the hill on
+the east side incline toward the lake, those of that on the west side
+from it. In this case a large proportion of the rain which falls on the
+eastern slope of the eastern hill may find its way between the strata to
+the lake, and an equally large proportion of the precipitation upon the
+eastern slope of the western ridge may escape out of the basin by
+similar channels. In such case the clearing of the _outer_ slopes of
+either or both mountains, while the forests of the _inner_ declivities
+remained intact, might affect the quantity of water 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 of natural lakes, then, cannot be relied upon as
+a proof, still less as a measure of an increase or diminution in the
+fall of rain within their geographical basins, resulting from the
+felling of the woods which covered them; though such phenomena afford
+very strong presumptive evidence that the supply of water is somehow
+augmented or lessened. The supply is, in most cases, derived much less
+from the precipitation which falls directly upon the surface of lakes,
+than from waters which flow above or under the ground around them, and
+which, in the latter case, often come from districts not comprised
+within what superficial geography would regard as belonging to the lake
+basins.
+
+It is, upon the whole, evident that the question can hardly be
+determined except by the comparison of pluviometrical observations made
+at a given station before and after the destruction of the woods. Such
+observations, unhappily, are scarcely 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
+Institution at Washington is well situated for directing the attention
+of observers in the newer territory of the United States to this
+subject, and it is to be hoped that it will not fail to avail itself of
+its facilities for this purpose.
+
+Numerous other authorities might be cited in support of the proposition
+that forests tend, at least in certain latitudes and at certain seasons,
+to produce rain; but though the arguments of the advocates of this
+doctrine are very plausible, not to say convincing, their opinions are
+rather _a priori_ conclusions from general meteorological laws, than
+deductions from facts of observation, and it is remarkable that there is
+so little direct evidence on the subject.
+
+On the other hand, Foissac expresses the opinion that forests have no
+influence on precipitation, beyond that of promoting the deposit of dew
+in their vicinity, and he states, as a fact of experience, that the
+planting of large vegetables, and especially of trees, is a very
+efficient means of drying morasses, because the plants draw from the
+earth a quantity of water larger than the average annual fall of
+rain.[190] Kloeden, admitting that the rivers Oder and Elbe have
+diminished in quantity of water, the former since 1778, the latter since
+1828, denies that the diminution of volume is to be ascribed to a
+decrease of precipitation in consequence of the felling of the forests,
+and states, what other physicists confirm, that, during the same period,
+meteorological records in various parts of Europe show rather an
+augmentation than a reduction of rain.[191]
+
+The observations of Belgrand tend to show, contrary to the general
+opinion, that less rain falls in wooded than in denuded districts. He
+compared the precipitation for the year 1852, at Vezelay in the valley
+of the Bouchat, and at Avallon in the valley of the Grenetiere. At the
+first of these places it was 881 millimetres, at the latter 581
+millimetres. 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 proportions of
+forest and cultivated country around them, the basin of the Bouchat
+being entirely bare, while that of the Grenetiere is well wooded.[192]
+Observations in the same valleys, considered with reference to the
+seasons, show the following pluviometric results:
+
+FOR LA GRENETIERE.
+
+  February, 1852,   42.2 millimetres precipitation.
+  November,  "      23.8      "           "
+  January,  1853,   35.4      "           "
+                   -----
+           Total,  106.4 in three cold months.
+
+  September, 1851,  27.1 millimetres precipitation.
+  May,       1852,  20.9      "           "
+  June,       "     56.3      "           "
+  July,       "     22.8      "           "
+  September,  "     22.8      "           "
+                   -----
+           Total,  149.9 in five warm months.
+
+FOR LE BOUCHAT.
+
+  February, 1852,   51.3 millimetres precipitation.
+  November,  "      36.6      "           "
+  January,  1853,   92.0      "           "
+                   -----
+           Total,  179.9 in three cold months.
+
+  September, 1851,  43.8 millimetres precipitation.
+  May,       1852,  13.2      "           "
+  June,       "     55.5      "           "
+  July,       "     19.5      "           "
+  September,  "     26.5      "           "
+                   -----
+           Total,  158.5 in five warm months.
+
+These observations, so far as they go, seem to show that more rain falls
+in cleared than in wooded countries, but this result is so contrary to
+what has been generally accepted as a theoretical conclusion, that
+further experiment is required to determine the question.
+
+Becquerel--whose treatise on the climatic effects of the destruction of
+the forest is the fullest general discussion of that subject known to
+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 any
+influence upon precipitation, the presumption is that he rejects the
+doctrine of its importance as an agent in producing the fall of rain.
+
+The effect of the forest on precipitation, then, is not entirely free
+from doubt, and we cannot positively affirm that the total annual
+quantity of rain is diminished or increased by the destruction of the
+woods, though both theoretical considerations and the balance of
+testimony strongly 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 more uniform degree of humidity in the
+atmosphere than is observed in cleared grounds. Scarcely less can it be
+questioned that they promote the frequency of showers, and, if they do
+not augment the amount of precipitation, they equalize its distribution
+through the different seasons.
+
+
+_Influence of the Forest on the Humidity of the Soil._
+
+I have hitherto confined myself to the influence of the forest on
+meteorological conditions, a subject, as has been seen, full of
+difficulty and uncertainty. Its comparative effects on the temperature,
+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
+and greater superficial watercourses, are much less disputable as well
+as more easily estimated, and much more important, than its possible
+value as a cause of strictly climatic equilibrium or disturbance.
+
+The action of the forest on the earth is chiefly mechanical, but the
+organic process of abstraction of water by its roots affects the
+quantity of that fluid contained in the vegetable mould, and in the
+mineral strata near the surface, and, consequently, the consistency of
+the soil. In treating of the effects of trees on the moisture of the
+atmosphere, I have said that the forest, by interposing a canopy between
+the sky and the ground, and by covering the surface with a thick mantle
+of fallen leaves, at 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 than that of cleared land. This
+agrees with experience. The soil of the forest is always moist, except
+in the extremest droughts, and it is exceedingly rare that a primitive
+wood suffers from want of humidity. How far this accumulation of water
+affects the condition of neighboring grounds by lateral infiltration, we
+do not know, but we shall see, in a subsequent chapter, that water is
+conveyed to great distances by this process, and we may hence infer that
+the influence in question is an important one.
+
+
+_Influence of the Forest on the Flow of Springs._
+
+It is well established that the protection afforded by the forest
+against the escape of moisture from its soil, insures the permanence and
+regularity of natural springs, not only within the limits of the wood,
+but at some distance beyond its borders, and thus contributes to the
+supply of an element essential to both vegetable and animal life. As the
+forests are destroyed, the springs which flowed from the woods, and,
+consequently, the greater watercourses fed by them, diminish 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 years ago, by simply
+allowing the bushes and young trees to grow up on a rocky knoll, not
+more than half an acre in extent, immediately above it, and has since
+continued to flow uninterruptedly. The uplands in the Atlantic States
+formerly abounded in sources and rills, but in many parts of those
+States which have been cleared for above a generation or two, the hill
+pastures now suffer severely from drought, and in dry seasons no longer
+afford either water or herbage for cattle.
+
+Foissac, indeed, quotes from the elder Pliny (_Nat. Hist._, xxxi, c. 30)
+a passage affirming that the felling of the woods gives rise to springs
+which did not exist before because the water of the soil was absorbed by
+the trees; and the same meteorologist declares, as I observed in
+treating of the effect of the forest on atmospheric humidity, that the
+planting of trees tends to drain marshy ground, because the roots absorb
+more water than falls from the air. But Pliny's 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 reason, the cabins of the first settlers
+were perched upon the hills. As the forests have been from time to time
+removed, and the face of the earth laid open to the air and sun, the
+moisture has been evaporated, and the removal of the highways and of
+human habitations from the bleak hills to the sheltered valleys, is one
+of the most agreeable among the many improvements which later
+generations have witnessed in the interior of New England and the other
+Northern States.
+
+Almost every treatise on the economy of the forest adduces numerous
+facts in support of the doctrine that the clearing of the woods tends to
+diminish the flow of springs and the humidity of the soil, and it might
+seem unnecessary to bring forward further evidence on this point.[194]
+But the subject is of too much practical importance and of too great
+philosophical interest to be summarily disposed of; and it ought
+particularly to be noticed that there is at least one case--that of some
+loose soils which, when bared of wood, very rapidly absorb and transmit
+to lower strata the water they receive from the atmosphere, as argued by
+Valles[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 then be conducted along it, until,
+finally, at the outcropping of this stratum, it bursts from a hillside
+as a running spring. But such instances are doubtless too rare to form a
+frequent or an important exception to the general law, because it is
+only under very uncommon circumstances that rain water runs off over the
+surface of forest ground instead of sinking into it, and very rarely the
+case that such a soil as has just been supposed is covered by a layer of
+vegetable earth thick enough to retain, until it is evaporated, all the
+rain that falls upon it, without imparting any water to the strata below
+it.
+
+If we look at the point under discussion as purely a question of fact,
+to be determined by positive evidence and not by argument, the
+observations of Boussingault are, both in the circumstances they detail,
+and in the weight of authority to be attached to the testimony, among
+the most important yet recorded. They are embodied in the fourth section
+of the twentieth chapter of that writer's _Economie Rurale_, and I have
+already referred to them on page 191 for another 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 the increasing breadth of the belt of pebbles along their
+banks seems to prove the loss of a part of their water; and, finally,
+abundant springs have almost dried up. These observations have been
+principally made in valleys bounded by high mountains, and it is thought
+to have been noticed that this diminution of the waters has immediately
+followed the epoch when the inhabitants have begun to destroy,
+unsparingly, the woods which were spread over the face of the land.
+
+"These facts would indicate that, where clearings have been made,
+it rains less than formerly, and this is the generally received
+opinion. * * * But while the facts I have stated have been established,
+it has been observed, at the same time, that, since the clearing of the
+mountains, the rivers and the torrents, which seemed to have lost a part
+of their water, sometimes suddenly swell, and that, occasionally, to a
+degree which causes great disasters. Besides, after violent storms,
+springs which had become almost exhausted have been observed to burst
+out with impetuosity, 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. For instance: if the low water of
+the Rhone during one part of the year were exactly compensated by a
+sufficient number of floods, it would follow that this river would
+convey to the Mediterranean the same volume of water which it carried to
+that sea in ancient times, before the period when the countries near its
+source were stripped of their woods, and when, probably, its mean depth
+was not subject to so great variations as in our days. If this were so,
+the forests would have this value--that of regulating, of economizing in
+a certain sort, the drainage of the rain water.
+
+"If running streams really become rarer in proportion as clearing is
+extended, it follows either that the rain is less abundant, or that
+evaporation is greatly favored by a surface which is no longer protected
+by trees against the rays of the sun and the wind. These two causes,
+acting in the same direction, must often be cumulative in their effects,
+and before we attempt to fix the value of each, it is proper 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 this effect is due. * * * I
+shall attach no value except to facts which have taken place under the
+eye of man, as it is the influence of his labors on the meteorological
+condition of the atmosphere which I propose to estimate. What I am about
+to detail has been observed particularly in America, but I shall
+endeavor to establish, that what I believe to be true of America would
+be equally so for any other continent.
+
+"One of the most interesting parts of Venezuela is, no doubt, the valley
+of Aragua. Situated at a short distance from the coast, and endowed,
+from its elevation, with various climates and a soil of unexampled
+fertility, its agriculture embraces at once the crops suited to tropical
+regions and to Europe. Wheat succeeds 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
+no outlet to the ocean, form, by their union, the beautiful Lake of
+Tacarigua or Valencia. This lake, according to Humboldt, is larger than
+that of Neufchatel; it is at an elevation of 439 metres [= 1,460 English
+feet] above the sea, and its greatest length does not exceed two leagues
+and a half [= seven English miles].
+
+"At the time of Humboldt's visit to the valley of Aragua, the
+inhabitants were struck by the gradual diminution which the lake had
+been undergoing for thirty years. In fact, by comparing the descriptions
+given by historians 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, had often traversed the
+valley of Aragua, says positively that New Valencia was founded, in
+1555, at half a league from the Lake of Tacarigua; in 1800, Humboldt
+found this city 5,260 metres [= 3-1/3 English miles] from the shore.
+
+"The aspect of the soil furnished new proofs. Many hillocks on the plain
+retain the name of islands, which they more justly bore when they were
+surrounded by water. The ground laid bare by the retreat of the lake was
+converted into 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 built in 1740 on the island of Cabrera, was
+now on a peninsula; and, finally, on two granitic islands, those of Cura
+and Cabo Blanco, Humboldt observed among the shrubs, some metres above
+the water, fine sand filled with helicites.
+
+"These clear and positive facts suggested numerous explanations, all
+assuming a subterranean outlet, which permitted the discharge of the
+water to the ocean. Humboldt disposed of these hypotheses, and, after a
+careful examination of the locality, the distinguished traveller did not
+hesitate to ascribe the diminution of the waters of the lake to the
+numerous clearings which had been made in the valley of Aragua within
+half a century. * * *
+
+"In 1800, the valley of Aragua possessed a population as dense as that
+of any of the best-peopled parts of France. * * * Such was the
+prosperous condition of this fine country when Humboldt occupied the
+Hacienda de Cura.
+
+"Twenty-two years later, I explored the valley of Aragua, fixing my
+residence in the little town of Maracay. For some years previous, the
+inhabitants had observed that the waters of the lake were no longer
+retiring, but, on the contrary, were sensibly rising. Grounds, not long
+before occupied by plantations, 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 to flood the
+road between Maracay and New Valencia. The fears which the inhabitants
+of the shores had so long entertained were reversed. * * * Those who had
+explained the diminution of the lake by the supposition of subterranean
+channels were suspected of blocking them up, to prove themselves in the
+right.
+
+"During the twenty-two years which had elapsed, important political
+events had occurred. Venezuela no longer belonged to Spain. The peaceful
+valley of Aragua had been the theatre of bloody struggles, and a war of
+extermination 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 plantations were abandoned, and the forest, which in the
+tropics so rapidly encroaches, had soon recovered a large proportion of
+the soil which man had wrested from it by more than a century of
+constant and painful labor.
+
+"At the time of the growing prosperity of the valley of Aragua, the
+principal affluents of the lake were diverted, to serve for irrigation,
+and the rivers were dry for more than six months of the year. At the
+period of my visit, their waters, no longer employed, flowed freely."
+
+Boussingault proceeds to state that two lakes near Ubate in New Granada,
+at an elevation of 2,562 metres (= 8,500 English feet), where there is a
+constant temperature of 14 deg. to 16 deg. centigrade [= 57 deg., 61 deg. Fahrenheit],
+had formed but one, a century before his visit; that the waters were
+gradually retiring, and the plantations extending over the abandoned
+bed; that, by inquiry of old hunters and by examination of parish
+records, he found that extensive clearings had been made and were still
+going on.
+
+He found, also, that the length of the Lake of Fuquene, in the same
+valley, had, within two centuries, been reduced from ten leagues to one
+and a half, its breadth from three leagues to one. At the former period,
+timber was abundant, and the neighboring mountains were 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, similar to those already
+detailed, might be cited, and he proceeds to show, by several examples,
+that the waters of other lakes in the same regions, where the valleys
+had always been bare of wood, or where the forests had not been
+disturbed, had undergone no change of level.
+
+Boussingault further maintains that the lakes of Switzerland have
+sustained a depression of level since the too prevalent destruction of
+the woods, and arrives at the general conclusion, that, "in countries
+where great clearings have been made, there has most probably been a
+diminution in the living waters which flow upon the surface of the
+ground." This conclusion he further supports by two examples: one, where
+a fine spring, 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 rain gauges, established as soon as the
+decrease of water began to excite alarm, showed a greater fall of rain
+for the second year of observation than the first, yet there was no
+appreciable increase in the flow of the mill streams. From these cases,
+the distinguished physicist infers that very restricted local clearings
+may diminish and even suppress springs and brooks, without any reduction
+in the total quantity of rain.
+
+It will have been noticed that these observations, with the exception of
+the last two cases, do not bear directly upon the question of the
+diminution of springs by clearings, but they logically infer it from the
+subsidence of the natural reservoirs which springs once filled. There
+is, however, no want of positive evidence on this subject.
+
+Marschand cites the following instances: "Before the felling of the
+woods, within the last few years, in the valley of the Soulce, the
+Combe-es-Mounin and the Little Valley, the Sorne furnished a regular
+and sufficient supply 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 that it has been necessary to change
+the water wheels, because those of the old construction are no longer
+able to drive the machinery, and at last to introduce a steam engine to
+prevent the stoppage of the works for want of water.
+
+"When the factory of St. Ursanne was established, the river that
+furnished its power was abundant, long known and tried, and had, from
+time immemorial, sufficed for the machinery of a previous factory.
+Afterward, the woods near its sources were cut. The supply of water fell
+off in consequence, the factory wanted water for half the year, and was
+at last obliged to stop altogether.
+
+"The spring of Combefoulat, in the commune of Seleate, was well known as
+one of the best in the country; it was remarkably abundant and
+sufficient, in spite of the severest droughts, to supply all the
+fountains of the town; but, as soon as considerable forests were felled
+in Combe-de-pre Martin and in the valley of Combefoulat, the famous
+spring which lies below these woods has become a mere thread of water,
+and disappears altogether in times of drought.
+
+"The spring of Varieux, which formerly supplied the castle of Pruntrut,
+lost more than half its water after the clearing of Varieux and
+Rongeoles. These woods have been replanted, the young trees are growing
+well, and with the woods, the waters of the spring are increasing.
+
+"The Dog Spring between Pruntrut and Bressancourt has entirely vanished
+since the surrounding forests grounds were brought under cultivation.
+
+"The Wolf Spring, in the commune of Soubey, furnishes a remarkable
+example of the influence of the woods upon fountains. A few years ago
+this spring did not exist. At the place where it now rises, a small
+thread of water was observed after very long rains, but the stream
+disappeared with the rain. The spot is in the 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
+occasional rill, and furnished abundant water in the longest droughts.
+For forty or fifty years, this spring was considered the best in the
+Clos du Doubs. A few years since, the grove was felled, and the ground
+turned again to a pasture. The spring disappeared with the wood, and is
+now as dry as it was ninety years ago."[197]
+
+"The influence of the forest on springs," says Hummel, "is strikingly
+shown by an instance at Heilbronn. The woods on the hills surrounding
+the town are cut in regular succession every twentieth year. As the
+annual cuttings approach a certain point, the springs yield less water,
+some of them none at all; but as the young growth shoots up, they now
+more and more freely, and at length bubble up again in all their
+original abundance."[198]
+
+Piper states the following case: "Within about half a mile of my
+residence there is a pond upon which mills have been standing for a long
+time, dating back, I believe, to the first settlement of the town. These
+have been kept in constant operation until within some twenty or thirty
+years, when the supply of water began to fail. The 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 season of freshets; and, what was never
+heard of before, the stream itself has been entirely dry. Within the
+last ten years a new growth of wood has sprung up on most of the land
+formerly occupied by the old forest; and now the water runs through the
+year, notwithstanding the great droughts of the last few years, going
+back from 1856."
+
+Dr. Piper quotes from a letter of William C. Bryant the following
+remarks: "It is a common observation that our summers are become drier,
+and our streams smaller. Take the Cuyahoga as an illustration. Fifty
+years ago large barges loaded with goods went up and down that river,
+and one of the vessels engaged in the 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, at New
+Portage, and sailed to New Orleans without breaking bulk. Now, the river
+hardly affords a supply of water at New Portage for the canal. The same
+may be said of other streams--they are drying up. And from the same
+cause--the destruction of our forests--our summers are growing drier,
+and our winters colder."[199]
+
+No observer has more carefully studied the influence of the forest upon
+the flow of the waters, or reasoned more ably on the ascertained
+phenomena than Cantegril. The facts presented in the following case,
+communicated by him to the _Ami des Sciences_ for December, 1859, are as
+nearly conclusive as any single instance well can be:
+
+"In the territory of the commune of Labruguiere, there is a forest of
+1,834 hectares [4,530 acres], known by the name of the Forest of
+Montaut, and belonging to that commune. It extends along the northern
+slope of the Black Mountains. The soil is granitic, the maximum altitude
+1,243 metres [4,140 feet], and the inclination ranges between 15 and 60
+to 100.
+
+"A small current of water, the brook of Caunan, takes its rise in this
+forest, and receives the waters of two thirds of its surface. At the
+lower extremity of the wood and on the stream are several fulleries,
+each requiring a force of eight horse-power to drive the water wheels
+which work the stampers. The commune of Labruguiere had been for a long
+time famous for its opposition to forest laws. Trespasses and abuses 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 the current of
+the Caunan. The violence of the floods was sometimes such that they were
+obliged to stop the machinery for some time. During the summer another
+inconvenience was felt. If the dry weather continued a little longer
+than usual, the delivery of water became insignificant. Each fullery
+could for the most part only employ a single set of stampers, and it was
+not unusual to see the work entirely suspended.
+
+"After 1840, the municipal authority succeeded in enlightening the
+population as to their true interests. Protected by a more watchful
+supervision, aided by well-managed replantation, the forest has
+continued to improve to the present day. In proportion to the
+restoration of the forest, the condition of 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 rain;
+the floods follow a regular progression till they reach their maximum,
+and decrease in the same manner. Finally, the fulleries are no longer
+forced to suspend work in summer; the water is always sufficiently
+abundant to allow the employment of two sets of stampers at least, and
+often even of three.
+
+"This example is remarkable in this respect, that, all other
+circumstances having remained the same, the changes in the action of the
+stream can be attributed only to the restoration of the forest--changes
+which may be thus summed up: diminution of flood water during
+rains--increase of delivery at other seasons."
+
+
+_The Forest in Winter._
+
+To estimate rightly the importance of the forest as a natural apparatus
+for accumulating the water that falls upon the surface and transmitting
+it to the subjacent strata, we must compare the condition and properties
+of its soil with those of cleared and cultivated earth, and examine the
+consequently different action of these soils at different seasons of the
+year. The disparity between them is greatest in climates where, as in
+the Northern American States and 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 or
+near the tropics, but they are not wanting in higher latitudes; for a
+large part of Asiatic and even of European Turkey is almost wholly
+deprived of summer rains. In the principal regions occupied by European
+cultivation, and where alone the questions discussed in this volume are
+recognized as having, at present, any practical importance, rain falls
+at all seasons, and it is to these regions that, on this point as well
+as others, I chiefly confine my attention.
+
+The influence of the forest upon the waters of the earth has been more
+studied in France than in any other part of the civilized world, because
+that country has, in recent times, suffered most severely from the
+destruction of the woods. But in the southern provinces of that empire,
+where the evils resulting from this cause are 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 are gone. For these reasons, the specific
+character of the forest, as a winter reservoir of moisture in countries
+with a cold and dry atmosphere, has not attracted so much attention in
+France and Northern Europe as it deserves in the United States, where an
+excessive climate renders that function of the woods more important.
+
+In New England, irregular as the climate is, the first autumnal snows
+usually fall before the ground is frozen at all, or when the frost
+extends at most to the depth of only a few inches. In the woods,
+especially those situated upon the elevated ridges which supply the
+natural irrigation of the soil and feed 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 unfavorable
+for radiation, but, even when it is of considerable thickness, it is not
+wholly impervious to the rays of the sun, and for this reason, as well
+as from the warmth of lower strata, the frozen crust, if one has been
+formed, is soon thawed, and does not again fall below the freezing point
+during the winter.
+
+The snow in contact with the earth now begins to melt, with greater or
+less rapidity, according to the relative temperature of the earth and
+the air, while the water resulting from its dissolution is imbibed by
+the vegetable mould, and carried off by infiltration so fast that both
+the 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
+partially protected from the action of the sun, and as very little water
+runs off in the winter by superficial watercourses, except in rare cases
+of sudden thaw, there can be no question that much the greater part of
+the snow deposited in the forest is slowly melted and absorbed by the
+earth.
+
+The quantity of snow that falls in extensive forests, far from the open
+country, has seldom been ascertained by direct observation, because
+there are few meteorological stations in such situations. In the
+Northeastern border States of the American Union, the ground in the deep
+woods is covered with snow four or five months, and the proportion of
+water which falls in 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 unevaporated in the forest, for many days
+after snow let fall at the same time in the cleared field has
+disappeared without either a thaw to melt it or a wind powerful enough
+to drift it away. Even when bared of their leaves, the trees of a wood
+obstruct, in an important degree, both the direct action of the sun's
+rays on the snow, and the movement of drying and thawing winds.
+
+Dr. Piper records the following observations: "A body of snow, one foot
+in depth, and sixteen feet square, was protected from the wind by a
+tight board fence about five feet high, 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
+on, which lasted about a fortnight, the larger body of snow was entirely
+dissolved in less than a week, while the smaller body was not wholly
+gone at the end of the second week.
+
+"Equal quantities of snow were placed in vessels of the same kind and
+capacity, the temperature of the air being seventy degrees. In the 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 first was
+dissolved in sixteen minutes, while the latter had a small unthawed
+proportion remaining at the end of eighty-five minutes."[201]
+
+The snow in the woods is protected in the same way, though not literally
+to the same extent as by the fence in one of these cases and the cover
+in the other. Little of the winter precipitation, therefore, is lost by
+evaporation, and as it slowly melts at bottom it is absorbed by the
+earth, and but a very small quantity of water runs off from the surface.
+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 sinking deep enough
+to reach wells and springs, which, of course, depend very much on winter
+rains and snows for their entire supply. This observation, though
+specially true of cleared and cultivated grounds, is not wholly
+inapplicable to the forest, particularly when, as is too often the case
+in Europe, the underwood and the decaying leaves are removed.
+
+The general effect of the forest in cold climates is to assimilate the
+winter state of the ground to that of wooded regions under softer skies;
+and it is a circumstance well worth noting, that in 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 umbrella pines, ilexes, cork oaks, and
+other trees of persistent foliage, whose evergreen leaves afford to the
+soil a protection analogous to that which it derives from snow in more
+northern climates.
+
+The water imbibed by the soil in winter sinks until it meets a more or
+less impermeable, or a saturated stratum, and then, by unseen conduits,
+slowly finds its way to the channels 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
+percolating through the vegetable and mineral layers, acquires their
+temperature, and is chemically affected by their action, but it carries
+very little matter in mechanical suspension.
+
+The process I have described is a slow one, and the supply of moisture
+derived from the snow, augmented by the rains of the following seasons,
+keeps the forest ground, where the surface is level or but moderately
+inclined, in a state of saturation through almost the whole 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 highlands. Their channels
+are subject only to slow and gradual changes, and they carry down to the
+lakes and the sea no accumulation of sand or silt to fill up their
+outlets, and, by raising their beds, to force them to spread over the
+low grounds near their mouth.[202]
+
+In this state of things, destructive tendencies of all sorts are
+arrested or compensated, and tree, bird, beast, and fish, alike, find a
+constant uniformity of condition most favorable to the regular and
+harmonious coexistence of them all.
+
+
+_General Consequences of the Destruction of the Forest._
+
+With the disappearance of the forest, all is changed. At one season, the
+earth parts with its warmth by radiation to an open sky--receives, at
+another, an immoderate heat from the unobstructed rays of the sun. Hence
+the climate becomes excessive, and the soil is alternately parched by
+the fervors of summer, and seared by the rigors of winter. Bleak winds
+sweep unresisted over its surface, drift away the snow that sheltered it
+from the frost, and dry up its scanty moisture. The precipitation
+becomes as regular as the temperature; the melting snows and vernal
+rains, no longer absorbed by a loose and bibulous vegetable mould, rush
+over the frozen surface, and pour down the valleys seaward, instead of
+filling a retentive bed of absorbent earth, and storing up a supply of
+moisture to feed perennial springs. The soil is bared of its covering of
+leaves, broken and loosened by the plough, deprived of the fibrous
+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 by the
+deposition of the mineral and vegetable matter carried down by the
+waters. The channels of great rivers become unnavigable, their estuaries
+are choked up, and harbors which once sheltered large navies are shoaled
+by dangerous sandbars. The earth, stripped of its vegetable glebe, grows
+less and less productive, and, consequently, less able to protect itself
+by weaving a new network of roots to bind its particles together, a new
+carpeting of turf to shield it from wind and sun and scouring rain.
+Gradually it becomes altogether barren. The washing of the soil from the
+mountains leaves bare ridges of sterile rock, and the rich organic mould
+which covered them, now swept down into the dank low grounds, promotes a
+luxuriance of aquatic vegetation that breeds fever, and more insidious
+forms of mortal disease, by its decay, and thus the earth is rendered no
+longer fit for the habitation of man.[203]
+
+To the general truth of this sad picture there are many exceptions, even
+in countries of excessive climates. Some of these are due to favorable
+conditions of surface, of geological structure, and of the distribution
+of rain; in many 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 the violation of her
+harmonies, though slow, is sure, and the gradual deterioration of soil
+and climate in such exceptional regions is as certain to result from the
+destruction of the woods as is any natural effect to follow its cause.
+
+In the vast farrago of crudities which the elder Pliny's ambition of
+encyclopaedic attainment and his ready credulity have gathered together,
+we meet some judicious observations. Among these we must reckon the
+remark with which 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 are stripped of the trees which formerly
+confined and absorbed the rains." The absorption here referred to is not
+that of the soil, but of the roots, which, Pliny supposed, drank up the
+water to feed the growth of the trees.
+
+Although this particular evil effect of too extensive clearing was so
+early noticed, the lesson seems to have been soon forgotten. The
+legislation of the Middle Ages in Europe is full of absurd provisions
+concerning the forests, which sovereigns sometimes destroyed because
+they 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 later
+ages to appreciate their geographical importance, and it is only in very
+recent times, only in a few European countries, that the too general
+felling of the woods has been recognized as the most destructive among
+the many causes of the physical deterioration of the earth.
+
+
+_Condition of the Forest, and its Literature in different Countries._
+
+The literature of the forest, which in England and America has not yet
+become sufficiently extensive to be known as a special branch of
+authorship, counts its thousands of volumes in Germany, Italy, and
+France. It is in 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 investigated. On the other hand, the purely
+economical aspects of sylviculture have been most satisfactorily
+expounded, and that art has been most philosophically discussed, and
+most skilfully and successfully practised, in Germany.
+
+The eminence of Italian theoretical hydrographers and the great ability
+of Italian hydraulic engineers are well known, but the specific
+geographical importance of the woods has not been so clearly recognized
+in Italy as in the states bordering it on the north and west. It is true
+that the face of nature has been as completely revolutionized by man,
+and that the action of torrents has created as wide and as hopeless
+devastation in that country as in France; but in the French Empire the
+desolation produced by clearing the forests is more recent,[205] has
+been more suddenly effected, and, therefore, excites a livelier and more
+general interest than in Italy, where public opinion does not so readily
+connect the effect with its true cause. Italy, too, from ancient habit,
+employs little wood in architectural 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 administration of this
+great public interest might have been understood. The woods which
+controlled and regulated the flow of the river sources were very often
+in one jurisdiction, the plains to be irrigated, or to be inundated by
+floods and desolated by torrents, in another. Concert of action on such
+a subject between a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties was
+obviously impossible, and nothing but the union of all the Italian
+states under a single government can render practicable the
+establishment of such arrangements for the conservation and restoration
+of the forests and the regulation of the flow of the waters as are
+necessary for the full development of the yet unexhausted resources of
+that fairest of lands, and even for the permanent maintenance of the
+present condition of its physical geography.
+
+The denudation of the Central and Southern Apennines and of the Italian
+declivity of the Western Alps began at a period of unknown antiquity,
+but it does not seem to have been carried to a very dangerous length
+until the foreign conquests and extended commerce of Rome created a
+greatly increased demand for wood for the construction of ships and for
+military material. The Eastern Alps, the Western Apennines, and the
+Maritime Alps retained their forests much later; but even here the want
+of wood, and the injury to the plains and the navigation of the rivers
+by sediment brought down by the torrents, led to some legislation for
+the protection of the forests, by the Republic of Venice in the
+fifteenth century, by that of 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 property in some of
+them were so burdensome that rural municipalities sometimes proposed to
+cede their common woods to the Government, without any other
+compensation than the remission of the taxes imposed on forest
+lands.[208] Under such circumstances, woodlands would soon become
+disafforested, and where facilities of transportation and a good demand
+for timber have increased the inducements to fell it, as upon the
+borders of the Mediterranean, the destruction of the forest and all the
+evils which attend it have gone on at a seriously alarming rate. It has
+even been calculated that four tenths of the area of the Ligurian
+provinces have been washed away or rendered incapable of cultivation by
+the felling of the woods.[209]
+
+The damp and cold climate of England requires the maintenance of
+household fires through a large part of the year. Contrivances for
+economizing fuel were of later introduction in that country than on the
+Continent. The soil, like the sky, was, in general, charged with
+humidity; its natural condition was unfavorable for common roads, and
+the transportation of so heavy a material as coal, by land, from the
+remote counties where alone it was mined in the Middle Ages, was costly
+and difficult. For all these reasons, the consumption of wood was large,
+and apprehensions of the exhaustion of the forests were excited at an
+early period. Legislation there, as elsewhere, proved ineffectual to
+protect them, and many authors of the sixteenth century express fears of
+serious evils from the wasteful economy of the people in this respect.
+Harrison, in his curious chapter "Of Woods and Marishes" in Holinshed's
+compilation, complains of the rapid decrease of the forests, and adds:
+"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, reed, 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 see
+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,
+and vpwards, after that rate, either by free deed, copie hold, or fee
+farme, might plant one acre of wood, or sowe the same with oke mast,
+hasell, beech, and sufficient prouision be made that it may be cherished
+and kept. But I feare me that I should then liue too long, and so long,
+that I should either be wearie of the world, or the world of me."[210]
+Evelyn's "Silva," the first edition of which appeared in 1664, rendered
+an extremely important service to the cause of the woods, and there is
+no doubt that the ornamental plantations in which England far surpasses
+all other countries, are, in some measure, the fruit of Evelyn's
+enthusiasm. In England, however, arboriculture, the planting and nursing
+of single trees, has, until recently, been better understood than
+sylviculture, the sowing and training of the forest. But this latter
+branch of rural improvement is now pursued on a very considerable scale,
+though, so far as I know, not by the National Government.
+
+
+_The Influence of the Forest on Inundations._
+
+Besides the climatic question, which I have already sufficiently
+discussed, and the obvious inconveniences of a scanty supply of
+charcoal, of fuel, and of timber for architectural and naval
+construction and for the thousand other uses to which wood is applied in
+rural and domestic economy, and in the various industrial 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 transportation of earth, gravel, pebbles, and even of
+considerable masses of rock, from higher to lower levels, by torrents.
+There are, however, connected with this general subject, several other
+topics of minor or strictly local interest, or of more uncertain
+character, which I shall have occasion more fully to speak of hereafter.
+
+The first of these three principal subjects--the influence of the woods
+on springs and other living waters--has been already considered; and if
+the facts stated in that discussion are well established, and the
+conclusions I have drawn from them are logically sound, it would seem to
+follow, as a necessary corollary, that the action of the forest is as
+important in diminishing the frequency and violence 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 of rivers, and, consequently, the overflow of their
+banks, which constitutes what is called inundation. The mechanical
+resistance, too, offered by the trunks of trees and of undergrowth to
+the flow of water over the surface, tends sensibly to retard the
+rapidity of its descent down declivities, and to divert and divide
+streams which may have already accumulated from smaller threads of
+water.[211]
+
+Inundations are produced by the insufficiency of the natural channels of
+rivers to carry off the waters of their basins as fast as those waters
+flow into them. In accordance with the usual economy of nature, we
+should presume that she had everywhere provided the means of
+discharging, without disturbance of her general arrangements or abnormal
+destruction of her products, the precipitation which she sheds upon the
+face of the earth. Observation confirms this presumption, at least in
+the countries to which I confine my 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
+the currents. Even now the trees come down almost to the water's edge
+along the rivers, in the larger forests of the United States, and the
+surface of the streams seems liable to no great change in level or in
+rapidity of current. A circumstance almost conclusive as to the
+regularity of flow in forest rivers, is that they do not form large
+sedimentary deposits, at their points of discharge into lakes or larger
+streams, such accumulations beginning, or at least advancing far more
+rapidly, after the valleys are cleared.
+
+In the Northern United States, although inundations are sometimes
+produced in the height of summer by heavy rains, it will be found
+generally true that the most rapid rise of the waters, and, of course,
+the most destructive "freshets," as they are called in America, are
+produced by the sudden dissolution of the snow before the open ground is
+thawed in the spring. It frequently happens that a powerful thaw sets in
+after a long period of frost, and the snow which had been months in
+accumulating is dissolved and carried off in a few hours. When the snow
+is deep, it, to use a popular expression, "takes the frost out of the
+ground" in the woods, and, if it lies long enough, in the fields 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 often filled with drifts to the height
+of many feet. The knolls become frozen to a great depth; succeeding
+partial thaws melt the surface snow, and the water runs down into the
+furrows of ploughed fields, and other artificial and natural hollows,
+and then often freezes to solid ice. In this state of things, almost the
+entire surface of the cleared land is impervious to water, and from the
+absence of trees and the general smoothness of the ground, it offers
+little mechanical resistance to superficial currents. If, under these
+circumstances, warm weather accompanied by rain occurs, the rain and
+melted snow are swiftly hurried to the bottom of the valleys and
+gathered to raging torrents.
+
+It ought further to be considered that, though the lighter ploughed
+soils readily imbibe a great deal of water, yet the grass lands, and all
+the heavy and tenacious earths, absorb it in much smaller quantities,
+and less rapidly than the vegetable mould of the forest. Pasture,
+meadow, and clayey soils, taken together, greatly predominate over the
+sandy ploughed fields, in all large agricultural districts, and hence,
+even if, in the case we are supposing, the open ground chance to have
+been thawed before 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 bursts, from the hydrostatic
+pressure from below, or is violently torn up by the current, and is
+swept by the impetuous stream, in large masses and with resistless fury,
+against banks, bridges, dams, and mills erected near them. The bark of
+the trees along the rivers is often abraded, at a height of many feet
+above the ordinary water level, by cakes of floating ice, which are at
+last stranded by the receding flood on meadow or ploughland, to delay,
+by their chilling influence, the advent of the tardy spring.
+
+The surface of a forest, in its natural condition, can never pour forth
+such deluges of water as flow from cultivated soil. Humus, or vegetable
+mould, is capable of absorbing almost twice its own weight of water. The
+soil in a forest of deciduous foliage is composed of humus, 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 saturated, for it then
+gives off a portion of its moisture to the mineral earth below, and thus
+is ready to receive a new supply; and, besides, the bed of leaves not
+yet converted to mould takes up and retains a very considerable
+proportion of snow water, as well as of rain.
+
+In the warm climates of Southern Europe, as I have already said, the
+functions of the forest, so far as the disposal of the water of
+precipitation is concerned, are essentially 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 not
+the characteristics which mark them in the latter, nor is the
+conservative influence of the woods in winter relatively so important,
+though it is equally unquestionable.
+
+If the summer floods in the United States are attended with less
+pecuniary damage than those of the Loire and other rivers of France, the
+Po and its tributaries in Italy, the Emme and her sister torrents which
+devastate the valleys of Switzerland, it is partly because the banks of
+American rivers are not yet lined with towns, their shores and 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 the Old World, is,
+in a still greater degree, to be ascribed to the fact that, with all our
+thoughtless improvidence, we have not yet bared all the sources of our
+streams, not yet overthrown all the barriers which nature has erected to
+restrain her own destructive energies. Let us be wise in time, and
+profit by the errors of our older brethren!
+
+The influence of the forest in preventing inundations has been very
+generally recognized, both as a theoretical inference and as a fact of
+observation; but Belgrand and his commentator Valles have deduced an
+opposite result from various facts of experience and from scientific
+considerations. They contend that the superficial drainage is more
+regular from cleared than from 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 latter
+are, first, that the fallen leaves in the forest constitute an
+impermeable covering of the soil over, not through, which the water of
+rains and of melting snows flows off, and secondly, that the roots of
+trees penetrate and choke up the fissures in the rocks, so as to impede
+the passage of water through channels which nature has provided for its
+descent to lower strata.
+
+As to the first of these, we may appeal to familiar facts within the
+personal knowledge of every man acquainted with the operations of sylvan
+nature. I have before me a letter from an acute and experienced
+observer, containing this paragraph: "I think that rain water does not
+ever, except in very trifling quantities, flow over the leaves in the
+woods in summer or 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 winter after the snow has principally
+disappeared, the water in and between the layers of leaves sometimes
+freezes into a solid crust, which allows the flow of water over it. But
+this occurs only in depressions and on a very small scale; and the ice
+thus formed is so soon dissolved that no sensible effect is produced on
+the escape of water from the general surface.
+
+As to the influence of roots upon drainage, I believe there is no doubt
+that they, independently of their action as absorbents, mechanically
+promote it. Not only does the water of the soil follow them
+downward,[212] but their 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 of roots within them increases the area of the
+crevice in proportion to its length. Consequently, the widening of a
+fissure to the extent of one inch might give an additional drainage
+equal to a square foot of open tubing.
+
+The observations and reasonings of Belgrand and Valles, though their
+conclusions have not been accepted by many, are very important in one
+point of view. These writers insist much on the necessity of taking into
+account, in estimating the relations 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 often reasoned as if the surface earth were either
+impermeable to water, or already saturated with it; whereas, in fact, it
+is a sponge, always imbibing humidity and always giving it off, not by
+evaporation only, but by infiltration and percolation.
+
+The destructive effects of inundations considered simply as a mechanical
+power by which life is endangered, crops destroyed, and the artificial
+constructions of man overthrown, are very terrible. Thus far, however,
+the flood is a temporary and by no means an irreparable evil, for if its
+ravages end here, the prolific powers of nature and the industry of man
+soon restore what had been lost, and the face of the earth no 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
+occasioned no other evil than to produce, once in ten years upon the
+average, an inundation which should destroy the harvest of the low
+grounds along the rivers, the damage would be too inconsiderable, and of
+too transitory a character, to warrant the inconveniences and the
+expense involved in the measures which the most competent judges in many
+parts of Europe believe the respective governments ought to take to
+obviate it.
+
+
+_Destructive Action of Torrents._
+
+But the great, the irreparable, the appalling mischiefs which have
+already resulted, and threaten to ensue on a still more extensive scale
+hereafter, from too rapid superficial drainage, are of a properly
+geographical character, and consist primarily in erosion, displacement,
+and transportation of the superficial strata, vegetable and mineral--of
+the integuments, so to speak, with which nature has clothed the skeleton
+framework of the globe. It is difficult to convey by description an idea
+of the desolation of the regions most exposed to the ravages of torrent
+and of flood; and the thousands, who, in these days of travel, are
+whirled by steam near or even through the theatres of these calamities,
+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
+the impression that nature pronounced the curse of perpetual sterility
+and desolation upon these sublime but fearful wastes, difficult to
+believe that they were once, and but for the folly of man might still
+be, blessed with all the natural advantages which Providence has
+bestowed upon the most favored climes. But the historical evidence is
+conclusive as to the destructive changes occasioned by the agency of man
+upon the flanks of the Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and other
+mountain ranges in Central and Southern Europe, and the progress of
+physical deterioration has been so rapid that, in some localities, a
+single generation has witnessed the beginning and the end of the
+melancholy revolution.
+
+It is certain that a desolation, like that which has overwhelmed many
+once beautiful and fertile regions of Europe, awaits an important part
+of the territory of the United States, and of other comparatively new
+countries over which European civilization is now extending its sway,
+unless prompt measures are taken to check the action of destructive
+causes already in operation. It is vain to expect that legislation can
+do anything effectual to arrest the progress of the evil in those
+countries, except so far as the state is still the proprietor of
+extensive forests. Woodlands which have passed into private hands will
+everywhere be managed, in spite of legal restrictions, upon the same
+economical principles as other possessions, and every proprietor will,
+as a general 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 the most serious fears are entertained, not only of the
+depopulation of those districts, but of enormous mischiefs to the
+provinces contiguous to them.[214] The only legal provisions from which
+anything is to be hoped, are such as shall make it a matter of private
+advantage to the landholder to spare the trees upon his grounds, and
+promote the growth of the young wood. Something may be done by exempting
+standing forests from taxation, and by imposing taxes on wood felled for
+fuel or for timber, something by premiums or honorary distinctions for
+judicious management of the woods. It would be difficult to induce
+governments, general or local, to make the necessary appropriations for
+such purposes, but there can be no doubt that it would be sound economy
+in the end.
+
+In countries where there exist municipalities endowed with an
+intelligent public spirit, the purchase and control of forests by such
+corporations would often prove advantageous; and in some of the
+provinces of Northern Lombardy, experience has shown that such
+operations may be conducted with great benefit to all the interests
+connected with the proper management of the woods. 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
+value, that there is, too often, nothing left that is worth protecting.
+In the canton of Ticino, the peasants have very frequently voted to sell
+the town woods and divide the proceeds among the corporators. The
+sometimes considerable sums thus received are squandered in wild
+revelry, and the sacrifice of the forests brings not even a momentary
+benefit to the proprietors.[215]
+
+It is evidently a matter of the utmost importance that the public, and
+especially land owners, be roused to a sense of the dangers to which the
+indiscriminate clearing of the woods may expose not only future
+generations, but the very soil itself. Fortunately, some of the American
+States, as well as the governments of many European colonies, still
+retain the ownership of great tracts of primitive woodland. The State of
+New York, for example, has, in its northeastern counties, a vast extent
+of territory in which the lumberman has only here and there established
+his camp, and where the forest, though interspersed with permanent
+settlements, robbed of some of its finest pine groves, and often ravaged
+by devastating fires, still covers 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 remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a
+museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation
+of the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous tree, and humble
+plant that loves the shade, and fish and fowl and four-footed beast, may
+dwell and perpetuate their kind, in the enjoyment of such imperfect
+protection as the laws of a people jealous of restraint can afford them.
+The immediate loss to the public treasury from the adoption of this
+policy would be inconsiderable, for these lands are sold at low rates.
+The forest alone, economically managed, would, without injury, and even
+with benefit to its permanence and growth, soon yield a regular income
+larger than the present value of the fee.
+
+The collateral advantages of the preservation of these forests would be
+far greater. Nature threw up those mountains and clothed them with lofty
+woods, that they might serve as a reservoir to supply with perennial
+waters the thousand rivers and rills that are fed by the rains and snows
+of the Adirondacks, and as a screen for the fertile plains of the
+central counties against 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 influence that tends to
+maintain an equilibrium of temperature and humidity is of cardinal
+importance. The felling of the Adirondack woods would ultimately involve
+for Northern and Central New York consequences similar to those which
+have resulted from the laying bare of the southern and western
+declivities of the French Alps and the spurs, ridges, and detached peaks
+in front of them.
+
+It is true that the evils to be apprehended from the clearing of the
+mountains of New York may be less in degree than those which a similar
+cause has produced in Southern France, where the intensity of its action
+has been increased by the inclination of the mountain declivities, and
+by the peculiar geological constitution of the earth. The degradation of
+the soil is, perhaps, not equally promoted by a combination of the same
+circumstances, in any of the American 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
+larger quantities of sediment, and the increasing obstructions to the
+navigation of the Hudson, which are extending themselves down the
+channel in proportion as the fields are encroaching upon the forest,
+give good grounds for the fear of serious injury to the commerce of the
+important towns on the upper waters of that river, unless measures are
+taken to prevent the expansion of "improvements" which have already been
+carried beyond the demands of a wise economy.
+
+I have stated, in a general way, the nature of the evils in question,
+and of the processes by which they are produced; but I shall make their
+precise character and magnitude better understood by presenting some
+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 because
+its deterioration is comparatively recent, and has been watched and
+described by very competent and trustworthy observers, whose reports are
+more easily accessible than those published in other countries.[216]
+
+The provinces of Dauphiny, Avignon, and Provence comprise a territory of
+fourteen or fifteen thousand square miles, bounded northwest by the
+Isere, northeast and east by the Alps, south by the Mediterranean, west
+by the Rhone, and extending from 42 deg. to about 45 deg. of north latitude. The
+surface is generally hilly and even mountainous, and several 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 districts, the vine
+and the fig everywhere flourish, the olive thrives as far north as
+431/2 deg., and upon the coast, grow the orange, the lemon, and the date
+palm. The forest trees, too, are of southern type, umbrella pines,
+various species of evergreen oaks, and many other trees and shrubs of
+persistent broad-leaved foliage, characterizing the landscape.
+
+The rapid slope of the mountains naturally exposed these provinces to
+damage by torrents, and the Romans diminished their injurious effects by
+erecting, in the beds of ravines, barriers of rocks loosely piled up,
+which permitted a slow escape of the water, but compelled it to deposit
+above the dikes the earth and gravel with 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 process of clearing the soil went on so slowly that, for
+centuries, neither the want of timber and fuel, nor the other evils
+about to be depicted, were seriously felt. Indeed, throughout the Middle
+Ages, these provinces were well wooded, and famous for the fertility and
+abundance, not only of the low grounds, but of the hills.
+
+Such was the state of things at the close of the fifteenth century. The
+statistics of the seventeenth show that while there had been an increase
+of prosperity and population in Lower Provence, as well as in the
+correspondingly situated parts of the other two provinces I have
+mentioned, there was an alarming decrease both in the wealth and in the
+population of Upper Provence and Dauphiny, although, by the clearing of
+the forests, a great extent of 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 towns on and near the Rhone
+and the coast, their advance in commerce and industry, and the
+consequently enlarged demand for agricultural products, ought naturally
+to have increased the rural population and the value of their lands; but
+the physical decay of the uplands was such that considerable tracts were
+deserted altogether, and in Upper Provence, the fires which in 1471
+counted 897, were reduced to 747 in 1699, to 728 in 1733, and to 635 in
+1776.
+
+These facts I take from the _La Provence au point de vue des Bois, des
+Torrents et des Inondations_, of Charles de Ribbe, one of the highest
+authorities, and I add further details from the same source.
+
+"Commune of Barles, 1707: Two hills have become connected by land
+slides, and have formed a lake which covers the best part of the soil.
+1746: New slides buried twenty houses composing a village, no trace of
+which is left; more than one third of the land had disappeared.
+
+"Monans, 1724: Deserted by its inhabitants and no longer cultivated.
+
+"Gueydan, 1760: It appears by records that the best grounds have been
+swept off since 1756, and that ravines occupy their place.
+
+"Digne, 1762: The river Bleone has destroyed the most valuable part of
+the territory.
+
+"Malmaison, 1768: The inhabitants have emigrated, all their fields
+having been lost."
+
+In the case of the commune of St. Laurent du Var, it appears that, after
+clearings in the Alps, succeeded by others in the common woods of the
+town, the floods 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 away in 1761. In 1762, after another destructive
+inundation, many of the inhabitants emigrated, and in 1765, one half of
+the territory had been laid waste.
+
+"In 1766, the assessor Serraire said to the Assembly: 'As to the damage
+caused by brooks and torrents, it is impossible to deny its extent.
+Upper Provence 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. Villages have been almost submerged by torrents which
+formerly had not even names, and large towns are on the point of
+destruction from the same cause.'"
+
+In 1776, Viscount Puget thus reported: "The mere aspect of Upper
+Provence is calculated to appal the patriotic magistrate. One sees only
+lofty mountains, deep valleys with precipitous sides, rivers with broad
+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 consequences of
+indiscriminate clearing; villages whose inhabitants, finding no longer
+the means of subsistence, are emigrating day by day; houses dilapidated
+to huts, and but a miserable remnant of population."
+
+"In a document of the year 1771, the ravages of the torrents were
+compared to the effects of an earthquake, half the soil in many communes
+seeming to have been swallowed up.
+
+"Our mountains," said the administrators of the province of the Lower
+Alps in 1792, "present nothing but a surface of stony tufa; clearing is
+still going on, and the little rivulets are becoming torrents. Many
+communes have lost their harvests, their flocks, and their houses by
+floods. The washing down of the mountains is to be ascribed to the
+clearings and the practice of burning them over."
+
+These complaints, it will be seen, all date before the Revolution, but
+the desolation they describe has since advanced with still swifter
+steps.
+
+Surell--whose valuable work, _Etude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes_,
+published in 1841, presents the most appalling picture of the
+desolations of the torrent, and, at the same time, the most careful
+studies of the history and essential character of this great evil--in
+speaking of the valley of Devoluy, 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 district. Many localities, now completely bare, still
+retain the name of 'wood,' and one of them is called, in old deeds,
+_Comba nigra_ [Black forest or dell], on account of its dense woods.
+These and many other proofs confirm the local traditions which are
+unanimous on this point.
+
+"There, as everywhere in the Upper Alps, the clearings began on the
+flanks of the mountains, and were gradually extended into the valleys
+and then to the highest accessible peaks. Then followed the Revolution,
+and caused the destruction of the remainder of the trees which had thus
+far escaped the woodman's axe."
+
+In a note to this passage, the writer says: "Several persons have told
+me that they had lost flocks of sheep, by straying, in the forests of
+Mont Auroux, which covered the flanks of the mountain from La Cluse to
+Agneres. These declivities are now as bare as the palm of the hand."
+
+The ground upon the steep mountains being once bared of trees, and the
+underwood killed by the grazing of horned cattle, sheep, and goats,
+every depression becomes a watercourse. "Every storm," says Surell, 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 being swept into
+ravines formed in the course of a few hours. Sometimes the flood pours
+in a sheet over the surface, without ravine or even bed, and ruins
+extensive grounds, which are abandoned forever."
+
+I cannot follow Surell in his description and classification of
+torrents, and I must refer the reader to his instructive work for a full
+exposition of the theory of the subject. In order, however, to show what
+a concentration of destructive energies may be effected by felling the
+woods that clothe and support the 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," says
+he, "is frightful. Within a distance of less than three kilometres
+[= one mile and seven eighths English], more than sixty torrents hurl
+into the depths of the gorge the debris torn from its two flanks. The
+smallest of these secondary torrents, if transferred to a fertile
+valley, would be enough to ruin it."
+
+The eminent political economist Blanqui, in a memoir read before the
+Academy of Moral and Political Science on the 25th of November, 1843,
+thus expresses himself: "Important as are the causes of impoverishment
+already described, they are not to be compared to the consequences which
+have followed from the two inveterate evils of the Alpine provinces of
+France, the extension of clearing and the ravages of torrents. * * The
+most important result 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 once the springs and the fuel.
+Between Grenoble and Briancon in the valley of the Romanche, many
+villages are so destitute of wood that they are reduced to the necessity
+of baking their bread with sun-dried cowdung, and even this they can
+afford to do but once a year. This bread becomes so hard that it can be
+cut only with an axe, and I have myself seen a loaf of bread in
+September, at the kneading of which I was present the January previous.
+
+"Whoever has visited the valley of Barcelonette, those of Embrun, and of
+Verdun, and that Arabia Petraea of the department of the Upper Alps,
+called Devoluy, knows that there is no time to lose, that in fifty years
+from this date France will be separated from Savoy, as Egypt from
+Syria, by a desert."[218]
+
+It deserves to be specially noticed that the district here referred to,
+though now among the most hopelessly waste in France, was very
+productive even down to so late a period as the commencement of the
+French Revolution. Arthur Young, writing in 1789, says: "About
+Barcelonette and in the highest parts of the mountains, the hill
+pastures feed a million of sheep, besides large herds of other cattle;"
+and he adds: "With such a soil, 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 course of the Loire are the only streams
+he mentions as inflicting serious injury by their floods. The ravages of
+the torrents had, indeed, as we have seen, commenced earlier in some
+other localities, but we are authorized to infer that they were, in
+Young's time, too limited in range, and relatively too insignificant, to
+require notice in a general view of the provinces where they have now
+ruined so large a proportion of the soil.
+
+But I resume my citations.
+
+"I do not exaggerate," says Blanqui. "When I shall have finished my
+excursion and designated localities by their names, there will rise, I
+am sure, more than one voice 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 province of
+Constantine; for there you can travel on horseback, and you find grass
+in the spring, whereas in more than fifty communes in the Alps there is
+absolutely nothing.
+
+"The clear, brilliant, Alpine sky of Embrun, of Gap, of Barcelonette,
+and of Digne, which for months is without a cloud, produces droughts
+interrupted only by diluvial rains like those of the tropics. The abuse
+of the right of pasturage and the felling of the woods have stripped the
+soil of all its grass and all its trees, and the scorching sun bakes it
+to the consistence of porphyry. When moistened by the rain, as it has
+neither support nor cohesion, it rolls down to the valleys, sometimes in
+floods resembling black, yellow, or reddish lava, sometimes in streams
+of pebbles, and even huge blocks of stone, which pour down with a
+frightful roar, and in 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 shivers to fragments the very
+rocks, and of the rain which sweeps them down, penetrate deeper and
+deeper into the heart of the mountain, while the beds of the torrents
+issuing from them are sometimes raised several feet, in a single year,
+by the debris, so that they reach the level of the bridges, which, of
+course, are then carried off. The torrent beds are recognized at a great
+distance, as they issue from the mountains, and they spread themselves
+over the low grounds, in fan-shaped expansions, like a mantle of stone,
+sometimes ten thousand feet wide, rising high at the centre, and curving
+toward the circumference till their lower edges meet the plain.
+
+"Such is their aspect in dry weather. But no tongue can give an adequate
+description of their devastations in one of those sudden floods which
+resemble, in almost none of their phenomena, the action of ordinary
+river water. They are now no longer overflowing brooks, but real seas,
+tumbling down in cataracts, 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 accompanied with a roar louder than the
+crash of thunder. A furious wind precedes the rushing water and
+announces its approach. Then comes a violent eruption, followed by a
+flow of muddy waves, and after a few hours all returns to the dreary
+silence which at periods of rest marks these abodes of desolation.
+
+"This is but an imperfect sketch of this scourge of the Alps. Its
+devastations are increasing with the progress of clearing, and are every
+day turning a portion of our frontier departments into barren wastes.
+
+"The unfortunate passion for clearing manifested itself at the beginning
+of the French Revolution, and has much increased under the pressure of
+immediate want. It has now reached an extreme point, and must be
+speedily checked, or the last inhabitant will be compelled to retreat
+when the last tree falls.
+
+"The elements of destruction are increasing in violence. Rivers might be
+mentioned whose beds have been raised ten feet in a single year. The
+devastation advances in geometrical progression as the higher slopes are
+bared of their wood, and 'the ruin from above,' to use the words of a
+peasant, 'helps to hasten the desolation below.'
+
+"The Alps of Provence present a terrible aspect. In the more equable
+climate of Northern France, one can form no conception of those parched
+mountain gorges where not even a bush can be found to shelter a bird,
+where, at most, the wanderer sees in summer here and there a withered
+lavender, 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 the soil they overflow in their swift descent, and leave it
+even more seared than it was from want of moisture. Man at last retires
+from the fearful desert, and I have, the present season, found not a
+living soul in districts where I remember to have enjoyed hospitality
+thirty years ago."
+
+In 1853, ten years after the date of Blanqui's memoir, M. de Bonville,
+prefect of the Lower Alps, addressed to the Government a report in which
+the following passages occur:
+
+"It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept off by the
+increasing violence of that curse of the mountains, the torrents, is
+daily diminishing with fearful rapidity. 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 the grass they require for their sustenance, scratch the ground
+in search of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed and
+carried off by melting snows and summer storms.
+
+"I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty years they
+have been too often depicted to require to be further discussed, but it
+is important to show that their ravages are daily extending the range of
+devastation. The bed of the Durance, which now in some places exceeds
+2,000 metres [about 6,600 feet, or a mile and a quarter] in width, and,
+at ordinary times, has a current of water less than 10 metres [about 33
+feet] wide, shows something of the extent of the damage.[220] Where, ten
+years ago, there were still woods and cultivated grounds to be seen,
+there is now but a vast torrent: there is not one of our mountains which
+has not at least one torrent, and new ones are daily forming.
+
+"An indirect proof of the diminution of the soil is to be found in the
+depopulation of the country. In 1852, I reported to the General Council
+that, according to the census of that year, the population of the
+department of the Lower Alps had fallen off no less than 5,000 souls in
+the five years between 1846 and 1851.
+
+"Unless prompt and energetic measures are taken, it is easy to fix the
+epoch when the French Alps will be but a desert. The interval between
+1851 and 1856 will show a further decrease of population. In 1862, the
+ministry will announce a continued and progressive reduction in the
+number of acres devoted to agriculture; every year will aggravate the
+evil, and, in a half century, France will count more ruins, and a
+department the less."
+
+Time has verified the predictions of De Bonville. The later census
+returns show a progressive diminution in the population of the
+departments of the Lower Alps, the Isere, the Drome, Ariege, the Upper
+and the Lower Pyrenees, the Lozere, the Ardennes, the Doubs, the Vosges,
+and, in short, in all 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 rendered uninhabitable, by ruthlessly
+depriving them of their natural advantages and securities, to provinces
+where the face of the earth was so formed by nature as to need no such
+safeguards, and where, consequently, she preserves her outlines in spite
+of the wasteful improvidence of man.[221]
+
+Highly colored as these pictures seem, they are not exaggerated,
+although the hasty tourist through Southern France and Northern Italy,
+finding little in his high road experiences to justify them, might
+suppose them so. The lines of communication by locomotive train and
+diligence lead generally over safer ground, 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,
+is producing analogous effects upon the lower ridges of the Alps and the
+plains which skirt them; and even now one needs but an hour's departure
+from some great thoroughfares to reach sites where the genius of
+destruction revels as wildly as in the most frightful of the abysses
+which Blanqui has painted.[222]
+
+There is one effect of the action of torrents which few travellers on
+the Continent are heedless enough to pass without notice. I refer to the
+elevation of the beds of mountain streams in consequence of the deposit
+of the 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 as the bed of the torrent is raised,
+so that, to reach a river, you ascend from the fields beside it; and
+sometimes the ordinary level of the stream is above the streets and even
+the roofs of the towns through which it passes.[223]
+
+The traveller who visits the depths of an Alpine ravine, observes the
+length and width of the gorge and the great height and apparent solidity
+of the precipitous walls which bound it, and calculates the mass of rock
+required to fill the vacancy, can hardly believe that the humble
+brooklet which purls at his feet has been the principal agent in
+accomplishing this tremendous erosion. Closer observation will often
+teach him, 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 mighty enough to sweep down the largest masses of gravel
+and of rock.[224] The simple measurement of the cubical contents of the
+semi-circular hillock which he climbed before he entered the gorge, the
+structure and composition of which conclusively show that it must have
+been washed out of this latter by torrential action, will often account
+satisfactorily for the disposal of most of the matter which once filled
+the ravine.
+
+It must further be remembered, that every inch of the violent movement
+of the rocks is accompanied with crushing concussion, or, at least, with
+great abrasion, and, as you follow the deposit along the course of the
+waters which transport it, you find the stones gradually rounding off in
+form, and diminishing in size until they pass successively into gravel,
+sand, impalpable slime.
+
+I do not mean to assert that all the rocky valleys of the Alps have been
+produced by the action of torrents resulting from the destruction of the
+forests. All the greater, and many of 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 convulsion, widened and scarped, and often even polished, so
+to speak, by the action of glaciers during the ice period, and but
+little changed in form by running water in later eras.[225]
+
+In these valleys of ancient formation, which extend into the very heart
+of the mountains, the streams, though rapid, have lost the true
+torrential character, if, indeed, they ever possessed it. Their beds
+have become approximately constant, and their walls no longer crumble
+and fall into 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 central ridge, and accumulated thickly between
+their solid buttresses. But it is on this crust that the mountaineer
+dwells. Here are his forests, here his pastures, and the ravages of the
+torrent both destroy his world, and convert it into a source of
+overwhelming desolation to the plains below.
+
+
+_Transporting Power of Rivers._
+
+An instance that fell under my own observation in 1857, will serve to
+show something of the eroding and transporting power of streams which,
+in these respects, fall incalculably below the torrents of the Alps. In
+a flood of the Ottaquechee, a small river which flows through Woodstock,
+Vermont, a milldam on that stream burst, and the sediment with which the
+pond was filled, estimated after careful measurement at 13,000 cubic
+yards, was carried down by the current. Between this dam and the slack
+water of another, four miles below, the bed of the stream, which is
+composed of pebbles interspersed in a few places with larger stones, is
+about sixty-five feet wide, though, at low water, the breadth of the
+current is considerably less. The sand and fine gravel were smoothly and
+evenly distributed over the bed to a width of fifty-five or sixty feet,
+and for a distance of about two miles, except at two or three
+intervening rapids, filled up all the interstices between the stones,
+covering them to the depth 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 breakage of the dam, had
+then been undisturbed for about twenty-five years, and its contents
+consisted almost entirely of sand, the rapidity of the current in floods
+being such that it would let fall little lighter sediment, even above an
+obstruction like a dam. The quantity I have mentioned evidently bears a
+very inconsiderable proportion to the total erosion of the stream
+during that period, because the wash of the banks consists chiefly of
+fine earth rather than of sand, and after the pond was once filled, or
+nearly so, even this material could no longer be deposited in it. The
+fact of the complete removal of the deposit I have described between the
+two dams in a single freshet, shows that, in spite of considerable
+obstruction from roughness of bed, large quantities of sand may be taken
+up and carried off by streams of no great rapidity of inclination; for
+the whole descent of the bed of the river between the two dams--a
+distance of four miles--is but sixty feet, or fifteen feet to the mile.
+
+
+_The Po and its Deposits._
+
+The current of the river Po, for a considerable distance after its
+volume of water is otherwise sufficient for continuous navigation, is
+too rapid for that purpose until near Piacenza, where its velocity
+becomes too much reduced to transport great quantities of mineral
+matter, except in a state of minute division. Its southern affluents
+bring down from the Apennines a large quantity of fine earth from
+various geological formations, while its Alpine tributaries west of the
+Ticino are charged 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 remained unconfined. But, as the surface of
+the water in floods is from six to fifteen feet above the general level
+of its banks, the Po can, at that period, receive no contributions of
+earth from the washing of the fields of Lombardy, and there is no doubt
+that a large proportion of the sediment it now deposits at its mouth
+descended from the Alps in the form of rock, though reduced by the
+grinding action of the waters, in its passage seaward, to the condition
+of fine sand, and often of silt.[227]
+
+We know little of the history of the Po, or of the geography of the
+coast near the point where it enters the Adriatic, at any period more
+than twenty centuries before our own. Still less can we say how much of
+the plains of Lombardy had been formed by its action, combined with
+other causes, before man accelerated its levelling operations by felling
+the first woods on the mountains whence its waters are derived. But we
+know that since the Roman conquest of Northern Italy, its deposits have
+amounted to a quantity which, if recemented into rock, recombined into
+gravel, 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 the Po has filled up the lagoon, and Ravenna is now four
+miles from the sea. The town of Adria, which lies between the Po and the
+Adige, at the distance of some four or five miles from each, was once a
+harbor famous enough to have given its name to the Adriatic sea, and it
+was still a seaport in the time of Augustus. The combined action of the
+two rivers has so advanced the coast line that Adria is now about
+fourteen miles inland, and, in other places, the deposits made within
+the same period by these and other neighboring streams have a width of
+twenty miles.
+
+What proportion of the earth with which they are charged these rivers
+have borne out into deep water, during the last two thousand years, we
+do not know, but as they still transport enormous quantities, as the
+North Adriatic appears to have shoaled rapidly, and as long islands,
+composed in great part of fluviatile deposits, have formed opposite
+their mouths, it must evidently have been very great. The floods of the
+Po occur but once, or sometimes twice in a year.[228] At other times,
+its waters are comparatively limpid and seem to hold no great amount of
+mud or fine sand in mechanical suspension; but at high water it contains
+a large proportion of solid matter, and according to Lombardini, it
+annually transports to the shores of the Adriatic not less than
+42,760,000 cubic metres, 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 centimetres, 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 the northern declivity of
+the Apennines by torrents. Nearly the whole of the debris thus removed
+from the southern face of the Alps between Monte Rosa and the sources of
+the Adda--a length of watershed not less than one hundred and fifty
+miles--is arrested by the still waters of the Lakes Maggiore and Como,
+and some smaller lacustrine reservoirs, and never reaches the sea. The
+Po is not continuously embanked except for the lower half of its course.
+Above Piacenza, therefore, it spreads and deposits sediment over a wide
+surface, and the water withdrawn from it for irrigation at lower points,
+as well as its inundations in the occasional ruptures of its banks,
+carry over the adjacent soil a large amount of slime.
+
+If we add to the estimated annual deposits of the Po at its mouth, the
+earth and sand transported to the sea by the Adige, the Brenta, and
+other less important streams, the prodigious mass of detritus swept into
+Lago Maggiore by the Tosa, the Maggia, and the Ticino, into the lake of
+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 assume that we have an aggregate of not less than four times the
+quantity carried to the Adriatic by the Po, or 220,000,000 cubic yards
+of solid matter, abstracted every year from the Italian Alps and the
+Apennines, and removed out of their domain by the force of running
+water.[230]
+
+The present rate of deposit at the mouth of the Po has continued since
+the year 1600, the previous advance of the coast, after the year 1200,
+having been only one third as rapid. The great increase of erosion and
+transport is ascribed by Lombardini chiefly to the destruction of the
+forests in the basin of that river and the valleys, of its tributaries,
+since the beginning of the seventeenth century.[231] We have no data to
+show the rate of deposit in any given century before the year 1200, and
+it doubtless varied according 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 their mechanical force is then
+greatest, and because the loose earth and stones of freshly cleared
+forest ground are most easily removed. Many of the Alpine valleys west
+of the Ticino--that of the Dora Baltea for instance--were nearly
+stripped of their forests in the days of the Roman empire, others in the
+Middle Ages, and, of course, there must have been, at different periods
+before the year 1200, epochs when the erosion and transportation of
+solid matter from the Alps and the Apennines were as great as since the
+year 1600.
+
+Upon the whole, we shall not greatly err if we assume that, for a period
+of not less than two thousand years, the walls of the basin of the
+Po--the Italian slope of the Alps, and the northern and northeastern
+declivities of the Apennines--have annually sent down into the Adriatic,
+the lakes, and the plains, not less than 150,000,000 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, where, as we know from ancient
+remains--roads, bridges, and the like--from other direct testimony, and
+from geological considerations, very little degradation has taken place
+within twenty centuries, and hence the quantity to be assigned to
+localities where the destructive causes have been most active is
+increased in proportion.
+
+If this vast mass of pulverized rock and earth were restored to the
+localities from which it was derived, it certainly would not obliterate
+valleys and gorges hollowed out 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 many bare
+mountain ridges, essentially change the line of junction between plain
+and mountain, and carry back a long reach of the Adriatic coast many
+miles to the west.[233]
+
+It is, indeed, not to be supposed that all the degradation of the
+mountains is due to the destruction of the forests--that the flanks of
+every Alpine valley in Central Europe below the snow line were once
+covered with earth and green with woods, but there are not many
+particular cases, in which we can, with certainty, or even with strong
+probability, affirm the contrary.
+
+We cannot measure the share which human action has had in augmenting the
+intensity of causes of mountain degradation, but we know that the
+clearing of the woods has, in some cases, produced within two or three
+generations, effects as blasting as those generally ascribed to
+geological convulsions, 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 now desolate valleys in those mountains is
+to be ascribed to the same cause, and authentic descriptions of the
+irresistible force of the torrent show that, aided by frost and heat, it
+is adequate to level Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa themselves, unless new
+upheavals shall maintain their elevation.
+
+It has been contended that all rivers which take their rise in mountains
+originated in torrents. These, it is said, have lowered the summits by
+gradual erosion, and, with the material thus derived, have formed shoals
+in the sea which once beat against the cliffs; then, by successive
+deposits, gradually 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 lower the ridges of the Alps and the
+Apennines, raising still higher the plains of Lombardy and Provence,
+extending the coast still farther into the Adriatic and the
+Mediterranean, reducing the inclination of their own beds and the
+rapidity of their flow, and thus tending to become river-like in
+character.
+
+There are cases where torrents cease their ravages of themselves, in
+consequence of some change in the condition of the basin where they
+originate, or of the face of the mountain at a higher level, while the
+plain or the sea below remains in substantially the same state as
+before. If a torrent rises in a small valley containing no great amount
+of earth and of disintegrated or loose rock, it may, in the course of a
+certain period, wash out all the transportable material, and if the
+valley is then left with solid walls, it will cease to furnish debris 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 requires long
+and careful study to detect the primitive form, masked as it is by
+groves of trees, by cultivated fields, and often by houses, but, when
+examined closely, and from different points of view, its characteristic
+figure manifestly appears, and its true history cannot be mistaken.
+Along the hillock flows a streamlet, issuing from the ravine, and
+quietly watering the fields. This was originally a torrent, and in the
+background may be discovered its mountain basin. Such _extinguished_
+torrents, if I may use the expression, are numerous."[234]
+
+But for the intervention of man and domestic animals, these latter
+beneficent revolutions would occur more frequently, proceed more
+rapidly. The new scarped mountains, the hillocks of debris, the plains
+elevated by sand and gravel spread over them, the shores freshly 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, generations, but
+centuries;[235] and man, who even now finds scarce breathing room on
+this vast globe, cannot retire from the Old World to some yet
+undiscovered continent, and wait for the slow action of such causes to
+replace, by a new creation, the Eden he has wasted.
+
+
+_Mountain Slides._
+
+I have said that the mountainous regions of the Atlantic States of the
+American Union are exposed to similar ravages, and I may add that there
+is, in some cases, reason to apprehend from the same cause even more
+appalling calamities than those which 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 was
+produced by the denudation of the surface. It may have been occasioned
+by this cause, or by the construction of the road through the Notch, the
+excavations for which, perhaps, cut through the buttresses that
+supported the sloping strata above.
+
+Not to speak of the fall of earth when the roots which held it together,
+and the bed of leaves and mould which sheltered it both from
+disintegrating frost and from sudden drenching and dissolution by heavy
+showers, are gone, it is easy to see that, in a climate with severe
+winters, the removal of the forest, and, consequently, of the soil it
+had contributed to form, might cause the displacement and descent of
+great masses of rock. The woods, the vegetable mould, and the soil
+beneath, protect the rocks they cover from the direct action of heat and
+cold, and from the expansion and contraction which accompany them. Most
+rocks, while covered with earth, contain a considerable quantity of
+water.[236] A fragment of rock pervaded with moisture cracks and splits,
+if thrown into a furnace, and sometimes with a loud detonation; 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 strata from freezing in the hardest
+winters, and the moisture descends, in a liquid form, until it escapes
+in springs, or passes off by deep subterranean channels. But when the
+ridges are laid bare, the water of the autumnal rains fills the minutest
+pores and veins and fissures and lines of separation of the rocks, then
+suddenly freezes, and bursts asunder huge, and apparently solid blocks
+of adamantine stone.[237] Where the strata are inclined at a
+considerable angle, the freezing of a thin film of water over a large
+interstratal area might occasion a slide that should cover miles with
+its ruins; and similar results might be produced by the simple
+hydrostatic pressure of a column of water, admitted by the removal of
+the covering of earth to flow into a crevice faster than it could escape
+through orifices below.
+
+Earth or rather mountain slides, compared to which the catastrophe that
+buried the Willey family in New Hampshire was but a pinch of dust, have
+often occurred in the Swiss Italian, and French Alps. The land slip,
+which overwhelmed and covered to the depth of seventy feet, the town of
+Plurs in the valley of the Maira, on the night of the 4th of September,
+1618, sparing not a soul of a 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 of the
+Cordevole, a tributary of the Piave, destroying in its fall three
+hamlets and sixty lives. The rubbish filled the valley for a distance of
+nearly two miles, and, by damming up the waters of the Cordevole, formed
+a lake about three miles long, and a hundred and fifty feet deep, which
+still subsists, though reduced to half its original length by the
+wearing down of its outlet.[238]
+
+On the 14th of February, 1855, the hill of Belmonte, a little below the
+parish of San Stefano, in Tuscany, slid into the valley of the Tiber,
+which consequently flooded the village to the depth of fifty feet, and
+was finally drained off by a tunnel. The mass of debris is stated to
+have been about 3,500 feet long, 1,000 wide, and not less than 600
+high.[239]
+
+Such displacements of earth and rocky strata rise to the magnitude of
+geological convulsions, but they are of so rare occurrence in countries
+still covered by the primitive forest, so common where the mountains
+have 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 of vegetation would have prevented--that we are justified in
+ascribing them for the most part to the same cause as that to which the
+destructive effects of mountain torrents are chiefly due--the felling of
+the woods.
+
+In nearly every case of this sort the circumstances of which are known,
+the immediate cause of the slip has been, either an earthquake, the
+imbibition of water in large quantities by bare earth, or its
+introduction between or beneath solid strata. If water insinuates 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 afforded by inequalities
+of face and by friction; if it finds its way beneath hard earth or rock
+reposing on clay or other bedding of similar properties, it converts the
+supporting layer into a semi-fluid mud, which opposes no obstacle to the
+sliding of the strata above.
+
+The upper part of the mountain which buried Goldau was composed of a
+hard but brittle conglomerate, called _nagelflue_, resting on an
+unctuous clay, and inclining rapidly toward the village. Much earth
+remained upon the rock, in irregular masses, but the woods had been
+felled, and the water had free access to the surface, and to the
+crevices which sun and frost had already produced in the rock, and of
+course, to the slimy stratum 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 into a viscous paste. The mass that fell
+measured between two and a half and three miles in length by one
+thousand feet in width, and its average thickness is thought to have
+been about a hundred feet. The highest portion of the mountain was more
+than three thousand feet above the village, and the momentum acquired by
+the rocks and earth in their descent carried huge blocks of stone far up
+the opposite slope of the Rigi.
+
+The Piz, which fell into the Cordevole, rested on a steeply inclined
+stratum of limestone, with a thin layer of calcareous marl intervening,
+which, by long exposure to frost and the infiltration of water, had lost
+its original consistence, and become a loose and slippery mass instead
+of a cohesive and tenacious bed.
+
+
+_Protection against fall of Rocks and Avalanches by Trees._
+
+Forests often subserve a valuable purpose in preventing the fall of
+rocks, by mere mechanical resistance. Trees, as well as herbaceous
+vegetation, grow in the Alps upon declivities of surprising steepness of
+inclination, and the traveller sees both luxuriant grass and flourishing
+woods on slopes at which the soil, in the 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 has stopped its progress just as it was beginning to slide
+down to a lower level. When a forest in such a position is cut, these
+blocks lose their support, and a single wet season is enough not only to
+bare the face of a considerable extent of rock, but to cover with earth
+and stone many acres of fertile soil below.[240]
+
+In Switzerland and other snowy and mountainous countries, forests render
+a most important service by preventing the formation and fall of
+destructive avalanches, and in many parts of the Alps exposed to this
+catastrophe, the woods are protected, though too often ineffectually, by
+law. No forest, indeed, could arrest a large avalanche once in motion,
+but the mechanical resistance afforded by the trees prevents their
+formation, both by obstructing the wind, which gives to the dry snow of
+the _Staub-Lawine_, or dust avalanche, its first impulse, and by
+checking the disposition of moist 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 earth
+from the face of the rock, or, if the soil is left, fresh slides every
+winter destroy the young plantations, and the restoration of the wood
+becomes impossible. The track widens with every new avalanche. Dwellings
+and their occupants are buried in the snow, or swept away by the rushing
+mass, or by the furious blasts it occasions through the displacement of
+the air; roads and bridges are destroyed; rivers blocked up, which swell
+till they overflow the valley above, and then, bursting their snowy
+barrier, flood the fields below with all the horrors of a winter
+inundation.[242]
+
+
+_Principal Causes of the Destruction of the Forest._
+
+The needs of agriculture are the most familiar cause of the destruction
+of the forest in new countries; for not only does an increasing
+population demand additional acres to grow the vegetables which feed it
+and its domestic animals, but the slovenly husbandry of the border
+settler soon exhausts the luxuriance of his first fields, and compels
+him to remove his household gods to a fresher 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 fairest ornaments. The value of timber increases with its
+dimensions in almost geometrical proportion, and the tallest, most
+vigorous, and most symmetrical trees fall the first sacrifice. This is a
+fortunate circumstance for the remainder of the wood; for the impatient
+lumberman contents himself with felling a few of the best trees, and
+then hurries on to take his tithe of still virgin groves.
+
+The unparalleled facilities for internal navigation, afforded by the
+numerous rivers of the present and former British colonial possessions
+in North America, have proved very fatal to the forests of that
+continent. Quebec has become a centre for a lumber trade, which, in the
+bulk of its material, and, consequently, in the tonnage required for its
+transportation, rivals 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 Europe, and during the summer months
+the St. Lawrence is almost as crowded with vessels as the Thames.[244]
+Of late, Chicago, in Illinois, has been one of the greatest lumber as
+well as grain depots of the United States, and it receives and
+distributes contributions from all the forests in the States washed by
+Lake Michigan, as well as from some more distant points.
+
+The operations of the lumberman involve other dangers to the woods
+besides the loss of the trees felled by him. The narrow clearings around
+his _shanties_[245] form openings which let in the wind, and thus
+sometimes occasion the overthrow of thousands of trees, the fall of
+which dams up small streams, and creates bogs by the spreading of the
+waters, while the decaying trunks facilitate the multiplication 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, indiscriminately, every age
+and every species of tree.[246] While, then, without much injury to the
+younger growths, the native forest will bear several "cuttings over" in
+a generation--for the increasing value of lumber brings into use, every
+four or five years, a quality of timber which had been before rejected
+as unmarketable--a fire may render the declivity of a mountain
+unproductive for a century.[247]
+
+
+_American Forest Trees._
+
+The remaining forests of the Northern States and of Canada no longer
+boast the mighty pines which almost rivalled the gigantic Sequoia of
+California; and the growth of the larger forest trees is so slow, after
+they have attained to a certain size, that if every pine and oak 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 esteemed large
+ones of their kind in that part of America" [Vermont], qualifying his
+account with the remark that his measurements "do not denote the
+greatest which nature has produced of their particular species, but the
+greatest which are to be found in most of our towns."
+
+                Diameter.                     Height.
+
+  Pine,         6 feet,                      247 feet.
+  Maple,        5  "    9 inches, }
+  Buttonwood,   5  "    6    "    }
+  Elm,          5  "              }
+  Hemlock,      4  "    9    "    }
+  Oak,          4  "              }   From 100 to 200 feet.
+  Basswood,     4  "              }
+  Ash,          4  "              }
+  Birch,        4  "              }
+
+He adds a note saying that a white pine was cut in Dunstable, New
+Hampshire, in the year 1736, the diameter of which was seven feet and
+eight inches. Dr. Dwight says that a fallen pine in Connecticut was
+found to measure two hundred and forty-seven feet in height, and adds:
+"A few years since, such trees were in great numbers 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: "Fifty years ago, several trees growing on rather dry land in
+Blandford, Massachusetts, measured, after they were felled, two hundred
+and twenty-three feet. All these trees are surpassed by a pine felled at
+Hanover, New Hampshire, about a hundred years ago, and described as
+measuring two hundred and seventy-four feet.[249]
+
+These descriptions, it will be noticed, apply to trees cut from sixty to
+one hundred years since. Persons, whom observation has rendered familiar
+with the present character of the American forest, will be struck with
+the smallness of the diameter which Dr. Williams and Dr. Dwight ascribe
+to trees of such extraordinary height. Individuals of the several
+species mentioned in Dr. Williams's table, are now hardly to be found in
+the same climate, exceeding one half or at most two thirds of the height
+which he assigns to them; but, except in the case of the oak and 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
+caused the destruction of all the best--that is, the tallest and
+straightest--specimens of both; the other, that the thinning of the
+woods by the axe of the lumberman has allowed the access of light and
+heat and air to trees of humbler worth and lower stature, which have
+survived their more towering brethren. These, consequently, have been
+able to expand their crowns and swell their stems to a degree not
+possible so long as they were overshadowed and stifled by the lordly oak
+and pine. While, therefore, the New England forester must search long
+before he finds a pine
+
+    fit to be the mast
+  Of some great ammiral,
+
+beeches and elms and birches, as sturdy as the mightiest of their
+progenitors, are still no rarity.[250]
+
+Another evil, sometimes of serious magnitude, which attends the
+operations of the lumberman, is the injury to the banks of rivers from
+the practice of floating. I do not here allude to rafts, which, being
+under the control of those who navigate them, may be so guided as to
+avoid damage to the shore, but to masts, logs, and other pieces of
+timber singly intrusted to the streams, to be conveyed by their currents
+to sawmill ponds, or to convenient places for collecting them 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 opened, or the dam is blown up or
+otherwise suddenly broken, and the whole mass of lumber above it is
+hurried down with the rolling flood. Both of these modes of proceeding
+expose the banks of the rivers employed as channels of flotation to
+abrasion,[251] and in some of the American States it has been found
+necessary to protect, by special legislation, the lands through which
+they flow from the serious injury sometimes received through the
+practices I have described.[252]
+
+
+_Special Causes of the Destruction of European Woods._
+
+The causes of forest waste thus far enumerated are more or less common
+to both continents; but in Europe extensive woods have, at different
+periods, been deliberately destroyed by fire or the axe, because they
+afforded a retreat to enemies, robbers, and outlaws, and this practice
+is said to have been resorted to 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 mediaeval
+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. The
+laws of almost every European state more or less adequately secure the
+permanence of the forest; and I believe Spain is the only European land
+which has not made some public provision for the protection and
+restoration of the woods--the only country whose people systematically
+war upon the garden of God.[254]
+
+
+_Royal Forests and Game Laws._
+
+The French authors I have quoted, as well as many other writers of the
+same nation, refer to the French Revolution as having given a new
+impulse to destructive causes which were already threatening the total
+extermination of the woods.[255] The general crusade against the
+forests, which accompanied that important event, is to be ascribed, in a
+considerable degree, to political resentments. The forest codes of the
+mediaeval kings, and the local "coutumes" of feudalism contained many
+severe and even inhuman provisions, 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 des Rois
+d'Angleterre_, p. 67, "was hunting one day in a new forest, which he had
+caused to be made out of eighteen parishes that he had destroyed, when,
+by mischance, he was killed by an arrow wherewith Tyreus de Rois [Sir
+Walter Tyrell] thought to slay a beast, but missed the beast, and slew
+the king, who was beyond it. And in this very same forest, his brother
+Richard ran so hard against a tree that he died of it. And men commonly
+said that these things were because they had so laid waste and taken the
+said parishes."
+
+These barbarous acts, as Bonnemere observes,[257] were simply the
+transfer of the customs of the French kings, of their vassals, and even
+of inferior gentlemen, to conquered England. "The death of a hare," says
+our author, "was a hanging matter, the murder of a plover a capital
+crime. Death was inflicted on those who spread nets for pigeons;
+wretches who had drawn a bow upon a stag were to be tied to the animal
+alive; and among the seigniors it was a standing excuse for having
+killed game on forbidden ground, that they aimed at a serf." The feudal
+lords enforced these codes with unrelenting rigor, and not unfrequently
+took the law into their own hands. In the time of Louis IX, according to
+William of Nangis, "three noble children, born in Flanders, who were
+sojourning at the abbey of St. Nicholas in 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 criminal than themselves, the king was much inclined to inflict
+the punishment of death on the proud baron. "If he believed," said he,
+"that our Lord would be as well content with hanging as with pardoning,
+he would hang Sir Enguerrand in spite of all his barons;" but noble and
+clerical interests unfortunately prevailed. The king was persuaded to
+inflict a milder retribution, and the murderer was condemned to pay ten
+thousand livres in coin, and to "build for the souls of the three
+children two chapels wherein mass should be said every day."[259] The
+hope of shortening the purgatorial term of the young persons, by the
+religious rites to be celebrated in the chapels, was doubtless the
+consideration which operated most powerfully on the mind of the king;
+and Europe lost a great example for the sake of a mass.
+
+The desolation and depopulation, resulting from the extension of the
+forest and the enforcement of the game laws, induced several of the
+French kings to consent to some relaxation of the severity of these
+latter. Francis I, however, revived their barbarous provisions, and,
+according to Bonnemere, even so good a monarch as Henry IV reenacted
+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, "was imposed on every one shooting at
+pigeons, which, at that time, swooped down by thousands upon the
+new-sown fields and devoured the seed. But let us count even this a
+progress, for we have seen that the murder of a pigeon had been a
+capital crime."[260]
+
+Not only were the slightest trespasses on the forest domain--the cutting
+of an oxgoad, for instance--severely punished, but game animals were
+still sacred when they had wandered from their native precincts and were
+ravaging the fields of the peasantry. A herd of deer or of wild boars
+often consumed 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," says Paul Louis Courier, speaking in the name of the
+peasants of Chambord, in the "Simple Discours," "the game has made war
+upon us. Paris was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its
+environs, now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to support
+the gamekeepers."[261]
+
+In the popular mind, the forest was associated with all the abuses of
+feudalism, and the evils the peasantry had suffered from the legislation
+which protected both it and the game it sheltered, blinded them to the
+still greater physical mischiefs which its destruction was to entail
+upon them. No longer protected by law, the crown forests and those of
+the great lords were attacked 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,
+facility of internal communication, and the like. Thus resentful memory
+of the wrongs associated with the forest, popular ignorance, and the
+cupidity of speculators cunning enough to turn these circumstances to
+profitable account, combined to hasten the sacrifice of the remaining
+woods, and a waste was produced which hundreds of years and millions of
+treasure will hardly repair.
+
+
+_Small Forest Plants, and Vitality of Seed._
+
+Another function of the woods to which I have barely alluded deserves a
+fuller notice than can be bestowed upon it in a treatise the scope of
+which is purely economical. The forest is the native habitat of a large
+number of humbler plants, to the growth and perpetuation of which its
+shade, 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 not naturally propagating themselves in the open
+ground, may perhaps germinate and grow under artificial stimulation and
+protection, and finally become hardy enough to maintain an independent
+existence in very different circumstances from those which at present
+seem essential to their life.
+
+Besides this, although the accounts of the growth of seeds, which have
+lain for ages in the ashy dryness of Egyptian catacombs, are to be
+received with great caution, or, more probably, to be rejected
+altogether, yet their vitality seems almost imperishable while they
+remain in the situations in which nature deposits them. When a forest
+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, sprout up, and in
+due time, if not choked by other trees belonging to a later stage in the
+order of natural succession, restore again the original wood. In these
+cases, the seeds of the new crop may often have been brought by the
+wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other causes; but, in many
+instances, this explanation is not probable.
+
+When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United States, the ashes
+are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of fire weed, a tall
+herbaceous plant, very seldom seen growing under other circumstances,
+and often not to be found for a distance 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 buried, or a special pabulum furnished only by the combustion of the
+vegetable remains that cover the ground in the woods. Earth brought up
+from wells or other excavations soon produces a harvest of plants often
+very unlike those of the local flora.
+
+Moritz Wagner, as quoted by Wittwer,[264] remarks in his description of
+Mount Ararat: "A singular phenomenon to which my guide drew my attention
+is the appearance of several plants on the earth-heaps left by the last
+catastrophe [an earthquake], which grow nowhere else on the mountain,
+and had never been observed in this region before. The seeds of these
+plants were probably 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 sylvan plants, too deeply buried
+by successive layers of forest foliage and the mould resulting from its
+decomposition to be reached by the plough when the trees are gone and
+the ground brought under cultivation, may, if a wiser posterity replants
+the wood which sheltered their parent stems, germinate and grow, after
+lying for generations in a state of suspended animation.
+
+Darwin says: "In Staffordshire, on the estate of a relation, where I had
+ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren
+heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man, but several
+hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five
+years previously and planted with Scotch fir. The change in the native
+vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more
+than is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to
+another; not only the proportional 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
+seeds had been deposited when an ancient forest protected the growth of
+the plants which bore them, and that they sprang up to new life when a
+return of favorable conditions awaked them from a sleep of centuries.
+Darwin indeed says that the heath "had never been touched by the hand
+of man." Perhaps not, after it became a heath; but what evidence is
+there to control the general presumption that this heath was preceded by
+a forest, in whose shade the vegetables which dropped the seeds in
+question might have grown?[266]
+
+Although, therefore, the destruction of a wood and the reclaiming of the
+soil to agricultural uses suppose the death of its smaller dependent
+flora, these revolutions do not exclude the possibility of its
+resurrection. In a practical view of the subject, however, we must admit
+that when the woodman fells a tree he sacrifices the colony of humbler
+growths which had vegetated under its protection. Some wood plants are
+known to possess valuable medicinal properties, and experiment may show
+that the number of these is greater than we now suppose. Few of them,
+however, have any other economical value than that of furnishing a
+slender pasturage to cattle allowed to roam in the woods; and even this
+small advantage is far more than compensated by the mischief 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 than the brandy cask whose staves
+are split out from its heart wood; a bed of anemones, hepaticas, or wood
+violets than the leeks and onions which he may grow on the soil they
+have enriched and in the air they made fragrant--he who has enjoyed that
+special training of the heart and intellect which can be acquired only
+in the unviolated sanctuaries of nature, "where man is distant, but God
+is near"--will not rashly assert his right to extirpate a tribe of
+harmless vegetables, barely because their products neither tickle his
+palate nor fill his pocket; and his regret at the dwindling area of the
+forest solitude will be augmented by the reflection that the nurselings
+of the woodland perish with the pines, the oaks, and the beeches that
+sheltered them.[267]
+
+Although, as I have said, birds do not frequent the deeper recesses of
+the wood,[268] yet a very large proportion of them build their nests in
+trees, and find in their foliage and branches a secure retreat from the
+inclemencies of the seasons 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 wood
+legions of their winged enemies, which swoop down upon the fields to
+save man's harvests by devouring the destroying worm, and surprising the
+lagging beetle in his tardy retreat to the dark cover where he lurks
+through the hours of daylight.
+
+The insects most injurious to rural industry do not multiply in or near
+the woods. The locust, which ravages the East with its voracious armies,
+is bred in vast open plains which admit the full heat of the sun to
+hasten the hatching of the eggs, gather no moisture to destroy them, and
+harbor no bird to feed upon the larvae.[269] It is only since the felling
+of the forests of Asia Minor and Cyrene that the locust has become so
+fearfully destructive in those countries; and the grasshopper, which now
+threatens to be almost as great a pest to the agriculture of some North
+American soils, breeds in seriously injurious numbers only where a wide
+extent of surface is bare of woods.
+
+
+_Utility of the Forest._
+
+In most parts of Europe, the woods are already so nearly extirpated that
+the mere protection of those which now exist is by no means an adequate
+remedy for the evils resulting from the want of them; and besides, as I
+have already 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] and France has now set herself
+energetically at work to restore the woods in the southern provinces,
+and thereby to prevent the utter depopulation and waste with which that
+once fertile soil and delicious climate are threatened.
+
+The objects of the restoration of the forest are as multifarious as the
+motives that have led to its destruction, and as the evils which that
+destruction has occasioned. It is hoped that the planting of the
+mountains will diminish the frequency and violence of 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, prevent the spread of miasmatic effluvia, and,
+finally, furnish an inexhaustible and self-renewing supply of a material
+indispensable to so many purposes of domestic comfort, to the successful
+exercise of every art of peace, every destructive energy of war.[271]
+
+But our enumeration of the uses of trees is not yet complete. Besides
+the influence of the forest, in mountain ranges, as a means of
+preventing the scooping out of ravines and the accumulations of water
+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 considered in
+the chapter on the waters; and another very important use of trees, that
+of fixing movable sand-dunes, and reclaiming them to profitable
+cultivation, will be pointed out in the chapter on the sands.
+
+The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures and the mechanical
+arts, of military armaments, and especially of the commercial fleets and
+navies of Christendom within the present century, has greatly augmented
+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 her only
+remaining trees fit for such uses.[273] The walnut trees alone felled in
+Europe within two years to furnish the armies of America with
+gunstocks, would form a forest of no inconsiderable extent.[274]
+
+
+_The Forests of Europe._
+
+Mirabeau estimated the forests of France in 1750 at seventeen millions
+of hectares [42,000,000 acres]; in 1860 they were reduced to eight
+millions [19,769,000 acres]. This would be at the rate of 82,000
+hectares [202,600 acres] per year. Troy, from whose valuable pamphlet,
+_Etude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes_, I take these statistical
+details, supposes that Mirabeau's statement may have been an extravagant
+one, but it still remains certain that the waste has been enormous; for
+it is known that, in some departments, that of Ariege, for instance,
+clearing has gone on during the last half century at the rate of three
+thousand acres a year,[275] and in all parts of the empire trees have
+been felled faster than they 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 any agricultural use. Hence it is
+evident that the proportion of forest in 1750, taking even Mirabeau's
+large estimate, was not very much too great for permanent maintenance,
+though doubtless the distribution was so unequal that it would have been
+sound policy to fell the woods and clear land in some provinces, while
+large forests should have been planted in others.[277] During the
+period in question, France neither exported manufactured wood or rough
+timber, nor derived important collateral advantages of any sort from the
+destruction of her forests. She is consequently impoverished and
+crippled to the extent of the difference between what she actually
+possesses of wooded surface and what she ought to have retained.
+
+Italy and Spain are bared of trees in a greater degree than France, and
+even Russia, which we habitually consider as substantially a forest
+country, is beginning to suffer seriously for want of wood. Jourdier, as
+quoted by Clave, observes: "Instead of a vast territory with immense
+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 man or of
+fire, those two great enemies of Muscovite sylviculture. This is so
+true, that clear-sighted men already foresee a crisis which will become
+terrible, unless the discovery of great deposits of some new
+combustible, as pit coal or anthracite, shall diminish its evils."[278]
+
+Germany, from character of surface and climate, and from the attention
+which has long been paid in all the German States to sylviculture, is,
+taken as a whole, in a far better condition in this respect than its
+more southern neighbors; but in the Alpine 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 parts of the territory of Bavaria, where, not long since, wood
+abounded, I may mention the fact that the water of salt springs is, in
+some instances, conveyed to the distance of sixty miles, in iron pipes,
+to reach a supply of fuel for boiling it down.[279]
+
+
+_Forests of the United States and Canada._
+
+The vast forests of the United States and Canada cannot long resist the
+improvident habits of the backwoodsman and the increased demand for
+lumber. According to the census of the former country for 1860, which
+gives returns of the "sawed and planed lumber" alone, timber for
+framing and for a vast variety of mechanical purposes being omitted
+altogether, the value of the former material prepared for market in the
+United States was, in 1850, $58,521,976; in 1860, $95,912,286. The
+quantity of unsawed lumber is not likely to have increased 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 value. Perhaps this rise of prices may even be
+sufficient to make the entire difference between the value of "sawed and
+planed lumber" produced in the ten years in question by the six New
+England States (21 per cent.), and the six Middle States (15 per cent.);
+but the amount produced by the Western and by the Southern States had
+doubled, and that returned from the Pacific States and Territories had
+trebled in value in the same interval, so that there was certainly, in
+those States, a large increase in the actual quantity prepared for sale.
+
+I greatly doubt whether any one of the American States, except, perhaps,
+Oregon, has, at this moment, more woodland than it ought permanently to
+preserve, though, no doubt, a different distribution of the forests in
+all of them might be highly advantageous. It is a great misfortune to
+the American Union that the State Governments have so generally disposed
+of their original domain to private citizens. It is true that public
+property is not sufficiently respected in the United States; and it is
+also true that, within the memory of almost every man of mature age,
+timber was of so little value in that country, that the owners of
+private woodlands submitted, almost without complaint, to what would be
+regarded elsewhere 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, not to the action of their local or general
+legislatures. Even in France, government has moved with too slow and
+hesitating a pace, and preventive measures do not yet compensate
+destructive causes. The judicious remarks of Troy on this point may well
+be applied to other countries than France, other measures of public
+policy than the preservation of the woods. "To move softly," says he,
+"is to commit the most dangerous, the most unpardonable of imprudences;
+it diminishes the prestige of authority; it furnishes a triumph to the
+sneerer and the incredulous; it strengthens opposition and encourages
+resistance; it ruins the administration in the opinion of the people,
+weakens its power and depresses its courage."[281]
+
+
+_The Economy of the Forest._
+
+The legislation of European states upon sylviculture, and the practice
+of that art, divide themselves into two great branches--the preservation
+of existing forests, and the creation of new. From the long operation of
+causes already set forth, what is understood in America and other new
+countries by the "primitive forest," no longer exists in the territories
+which were the seats 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 man and by domestic animals,
+and they always present more or less of an artificial character and
+arrangement. Both they and planted forests, which, though certainly not
+few, are of recent date in Europe, demand, as well for protection as for
+promotion of growth, a treatment different in some respects from that
+which would be suited to the character and wants of the virgin wood.
+
+On this latter branch of the subject, experience and observation have
+not yet collected a sufficient stock of facts to serve for the
+construction of a complete system of sylviculture; but the management of
+the forest as it exists in France--the different zones and climates of
+which country present many points of analogy with those of the United
+States and some of the British colonies--has been carefully studied, and
+several manuals of practice have been prepared for the foresters of that
+empire. I believe the best of these is the _Cours Elementaire de Culture
+des Bois cree a l'Ecole Forestiere de Nancy, par M. Lorentz, complete,
+et publie par A. Parade_, with a supplement under the title of _Cours
+d'Amenagement des Forets, par Henri Nanquette_. The _Etudes sur
+l'Economie Forestiere, par Jules Clave_, 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 sufficiently specific in its details to serve that
+purpose. Notwithstanding the difference of conditions between the
+aboriginal and the trained forest, the judicious observer who aims at
+the preservation of the former will reap much instruction from the
+treatises I have cited, and I believe he will be convinced that the
+sooner a natural wood is brought into the state of an artificially
+regulated one, the better it is for all the multiplied interests which
+depend on the wise administration of this branch of public
+economy.[282]
+
+One consideration bearing on this subject has received less attention
+than it merits, because most persons interested in such questions have
+not opportunities for the comparison I refer to. I mean the great
+general superiority of cultivated timber to that of strictly spontaneous
+growth. I say _general_ superiority, because there are exceptions to the
+rule. The white pine, _Pinus strobus_, for instance, and other trees 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 wholly free from
+knots, is regular in annular structure, soft and uniform in texture,
+and, consequently, superior to almost all other timber for joinery. If,
+while a large pine is spared, the broad-leaved or other smaller trees
+around it are felled, the swaying of the tree from the action of the
+wind mechanically produces separations between the layers of annual
+growth, and greatly diminishes the value of the timber.
+
+The same defect is often observed in pines which, from some accident of
+growth, have much overtopped their fellows in the virgin forest. The
+white pine, growing in the fields, or in open glades in the woods, is
+totally different from the true forest tree, both in general aspect and
+in quality of wood. Its stem is much shorter, its top less tapering, its
+foliage denser and more inclined to gather into tufts, its branches more
+numerous and of larger diameter, its wood shows 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 with trees grown in the open grounds
+from known white-pine seedlings, I believe their peculiar character is
+due to unfavorable circumstances in their early growth. The pine, then,
+is an exception to the general rule as to the inferiority of the forest
+to the open-ground tree. The pasture oak and pasture beech, on the
+contrary, are well known to produce far better timber than those grown
+in the woods, and there are few trees to which the remark is not equally
+applicable.[283]
+
+Another advantage of the artificially regulated forest is, that it
+admits of such grading of the ground as to favor the retention or
+discharge of water at will, while the facilities it affords for
+selecting and duly proportioning, as well as properly spacing, the trees
+which compose it, are too obvious to require to be more than hinted at.
+In conducting these operations, 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 Clave, "is not, as is often
+supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each other in long
+perspective, without bond of union, and capable of isolation from each
+other; it is, on the contrary, a whole, the different parts of which are
+interdependent upon each other, and it constitutes, so to speak, a true
+individuality. Every forest has a special character, determined by the
+form of the surface it grows upon, the kinds of trees that compose it,
+and the manner in which they are grouped."[284]
+
+
+_European and American Trees compared._
+
+The woods of North America are strikingly distinguished from those of
+Europe by the vastly greater variety of species they contain. According
+to Clave, there are in "France and in most parts of Europe" only about
+twenty forest trees, five or six of which are spike-leaved and resinous,
+the remainder broad-leaved."[285] Our author, however, doubtless means
+genera, though he uses the word _especes_. Rossmaessler 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 strobus_--and the cedar of Lebanon from Asia, though
+it is indigenous in Algeria also. We may then safely say that Europe
+does not possess above forty or fifty trees of such economical value as
+to be worth the special care of the forester, while the oak alone
+numbers not less than thirty species in the United States,[286] and some
+other North American genera are almost equally diversified.[287]
+
+Few European trees, except those bearing edible fruit, have been
+naturalized in the United States, while the American forest flora has
+made large contributions to that of Europe. It is a very poor taste
+which has led to the substitution of the less picturesque European for
+the graceful and majestic American elm, in some public grounds in the
+United States. On the other hand, the European mountain ash--which in
+beauty and healthfulness of growth is superior to our own--the horse
+chestnut, and the abele, or silver poplar, are valuable additions to the
+ornamental trees of North America. The Swiss arve or zirbelkiefer,
+_Pinus cembra_, which yields a well-flavored edible seed and furnishes
+excellent wood for carving, the umbrella pine which also bears a seed
+agreeable to the taste, and which, 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 in strength and elasticity of
+fibre, is valuable for its timber and its oil.[288] The maritime pine,
+which has proved of such immense use in fixing drifting sands in France,
+may perhaps be better adapted to this purpose than any of the pines of
+the New World, and it is of great importance for its turpentine, resin,
+and tar. The epicea, or common fir, _Abies picea_, _Abies excelsa_,
+_Picea excelsa_, abundant in the mountains of France and the contiguous
+country, is known for its product, Burgundy pitch, and, as it flourishes
+in a greater variety of soil and climate than almost any other
+spike-leaved tree, it might be well worth transplantation.[289] The cork
+oak has been introduced into the United States, I believe, and would
+undoubtedly thrive in the Southern section of the Union.[290]
+
+In the walnut, the chestnut, the cork oak, the mulberry, the olive, the
+orange, the lemon, the fig, and the multitude of other trees which, by
+their fruit, or by other products, yield an annual revenue, nature has
+provided Southern Europe with a partial compensation for the loss of
+the native forest. It is true that these trees, planted as most of them
+are at such distances as to admit of cultivation, or of the growth of
+grass among them, are but an 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 wanting, certainly,
+north of the Alps. The apple, the pear, and the prune are important in
+the economy both of man and of nature, but they are far less numerous in
+Switzerland and Northern France than are the trees I have mentioned in
+Southern Europe, both because they are in general less remunerative, and
+because the climate, in higher latitudes, does not permit the free
+introduction of shade trees into grounds occupied for agricultural
+purposes.[291]
+
+The multitude of species, intermixed as they are in their spontaneous
+growth, gives the American forest landscape a variety of aspect not
+often seen in the woods of Europe, and the gorgeous tints, which nature
+repeats from the dying dolphin to paint the falling leaf of the American
+maples, oaks, and ash trees, clothe the hillsides 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 most American travellers in Europe are willing
+to allow; and, besides, the small deciduous shrubs which often carpet
+the forest glades of these mountains are dyed with a ruddy and orange
+glow, which, in the distant landscape, is no mean substitute for the
+scarlet and crimson and gold and amber of the transatlantic woodland.
+
+No American evergreen known to me resembles the umbrella pine
+sufficiently to be a fair object of comparison with it.[292] A cedar,
+very common above the Highlands on the Hudson, is extremely like the
+cypress, straight, slender, with erect, compressed ramification, and
+feathered to the ground, but its foliage is neither so dark nor so
+dense, the tree does not attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor
+has it the lithe flexibility 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, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its
+foliage, gropes around with its feeble branches, and hisses as in
+impotent passion. The cypress gathers its limbs still more closely to
+its stem, bows a gracious salute rather than an humble obeisance to the
+tempest, bends to the wind with an elasticity that assures you of its
+prompt return to its regal attitude, and sends from its thick leaflets a
+murmur like the roar of the far-off ocean.
+
+The cypress and the umbrella pine are not merely conventional types of
+the Italian landscape. They are essential elements in a field of rural
+beauty which can be seen in perfection only in the basin of the
+Mediterranean, and they are as characteristic of this class of scenery
+as the date palm is of the oases of the desert. There is, however, this
+difference: a single cypress or pine is often enough to shed beauty over
+a wide area; the palm is a social 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 wheel
+carriages and high roads can acquire any notion of the face of the
+earth, and form any proper geographical image of that country. At other
+seasons, not high walls only, but equally impervious hedges, and now,
+unhappily, acacias thickly planted along the railway routes, confine the
+view so completely, that the arch of a tunnel, or a night cap over the
+traveller's eyes, is scarcely a more effectual obstacle to the
+gratification of his curiosity.[293]
+
+
+_Sylviculture._
+
+The art, or, as the Continental foresters call it, the science of
+sylviculture has been so little pursued in England and America, that its
+nomenclature has not been introduced into the English vocabulary, and I
+shall not be able to describe 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 like the present,
+but the almost total want of conveniently accessible means of
+information on the subject, in English-speaking countries, will justify
+me in presenting it with somewhat more of detail than would otherwise be
+pertinent.
+
+The two best known methods are those distinguished as the _taillis_,
+copse or coppice treatment,[294] and the _futaie_, for which I find no
+English equivalent, but which may not inappropriately be called the
+_full-growth_ system. A _taillis_, copse, or coppice, is a wood composed
+of shoots from the roots of trees previously cut for fuel and timber.
+The shoots are thinned out from time to time, and finally cut, either
+after a fixed number of years, or after the young trees have attained to
+certain dimensions, their roots being then left to send out a new
+progeny as before. This is the cheapest method of management, and
+therefore the best wherever the price of labor and of capital bears a
+high proportion to that of 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 mixed character of the
+forest--in many respects an important advantage, if not an indispensable
+condition of growth--is lost;[296] and besides this, large wood of any
+species cannot be grown in this method, because trees which shoot from
+decaying stumps and their dying roots, become hollow or otherwise
+unsound before they acquire their full dimensions. A more fatal
+objection still, is, that the roots of trees will not bear more than two
+or three, or at most four cuttings of their shoots before their vitality
+is exhausted, and the wood can then be restored only by replanting
+entirely. The period of cutting coppices varies in Europe from fifteen
+to forty years, according to soil, species, and rapidity of growth.
+
+In the _futaie_, or full-growth system, the trees are allowed to stand
+as long as they continue in healthy and vigorous growth. This is a
+shorter period than would be at first supposed, when we consider the
+advanced age and great dimensions to which, under favorable
+circumstances, many forest trees attain in temperate climates. But, as
+every observing person familiar with the natural forest is aware, these
+are exceptional cases, just as are instances of great longevity or of
+gigantic stature among men. Able vegetable physiologists have maintained
+that the tree, like most reptiles, has no natural limit of life or of
+growth, and that the only reason why our oaks and our pines do not reach
+the age of twenty centuries 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
+sequoia, it may not be able to carry it beyond one hundred and fifty in
+the oak. The limit may be different, too, in different trees of the same
+species, not from defective organization in those of inferior growth,
+but from more or less favorable conditions of soil, nourishment, and
+exposure. Whenever a tree attains to the limit beyond which its
+circulating fluids cannot rise, we may suppose that decay begins, and
+death follows, from the same causes which bring about the same results
+in animals of limited size--such, for example, as the interruption of
+functions essential to life, in consequence of the clogging up of ducts
+by matter assimilable in the stage of growth, but no longer so when
+increment has ceased.
+
+In the natural woods, we observe that, though, among the myriads of
+trees which grow upon a square mile, there are several vegetable giants,
+yet the great majority of them begin to decay long before they have
+attained their maximum of stature, and this seems to be still more
+emphatically true of the artificial forest. In France, according to
+Clave, "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 woods [_bois blancs_], in wet
+soils, languish and die before reaching the fiftieth year."[297] These
+ages are certainly below the average of those of American forest trees,
+and are greatly exceeded in very numerous well-attested instances of
+isolated trees in Europe.
+
+The former mode of treating the futaie, called the garden system, was to
+cut the trees individually as they arrived at maturity, but, in the best
+regulated forests, this practice has been abandoned for the German
+method, which embraces not only the securing of the largest immediate
+profit, but the replanting of the forest, and the care of the young
+growth. This is effected in the case of a forest, whether natural or
+artificial, which is to be subjected to regular management, by three
+operations. The first of these consists in felling about one third of
+the wood, in such way as to leave convenient spaces for the growth of
+young trees. The remaining two-thirds are 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
+mutually give to each other, the remainder of the original forest is
+felled, and the wood now consists wholly of young and vigorous trees.
+This result is obtained after about twenty years. At convenient periods
+afterward, the unhealthy stocks and those injured by wind or other
+accidents are removed, and in some instances the growth of the remainder
+is promoted by irrigation or by fertilizing applications.[298] When the
+forest is approaching to maturity, the original processes already
+described are repeated; and as, in different parts of an extensive
+forest, they would take place in different zones, it would afford
+indefinitely an annual crop of firewood and timber.
+
+The duties of the forester do not end here. It sometimes happens that
+the glades left by felling the older trees are not sufficiently seeded,
+or that the species, or _essences_, as the French oddly call them, are
+not duly proportioned in the new crop. In this case, seed must be
+artificially sown, or young trees planted in the vacancies.
+
+One of the most important rules in the administration of the forest is
+the absolute exclusion of domestic quadrupeds from every wood which is
+not destined to be cleared. No growth of young trees is possible where
+cattle are admitted to pasture at any season of the year, though they
+are undoubtedly most destructive while trees are in leaf.[299]
+
+It is often necessary to take measures for the protection of young trees
+against the rabbit, the mole, and other rodent quadrupeds, and of older
+ones against the damage done by the larvae of insects hatched upon the
+surface or in the tissues of the bark, or even in the wood itself. The
+much greater liability of the artificial 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
+regulated forest are abundant compensations for the loss thus
+occasioned, and the progress of entomological science will, perhaps,
+suggest new methods of preventing the ravages of insects. Thus far,
+however, the collection and destruction of the eggs, by simple but
+expensive means, has proved the only effectual remedy.[300]
+
+It is common in Europe to permit the removal of the fallen leaves and
+fragments of bark and branches with which the forest soil is covered,
+and sometimes the cutting of the lower twigs of evergreens. The leaves
+and twigs are principally used as litter for cattle, and finally as
+manure, the bark and wind-fallen branches as fuel. By long usage,
+sometimes by express grant, this privilege has become a vested right of
+the population in the neighborhood of many public, and even large
+private forests; but it is generally regarded as a serious evil. To
+remove the leaves and fallen twigs 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 ploughing. The carbonic acid
+given out by decaying leaves, when taken up by water, serves to
+dissolve the mineral constituents of the soil, and is particularly
+active in disintegrating feldspar and the clay derived from its
+decomposition. * * * The leaves belong to the soil. Without them it
+cannot preserve its fertility, and cannot furnish nutriment to the
+beech. The trees languish, produce seed incapable of germination, and
+the spontaneous self-sowing, which is an indispensable element in the
+best systems of sylviculture, fails altogether in the bared and
+impoverished soil."[301]
+
+Besides these evils, the removal of the leaves deprives the soil of that
+spongy character which gives it such immense value as a reservoir of
+moisture and a regulator of the flow of springs; and, finally, it
+exposes the surface roots to the drying influence of sun and wind, to
+accidental mechanical injury from the tread of animals or men, and, in
+cold climates, to the destructive effects of frost.
+
+The annual lopping and trimming of trees for fuel, so common in Europe,
+is fatal to the higher uses of the forest, but where small groves are
+made, or rows of trees planted, for no other purpose than to secure a
+supply of firewood, 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 use an old English word, a
+doddered tree, is in general a melancholy object, yet it must be
+admitted that the aspect of some species--the American locust, _Robinia
+pseudacacia_, for instance--when young, is improved by this
+process.[302]
+
+I have spoken of the needs of agriculture as a principal cause of the
+destruction of the forest, and of domestic cattle as particularly
+injurious to the growth of young trees. But these animals affect the
+forest, indirectly, in a still more important way, because the extent of
+cleared ground required for agricultural use depends very much on the
+number and kinds of the cattle bred. We have seen, in a former chapter,
+that, in the United States, the domestic quadrupeds amount to more than
+a hundred millions, or three times the number of the human population of
+the Union. In many of the Western States, the swine subsist more or less
+on acorns, nuts, and other products of the woods, and the prairies, or
+natural meadows of the Mississippi valley, yield a large amount 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 this, the ground
+required to produce the grass and grain consumed in rearing and
+fattening a grazing quadruped, would yield a far larger amount of
+nutriment, if devoted to the growing of breadstuffs, than is furnished
+by his flesh; and, upon the whole, whatever advantages may be reaped
+from the breeding of domestic cattle, it is plain that the cleared land
+devoted to their sustenance in the originally wooded part of the United
+States, after deducting a quantity sufficient to produce an amount of
+aliment equal to their flesh, still greatly exceeds that cultivated for
+vegetables, directly consumed by the people of the same regions; or, to
+express a nearly equivalent idea in other words, the meadow and the
+pasture, taken together, much exceed the plough land.[303]
+
+In fertile countries, like the United States, the foreign demand for
+animal and vegetable aliment, for cotton, and for tobacco, much enlarges
+the sphere of agricultural operations, and, of course, prompts 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 of the Old World
+that derive the raw material of their mechanical industry from distant
+lands, and import many articles of vegetable food or luxury which their
+own climates cannot advantageously produce.
+
+The growth of arboreal vegetation is so slow that, though he who buries
+an acorn may hope to see it shoot up to a miniature resemblance of the
+majestic tree which shall shade his remote descendants, yet the longest
+life hardly embraces the seedtime and the harvest of a forest. The
+planter of a wood must be actuated by higher motives than those of an
+investment the profits of which consist in direct pecuniary gain to
+himself or even to his posterity; for if, in rare cases, an artificial
+forest may, in two 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 to those that are to come after it.
+Especially is this obligation incumbent upon Americans. No civilized
+people profits so largely from the toils and sacrifices of its immediate
+predecessors as they; no generations have ever sown so liberally, and,
+in their own persons, reaped so scanty a return, as the pioneers of
+Anglo-American social life. We can repay our debt to our noble
+forefathers only by a like magnanimity, by a like self-forgetting care
+for the moral and material interests of our own posterity.
+
+
+_Instability of American Life._
+
+All human institutions, associate arrangements, modes of life, have
+their characteristic imperfections. The natural, perhaps the necessary
+defect of ours, is their instability, their want of fixedness, not in
+form only, but even in spirit. The face of physical nature in the United
+States shares this incessant fluctuation, and the landscape is as
+variable as the habits of the population. It is time for some abatement
+in the restless love of change which characterizes us, and makes us
+almost a nomade rather than 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 and plough
+land--would involve a certain persistence of character in all the
+branches of industry, all the occupations and habits of life, which
+depend upon or are immediately connected with either, without implying a
+rigidity that should exclude flexibility of accommodation to the many
+changes of external circumstance which human wisdom can neither prevent
+nor foresee, and would thus help us to become, more emphatically, a
+well-ordered and stable commonwealth, and, not less conspicuously, a
+people of progress.
+
+     NOTE on word _watershed_, omitted on p. 257.--Sir John F. W.
+     Herschel (_Physical Geography_, 137, and elsewhere) spells this
+     word _water-sched_, because he considers it a translation, or
+     rather an adoption of the German "Wasser-scheide, separation of
+     the waters, not water-_shed_, 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 because _sch_ is a
+     combination of letters wholly unknown to modern English
+     orthography and properly representing no sound recognized in
+     English orthoepy, and for the still better reason that
+     _watershed_, in the sense of _division-of-the-waters_, has a
+     legitimate English etymology.
+
+     The Anglo-Saxon _sceadan_ meant both to separate or divide, and
+     to shade or shelter. It is the root of the English verbs _to
+     shed_ and _to shade_, and in the former meaning is the A. S.
+     equivalent of the German verb _scheiden_.
+
+     _Shed_ in Old English had the meaning _to separate_ or
+     _distinguish_. It is so used in the _Owl and the Nightingale_, v.
+     197. Palsgrave (_Lesclarcissement, etc._, p. 717) defines _I
+     shede_, I departe thinges asonder; and the word still means _to
+     divide_ in several English local dialects. Hence, _watershed_,
+     the division or separation of the waters, is good English both in
+     sense and spelling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WATERS.
+
+LAND ARTIFICIALLY WON FROM THE WATERS: _a_, EXCLUSION OF THE SEA BY
+DIKING; _b_, DRAINING OF LAKES AND MARSHES; _c_, GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCE
+OF SUCH OPERATIONS--LOWERING OF LAKES--MOUNTAIN LAKES--CLIMATIC EFFECTS
+OF DRAINING LAKES AND MARSHES--GEOGRAPHICAL AND CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF
+AQUEDUCTS, RESERVOIRS, AND CANALS--SURFACE AND UNDERDRAINING, AND THEIR
+CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHICAL EFFECTS--IRRIGATION AND ITS CLIMATIC AND
+GEOGRAPHICAL EFFECTS.
+
+INUNDATIONS AND TORRENTS: _a_, RIVER EMBANKMENTS; _b_, FLOODS OF THE
+ARDECHE; _c_, CRUSHING FORCE OF TORRENTS; _d_, INUNDATIONS OF 1856 IN
+FRANCE; _e_, REMEDIES AGAINST INUNDATIONS--CONSEQUENCES IF THE NILE HAD
+BEEN CONFINED BY LATERAL DIKES.
+
+IMPROVEMENTS IN THE VAL DI CHIANA--IMPROVEMENTS IN THE TUSCAN
+MAREMME--OBSTRUCTION OF RIVER MOUTHS--SUBTERRANEAN WATERS--ARTESIAN
+WELLS--ARTIFICIAL SPRINGS--ECONOMIZING PRECIPITATION.
+
+
+_Land artificially won from the Waters._
+
+Man, as we have seen, has done much to revolutionize the solid surface
+of the globe, and to change the distribution and proportions, if not the
+essential character, of the organisms which inhabit the land and even
+the waters. Besides the influence thus exerted upon the life which
+peoples the sea, his action upon the land has involved a certain amount
+of indirect encroachment upon the territorial jurisdiction of the ocean.
+So far as he has increased the erosion of running waters by the
+destruction of the forest, he has promoted the deposit of solid matter
+in the sea, thus reducing its depth, advancing the coast line, and
+diminishing the area covered by the waters. He has gone beyond this, and
+invaded the realm of the ocean by constructing within its borders
+wharves, piers, lighthouses, breakwaters, fortresses, and other
+facilities for his commercial and military operations; and in some
+countries he has permanently rescued from tidal overflow, and even from
+the very bed of the deep, tracts of ground extensive enough to
+constitute valuable additions to his agricultural domain. The quantity
+of soil gained from the sea by these different modes of acquisition is,
+indeed, too inconsiderable to form an appreciable element in the
+comparison of the general proportion between the two great forms of
+terrestrial surface, land and water; but the results of such operations,
+considered in their physical and their moral bearings, are sufficiently
+important to entitle them to special notice in every comprehensive view
+of the relations between man and nature.
+
+There are cases, as on the western shores of the Baltic, where, in
+consequence of the secular elevation of the coast, the sea appears to be
+retiring; others, where, from the slow sinking of the land, it seems to
+be advancing. These movements depend upon geological causes wholly out
+of our reach, and man can neither advance nor retard them. There are
+also cases where similar apparent effects are produced by local oceanic
+currents, by river deposit or erosion, by tidal action, or by the
+influence of the wind upon the waves and the sands of the sea beach. A
+regular current may drift suspended earth and seaweed along a coast
+until they are caught by an eddy and finally deposited out of the reach
+of further disturbance, or it may scoop out the bed of the sea and
+undermine promontories and headlands; a powerful river, as the wind
+changes the direction of its flow at its outlet, may wash away shores
+and sandbanks at one point to deposit their material at another; the
+tide or waves, stirred to unusual depths by the wind, may gradually wear
+down the line of coast, or they may form shoals and coast dunes by
+depositing the sand they have rolled up from the bottom of the ocean.
+These latter modes of action are slow in producing effects sufficiently
+important to be noticed in general geography, or even to be visible in
+the representations of coast line laid down in ordinary maps; but they
+nevertheless form conspicuous features in local topography, and they are
+attended with consequences of great moment to the material and the moral
+interests of men.
+
+The forces which produce these results are all in a considerable degree
+subject to control, or rather to direction and resistance, by human
+power, and it is in guiding and combating them that man has achieved
+some of his most remarkable and honorable conquests over nature. The
+triumphs in question, or what we generally call harbor and coast
+improvements, whether we estimate their value by the money and labor
+expended upon them, or by their bearing upon the interests of commerce
+and the arts of civilization, must take a very high rank among the great
+works of man, and they are fast assuming a magnitude greatly exceeding
+their former relative importance. The extension of commerce and of the
+military marine, and especially the introduction of vessels of increased
+burden and deeper draught of water, have imposed upon engineers tasks of
+a character which a century ago would have been pronounced, and, in
+fact, would have been impracticable; but necessity has stimulated an
+ingenuity which has contrived means of executing them, and which gives
+promise of yet greater performance in time to come.
+
+Men have ceased to admire the power which heaped up the great pyramid to
+gratify the pride of a despot with a giant sepulchre; for many great
+harbors, many important lines of internal communication, in the
+civilized world, now exhibit works which surpass the vastest remains of
+ancient architectural art in mass and weight of matter, demand the
+exercise of far greater constructive skill, and involve a much heavier
+pecuniary expenditure than would now be required for the building of the
+tomb of Cheops. It is computed that the great pyramid, the solid
+contents of which when complete were about 3,000,000 cubic yards, could
+be erected for a million of pounds sterling. The breakwater at
+Cherbourg, founded in rough water sixty feet, deep, at an average
+distance of more than two miles from the shore, contains double the mass
+of the pyramid, and many a comparatively unimportant railroad has been
+constructed at twice the cost which would now build that stupendous
+monument. Indeed, although man, detached from the solid earth, is almost
+powerless to struggle against the sea, he is fast becoming invincible by
+it so long as his foot is planted on the shore, or even on the bottom of
+the rolling ocean; and though on some battle fields between the waters
+and the land, he is obliged slowly to yield his ground, yet he retreats
+still facing the foe, and will finally be able to say to the sea: "Thus
+far shalt thou come and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be
+stayed!"
+
+The description of works of harbor and coast improvement which have only
+an economical value, not a true geographical importance, does not come
+within the plan of the present volume, and in treating this branch of my
+subject, I shall confine myself to such as are designed either to gain
+new soil by excluding the waters from grounds which they had permanently
+or occasionally covered, or to resist new encroachments of the sea upon
+the land.
+
+
+a. _Exclusion of the Sea by Diking._
+
+The draining of the Lincolnshire fens in England, which converted about
+400,000 acres of marsh, pool, and tide-washed flat into plough land and
+pasturage, is a work, or rather series of works, of great magnitude, and
+it possesses much economical, and, indeed, no trifling geographical
+importance. Its plans and methods were, at least in part, borrowed from
+the example of like improvements in Holland, and it is, in difficulty
+and extent, inferior to works executed for the same purpose on the
+opposite coast of the North Sea, by Dutch, Frisic, and Low German
+engineers. The space I can devote to such operations will be better
+employed in describing the latter, and I content myself with the simple
+statement I have already made of the quantity of worthless and even
+pestilential land which has been rendered both productive and salubrious
+in Lincolnshire, by diking out the sea, and the rivers which traverse
+the fens of that country.
+
+The almost continued prevalence of west winds upon both coasts of the
+German Ocean occasions a constant set of the currents of that sea to the
+east, and both for this reason and on account of the greater violence of
+storms from the former quarter, the English shores are much less exposed
+to invasion by the waves than those of the Netherlands and the provinces
+contiguous to them on the north. The old Netherlandish chronicles are
+filled with the most startling accounts of the damage done by the
+irruptions of the ocean, from west winds or extraordinarily high tides,
+at times long before any considerable extent of seacoast was diked.
+Several hundreds of these terrible inundations are recorded, and in very
+many of them the loss of human lives is estimated as high as one hundred
+thousand. It is impossible to doubt that there must be enormous
+exaggeration in these numbers; for, with all the reckless hardihood
+shown by men in braving the dangers and privations attached by nature to
+their birthplace, it is inconceivable that so dense a population as such
+wholesale destruction of life supposes could find the means of
+subsistence, or content itself to dwell, on a territory liable, a dozen
+times in a century, to such fearful devastation. There can be no doubt,
+however, that the low continental shores of the German Ocean very
+frequently suffered immense injury from inundation by the sea, and it is
+natural, therefore, that the various arts of resistance to the
+encroachments of the ocean, and, finally, of aggressive warfare upon its
+domain, and of permanent conquest of its territory, should have been
+earlier studied and carried to higher perfection in the latter
+countries, than in England, which had much less to lose or to gain by
+the incursions or the retreat of the waters.
+
+Indeed, although the confinement of swelling rivers by artificial
+embankments is of great antiquity, I do not know that the defence or
+acquisition of land from the sea by diking was ever practised on a large
+scale until systematically undertaken by the Netherlanders, a few
+centuries after the commencement of the Christian era. The silence of
+the Roman historians affords a strong presumption that this art was
+unknown to the inhabitants of the Netherlands at the time of the Roman
+invasion, and the elder Pliny's description of the mode of life along
+the coast which has now been long diked in, applies precisely to the
+habits of the people who live on the low islands and mainland flats
+lying outside of the chain of dikes, and wholly unprotected by
+embankments of any sort.
+
+It has been conjectured, and not without probability, that the causeways
+built by the Romans across the marshes of the Low Countries, in their
+campaigns against the Germanic tribes, gave the natives the first hint
+of the utility which might be derived from similar constructions applied
+to a different purpose.[306] If this is so, it is one of the most
+interesting among the many instances in which the arts and enginery of
+war have been so modified as to be eminently promotive of the blessings
+of peace, thereby in some measure compensating the wrongs and sufferings
+they have inflicted on humanity.[307] The Lowlanders are believed to
+have secured some coast and bay islands by ring dikes, and to have
+embanked some fresh water channels, as early as the eighth or ninth
+century; but it does not appear that sea dikes, important enough to be
+noticed in historical records, were constructed on the mainland before
+the thirteenth century. The practice of draining inland accumulation of
+water, whether fresh or salt, for the purpose of bringing under
+cultivation the ground they cover, is of later origin, and is said not
+to have been adopted until after the middle of the fifteenth
+century.[308]
+
+The total amount of surface gained to the agriculture of the Netherlands
+by diking out the sea and by draining shallow bays and lakes, is
+estimated by Staring at three hundred and fifty-five thousand _bunder_
+or hectares, equal to eight hundred and seventy-seven thousand two
+hundred and forty acres, which is one tenth of the area of the
+kingdom.[309] In very many instances, the dikes have been partially, in
+some particularly exposed localities totally destroyed by the violence
+of the sea, and the drained lands again flooded. In some cases, the soil
+thus painfully won from the ocean has been entirely lost; in others it
+has been recovered by repairing or rebuilding the dikes and pumping out
+the water. Besides this, the weight of the dikes gradually sinks them
+into the soft soil beneath, and this loss of elevation must be
+compensated by raising the surface, while the increased burden thus
+added tends to sink them still lower. "Tetens declares," says Kohl,
+"that in some places the dikes have gradually sunk to the depth of sixty
+or even a hundred feet."[310] For these reasons, the processes of dike
+building have been almost everywhere again and again repeated, and thus
+the total expenditure of money and of labor upon the works in question
+is much greater than would appear from an estimate of the actual cost of
+diking-in a given extent of coast land and draining a given area of
+water surface.[311]
+
+On the other hand, by erosion of the coast line, the drifting of sand
+dunes into the interior, and the drowning of fens and morasses by
+incursions of the sea--all caused, or at least greatly aggravated, by
+human improvidence--the Netherlands have lost a far larger area of land
+since the commencement of the Christian era than they have gained by
+diking and draining. Staring despairs of the possibility of calculating
+the loss from the first-mentioned two causes of destruction, but he
+estimates that not less than six hundred and forty thousand bunder, or
+one million five hundred and eighty-one thousand acres, of fen and marsh
+have been washed away, or rather deprived of their vegetable surface and
+covered by water, and thirty-seven thousand bunder, or ninety-one
+thousand four hundred acres of recovered land, have been lost by the
+destruction of the dikes which protected them.[312] The average value of
+land gained from the sea is estimated at about nineteen pounds sterling,
+or ninety dollars, per acre; while the lost fen and morass was not worth
+more than one twenty-fifth part of the same price. The ground buried by
+the drifting of the dunes appears to have been almost entirely of this
+latter character, and, upon the whole, there is no doubt that the soil
+added by human industry to the territory of the Netherlands, within the
+historical period, greatly exceeds in pecuniary value that which has
+fallen a prey to the waves during the same era.
+
+Upon most low and shelving coasts, like those of the Netherlands, the
+maritime currents are constantly changing, in consequence of the
+variability of the winds, and the shifting of the sandbanks, which the
+currents themselves now form and now displace. While, therefore, at one
+point the sea is advancing landward, and requiring great effort to
+prevent the undermining and washing away of the dikes, it is shoaling at
+another by its own deposits, and exposing, at low water, a gradually
+widening belt of sands and ooze. The coast lands selected for diking-in
+are always at points where the sea is depositing productive soil. The
+Eider, the Elbe, the Weser, the Ems, the Rhine, the Maas, and the
+Schelde bring down large quantities of fine earth. The prevalence of
+west winds prevents the waters from carrying this material far out from
+the coast, and it is at last deposited northward or southward from the
+mouth of the rivers which contribute it, according to the varying drift
+of the currents.
+
+The process of natural deposit which prepares the coast for diking-in is
+thus described by Staring: "All sea-deposited soil is composed of the
+same constituents. First comes a stratum of sand, with marine shells, or
+the shells of mollusks living in brackish water. If there be tides, and,
+of course, flowing and ebbing currents, mud is let fall upon the sand
+only after the latter has been raised above low-water mark; for then
+only, at the change from flood to ebb, is the water still enough to form
+a deposit of so light a material. Where mud is found at greater depths,
+as, for example, in a large proportion of the Ij, it is a proof that
+at this point there was never any considerable tidal flow or other
+current. * * * The powerful tidal currents, flowing and ebbing twice a
+day, drift sand with them. They scoop out the bottom at one point, raise
+it at another, and the sandbanks in the current are continually
+shifting. As soon as a bank raises itself above low-water mark, flags
+and reeds establish themselves upon it. The mechanical resistance of
+these plants checks the retreat of the high water and favors the deposit
+of the earth suspended in it, and the formation of land goes on with
+surprising rapidity. When it has risen to high-water level, it is soon
+covered with grasses, and becomes what is called _schor_ in Zeeland,
+_kwelder_ in Friesland. Such grounds are the foundation or starting
+point of the process of diking. When they are once elevated to the
+flood-tide level, no more mud is deposited upon them except by
+extraordinary high tides. Their further rise is, accordingly, very slow,
+and it is seldom advantageous to delay longer the operation of
+diking."[313]
+
+The formation of new banks by the sea is constantly going on at points
+favorable for the deposit of sand and earth, and hence opportunity is
+continually afforded for enclosure of new land outside of that already
+diked in, the coast is fast advancing seaward, and every new embankment
+increases the security of former enclosures. The province of Zeeland
+consists of islands washed by the sea on their western coasts, and
+separated by the many channels through which the Schelde and some other
+rivers find their way to the ocean. In the twelfth century these
+islands were much smaller and more numerous than at present. They have
+been gradually enlarged, and, in several instances, at last connected by
+the extension of their system of dikes. Walcheren is formed of ten
+islets united into one about the end of the fourteenth century. At the
+middle of the fifteenth century, Goeree and Overflakkee consisted of
+separate islands, containing altogether about ten thousand acres; by
+means of above sixty successive advances of the dikes, they have been
+brought to compose a single island, whose area is not less than sixty
+thousand acres.[314]
+
+In the Netherlands--which the first Napoleon characterized as a deposit
+of the Rhine, and as, therefore, by natural law, rightfully the property
+of him who controlled the sources of that great river--and on the
+adjacent Frisic, Low German and Danish shores and islands, sea and river
+dikes have been constructed on a grander and more imposing scale than in
+any other country. The whole economy of the art has been there most
+thoroughly studied, and the literature of the subject is very extensive.
+For my present aim, which is concerned with results rather than with
+processes, it is not worth while to refer to professional treatises, and
+I shall content myself with presenting such information as can be
+gathered from works of a more popular character.[315]
+
+The superior strata of the lowlands upon and near the coast are, as we
+have seen, principally composed of soil brought down by the great
+rivers I have mentioned, and either directly deposited by them upon the
+sands of the bottom, or carried out to sea by their currents, and then,
+after a shorter or longer exposure to the chemical and mechanical action
+of salt water and marine currents, restored again to the land by tidal
+overflow and subsidence from the waters in which it was suspended. At a
+very remote period, the coast flats were, at many points, raised so high
+by successive alluvious or tidal deposits as to be above ordinary high
+water level, but they were still liable to occasional inundation from
+river floods, and from the sea water also, when heavy or long-continued
+west winds drove it landward. The extraordinary fertility of this soil
+and its security as a retreat from hostile violence attracted to it a
+considerable population, while its want of protection against inundation
+exposed it to the devastations of which the chroniclers of the Middle
+Ages have left such highly colored pictures. The first permanent
+dwellings on the coast flats were erected upon artificial mounds, and
+many similar precarious habitations still exist on the unwalled islands
+and shores beyond the chain of dikes. River embankments, which, as is
+familiarly known, have from the earliest antiquity been employed in many
+countries where sea dikes are unknown, were probably the first works of
+this character constructed in the Low Countries, and when two
+neighboring streams of fresh water had been embanked, the next step in
+the process would naturally be to connect the river walls together by a
+transverse dike or raised causeway, which would serve to secure the
+intermediate ground both against the backwater of river floods and
+against overflow by the sea. The oldest true sea dikes described in
+historical records, however, are those enclosing islands in the
+estuaries of the great rivers, and it is not impossible that the double
+character they possess as a security against maritime floods and as a
+military rampart, led to their adoption upon those islands before
+similar constructions had been attempted upon the mainland.
+
+At some points of the coast, various contrivances, such as piers, piles,
+and, in fact, obstructions of all sorts to the ebb of the current, are
+employed to facilitate the deposit of slime, before a regular enclosure
+is commenced. Usually, however, the first step is to build low and cheap
+embankments, extending from an older dike, or from high ground, around
+the parcel of flat intended to be secured. These are called summer dikes
+(_sommer-deich_, pl. _sommer-deiche_, German; _zomerkaai_, _zomerkade_,
+pl. _zomerkaaie_, _zomerkaden_, Dutch). They are erected when a
+sufficient extent of ground to repay the cost has been elevated enough
+to be covered with coarse vegetation fit for pasturage. They serve both
+to secure the ground from overflow by the ordinary flood tides of mild
+weather, and to retain the slime deposited by very high water, which
+would otherwise be partly carried off by the retreating ebb. The
+elevation of the soil goes on slowly after this; but when it has at last
+been sufficiently enriched, and raised high enough to justify the
+necessary outlay, permanent dikes are constructed by which the water is
+excluded at all seasons. These embankments are constructed of sand from
+the coast dunes or from sandbanks, and of earth from the mainland or
+from flats outside the dikes, bound and strengthened by fascines, and
+provided with sluices, which are generally founded on piles and of very
+expensive construction, for drainage at low water. The outward slope of
+the sea dikes is gentle, experience having shown that this form is least
+exposed to injury both from the waves and from floating ice, and the
+most modern dikes are even more moderate in the inclination of the
+seaward scarp than the older ones.[316] The crown of the dike, however,
+for the last three or four feet of its height, is much steeper, being
+intended rather as a protection against the spray than against the
+waves, and the inner slope is always comparatively abrupt.
+
+The height and thickness of dikes varies according to the elevation of
+the ground they enclose, the rise of the tides, the direction of the
+prevailing winds, and other special causes of exposure, but it may be
+said that they are, in general, raised from fifteen to twenty feet above
+ordinary high-water mark. The water slopes of river dikes are protected
+by plantations of willows or strong semi-aquatic shrubs or grasses, but
+as these will not grow upon banks exposed to salt water, sea dikes must
+be faced with stone, fascines, or some other _revetement_.[317] Upon the
+coast of Schleswig and Holstein, where the people have less capital at
+their command, they defend their embankments against ice and the waves
+by a coating of twisted straw or reeds, which must be renewed as often
+as once, sometimes twice a year. The inhabitants of these coasts call
+the chain of dikes "the golden border," a name it well deserves, whether
+we suppose it to refer to its enormous cost, or, as is more probable, to
+its immense value as a protection to their fields and their firesides.
+
+When outlying flats are enclosed by building new embankments, the old
+interior dikes are suffered to remain, both as an additional security
+against the waves, and because the removal of them would be expensive.
+They serve, also, as roads or causeways, a purpose for which the
+embankments nearest the sea are seldom employed, because the whole
+structure might be endangered from the breaking of the turf by wheels
+and the hoofs of horses. Where successive rows of dikes have been thus
+constructed, it is observed that the ground defended by the more ancient
+embankments is lower than that embraced within the newer enclosures, and
+this depression of level has been ascribed to a general subsidence of
+the coast from geological causes; but the better opinion seems to be
+that it is, in most cases, due merely to the consolidation and settling
+of the earth from being more effectually dried, from the weight of the
+dikes, from the tread of men and cattle, and from the movement of the
+heavy wagons which carry off the crops.[318] Notwithstanding this slow
+sinking, most of the land enclosed by dikes is still above low-water
+mark, and can, therefore, be wholly or partially freed from rain water,
+and from that received by infiltration from higher ground, by sluices
+opened at the ebb of the tide. For this purpose, the land is carefully
+ditched, and advantage is taken of every favorable occasion for
+discharging the water through the sluices. But the ground cannot be
+effectually drained by this means, unless it is elevated four or five
+feet, at least, above the level of the ebb tide, because the ditches
+would not otherwise have a sufficient descent to carry the water off in
+the short interval between ebb and flow, and because the moisture of the
+saturated subsoil is always rising by capillary attraction. Whenever,
+therefore, the soil has sunk below the level I have mentioned, and in
+cases where its surface has never been raised above it, pumps, worked by
+wind or some other mechanical power, must be very frequently employed to
+keep the land dry enough for pasturage and cultivation.[319]
+
+
+b. _Draining of Lakes and Marshes._
+
+The substitution of steam engines for the feeble and uncertain action of
+windmills, in driving pumps, has much facilitated the removal of water
+from the polders and the draining of lakes, marshes, and shallow bays,
+and thus given such an impulse to these enterprises, that not less than
+one hundred and ten thousand acres were reclaimed from the waters, and
+added to the agricultural domain of the Netherlands, between 1815 and
+1858. The most important of these undertakings was the draining of the
+Lake of Haarlem, and for this purpose some of the most powerful
+hydraulic engines ever constructed were designed and executed.[320] The
+origin of this lake is unknown. It is supposed by some geographers to be
+a part of an ancient bed of the Rhine, the channel of which, as there is
+good reason to believe, has undergone great changes since the Roman
+invasion of the Netherlands; by others it is thought to have once formed
+an inland marine channel, separated from the sea by a chain of low
+islands, which the sand washed up by the tides has since connected with
+the mainland and converted into a continuous line of coast. The best
+authorities, however, find geological evidence that the surface occupied
+by the lake was originally a marshy tract containing within its limits
+little solid ground, but many ponds and inlets, and much floating as
+well as fixed fen.
+
+In consequence of the cutting of turf for fuel, and the destruction of
+the few trees and shrubs which held the loose soil together with their
+roots, the ponds are supposed to have gradually extended themselves,
+until the action of the wind upon their enlarged surface gave their
+waves sufficient force to overcome the resistance of the feeble barriers
+which separated them, and to unite them all into a single lake. Popular
+tradition, it is true, ascribes the formation of the Lake of Haarlem to
+a single irruption of the sea, at a remote period, and connects it with
+one or another of the destructive inundations of which the Netherland
+chronicles describe so many; but on a map of the year 1531, a chain of
+four smaller waters occupies nearly the ground afterward covered by the
+Lake of Haarlem, and they have more probably been united by gradual
+encroachments resulting from the improvident practices above referred
+to, though no doubt the consummation may have been hastened by floods,
+and by the neglect to maintain dikes, or the intentional destruction of
+them, in the long wars of the sixteenth century.
+
+The Lake of Haarlem was a body of water not far from fifteen miles in
+length, by seven in greatest width, lying between the cities of
+Amsterdam and Leyden, running parallel with the coast of Holland at the
+distance of about five miles from the sea, and covering an area of about
+45,000 acres. By means of the Ij, it communicated with the Zuiderzee,
+the Mediterranean of the Netherlands, and its surface was little above
+the mean elevation of that of the sea. Whenever, therefore, the waters
+of the Zuiderzee were acted upon by strong northwest winds, those of the
+Lake of Haarlem were raised proportionally and driven southward, while
+winds from the south tended to create a flow in the opposite direction.
+The shores of the lake were everywhere low, and though in the course of
+the eighty years between 1767 and 1848 more than L350,000 or $1,700,000
+had been expended in checking its encroachments, it often burst its
+barriers, and produced destructive inundations. On the 29th of November,
+1836, a south wind brought its waters to the very gates of Amsterdam,
+and on the 26th of December of the same year, in a northwest gale, they
+overflowed twenty thousand acres of land at the southern extremity of
+the lake, and flooded a part of the city of Leyden. The depth of water
+did not, in general, exceed fourteen feet, but the bottom was a
+semi-fluid ooze or slime, which partook of the agitation of the waves,
+and added considerably to their mechanical force. Serious fears were
+entertained that the lake would form a junction with the inland waters
+of the Legmeer and Mijdrecht, swallow up a vast extent of valuable soil,
+and finally endanger the security of a large proportion of the land
+which the industry of Holland had gained in the course of centuries from
+the ocean.
+
+For this reason, and for the sake of the large addition the bottom of
+the lake would make to the cultivable soil of the state, it was resolved
+to drain it, and the preliminary steps for that purpose were commenced
+in the year 1840. The first operation was to surround the entire lake
+with a ring canal and dike, in order to cut off the communication with
+the Ij, and to exclude the water of the streams and morasses which
+discharged themselves into it from the land side. The dike was composed
+of different materials, according to the means of supply at different
+points, such as sand from the coast dunes, earth and turf excavated from
+the line of the ring canal, and floating turf,[321] fascines being
+everywhere used to bind and compact the mass together. This operation
+was completed in 1848, and three steam pumps were then employed for five
+years in discharging the water. The whole enterprise was conducted at
+the expense of the state, and in 1853 the recovered lands were offered
+for sale for its benefit. Up to 1858, forty-two thousand acres had been
+sold at not far from sixteen pounds sterling or seventy-seven dollars an
+acre, amounting altogether to L661,000 sterling or $3,200,000. The
+unsold lands were valued at more than L6,000 or nearly $30,000, and as
+the total cost was L764,500 or about $3,700,000, the direct loss to the
+state, exclusive of interest on the capital expended, may be stated at
+L100,000 or something less than $500,000.
+
+In a country like the United States, of almost boundless extent of
+sparsely inhabited territory, such an expenditure for such an object
+would be poor economy. But Holland has a narrow domain, great pecuniary
+resources, an excessively crowded population, and a consequent need of
+enlarged room and opportunity for the exercise of industry. Under such
+circumstances, and especially with an exposure to dangers so formidable,
+there is no question of the wisdom of the measure. It has already
+provided homes and occupation for more than five thousand citizens, and
+furnished a profitable investment for a capital of not less than
+L400,000 sterling or $2,000,000, which has been expended in improvements
+over and above the purchase money of the soil; and the greater part of
+this sum, as well as of the cost of drainage, has been paid as a
+compensation for labor. The excess of governmental expenditure over the
+receipts, if employed in constructing ships of war or fortifications,
+would have added little to the military strength of the kingdom; but the
+increase of territory, the multiplication of homes and firesides which
+the people have an interest in defending, and the augmentation of
+agricultural resources, constitute a stronger bulwark against foreign
+invasion than a ship of the line or a fortress armed with a hundred
+cannon.
+
+The bearing of the works I have noticed, and of others similar in
+character, upon the social and moral, as well as the purely economical
+interests of the people of the Netherlands, has induced me to describe
+them more in detail than the general purpose of this volume may be
+thought to justify; but if we consider them simply from a geographical
+point of view, we shall find that they are possessed of no small
+importance as modifications of the natural condition of terrestrial
+surface. There is good reason to believe that before the establishment
+of a partially civilized race upon the territory now occupied by Dutch,
+Frisic, and Low German communities, the grounds not exposed to
+inundation were overgrown with dense woods, that the lowlands between
+these forests and the sea coasts were marshes, covered and partially
+solidified by a thick matting of peat plants and shrubs interspersed
+with trees, and that even the sand dunes of the shore were protected by
+a vegetable growth which, in a great measure, prevented the drifting and
+translocation of them.
+
+The present causes of river and coast erosion existed, indeed, at the
+period in question; but some of them must have acted with less
+intensity, there were strong natural safeguards against the influence of
+marine and fresh-water currents, and the conflicting tendencies had
+arrived at a condition of approximate equilibrium, which permitted but
+slow and gradual changes in the face of nature. The destruction of the
+forests around the sources and along the valleys of the rivers by man
+gave them a more torrential character. The felling of the trees, and the
+extirpation of the shrubbery upon the fens by domestic cattle, deprived
+the surface of cohesion and consistence, and the cutting of peat for
+fuel opened cavities in it, which, filling at once with water, rapidly
+extended themselves by abrasion of their borders, and finally enlarged
+to pools, lakes, and gulfs, like the Lake of Haarlem and the northern
+part of the Zuiderzee. The cutting of the wood and the depasturing of
+the grasses upon the sand dunes converted them from solid bulwarks
+against the ocean to loose accumulations of dust, which every sea breeze
+drove farther landward, burying, perhaps, fertile soil and choking up
+watercourses on one side, and exposing the coast to erosion by the sea
+upon the other.
+
+
+c. _Geographical Influence of such Operations._
+
+The changes which human action has produced within twenty centuries in
+the Netherlands and the neighboring provinces, are certainly of no small
+geographical importance, considered simply as a direct question of loss
+and gain of territory. They have also undoubtedly been attended with
+some climatic consequences, they have exercised a great influence on the
+spontaneous animal and vegetable life of this region, and they cannot
+have failed to produce effects upon tidal and other oceanic currents,
+the range of which may be very extensive. The force of the tidal wave,
+the height to which it rises, the direction of its currents, and, in
+fact, all the phenomena which characterize it, as well as all the
+effects it produces, depend as much upon the configuration of the coast
+it washes, and the depth of water, and form of bottom near the shore, as
+upon the attraction which occasions it. Every one of the terrestrial
+conditions which affect the character of tidal and other marine currents
+has been very sensibly modified by the operations I have described, and
+on this coast, at least, man has acted almost as powerfully on the
+physical geography of the sea as on that of the land.
+
+
+_Lowering of Lakes._
+
+The hydraulic works of the Netherlands and of the neighboring states are
+of such magnitude, that they quite throw into the shade all other known
+artificial arrangements for defending the land against the encroachments
+of the rivers and the sea, and for reclaiming to the domain of
+agriculture and civilization soil long covered by the waters. But
+although the recovery and protection of lands flooded by the sea seems
+to be an art wholly of Netherlandish origin, we have abundant evidence,
+that in ancient as well as in comparatively modern times, great
+enterprises more or less analogous in character have been successfully
+undertaken, both in inland Europe and in the less familiar countries of
+the East.
+
+One of the best known of these is the tunnel which serves to discharge
+the surplus waters of the Lake of Albano, about fourteen miles from
+Rome. This lake, about six miles in circuit, occupies one of the craters
+of an extinct volcanic range, and the surface of its waters is about
+nine hundred feet above the sea. It is fed by rivulets and subterranean
+springs originating in the Alban Mount, or Monte Cavo, the most elevated
+peak of the volcanic group just mentioned, which rises to the height of
+about three thousand feet. At present the lake has no discoverable
+natural outlet, but it is not known that the water ever stood at such a
+height as to flow regularly over the lip of the crater. It seems that at
+the earliest period of which we have any authentic memorials, its level
+was usually kept by evaporation, or by discharge through subterranean
+channels, considerably below the rim of the basin which encompassed it,
+but in the year 397 B. C., the water, either from the obstruction of
+such channels, or in consequence of increased supplies from unknown
+sources, rose to such a height as to flow over the edge of the crater,
+and threaten inundation to the country below by bursting through its
+walls. To obviate this danger, a tunnel for carrying off the water was
+pierced at a level much below the height to which it had risen. This
+gallery, cut entirely with the chisel through the rock for a distance
+of six thousand feet, or nearly a mile and one seventh, is still in so
+good condition as to serve its original purpose. The fact that this work
+was contemporaneous with the siege of Veii, has given to ancient
+annalists occasion to connect the two events, but modern critics are
+inclined to reject Livy's account of the matter, as one of the many
+improbable fables which disfigure the pages of that historian. It is,
+however, repeated by Cicero and by Dionysins of Halicarnassus, and it is
+by no means impossible that, in an age when priests and soothsayers
+monopolized both the arts of natural magic and the little which yet
+existed of physical science, the Government of Rome, by their aid,
+availed itself at once of the superstition and of the military ardor of
+its citizens to obtain their sanction to an enterprise which sounder
+arguments might not have induced them to approve.
+
+Still more remarkable is the tunnel cut by the Emperor Claudius to drain
+the Lake Fucinus, now Lago di Celano, in the Neapolitan territory, about
+fifty miles eastward of Rome. This lake, as far as its history is known,
+has varied very considerably in its dimensions at different periods,
+according to the character of the seasons. It has no visible outlet, but
+was originally either drained by natural subterranean conduits, or kept
+within certain extreme limits by evaporation. In years of uncommon
+moisture, it spread over the adjacent soil and destroyed the crops; in
+dry seasons, it retreated, and produced epidemic disease by poisonous
+exhalations from the decay of vegetable and animal matter upon its
+exposed bed. Julius Caesar had proposed the construction of a tunnel to
+drain the lake, but the enterprise was not actually undertaken until the
+reign of Claudius, when--after a temporary failure, from errors in
+levelling by the engineers, as was pretended at the time, or, as now
+appears certain, in consequence of frauds by the contractors in the
+execution of the work--it was at least partially completed. From this
+imperfect construction, it soon got out of repair, but was restored by
+Hadrian, and seems to have answered its design for some centuries. In
+the barbarism which followed the downfall of the empire, it again fell
+into decay, and though numerous attempts were made to repair it during
+the Middle Ages, no tolerable success seems to have attended any of
+these efforts, until the present generation.
+
+Works have now been some years in progress for restoring, or rather
+enlarging and rebuilding this ancient tunnel, upon a scale of grandeur
+which does infinite honor to the liberality and public spirit of the
+projectors, and with an ingenuity of design and a constructive skill
+which reflect the highest credit upon the professional ability of the
+engineers who have planned the works and directed their execution. The
+length of this tunnel is 18,634 feet, or rather more than three miles
+and a half. Of course, it is one of the longest subterranean galleries
+yet executed in Europe, and it offers many curious particulars in its
+original design which cannot here be described. The difference between
+the highest and the lowest known levels of the surface of the lake
+amounts to at least forty feet, and the difference of area covered at
+these respective stages is not much less than eight thousand acres. The
+tunnel will reduce the water to a much lower point, and it is computed
+that, including the lands occasionally overflowed, not less than forty
+thousand acres of as fertile soil as any in Italy will be recovered from
+the lake and permanently secured from inundation by its waters.
+
+Many similar enterprises have been conceived and executed in modern
+times, both for the purpose of reclaiming land covered by water and for
+sanitary reasons.[322] They are sometimes attended with wholly
+unexpected evils, as, for example, in the case of Barton Pond, in
+Vermont, and in that of the Lake Storsjoe, in Sweden, already mentioned
+on a former page. Another still less obvious consequence of the
+withdrawal of the waters has occasionally been observed in these
+operations. The hydrostatic force with which the water, in virtue of its
+specific gravity, presses against the banks that confine it, has a
+tendency to sustain them whenever their composition and texture are not
+such as to expose them to softening and dissolution by the infiltration
+of the water. If then, the slope of the banks is considerable, or if the
+earth of which they are composed rests on a smooth and slippery stratum
+inclining toward the bed of the lake, they are liable to fall or slide
+forward when the mechanical support of the water is removed, and this
+sometimes happens on a considerable scale. A few years ago, the surface
+of the Lake of Lungern, in the Canton of Unterwalden, in Switzerland,
+was lowered by driving a tunnel about a quarter of a mile long through
+the narrow ridge, called the Kaiserstuhl, which forms a barrier at the
+north end of the basin. When the water was drawn off, the banks, which
+are steep, cracked and burst, several acres of ground slid down as low
+as the water receded, and even the whole village of Lungern was thought
+to be in no small danger.
+
+Other inconveniences of a very serious character have often resulted
+from the natural wearing down, or, much more frequently, the imprudent
+destruction, of the barriers which confine mountain lakes. In their
+natural condition, such basins serve both to receive and retain the
+rocks and other detritus brought down by the torrents which empty into
+them, and to check the impetus of the rushing waters by bringing them to
+a temporary pause; but if the outlets are lowered so as to drain the
+reservoirs, the torrents continue their rapid flow through the ancient
+bed of the basins, and carry down with them the sand and gravel with
+which they are charged, instead of depositing their burden as before in
+the still waters of the lakes.
+
+
+_Mountain Lakes._
+
+It is a common opinion in America that the river meadows, bottoms, or
+_intervales_, as they are popularly called, are generally the beds of
+ancient lakes which have burst their barriers and left running currents
+in their place. It was shown by Dr. Dwight, many years ago, that this is
+very far from being universally true; but there is no doubt that
+mountain lakes were of much more frequent occurrence in primitive than
+in modern geography, and there are many chains of such still existing in
+regions where man has yet little disturbed the original features of the
+earth. In the long valleys of the Adirondack range in Northern New York,
+and in the mountainous parts of Maine, eight, ten, and even more lakes
+and lakelets are sometimes found in succession, each emptying into the
+next lower pool, and so all at last into some considerable river. When
+the mountain slopes which supply these basins shall be stripped of their
+woods, the augmented swelling of the lakes will break down their
+barriers, their waters will run off, and the valleys will present
+successions of flats with rivers running through them, instead of chains
+of lakes connected by natural canals.
+
+A similar state of things seems to have existed in the ancient geography
+of France. "Nature," says Lavergne, "has not excavated on the flanks of
+our Alps reservoirs as magnificent as those of Lombardy; she had,
+however, constructed smaller, but more numerous lakes, which the
+negligence of man has permitted to disappear. Auguste de Gasparin,
+brother of the illustrious agriculturist, demonstrated more than thirty
+years ago, in an original paper, that many natural dikes formerly
+existed in the mountain valleys, which have been swept away by the
+waters. He proposed to rebuild and to multiply them. This interesting
+suggestion has reappeared several times since, but has met with strong
+opposition from skilful engineers. It would, nevertheless, be well to
+try the experiment of creating artificial lakes which should fill
+themselves with the water of melting snows and deluging rains, to be
+drawn out in times of drought. If this plan has able opposers, it has
+also warm advocates. Experience alone can decide the question."[323]
+
+
+_Climatic Effects of Draining Lakes and Marshes._
+
+The draining of lakes, marshes, and other superficial accumulations of
+moisture, reduces the water surface of a country, and, of course, the
+evaporation from it. Lakes, too, in elevated positions, lose a part of
+their water by infiltration, and thereby supply other lakes, springs,
+and rivulets at lower levels. Hence, it is evident that the draining of
+such waters, if carried on upon a large scale, must affect both the
+humidity and the temperature of the atmosphere, and the permanent supply
+of water for extensive districts.[324]
+
+
+_Geographical and Climatic Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs, and
+Canals._
+
+Many processes of internal improvement, such as aqueducts for the supply
+of great cities, railroad cuts and embankments, and the like, divert
+water from its natural channels, and affect its distribution and
+ultimate discharge. The collecting of the waters of a considerable
+district into reservoirs, to be thence carried off by means of
+aqueducts, as, for example, in the forest of Belgrade, near
+Constantinople, deprives the grounds originally watered by the springs
+and rivulets of the necessary moisture, and reduces them to barrenness.
+Similar effects must have followed from the construction of the numerous
+aqueducts which supplied ancient Rome with such a profuse abundance of
+water. On the other hand, the filtration of water through the banks or
+walls of an aqueduct carried upon a high level across low ground, often
+injures the adjacent soil, and is prejudicial to the health of the
+neighboring population; and it has been observed in Switzerland, that
+fevers have been produced by the stagnation of the water in excavations
+from which earth had been taken to form embankments for railways.
+
+If we consider only the influence of physical improvements on civilized
+life, we shall perhaps ascribe to navigable canals a higher importance,
+or at least a more diversified influence, than to any other works of man
+designed to control the waters of the earth, and to affect their
+distribution, They bind distant regions together by social ties, through
+the agency of the commerce they promote; they facilitate the
+transportation of military stores and engines, and of other heavy
+material connected with the discharge of the functions of government;
+they encourage industry by giving marketable value to raw material and
+to objects of artificial elaboration which would otherwise be worthless
+on account of the cost of conveyance; they supply from their surplus
+waters means of irrigation and of mechanical power; and, in many other
+ways, they contribute much to advance the prosperity and civilization of
+nations. Nor are they wholly without geographical importance. They
+sometimes drain lands by conveying off water which would otherwise
+stagnate on the surface, and, on the other hand, like aqueducts, they
+render the neighboring soil cold and moist by the percolation of water
+through their embankments;[325] they dam up, check, and divert the
+course of natural currents, and deliver them at points opposite to, or
+distant from, their original outlets; they often require extensive
+reservoirs to feed them, thus retaining through the year accumulations
+of water--which would otherwise run off, or evaporate in the dry
+season--and thereby enlarging the evaporable surface of the country; and
+we have already seen that they interchange the flora and the fauna of
+provinces widely separated by nature. All these modes of action
+certainly influence climate and the character of terrestrial surface,
+though our means of observation are not yet perfected enough to enable
+us to appreciate and measure their effects.
+
+
+_Climatic and Geographical Effects of Surface and Underground Draining._
+
+I have commenced this chapter with a description of the dikes and other
+hydraulic works of the Netherland engineers, because the geographical
+results of such operations are more obvious and more easily measured,
+though certainly not more important, than those of the older and more
+widely diffused modes of resisting or directing the flow of waters,
+which have been practised from remote antiquity in the interior of all
+civilized countries. Draining and irrigation are habitually regarded as
+purely agricultural processes, having little or no relation to technical
+geography; but we shall find that they exert a powerful influence on
+soil, climate, and animal and vegetable life, and may, therefore, justly
+claim to be regarded as geographical elements.
+
+
+_Surface and Under-draining and their Effects._
+
+Superficial draining is a necessity in all lands newly reclaimed from
+the forest. The face of the ground in the woods is never so regularly
+inclined as to permit water to flow freely over it. There are, even on
+the hillsides, many small ridges and depressions, partly belonging to
+the original distribution of the soil, and partly occasioned by
+irregularities in the growth and deposit of vegetable matter. These, in
+the husbandry of nature, serve as dams and reservoirs to collect a
+larger supply of moisture than the spongy earth can at once imbibe.
+Besides this, the vegetable mould is, even under the most favorable
+circumstances, slow in parting with the humidity it has accumulated
+under the protection of the woods, and the infiltration from neighboring
+forests contributes to keep the soil of small clearings too wet for the
+advantageous cultivation of artificial crops. For these reasons, surface
+draining must have commenced with agriculture itself, and there is
+probably no cultivated district, one may almost say no single field,
+which is not provided with artificial arrangements for facilitating the
+escape of superficial water, and thus carrying off moisture which, in
+the natural condition of the earth, would have been imbibed by the soil.
+
+The beneficial effects of surface drainage, the necessity of extending
+the fields as population increased, and the inconveniences resulting
+from the presence of marshes in otherwise improved regions, must have
+suggested at a very early period of human industry the expediency of
+converting bogs and swamps into dry land by drawing off their waters;
+and it would not be long after the introduction of this practice before
+further acquisition of agricultural territory would be made by lowering
+the outlet of small ponds and lakes, and adding the ground they covered
+to the domain of the husbandman.
+
+All these processes belong to the incipient civilization of the
+ante-historical periods, but the construction of subterranean channels
+for the removal of infiltrated water marks ages and countries
+distinguished by a great advance in agricultural theory and practice, a
+great accumulation of pecuniary capital, and a density of population
+which creates a ready demand and a high price for all products of rural
+industry. Under-draining, too, would be most advantageous in damp and
+cool climates, where evaporation is slow, and upon soils where the
+natural inclination of surface does not promote a very rapid flow of the
+surface waters. All the conditions required to make this mode of rural
+improvement, if not absolutely necessary, at least apparently
+profitable, exist in Great Britain, and it is, therefore, very natural
+that the wealthy and intelligent farmers of England should have carried
+this practice farther, and reaped a more abundant pecuniary return from
+it, than those of any other country.
+
+Besides superficial and subsoil drains, there is another method of
+disposing of superfluous surface water, which, however, can rarely be
+practised, because the necessary conditions for its employment are not
+of frequent occurrence. Whenever a tenacious water-holding stratum rests
+on a loose, gravelly bed, so situated as to admit of a free discharge of
+water from or through it by means of the outcropping of the bed at a
+lower level, or of deep-lying conduits leading to distant points of
+discharge, superficial waters may be carried off by opening a passage
+for them through the impervious into the permeable stratum. Thus,
+according to Bischof, as early as the time of King Rene, in the first
+half of the fifteenth century, the plain of Paluns, near Marseilles, was
+laid dry by boring, and Wittwer informs us that drainage is effected at
+Munich by conducting the superfluous water into large excavations, from
+which it filters through into a lower stratum of pebble and gravel lying
+a little above the level of the river Isar.[326] So at Washington, in
+the western part of the city, which lies high above the rivers Potomac
+and Rock Creek, many houses are provided with dry wells for draining
+their cellars and foundations. These extend through hard tenacious earth
+to the depth of thirty or forty feet, when they strike a stratum of
+gravel, through which the water readily passes off.
+
+This practice has been extensively employed at Paris, not merely for
+carrying off ordinary surface water, but for the discharge of offensive
+and deleterious fluids from chemical and manufacturing establishments. A
+well of this sort received, in the winter of 1832-'33, twenty thousand
+gallons per day of the foul water from a starch factory, and the same
+process was largely used in other factories. The apprehension of injury
+to common and artesian wells and springs led to an investigation on this
+subject, in behalf of the municipal authorities, by Girard and Parent
+Duchatelet, in the latter year. The report of these gentlemen, published
+in the _Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_ for 1833, second half year, is
+full of curious and instructive facts respecting the position and
+distribution of the subterranean waters under and near Paris; but it
+must suffice to say that the report came to the conclusion that, in
+consequence of the absolute immobility of these waters, and the
+relatively small quantity of noxious fluid to be conveyed to them, there
+was no danger of the diffusion of this latter, if discharged into them.
+This result will not surprise those who know that, in another work,
+Duchatelet maintains analogous opinions as to the effect of the
+discharge of the city sewers into the Seine upon the waters of that
+river. The quantity of matter delivered by them he holds to be so nearly
+infinitesimal, as compared with the volume of water of the Seine, that
+it cannot possibly affect it to a sensible degree. I would, however,
+advise determined water drinkers living at Paris to adopt his
+conclusions, without studying his facts and his arguments; for it is
+quite possible that he may convert his readers to a faith opposite to
+his own, and that they will finally agree with the poet who held water
+an "ignoble beverage."
+
+
+_Climatic and Geographical Effects of Surface Draining._
+
+When we remove water from the surface, we diminish the evaporation from
+it, and, of course, the refrigeration which accompanies all evaporation
+is diminished in proportion. Hence superficial draining ought to be
+attended with an elevation of atmospheric temperature, and, in cold
+countries, it might be expected to lessen the frequency of frosts.
+Accordingly, it is a fact of experience that, other things being equal,
+dry soils, and the air in contact with them, are perceptibly warmer
+during the season of vegetation, when evaporation is most rapid, than
+moist lands and the atmospheric stratum resting upon them. Instrumental
+observation on this special point has not yet been undertaken on a very
+large scale, but still we have thermometric data sufficient to warrant
+the general conclusion, and the influence of drainage in diminishing the
+frequency of frost appears to be even better established than a direct
+increase of atmospheric temperature. The steep and dry uplands of the
+Green Mountain range in New England often escape frosts when the Indian
+corn harvest on moister grounds, five hundred or even a thousand feet
+lower, is destroyed or greatly injured by them. The neighborhood of a
+marsh is sure to be exposed to late spring and early autumnal frosts,
+but they cease to be feared after it is drained, and this is
+particularly observable in very cold climates, as, for example, in
+Lapland.[327]
+
+In England, under-drains are not generally laid below the reach of daily
+variations of temperature, or below a point from which moisture might be
+brought to the surface by capillary attraction and evaporated by the
+heat of the sun. They, therefore, like surface drains, withdraw from
+local solar action much moisture which would otherwise be vaporized by
+it, and, at the same time, by drying the soil above them, they increase
+its effective hygroscopicity, and it consequently absorbs from the
+atmosphere a greater quantity of water than it did when, for want of
+under-drainage, the subsoil was always humid, if not saturated.
+Under-drains, then, contribute to the dryness as well as to the warmth
+of the atmosphere, and, as dry ground is more readily heated by the rays
+of the sun than wet, they tend also to raise the mean, and especially
+the summer temperature of the soil.
+
+So far as respects the immediate improvement of soil and climate, and
+the increased abundance of the harvests, the English system of surface
+and subsoil drainage has fully justified the eulogiums of its advocates;
+but its extensive adoption appears to have been attended with some
+altogether unforeseen and undesirable consequences, very analogous to
+those which I have described as resulting from the clearing of the
+forests. The under-drains carry off very rapidly the water imbibed by
+the soil from precipitation, and through infiltration from neighboring
+springs or other sources of supply. Consequently, in wet seasons, or
+after heavy rains, a river bordered by artificially drained lands
+receives in a few hours, from superficial and from subterranean
+conduits, an accession of water which, in the natural state of the
+earth, would have reached it only by small instalments after percolating
+through hidden paths for weeks or even months, and would have furnished
+perennial and comparatively regular contributions, instead of swelling
+deluges, to its channel. Thus, when human impatience rashly substitutes
+swiftly acting artificial contrivances for the slow methods by which
+nature drains the surface and superficial strata of a river basin, the
+original equilibrium is disturbed, the waters of the heavens are no
+longer stored up in the earth to be gradually given out again, but are
+hurried out of man's domain with wasteful haste; and while the
+inundations of the river are sudden and disastrous, its current, when
+the drains have run dry, is reduced to a rivulet, it ceases to supply
+the power to drive the machinery for which it was once amply sufficient,
+and scarcely even waters the herds that pasture upon its margin.[328]
+
+
+_Irrigation and its Climatic and Geographical Effects._
+
+We know little of the history of the extinct civilizations which
+preceded the culture of the classic ages, and no nation has, in modern
+times, spontaneously emerged from barbarism, and created for itself the
+arts of social life.[329] The improvements of the savage races whose
+history we can distinctly trace are borrowed and imitative, and our
+theories as to the origin and natural development of industrial art are
+conjectural. Of course, the relative antiquity of particular branches of
+human industry depends much upon the natural character of soil, climate,
+and spontaneous vegetable and animal life in different countries; and
+while the geographical influence of man would, under given
+circumstances, be exerted in one direction, it would, under different
+conditions, act in an opposite or a diverging line. I have given some
+reasons for thinking that in the climates to which our attention has
+been chiefly directed, man's first interference with the natural
+arrangement and disposal of the waters was in the way of drainage of
+surface. But if we are to judge from existing remains alone, we should
+probably conclude that irrigation is older than drainage; for, in the
+regions regarded by general tradition as the cradle of the human race,
+we find traces of canals evidently constructed for the former purpose at
+a period long preceding the ages of which we have any written memorials.
+There are, in ancient Armenia, extensive districts which were already
+abandoned to desolation at the earliest historical epoch, but which, in
+a yet remoter antiquity, had been irrigated by a complicated and highly
+artificial system of canals, the lines of which can still be followed;
+and there are, in all the highlands where the sources of the Euphrates
+rise, in Persia, in Egypt, in India, and in China, works of this sort
+which must have been in existence before man had begun to record his own
+annals.
+
+In warm countries, such as most of those just mentioned, the effects I
+have described as usually resulting from the clearing of the forests
+would very soon follow. In such climates, the rains are inclined to be
+periodical; they are also violent, and for these reasons the soil would
+be parched in summer and liable to wash in winter. In these countries,
+therefore, the necessity for irrigation must soon have been felt, and
+its introduction into mountainous regions like Armenia must have been
+immediately followed by a system of terracing, or at least scarping the
+hillsides. Pasture and meadow, indeed, may be irrigated even when the
+surface is both steep and irregular, as may be observed abundantly on
+the Swiss as well as on the Piedmontese slope of the Alps; but in dry
+climates, plough land and gardens on hilly grounds require terracing,
+both for supporting the soil and for administering water by irrigation,
+and it should be remembered that terracing, of itself, even without
+special arrangements for controlling the distribution of water, prevents
+or at least checks the flow of rain water, and gives it time to sink
+into the ground instead of running off over the surface.
+
+There are few things in Continental husbandry which surprise English or
+American observers so much as the extent to which irrigation is employed
+in agriculture, and that, too, on soils, and with a temperature, where
+their own experience would have led them to suppose it would be
+injurious to vegetation rather than beneficial to it. The summers in
+Northern Italy, though longer, are very often not warmer than in New
+England; and in ordinary years, the summer rains are as frequent and as
+abundant in the former country as in the latter. Yet in Piedmont and
+Lombardy, irrigation is bestowed upon almost every crop, while in New
+England it is never employed at all in farming husbandry, or indeed for
+any purpose except in kitchen gardens, and possibly, in rare cases, in
+some other small branch of agricultural industry.[330]
+
+The summers in Egypt, in Syria, and in Asia Minor and even Rumelia, are
+almost rainless. In such climates, the necessity of irrigation is
+obvious, and the loss of the ancient means of furnishing it readily
+explains the diminished fertility of most of the countries in
+question.[331] The surface of Palestine, for example, is composed, in a
+great measure, of rounded limestone hills, once, no doubt, covered with
+forests. These were partially removed before the Jewish conquest.[332]
+When the soil began to suffer from drought, reservoirs to retain the
+waters of winter were hewn in the rock near the tops of the hills, and
+the declivities were terraced. So long as the cisterns were in good
+order, and the terraces kept up, the fertility of Palestine was
+unsurpassed, but when misgovernment and foreign and intestine war
+occasioned the neglect or destruction of these works--traces of which
+still meet the traveller's eye at every step,--when the reservoirs were
+broken and the terrace walls had fallen down, there was no longer water
+for irrigation in summer, the rains of winter soon washed away most of
+the thin layer of earth upon the rocks, and Palestine was reduced almost
+to the condition of a desert.
+
+The course of events has been the same in Idumaea. The observing
+traveller discovers everywhere about Petra, particularly if he enters
+the city by the route of Wadi Ksheibeh, very extensive traces of ancient
+cultivation, and upon the neighboring ridges are the ruins of numerous
+cisterns evidently constructed to furnish a supply of water for
+irrigation.[333] In primitive ages, the precipitation of winter in
+these hilly countries was, in great part, retained for a time in the
+superficial soil, first by the vegetable mould of the forests, and then
+by the artificial arrangements I have described. The water imbibed by
+the earth was partly taken up by direct evaporation, partly absorbed by
+vegetation, and partly carried down by infiltration to subjacent strata
+which gave it out in springs at lower levels, and thus a fertility of
+soil and a condition of the atmosphere were maintained sufficient to
+admit of the dense population that once inhabited those now arid wastes.
+At present, the rain water runs immediately off from the surface and is
+carried down to the sea, or is drunk up by the sands of the wadis, and
+the hillsides which once teemed with plenty are bare of vegetation, and
+seared by the scorching winds of the desert.
+
+In Southern Europe, in the Turkish Empire, and in many other countries,
+a very large proportion of the surface is, if not absolutely flooded, at
+least thoroughly moistened by irrigation, a great number of times in the
+course of every season, and this, especially, at periods when it would
+otherwise be quite dry, and when, too, the power of the sun and the
+capacity of the air for absorbing moisture are greatest. Hence it is
+obvious that the amount of evaporation from the earth in these
+countries, and, of course, the humidity and the temperature of both the
+soil and the atmosphere in contact with it, must be much affected by the
+practice of irrigation. The cultivable area of Egypt, or the space
+accessible to cultivation, between desert and desert, is more than seven
+thousand square statute miles. Much of the surface, though not out of
+the reach of irrigation, lies too high to be economically watered, and
+irrigation and cultivation are therefore confined to an area of five or
+six thousand square miles, nearly the whole of which is regularly and
+constantly watered when not covered by the inundation, except in the
+short interval between the harvest and the rise of the waters. For
+nearly half of the year, then, irrigation adds five or six thousand
+square miles, or more than a square equatorial degree, to the evaporable
+surface of the Nile valley, or, in other words, more than decuples the
+area from which an appreciable quantity of moisture would otherwise be
+evaporated; for after the Nile has retired within its banks, its waters
+by no means cover one tenth of the space just mentioned.[334] The
+fresh-water canals now constructing, in connection with the works for
+the Suez canal, will not only restore the long abandoned fields east of
+the Nile, but add to the arable soil of Egypt hundreds of square miles
+of newly reclaimed desert, and thus still further increase the climatic
+effects of irrigation.[335]
+
+The Nile receives not a single tributary in its course through Egypt;
+there is not so much as one living spring in the whole land,[336] and,
+with the exception of a narrow strip of coast, where the annual
+precipitation is said to amount to six inches, the fall of rain in the
+territory of the Pharaohs is not two inches in the year. The subsoil of
+the whole valley is pervaded with moisture by infiltration from the
+Nile, and water can everywhere be found at the depth of a few feet. Were
+irrigation suspended, and Egypt abandoned, as in that case it must be,
+to the operations of nature, there is no doubt that trees, the roots of
+which penetrate deeply, would in time establish themselves on the
+deserted soil, fill the valley with verdure, and perhaps at last temper
+the climate, and even call down abundant rain from the heavens.[337] But
+the immediate effect of discontinuing irrigation would be, first, an
+immense reduction of the evaporation from the valley in the dry season,
+and then a greatly augmented dryness and heat of the atmosphere. Even
+the almost constant north wind--the strength of which would be increased
+in consequence of these changes--would little reduce the temperature of
+the narrow cleft between the burning mountains which hem in the channel
+of the Nile, so that a single year would transform the most fertile of
+soils to the most barren of deserts, and render uninhabitable a
+territory that irrigation makes capable of sustaining as dense a
+population as has ever existed in any part of the world.[338] Whether
+man found the valley of the Nile a forest, or such a waste as I have
+just described, we do not historically know. In either case, he has not
+simply converted a wilderness into a garden, but has unquestionably
+produced extensive climatic change.[339]
+
+The fields of Egypt are more regularly watered than those of any other
+country bordering on the Mediterranean, except the rice grounds in
+Italy, and perhaps the _marcite_ or winter meadows of Lombardy; but
+irrigation is more or less employed throughout almost the entire basin
+of that sea, and is everywhere attended with effects which, if less in
+degree, are analogous in character to those resulting from it in Egypt.
+In general, it may be said that the soil is nowhere artificially watered
+except when it is so dry that little moisture would be evaporated from
+it, and, consequently, every acre of irrigated ground is so much added
+to the evaporable surface of the country. When the supply of water is
+unlimited, it is allowed, after serving its purpose on one field, to run
+into drains, canals, or rivers. But in most regions where irrigation is
+regularly employed, it is necessary to economize the water; after
+passing over or through one parcel of ground, it is conducted to
+another; no more is withdrawn from the canals at any one point than is
+absorbed by the soil it irrigates, or evaporated from it, and,
+consequently, it is not restored to liquid circulation, except by
+infiltration or precipitation. We are safe, then, in saying that the
+humidity evaporated from any artificially watered soil is increased by a
+quantity bearing a large proportion to the whole amount distributed over
+it; for most even of that which is absorbed by the earth is immediately
+given out again either by vegetables or by evaporation.
+
+It is not easy to ascertain precisely either the extent of surface thus
+watered, or the amount of water supplied, in any given country, because
+these quantities vary with the character of the season; but there are
+not many districts in Southern Europe where the management of the
+arrangements for irrigation is not one of the most important branches of
+agricultural labor. The eminent engineer Lombardini describes the system
+of irrigation in Lombardy as, "every day in summer, diffusing over
+550,000 hectares of land 45,000,000 cubic metres of water, which is
+equal to the entire volume of the Seine, at an ordinary flood, or a rise
+of three metres above the hydrometer at the bridge of La Tournelle at
+Paris."[340] Niel states the quantity of land irrigated in the former
+kingdom of Sardinia, including Savoy, in 1856, at 240,000 hectares, or
+not much less than 600,000 acres. This is about four thirteenths of the
+cultivable soil of the kingdom. According to the same author, the
+irrigated lands in France did not exceed 100,000 hectares, or 247,000
+acres, while those in Lombardy amounted to 450,000 hectares, more than
+1,100,000 acres.[341] In these three states alone, then, there were more
+than three thousand square miles of artificially watered land, and if we
+add the irrigated soils of the rest of Italy, of the Mediterranean
+islands, of the Spanish peninsula, of Turkey in Europe and in Asia
+Minor, of Syria, of Egypt and the remainder of Northern Africa, we shall
+see that irrigation increases the evaporable surface of the
+Mediterranean basin by a quantity bearing no inconsiderable proportion
+to the area naturally covered by water within it. As near as can be
+ascertained, the amount of water applied to irrigated lands is scarcely
+anywhere less than the total precipitation during the season of
+vegetable growth, and in general it much exceeds that quantity. In grass
+grounds and in field culture it ranges from 27 or 28 to 60 inches, while
+in smaller crops, tilled by hand labor, it is sometimes carried as high
+as 300 inches.[342] The rice grounds and the _marcite_ of Lombardy are
+not included in these estimates of the amount of water applied.
+Arrangements are concluded, and new plans proposed, for an immense
+increase of the lands fertilized by irrigation in France and Italy, and
+there is every reason to believe that the artificially watered soil of
+the latter country will be doubled, that of France quadrupled, before
+the end of this century. There can be no doubt that by these operations
+man is exercising a powerful influence on soil, on vegetable and animal
+life, and on climate, and hence that in this, as in many other fields of
+industry, he is truly a geographical agency.[343] The quantity of water
+artificially withdrawn from running streams for the purpose of
+irrigation is such as very sensibly to affect their volume, and it is,
+therefore, an important element in the geography of rivers. Brooks of no
+trifling current are often wholly diverted from their natural channels
+to supply the canals, and their entire mass of water completely
+absorbed, so that it does not reach the river which it naturally feeds,
+except in such proportion as it is conveyed to it by infiltration.
+Irrigation, therefore, diminishes great rivers in warm countries by
+cutting off their sources of supply as well as by direct abstraction of
+water from their channels. We have just seen that the system of
+irrigation in Lombardy deprives the Po of a quantity of water equal to
+the total delivery of the Seine at ordinary flood, or, in other words,
+of the equivalent of a tributary navigable for hundreds of miles by
+vessels of considerable burden. The new canals commenced and projected
+will greatly increase the loss. The water required for irrigation in
+Egypt is less than would be supposed from the exceeding rapidity of
+evaporation in that arid climate; for the soil is thoroughly saturated
+during the inundation, and infiltration from the Nile continues to
+supply a considerable amount of humidity in the dryest season. Linant
+Bey computed that twenty-nine cubic metres per day sufficed to irrigate
+a hectare in the Delta.[344] This is equivalent to a fall of rain of two
+millimetres and nine tenths per day, or, if we suppose water to be
+applied for one hundred and fifty days during the dry season, to a total
+precipitation of 435 millimetres, about seventeen inches and one third.
+Taking the area of actually cultivated soil in Egypt at the low estimate
+of 3,600,000 acres, and the average amount of water daily applied in
+both Upper and Lower Egypt at twelve hundredths of an inch in depth, we
+have an abstraction of 61,000,000 cubic yards, which--the mean daily
+delivery of the Nile being in round numbers 320,000,000 cubic yards--is
+nearly one fifth of the average quantity of water contributed to the
+Mediterranean by that river.
+
+Irrigation, as employed for certain special purposes in Europe and
+America, is productive of very prejudicial climatic effects. I refer
+particularly to the cultivation of rice in the Slave States of the
+American Union and in Italy. The climate of the Southern States is not
+necessarily unhealthy for the white man, but he can scarcely sleep a
+single night in the vicinity of the rice grounds without being attacked
+by a dangerous fever.[345] The neighborhood of the rice fields is less
+pestilential in Lombardy and Piedmont than in South Carolina and
+Georgia, but still very insalubrious to both man and beast. "Not only
+does the population decrease where rice is grown," says Escourrou
+Milliago, "but even the flocks are attacked by typhus. In the rice
+grounds, the soil is divided into compartments rising in gradual
+succession to the level of the irrigating canal, in order that the
+water, after having flowed one field, may be drawn off to another, and
+thus a single current serve for several compartments, the lowest field,
+of course, still being higher than the ditch which at last drains both
+it and the adjacent soil. This arrangement gives a certain force of
+hydrostatic pressure to the water with which the rice is irrigated, and
+the infiltration from these fields is said to extend through neighboring
+grounds, sometimes to the distance of not less than a myriametre, or six
+English miles, and to be destructive to crops and even trees reached by
+it. Land thus affected can no longer be employed for any purpose but
+growing rice, and when prepared for that crop, it propagates still
+further the evils under which it had itself suffered, and, of course,
+the mischief is a growing one."[346]
+
+The attentive traveller in Egypt and Nubia cannot fail to notice many
+localities, generally of small extent, where the soil is rendered
+infertile by an excess of saline matter in its composition. In many
+cases, perhaps in all, these barren spots lie rather above the level
+usually flooded by the inundations of the Nile, and yet they exhibit
+traces of former cultivation. Recent observations in India, a notice of
+which I find in an account of a meeting of the Asiatic Society in the
+Athenaeum of December 20, 1862, No. 1834, suggest a possible explanation
+of this fact. At this meeting, Professor Medlicott read an essay on "the
+saline efflorescence called 'Reh' and 'Kuller,'" which is gradually
+invading many of the most fertile districts of Northern and Western
+India, and changing them into sterile deserts. It consists principally
+of sulphate of soda (Glauber's salts), with varying proportions of
+common salt. Mr. Medlicott pronounces "these salts (which, in small
+quantities are favorable to fertility of soil) to be the gradual result
+of concentration by evaporation of river and canal waters, which contain
+them in very minute quantities, and with which the lands are either
+irrigated or occasionally overflowed." The river inundations in hot
+countries usually take place but once in a year, and, though the banks
+remain submerged for days or even weeks, the water at that period, being
+derived principally from rains and snows, must be less highly charged
+with mineral matter than at lower stages, and besides, it is always in
+motion. The water of irrigation, on the other hand, is applied for many
+months in succession, it is drawn from rivers at the seasons when their
+proportion of salts is greatest, and it either sinks into the
+superficial soil, carrying with it the saline substances it holds in
+solution, or is evaporated from the surface, leaving them upon it. Hence
+irrigation must impart to the soil more salts than natural inundation.
+The sterilized grounds in Egypt and Nubia lying above the reach of the
+floods, as I have said, we may suppose them to have been first
+cultivated in that remote antiquity when the Nile valley received its
+earliest inhabitants. They must have been artificially irrigated from
+the beginning; they may have been under cultivation many centuries
+before the soil at a lower level was invaded by man, and hence it is
+natural that they should be more strongly impregnated with saline matter
+than fields which are exposed every year, for some weeks, to the action
+of running water so nearly pure that it would be more likely to dissolve
+salts than to deposit them.
+
+
+INUNDATIONS AND TORRENTS.
+
+In pointing out in a former chapter the evils which have resulted from
+the too extensive destruction of the forests, I dwelt at some length on
+the increased violence of river inundations, and especially on the
+devastations of torrents, in countries improvidently deprived of their
+woods, and I spoke of the replanting of the forests as the only
+effectual method of preventing the frequent recurrence of disastrous
+floods. There are many regions where, from the loss of the superficial
+soil, from financial considerations, and from other causes, the
+restoration of the woods is not, under present circumstances, to be
+hoped for. Even where that measure is feasible and in actual process of
+execution, a great number of years must elapse before the action of the
+destructive causes in question can be arrested or perhaps even sensibly
+mitigated by it. Besides this, leaving out of view the objections urged
+by Belgrand and his followers to the generally received opinions
+concerning the beneficial influence of the forest as respects river
+inundations--for no one disputes its importance in preventing the
+formation and limiting the ravages of mountain torrents--floods will
+always occur in years of excessive precipitation, whether the surface of
+the soil be generally cleared or generally wooded.
+
+Physical improvement in this respect, then, cannot he confined to
+preventive measures, but, in countries subject to damage by inundation,
+means must he contrived to obviate dangers and diminish injuries to
+which human life and all the works of human industry will occasionally
+be exposed, in spite of every effort to lessen the frequency of their
+recurrence by acting directly on the causes that produce them. As every
+civilized country is, in some degree, subject to inundation by the
+overflow of rivers, the evil is a familiar one, and needs no general
+description. In discussing this branch of the subject, therefore, I may
+confine myself chiefly to the means that have been or may be employed to
+resist the force and limit the ravages of floods, which, left wholly
+unrestrained, would not only inflict immense injury upon the material
+interests of man, but produce geographical revolutions of no little
+magnitude.
+
+
+a. _River Embankments._
+
+The most obvious and doubtless earliest method of preventing the escape
+of river waters from their natural channels, and the overflow of fields
+and towns by their spread, is that of raised embankments along their
+course. The necessity of such embankments usually arises from the
+gradual elevation of the bed of running streams in consequence of the
+deposit of the earth and gravel they are charged with in high water;
+and, as we have seen, this elevation is rapidly accelerated when the
+highlands around the headwaters of rivers are cleared of their forests.
+When a river is embanked at a given point, and, consequently, the water
+of its floods, which would otherwise spread over a wide surface, is
+confined within narrow limits, the velocity of the current and its
+transporting power are augmented, and its burden of sand and gravel is
+deposited at some lower point, where the rapidity of its flow is
+checked by a diminution in the inclination of the bed, by a wider
+channel, or finally by a lacustrine or marine basin which receives its
+waters. Wherever it lets fall solid material, its channel is raised in
+consequence, and the declivity of the whole bed between the head of the
+embankment and the slack of the stream is reduced. Hence the current, at
+first accelerated by confinement, is afterward checked by the mechanical
+resistance of the matter deposited, and by the diminished inclination of
+its channel, and then begins again to let fall the earth it holds in
+suspension, and to raise its bed at the point where its overflow had
+been before prevented by embankment. The bank must now be raised in
+proportion, and these processes would be repeated and repeated
+indefinitely, had not nature provided a remedy in floods, which sweep
+out recent deposits, burst the bonds of the river and overwhelm the
+adjacent country with final desolation, or divert the current into a new
+channel, destined to become, in its turn, the scene of a similar
+struggle between man and the waters.
+
+Few rivers, like the Nile, more than compensate by the fertilizing
+properties of their water and their slime for the damage they may do in
+inundations, and, consequently, there are few whose floods are not an
+object of dread, few whose encroachments upon their banks are not a
+source of constant anxiety and expense to the proprietors of the lands
+through which they flow. River dikes, for confining the spread of
+currents at high water, are of great antiquity in the East, and those of
+the Po and its tributaries were begun before we have any trustworthy
+physical or political annals of the provinces upon their borders. From
+the earliest ages, the Italian hydraulic engineers have stood in the
+front rank of their profession, and the Italian literature of this
+branch of material improvement is exceedingly voluminous. But the
+countries for which I write have no rivers like the Po, no plains like
+those of Lombardy, and the dangers to which the inhabitants of English
+and American river banks are exposed are more nearly analogous to those
+that threaten the soil and population in the valleys and plains of
+France, than to the perils and losses of the Lombard. The writings of
+the Italian hydrographers, too, though rich in professional instruction,
+are less accessible to foreigners and less adapted to popular use than
+those of French engineers.[347] For these reasons I shall take my
+citations principally from French authorities, though I shall
+occasionally allude to Italian writers on the floods of the Tiber, of
+the Arno, and some other Italian streams which much resemble those of
+the rivers of England and the United States.
+
+
+b. _Floods of the Ardeche._
+
+The floods of mountain streams are attended with greater immediate
+danger to life and property than those of rivers of less rapid flow,
+because their currents are more impetuous, and they rise more suddenly
+and with less previous warning. At the same time, their ravages are
+confined within narrower limits, the waters retire sooner to their
+accustomed channel, and the danger is more quickly over, than in the
+case of inundations of larger rivers. The Ardeche, which has given its
+name to a department in France, drains a basin of 600,238 acres, or a
+little less than nine hundred and thirty-eight square miles. Its
+remotest source is about seventy-five miles, in a straight line, from
+its junction with the Rhone, and springs at an elevation of four
+thousand feet above that point. At the lowest stage of the river, the
+bed of the Chassezac, its largest and longest tributary, is in many
+places completely dry on the surface--the water being sufficient only
+to supply the subterranean channels of infiltration--and the Ardeche
+itself is almost everywhere fordable, even below the mouth of the
+Chassezac. But in floods, the river has sometimes risen more than sixty
+feet at the Pont d'Arc, a natural arch of two hundred feet chord, which
+spans the stream below its junction with all its important affluents. At
+the height of the inundation of 1827, the quantity of water passing this
+point--after deducting thirty per cent. for material transported with
+the current and for irregularity of flow--was estimated at 8,845 cubic
+yards to the second, and between twelve at noon on the 10th of September
+of that year and ten o'clock the next morning, the water discharged
+through the passage in question amounted to more than 450,000,000 cubic
+yards. This quantity, distributed equally through the basin of the
+river, would cover its entire area to a depth of more than five inches.
+
+The Ardeche rises so suddenly that, in the inundation of 1846, the women
+who were washing in the bed of the river had not time to save their
+linen, and barely escaped with their lives, though they instantly fled
+upon hearing the roar of the approaching flood. Its waters and those of
+its affluents fall almost as rapidly, for in less than twenty-four hours
+after the rain has ceased in the Cevennes, where it rises, the Ardeche
+returns within its ordinary channel, even at its junction with the
+Rhone. In the flood of 1772, the water at La Beaume de Ruoms, on the
+Beaume, a tributary of the Ardeche, rose thirty-five feet above low
+water, but the stream was again fordable on the evening of the same day.
+The inundation of 1827 was, in this respect, exceptional, for it
+continued three days, during which period the Ardeche poured into the
+Rhone 1,305,000,000 cubic yards of water.
+
+The Nile delivers into the sea 101,000 cubic feet or 3,741 cubic yards
+per second, on an average of the whole year.[348] This is equal to
+323,222,400 cubic yards per day. In a single day of flood, then, the
+Ardeche, a river too insignificant to be known except in the local
+topography of France, contributed to the Rhone once and a half, and for
+three consecutive days once and one third, as much as the average
+delivery of the Nile during the same periods, though the basin of the
+latter river contains 500,000 square miles of surface, or more than five
+hundred times as much as that of the former.
+
+The average annual precipitation in the basin of the Ardeche is not
+greater than in many other parts of Europe, but excessive quantities of
+rain frequently fall in that valley in the autumn. On the 9th of
+October, 1827, there fell at Joyeuse, on the Beaume, no less than
+thirty-one inches between three o'clock in the morning and midnight.
+Such facts as this explain the extraordinary suddenness and violence of
+the floods of the Ardeche, and the basins of many other tributaries of
+the Rhone exhibit meteorological phenomena not less remarkable.[349] The
+inundation of the 10th September, 1857, was accompanied with a terrific
+hurricane, which passed along the eastern slope of the high grounds
+where the Ardeche and several other western affluents of the Rhone take
+their rise. The wind tore up all the trees in its path, and the rushing
+torrents bore their trunks down to the larger streams, which again
+transported them to the Rhone in such rafts that one might almost have
+crossed that river by stepping from trunk to trunk.[350] The Rhone,
+therefore, is naturally subject to great and sudden inundations, and the
+same remark may be applied to most of the principal rivers of France,
+because the geographical character of all of them is approximately the
+same.
+
+The height and violence of the inundations of most great rivers are
+determined by the degree in which the floods of the different
+tributaries are coincident in time. Were all the affluents of the Rhone
+to pour their highest annual floods into its channel at once, were a
+dozen Niles to empty themselves into its bed at the same moment, its
+water would rise to a height and rush with an impetus that would sweep
+into the Mediterranean the entire population of its banks, and all the
+works that man has erected upon the plains which border it. But such a
+coincidence can never happen. The tributaries of this river run in very
+different directions, and some of them are swollen principally by the
+melting of the snows about their sources, others almost exclusively by
+heavy rains. When a damp southeast wind blows up the valley of the
+Ardeche, its moisture is condensed, and precipitated in a deluge upon
+the mountains which embosom the headwaters of that stream, thus
+producing a flood, while a neighboring basin, the axis of which lies
+transversely or obliquely to that of the Ardeche, is not at all
+affected.[351]
+
+It is easy to see that the damage occasioned by such floods as I have
+described must be almost incalculable, and it is by no means confined to
+the effects produced by overflow and the mechanical force of the
+superficial currents. In treating of the devastations of torrents in a
+former chapter, I confined myself principally to the erosion of surface
+and the transportation of mineral matter to lower grounds by them. The
+general action of torrents, as there shown, tends to the ultimate
+elevation of their beds by the deposit of the earth, gravel, and stone
+conveyed by them; but until they have thus raised their outlets so as
+sensibly to diminish the inclination of their channels--and sometimes
+when extraordinary floods give the torrents momentum enough to sweep
+away the accumulations which they have themselves heaped up--the swift
+flow of their currents, aided by the abrasion of the rolling rocks and
+gravel, scoops their beds constantly deeper, and they consequently not
+only undermine their banks, but frequently sap the most solid
+foundations which the art of man can build for the support of bridges
+and hydraulic structures.[352]
+
+In the inundation of 1857, the Ardeche destroyed a stone bridge near La
+Beaume, which had been built about eighty years before. The resistance
+of the piers, which were erected on piles, the channel at that point
+being of gravel, produced an eddying current that washed away the bed of
+the river above them, and the foundation, thus deprived of lateral
+support, yielded to the weight of the bridge, and the piles and piers
+fell up stream.
+
+By a curious law of compensation, the stream which, at flood, scoops out
+cavities in its bed, often fills them up again as soon as the diminished
+velocity of the current allows it to let fall the sand and gravel with
+which it is charged, so that when the waters return to their usual
+channel, the bottom shows no sign of having been disturbed. In a flood
+of the Escontay, a tributary of the Rhone, in 1846, piles driven sixteen
+feet into its gravelly bed for the foundation of a pier were torn up and
+carried off, and yet, when the river had fallen to low-water mark, the
+bottom at that point appeared to have been raised higher than it was
+before the flood, by new deposits of sand and gravel, while the cut
+stones of the half-built pier were found buried to a great depth, in the
+excavation which the water had first washed out. The gravel with which
+rivers thus restore the level of their beds is principally derived from
+the crushing of the rocks brought down by the mountain torrents, and the
+destructive effects of inundations are immensely diminished by this
+reduction of large stones to minute fragments. If the blocks hurled down
+from the cliffs were transported unbroken to the channels of large
+rivers, the mechanical force of their movement would be irresistible.
+They would overthrow the strongest barriers, spread themselves over a
+surface as wide as the flow of the waters, and convert the most smiling
+valleys into scenes of the wildest desolation.
+
+
+c. _Crushing Force of Torrents._
+
+There are few operations of nature where the effect seems more
+disproportioned to the cause than in the comminution of rock in the
+channel of swift waters. Igneous rocks are generally so hard as to be
+wrought with great difficulty, and they bear the weight of enormous
+superstructures without yielding to the pressure; but to the torrent
+they are as wheat to the millstone. The streams which pour down the
+southern scarp of the Mediterranean Alps along the Riviera di Ponente,
+near Genoa, have short courses, and a brisk walk of a couple of hours or
+even less takes you from the sea beach to the headspring of many of
+them. In their heaviest floods, they bring rounded masses of serpentine
+quite down to the sea, but at ordinary high water their lower course is
+charged only with finely divided particles of that rock. Hence, while,
+near their sources, their channels are filled with pebbles and angular
+fragments, intermixed with a little gravel, the proportions are reversed
+near their mouths, and, just above the points where their outlets are
+partially choked by the rolling shingle of the beach, their beds are
+composed of sand and gravel to the almost total exclusion of pebbles.
+The greatest depth of the basin of the Ardeche is seventy-five miles,
+but most of its tributaries have a much shorter course. "These
+affluents," says Mardigny, "hurl into the bed of the Ardeche enormous
+blocks of rock, which this river, in its turn, bears onward, and grinds
+down, at high water, so that its current rolls only gravel at its
+confluence with the Rhone."[353]
+
+Guglielmini argued that the gravel and sand of the beds of running
+streams were derived from the trituration of rocks by the action of the
+currents, and inferred that this action was generally sufficient to
+reduce hard rock to sand in its passage from the source to the outlet of
+rivers. Frisi controverted this opinion, and maintained that river sand
+was of more ancient origin, and he inferred from experiments in
+artificially grinding stones that the concussion, friction, and
+attrition of rock in the channel of running waters were inadequate to
+its comminution, though he admitted that these same causes might reduce
+silicious sand to a fine powder capable of transportation to the sea by
+the currents.[354] Frisi's experiments were tried upon rounded and
+polished river pebbles, and prove nothing with regard to the action of
+torrents upon the irregular, more or less weathered, and often cracked
+and shattered rocks which lie loose in the ground at the head of
+mountain valleys. The fury of the waters and of the wind which
+accompanies them in the floods of the French Alpine torrents is such,
+that large blocks of stone are hurled out of the bed of the stream to
+the height of twelve or thirteen feet. The impulse of masses driven with
+such force overthrows the most solid masonry, and their concussion
+cannot fail to be attended with the crushing of the rocks
+themselves.[355]
+
+
+d. _Inundations of 1856 in France._
+
+The month of May, 1856, was remarkable for violent and almost
+uninterrupted rains, and most of the river basins of France were
+inundated to an extraordinary height. In the valleys of the Loire and
+its affluents, about a million of acres, including many towns and
+villages, were laid under water, and the amount of pecuniary damage was
+almost incalculable.[356] The flood was not less destructive in the
+valley of the Rhone, and in fact an invasion by a hostile army could
+hardly have been more disastrous to the inhabitants of the plains than
+was this terrible deluge. There had been a flood of this latter river in
+the year 1840, which, for height and quantity of water, was almost as
+remarkable as that of 1856, but it took place in the month of November,
+when the crops had all been harvested, and the injury inflicted by it
+upon agriculturists was, therefore, of a character to be less severely
+and less immediately felt than the consequences of the inundation of
+1856.[357]
+
+In the fifteen years between these two great floods, the population and
+the rural improvements of the river valleys had much increased, common
+roads, bridges, and railways had been multiplied and extended, telegraph
+lines had been constructed, all of which shared in the general ruin, and
+hence greater and more diversified interests were affected by the
+catastrophe of 1856 than by any former like calamity. The great flood of
+1840 had excited the attention and roused the sympathies of the French
+people, and the subject was invested with new interest by the still more
+formidable character of the inundations of 1856. It was felt that these
+scourges had ceased to be a matter of merely local concern, for,
+although they bore most heavily on those whose homes and fields were
+situated within the immediate reach of the swelling waters, yet they
+frequently destroyed harvests valuable enough to be a matter of national
+interest, endangered the personal security of the population of
+important political centres, interrupted communication for days and even
+weeks together on great lines of traffic and travel--thus severing as
+it were all Southwestern France from the rest of the empire--and finally
+threatened to produce great and permanent geographical changes. The
+well-being of the whole commonwealth was seen to be involved in
+preventing the recurrence, and in limiting the range of such
+devastations. The Government encouraged scientific investigation of the
+phenomena and their laws. Their causes, their history, their immediate
+and remote consequences, and the possible safeguards to be employed
+against them, have been carefully studied by the most eminent
+physicists, as well as by the ablest theoretical and practical engineers
+of France. Many hitherto unobserved facts have been collected, many new
+hypotheses suggested, and many plans, more or less original in
+character, have been devised for combating the evil; but thus far, the
+most competent judges are not well agreed as to the mode, or even the
+possibility, of applying a remedy.
+
+
+e. _Remedies against Inundations._
+
+Perhaps no one point has been more prominent in the discussions than the
+influence of the forest in equalizing and regulating the flow of the
+water of precipitation. As we have already seen, opinion is still
+somewhat divided on this subject, but the conservative action of the
+woods in this respect has been generally recognized by the public of
+France, and the Government of the empire has made this principle the
+basis of important legislation for the protection of existing forests,
+and for the formation of new. The clearing of woodland, and the
+organization and functions of a police for its protection, are regulated
+by a law bearing date June 18th, 1859, and provision was made for
+promoting the restoration of private woods by a statute adopted on the
+28th of July, 1860. The former of these laws passed the legislative body
+by a vote of 246 against 4, the latter with but a single negative voice.
+The influence of the government, in a country where the throne is so
+potent as in France, would account for a large majority, but when it is
+considered that both laws, the former especially, interfere very
+materially with the rights of private domain, the almost entire
+unanimity with which they were adopted is proof of a very general
+popular conviction, that the protection and extension of the forests is
+a measure more likely than any other to check the violence, if not to
+prevent the recurrence, of destructive inundations. The law of July
+28th, 1860, appropriated 10,000,000 francs, to be expended, at the rate
+of 1,000,000 francs per year, in executing or aiding the replanting of
+woods. It is computed that this appropriation will secure the creation
+of new forest to the extent of about 250,000 acres, or one eleventh part
+of the soil where the restoration of the forest is thought feasible and,
+at the same time, specially important as a security against the evils
+ascribed in a great measure to its destruction.
+
+The provisions of the laws in question are preventive rather than
+remedial; but some immediate effect may be expected to result from them,
+particularly if they are accompanied with certain other measures, the
+suggestion of which has been favorably received. The strong repugnance
+of the mountaineers to the application of a system which deprives them
+of a part of their pasturage--for the absolute exclusion of domestic
+animals is indispensable to the maintenance of an existing forest and to
+the formation of a new--is the most formidable obstacle to the execution
+of the laws of 1859-'60. It is proposed to compensate this loss by a
+cheap system of irrigation of lower pasture grounds, consisting in
+little more than in running horizontal furrows along the hillsides, thus
+converting the scarp of the hills into a succession of small terraces
+which, when once turfed over, are very permanent. Experience is said to
+have demonstrated that this simple process suffices to retain the water
+of rains, of snows, and of small springs and rivulets, long enough for
+the irrigation of the soil, thus increasing its product of herbage in a
+fivefold proportion, and that it partially checks the too rapid flow of
+surface water into the valleys, and, consequently, in some measure
+obviates one of the most prominent causes of inundations.[358] It is
+evident that, if such results are produced by this method, its
+introduction upon an extensive scale must also have the same climatic
+effects as other systems of irrigation.
+
+Whatever may be the ultimate advantages of reclothing a large extent of
+the territory of France with wood, or of so shaping its surface as to
+prevent the too rapid flow of water over it, the results to be obtained
+by such processes can be realized in an adequate measure only after a
+long succession of years. Other steps must be taken, both for the
+immediate security of the lives and property of the present generation,
+and for the prevention of yet greater and remoter evils which are
+inevitable unless means to obviate them are found before it is forever
+too late. The frequent recurrence of inundations like those of 1856, for
+a single score of years, in the basins of the Rhone and the Loire, with
+only the present securities against them, would almost depopulate the
+valleys of those rivers, and produce physical revolutions in them,
+which, like revolutions in the political world, could never be made to
+"go backward."
+
+Destructive inundations are seldom, if ever, produced by precipitation
+within the limits of the principal valley, but almost uniformly by
+sudden thaws or excessive rains on the mountain ranges where the
+tributaries take their rise. It is therefore plain that any measures
+which shall check the flow of surface waters into the channels of the
+affluents, or which shall retard the delivery of such waters into the
+principal stream by its tributaries, will diminish in the same
+proportion the dangers and the evils of inundation by great rivers. The
+retention of the surface waters upon or in the soil can hardly be
+accomplished except by the methods already mentioned, replanting of
+forests, and furrowing or terracing. The current of mountain streams can
+be checked by various methods, among which the most familiar and obvious
+is the erection of barriers or dams across their channels, at points
+convenient for forming reservoirs large enough to retain the superfluous
+waters of great rains and thaws. Besides the utility of such basins in
+preventing floods, the construction of them is recommended by very
+strong considerations, such as the meteorological effects of increased
+evaporable surface, the furnishing of a constant supply of water for
+agricultural and mechanical purposes, and, finally, their value as ponds
+for breeding and rearing fish, and, perhaps, for cultivating aquatic
+vegetables.
+
+The objections to the general adoption of the system of reservoirs are
+these: the expense of their construction and maintenance; the reduction
+of cultivable area by the amount of surface they must cover; the
+interruption they would occasion to free communication; the probability
+that they would soon be filled up with sediment, and the obvious fact
+that when full of earth or even water, they would no longer serve their
+principal purpose; the great danger to which they would expose the
+country below them in case of the bursting of their barriers;[359] the
+evil consequences they would occasion by prolonging the flow of
+inundations in proportion as they diminished their height; the injurious
+effects it is supposed they would produce upon the salubrity of the
+neighboring districts; and, lastly, the alleged impossibility of
+constructing artificial basins sufficient in capacity to prevent, or in
+any considerable measure to mitigate, the evils they are intended to
+guard against.
+
+The last argument is more easily reduced to a numerical question than
+the others. The mean and extreme annual precipitation of all the basins
+where the construction of such works would be seriously proposed is
+already approximately known by meteorological tables, and the quantity
+of water, delivered by the greatest floods which have occurred within
+the memory of man, may be roughly estimated from their visible traces.
+From these elements, or from recorded observations, the capacity of the
+necessary reservoirs can be calculated. Let us take the case of the
+Ardeche. In the inundation of 1857, that river poured into the Rhone
+1,305,000,000 cubic yards of water in three days. If we suppose that
+half this quantity might have been suffered to flow down its channel
+without inconvenience, we shall have about 650,000,000 cubic yards to
+provide for by reservoirs. The Ardeche and its principal affluent, the
+Chassezac, have, together, about twelve considerable tributaries rising
+near the crest of the mountains which bound the basin. If reservoirs of
+equal capacity were constructed upon all of them, each reservoir must be
+able to contain 54,000,000 cubic yards, or, in other words, must be
+equal to a lake 3,000 yards long, 1,000 yards wide, and 18 yards deep,
+and besides, in order to render any effectual service, the reservoirs
+must all have been empty at the commencement of the rains which produced
+the inundation.
+
+Thus far, I have supposed the swelling of the waters to be uniform
+throughout the whole basin; but such was by no means the fact in the
+inundation of 1857, for the rise of the Chassezac, which is as large as
+the Ardeche proper, did not exceed the limits of ordinary floods, and
+the dangerous excess came solely from the headwaters of the latter
+stream. Hence reservoirs of double the capacity I have supposed would
+have been necessary upon the tributaries of that river, to prevent the
+injurious effects of the inundation. It is evident that the construction
+of reservoirs of such magnitude for such a purpose is financially, if
+not physically, impracticable, and when we take into account a point I
+have just suggested, namely, that the reservoirs must be empty at all
+times of apprehended flood, and, of course, their utility limited almost
+solely to the single object of preventing inundations, the total
+inapplicability of such a measure in this particular case becomes still
+more glaringly manifest.
+
+Another not less conclusive fact is that the valleys of all the upland
+tributaries of the Ardeche descend so rapidly, and have so little
+lateral expansion, as to render the construction of capacious reservoirs
+in them quite impracticable. Indeed, engineers have found but two points
+in the whole basin suitable for that purpose, and the reservoirs
+admissible at these would have only a joint capacity of about 70,000,000
+cubic yards, or less than one ninth part of what I suppose to be
+required. The case of the Ardeche is no doubt an extreme one, both in
+the topographical character of its basin and in its exposure to
+excessive rains; but all destructive inundations are, in a certain
+sense, extreme cases also, and this of the Ardeche serves to show that
+the construction of reservoirs is not by any means to be regarded as a
+universal panacea against floods.
+
+Nor, on the other hand, is this measure to be summarily rejected. Nature
+has adopted it on a great scale, on both flanks of the Alps, and on a
+smaller, on those of the Adirondacks and lower chains, and in this as in
+many other instances, her processes may often be imitated with
+advantage. The validity of the remaining objections to the system under
+discussion depends on the topography, geology, and special climate of
+the regions where it is proposed to establish such reservoirs. Many
+upland streams present numerous points where none of these objections,
+except those of expense and of danger from the breaking of dams, could
+have any application. Reservoirs may be so constructed as to retain the
+entire precipitation of the heaviest thaws and rains, leaving only the
+ordinary quantity to flow along the channel; they may be raised to such
+a height as only partially to obstruct the surface drainage; or they may
+be provided with sluices by means of which their whole contents can be
+discharged in the dry season and a summer crop be grown upon the ground
+they cover at high water. The expediency of employing them and the mode
+of construction depend on local conditions, and no rules of universal
+applicability can be laid down on the subject.
+
+It is remarkable that nations which we, in the false pride of our modern
+civilization, so generally regard as little less than barbarian, should
+have long preceded Christian Europe in the systematic employment of
+great artificial basins for the various purposes they are calculated to
+subserve. The ancient Peruvians built strong walls, of excellent
+workmanship, across the channels of the mountain sources of important
+streams, and the Arabs executed immense works of similar description,
+both in the great Arabian peninsula and in all the provinces of Spain
+which had the good fortune to fall under their sway. The Spaniards of
+the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who, in many points of true
+civilization and culture, were far inferior to the races they subdued,
+wantonly destroyed these noble monuments of social and political wisdom,
+or suffered them to perish, because they were too ignorant to appreciate
+their value, or too unskilful as practical engineers to be able to
+maintain them, and some of their most important territories were soon
+reduced to sterility and poverty in consequence.
+
+Another method of preventing or diminishing the evils of inundation by
+torrents and mountain rivers, analogous to that employed for the
+drainage of lakes, consists in the permanent or occasional diversion of
+their surplus waters, or of their entire currents, from their natural
+courses, by tunnels or open channels cut through their banks. Nature, in
+many cases, resorts to a similar process. Most great rivers divide
+themselves into several arms in their lower course, and enter the sea by
+different mouths. There are also cases where rivers send off lateral
+branches to convey a part of their waters into the channel of other
+streams.[360] The most remarkable of these is the junction between the
+Amazon and the Orinoco by the natural canal of the Cassiquiare and the
+Rio Negro. In India, the Cambodja and the Menam are connected by the
+Anam; the Saluen and the Irawaddi by the Panlaun. There are similar
+examples, though on a much smaller scale, in Europe. The Tornea and the
+Calix rivers in Lapland communicate by the Tarando, and in Westphalia,
+the Else, an arm of the Haase, falls into the Weser.
+
+The change of bed in rivers by gradual erosion of their banks is
+familiar to all, but instances of the sudden abandonment of a primitive
+channel are by no means wanting. At a period of unknown antiquity, the
+Ardeche pierced a tunnel 200 feet wide and 100 high, through a rock, and
+sent its whole current through it, deserting its former bed, which
+gradually filled up, though its course remained traceable. In the great
+inundation of 1827, the tunnel proved insufficient for the discharge of
+the water, and the river burst through the obstructions which had now
+choked up its ancient channel, and resumed its original course.[361]
+
+It was probably such facts as these that suggested to ancient engineers
+the possibility of like artificial operations, and there are numerous
+instances of the execution of works for this purpose in very remote
+ages. The Bahr Jusef, the great stream which supplies the Fayoum with
+water from the Nile, has been supposed, by some writers, to be a natural
+channel; but both it and the Bahr el Wady are almost certainly
+artificial canals constructed to water that basin, to regulate the level
+of Lake Moeris, and possibly, also, to diminish the dangers resulting
+from excessive inundations of the Nile, by serving as waste-weirs to
+discharge a part of its surplus waters. Several of the seven ancient
+mouths of the Nile are believed to be artificial channels, and Herodotus
+even asserts that King Menes diverted the entire course of that river
+from the Libyan to the Arabian side of the valley. There are traces of
+an ancient river bed along the western mountains, which give some
+countenance to this statement. But it is much more probable that the
+works of Menes were designed rather to prevent a natural, than to
+produce an artificial, change in the channel of the river.
+
+Two of the most celebrated cascades in Europe, those of the Teverone at
+Tivoli and of the Velino at Terni, owe, if not their existence, at least
+their position and character, to the diversion of their waters from
+their natural beds into new channels, in order to obviate the evils
+produced by their frequent floods. Remarkable works of the same sort
+have been executed in Switzerland, in very recent times. Until the year
+1714, the Kander, which drains several large Alpine valleys, ran, for a
+considerable distance, parallel with the Lake of Thun, and a few miles
+below the city of that name emptied into the river Aar. It frequently
+flooded the flats along the lower part of its course, and it was
+determined to divert it into the Lake of Thun. For this purpose, two
+parallel tunnels were cut through the intervening rock, and the river
+turned into them. The violence of the current burst up the roof of the
+tunnels, and, in a very short time, wore the new channel down not less
+than one hundred feet, and even deepened the former bed at least fifty
+feet, for a distance of two or three miles above the tunnel. The lake
+was two hundred feet deep at the point where the river was conducted
+into it, but the gravel and sand carried down by the Kander has formed
+at its mouth a delta containing more than a hundred acres, which is
+still advancing at the rate of several yards a year. The Linth, which
+formerly sent its waters directly to the Lake of Zurich, and often
+produced very destructive inundations, was turned into the Wallensee
+about forty years ago, and in both these cases a great quantity of
+valuable land was rescued both from flood and from insalubrity.
+
+In Switzerland, the most terrible inundations often result from the
+damming up of deep valleys by ice slips or by the gradual advance of
+glaciers, and the accumulation of great masses of water above the
+obstructions. The ice is finally dissolved by the heat of summer or the
+flow of warm waters, and when it bursts, the lake formed above is
+discharged almost in an instant, and all below is swept down to certain
+destruction. In 1595, about a hundred and fifty lives and a great amount
+of property were lost by the eruption of a lake formed by the descent of
+a glacier into the valley of the Drance, and a similar calamity laid
+waste a considerable extent of soil in the year 1818. On this latter
+occasion, the barrier of ice and snow was 3,000 feet long, 600 thick,
+and 400 high, and the lake which had formed above it contained not less
+than 800,000,000 cubic feet. A tunnel was driven through the ice, and
+about 300,000,000 cubic feet of water safely drawn off by it, but the
+thawing of the walls of the tunnel rapidly enlarged it, and before the
+lake was half drained, the barrier gave way and the remaining
+500,000,000 cubic feet of water were discharged in half an hour. The
+recurrence of these floods has since been prevented by directing streams
+of water, warmed by the sun, upon the ice in the bed of the valley, and
+thus thawing it before it accumulates in sufficient mass to threaten
+serious danger.
+
+In the cases of diversion of streams above mentioned, important
+geographical changes have been directly produced by those operations. By
+the rarer process of draining glacier lakes, natural eruptions of water,
+which would have occasioned not less important changes in the face of
+the earth, have been prevented by human agency.
+
+The principal means hitherto relied upon for defence against river
+inundations has been the construction of dikes along the banks of the
+streams, parallel to the channel and generally separated from each other
+by a distance not much greater than the natural width of the bed.[362]
+If such walls are high enough to confine the water and strong enough to
+resist its pressure, they secure the lands behind them from all the
+evils of inundation except those resulting from infiltration; but such
+ramparts are enormously costly in original construction and maintenance,
+and, as we have already seen, the filling up of the bed of the river in
+its lower course, by sand and gravel, involves the necessity of
+occasionally incurring new expenditures in increasing the height of the
+banks.[363] They are attended, too, with some collateral disadvantages.
+They deprive the earth of the fertilizing deposits of the waters, which
+are powerful natural restoratives of soils exhausted by cultivation;
+they accelerate the rapidity and transporting power of the current at
+high water by confining it to a narrower channel, and it consequently
+conveys to the sea the earthy matter it holds in suspension, and chokes
+up harbors with a deposit which it would otherwise have spread over a
+wide surface; they interfere with roads and the convenience of river
+navigation, and no amount of cost or care can secure them from
+occasional rupture, in case of which the rush of the waters through the
+breach is more destructive than the natural flow of the highest
+inundation.[364]
+
+For these reasons, many experienced engineers are of opinion that the
+system of longitudinal dikes ought to be abandoned, or, where that
+cannot be done without involving too great a sacrifice of existing
+constructions, their elevation should be much reduced, so as to present
+no obstruction to the lateral spread of extraordinary floods, and they
+should be provided with sluices to admit the water without violence
+whenever they are likely to be overflowed. Where dikes have not been
+erected, and where they have been reduced in height, it is proposed to
+construct, at convenient intervals, transverse embankments of moderate
+height running from the banks of the river across the plains to the
+hills which bound them. These measures, it is argued, will diminish the
+violence of inundations by permitting the waters to extend themselves
+over a greater surface and thus retarding the flow of the river
+currents, and will, at the same time, secure the deposit of fertilizing
+slime upon all the soil covered by the flood.
+
+Rozet, an eminent French engineer, has proposed a method of diminishing
+the ravages of inundations, which aims to combine the advantages of all
+other systems, and at the same time to obviate the objections to which
+they are all more or less liable.[365] The plan of Rozet is recommended
+by its simplicity and cheapness as well as its facility and rapidity of
+execution, and is looked upon with favor by many persons very competent
+to judge in such matters. He proposes to commence with the amphitheatres
+in which mountain torrents so often rise, by covering their slopes and
+filling their beds with loose blocks of rock, and by constructing at
+their outlets, and at other narrow points in the channels of the
+torrents, permeable barriers of the same material promiscuously heaped
+up, much according to the method employed by the ancient Romans in their
+northern provinces for a similar purpose. By this means, he supposes,
+the rapidity of the current would be checked, and the quantity of
+transported pebbles and gravel much diminished.
+
+When the stream has reached that part of its course where it is bordered
+by soil capable of cultivation, and worth the expense of protection, he
+proposes to place along one or both sides of the stream, according to
+circumstances, a line of cubical blocks of stone or pillars of masonry
+three or four feet high and wide, and at the distance of about eleven
+yards from each other. The space between the two lines, or between a
+line and the opposite high bank, would, of course, be determined by
+observation of the width of the swift-water current at high floods. As
+an auxiliary measure, small ditches and banks, or low walls of pebbles,
+should be constructed from the line of blocks across the grounds to be
+protected, nearly at right angles to the current, but slightly inclining
+downward, and at convenient distances from each other. Rozet thinks the
+proper interval would be 300 yards, and it is evident that, if he is
+right in his main principle, hedges, rows of trees, or even common
+fences, would in many cases answer as good a purpose as banks and
+trenches or low walls. The blocks or pillars of stone would, he
+contends, check the lateral currents so as to compel them to let fall
+all their pebbles and gravel in the main channel--where they would be
+rolled along until ground down to sand or silt--and the transverse
+obstructions would detain the water upon the soil long enough to secure
+the deposit of its fertilizing slime. Numerous facts are cited in
+support of the author's views, and I imagine there are few residents of
+rural districts whose own observation will not furnish testimony
+confirmatory of their soundness.[366]
+
+The deposit of slime by rivers upon the flats along their banks not only
+contributes greatly to the fertility of the soil thus flowed, but it
+subserves a still more important purpose in the general economy of
+nature. All running streams begin with excavating channels for
+themselves, or deepening the natural depressions in which they
+flow;[367] but in proportion as their outlets are raised by the solid
+material transported by their currents, their velocity is diminished,
+they deposit gravel and sand at constantly higher and higher points, and
+so at last elevate, in the middle and lower part of their course, the
+beds they had previously scooped out.[368] The raising of the channels
+is compensated in part by the simultaneous elevation of their banks and
+the flats adjoining them, from the deposit of the finer particles of
+earth and vegetable mould brought down from the mountains, without which
+elevation the low grounds bordering all rivers would be, as in many
+cases they in fact are, mere morasses.
+
+All arrangements which tend to obstruct this process of raising the
+flats adjacent to the channel, whether consisting in dikes which confine
+the waters, and, at the same time, augment the velocity of the current,
+or in other means of producing the last-mentioned effect, interfere with
+the restorative economy of nature, and at last occasion the formation of
+marshes where, if left to herself, she would have accumulated
+inexhaustible stores of the richest soil, and spread them out in plains
+above the reach of ordinary floods.[369]
+
+
+_Consequences if the Nile had been Diked._
+
+If a system of continuous lateral dikes, like those of the Po, had been
+adopted in Egypt in the early dynasties, when the power and the will to
+undertake the most stupendous material enterprises were so eminently
+characteristic of the government of that country, and the waters of the
+annual inundation consequently prevented from flooding the land, it is
+conceivable that the productiveness of the small area of cultivable soil
+in the Nile valley might have been long kept up by artificial irrigation
+and the application of manures. But nature would have rebelled at last,
+and centuries before our time the mighty river would have burst the
+fetters by which impotent man had vainly striven to bind his swelling
+floods, the fertile fields of Egypt would have been converted into dank
+morasses, and then, perhaps, in some distant future, when the expulsion
+of man should have allowed the gradual restoration of the primitive
+equilibrium, would be again transformed into luxuriant garden and plough
+land. Fortunately, the "wisdom of Egypt" taught her children better
+things. They invited and welcomed, not repulsed, the slimy embraces of
+Nilus, and his favors have been, from the hoariest antiquity, the
+greatest material blessing ever bestowed upon a people.[370]
+
+The valley of the Po has probably not been cultivated or inhabited so
+long as that of the Nile, but embankments have been employed on its
+lower course for at least two thousand years, and for many centuries
+they have been connected in a continuous chain. I have pointed out in a
+former chapter the effects produced on the geography of the Adriatic by
+the deposit of river sediment in the sea at the mouths of the Po, the
+Adige, and the Brenta. If these rivers had been left unconfined, like
+the Nile, and allowed to spread their muddy waters at will, according to
+the laws of nature, the slime they have carried to the coast would have
+been chiefly distributed over the plains of Lombardy. Their banks would
+have risen as fast as their beds, the coast line would not have been
+extended so far into the Adriatic, and, the current of the streams being
+consequently shorter, the inclination of their channel and the rapidity
+of their flow would not have been so greatly diminished. Had man spared
+a reasonable proportion of the forests of the Alps, and not attempted to
+control the natural drainage of the surface, the Po would resemble the
+Nile in all its essential characteristics, and, in spite of the
+difference of climate, perhaps be regarded as the friend and ally, not
+the enemy and the invader, of the population which dwells upon its
+banks.[371]
+
+The Nile is larger than all the rivers of Lombardy together,[372] it
+drains a basin twenty times as extensive, its banks have been occupied
+by man probably twice as long. But its geographical character has not
+been much changed in the whole period of recorded history, and, though
+its outlets have somewhat fluctuated in number and position, its
+historically known encroachments upon the sea are trifling compared with
+those of the Po and the neighboring streams. The deposits of the Nile
+are naturally greater in Upper than in Lower Egypt. They are found to
+have raised the soil at Thebes about seven feet within the last
+seventeen hundred years, and in the Delta the rise has been certainly
+more than half as great.
+
+We shall, therefore, not exceed the truth if we suppose the annually
+inundated surface of Egypt to have been elevated, upon an average, ten
+feet, within the last 5,000 years, or twice and a half the period during
+which the history of the Po is known to us.[373]
+
+We may estimate the present actually cultivated area of Egypt at about
+5,500 square statute miles. As I have computed in a note on page 372,
+that area is not more than half as extensive as under the dynasties of
+the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies; for--though, in consequence of the
+elevation of the river bed, the inundations now have a wider _natural_
+spread--the industry of the ancient Egyptians conducted the Nile water
+over a great extent of soil it does not now reach. We may, then, adopt a
+mean between the two quantities, and we shall probably come near the
+truth if we assume the convenient number of 7,920 square statute miles
+as the average measure of the inundated land during the historical
+period. Taking the deposit on this surface at ten feet, the river
+sediment let fall on the soil of Egypt within the last fifty centuries
+would amount to fifteen cubic miles.
+
+Had the Nile been banked in, like the Po, all this deposit, except that
+contained in the water diverted by canals or otherwise drawn from the
+river for irrigation and other purposes, would have been carried out to
+sea.[374] This would have been a considerable quantity; for the Nile
+holds earth in suspension even at low water, a much larger proportion
+during the flood, and irrigation must have been carried on during the
+whole year. The precise amount which would have been thus distributed
+over the soil is matter of conjecture, but three cubic miles is
+certainly a liberal estimate. This would leave twelve cubic miles as the
+quantity which embankments would have compelled the Nile to transport to
+the Mediterranean over and above what it has actually deposited in that
+sea. The Mediterranean is shoal for some miles out to sea along the
+whole coast of the Delta, and the large bays or lagoons within the coast
+line, which communicate both with the river and the sea, have little
+depth of water. These lagoons the river deposits would have filled up,
+and there would still have been surplus earth enough to extend the Delta
+far into the Mediterranean.[375]
+
+
+_Deposits of the Tuscan Rivers._
+
+The Arno, and all the rivers rising on the western slopes and spurs of
+the Apennines, carry down immense quantities of mud to the
+Mediterranean. There can be no doubt that the volume of earth so
+transported is very much greater than it would have been had the soil
+about the headwaters of those rivers continued to be protected from wash
+by forests; and there is as little question that the quantity borne out
+to sea by the rivers of Western Italy is much increased by artificial
+embankments, because they are thereby prevented from spreading over the
+surface the sedimentary matter with which they are charged. The western
+coast of Tuscany has advanced some miles seaward within a very few
+centuries. The bed of the sea, for a long distance, has been raised, and
+of course the relative elevation of the land above it lessened; harbors
+have been filled up and destroyed; long lines of coast dunes have been
+formed, and the diminished inclination of the beds of the rivers near
+their outlets has caused their waters to overflow their banks and
+convert them into pestilential marshes. The territorial extent of
+Western Italy has thus been considerably increased, but the amount of
+soil habitable and cultivable by man has been, in a still higher
+proportion, diminished. The coast of ancient Etruria was filled with
+great commercial towns, and their rural environs were occupied by a
+large and prosperous population. But maritime Tuscany has long been one
+of the most unhealthy districts in Christendom; the famous mart of
+Populonia has not an inhabitant; the coast is almost absolutely
+depopulated, and the malarious fevers have extended their ravages far
+into the interior.
+
+These results are certainly not to be ascribed wholly to human action.
+They are, in a large proportion, due to geological causes over which man
+has no control. The soil of much of Tuscany becomes pasty, almost fluid
+even, as soon as it is moistened, and when thoroughly saturated with
+water, it flows like a river. Such a soil as this would not be
+completely protected by woods, and, indeed, it would now be difficult to
+confine it long enough to allow it to cover itself with forest
+vegetation. Nevertheless, it certainly was once chiefly wooded, and the
+rivers which flow through it must then have been much less charged with
+earthy matter than at present, and they must have carried into the sea a
+smaller proportion of their sediment when they were free to deposit it
+on their banks than since they have been confined by dikes.[376]
+
+It is, in general, true, that the intervention of man has hitherto
+seemed to insure the final exhaustion, ruin, and desolation of every
+province of nature which he has reduced to his dominion. Attila was only
+giving an energetic and picturesque expression to the tendencies of
+human action, as personified in himself, when he said that "no grass
+grew where his horse's hoofs had trod." The instances are few, where a
+second civilization has flourished upon the ruins of an ancient culture,
+and lands once rendered uninhabitable by human acts or neglect have
+generally been forever abandoned as hopelessly irreclaimable. It is, as
+I have before remarked, a question of vast importance, how far it is
+practicable to restore the garden we have wasted, and it is a problem on
+which experience throws little light, because few deliberate attempts
+have yet been made at the work of physical regeneration, on a scale
+large enough to warrant general conclusions in any one class of cases.
+
+The valleys and shores of Tuscany form, however, a striking exception to
+this remark. The success with which human guidance has made the
+operations of nature herself available for the restoration of her
+disturbed harmonies, in the Val di Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, is
+among the noblest, if not the most brilliant achievements of modern
+engineering, and, regarded in all its bearings on the great question of
+which I have just spoken, it is, as an example, of more importance to
+the general interests of humanity than the proudest work of internal
+improvement that mechanical means have yet constructed. The operations
+in the Val di Chiana have consisted chiefly in so regulating the flow of
+the surface waters into and through it, as to compel them to deposit
+their sedimentary matter at the will of the engineers, and thereby to
+raise grounds rendered insalubrious and unfit for agricultural use by
+stagnating water; the improvements in the Maremma have embraced both
+this method of elevating the level of the soil, and the prevention of
+the mixture of salt water with fresh in the coast marshes and shallow
+bays, which is a very active cause of the development of malarious
+influences.[377]
+
+
+_Improvements in the Val di Chiana._
+
+For twenty miles or more after the remotest headwaters of the Arno have
+united to form a considerable stream, this river flows southeastward to
+the vicinity of Arezzo. It here sweeps round to the northwest, and
+follows that course to near its junction with the Sieve, a few miles
+above Florence, from which point its general direction is westward to
+the sea. From the bend at Arezzo, a depression called the Val di Chiana
+runs southeastward until it strikes into the valley of the Paglia, a
+tributary of the Tiber, and thus connects the basin of the latter river
+with that of the Arno. In the Middle Ages, and down to the eighteenth
+century, the Val di Chiana was often overflowed and devastated by the
+torrents which poured down from the highlands, transporting great
+quantities of slime with their currents, stagnating upon its surface,
+and gradually converting it into a marshy and unhealthy district, which
+was at last very greatly reduced in population and productiveness. It
+had, in fact, become so desolate that even the swallow had deserted
+it.[378]
+
+The bed of the Arno near Arezzo and that of the Paglia at the southern
+extremity of the Val di Chiana did not differ much in level. The
+general inclination of the valley was therefore small; it does not
+appear to have ever been divided into opposite slopes by a true
+watershed, and the position of the summit seems to have shifted
+according to the varying amount and place of deposit of the sediment
+brought down by the lateral streams which emptied into it. The length of
+its principal channel of drainage, and even the direction of its flow at
+any given point, were therefore fluctuating. Hence, much difference of
+opinion was entertained at different times with regard to the normal
+course of this stream, and, consequently, to the question whether it was
+to be regarded as properly an affluent of the Tiber or of the Arno.
+
+The bed of the latter river at the bend has been eroded to the depth of
+thirty or forty feet, and that, apparently, at no very remote period. If
+it were elevated to what was evidently its original height, the current
+of the Arno would be so much above that of the Paglia as to allow of a
+regular flow from its channel to the latter stream, through the Val di
+Chiana, provided the bed of the valley had remained at the level which
+excavations prove it to have had a few centuries ago, before it was
+raised by the deposits I have mentioned. These facts, together with the
+testimony of ancient geographers which scarcely admits of any other
+explanation, are thought to prove that all the waters of the Upper Arno
+were originally discharged through the Val di Chiana into the Tiber, and
+that a part of them still continued to flow, at least occasionally, in
+that direction down to the days of the Roman empire, and perhaps for
+some time later. The depression of the bed of the Arno, and the raising
+of that of the valley by the deposits of the lateral torrents and of the
+Arno itself, finally cut off the branch of the river which had flowed to
+the Tiber, and all its waters were turned into its present channel,
+though the principal drainage of the Val di Chiana appears to have been
+in a southeastwardly direction until within a comparatively recent
+period.
+
+In the sixteenth century, the elevation of the bed of the valley had
+become so considerable, that in 1551, at a point about ten miles south
+of the Arno, it was found to be not less than one hundred and thirty
+feet above that river; then followed a level of ten miles, and then a
+continuous descent to the Paglia. Along the level portion of the valley
+was a boatable channel, and lakes, sometimes a mile or even two miles in
+breadth, had formed at various points farther south. At this period, the
+drainage of the summit level might easily have been determined in either
+direction, and the opposite descents of the valley made to culminate at
+the north or at the south end of the level. In the former case, the
+watershed would have been ten miles south of the Arno; in the latter,
+twenty miles, and the division would have been not very unequal.
+
+Various schemes were suggested at this time for drawing off the stagnant
+waters, as well as for the future regular drainage of the valley, and
+small operations for those purposes were undertaken with partial
+success; but it was feared that the discharge of the accumulated waters
+into the Tiber would produce a dangerous inundation, while the diversion
+of the drainage into the Arno would increase the violence of the floods
+to which that river was very subject, and no decisive steps were taken.
+In 1606, an engineer whose name has not been preserved proposed, as the
+only possible method of improvement, the piercing of a tunnel through
+the hills bounding the valley on the west to convey its waters to the
+Ombrone, but the expense and other objections prevented the adoption of
+this project.[379] The fears of the Roman Government for the security of
+the valley of the Tiber had induced it to construct barriers across that
+part of the channel which lay within its territory, and these
+obstructions, though not specifically intended for that purpose,
+naturally promoted the deposit of sediment and the elevation of the bed
+of the valley in their neighborhood. The effect of this measure and of
+the continued spontaneous action of the torrents was, that the northern
+slope, which in 1551 had commenced at the distance of ten miles from the
+Arno, was found in 1605 to begin, nearly thirty miles south of that
+river, and in 1645 it had been removed about six miles farther in the
+same direction.[380]
+
+In the seventeenth century, the Tuscan and Papal Governments consulted
+Galileo, Torricelli, Castelli, Cassini, Viviani, and other distinguished
+philosophers and engineers, on the possibility of reclaiming the valley
+by a regular artificial drainage. Most of these eminent physicists were
+of opinion that the measure was impracticable, though not altogether for
+the same reasons; but they seem to have agreed in thinking that the
+opening of such channels, in either direction, as would give the current
+a flow sufficiently rapid to drain the lands properly, would dangerously
+augment the inundations of the river--whether the Tiber or the
+Arno--into which the waters should be turned. The general improvement of
+the valley was now for a long time abandoned, and the waters were
+allowed to spread and stagnate until carried off by partial drainage,
+infiltration, and evaporation. Torricelli had contended that the slope
+of a large part of the valley was too small to allow it to be drained by
+ordinary methods, and that no practicable depth and width of canal would
+suffice for that purpose. It could be laid dry, he thought, only by
+converting its surface into an inclined plane, and he suggested that
+this might be accomplished by controlling the flow of the numerous
+torrents which pour into it, so as to force them to deposit their
+sediment at the pleasure of the engineer, and, consequently, to elevate
+the level of the area over which it should be spread.[381] This plan
+did not meet with immediate general acceptance, but it was soon adopted
+for local purposes at some points in the southern part of the valley,
+and it gradually grew in public favor and was extended in application
+until its final triumph a hundred years later.
+
+In spite of these encouraging successes, however, the fear of danger to
+the valley of the Arno and the Tiber, and the difficulty of an agreement
+between Tuscany and Rome--the boundary between which states crossed the
+Val di Chiana not far from the halfway point between the two rivers--and
+of reconciling other conflicting interests, prevented the resumption of
+the projects for the general drainage of the valley until after the
+middle of the eighteenth century. In the mean time the science of
+hydraulics had become better understood, and the establishment of the
+natural law according to which the velocity of a current of water, and
+of course the proportional quantity discharged by it in a given time,
+are increased by increasing its mass, had diminished if not dissipated
+the fear of exposing the banks of the Arno to greater danger from
+inundations by draining the Val di Chiana into it.
+
+The suggestion of Torricelli was finally adopted as the basis of a
+comprehensive system of improvement, and it was decided to continue and
+extend the inversion of the original flow of the waters, and to turn
+them into the Arno from a point as far to the south as should be found
+practicable. The conduct of the works was committed to a succession of
+able engineers who, for a long series of years, were under the general
+direction of the celebrated philosopher and statesman Fossombroni, and
+the success has fully justified the expectations of the most sanguine
+advocates of the scheme. The plan of improvement embraced two branches:
+the one, the removal of certain obstructions in the bed of the Arno,
+and, consequently, the further depression of the channel of that river,
+in certain places, with the view of increasing the rapidity of its
+current; the other, the gradual filling up of the ponds and swamps, and
+raising of the lower grounds of the Val di Chiana, by directing to
+convenient points the flow of the streams which pour down into it, and
+there confining their waters by temporary dams until the sediment was
+deposited where it was needed. The economical result of these operations
+has been, that in 1835 an area of more than four hundred and fifty
+square miles of pond, marsh, and damp, sickly low grounds had been
+converted into fertile, healthy and well-drained soil, and,
+consequently, that so much territory has been added to the agricultural
+domain of Tuscany.
+
+But in our present view of the subject, the geographical revolution
+which has been accomplished is still more interesting. The climatic
+influence of the elevation and draining of the soil must have been
+considerable, though I do not know that an increase or a diminution of
+the mean temperature or precipitation in the valley has been established
+by meteorological observation. There is, however, in the improvement of
+the sanitary condition of the Val di Chiana, which was formerly
+extremely unhealthy, satisfactory proof of a beneficial climatic change.
+The fevers, which not only decimated the population of the low grounds
+but infested the adjacent hills, have ceased their ravages, and are now
+not more frequent than in other parts of Tuscany. The strictly
+topographical effect of the operations in question, besides the
+conversion of marsh into dry surface, has been the inversion of the
+inclination of the valley for a distance of thirty-five miles, so that
+this great plain which, within a comparatively short period, sloped and
+drained its waters to the south, now inclines and sends its drainage to
+the north. The reversal of the currents of the valley has added to the
+Arno a new tributary equal to the largest of its former affluents, and a
+most important circumstance connected with this latter fact is, that the
+increase of the volume of its waters has accelerated their velocity in a
+still greater proportion, and, instead of augmenting the danger from its
+inundations, has almost wholly obviated that source of apprehension.
+Between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the year 1761,
+thirty-one destructive floods of the Arno are recorded; between 1761,
+when the principal streams of the Val di Chiana were diverted into that
+river, and 1835, not one.[382]
+
+
+_Improvements in the Tuscan Maremme._
+
+In the improvements of the Tuscan Maremma, more formidable difficulties
+have been encountered. The territory to be reclaimed was more extensive;
+the salubrious places of retreat for laborers and inspectors were more
+remote; the courses of the rivers to be controlled were longer and their
+natural inclination less rapid; some of them, rising in wooded regions,
+transported comparatively little earthy matter,[383] and above all,
+
+A like example is observed in the Anapus near Syracuse, which, below the
+junction of its two branches, is narrower, though swifter than either of
+them, and such cases are by no means unfrequent. The immediate effect of
+the confluence of two rivers upon the current below depends upon local
+circumstances, and especially upon the angle of incidence. If the two
+nearly coincide in direction, so as to include a small angle, the joint
+current will have a greater velocity than the slower confluent, perhaps
+even than either of them. If the two rivers run in transverse, still
+more if they flow in more or less opposite directions, the velocity of
+the principal branch will be retarded both above and below the junction,
+and at high water it may even set back the current of the affluent.
+
+On the other hand, the diversion of a considerable branch from a river
+retards its velocity below the point of separation, and here a deposit
+of earth in its channel immediately begins, which has a tendency to turn
+the whole stream into the new bed. "Theory and the authority of all
+hydrographical writers combine to show that the channels of rivers
+undergo an elevation of bed below a canal of diversion."--Letter of
+FOSSOMBRONI, in SALVAGNOLI, _Raccolta di Documenti_, p. 32. See the
+early authorities and discussions on the principle stated in the text,
+in FRISI, _Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti_, libro iii, capit.
+i. the coast, which is a recent deposit of the waters, is little
+elevated above the sea, and admits into its lagoons and the mouths of
+its rivers floods of salt water with every western wind, every rising
+tide.[384]
+
+The western coast of Tuscany is not supposed to have been an unhealthy
+region before the conquest of Etruria by the Romans, but it certainly
+became so within a few centuries after that event. This was a natural
+consequence of the neglect or wanton destruction of the public
+improvements, and especially the hydraulic works in which the Etruscans
+were so skilful, and of the felling of the upland forests, to satisfy
+the demand for wood at Rome for domestic, industrial, and military
+purposes. After the downfall of the Roman empire, the incursions of the
+barbarians, and then feudalism, foreign domination, intestine wars, and
+temporal and spiritual tyrannies, aggravated still more cruelly the
+moral and physical evils which Tuscany and the other Italian States were
+doomed to suffer, and from which they have enjoyed but brief respites
+during the whole period of modern history. The Maremma was already
+proverbially unhealthy in the time of Dante, who refers to the fact in
+several familiar passages, and the petty tyrants upon its borders often
+sent criminals to places of confinement in its territory, as a slow but
+certain mode of execution. Ignorance of the causes of the insalubrity,
+and often the interference of private rights,[385] prevented the
+adoption of measures to remove it, and the growing political and
+commercial importance of the large towns in more healthful localities
+absorbed the attention of Government, and deprived the Maremma of its
+just share in the systems of physical improvement which were
+successfully adopted in interior and Northern Italy.
+
+Before any serious attempts were made to drain or fill up the marshes of
+the Maremme, various other sanitary experiments were tried. It was
+generally believed that the insalubrity of the province was the
+consequence, not the cause, of its depopulation, and that, if it were
+once densely inhabited, the ordinary operations of agriculture, and
+especially the maintenance of numerous domestic fires, would restore it
+to its ancient healthfulness.[386] In accordance with these views,
+settlers were invited from various parts of Italy, from Greece, and,
+after the accession of the Lorraine princes, from that country also, and
+colonized in the Maremme. To strangers coming from soils and skies so
+unlike those of the Tuscan marshes, the climate was more fatal than to
+the inhabitants of the neighboring districts, whose constitutions had
+become in some degree inured to the local influences, or who at least
+knew better how to guard against them. The consequence very naturally
+was that the experiment totally failed to produce the desired effects,
+and was attended with a great sacrifice of life and a heavy loss to the
+treasury of the state.
+
+The territory known as the Tuscan Maremma, _ora maritima_, or
+Maremme--for the plural form is most generally used--lies upon and near
+the western coast of Tuscany, and comprises about 1,900 square miles
+English, of which 500 square miles, or 320,000 acres, are plain and
+marsh including 45,500 acres of water surface, and about 290,000 acres
+are forest. One of the mountain peaks, that of Mount Amiata, rises to
+the height of 6,280 feet. The mountains of the Maremma are healthy, the
+lower hills much less so, as the malaria is felt at some points at the
+height of 1,000 feet, and the plains, with the exception of a few
+localities favorably situated on the seacoast, are in a high degree
+pestilential. The fixed population is about 80,000, of whom one sixth
+live on the plains in the winter and about one tenth in the summer. Nine
+or ten thousand laborers come down from the mountains of the Maremma and
+the neighboring provinces into the plain, during the latter season, to
+cultivate and gather the crops.
+
+Out of this small number of inhabitants and strangers, 35,619 were ill
+enough to require medical treatment between the 1st of June, 1840, and
+the 1st of June, 1841, and more than one half the cases were of
+intermittent, malignant, gastric, or catarrhal fever. Very few
+agricultural laborers escaped fever, though the disease did not always
+manifest itself until they had returned to the mountains. In the
+province of Grosseto, which embraces nearly the whole of the Maremma,
+the annual mortality was 3.92 per cent. the average duration of life but
+23.18 years, and 75 per cent. of the deaths were among persons engaged
+in agriculture.
+
+The filling up of the low grounds and the partial separation of the
+waters of the sea and the land, which had been in progress since the
+year 1827, now began to show very decided effects upon the sanitary
+condition of the population. In the year ending June 1st, 1842, the
+number of the sick was reduced by more than 2,000, and the cases of
+fever by more than 4,000. The next year, the cases of fever fell to
+10,500, and in that ending June 1st, 1844, to 9,200. The political
+events of 1848 and the preceding and following years, occasioned the
+suspension of the works of improvement in the Maremma, but they were
+resumed after the revolution of 1859, and are now in successful
+progress.
+
+I have spoken, with some detail, of the improvements in the Val di
+Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, because of their great relative
+importance, and because their history is well known; but like operations
+have been executed in the territory of Pisa and upon the coast of the
+duchy of Lucca. In the latter case, they were confined principally to
+prevention of the intermixing of fresh water with that of the sea. In
+1741, sluices or lock gates were constructed for this purpose, and the
+following year, the fevers, which had been destructive to the coast
+population for a long time previous, disappeared altogether. In 1768 and
+1769, the works having fallen to decay, the fevers returned in a very
+malignant form, but the rebuilding of the gates again restored the
+healthfulness of the shore. Similar facts recurred in 1784 and 1785, and
+again from 1804 to 1821. This long and repeated experience has at last
+impressed upon the people the necessity of vigilant attention to the
+sluices, which are now kept in constant repair. The health of the coast
+is uninterrupted, and Viareggio, the capital town of the district, is
+now much frequented for its sea baths and its general salubrity, at a
+season when formerly it was justly shunned as the abode of disease and
+death.[387]
+
+It is now a hundred years since the commencement of the improvements in
+the Val di Chiana, and those of the Maremma have been in more or less
+continued operation for above a generation. They have, as we have seen,
+produced important geographical changes in the surface of the earth and
+in the flow of considerable rivers, and their effects have been not less
+conspicuous in preventing other changes, of a deleterious character,
+which would infallibly have taken place if they had not been arrested by
+the improvements in question. It has been already stated that, in order
+to prevent the overflow of the valley of the Tiber by freely draining
+the Val di Chiana into it, the Papal authorities, long before the
+commencement of the Tuscan works, constructed strong barriers near the
+southern end of the valley, which detained the waters of the wet season
+until they could be gradually drawn off into the Paglia. They
+consequently deposited most of their sediment in the Val di Chiana and
+carried down comparatively little earth to the Tiber. The lateral
+streams contributing the largest quantities of sedimentary matter to the
+Val di Chiana originally flowed into that valley near its northern end;
+and the change of their channels and outlets in a southern direction, so
+as to raise that part of the valley by their deposits and thereby
+reverse its drainage, was one of the principal steps in the process of
+improvement.
+
+We have seen that the north end of the Val di Chiana near the Arno had
+been raised by spontaneous deposit of sediment to such a height as to
+interpose a sufficient obstacle to all flow in that direction. If, then,
+the Roman dam had not been erected, or the works of the Tuscan
+Government undertaken, the whole of the earth, which has been arrested
+by those works and employed to raise the bed and reverse the declivity
+of the valley, would have been carried down to the Tiber and thence into
+the sea. The deposit thus created, would, of course, have contributed to
+increase the advance of the shore at the mouth of that river, which has
+long been going on at the rate of three metres and nine tenths (twelve
+feet and nine inches) per annum.[388] It is evident that a quantity of
+earth, sufficient to effect the immense changes I have described in a
+wide valley more than thirty miles long, if deposited at the outlet of
+the Tiber, would have very considerably modified the outline of the
+coast, and have exerted no unimportant influence on the flow of that
+river, by raising its point of discharge and lengthening its channel.
+
+The sediment washed into the marshes of the Maremme is not less than
+12,000,000 cubic yards per annum. The escape of this quantity into the
+sea, which is now almost wholly prevented, would be sufficient to
+advance the coast line fourteen yards per year, for a distance of forty
+miles, computing the mean depth of the sea near the shore at twelve
+yards. It is true that in this case, as well as in that of other rivers,
+the sedimentary matter would not be distributed equally along the shore,
+and much of it would be carried out into deep water, or perhaps
+transported by the currents to distant coasts. The immediate effects of
+the deposit, therefore, would not be so palpable as they appear in this
+numerical form, but they would be equally certain, and would infallibly
+manifest themselves, first, perhaps, at some remote point, and afterward
+at or near the outlets of the rivers which produced them.
+
+
+_Obstruction of River Mouths._
+
+The mouths of a large proportion of the streams known to ancient
+internal navigation are already blocked up by sandbars or fluviatile
+deposits, and the maritime approaches to river harbors frequented by the
+ships of Phenicia and Carthage and Greece and Rome are shoaled to a
+considerable distance out to sea. The inclination of almost every known
+river bed has been considerably reduced within the historical period,
+and nothing but great volume of water, or exceptional rapidity of flow,
+now enables a few large streams like the Amazon, the La Plata, the
+Ganges, and, in a less degree, the Mississippi, to carry their own
+deposits far enough out into deep water to prevent the formation of
+serious obstructions to navigation. But the degradation of their banks,
+and the transportation of earthy matter to the sea by their currents,
+are gradually filling up the estuaries even of these mighty floods, and
+unless the threatened evil shall be averted by the action of geological
+forces, or by artificial contrivances more efficient than dredging
+machines, the destruction of every harbor in the world which receives a
+considerable river must inevitably take place at no very distant date.
+
+This result would, perhaps, have followed in some incalculably distant
+future, if man had not come to inhabit the earth as soon as the natural
+forces which had formed its surface had arrived at such an approximate
+equilibrium that his existence on the globe was possible; but the
+general effect of his industrial operations has been to accelerate it
+immensely. Rivers, in countries planted by nature with forests and never
+inhabited by man, employ the little earth and gravel they transport
+chiefly to raise their own beds and to form plains in their basins.[389]
+In their upper course, where the current is swiftest, they are most
+heavily charged with coarse rolled or suspended matter, and this, in
+floods, they deposit on their shores in the mountain valleys where they
+rise; in their middle course, a lighter earth is spread over the bottom
+of their widening basins, and forms plains of moderate extent; the fine
+silt which floats farther is deposited over a still broader area, or, if
+carried out to sea, is, in great part quickly swept far off by marine
+currents and dropped at last in deep water. Man's "improvement" of the
+soil increases the erosion from its surface; his arrangements for
+confining the lateral spread of the water in floods compel the rivers to
+transport to their mouths the earth derived from that erosion even in
+their upper course; and, consequently, the sediment they deposit at
+their outlets is not only much larger in quantity, but composed of
+heavier materials, which sink more readily to the bottom of the sea and
+are less easily removed by marine currents.
+
+The tidal movement of the ocean, deep sea currents, and the agitation of
+inland waters by the wind, lift up the sands strewn over the bottom by
+diluvial streams or sent down by mountain torrents, and throw them up on
+dry land, or deposit them in sheltered bays and nooks of the coast--for
+the flowing is stronger than the ebbing tide, the affluent than the
+refluent wave. This cause of injury to harbors it is not in man's power
+to resist by any means at present available; but, as we have seen,
+something can be done to prevent the degradation of high grounds, and to
+diminish the quantity of earth which is annually abstracted from the
+mountains, from table lands, and from river banks, to raise the bottom
+of the sea.
+
+This latter cause of harbor obstruction, though an active agent, is,
+nevertheless, in many cases, the less powerful of the two. The earth
+suspended in the lower course of fluviatile currents is lighter than sea
+sand, river water lighter than sea water, and hence, if a land stream
+enters the sea with a considerable volume, its water flows over that of
+the sea, and bears its slime with it until it lets it fall far from
+shore, or, as is more frequently the case, mingles with some marine
+current and transports its sediment to a remote point of deposit. The
+earth borne out of the mouths of the Nile is in part carried over the
+waves which throw up sea sand on the beach, and deposited in deep water,
+in part drifted by the current, which sweeps east and north along the
+coasts of Egypt and Syria, until it finds a resting place in the
+northeastern angle of the Mediterranean.[390] Thus the earth loosened by
+the rude Abyssinian ploughshare, and washed down by the rain from the
+hills of Ethiopia which man has stripped of their protecting forests,
+contributes to raise the plains of Egypt, to shoal the maritime channels
+which lead to the city built by Alexander near the mouth of the Nile,
+and to fill up the harbors made famous by Phenician commerce.
+
+
+_Subterranean Waters._
+
+I have frequently alluded to a branch of geography, the importance of
+which is but recently adequately recognized--the subterranean waters of
+the earth considered as stationary reservoirs, as flowing currents, and
+as filtrating fluids. The earth drinks in moisture by direct absorption
+from the atmosphere, by the deposition of dew, by rain and snow, by
+percolation from rivers and other superficial bodies of water, and
+sometimes by currents flowing into caves or smaller visible
+apertures.[391] Some of this humidity is exhaled again by the soil,
+some is taken up by organic growths and by inorganic compounds, some
+poured out upon the surface by springs and either immediately evaporated
+or carried down to larger streams and to the sea, some flows by
+subterranean courses into the bed of fresh-water rivers[392] or of the
+ocean, and some remains, though even here not in forever motionless
+repose, to fill deep cavities and underground channels.[393] In every
+case the aqueous vapors of the air are the ultimate source of supply,
+and all these hidden stores are again returned to the atmosphere by
+evaporation.
+
+The proportion of the water of precipitation taken up by direct
+evaporation from the surface of the ground seems to have been generally
+exaggerated, sufficient allowance not being made for moisture carried
+downward, or in a lateral direction, by infiltration or by crevices in
+the superior rocky or earthy strata. According to Wittwer, Mariotte
+found that but one sixth of the precipitation in the basin of the Seine
+was delivered into the sea by that river, "so that five sixths remained
+for evaporation and consumption by the organic world."[394]
+
+Lieutenant Maury--whose scientific reputation, though fallen, has not
+quite sunk to the level of his patriotism--estimates the annual amount
+of precipitation in the valley of the Mississippi at 620 cubic miles,
+the discharge of that river into the sea at 107 cubic miles, and
+concludes that "this would leave 513 cubic miles of water to be
+evaporated from this river basin annually."[395] In these and other like
+computations, the water carried down into the earth by capillary and
+larger conduits is wholly lost sight of, and no thought is bestowed upon
+the supply for springs, for common and artesian wells, and for
+underground rivers, like those in the great caves of Kentucky, which may
+gush up in fresh-water currents at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, or
+rise to the light of day in the far-off peninsula of Florida.
+
+The progress of the emphatically modern science of geology has corrected
+these erroneous views, because the observations on which it depends have
+demonstrated not only the existence, but the movement, of water in
+nearly all geological formations, have collected evidence of the
+presence of large reservoirs at greater or less depths beneath surfaces
+of almost every character, and have investigated the rationale of the
+attendant phenomena. The distribution of these waters has been minutely
+studied with reference to a great number of localities, and though the
+actual mode of their vertical and horizontal transmission is still
+involved in much doubt, the laws which determine their aggregation are
+so well understood, that, when the geology of a given district is known,
+it is not difficult to determine at what depth water will be reached by
+the borer, and to what height it will rise.
+
+The same principles have been successfully applied to the discovery of
+small subterranean collections or currents of water, and some persons
+have acquired, by a moderate knowledge of the superficial structure of
+the earth combined with long practice, a skill in the selection of
+favorable places for digging wells which seems to common observers
+little less than miraculous. The Abbe Paramelle--a French ecclesiastic
+who devoted himself for some years to this subject and was extensively
+employed as a well-finder--states, in his work on Fountains, that in the
+course of thirty-four years he had pointed out more than ten thousand
+subterranean springs, and though his geological speculations were often
+erroneous, the highest scientific authorities in Europe have testified
+to the great practical value of his methods, and the almost infallible
+certainty of his predictions.[396]
+
+Babinet quotes a French proverb, "Summer rain wets nothing," and
+explains it as meaning that the water of such rains is "almost totally
+taken up by evaporation." "The rains of summer," he adds, "however
+abundant they may be, do not penetrate the soil to a greater depth than
+15 or 20 centimetres. In summer the evaporating power of the heat is
+five or six times as great as in winter, and this power is exerted by an
+atmosphere capable of containing five times as much vapor as in winter."
+"A stratum of snow which prevents evaporation [from the soil] causes
+almost all the water that composes it to filter down into the earth, and
+form a reserve for springs, wells, and rivers which could not be
+supplied by any amount of summer rain." "This latter--useful, indeed
+like dew, to vegetation--does not penetrate the soil and accumulate a
+store to feed springs and to be brought up by them to the open
+air."[397] This conclusion, however applicable it may be to the climate
+and soil of France, is too broadly stated to be accepted as a general
+truth, and in countries where the precipitation is small in the winter
+months, familiar observation shows that the quantity of water yielded by
+deep wells and natural springs depends not less on the rains of summer
+than on those of the rest of the year, and, consequently, that much of
+the precipitation of that season must find its way to strata too deep to
+lose water by evaporation.
+
+The supply of subterranean reservoirs and currents, as well as of
+springs, is undoubtedly derived chiefly from infiltration, and hence it
+must be affected by all changes of the natural surface that accelerate
+or retard the drainage of the soil, or that either promote or obstruct
+evaporation from it. It has sufficiently appeared from what has gone
+before, that the spontaneous drainage of cleared ground is more rapid
+than that of the forest, and consequently, that the felling of the
+woods, as well as the draining of swamps, deprives the subterranean
+waters of accessions which would otherwise be conveyed to them by
+infiltration. The same effect is produced by artificial contrivances for
+drying the soil either by open ditches or by underground pipes or
+channels, and in proportion as the sphere of these operations is
+extended, the effect of them cannot fail to make itself more and more
+sensibly felt in the diminished supply of water furnished by wells and
+running springs.[398]
+
+It is undoubtedly true that loose soils, stripped of vegetation and
+broken up by the plough or other processes of cultivation, may, until
+again carpeted by grasses or other plants, absorb more rain and snow
+water than when they were covered by a natural growth; but it is also
+true that the evaporation from such soils is augmented in a still
+greater proportion. Rain scarcely penetrates beneath the sod of grass
+ground, but runs off over the surface; and after the heaviest showers a
+ploughed field will often be dried by evaporation before the water can
+be carried off by infiltration, while the soil of a neighboring grove
+will remain half saturated for weeks together. Sandy soils frequently
+rest on a tenacious subsoil, at a moderate depth, as is usually seen in
+the pine plains of the United States, where pools of rain water collect
+in slight depressions on the surface of earth, the upper stratum of
+which is as porous as a sponge. In the open grounds such pools are very
+soon dried up by the sun and wind; in the woods they remain unevaporated
+long enough for the water to diffuse itself laterally until it finds, in
+the subsoil, crevices through which it may escape, or slopes which it
+may follow to their outcrop or descend along them to lower strata.
+
+The readiness with which water not obstructed by impermeable strata
+diffuses itself through the earth in all directions--and, consequently,
+the importance of keeping up the supply of subterranean reservoirs--find
+a familiar illustration in the effect of paving the ground about the
+stems of vines and trees. The surface earth around the trunk of a tree
+may be made perfectly impervious to water, by flag stones and cement,
+for a distance greater than the spread of the roots; and yet the tree
+will not suffer for want of moisture, except in droughts severe enough
+sensibly to affect the supply in deep wells and springs. Both forest and
+fruit trees grow well in cities where the streets and courts are closely
+paved, and where even the lateral access of water to the roots is more
+or less obstructed by deep cellars and foundation walls. The deep-lying
+veins and sheets of water, supplied by infiltration from above, send up
+moisture by capillary attraction, and the pavement prevents the soil
+beneath it from losing its humidity by evaporation. Hence, city-grown
+trees find moisture enough for their roots, and though plagued with
+smoke and dust, often retain their freshness while those planted in the
+open fields, where sun and wind dry up the soil faster than the
+subterranean fountains can water it, are withering from drought. Without
+the help of artificial conduit or of water carrier, the Thames and the
+Seine refresh the ornamental trees that shade the thoroughfares of
+London and of Paris, and beneath the hot and reeking mould of Egypt, the
+Nile sends currents to the extremest border of its valley.[399]
+
+
+_Artesian Wells._
+
+The existence of artesian wells depends upon that of subterranean
+reservoirs and rivers, and the supply yielded by borings is regulated by
+the abundance of such sources. The waters of the earth are, in many
+cases, derived from superficial currents which are seen to pour into
+chasms opened, as it were, expressly for their reception; and in others
+where no apertures in the crust of the earth have been detected, their
+existence is proved by the fact that artesian wells sometimes bring up
+from great depths seeds, leaves, and even living fish, which must have
+been carried down through channels large enough to admit a considerable
+stream. But in general, the sheets and currents of water reached by deep
+boring appear to be primarily due to infiltration from highlands where
+the water is first collected in superficial or subterranean reservoirs.
+By means of channels conforming to the dip of the strata, these
+reservoirs communicate with the lower basins, and exert upon them a
+fluid pressure sufficient to raise a column to the surface, whenever an
+orifice is opened.[400] The water delivered by an artesian well is,
+therefore, often derived from distant sources, and may be wholly
+unaffected by geographical or meteorological changes in its immediate
+neighborhood, while the same changes may quite dry up common wells and
+springs which are fed only by the local infiltration of their own narrow
+basins.
+
+In most cases, artesian wells have been bored for purely economical or
+industrial purposes, such as to obtain good water for domestic use or
+for driving light machinery, to reach saline or other mineral springs,
+and recently, in America, to open fountains of petroleum or rock oil.
+The geographical and geological effects of such abstraction of fluids
+from the bowels of the earth are too remote and uncertain to be here
+noticed;[401] but artesian wells have lately been employed in Algeria
+for a purpose which has even now a substantial, and may hereafter
+acquire a very great geographical importance. It was observed by many
+earlier as well as recent travellers in the East, among whom Shaw
+deserves special mention, that the Libyan desert, bordering upon the
+cultivated shores of the Mediterranean, appeared in many places to rest
+upon a subterranean lake at an accessible distance below the surface.
+The Moors are vaguely said to have _bored_ artesian wells down to this
+reservoir, to obtain water for domestic use and irrigation, but I do
+not find such wells described by any trustworthy traveller, and the
+universal astonishment and incredulity with which the native tribes
+viewed the operations of the French engineers sent into the desert for
+that purpose, are a sufficient proof that this mode of reaching the
+subterranean waters was new to them. They were, however, aware of the
+existence of water below the sands, and were dexterous in digging
+wells--square shafts lined with a framework of palm-tree stems--to the
+level of the sheet. The wells so constructed, though not technically
+artesian wells, answer the same purpose; for the water rises to the
+surface and flows over it as from a spring.[402]
+
+These wells, however, are too few and too scanty in supply to serve any
+other purposes than the domestic wells of other countries, and it is but
+recently that the transformation of desert into cultivable land by this
+means has been seriously attempted. The French Government has bored a
+large number of artesian wells in the Algerian desert within a few
+years, and the native sheikhs are beginning to avail themselves of the
+process. Every well becomes the nucleus of a settlement proportioned to
+the supply of water, and before the end of the year 1860, several nomade
+tribes had abandoned their wandering life, established themselves around
+the wells, and planted more than 30,000 palm trees, besides other
+perennial vegetables.[403] The water is found at a small depth,
+generally from 100 to 200 feet, and though containing too large a
+proportion of mineral matter to be acceptable to a European palate, it
+answers well for irrigation, and does not prove unwholesome to the
+natives.
+
+The most obvious use of artesian wells in the desert at present is that
+of creating stations for the establishment of military posts and halting
+places for the desert traveller; but if the supply of water shall prove
+adequate for the indefinite extension of the system, it is probably
+destined to produce a greater geographical transformation than has ever
+been effected by any scheme of human improvement. The most striking
+contrast of landscape scenery that nature brings near together in time
+or place, is that between the greenery of the tropics, or of a northern
+summer, and the snowy pall of leafless winter. Next to this in startling
+novelty of effect, we must rank the sudden transition from the shady and
+verdant oasis of the desert to the bare and burning party-colored ocean
+of sand and rock which surrounds it.[404] The most sanguine believer in
+indefinite human progress hardly expects that man's cunning will
+accomplish the universal fufilment of the prophecy, "the desert shall
+blossom as the rose," in its literal sense; but sober geographers have
+thought the future conversion of the sand plains of Northern Africa into
+fruitful gardens, by means of artesian wells, not an improbable
+expectation. They have gone farther, and argued that, if the soil were
+covered with fields and forests, vegetation would call down moisture
+from the Libyan sky, and that the showers which are now wasted on the
+sea, or so often deluge Southern Europe with destructive inundation,
+would in part be condensed over the arid wastes of Africa, and thus,
+without further aid from man, bestow abundance on regions which nature
+seems to have condemned to perpetual desolation.
+
+An equally bold speculation, founded on the well-known fact, that the
+temperature of the earth and of its internal waters increases as we
+descend beneath the surface, has suggested that artesian wells might
+supply heat for industrial and domestic purposes, for hot-house
+cultivation, and even for the local amelioration of climate. The success
+with which Count Lardarello has employed natural hot springs for the
+evaporation of water charged with boracic acid, and other fortunate
+applications of the heat of thermal sources, lend some countenance to
+the latter project; but both must, for the present, be ranked among the
+vague possibilities of science, not regarded as probable future triumphs
+of man over nature.
+
+
+_Artificial Springs._
+
+A more plausible and inviting scheme is that of the creation of
+perennial springs by husbanding rain and snow water, storing it up in
+artificial reservoirs of earth, and filtering it through purifying
+strata, in analogy with the operations of nature. The sagacious
+Palissy--starting from the theory that all springs are primarily derived
+from precipitation, and reasoning justly on the accumulation and
+movement of water in the earth--proposed to reduce theory to practice,
+and to imitate the natural processes by which rain is absorbed by the
+earth and given out again in running fountains. "When I had long and
+diligently considered the cause of the springing of natural fountains
+and the places where they be wont to issue," says he, "I did plainly
+perceive, at last, that they do proceed and are engendered of nought but
+the rains. And it is this, look you, which hath moved me to enterprise
+the gathering together of rain water after the manner of nature, and the
+most closely according to her fashion that I am able; and I am well
+assured that by following the formulary of the Supreme Contriver of
+fountains, I can make springs, the water whereof shall be as good and
+pure and clear as of such which be natural."[405] Palissy discusses the
+subject of the origin of springs at length and with much ability,
+dwelling specially on infiltration, and, among other things, thus
+explains the frequency of springs in mountainous regions: "Having well
+considered the which, thou mayest plainly see the reason why there be
+more springs and rivulets proceeding from the mountains than from the
+rest of the earth; which is for no other cause but that the rocks and
+mountains do retain the water of the rains like vessels of brass. And
+the said waters falling upon the said mountains descend continually
+through the earth, and through crevices, and stop not till they find
+some place that is bottomed with stone or close and thick rocks; and
+they rest upon such bottom until they find some channel or other manner
+of issue, and then they flow out in springs or brooks or rivers,
+according to the greatness of the reservoirs and of the outlets
+thereof."[406]
+
+After a full exposition of his theory, Palissy proceeds to describe his
+method of creating springs, which is substantially the same as that
+lately proposed by Babinet in the following terms: "Choose a piece of
+ground containing four or five acres, with a sandy soil, and with a
+gentle slope to determine the flow of the water. Along its upper line,
+dig a trench five or six feet deep and six feet wide. Level the bottom
+of the trench, and make it impermeable by paving, by macadamizing, by
+bitumen, or, more simply and cheaply, by a layer of clay. By the side of
+this trench dig another, and throw the earth from it into the first, and
+so on until you have rendered the subsoil of the whole parcel
+impermeable to rain water. Build a wall along the lower line with an
+aperture in the middle for the water, and plant fruit or other low trees
+upon the whole, to shade the ground and check the currents of air which
+promote evaporation. This will infallibly give you a good spring which
+will flow without intermission and supply the wants of a whole hamlet or
+a large chateau."[407] Babinet states that the whole amount of
+precipitation on a reservoir of the proposed area, in the climate of
+Paris, would be about 13,000 cubic yards, not above one half of which,
+he thinks, would be lost, and, of course, the other half would remain
+available to supply the spring. I much doubt whether this expectation
+would be realized in practice, in its whole extent; for if Babinet is
+right in supposing that the summer rain is wholly evaporated, the winter
+rains, being much less in quantity, would hardly suffice to keep the
+earth saturated and give off so large a surplus.
+
+The method of Palissy, though, as I have said, similar in principle to
+that of Babinet, would be cheaper of execution, and, at the same time,
+more efficient. He proposes the construction of relatively small
+filtering receptacles, into which he would conduct the rain falling upon
+a large area of rocky hillside, or other sloping ground not readily
+absorbing water. This process would, in all probability, be a very
+successful, as well as an inexpensive, mode of economizing atmospheric
+precipitation, and compelling the rain and snow to form perennial
+fountains at will.
+
+
+_Economizing Precipitation._
+
+The methods suggested by Palissy and by Babinet are of limited
+application, and designed only to supply a sufficient quantity of water
+for the domestic use of small villages or large private establishments.
+Dumas has proposed a much more extensive system for collecting and
+retaining the whole precipitation in considerable valleys, and storing
+it in reservoirs, whence it is to be drawn for household and mechanical
+purposes, for irrigation, and, in short, for all the uses to which the
+water of natural springs and brooks is applicable. His plan consists in
+draining both surface and subsoil, by means of conduits differing in
+construction according to local circumstances, but in the main not
+unlike those employed in improved agriculture, collecting the water in a
+central channel, securing its proper filterage, checking its too rapid
+flow by barriers at convenient points, and finally receiving the whole
+in spacious covered reservoirs, from which it may be discharged in a
+constant flow or at intervals as convenience may dictate.[408]
+
+There is no reasonable doubt that a very wide employment of these
+various contrivances for economizing and supplying water is practicable,
+and the expediency of resorting to them is almost purely an economical
+question. There appears to be no serious reason to apprehend collateral
+evils from them, and in fact all of them, except artesian wells, are
+simply indirect methods of returning to the original arrangements of
+nature, or, in other words, of restoring the fluid circulation of the
+globe; for when the earth was covered with the forest, perennial springs
+gushed from the foot of every hill, brooks flowed down the bed of every
+valley. The partial recovery of the fountains and rivulets which once
+abundantly watered the face of the agricultural world seems practicable
+by such means, even without any general replanting of the forests; and
+the cost of one year's warfare, if judiciously expended in a combination
+of both methods of improvement, would secure, to almost every country
+that man has exhausted, an amelioration of climate, a renovated
+fertility of soil, and a general physical improvement, which might
+almost be characterized as a new creation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SANDS.
+
+ORIGIN OF SAND--SAND NOW CARRIED DOWN TO THE SEA--THE SANDS OF EGYPT AND
+THE ADJACENT DESERT----THE SUEZ CANAL----THE SANDS OF EGYPT--COAST DUNES
+AND SAND PLAINS--SAND BANKS--DUNES ON COAST OF AMERICA--DUNES OF WESTERN
+EUROPE--FORMATION OF DUNES--CHARACTER OF DUNE SAND--INTERIOR STRUCTURE
+OF DUNES--FORM OF DUNES--GEOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF DUNES--INLAND DUNES--
+AGE, CHARACTER, AND PERMANENCE OF DUNES--USE OF DUNES AS BARRIER AGAINST
+THE SEA--ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA--THE LIIMFJORD--ENCROACHMENTS OF THE
+SEA--DRIFTING OF DUNE SANDS--DUNES OF GASCONY--DUNES OF DENMARK--DUNES
+OF PRUSSIA--ARTIFICIAL FORMATION OF DUNES--TREES SUITABLE FOR DUNE
+PLANTATIONS--EXTENT OF DUNES IN EUROPE--DUNE VINEYARDS OF CAPE BRETON--
+REMOVAL OF DUNES--INLAND SAND PLAINS--THE LANDES OF GASCONY--THE BELGIAN
+CAMPINE--SANDS AND STEPPES OF EASTERN EUROPE--ADVANTAGES OF RECLAIMING
+DUNES--GOVERNMENT WORKS OF IMPROVEMENT.
+
+
+_Origin of Sand._
+
+Sand, which is found in beds or strata at the bottom of the sea or in
+the channels of rivers, as well as in extensive deposits upon or beneath
+the surface of the dry land, appears to consist essentially of the
+detritus of rocks. It is not always by any means clear through what
+agency the solid rock has been reduced to a granular condition; for
+there are beds of quartzose sand, where the sharp, angular shape of the
+particles renders it highly improbable that they have been formed by
+gradual abrasion and attrition, and where the supposition of a crushing
+mechanical force seems equally inadmissible. In common sand, the quartz
+grains are the most numerous; but this is not a proof that the rocks
+from which these particles were derived were wholly, or even chiefly,
+quartzose in character; for, in many composite rocks, as, for example,
+in the granitic group, the mica, felspar, and hornblende are more easily
+decomposed by chemical action, or disintegrated, comminuted, and reduced
+to an impalpable state by mechanical force, than the quartz. In the
+destruction of such rocks, therefore, the quartz would survive the other
+ingredients, and remain unmixed, when they had been decomposed and had
+entered into new chemical combinations, or been ground to slime and
+washed away by water currents.
+
+The greater or less specific gravity of the different constituents of
+rock doubtless aids in separating them into distinct masses when once
+disintegrated, though there are veined and stratified beds of sand where
+the difference between the upper and lower layers, in this respect, is
+too slight to be supposed capable of effecting a complete
+separation.[409] In cases where rock has been reduced to sandy fragments
+by heat, or by obscure chemical and other molecular forces, the sandbeds
+may remain undisturbed, and represent, in the series of geological
+strata, the solid formations from which they were derived. The large
+masses of sand not found in place have been transported and accumulated
+by water or by wind, the former being generally considered the most
+important of these agencies; for the extensive deposits of the Sahara,
+of the deserts of Persia, and of that of Gobi, are commonly supposed to
+have been swept together or distributed by marine currents, and to have
+been elevated above the ocean by the same means as other upheaved
+strata.
+
+Meteoric and mechanical influences are still active in the reduction of
+rocks to a fragmentary state; but the quantity of sand now transported
+to the sea seems to be comparatively inconsiderable, because--not to
+speak of the absence of diluvial action--the number of torrents emptying
+directly into the sea is much less than it was at earlier periods. The
+formation of alluvial plains in maritime bays, by the sedimentary matter
+brought down from the mountains, has lengthened the flow of such streams
+and converted them very generally into rivers, or rather affluents of
+rivers much younger than themselves. The filling up of the estuaries has
+so reduced the slope of all large and many small rivers, and,
+consequently, so checked the current of what the Germans call their
+_Unterlauf_, or lower course, that they are much less able to transport
+heavy material than at earlier epochs. The slime deposited by rivers at
+their junction with the sea, is usually found to be composed of material
+too finely ground and too light to be denominated sand, and it can be
+abundantly shown that the sandbanks at the outlet of large streams are
+of tidal, not of fluviatile origin, or, in lakes and tideless seas, a
+result of the concurrent action of waves and of wind.
+
+Large deposits of sand, therefore, must in general be considered as of
+ancient, not of recent formation, and many eminent geologists ascribe
+them to diluvial action. Staring has discussed this question very fully,
+with special reference to the sands of the North Sea, the Zuiderzee, and
+the bays and channels of the Dutch coast.[410] His general conclusion
+is, that the rivers of the Netherlands "move sand only by a very slow
+displacement of sandbanks, and do not carry it with them as a suspended
+or floating material." The sands of the German Ocean he holds to be a
+product of the "great North German drift," deposited where they now lie
+before the commencement of the present geological period, and he
+maintains similar opinions with regard to the sands thrown up by the
+Mediterranean at the mouths of the Nile and on the Barbary coast.[411]
+
+
+_Sand now carried to the Sea._
+
+There are, however, cases where mountain streams still bear to the sea
+perhaps relatively small, but certainly absolutely large, amounts of
+disintegrated rock.[412] The quantity of sand and gravel carried into
+the Mediterranean by the torrents of the Maritime Alps, the Ligurian
+Apennines, the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, and the
+mountains of Calabria, is apparently great. In mere mass, it is
+possible, if not probable, that as much rocky material, more or less
+comminuted, is contributed to the basin of the Mediterranean by Europe,
+even excluding the shores of the Adriatic and the Euxine, as is washed
+up from it upon the coasts of Africa and Syria. A great part of this
+material is thrown out again by the waves on the European shores of that
+sea. The harbors of Luni, Albenga, San Remo, and Savona west of Genoa,
+and of Porto Fino on the other side, are filling up, and the coast near
+Carrara and Massa is said to have advanced upon the sea to a distance
+of 475 feet in thirty-three years.[413] Besides this, we have no
+evidence of the existence of deep-water currents in the Mediterranean,
+extensive enough and strong enough to transport quartzose sand across
+the sea. It may be added that much of the rock from which the torrent
+sands of Southern Europe are derived contains little quartz, and hence
+the general character of these sands is such that they must be
+decomposed or ground down to an impalpable slime, long before they could
+be swept over to the African shore.
+
+The torrents of Europe, then, do not at present furnish the material
+which composes the beach sands of Northern Africa, and it is equally
+certain that those sands are not brought down by the rivers of the
+latter continent. They belong to a remote geological period, and have
+been accumulated by causes which we cannot at present assign. The wind
+does not stir water to great depths with sufficient force to disturb the
+bottom,[414] and the sand thrown upon the coast in question must be
+derived from a narrow belt of sea. It must hence, in time, become
+exhausted, and the formation of new sandbanks and dunes upon the
+southern shores of the Mediterranean will cease at last for want of
+material.[415]
+
+But even in the cases where the accumulations of sand in extensive
+deserts appear to be of marine formation, or rather aggregation, and to
+have been brought to their present position by upheaval, they are not
+wholly composed of material collected or distributed by the currents of
+the sea; for, in all such regions, they continue to receive some small
+contributions from the disintegration of the rocks which underlie, or
+crop out through, the superficial deposits. In some instances, too, as
+in Northern Africa, additions are constantly made to the mass by the
+prevalence of sea winds, which transport, or, to speak more precisely,
+roll the finer beach sand to considerable distances into the interior.
+But this is a very slow process, and the exaggerations of travellers
+have diffused a vast deal of popular error on the subject.
+
+
+_Sands of Egypt._
+
+In the narrow valley of the Nile--which, above its bifurcation near
+Cairo, is, throughout Egypt and Nubia, generally bounded by precipitous
+cliffs--wherever a ravine or other considerable depression occurs in the
+wall of rock, one sees what seems a stream of desert sand pouring down,
+and common observers have hence concluded that the whole valley is in
+danger of being buried under a stratum of infertile soil. The ancient
+Egyptians apprehended this, and erected walls, often of unburnt brick,
+across the outlet of gorges and lateral valleys, to check the flow of
+the sand streams. In later ages, these walls have mostly fallen into
+decay, and no preventive measures against such encroachments are now
+resorted to. But the extent of the mischief to the soil of Egypt, and
+the future danger from this source, have been much overrated. The sand
+on the borders of the Nile is neither elevated so high by the wind, nor
+transported by that agency in so great masses, as is popularly supposed;
+and of that which is actually lifted or rolled and finally deposited by
+air currents, a considerable proportion is either calcareous, and,
+therefore, readily decomposable, or in the state of a very fine dust,
+and so, in neither case, injurious to the soil. There are, indeed, both
+in Africa and in Arabia, considerable tracts of fine silicious sand,
+which may be carried far by high winds, but these are exceptional cases,
+and in general the progress of the desert sand is by a rolling motion
+along the surface.[416] So little is it lifted, and so inconsiderable
+is the quantity yet remaining on the borders of Egypt, that a wall four
+or five feet high suffices for centuries to check its encroachments.
+This is obvious to the eye of every observer who prefers the true to the
+marvellous; but the old-world fable of the overwhelming of caravans by
+the fearful simoom--which, even the Arabs no longer repeat, if indeed
+they are the authors of it--is so thoroughly rooted in the imagination
+of Christendom that most desert travellers, of the tourist class, think
+they shall disappoint the readers of their journals if they do not
+recount the particulars of their escape from being buried alive by a
+sand storm, and the popular demand for a "sensation" must be gratified
+accordingly.[417]
+
+Another circumstance is necessary to be considered in estimating the
+danger to which the arable lands of Egypt are exposed. The prevailing
+wind in the valley of the Nile and its borders is from the north, and it
+may be said without exaggeration that the north wind blows for three
+quarters of the year.[418] The effect of winds blowing up the valley is
+to drive the sands of the desert plateau which border it, in a direction
+parallel with the axis of the valley, not transversely to it; and if it
+ran in a straight line, the north wind would carry no desert sand into
+it. There are, however, both curves and angles in its course, and hence,
+wherever its direction deviates from that of the wind, it might receive
+sand drifts from the desert plain through which it runs. But, in the
+course of ages, the winds have, in a great measure, bared the projecting
+points of their ancient deposits, and no great accumulations remain in
+situations from which either a north or a south wind would carry them
+into the valley.[419]
+
+
+_The Suez Canal._
+
+These considerations apply, with equal force, to the supposed danger of
+the obstruction of the Suez Canal by the drifting of the desert sands.
+The winds across the isthmus are almost uniformly from the north, and
+they swept it clean of flying sands long ages since. The traces of the
+ancient canal between the Red Sea and the Nile are easily followed for a
+considerable distance from Suez. Had the drifts upon the isthmus been as
+formidable as some have feared and others have hoped, those traces would
+have been obliterated, and Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes filled up,
+many centuries ago. The few particles driven by the rare east and west
+winds toward the line of the canal, would easily be arrested by
+plantations or other simple methods, or removed by dredging. The real
+dangers and difficulties of this magnificent enterprise--and they are
+great--consist in the nature of the soil to be removed in order to form
+the line, and especially in the constantly increasing accumulation of
+sea sand at the southern terminus by the tides of the Red Sea, and at
+the northern, by the action of the winds. Both seas are shallow for
+miles from the shore, and the excavation and maintenance of deep
+channels, and of capacious harbors with easy and secure entrances, in
+such localities, is doubtless one of the hardest problems offered to
+modern engineers for practical solution.
+
+
+_Sands of Egypt._
+
+The sand let fall in Egypt by the north wind is derived, not from the
+desert, but from a very different source--the sea. Considerable
+quantities of sand are thrown up by the Mediterranean, at and between
+the mouths of the Nile, and indeed along almost the whole southern coast
+of that sea, and drifted into the interior to distances varying
+according to the force of the wind and the abundance and quality of the
+material. The sand so transported contributes to the gradual elevation
+of the Delta, and of the banks and bed of the river itself. But just in
+proportion as the bed of the stream is elevated, the height of the water
+in the annual inundations is increased also, and as the inclination of
+the channel is diminished, the rapidity of the current is checked, and
+the deposition of the slime it holds in suspension consequently
+promoted. Thus the winds and the water, moving in contrary directions,
+join in producing a common effect.
+
+The sand, blown over the Delta and the cultivated land higher up the
+stream during the inundation, is covered or mixed with the fertile earth
+brought down by the river, and no serious injury is sustained from it.
+That spread over the same ground after the water has subsided, and
+during the short period when the soil is not stirred by cultivation or
+covered by the flood, forms a thin pellicle over the surface as far as
+it extends, and serves to divide and distinguish the successive layers
+of slime deposited by the annual inundations. The particles taken up by
+the wind on the sea beach are borne onward, by a hopping motion, or
+rolled along the surface, until they are arrested by the temporary
+cessation of the wind, by vegetation, or by some other obstruction, and
+they may, in process of time, accumulate in large masses, under the lee
+of rocky projections, buildings, or other barriers which break the force
+of the wind.
+
+In these facts we find the true explanation of the sand drifts, which
+have half buried the Sphinx and so many other ancient monuments in that
+part of Egypt. These drifts, as I have said, are not primarily from the
+desert, but from the sea; and, as might be supposed from the distance
+they have travelled, they have been long in gathering. While Egypt was a
+great and flourishing kingdom, measures were taken to protect its
+territory against the encroachment of sand, whether from the desert or
+from the sea; but the foreign conquerors, who destroyed so many of its
+religious monuments, did not spare its public works, and the process of
+physical degradation undoubtedly began as early as the Persian invasion.
+The urgent necessity, which has compelled all the successive tyrannies
+of Egypt to keep up some of the canals and other arrangements for
+irrigation, was not felt with respect to the advancement of the sands;
+for their progress was so slow as hardly to be perceptible in the course
+of a single reign, and long experience has shown that, from the natural
+effect of the inundations, the cultivable soil of the valley is, on the
+whole, trenching upon the domain of the desert, not retreating before
+it.
+
+The oases of the Libyan, as well as of many Asiatic deserts, have no
+such safeguards. The sands are fast encroaching upon them, and threaten
+soon to engulf them, unless man shall resort to artesian wells and
+plantations, or to some other efficient means of checking the advance of
+this formidable enemy, in time to save these islands of the waste from
+final destruction.
+
+Accumulations of sand are, in certain cases, beneficial as a protection
+against the ravages of the sea; but, in general, the vicinity, and
+especially the shifting of bodies of this material, are destructive to
+human industry, and hence, in civilized countries, measures are taken to
+prevent its spread. This, however, can be done only where the population
+is large and enlightened, and the value of the soil, or of the
+artificial erections and improvements upon it, is considerable. Hence in
+the deserts of Africa and of Asia, and the inhabited lands which border
+on them, no pains are usually taken to check the drifts, and when once
+the fields, the houses, the springs, or the canals of irrigation are
+covered or choked, the district is abandoned without a struggle, and
+surrendered to perpetual desolation.[420]
+
+
+_Sand Dunes and Sand Plains._
+
+Two forms of sand deposit are specially important in European and
+American geography. The one is that of dune or shifting hillock upon the
+coast, the other that of barren plain in the interior. The coast dunes
+are composed of sand washed up from the depths of the sea by the waves,
+and heaped in knolls and ridges by the winds. The sand with which many
+plains are covered, appears sometimes to have been deposited upon them
+while they were yet submerged, sometimes to have been drifted from the
+sea coast, and scattered over them by wind currents, sometimes to have
+been washed upon them by running water. In these latter cases, the
+deposit, though in itself considerable, is comparatively narrow in
+extent and irregular in distribution, while, in the former, it is often
+evenly spread over a very wide surface. In all great bodies of either
+sort, the silicious grains are the principal constituent, though, when
+not resulting from the disintegration of silicious rock and still
+remaining in place, they are generally accompanied with a greater or
+less admixture of other mineral particles, and of animal and vegetable
+remains,[421] and they are, also, usually somewhat changed in
+consistence by the ever-varying conditions of temperature and moisture
+to which they have been exposed since their deposit. Unless the
+proportion of these latter ingredients is so large as to create a
+certain adhesiveness in the mass--in which case it can no longer
+properly be called sand--it is infertile, and, if not charged with
+water, partially agglutinated by iron, lime, or other cement, or
+confined by alluvion resting upon it, it is much inclined to drift,
+whenever, by any chance, the vegetable network which, in most cases,
+thinly clothes and at the same time confines it, is broken.
+
+Human industry has not only fixed the flying dunes, but, by mixing clay
+and other tenacious earths with the superficial stratum of extensive
+sand plains, and by the application of fertilizing substances, it has
+made them abundantly productive of vegetable life. These latter
+processes belong to agriculture and not to geography, and, therefore,
+are not embraced within the scope of the present subject. But the
+preliminary steps, whereby wastes of loose, drifting barren sands are
+transformed into wooded knolls and plains, and finally, through the
+accumulation of vegetable mould, into arable ground, constitute a
+conquest over nature which precedes agriculture--a geographical
+revolution--and, therefore, an account of the means by which the change
+has been effected belongs properly to the history of man's influence on
+the great features of physical geography. I proceed, then, to examine
+the structure of dunes, and to describe the warfare man wages with the
+sand hills, striving on the one hand to maintain and even extend them,
+as a natural barrier against encroachments of the sea, and, on the
+other, to check their moving and wandering propensities, and prevent
+them from trespassing upon the fields he has planted and the habitations
+in which he dwells.
+
+
+_Coast Dunes._
+
+Coast dunes are oblong ridges or round hillocks, formed by the action of
+the wind upon sands thrown up by the waves on the beach of seas, and
+sometimes of fresh-water lakes. On most coasts, the supply of sand for
+the formation of dunes is derived from tidal waves. The flow of the tide
+is more rapid, and consequently its transporting power greater, than
+that of the ebb; the momentum, acquired by the heavy particles in
+rolling in with the water, tends to carry them even beyond the flow of
+the waves; and at the turn of the tide, the water is in a state of
+repose long enough to allow it to let fall much of the solid matter it
+holds in suspension. Hence, on all low, tide-washed coasts of seas with
+sandy bottoms, there exist several conditions favorable to the formation
+of sand deposits along high-water mark.[422] If the land winds are of
+greater frequency, duration, or strength than the sea winds, the sands
+left by the retreating wave will be constantly blown back into the
+water; but if the prevailing air currents are in the opposite direction,
+the sands will soon be carried out of the reach of the highest waves,
+and transported continually farther and farther into the interior of the
+land, unless obstructed by high grounds, vegetation, or other obstacles.
+
+The tide, though a usual, is by no means a necessary condition for the
+accumulations of sand out of which dunes are formed. The Baltic and the
+Mediterranean are almost tideless seas, but there are dunes on the
+Russian and Prussian coasts of the Baltic, and at the mouths of the Nile
+and many other points on the shores of the Mediterranean. The vast
+shoals in the latter sea, known to the ancients as the Greater and
+Lesser Syrtis, are of marine origin. They are still filling up with
+sand, washed up from greater depths, or sometimes drifted from the coast
+in small quantities, and will probably be converted, at some future
+period, into dry land covered with sand hills. There are also extensive
+ranges of dunes upon the eastern shores of the Caspian, and at the
+southern, or rather southeastern extremity of Lake Michigan.[423] There
+is no doubt that this latter lake formerly extended much farther in that
+direction, but its southern portion has gradually shoaled and at last
+been converted into solid land, in consequence of the prevalence of the
+northwest winds. These blow over the lake a large part of the year, and
+create a southwardly set of the currents, which wash up sand from the
+bed of the lake and throw it on shore. Sand is taken up from the beach
+at Michigan City by every wind from that quarter, and, after a heavy
+blow of some hours' duration, sand ridges may be observed on the north
+side of the fences, like the snow wreaths deposited by a drifting wind
+in winter. Some of the particles are carried back by contrary winds, but
+most of them lodge on or behind the dunes, or in the moist soil near the
+lake, or are entangled by vegetables, and tend permanently to elevate
+the level. Like effects are produced by constant sea winds, and dunes
+will generally be formed on all low coasts where such prevail, whether
+in tideless or in tidal waters.
+
+Jobard thus describes the _modus operandi_, under ordinary
+circumstances, at the mouths of the Nile, where a tide can scarcely be
+detected: "When a wave breaks, it deposits an almost imperceptible line
+of fine sand. The next wave brings also its contribution, and shoves the
+preceding line a little higher. As soon as the particles are fairly out
+of the reach of the water they are dried by the heat of the burning sun,
+and immediately seized by the wind and rolled or borne farther inland.
+The gravel is not thrown out by the waves, but rolls backward and
+forward until it is worn down to the state of fine sand, when it, in its
+turn, is cast upon the land and taken up by the wind."[424] This
+description applies only to the common every-day action of wind and
+water; but just in proportion to the increasing force of the wind and
+the waves, there is an increase in the quantity of sand, and in the
+magnitude of the particles carried off from the beach by it, and, of
+course, every storm in a landward direction adds sensibly to the
+accumulation upon the shore.
+
+
+_Sand Banks._
+
+Although dunes, properly so called, are found only on dry land and above
+ordinary high-water mark, and owe their elevation and structure to the
+action of the wind, yet, upon many shelving coasts, accumulations of
+sand much resembling dunes are formed under water at some distance from
+the shore by the oscillations of the waves, and are well known by the
+name of sand banks. They are usually rather ridges than banks, of
+moderate inclination, and with the steepest slope seaward; and their
+form differs from that of dunes only in being lower and more continuous.
+Upon the western coast of the island of Amrum, for example, there are
+three rows of such banks, the summits of which are at a distance of
+perhaps a couple of miles from each other; so that, including the width
+of the banks themselves, the spaces between them, and the breadth of the
+zone of dunes upon the land, the belt of moving sands on that coast is
+probably not less than eight miles wide.
+
+Under ordinary circumstances, sand banks are always rolling landward,
+and they compose the magazine from which the material for the dunes is
+derived. The dunes, in fact, are but aquatic sand banks transferred to
+dry land. The laws of their formation are closely analogous, because the
+action of the two fluids, by which they are respectively accumulated and
+built up, is very similar when brought to bear upon loose particles of
+solid matter. It would, indeed, seem that the slow and comparatively
+regular movements of the heavy, unelastic water ought to affect such
+particles very differently from the sudden and fitful impulses of the
+light and elastic air. But the velocity of the wind currents gives them
+a mechanical force approximating to that of the slower waves, and,
+however difficult it may be to explain all the phenomena that
+characterize the structure of the dunes, observation has proved that it
+is nearly identical with that of submerged sand banks. The differences
+of form are generally ascribable to the greater number and variety of
+surface accidents of the ground on which the sand hills of the land are
+built up, and to the more frequent changes, and wider variety of
+direction, in the courses of the wind.
+
+
+_Dunes on the Coast of America._
+
+Upon the Atlantic coast of the United States, the prevalence of western
+or off-shore winds is unfavorable to the formation of dunes, and, though
+marine currents lodge vast quantities of sand, in the form of banks, on
+that coast, its shores are proportionally more free from sand hills than
+some others of lesser extent. There are, however, very important
+exceptions. The action of the tide throws much sand upon some points of
+the New England coast, as well as upon the beaches of Long Island and
+other more southern shores, and here dunes resembling those of Europe
+are formed. There are also extensive ranges of dunes on the Pacific
+coast of the United States, and at San Francisco they border some of the
+streets of the city.
+
+The dunes of America are far older than her civilization, and the soil
+they threaten or protect possesses, in general, too little value to
+justify any great expenditure in measures for arresting their progress
+or preventing their destruction. Hence, great as is their extent and
+their geographical importance, they have, at present, no such intimate
+relations to human life as to render them objects of special interest in
+the point of view I am taking, and I do not know that the laws of their
+formation and motion have been made a subject of original investigation
+by any American observer.
+
+
+_Dunes of Western Europe._
+
+Upon the western coast of Europe, on the contrary, the ravages
+occasioned by the movement of sand dunes, and the serious consequences
+often resulting from the destruction of them, have long engaged the
+earnest attention of governments and of scientific men, and for nearly a
+century persevering and systematic effort has been made to bring them
+under human control. The subject has been carefully studied in Denmark
+and the adjacent duchies, in Western Prussia, in the Netherlands, and in
+France; and the experiments in the way of arresting the drifting of the
+dunes, and of securing them, and the lands they shelter, from the
+encroachments of the sea, have resulted in the adoption of a system of
+coast improvement substantially the same in all these countries. The
+sands, like the forests, have now their special literature, and the
+volumes and memoirs, which describe them and the processes employed to
+subdue them, are full of scientific interest and of practical
+instruction.[425]
+
+
+_Formation of Dunes._
+
+The laws which govern the formation of dunes are substantially these. We
+have seen that, under certain conditions, sand is accumulated above
+high-water mark on low sea and lake shores. So long as the sand is kept
+wet by the spray or by capillary attraction, it is not disturbed by air
+currents, but as soon as the waves retire sufficiently to allow it to
+dry, it becomes the sport of the wind, and is driven up the gently
+sloping beach until it is arrested by stones, vegetables, or other
+obstructions, and thus an accumulation is formed which constitutes the
+foundation of a dune. However slight the elevation thus created, it
+serves to stop or retard the progress of the sand grains which are
+driven against its shoreward face, and to protect from the further
+influence of the wind the particles which are borne beyond it, or rolled
+over its crest, and fall down behind it. If the shore above the beach
+line were perfectly level and straight, the grass or bushes upon it of
+equal height, the sand thrown up by the waves uniform in size and weight
+of particles as well as in distribution, and if the action of the wind
+were steady and regular, a continuous bank would be formed, everywhere
+alike in height and cross section. But no such constant conditions
+anywhere exist. The banks are curved, broken, unequal in elevation; they
+are sometimes bare, sometimes clothed with vegetables of different
+structure and dimensions; the sand thrown up is variable in quantity and
+character; and the winds are shifting, gusty, vortical, and often
+blowing in very narrow currents. From all these causes, instead of
+uniform hills, there rise irregular rows of sand heaps, and these, as
+would naturally be expected, are of a pyramidal, or rather conical
+shape, and connected at bottom by more or less continuous ridges of the
+same material.
+
+On a receding coast, dunes will not attain so great a height as on more
+secure shores, because they are undermined and carried off before they
+have time to reach their greatest dimensions. Hence, while at sheltered
+points in Southwestern France, there are dunes three hundred feet or
+more in height, those on the Frisic Islands and the exposed parts of the
+coast of Schleswig-Holstein range only from twenty to one hundred feet.
+On the western shores of Africa, it is said that they sometimes attain
+an elevation of six hundred feet. This is one of the very few points
+known to geographers where desert sands are advancing seaward, and here
+they rise to the greatest altitude to which sand grains can be carried
+by the wind.
+
+The hillocks, once deposited, are held together and kept in shape,
+partly by mere gravity, and partly by the slight cohesion of the lime,
+clay, and organic matter mixed with the sand; and it is observed that,
+from capillary attraction, evaporation from lower strata, and retention
+of rain water, they are always moist a little below the surface.[426] By
+successive accumulations, they gradually rise to the height of thirty,
+fifty, sixty, or a hundred feet, and sometimes even much higher. Strong
+winds, instead of adding to their elevation, sweep off loose particles
+from their surface, and these, with others blown over or between them,
+build up a second row of dunes, and so on according to the character of
+the wind, the supply and consistence of the sand, and the face of the
+country. In this way is formed a belt of sand dunes, irregularly
+dispersed and varying much in height and dimensions, and some times many
+miles in breadth. On the Island of Sylt, in the German Sea, where there
+are several rows, the width of the belt is from half a mile to a mile.
+There are similar ranges on the coast of Holland, exceeding two miles in
+breadth, while at the mouths of the Nile they form a zone not less than
+ten miles wide. The base of some of the dunes in the Delta of the Nile
+is reached by the river during the annual inundation, and the
+infiltration of the water, which contains lime, has converted the lower
+strata into a silicious limestone, or rather a calcareous sandstone, and
+thus afforded an opportunity of studying the structure of that rock in a
+locality where its origin and mode of aggregation and solidification are
+known.
+
+
+_Character of Dune Sand._
+
+"Dune sand," says Staring, "consists of well-rounded grains of quartz,
+more or less colored by iron, and often mingled with fragments of
+shells, small indeed, but still visible to the naked eye.[427] These
+fragments are not constant constituents of dune sand. They are sometimes
+found at the very summits of the hillocks, as at Overveen; in the King's
+Dune, near Egmond, they form a coarse calcareous gravel very largely
+distributed through the sand, while the interior dunes between Haarlem
+and Warmond exhibit no trace of them. It is yet undecided whether the
+presence or absence of these fragments is determined by the period of
+the formation of the dunes, or whether it depends on a difference in the
+process by which different dunes have been accumulated. Land shells,
+such as snails, for example, are found on the surface of the dunes in
+abundance, and many of the shelly fragments in the interior of the
+hillocks may be derived from the same source."[428]
+
+J. G. Kohl has some poetical thoughts upon the origin and character of
+the dune sands, which are worth quoting:
+
+"The sand was composed of pure transparent quartz. I could not observe
+this sand without the greatest admiration. If it is the product of the
+waves, breaking and crushing flints and fragments of quartz against each
+other, it is a result which could be brought about only in the course of
+countless ages. We need not lift ourselves to the stars, to their
+incalculable magnitudes and distances and numbers, in order to feel the
+giddiness of astonishment. Here, upon earth, in the simple sand, we find
+miracle enough. Think of the number of sand grains contained in a single
+dune, then of all the dunes upon this widely extended coast--not to
+speak of the innumerable grains in the Arabian, African, and Prussian
+deserts--this, of itself, is sufficient to overwhelm a thoughtful fancy.
+How long, how many times must the waves have risen and sunk in order to
+reduce these vast heaps to powder!
+
+"During the whole time I spent on this coast, I had always some sand in
+my fingers, was rubbing and rolling it about, examining it on all sides,
+holding a little shining grain on the tip of my finger, and thinking to
+myself how, in its corners, its angles, its whole configuration, it
+might very probably have a history longer than that of the old German
+nation--possibly longer than that of the human race. Where was the
+original quartz crystal, of which this is a fragment, first formed? To
+what was it once fixed? What power broke it loose? How was it beaten
+smaller and ever smaller by the waves? They tossed it, for aeons, to and
+fro upon the beach, rolled it up and down, forced it to make thousands
+and thousands of daily voyages for millions and millions of days. Then
+the wind bore it away, and used it in building up a dune; there it lay
+for centuries, packed in with its fellows, protecting the marshes and
+cherished by the inhabitants, till, seized again by the pursuing sea, it
+fell once more into the water, there to begin the endless dance
+anew--and again to be swept away by the wind--and again to find rest in
+the dunes, a protection and a blessing to the coast. There is something
+mysterious about such a grain of sand, and at last I went so far as to
+fancy a little immortal spark linked with each one, presiding over its
+destiny, and sharing its vicissitudes. Could we arm our eyes with a
+microscope, and then dive, like a sparling, into one of these dunes, the
+pile, which is in fact only a heap of countless little crystal blocks,
+would strike us as the most marvellous building upon earth. The sunbeams
+would pass, with illuminating power, through all these little
+crystalline bodies. We should see how every sand grain is formed, by
+what multifarious little facets it is bounded, we should even discover
+that it is itself composed of many distinct particles."[429]
+
+Sand concretions form within the dunes and especially in the depressions
+between them. These are sometimes so extensive and impervious as to
+retain a sufficient supply of water to feed perennial springs, and to
+form small permanent ponds, and they are a great impediment to the
+penetration of roots, and consequently to the growth of trees planted,
+or germinating from self-sown seeds, upon the dunes.[430]
+
+
+_Interior Structure of Dunes._
+
+The interior structure of the dunes, the arrangement of their particles,
+is not, as might be expected, that of an unorganized, confused heap, but
+they show a strong tendency to stratification. This is a point of much
+geological interest, because it indicates that sandstone may owe its
+stratified character to the action of wind as well as of water. The
+origin and peculiar character of these layers are due to a variety of
+causes. A southwest wind and current may deposit upon a dune a stratum
+of a given color and mineral composition, and this may be succeeded by a
+northwest wind and current, bringing with them particles of a different
+hue, constitution, and origin.
+
+Again, if we suppose a violent tempest to strew the beach with sand
+grains very different in magnitude and specific gravity, and, after the
+sand is dry, to be succeeded by a gentle breeze, it is evident that only
+the lighter particles will be taken up and carried to the dunes. If,
+after some time, the wind freshens, heavier grains will be transported
+and deposited on the former, and a still stronger succeeding gale will
+roll up yet larger kernels. Each of these deposits will form a stratum.
+If we suppose the tempest to be followed, after the sand is dry, not by
+a gentle breeze, but by a wind powerful enough to lift at the same time
+particles of very various magnitudes and weights, the heaviest will
+often lodge on the dune while the lighter will be carried farther. This
+would produce a stratum of coarse sand, and the same effect might result
+from the blowing away of light particles out of a mixed layer, while the
+heavier remained undisturbed.[431] Still another cause of
+stratification may be found in the occasional interposition of a thin
+layer of leaves or other vegetable remains between successive deposits,
+and this I imagine to be more frequent than has been generally supposed.
+
+The eddies of strong winds between the hillocks must also occasion
+disturbances and re-arrangements of the sand layers, and it seems
+possible that the irregular thickness and the strange contortions of the
+strata of the sandstone at Petra may be due to some such cause. A
+curious observation of Professor Forchhammer suggests an explanation of
+another peculiarity in the structure of the sandstone of Mount Seir. He
+describes dunes in Jutland, composed of yellow quartzose sand intermixed
+with black titanian iron. When the wind blows over the surface of the
+dunes, it furrows the sand with alternate ridges and depressions,
+ripples, in short, like those of water. The swells, the dividing ridges
+of the system of sand ripples, are composed of the light grains of
+quartz, while the heavier iron rolls into the depressions between, and
+thus the whole surface of the dune appears as if covered with a fine
+black network.
+
+
+_Form of Dunes._
+
+The sea side of dunes, being more exposed to the caprices of the wind,
+is more irregular in form than the lee or land side, where the
+arrangement of the particles is affected by fewer disturbing and
+conflicting influences. Hence, the stratification of the windward slope
+is somewhat confused, while the sand on the lee side is found to be
+disposed in more regular beds, inclining landward, and with the largest
+particles lowest, where their greater weight would naturally carry them.
+The lee side of the dunes, being thus formed of sand deposited according
+to the laws of gravity, is very uniform in its slope, which, according
+to Forchhammer, varies little from an angle of 30 deg. with the horizon,
+while the more exposed and irregular weather side lies at an inclination
+of from 5 deg. to 10 deg.. When, however, the outer tier of dunes is formed so
+near the waterline as to be exposed to the immediate action of the
+waves, it is undermined, and the face of the hill is very steep and
+sometimes nearly perpendicular.
+
+
+_Geological Importance of Dunes._
+
+These observations, and other facts which a more attentive study on the
+spot would detect, might furnish the means of determining interesting
+and important questions concerning geological formations in localities
+very unlike those where dunes are now thrown up. For example, Studer
+supposes that the drifting sand hills of the African desert were
+originally coast dunes, and that they have been transported to their
+present position far in the interior, by the rolling and shifting
+leeward movement to which all dunes not covered with vegetation are
+subject. The present general drift of the sands of that desert appears
+to be to the southwest and west, the prevailing winds blowing from the
+northeast and east; but it has been doubted whether the shoals of the
+western coast of Northern Africa, and the sands upon that shore, are
+derived from the bottom of the Atlantic, in the usual manner, or, by an
+inverse process, from those of the Sahara. The latter, as has been
+before remarked, is probably the truth, though observations are wanting
+to decide the question.[432] There is nothing violently improbable in
+the supposition that they may have been first thrown up by the
+Mediterranean on its Libyan coast, and thence blown south and west over
+the vast space they now cover. But whatever has been their source and
+movement, they can hardly fail to have left on their route some
+sandstone monuments to mark their progress, such, for example, as we
+have seen are formed from the dune sand at the mouth of the Nile; and it
+is conceivable that the character of the drifting sands themselves, and
+of the conglomerates and sandstones to whose formation they have
+contributed, might furnish satisfactory evidence as to their origin,
+their starting point, and the course by which they have wandered so far
+from the sea.[433]
+
+If the sand of coast dunes is, as Staring describes it, composed chiefly
+of well-rounded quartzose grains, fragments of shells, and other
+constant ingredients, it would often be recognizable as coast sand, in
+its agglutinate state of sandstone. The texture of this rock varies from
+an almost imperceptible fineness of grain to great coarseness, and
+affords good facilities for microscopic observation of its structure.
+There are sandstones, such, for example, as are used for grindstones,
+where the grit, as it is called, is of exceeding sharpness; others where
+the angles of the grains are so obtuse that they scarcely act at all on
+hard metals. The former may be composed of grains of rock, disintegrated
+indeed, and recemented together, but not, in the meanwhile, much rolled;
+the latter, of sands long washed by the sea, and drifted by land winds.
+There is, indeed, so much resemblance between the effects of driving
+winds and of rolling water upon light bodies, that there would be
+difficulty in distinguishing them;[434] but after all, it is not
+probable that sandstone, composed of grains thrown up from the salt sea,
+and long tossed by the winds, would be identical in its structure with
+that formed from fragments of rock crushed by mechanical force, or
+disintegrated by heat, and again agglutinated without much exposure to
+the action of moving water.[435]
+
+
+_Inland Dunes._
+
+I have met with some observations indicating a structural difference
+between interior and coast dunes, which might perhaps be recognized in
+the sandstones formed from these two species of sand hills respectively.
+In the great American desert between the Andes and the Pacific, Meyen
+found sand heaps of a perfect falciform shape.[436] They were from seven
+to fifteen feet high, the chord of their arc measuring from twenty to
+seventy paces. The slope of the convex face is described as very small,
+that of the concave as high as 70 deg. or 80 deg., and their surfaces were
+rippled. No smaller dunes were observed, nor any in the process of
+formation. The concave side uniformly faced the northwest, except toward
+the centre of the desert, where, for a distance of one or two hundred
+paces, they gradually opened to the west, and then again gradually
+resumed the former position.
+
+Poeppig ascribes a falciform shape to the movable, a conical to the fixed
+dunes, or _medanos_, of the same desert. "The medanos," he observes,
+"are hillock-like elevations of sand, some having a firm, others a loose
+base. The former [latter], which are always crescent shaped, are from
+ten to twenty feet high, and have an acute crest. The inner side is
+perpendicular, and the outer or bow side forms an angle with a steep
+inclination downward. When driven by violent winds, the medanos pass
+rapidly over the plains. The smaller and lighter ones move quickly
+forward, before the larger; but the latter soon overtake and crush them,
+whilst they are themselves shivered by the collision. These medanos
+assume all sorts of extraordinary figures, and sometimes move along the
+plain in rows forming most intricate labyrinths. * * A plain often
+appears to be covered with a row of medanos, and some days afterward it
+is again restored to its level and uniform aspect. * * *
+
+"The medanos with immovable bases are formed on the blocks of rocks
+which are scattered about the plain. The sand is driven against them by
+the wind, and as soon as it reaches the top point, it descends on the
+other side until that is likewise covered; thus gradually arises a
+conical-formed hill. Entire hillock chains with acute crests are formed
+in a similar manner. * * * On their southern declivities are found vast
+masses of sand, drifted thither by the mid-day gales. The northern
+declivity, though not steeper than the southern, is only sparingly
+covered with sand. If a hillock chain somewhat distant from the sea
+extends in a line parallel with the Andes, namely, from S. S. E. to N.
+N. W., the western declivity is almost entirely free of sand, as it is
+driven to the plain below by the southeast wind, which constantly
+alternates with the wind from the south."[437]
+
+It is difficult to reconcile this description with that of Meyen, but if
+confidence is to be reposed in the accuracy of either observer, the
+formation of the sand hills in question must be governed by very
+different laws from those which determine the structure of coast dunes.
+Captain Gilliss, of the American navy, found the sand hills of the
+Peruvian desert to be in general crescent shaped, as described by Meyen,
+and a similar structure is said to characterize the inland dunes of the
+Llano Estacado and other plateaus of the North American desert, though
+these latter are of greater height and other dimensions than those
+described by Meyen. There is no very obvious explanation of this
+difference in form between maritime and inland sand hills, and the
+subject merits investigation.[438]
+
+
+_Age, Character, and Permanence of Dunes._
+
+The origin of most great lines of dunes goes back past all history.
+There are on many coasts, several distinct ranges of sand hills which
+seem to be of very different ages, and to have been formed under
+different relative conditions of land and water.[439] In some cases,
+there has been an upheaval of the coast line since the formation of the
+oldest hillocks, and these have become inland dunes, while younger rows
+have been thrown up on the new beach laid bare by elevation of the sea
+bed. Our knowledge of the mode of their first accumulation is derived
+from observation of the action of wind and water in the few instances
+where, with or without the aid of man, new coast dunes have been
+accumulated, and of the influence of wind alone in elevating new sand
+heaps inland of the coast tier, when the outer rows are destroyed by the
+sea, as also when the sodded surface of ancient sands has been broken,
+and the subjacent strata laid open to the air.
+
+It is a question of much interest, in what degree the naked condition of
+most dunes is to be ascribed to the improvidence and indiscretion of
+man. There are, in Western France, extensive ranges of dunes covered
+with ancient and dense forests, while the recently formed sand hills
+between them and the sea are bare of vegetation, and are rapidly
+advancing upon the wooded dunes, which they threaten to bury beneath
+their drifts. Between the old dunes and the new, there is no
+discoverable difference in material or in structure; but the modern sand
+hills are naked and shifting, the ancient, clothed with vegetation and
+fixed. It has been conjectured that artificial methods of confinement
+and plantation were employed by the primitive inhabitants of Gaul; and
+Laval, basing his calculations on the rate of annual movement of the
+shifting dunes, assigns the fifth century of the Christian era as the
+period when these processes were abandoned.[440]
+
+There is no historical evidence that the Gauls were acquainted with
+artificial methods of fixing the sands of the coast, and we have little
+reason to suppose that they were advanced enough in civilization to be
+likely to resort to such processes, especially at a period when land
+could have had but a moderate value.
+
+In other countries, dunes have spontaneously clothed themselves with
+forests, and the rapidity with which their surface is covered by various
+species of sand plants, and finally by trees, where man and cattle and
+burrowing animals are excluded from them, renders it highly probable
+that they would, as a general rule, protect themselves, if left to the
+undisturbed action of natural causes. The sand hills of the Frische
+Nehrung, on the coast of Prussia, were formerly wooded down to the
+water's edge, and it was only in the last century that, in consequence
+of the destruction of their forests, they became moving sands.[441]
+There is every reason to believe that the dunes of the Netherlands were
+clothed with trees until after the Roman invasion. The old geographers,
+in describing these countries, speak of vast forests extending to the
+very brink of the sea; but drifting coast dunes are first mentioned by
+the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and so far as we know they have
+assumed a destructive character in consequence of the improvidence of
+man.[442] The history of the dunes of Michigan, so far as I have been
+able to learn from my own observation, or that of others, is the same.
+Thirty years ago, when that region was scarcely inhabited, they were
+generally covered with a thick growth of trees, chiefly pines, and
+underwood, and there was little appearance of undermining and wash on
+the lake side, or of shifting of the sands, except where the trees had
+been cut or turned up by the roots.[443]
+
+Nature, as she builds up dunes for the protection of the sea shore,
+provides, with similar conservatism, for the preservation of the dunes
+themselves; so that, without the interference of man, these hillocks
+would be, not perhaps absolutely perpetual, but very lasting in
+duration, and very slowly altered in form or position. When once covered
+with the trees, shrubs, and herbaceous growths adapted to such
+localities, dunes undergo no apparent change, except the slow occasional
+undermining of the outer tier, and accidental destruction by the
+exposure of the interior, from the burrowing of animals, or the
+upturning of trees with their roots, and all these causes of
+displacement are very much less destructive when a vegetable covering
+exists in the immediate neighborhood of the breach.
+
+Before the occupation of the coasts by civilized and therefore
+destructive man, dunes, at all points where they have been observed,
+seem to have been protected in their rear by forests, which served to
+break the force of the winds in both directions,[444] and to have
+spontaneously clothed themselves with a dense growth of the various
+plants, grasses, shrubs, and trees, which nature has assigned to such
+soils. It is observed in Europe that dunes, though now without the
+shelter of a forest country behind them, begin to protect themselves as
+soon as human trespassers are excluded, and grazing animals denied
+access to them. Herbaceous and arborescent plants spring up almost at
+once, first in the depressions, and then upon the surface of the sand
+hills. Every seed that sprouts, binds together a certain amount of sand
+by its roots, shades a little ground with its leaves, and furnishes food
+and shelter for still younger or smaller growths. A succession of a very
+few favorable seasons suffices to bind the whole surface together with a
+vegetable network, and the power of resistance possessed by the dunes
+themselves, and the protection they afford to the fields behind them,
+are just in proportion to the abundance and density of the plants they
+support.
+
+The growth of the vegetable covering can, of course, be much accelerated
+by judicious planting and watchful care, and this species of improvement
+is now carried on upon a vast scale, wherever the value of land is
+considerable and the population dense. In the main, the dunes on the
+coast of the German Sea, notwithstanding the great quantity of often
+fertile land they cover, and the evils which result from their
+movement, are, upon the whole, a protective and beneficial agent, and
+their maintenance is an object of solicitude with the governments and
+people of the shores they protect.[445]
+
+
+_Use of Dunes as a Barrier against the Sea._
+
+Although the sea throws up large quantities of sand on flat lee-shores,
+there are, as we have seen, many cases where it continually encroaches
+on those same shores and washes them away. At all points of the shallow
+North Sea where the agitation of the waves extends to the bottom, banks
+are forming and rolling eastward. Hence the sea sand tends to accumulate
+upon the coast of Schleswig-Holstein and Jutland, and were there no
+conflicting influences, the shore would rapidly extend itself westward.
+But the same waves which wash the sand to the coast undermine the beach
+they cover, and still more rapidly degrade the shore at points where it
+is too high to receive partial protection by the formation of dunes upon
+it. The earth of the coast is generally composed of particles finer,
+lighter, and more transportable by water than the sea sand. While,
+therefore, the billows raised by a heavy west wind may roll up and
+deposit along the beach thousands of tons of sand, the same waves may
+swallow up even a larger quantity of fine shore earth. This earth, with
+a portion of the sand, is swept off by northwardly and southwardly
+currents, and let fall at other points of the coast, or carried off,
+altogether, out of the reach of causes which might bring it back to its
+former position.
+
+Although, then, the eastern shore of the German Ocean here and there
+advances into the sea, it in general retreats before it, and but for the
+protection afforded it by natural arrangements seconded by the art and
+industry of man, whole provinces would soon be engulfed by the waters.
+This protection consists in an almost unbroken chain of sand banks and
+dunes, extending from the northernmost point of Jutland to the Elbe, a
+distance of not much less than three hundred miles, and from the Elbe
+again, though with more frequent and wider interruptions, to the
+Atlantic borders of France and Spain.[446] So long as the dunes are
+maintained by nature or by human art, they serve, like any other
+embankment or dike, as a partial or a complete protection against the
+encroachments of the sea; and on the other hand, when their drifts are
+not checked by natural processes, or by the industry of man, they become
+a cause of as certain, if not of as sudden, destruction as the ocean
+itself whose advance they retard.
+
+
+_Encroachments of the Sea._
+
+The eastward progress of the sea on the Danish and Netherlandish coast,
+and on certain shores of the Atlantic, depends so much on local
+geological structure, on the force and direction of tidal and other
+marine currents, on the volume and rapidity of coast rivers, on the
+contingencies of the weather and on other varying circumstances, that no
+general rate can he assigned to it.
+
+At Agger, near the western end of the Liimfjord, in Jutland, the coast
+was washed away, between the years 1815 and 1839, at the rate of more
+than eighteen feet a year. The advance of the sea appears to have been
+something less rapid for a century before; but from 1840 to 1857, it
+gained upon the land no less than thirty feet a year. At other points of
+the shore of Jutland, the loss is smaller, but the sea is encroaching
+generally upon the whole line of the coast.[447]
+
+
+_The Liimfjord._
+
+The irruption of the sea into the fresh-water lagoon of Liimfjord in
+Jutland, in 1825--one of the most remarkable encroachments of the ocean
+in modern times--is expressly ascribed to "mismanagement of the dunes"
+on the narrow neck of land which separated the fjord from the North Sea.
+At earlier periods, the sea had swept across the isthmus, and even burst
+through it, but the channel had been filled up again, sometimes by
+artificial means, sometimes by the operation of natural causes, and on
+all these occasions effects were produced very similar to those
+resulting from the formation of the new channel in 1825, which still
+remains open.[448] Within comparatively recent historical ages, the
+Liimfjord has thus been several times alternately filled with fresh and
+with salt water, and man has produced, by neglecting the dunes, or at
+least might have prevented by maintaining them, changes identical with
+those which are usually ascribed to the action of great geological
+causes, and sometimes supposed to have required vast periods of time for
+their accomplishment.
+
+"This breach," says Forchhammer, "which converted the Liimfjord into a
+sound, and the northern part of Jutland into an island, occasioned
+remarkable changes. The first and most striking phenomenon was the
+sudden destruction of almost all the fresh-water fish previously
+inhabiting this lagoon, which was famous for its abundant fisheries.
+Millions of fresh-water fish were thrown on shore, partly dead and
+partly dying, and were carted off by the people. A few only survived,
+and still frequent the shores at the mouth of the brooks. The eel,
+however, has gradually accommodated itself to the change of
+circumstances, and is found in all parts of the fjord, while to all
+other fresh-water fish, the salt water of the ocean seems to have been
+fatal. It is more than probable that the sand washed in by the irruption
+covers, in many places, a layer of dead fish, and has thus prepared the
+way for a petrified stratum similar to those observed in so many older
+formations.
+
+"As it seems to be a law of nature that animals whose life is suddenly
+extinguished while yet in full vigor, are the most likely to be
+preserved by petrification, we find here one of the conditions favorable
+to the formation of such a petrified stratum. The bottom of the
+Liimfjord was covered with a vigorous growth of aquatic plants,
+belonging both to fresh and to salt water, especially _Zostera marina_.
+This vegetation totally disappeared after the irruption, and, in some
+instances, was buried by the sand; and here again we have a familiar
+phenomenon often observed in ancient strata--the indication of a given
+formation by a particular vegetable species--and when the strata
+deposited at the time of the breach shall be accessible by upheaval, the
+period of eruption will be marked by a stratum of _Zostera_, and
+probably by impressions of fresh-water fishes.
+
+"It is very remarkable that the _Zostera marina_, a sea plant, was
+destroyed even where no sand was deposited. This was probably in
+consequence of the sudden change from brackish to salt water. * * It is
+well established that the Liimfjord communicated with the German Ocean
+at some former period. To that era belong the deep beds of oyster shells
+and _Cardium edule_, which are still found at the bottom of the fjord.
+And now, after an interval of centuries, during which the lagoon
+contained no salt-water shell fish, it again produces great numbers of
+_Mytilus edulis_. Could we obtain a deep section of the bottom, we
+should find beds of _Ostrea edulis_ and _Cardium edule_, then a layer of
+_Zostera marina_ with fresh-water fish, and then a bed of _Mytilus
+edulis_. If, in course of time, the new channel should be closed, the
+brooks would fill the lagoon again with fresh water; fresh-water fish
+and shell fish would reappear, and thus we should have a repeated
+alternation of organic inhabitants of the sea and of the waters of the
+land.
+
+"These events have been accompanied with but a comparatively
+insignificant change of land surface, while the formations in the bed of
+this inland sea have been totally revolutionized in character."[449]
+
+
+_Coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, Holland, and France._
+
+On the islands on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein, the advance of the
+sea has been more unequivocal and more rapid. Near the beginning of the
+last century, the dunes which had protected the western coast of the
+island of Sylt began to roll to the east, and the sea followed closely
+as they retired. In 1757, the church of Rantum, a village upon that
+island, was obliged to be taken down in consequence of the advance of
+the sand hills; in 1791, these hills had passed beyond its site, the
+waves had swallowed up its foundations, and the sea gained so rapidly,
+that, fifty years later, the spot where they lay was seven hundred feet
+from the shore.[450]
+
+The most prominent geological landmark on the coast of Holland is the
+Huis te Britten, _Arx Britannica_, a fortress built by the Romans, in
+the time of Caligula, on the main land near the mouth of the Rhine. At
+the close of the seventeenth century, the sea had advanced sixteen
+hundred paces beyond it. The older Dutch annalists record, with much
+parade of numerical accuracy, frequent encroachments of the sea upon
+many parts of the Netherlandish coast. But though the general fact of an
+advance of the ocean upon the land is established beyond dispute, the
+precision of the measurements which have been given is open to question.
+Staring, however, who thinks the erosion of the coast much exaggerated
+by popular geographers, admits a loss of more than a million and a half
+acres, chiefly worthless morass;[451] and it is certain that but for the
+resistance of man, but for his erection of dikes and protection of
+dunes, there would now be left of Holland little but the name. It is, as
+has been already seen, still a debated question among geologists whether
+the coast of Holland now is, and for centuries has been, subsiding. I
+believe most investigators maintain the affirmative; and if the fact is
+so, the advance of the sea upon the land is, in part, due to this cause.
+But the rate of subsidence is at all events very small, and therefore
+the encroachments of the ocean upon the coast are mainly to be ascribed
+to the erosion and transportation of the soil by marine waves and
+currents.
+
+The sea is fast advancing at several points of the western coast of
+France, and unknown causes have given a new impulse to its ravages since
+the commencement of the present century. Between 1830 and 1842, the
+Point de Grave, on the north side of the Gironde, retreated one hundred
+and eighty metres, or about fifty feet per year; from the latter year to
+1846, the rate was increased to more than three times that quantity, and
+the loss in those four years was above six hundred feet. All the
+buildings at the extremity of the peninsula have been taken down and
+rebuilt farther landward, and the lighthouse of the Grave now occupies
+its third position. The sea attacked the base of the peninsula also, and
+the Point de Grave and the adjacent coasts have been for twenty years
+the scene of one of the most obstinately contested struggles between man
+and the ocean recorded in the annals of modern engineering.
+
+It cannot, indeed, be affirmed that human power is able to arrest
+altogether the incursions of the waves on sandy coasts, by planting the
+beach, and clothing the dunes with wood. On the contrary, both in
+Holland and on the French coast, it has been found necessary to protect
+the dunes themselves by piling and by piers and sea walls of heavy
+masonry. But experience has amply shown that the processes referred to
+are entirely successful in preventing the movement of the dunes, and the
+drifting of their sands over cultivated lands behind them; and that, at
+the same time, the plantations very much retard the landward progress of
+the waters.[452]
+
+
+_Drifting of Dune Sands._
+
+Besides their importance as a barrier against the inroads of the ocean,
+dunes are useful by sheltering the cultivated ground behind them from
+the violence of the sea wind, from salt spray, and from the drifts of
+beach sand which would otherwise overwhelm them. But the dunes
+themselves, unless their surface sands are kept moist, and confined by
+the growth of plants, or at least by a crust of vegetable earth, are
+constantly rolling inward; and thus, while, on one side, they lay bare
+the traces of ancient human habitations or other evidences of the social
+life of primitive man, they are, on the other, burying fields, houses,
+churches, and converting populous districts into barren and deserted
+wastes.
+
+Especially destructive are they when, by any accident, a cavity is
+opened into them to a considerable depth, thereby giving the wind access
+to the interior, where the sand is thus first dried, and then scooped
+out and scattered far over the neighboring soil. The dune is now a
+magazine of sand, no longer a rampart against it, and mischief from this
+source seems more difficult to resist than from almost any other drift,
+because the supply of material at the command of the wind, is more
+abundant and more concentrated than in its original thin and widespread
+deposits on the beach. The burrowing of conies in the dunes is, in this
+way, not unfrequently a cause of their destruction and of great injury
+to the fields behind them. Drifts, and even inland sand hills, sometimes
+result from breaking the surface of more level sand deposits, far within
+the range of the coast dunes. Thus we learn from Staring, that one of
+the highest inland dunes in Friesland owes its origin to the opening of
+the drift sand by the uprooting of a large oak.[453]
+
+Great as are the ravages produced by the encroachment of the sea upon
+the western shores of continental Europe, they have been in some degree
+compensated by spontaneous marine deposits at other points of the coast,
+and we have seen in a former chapter that the industry of man has
+reclaimed a large territory from the bosom of the ocean. These latter
+triumphs are not of recent origin, and the incipient victories which
+paved the way for them date back perhaps as far as ten centuries. In the
+mean time, the dunes had been left to the operation of the laws of
+nature, or rather freed, by human imprudence, from the fetters with
+which nature had bound them, and it is scarcely three generations since
+man first attempted to check their destructive movements. As they
+advanced, he unresistingly yielded and retreated before them, and they
+have buried under their sandy billows many hundreds of square miles of
+luxuriant cornfields and vineyards and forests.
+
+
+_Dunes of Gascony._
+
+On the west coast of France, a belt of dunes, varying in width from a
+quarter of a mile to five miles, extends from the Adour to the estuary
+of the Gironde, and covers an area of three hundred and seventy-five
+square miles. When not fixed by vegetable growths, they advance eastward
+at a mean rate of about one rod, or sixteen and a half feet, a year. We
+do not know historically when they began to drift, but if we suppose
+their motion to have been always the same as at present, they would have
+passed over the space between the sea coast and their eastern boundary,
+and covered the large area above mentioned, in fourteen hundred years.
+We know, from written records, that they have buried extensive fields
+and forests and thriving villages, and changed the courses of rivers,
+and that the lighter particles carried from them by the winds, even
+where not transported in sufficient quantities to form sand hills, have
+rendered sterile much land formerly fertile.[454] They have also
+injuriously obstructed the natural drainage of the maritime districts by
+choking up the beds of the streams, and forming lakes and pestilential
+swamps of no inconsiderable extent. In fact, so completely do they
+embank the coast, that between the Gironde and the village of Mimizan, a
+distance of one hundred miles, there are but two outlets for the
+discharge of all the waters which flow from the land to the sea; and the
+eastern front of the dunes is bordered by a succession of stagnant
+pools, some of which are more than six miles in length and breadth.[455]
+
+
+_The Dunes of Denmark and Prussia._
+
+In the small kingdom of Denmark, inclusive of the duchies of Schleswig
+and Holstein, the dunes cover an area of more than two hundred and sixty
+square miles. The breadth of the chain is very various, and in some
+places it consists only of a single row of sand hills, while in others,
+it is more than six miles wide. The general rate of eastward movement of
+the drifting dunes is from three to twenty-four feet per annum. If we
+adopt the mean of thirteen feet and a half for the annual motion, the
+dunes have traversed the widest part of the belt in about twenty-five
+hundred years. Historical data are wanting as to the period of the
+formation of these dunes and of the commencement of their drifting; but
+there is recorded evidence that they have buried a vast extent of
+valuable land within three or four centuries, and further proof is found
+in the fact that the movement of the sands is constantly uncovering
+ruins of ancient buildings, and other evidences of human occupation, at
+points far within the present limits of the uninhabitable desert.
+Andresen estimates the average depth of the sand deposited over this
+area at thirty feet, which would give a cubic mile and a half for the
+total quantity.[456]
+
+The drifting of the dunes on the coast of Prussia commenced not much
+more than a hundred years ago. The Frische Nehrung is separated from the
+mainland by the Frische Haff, and there is but a narrow strip of arable
+land along its eastern borders. Hence its rolling sands have covered a
+comparatively small extent of dry land, but fields and villages have
+been buried and valuable forests laid waste by them. The loose coast row
+has drifted over the inland ranges, which, as was noticed in the
+description of these dunes on a former page, were protected by a surface
+of different composition, and the sand has thus been raised to a height
+which it could not have reached upon level ground. This elevation has
+enabled it to advance upon and overwhelm woods, which, upon a plain,
+would have checked its progress, and, in one instance, a forest of many
+hundred acres of tall pines was destroyed by the drifts between 1804 and
+1827.
+
+
+_Control of Dunes by Man._
+
+There are three principal modes in which the industry of man is brought
+to bear upon the dunes. First, the creation of them, at points where,
+from changes in the currents or other causes, new encroachments of the
+sea are threatened; second, the maintenance and protection of them where
+they have been naturally formed; and third, the removal of the inner
+rows where the belt is so broad that no danger is to be apprehended from
+the loss of them.
+
+
+_Artificial Formation of Dunes._
+
+In describing the natural formation of dunes, it was said that they
+began with an accumulation of sand around some vegetable or other
+accidental obstruction to the drifting of the particles. A high,
+perpendicular cliff, which deadens the wind altogether, prevents all
+accumulation of sand; but, up to a certain point, the higher and broader
+the obstruction, the more sand will heap up in front of it, and the more
+will that which falls behind it be protected from drifting farther. This
+familiar observation has taught the inhabitants of the coast that an
+artificial wall or dike will, in many situations, give rise to a broad
+belt of dunes. Thus a sand dike or wall, of three or four miles in
+length, thrown in 1610 across the Koegras, a tide-washed flat between
+the Zuiderzee and the North Sea, has occasioned the formation of rows of
+dunes a mile in breadth, and thus excluded the sea altogether from the
+Koegras. A similar dike, called the Zijperzeedijk, has produced another
+scarcely less extensive belt in the course of two centuries.
+
+A few years since, the sea was threatening to cut through the island of
+Ameland, and, by encroachment on the southern side and the blowing off
+of the sand from a low flat which connected the two higher parts of the
+island, it had made such progress, that in heavy storms the waves
+sometimes rolled quite across the isthmus. The construction of a
+breakwater and a sand dike have already checked the advance of the sea,
+and a large number of sand hills has been formed, the rapid growth of
+which promises complete future security against both wind and wave.
+Similar effects have been produced by the erection of plank fences, and
+even of simple screens of wattling and reeds.[457]
+
+
+_Protection of Dunes._
+
+The dunes of Holland are sometimes protected from the dashing of the
+waves by a _revetement_ of stone, or by piles; and the lateral
+high-water currents, which wash away their base, are occasionally
+checked by transverse walls running from the foot of the dunes to
+low-water mark; but the great expense of such constructions has
+prevented their adoption on a large scale.[458] The principal means
+relied on for the protection of the sand hills are the planting of their
+surfaces and the exclusion of burrowing and grazing animals. There are
+grasses, creeping plants, and shrubs of spontaneous growth, which
+flourish in loose sand, and, if protected, spread over considerable
+tracts, and finally convert their face into a soil capable of
+cultivation, or, at least, of producing forest trees. Krause enumerates
+one hundred and seventy-one plants as native to the coast sands of
+Prussia, and the observations of Andresen in Jutland carry the number of
+these vegetables up to two hundred and thirty-four.
+
+Some of these plants, especially the _Arundo arenaria_ or _arenosa_, or
+_Psamma_ or _Psammophila arenaria_--Klittetag, or Hjelme in Danish, helm
+in Dutch, Duenenhalm, Sandschilf, or Huegelrohr in German, gourbet in
+French, and marram in English--are exclusively confined to sandy soils,
+and thrive well only in a saline atmosphere.[459] The arundo grows to
+the height of about twenty-four inches, but sends its strong roots with
+their many rootlets to a distance of forty or fifty feet. It has the
+peculiar property of nourishing best in the loosest soil, and a sand
+shower seems to refresh it as the rain revives the thirsty plants of the
+common earth. Its roots bind together the dunes, and its leaves protect
+their surface. When the sand ceases to drift, the arundo dies, its
+decaying roots fertilizing the sand, and the decomposition of its leaves
+forming a layer of vegetable earth over it. Then follows a succession of
+other plants which gradually fit the sand hills, by growth and decay,
+for forest planting, for pasturage, and sometimes for ordinary
+agricultural use.
+
+But the protection and gradual transformation of the dunes is not the
+only service rendered by this valuable plant. Its leaves are nutritious
+food for sheep and cattle, its seeds for poultry;[460] cordage and
+netting twine are manufactured from its fibres, it makes a good material
+for thatching, and its dried roots furnish excellent fuel. These useful
+qualities, unfortunately, are too often prejudicial to its growth. The
+peasants feed it down with their cattle, cut it for rope making, or dig
+it up for fuel, and it has been found necessary to resort to severe
+legislation to prevent them from bringing ruin upon themselves by thus
+improvidently sacrificing their most effectual safeguard against the
+drifting of the sands.[461]
+
+In 1539, a decree of Christian III, king of Denmark, imposed a fine upon
+persons convicted of destroying certain species of sand plants upon the
+west coast of Jutland. This ordinance was renewed and made more
+comprehensive in 1558, and in 1569 the inhabitants of several districts
+were required, by royal rescript, to do their best to check the sand
+drifts, though the specific measures to be adopted for that purpose are
+not indicated. Various laws against stripping the dunes of their
+vegetation were enacted in the following century, but no active measures
+were taken for the subjugation of the sand drifts until 1779, when a
+preliminary system of operation for that purpose was adopted. This
+consisted in little more than the planting of the _Arundo arenaria_ and
+other sand plants, and the exclusion of animals destructive to these
+vegetables.[462] Ten years later, plantations of forest trees, which
+have since proved so valuable a means of fixing the dunes and rendering
+them productive, were commenced, and have been continued ever
+since.[463] During this latter period, Bremontier, without any knowledge
+of what was doing in Denmark, experimented upon the cultivation of
+forest trees on the dunes of Gascony, and perfected a system, which,
+with some improvements in matters of detail, is still largely pursued
+on those shores. The example of Denmark was soon followed in the
+neighboring kingdom of Prussia, and in the Netherlands; and, as we shall
+see hereafter, these improvements have been everywhere crowned with most
+flattering success.
+
+Under the administration of Reventlov, a little before the close of the
+last century, the Danish Government organized a regular system of
+improvement in the economy of the dunes. They were planted with the
+arundo and other vegetables of similar habits, protected against
+trespassers, and at last partly covered with forest trees. By these
+means much waste soil has been converted into arable ground, a large
+growth of valuable timber obtained, and the further spread of the
+drifts, which threatened to lay waste the whole peninsula of Jutland, to
+a considerable extent arrested.
+
+In France, the operations for fixing and reclaiming the dunes--which
+began under the direction of Bremontier about the same time as in
+Denmark, and which are, in principle and in many of their details,
+similar to those employed in the latter kingdom--have been conducted on
+a far larger scale, and with greater success, than in any other country.
+This is partly owing to a climate more favorable to the growth of
+suitable forest trees than that of Northern Europe, and partly to the
+liberality of the Government, which, having more important landed
+interests to protect, has put larger means at the disposal of the
+engineers than Denmark and Prussia have found it convenient to
+appropriate to that purpose. The area of the dunes already secured from
+drifting, and planted by the processes invented by Bremontier and
+perfected by his successors, is about 100,000 acres.[464] This amount of
+productive soil, then, has been added to the resources of France, and a
+still greater quantity of valuable land has been thereby rescued from
+the otherwise certain destruction with which it was threatened by the
+advance of the rolling sand hills.
+
+The improvements of the dunes on the coast of West Prussia began in
+1795, under Soeren Bjoern, a native of Denmark, and, with the exception of
+the ten years between 1807 and 1817, they have been prosecuted ever
+since. The methods do not differ essentially from those employed in
+Denmark and France, though they are modified by local circumstances,
+and, with respect to the trees selected for planting, by climate. In
+1850, between the mouth of the Vistula and Kahlberg, 6,300 acres,
+including about 1,900 acres planted with pines and birches, had been
+secured from drifting; between Kahlberg and the eastern boundary of
+West-Prussia, 8,000 acres; and important preliminary operations had been
+carried on for subduing the dunes on the west coast.[465]
+
+
+_Trees suited to Dune Plantations._
+
+The tree which has been found to thrive best upon the sand hills of the
+French coast, and at the same time to confine the sand most firmly and
+yield the largest pecuniary returns, is the maritime pine, _Pinus
+maritima_, a species valuable both for its timber and for its resinous
+products. It is always grown from seed, and the young shoots require to
+be protected for several seasons, by the branches of other trees,
+planted in rows, or spread over the surface and staked down, by the
+growth of the _Arundo arenaria_ and other small sand plants, or by
+wattled hedges. The beach, from which the sand is derived, has been
+generally planted with the arundo, because the pine does not thrive well
+so near the sea; but it is thought that a species of tamarisk is likely
+to succeed in that latitude even better than the arundo. The shade and
+the protection offered by the branching top of this pine are favorable
+to the growth of deciduous trees, and, while still young, of shrubs and
+smaller plants, which contribute more rapidly to the formation of
+vegetable mould, and thus, when the pine has once taken root, the
+redemption of the waste is considered as effectually secured.
+
+In France, the maritime pine is planted on the sands of the interior as
+well as on the dunes of the sea coast, and with equal advantage. This
+tree resembles the pitch pine of the Southern American States in its
+habits, and is applied to the same uses. The extraction of turpentine
+from it begins at the age of about twenty years, or when it has attained
+a diameter of from nine to twelve inches. Incisions are made up and down
+the trunk, to the depth of about half an inch in the wood, and it is
+insisted that if not more than two such slits are cut, the tree is not
+sensibly injured by the process. The growth, indeed, is somewhat
+checked, but the wood becomes superior to that of trees from which the
+turpentine is not extracted. Thus treated, the pine continues to
+flourish to the age of one hundred or one hundred and twenty years, and
+up to this age the trees on a hectare yield annually 350 kilogrammes of
+essence of turpentine, and 280 kilogrammes of resin, worth together 110
+francs. The expense of extraction and distillation is calculated at 44
+francs, and a clear profit of 66 francs per hectare, or more than five
+dollars per acre, is left.[466] This is exclusive of the value of the
+timber, when finally cut, which, of course, amounts to a very
+considerable sum.
+
+In Denmark, where the climate is much colder, hardier conifers, as well
+as the birch and other northern trees, are found to answer a better
+purpose than the maritime pine, and it is doubtful whether this tree
+would be able to resist the winter on the dunes of Massachusetts.
+Probably the pitch pine of the Northern States, in conjunction with some
+of the American oaks, birches, and poplars, and especially the robinia
+or locust, would prove very suitable to be employed on the sand hills of
+Cape Cod and Long Island. The ailanthus, now coming into notice as a
+sand-loving tree, may, perhaps, serve a better purpose than any of them.
+
+
+_Extent of Dunes in Europe._
+
+The dunes of Denmark, as we have seen, cover an area of two hundred and
+sixty square miles, or one hundred and sixty-six thousand acres; those
+of the Prussian coast are vaguely estimated at from eighty-five to one
+hundred and ten thousand acres; those of Holland at one hundred and
+forty thousand acres;[467] those of Gascony at about three hundred
+thousand acres.[468] I do not find any estimate of their extent in other
+provinces of France, in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, or in the
+Baltic provinces of Russia, but it is probable that the entire quantity
+of dune land upon the eastern shores of the Atlantic and the Baltic does
+not fall much short of a million of acres.[469] This vast deposit of sea
+sand extends along the coast for a distance of several hundred miles,
+and from the time of the destruction of the forests which covered it, to
+the year 1789, the whole line was rolling inward and burying the soil
+beneath it, or rendering the fields unproductive by the sand which
+drifted from it. At the same time, as the sand hills moved eastward, the
+ocean was closely following their retreat and swallowing up the ground
+they had covered, as fast as their movement left it bare.
+
+Planting the dunes has completely prevented the surface sands from
+blowing over the soil to the leeward of the plantations, and though it
+has not, in all cases, arrested the encroachments of the sea, it has so
+greatly retarded the rapidity of their advance, that sandy coasts, when
+once covered with forests, may be considered as substantially secure, so
+long as proper measures are taken for the protection of the woods.
+
+
+_Dune Vineyards of Cap Breton._
+
+In the vicinity of Cap Breton in France, a peculiar process is
+successfully employed, both for preventing the drifting of dunes, and
+for rendering the sands themselves immediately productive; but this
+method is applicable only in exceptional cases of favorable climate and
+exposure. It consists in planting vineyards upon the dunes, and
+protecting them by hedges of broom, _Erica scoparia_, so disposed as to
+form rectangles about thirty feet by forty. The vines planted in these
+enclosures thrive admirably, and the grapes produced by them are among
+the best grown in France. The dunes are so far from being an unfavorable
+soil for the vine, that fresh sea-sand is regularly employed as a
+fertilizer for it, alternating every other season with ordinary manure.
+The quantity of sand thus applied every second year, raises the surface
+of the vineyard about four or five inches. The vines are cut down every
+year to three or four shoots, and the raising of the soil rapidly
+covers the old stocks. As fast as buried, they send out new roots near
+the surface, and thus the vineyard is constantly renewed, and has always
+a youthful appearance, though it may have been already planted a couple
+of generations. This practice is ascertained to have been followed for
+two centuries, and is among the oldest well-authenticated attempts of
+man to resist and vanquish the dunes.[470]
+
+
+_Removal of Dunes._
+
+The artificial removal of dunes, no longer necessary as a protection,
+does not appear to have been practised upon a large scale except in the
+Netherlands, where the numerous canals furnish an easy and economical
+means of transporting the sand, and where the construction and
+maintenance of sea and river dikes, and of causeways and other
+embankments and fillings, create a great demand for that material. Sand
+is also employed in Holland, in large quantities, for improving the
+consistence of the tough clay bordering upon or underlying diluvial
+deposits, and for forming an artificial soil for the growth of certain
+garden and ornamental vegetables. When the dunes are removed, the ground
+they covered is restored to the domain of industry; and the quantity of
+land, recovered in the Netherlands by the removal of the barren sands
+which encumbered it, amounts to hundreds and perhaps thousands of
+acres.[471]
+
+
+_Inland Sand Plains._
+
+The inland sand plains of Europe are either derived from the drifting of
+dunes or other beach sands, or consist of diluvial deposits. As we have
+seen, when once the interior of a dune is laid open to the wind, its
+contents are soon scattered far and wide over the adjacent country, and
+the beach sands, no longer checked by the rampart which nature had
+constrained them to build against their own encroachments, are also
+carried to considerable distances from the coast. Few regions have
+suffered so much from this cause in proportion to their extent, as the
+peninsula of Jutland. So long as the woods, with which nature had
+planted the Danish dunes, were spared, they seem to have been
+stationary, and we have no historical evidence, of an earlier date than
+the sixteenth century, that they had become in any way injurious. From
+that period, there are frequent notices of the invasions of cultivated
+grounds by the sands; and excavations are constantly bringing to light
+proof of human habitation and of agricultural industry, in former ages,
+on soils now buried beneath deep drifts from the dunes and beaches of
+the sea coast.[472]
+
+Extensive tracts of valuable plain land in the Netherlands and in France
+have been covered in the same way with a layer of sand deep enough to
+render them infertile, and they can be restored to cultivation only by
+processes analogous to those employed for fixing and improving the
+dunes.[473] Diluvial sand plains, also, have been reclaimed by these
+methods in the Duchy of Austria, between Vienna and the Semmering ridge,
+in Jutland, and in the great champaign country of Northern Germany,
+especially the Mark Brandenburg, where artificial forests can be
+propagated with great ease, and where, consequently, this branch of
+industry has been pursued on a great scale, and with highly beneficial
+results, both as respects the supply of forest products and the
+preparation of the soil for agricultural use.
+
+As a general rule, inland sands are looser, dryer, and more inclined to
+drift, than those of the sea coast, where the moist and saline
+atmosphere of the ocean keeps them always more or less humid and
+cohesive. No shore dunes are so movable as the medanos of Peru described
+in a passage quoted from Poeppig on a former page, or as the sand hills
+of Poland, both of which seem better entitled to the appellation of sand
+waves than those of the Sahara or of the Arabian desert. The sands of
+the valley of the Lower Euphrates--themselves probably of submarine
+origin, and not derived from dunes--are advancing to the northwest with
+a rapidity which seems fabulous when compared with the slow movement of
+the sand hills of Gascony and the Low German coasts. Loftus, speaking of
+Niliyya, an old Arab town a few miles east of the ruins of Babylon, says
+that, "in 1848, the sand began to accumulate around it, and in six
+years, the desert, within a radius of six miles, was covered with
+little, undulating domes, while the ruins of the city were so buried
+that it is now impossible to trace their original form or extent."[474]
+Loftus considers this sand flood as the "vanguard of those vast drifts
+which, advancing from the southeast, threaten eventually to overwhelm
+Babylon and Baghdad."
+
+An observation of Layard, cited by Loftus, appears to me to furnish a
+possible explanation of this irruption. He "passed two or three places
+where the sand, issuing from the earth like water, is called
+'Aioun-er-rummal,' sand springs." These "springs" are very probably
+merely the drifting of sand from the ancient subsoil, where the
+protecting crust of aquatic deposit and vegetable earth has been broken
+through, as in the case of the drift which arose from the upturning of
+an oak mentioned on a former page. When the valley of the Euphrates was
+regularly irrigated and cultivated, the underlying sands were bound by
+moisture, alluvial slime, and vegetation; but now, that all improvement
+is neglected, and the surface, no longer watered, has become parched,
+powdery, and naked, a mere accidental fissure in the superficial stratum
+may soon be enlarged to a wide opening, that will let loose sand enough
+to overwhelm a province.
+
+
+_The Landes of Gascony._
+
+The most remarkable sand plain of France lies at the southwestern
+extremity of the empire, and is generally known as the Landes, or
+heaths, of Gascony. Clave thus describes it: "Composed of pure sand,
+resting on an impermeable stratum called _alios_, the soil of the Landes
+was, for centuries, considered incapable of cultivation. Parched in
+summer, drowned in winter, it produced only ferns, rushes, and heath,
+and scarcely furnished pasturage for a few half-starved flocks. To crown
+its miseries, this plain was continually threatened by the encroachments
+of the dunes. Vast ridges of sand, thrown up by the waves, for a
+distance of more than fifty leagues along the coast, and continually
+renewed, were driven inland by the west wind, and, as they rolled over
+the plain, they buried the soil and the hamlets, overcame all
+resistance, and advanced with fearful regularity. The whole province
+seemed devoted to certain destruction, when Bremontier invented his
+method of fixing the dunes by plantations of the maritime pine."[475]
+
+Although the Landes had been almost abandoned for ages, they show
+numerous traces of ancient cultivation and prosperity, and it is
+principally by means of the encroachments of the sands that they have
+become reduced to their present desolate condition. The destruction of
+the coast towns and harbors, which furnished markets for the products of
+the plains, the damming up of the rivers, and the obstruction of the
+smaller channels of natural drainage by the advance of the dunes, were
+no doubt very influential causes; and if we add the drifting of the sea
+sand over the soil, we have at least a partial explanation of the
+decayed agriculture and diminished population of this great waste. When
+the dunes were once arrested, and the soil to the east of them was felt
+to be secure against invasion by them, experiments, in the way of
+agricultural improvement, by drainage and plantation, were commenced,
+and they have been attended with such signal success, that the complete
+recovery of one of the dreariest and most extensive wastes in Europe may
+be considered as both a probable and a near event.[476]
+
+
+_The Belgian Campine._
+
+In the northern part of Belgium, and extending across the confines of
+Holland, is another very similar heath plain, called the Campine. This
+is a vast sand flat, interspersed with marshes and inland dunes, and,
+until recently, considered wholly incapable of cultivation. Enormous
+sums have been expended in reclaiming it by draining and other familiar
+agricultural processes, but without results at all proportional to the
+capital invested. In 1849, the unimproved portion of the Campine was
+estimated at little less than three hundred and fifty thousand acres.
+The example of France has prompted experiments in the planting of trees,
+especially the maritime pine, upon this barren waste, and the results
+have been such as to show that its sands may both be fixed and made
+productive, not only without loss, but with positive pecuniary
+advantage.[477]
+
+
+_Sands and Steppes of Eastern Europe._
+
+There are still unsubdued sand wastes in many parts of interior Europe
+not familiarly known to tourists or even geographers. "Olkuez and
+Schiewier in Poland," says Naumann, "lie in true sand deserts, and a
+boundless plain of sand stretches around Ozenstockau, on which there
+grows neither tree nor shrub. In heavy winds, this plain resembles a
+rolling sea, and the sand hills rise and disappear like the waves of the
+ocean. The heaps of waste from the Olkuez mines are covered with sand to
+the depth of four fathoms."[478] No attempts have yet been made to
+subdue the sands of Poland, but when peace and prosperity shall be
+restored to that unhappy country, there is no reasonable doubt that the
+measures, which have proved so successful on similar formations in
+Germany, may be employed with advantage in the Polish deserts.
+
+There are sand drifts in parts of the steppes of Russia, but in general
+the soil of those vast plains is of a different, though very varied,
+composition, and is covered with vegetation. The steppes, however, have
+many points of analogy with the sand plains of Northern Germany, and if
+they are ever fitted for civilized occupation, it must be by the same
+means, that is, by planting forests. It is disputed whether the steppes
+were ever wooded. They were certainly bare of forest growth at a very
+remote period; for Herodotus describes the country of the Scythians
+between the Ister and the Tanais as woodless, with the exception of the
+small province of Xylaea between the Dnieper and the Gulf of Perekop.
+They are known to have been occupied by a large nomade and pastoral
+population down to the sixteenth century, though these tribes are now
+much reduced in numbers. The habits of such races are scarcely less
+destructive to the forest than those of civilized life. Pastoral tribes
+do not employ much wood for fuel or for construction, but they
+carelessly or recklessly burn down the forests, and their cattle
+effectually check the growth of young trees wherever their range
+extends.
+
+At present, the furious winds which sweep over the plains, the droughts
+of summer, and the rights and abuses of pasturage, constitute very
+formidable obstacles to the employment of measures which have been
+attended with so valuable results on the sand wastes of France and
+Germany. The Russian Government has, however, attempted the wooding of
+the steppes, and there are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of
+Odessa, where the soil is of a particularly loose and sandy
+character.[479] The trees best suited to this locality, and, as there is
+good reason to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the _Ailanthus
+glandulosa_, or Japan varnish tree.[480] The remarkable success which
+has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at Odessa, will, no
+doubt, stimulate to similar trials elsewhere, and it seems not
+improbable that the arundo and the maritime pine, which have fixed so
+many thousand acres of drifting sands in Western Europe, will be,
+partially at least, superseded by the tamarisk and the varnish tree.
+
+
+_Advantages of Reclaiming the Sands._
+
+If we consider the quantity of waste land which has been made productive
+by the planting of the sand hills and plains, and the extent of fertile
+soil, the number of villages and other human improvements, and the value
+of the harbors, which the same process has saved from being buried under
+the rolling dunes, and at last swallowed up forever by the invasions of
+the sea, we shall be inclined to rank Bremontier and Reventlov among the
+greatest benefactors of their race. With the exception of the dikes of
+the Netherlands, their labors are the first deliberate and direct
+attempts of man to make himself, on a great scale, a geographical power,
+to restore natural balances which earlier generations had disturbed, and
+to atone, by acts guided by foreseeing and settled purpose, for the
+waste which thoughtless improvidence had created.
+
+
+_Government Works._
+
+There is an important political difference between these latter works
+and the diking system of the Netherlandish and German coasts. The dikes
+originally were, and in modern times very generally have been, private
+enterprises, undertaken with no other aim than to add a certain quantity
+of cultivable soil to the former possessions of their proprietor, or
+sometimes of the state. In short, with few exceptions, they have been
+merely a pecuniary investment, a mode of acquiring land not economically
+different from purchase. The planting of the dunes, on the contrary, has
+always been a public work, executed, not with the expectation of reaping
+a regular direct percentage of income from the expenditure, but dictated
+by higher views of state economy--by the same governmental principles,
+in fact, which animate all commonwealths in repelling invasion by
+hostile armies, or in repairing the damages that invading forces may
+have inflicted on the general interests of the people. The restoration
+of the forests in the southern part of France, as now conducted by the
+Government of that empire, is a measure of the same elevated character
+as the fixing of the dunes. In former ages, forests were formed or
+protected simply for the sake of the shelter they afforded to game, or
+for the timber they yielded; but the recent legislation of France, and
+of some other Continental countries, on this subject, looks to more
+distant as well as nobler ends, and these are among the public acts
+which most strongly encourage the hope that the rulers of Christendom
+are coming better to understand the true duties and interests of
+civilized government.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PROJECTED OR POSSIBLE GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES BY MAN.
+
+CUTTING OF MARINE ISTHMUSES--THE SUEZ CANAL--CANAL ACROSS ISTHMUS OF
+DARIEN--CANALS TO THE DEAD SEA--MARITIME CANALS IN GREECE--CANAL OF
+SAROS--CAPE COD CANAL--DIVERSION OF THE NILE--CHANGES IN THE CASPIAN--
+IMPROVEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICAN HYDROGRAPHY--DIVERSION OF RHINE--
+DRAINING OF THE ZUIDERZEE--WATERS OF THE KARST--SUBTERRANEAN WATERS
+OF GREECE--SOIL BELOW ROCK--COVERING ROCKS WITH EARTH--WADIES OF ARABIA
+PETRAEA--INCIDENTAL EFFECTS OF HUMAN ACTION--RESISTANCE TO GREAT NATURAL
+FORCES--EFFECTS OF MINING--ESPY'S THEORIES--RIVER SEDIMENT--NOTHING
+SMALL IN NATURE.
+
+
+_Cutting of Marine Isthmuses._
+
+Besides the great enterprises of physical transformation of which I have
+already spoken, other works of internal improvement or change have been
+projected in ancient and modern times, the execution of which would
+produce considerable, and, in some cases, extremely important,
+revolutions in the face of the earth. Some of the schemes to which I
+refer are evidently chimerical; others are difficult, indeed, but cannot
+be said to be impracticable, though discouraged by the apprehension of
+disastrous consequences from the disturbance of existing natural or
+artificial arrangements; and there are still others, the accomplishment
+of which is ultimately certain, though for the present forbidden by
+economical considerations.
+
+When we consider the number of narrow necks or isthmuses which separate
+gulfs and bays of the sea from each other, or from the main ocean, and
+take into account the time and cost, and risks of navigation which
+would be saved by executing channels to connect such waters, and thus
+avoiding the necessity of doubling long capes and promontories, or even
+continents, it seems strange that more of the enterprise and money which
+have been so lavishly expended in forming artificial rivers for internal
+navigation should not have been bestowed upon the construction of
+maritime canals. Many such have been projected in early and in recent
+ages, and some trifling cuts between marine waters have been actually
+made, but no work of this sort, possessing real geographical or even
+commercial importance, has yet been effected.
+
+These enterprises are attended with difficulties and open to objections,
+which are not, at first sight, obvious. Nature guards well the chains by
+which she connects promontories with mainlands, and binds continents
+together. Isthmuses are usually composed of adamantine rock or of
+shifting sands--the latter being much the more refractory material to
+deal with. In all such works there is a necessity for deep excavation
+below low-water mark--always a matter of great difficulty; the
+dimensions of channels for sea-going ships must be much greater than
+those of canals of inland navigation; the height of the masts or smoke
+pipes of that class of vessels would often render bridging impossible,
+and thus a ship canal might obstruct a communication more important than
+that which it was intended to promote; the securing of the entrances of
+marine canals and the construction of ports at their termini would in
+general be difficult and expensive, and the harbors and the channel
+which connected them would be extremely liable to fill up by deposits
+washed in from sea and shore. Besides all this, there is, in many cases,
+an alarming uncertainty as to the effects of joining together waters
+which nature has put asunder. A new channel may deflect strong currents
+from safe courses, and thus occasion destructive erosion of shores
+otherwise secure, or promote the transportation of sand or slime to
+block up important harbors, or it may furnish a powerful enemy with
+dangerous facilities for hostile operations along the coast.
+
+Nature sometimes mocks the cunning and the power of man by spontaneously
+performing, for his benefit, works which he shrinks from undertaking,
+and the execution of which by him she would resist with unconquerable
+obstinacy. A dangerous sand bank, that all the enginery of the world
+could not dredge out in a generation, may be carried off in a night by a
+strong river flood, or a current impelled by a violent wind from an
+unusual quarter, and a passage scarcely navigable by fishing boats may
+be thus converted into a commodious channel for the largest ship that
+floats upon the ocean. In the remarkable gulf of Liimfjord in Jutland,
+nature has given a singular example of a canal which she alternately
+opens as a marine strait, and, by shutting again, converts into a
+fresh-water lagoon. The Liimfjord was doubtless originally an open
+channel from the Atlantic to the Baltic between two islands, but the
+sand washed up by the sea blocked up the western entrance, and built a
+wall of dunes to close it more firmly. This natural dike, as we have
+seen, has been more than once broken through, and it is perhaps in the
+power of man, either permanently to maintain the barrier, or to remove
+it and keep a navigable channel constantly open. If the Liimfjord
+becomes an open strait, the washing of sea sand through it would perhaps
+block up some of the belts and small channels now important for the
+navigation of the Baltic, and the direct introduction of a tidal current
+might produce very perceptible effects on the hydrography of the
+Cattegat.
+
+
+_The Suez Canal._
+
+If the Suez Canal--the greatest and most truly cosmopolite physical
+improvement ever undertaken by man--shall prove successful, it will
+considerably affect the basins of the Mediterranean and of the Red Sea,
+though in a different manner, and probably in a less degree than the
+diversion of the current of the Nile from the one to the other--to which
+I shall presently refer--would do. It is, indeed, conceivable, that if a
+free channel be once cut from sea to sea, the coincidence of a high tide
+and a heavy south wind might produce a hydraulic force that would
+convert the narrow canal into an open strait. In such a case, it is
+impossible to estimate, or even to foresee, the consequences which might
+result from the unobstructed mingling of the flowing and ebbing currents
+of the Red Sea with the almost tideless waters of the Mediterranean.
+There can be no doubt, however, that they would be of a most important
+character as respects the simply geographical features and the organic
+life of both. But the shallowness of the two seas at the termini of the
+canal, the action of the tides of the one and the currents of the other,
+and the nature of the intervening isthmus, render the occurrence of such
+a cataclysm in the highest degree improbable. The obstruction of the
+canal by sea sand at both ends is a danger far more difficult to guard
+against and avert, than an irruption of the waters of either sea.
+
+There is, then, no reason to expect any change of coast lines or of
+natural navigable channels as a direct consequence of the opening of the
+Suez Canal, but it will, no doubt, produce very interesting revolutions
+in the animal and vegetable population of both basins. The
+Mediterranean, with some local exceptions--such as the bays of
+Calabria, and the coast of Sicily so picturesquely described by
+Quatrefages[481]--is comparatively poor in marine vegetation, and in
+shell as well as in fin fish. The scarcity of fish in some of its gulfs
+is proverbial, and you may scrutinize long stretches of beach on its
+northern shores, after every south wind for a whole winter, without
+finding a dozen shells to reward your search. But no one who has not
+looked down into tropical or subtropical seas can conceive the amazing
+wealth of the Red Sea in organic life. Its bottom is carpeted or paved
+with marine plants, with zoophytes and with shells, while its waters are
+teeming with infinitely varied forms of moving life. Most of its
+vegetables and its animals, no doubt, are confined by the laws of their
+organization to warmer temperatures than that of the Mediterranean, but
+among them there must be many, whose habitat is of a wider range, many
+whose powers of accommodation would enable them to acclimate themselves
+in a colder sea.
+
+We may suppose the less numerous aquatic fauna and flora of the
+Mediterranean to be equally capable of climatic adaptation, and hence,
+when the canal shall be opened, there will be an interchange of the
+organic population not already common to both seas. Destructive species,
+thus newly introduced, may diminish the numbers of their proper prey in
+either basin, and, on the other hand, the increased supply of
+appropriate food may greatly multiply the abundance of others, and at
+the same time add important contributions to the aliment of man in the
+countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
+
+A collateral feature of this great project deserves notice as possessing
+no inconsiderable geographical importance. I refer to the conduit or
+conduits constructed from the Nile to the isthmus, primarily to supply
+fresh water to the laborers on the great canal, and ultimately to serve
+as aqueducts for the city of Suez, and for the irrigation and
+reclamation of a large extent of desert soil. In the flourishing days of
+the Egyptian empire, the waters of the Nile were carried over important
+districts east of the river. In later ages, most of this territory
+relapsed into a desert, from the decay of the canals which once
+fertilized it. There is no difficulty in restoring the ancient channels,
+or in constructing new, and thus watering not only all the soil that the
+wisdom of the Pharaohs had improved, but much additional land. Hundreds
+of square miles of arid sand waste would thus be converted into fields
+of perennial verdure, and the geography of Lower Egypt would be thereby
+sensibly changed. If the canal succeeds, considerable towns will grow up
+at once at both ends of the channel, and at intermediate points, all
+depending on the maintenance of aqueducts from the Nile, both for water
+and for the irrigation of the neighboring fields which are to supply
+them with bread. Important interests will thus be created, which will
+secure the permanence of the hydraulic works and of the geographical
+changes produced by them, and Suez, or Port Said, or the city at Lake
+Timsah, may become the capital of the government which has been so long
+established at Cairo.
+
+
+_Canal across the Isthmus of Darien._
+
+The most colossal project of canalization ever suggested, whether we
+consider the physical difficulties of its execution, the magnitude and
+importance of the waters proposed to be united, or the distance which
+would be saved in navigation, is that of a channel between the Gulf of
+Mexico and the Pacific, across the Isthmus of Darien. I do not now speak
+of a lock canal, by way of the Lake of Nicaragua or any other route--for
+such a work would not differ essentially from other canals, and would
+scarcely possess a geographical character--but of an open cut between
+the two seas. It has been by no means shown that the construction of
+such a channel is possible, and, if it were opened, it is highly
+probable that sand bars would accumulate at both entrances, so as to
+obstruct any powerful current through it. But if we suppose the work to
+be actually accomplished, there would be, in the first place, such a
+mixture of the animal and vegetable life of the two great oceans as I
+have stated to be likely to result from the opening of the Suez Canal
+between two much smaller basins. In the next place, if the channel were
+not obstructed by sand bars, it might sooner or later be greatly widened
+and deepened by the mechanical action of the current through it, and
+consequences, not inferior in magnitude to any physical revolution which
+has taken place since man appeared upon the earth, might result from it.
+
+What those consequences would be is in a great degree matter of pure
+conjecture, and there is much room for the exercise of the imagination
+on the subject; but, as more than one geographer has suggested, there is
+one possible result which throws all other conceivable effects of such a
+work quite into the shade. I refer to changes in the course of the two
+great oceanic rivers, the Gulf Stream and the corresponding current on
+the Pacific side of the isthmus. The warm waters which the Gulf Stream
+transports to high latitudes and then spreads out, like an expanded
+hand, along the eastern shores of the Atlantic, give out, as they cool,
+heat enough to raise the mean temperature of Western Europe several
+degrees. In fact, the Gulf Stream is the principal cause of the
+superiority of the climate of Western Europe over those of Eastern
+America and Eastern Asia in the corresponding latitudes. All the
+meteorological conditions of the former region are in a great measure
+regulated by it, and hence it is the grandest and most beneficent of all
+purely geographical phenomena. We do not yet know enough of the laws
+which govern the movements of this mighty flood of warmth and life to be
+able to say whether its current would be perceptibly affected by the
+severance of the Isthmus of Darien; but as it enters and sweeps round
+the Gulf of Mexico, it is possible that the removal of the resistance of
+the land which forms the western shore of that sea, might allow the
+stream to maintain its original westward direction, and join itself to
+the tropical current of the Pacific.
+
+The effect of such a change would be an immediate depression of the mean
+temperature of Western Europe to the level of that of Eastern America,
+and perhaps the climate of the former continent might become as
+excessive as that of the latter, or even a new "ice period" be
+occasioned by the withdrawal of so important a source of warmth from the
+northern zones. Hence would result the extinction of vast multitudes of
+land and sea plants and animals, and a total revolution in the domestic
+and rural economy of human life in all those countries from which the
+New World has received its civilized population. Other scarcely less
+startling consequences may be imagined as possible; but the whole
+speculation is too dreary, distant, and improbable to deserve to be long
+indulged in.[482]
+
+
+_Canals to the Dead Sea._
+
+The project of Captain Allen for opening a new route to India by cuts
+between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, and between the Dead Sea and
+the Red Sea, presents many interesting considerations.[483] The
+hypsometrical observations of Bertou, Roth, and others, render it highly
+probable, if not certain, that the watershed in the Wadi-el-Araba
+between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea is not less than three hundred feet
+above the mean level of the latter, and if this is so, the execution of
+a canal from the one sea to the other is quite out of the question. But
+the summit level between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, near Jezreel,
+is believed to be little, if at all, more than one hundred feet above
+the sea, and the distance is so short that the cutting of a channel
+through the dividing ridge would probably be found by no means an
+impracticable undertaking. Although, therefore, we have no reason to
+believe it possible to open a navigable channel to the east by way of
+the Dead Sea, there is not much doubt that the basin of the latter might
+be made accessible from the Mediterranean.
+
+The level of the Dead Sea lies 1,316.7 feet below that of the ocean. It
+is bounded east and west by mountain ridges, rising to the height of
+from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the ocean. From its southern end, a
+depression called the Wadi-el-Araba extends to the Gulf of Akaba, the
+eastern arm of the Red Sea. The Jordan empties into its northern
+extremity, after having passed through the Lake of Tiberias at an
+elevation of 663.4 feet above the Dead Sea, or 653.3 below the
+Mediterranean, and drains a considerable valley north of the lake, as
+well as the plain of Jericho, which lies between the lake and the sea.
+If the waters of the Mediterranean were admitted freely into the basin
+of the Dead Sea, they would raise its surface to the general level of
+the ocean, and consequently flood all the dry land below that level
+within the basin.
+
+I do not know that accurate levels have been taken in the valley of the
+Jordan above the Lake of Tiberias, and our information is very vague as
+to the hypsometry of the northern part of the Wadi-el-Araba. As little
+do we know where a contour line, carried around the basin at the level
+of the Mediterranean, would strike its eastern and western borders. We
+cannot, therefore, accurately compute the extent of now dry land which
+would be covered by the admission of the waters of the Mediterranean, or
+the area of the inland sea which would be thus created. Its length,
+however, would certainly exceed one hundred and fifty miles, and its
+mean breadth, including its gulfs and bays, could scarcely be less than
+fifteen, perhaps even twenty. It would cover very little ground now
+occupied by civilized or even uncivilized man, though some of the soil
+which would be submerged--for instance, that watered by the Fountain of
+Elisha and other neighboring sources--is of great fertility, and, under
+a wiser government and better civil institutions, might rise to
+importance, because, from its depression, it possesses a very warm
+climate, and might supply Southeastern Europe with tropical products
+more readily than they can be obtained from any other source. Such a
+canal and sea would be of no present commercial importance, because they
+would give access to no new markets or sources of supply; but when the
+fertile valleys and the deserted plains east of the Jordan shall be
+reclaimed to agriculture and civilization, these waters would furnish a
+channel of communication which might become the medium of a very
+extensive trade.
+
+Whatever might be the economical results of the opening and filling of
+the Dead Sea basin, the creation of a new evaporable area, adding not
+less than 2,000 or perhaps 3,000 square miles to the present fluid
+surface of Syria, could not fail to produce important meteorological
+effects. The climate of Syria would be tempered, its precipitation and
+its fertility increased, the courses of its winds and the electrical
+condition of its atmosphere modified. The present organic life of the
+valley would be extinguished, and many tribes of plants and animals
+would emigrate from the Mediterranean to the new home which human art
+had prepared for them. It is possible, too, that the addition of 1,300
+feet, or forty atmospheres, of hydrostatic pressure upon the bottom of
+the basin might disturb the equilibrium between the internal and the
+external forces of the crust of the earth at this point of abnormal
+configuration, and thus produce geological convulsions the intensity of
+which cannot be even conjectured.
+
+
+_Maritime Canals in Greece._
+
+A maritime canal executed and another projected in ancient times, the
+latter of which is again beginning to excite attention, deserve some
+notice, though their importance is of a commercial rather than a
+geographical character. The first of these is the cut made by Xerxes
+through the rock which connects the promontory of Mount Athos with the
+mainland; the other, a navigable canal through the Isthmus of Corinth.
+In spite of the testimony of Herodotus and Thucydides, the Romans
+classed the canal of Xerxes among the fables of "mendacious Greece," and
+yet traces of it are perfectly distinct at the present day through its
+whole extent, except at a single point where, after it had become so
+choked as to be no longer navigable, it was probably filled up to
+facilitate communication by land between the promontory and the country
+in the rear of it.
+
+If the fancy kingdom of Greece shall ever become a sober reality, escape
+from its tutelage and acquire such a moral as well as political status
+that its own capitalists--who now prefer to establish themselves and
+employ their funds anywhere else rather than in their native land--have
+any confidence in the permanency of its institutions, a navigable
+channel will no doubt be opened between the gulfs of Lepanto and AEgina.
+The annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece will make such a work
+almost a political necessity, and it would not only furnish valuable
+facilities for domestic intercourse, but become an important channel of
+communication between the Levant and the countries bordering on the
+Adriatic, or conducting their trade through that sea.
+
+As I have said, the importance of this latter canal and of a navigable
+channel between Mount Athos and the continent would be chiefly
+commercial, but both of them would be conspicuous instances of the
+control of man over nature in a field where he has thus far done little
+to interfere with her spontaneous arrangements. If they were constructed
+upon such a scale as to admit of the free passage of the water through
+them, in either direction, as the prevailing winds should impel it, they
+would exercise a certain influence on the coast currents, which are
+important as hydrographical elements, and also as producing abrasion of
+the coast and a drift at the bottom of seas, and hence would be entitled
+to a higher rank than simply as artificial means of transit.
+
+
+_Canal of Saros._
+
+It has been thought practicable to cut a canal across the peninsula of
+Gallipoli from the outlet of the Sea of Marmora into the Gulf of Saros.
+It may be doubted whether the mechanical difficulties of such a work
+would not be found insuperable; but when Constantinople shall recover
+the important political and commercial rank which naturally belongs to
+her, the execution of such a canal will be recommended by strong reasons
+of military expediency, as well as by the interests of trade. An open
+channel across the peninsula would divert a portion of the water which
+now flows through the Dardanelles, diminish the rapidity of that
+powerful current, and thus in part remove the difficulties which
+obstruct the navigation of the strait. It would considerably abridge the
+distance by water between Constantinople and the northern coast of the
+AEgean, and it would have the important advantage of obliging an enemy to
+maintain two blockading fleets instead of one.
+
+
+_Cape Cod Canal._
+
+The opening of a navigable cut through the narrow neck which separates
+the southern part of Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts from the Atlantic,
+was long ago suggested, and there are few coast improvements on the
+Atlantic shores of the United States which are recommended by higher
+considerations of utility. It would save the most important coasting
+trade of the United States the long and dangerous navigation around Cape
+Cod, afford a new and safer entrance to Boston harbor for vessels from
+Southern ports, secure a choice of passages, thus permitting arrivals
+upon the coast and departures from it at periods when wind and weather
+might otherwise prevent them, and furnish a most valuable internal
+communication in case of coast blockade by a foreign power. The
+difficulties of the undertaking are no doubt formidable, but the expense
+of maintenance and the uncertainty of the effects of currents setting
+through the new strait are still more serious objections.
+
+
+_Diversion of the Nile._
+
+Perhaps the most remarkable project of great physical change, proposed
+or threatened in earlier ages, is that of the diversion of the Nile from
+its natural channel, and the turning of its current into either the
+Libyan desert or the Red Sea. The Ethiopian or Abyssinian princes more
+than once menaced the Memlouk sultans with the execution of this
+alarming project, and the fear of so serious an evil is said to have
+induced the Moslems to conciliate the Abyssinian kings by large
+presents, and by some concessions to the oppressed Christians of
+Egypt.[484] Indeed, Arabic historians affirm that in the tenth century
+the Ethiopians dammed the river, and, for a whole year, cut off its
+waters from Egypt. The probable explanation of this story is to be found
+in a season of extreme drought, such as have sometimes occurred in the
+valley of the Nile. About the beginning of the sixteenth century,
+Albuquerque the "Terrible" revived the scheme of turning the Nile into
+the Red Sea, with the hope of destroying the transit trade through Egypt
+by way of Kesseir. In 1525 the King of Portugal was requested by the
+Emperor of Abyssinia to send him engineers for that purpose; a successor
+of that prince threatened to attempt the project about the year 1700,
+and even as late as the French occupation of Egypt, the possibility of
+driving out the intruder by this means was suggested in England.
+
+It cannot be positively affirmed that the diversion of the waters of the
+Nile to the Red Sea is impossible. In the chain of mountains which
+separates the two valleys, Brown found a deep depression or wadi,
+extending from the one to the other, at no great elevation above the bed
+of the river. The Libyan desert is so much higher than the Nile below
+the junction of the two principal branches at Khartum, that there is no
+reason to believe a new channel for their united waters could be found
+in that direction; but the Bahr-el-Abiad flows through, if it does not
+rise in, a great table land, and some of its tributaries are supposed to
+communicate in the rainy season with branches of great rivers flowing in
+quite another direction. Hence it is probable that a portion at least of
+the waters of this great arm of the Nile--and perhaps a quantity the
+abstraction of which would be sensibly felt in Egypt--might be sent to
+the Atlantic by the Niger, lost in the inland lakes of Central Africa,
+or employed to fertilize the Libyan sand wastes.
+
+Admitting the possibility of turning the whole river into the Red Sea,
+let us consider the probable effect of the change. First and most
+obvious is the total destruction of the fertility of Middle and Lower
+Egypt, the conversion of that part of the valley into a desert, and the
+extinction of its imperfect civilization, if not the absolute
+extirpation of its inhabitants. This is the calamity threatened by the
+Abyssinian princes and the ferocious Portuguese warrior, and feared by
+the sultans of Egypt. Beyond these immediate and palpable consequences
+neither party then looked; but a far wider geographical area, and far
+more extensive and various human interests, would be affected by the
+measure. The spread of the Nile during the annual inundation covers, for
+many weeks, several thousand square miles with water, and at other
+seasons of the year pervades the same and even a larger area with
+moisture by infiltration. The abstraction of so large an evaporable
+surface from the southern shores of the Mediterranean could not but
+produce important effects on many meteorological phenomena, and the
+humidity, the temperature, the electrical condition and the atmospheric
+currents of Northeastern Africa might be modified to a degree that would
+sensibly affect the climate of Europe.
+
+The Mediterranean, deprived of the contributions of the Nile, would
+require a larger supply, and of course a stronger current, of water from
+the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar; the proportion of salt it
+contains would be increased, and the animal life of at least its
+southern borders would be consequently modified; the current which winds
+along its southern, eastern, and northeastern shores would be diminished
+in force and volume, if not destroyed altogether, and its basin and its
+harbors would be shoaled by no new deposits from the highlands of inner
+Africa.
+
+In the much smaller Red Sea, more immediately perceptible, if not
+greater, effects, would be produced. The deposits of slime would reduce
+its depth, and perhaps, in the course of ages, divide it into an inland
+and an open sea; its waters would be more or less freshened, and its
+immensely rich marine fauna and flora changed in character and
+proportion, and, near the mouth of the river, perhaps even destroyed
+altogether; its navigable channels would be altered in position and
+often quite obstructed; the flow of its tides would be modified by the
+new geographical conditions; the sediment of the river would form new
+coast lines and lowlands, which would be covered with vegetation, and
+probably thereby produce sensible climatic changes.
+
+
+_Changes in the Caspian._
+
+The Russian Government has contemplated the establishment of a nearly
+direct water communication between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azoff,
+partly by natural and partly by artificial channels, and there are now
+navigable canals between the Don and the Volga; but these works, though
+not wanting in commercial and political interest, do not possess any
+geographical importance. It is, however, very possible to produce
+appreciable geographical changes in the basin of the Caspian by the
+diversion of the great rivers which flow from Central Russia. The
+surface of the Caspian is eighty-three feet below the level of the Sea
+of Azoff, and its depression has been explained upon the hypothesis that
+the evaporation exceeds the supply derived, directly and indirectly,
+from precipitation, though able physicists now maintain that the sinking
+of this sea is due to a subsidence of its bottom from geological causes.
+At Tsaritsin, the Don, which empties into the Sea of Azoff, and the
+Volga, which pours into the Caspian, approach each other within ten
+miles. Near this point, by means of open or subterranean canals, the Don
+might be turned into the Volga, or the Volga into the Don. If we suppose
+the whole or a large proportion of the waters of the Don to be thus
+diverted from their natural outlet and sent down to the Caspian, the
+equilibrium between the evaporation from that sea and its supply of
+water might be restored, or its level even raised above its ancient
+limits. If the Volga were turned into the Sea of Azoff, the Caspian
+would be reduced in dimensions until the balance between loss and gain
+should be reestablished, and it would occupy a much smaller area than at
+present. Such changes in the proportion of solid and fluid surface would
+have some climatic effects in the territory which drains into the
+Caspian, and on the other hand, the introduction of a greater quantity
+of fresh water into the Sea of Azoff would render that gulf less saline,
+affect the character and numbers of its fish, and perhaps be not wholly
+without sensible influence on the water of the Black Sea.
+
+
+_Improvements in North American Hydrography._
+
+We are not yet well enough acquainted with the geography of Central
+Africa, or of the interior of South America, to conjecture what
+hydrographical revolutions might there be wrought; but from the fact
+that many important rivers in both continents drain extensive table
+lands, of very moderate inclination, there is reason to suppose that
+important changes in the course of rivers might be accomplished. Our
+knowledge of the drainage of North America is much more complete, and it
+is certain that there are numerous points where the courses of great
+rivers, or the discharge of considerable lakes, might be completely
+diverted, or at least partially directed into different channels.
+
+The surface of Lake Erie is 565 feet above that of the Hudson at Albany,
+and it is so near the level of the great plain lying east of it, that it
+was found practicable to supply the western section of the canal, which
+unites it with the Hudson, with water from the lake, or rather from the
+Niagara which flows out of it. Hence a channel might be constructed,
+which would draw off into the valley of the Genesee any desirable
+proportion of the water naturally discharged by the Niagara. The
+greatest depth of water yet sounded in Lake Erie is but two hundred and
+seventy feet, the mean depth one hundred and twenty. Open canals
+parallel with the Niagara, or directly toward the Genesee, might be
+executed upon a scale which would exercise an important influence on the
+drainage of the lake, if there were any adequate motive for such an
+undertaking. Still easier would it be to create additional outlets for
+the waters of Lake Superior at the Saut St. Mary--where the river which
+drains the lake descends twenty-two feet in a single mile--and thus
+produce incalculable effects, both upon that lake and upon the great
+chain of inland waters which communicate with it.
+
+The summit level between Lake Michigan and the Des Plaines, a tributary
+of the Mississippi, is only twenty-seven feet above the lake, and the
+intervening distance is but a very few miles. It has often been proposed
+to cut an open channel across this ridge, and there is no doubt of the
+practicability of the project. Were this accomplished, although such a
+cut would not, of itself, form a navigable canal, a part of the waters
+of Lake Michigan would be contributed to the Gulf of Mexico, instead of
+to that of St. Lawrence, and the flow might be so regulated as to keep
+the Illinois and the Mississippi at flood at all seasons of the year.
+The increase in the volume of these rivers would augment their velocity
+and their transporting power, and consequently, the erosion of their
+banks and the deposit of slime in the Gulf of Mexico, while the
+introduction of a larger body of cold water into the beds of these
+rivers would very probably produce a considerable effect on the animal
+life that peoples them. The diversion of water from the common basin of
+the great lakes through a new channel, in a direction opposite to their
+natural discharge, would not be absolutely without influence on the St.
+Lawrence, though probably the effect would be too small to be in any way
+perceptible.
+
+
+_Diversion of the Rhine._
+
+The interference of physical improvements with vested rights and ancient
+arrangements, is a more formidable obstacle in old countries than in
+new, to enterprises involving anything approaching to a geographical
+revolution. Hence such projects meet with stronger opposition in Europe
+than in America, and the number of probable changes in the face of
+nature in the former continent is proportionally less. I have noticed
+some important hydraulic improvements as already executed or in progress
+in Europe, and I may refer to some others as contemplated or suggested.
+One of these is the diversion of the Rhine from its present channel
+below Ragatz, by a cut through the narrow ridge near Sargans, and the
+consequent turning of its current into the Lake of Wallenstadt. This
+would be an extremely easy undertaking, for the ridge is but twenty
+feet above the level of the Rhine, and hardly two hundred yards wide.
+There is no present adequate motive for this diversion, but it is easy
+to suppose that it may become advisable within no long period. The
+navigation of the Lake of Constance is rapidly increasing in importance,
+and the shoaling of the eastern end of that lake by the deposits of the
+Rhine may require a remedy which can be found by no other so ready means
+as the discharge of that river into the Lake of Wallenstadt. The
+navigation of this latter lake is not important, nor is it ever likely
+to become so, because the rocky and precipitous character of its shores
+renders their cultivation impossible. It is of great depth, and its
+basin is capacious enough to receive and retain all the sediment which
+the Rhine would carry into it for thousands of years.
+
+
+_Draining of the Zuiderzee._
+
+I have referred to the draining of the Lake of Haarlem as an operation
+of great geographical as well as economical and mechanical interest. A
+much more gigantic project, of a similar character, is now engaging the
+attention of the Netherlandish engineers. It is proposed to drain the
+great salt-water basin called the Zuiderzee. This inland sea covers an
+area of not less than two thousand square miles, or about one million
+three hundred thousand acres. The seaward half, or that portion lying
+northwest of a line drawn from Enkhuizen to Stavoren, is believed to
+have been converted from a marsh to an open bay since the fifth century
+after Christ, and this change is ascribed, partly if not wholly, to the
+interference of man with the order of nature. The Zuiderzee communicates
+with the sea by at least six considerable channels, separated from each
+other by low islands, and the tide rises within the basin to the height
+of three feet. To drain the Zuiderzee, these channels must first be
+closed and the passage of the tidal flood through them cut off. If this
+be done, the coast currents will be restored approximately to the lines
+they followed fourteen or fifteen centuries ago, and there can be little
+doubt that an appreciable effect will thus be produced upon all the
+tidal phenomena of that coast, and, of course, upon the maritime
+geography of Holland.
+
+A ring dike and canal must then be constructed around the landward side
+of the basin, to exclude and carry off the fresh-water streams which now
+empty into it. One of these, the Ijssel, a considerable river, has a
+course of eighty miles, and is, in fact, one of the outlets of the
+Rhine, though augmented by the waters of several independent
+tributaries. These preparations being made, and perhaps transverse dikes
+erected at convenient points for dividing the gulf into smaller
+portions, the water must be pumped out by machinery, in substantially
+the same way as in the case of the Lake of Haarlem. No safe calculations
+can be made as to the expenditure of time and money required for the
+execution of this stupendous enterprise, but I believe its
+practicability is not denied by competent judges, though doubts are
+entertained as to its financial expediency. The geographical results of
+this improvement would be analogous to those of the draining of the Lake
+of Haarlem, but many times multiplied in extent, and its meteorological
+effects, though perhaps not perceptible on the coast, could hardly fail
+to be appreciable in the interior of Holland.
+
+
+_Waters of the Karst._
+
+The singular structure of the Karst, the great limestone plateau lying
+to the north of Trieste, has suggested some engineering operations which
+might be attended with sensible effects upon the geography of the
+province. I have described this table land as, though now bare of
+forests, and almost of vegetation, having once been covered with woods,
+and as being completely honeycombed by caves through which the drainage
+of that region is conducted. Schmidl has spent years in studying the
+subterranean geography and hydrography of this singular district, and
+his discoveries, and those of earlier cave-hunters, have led to various
+proposals of physical improvement of a novel character. Many of the
+underground water courses of the Karst are without visible outlet, and,
+in some instances at least, they, no doubt, send their waters, by deep
+channels, to the Adriatic.[485] The city of Trieste is very
+insufficiently provided with fresh water. It has been thought
+practicable to supply this want by tunnelling through the wall of the
+plateau, which rises abruptly in the rear of the town, until some
+subterranean stream is encountered, the current of which can be
+conducted to the city. More visionary projectors have gone further, and
+imagined that advantage might be taken of the natural tunnels under the
+Karst for the passage of roads, railways, and even navigable canals. But
+however chimerical these latter schemes may seem, there is every reason
+to believe that art might avail itself of these galleries for improving
+the imperfect drainage of the champaign country bounded by the Karst,
+and that stopping or opening the natural channels might very much modify
+the hydrography of an extensive region.
+
+
+_Subterranean Waters of Greece._
+
+There are parts of continental Greece which resemble the Karst and the
+adjacent plains in being provided with a natural subterranean drainage.
+The superfluous waters run off into limestone caves called _catavothra_
+([Greek: katabothra]). In ancient times, the entrances to the catavothra
+were enlarged or partially closed as the convenience of drainage or
+irrigation required, and there is no doubt that similar measures might
+be adopted at the present day with great advantage both to the salubrity
+and the productiveness of the regions so drained.
+
+
+_Soil below Rock._
+
+One of the most singular changes of natural surface effected by man is
+that observed by Beechey and by Barth at Lin Tefla, and near Gebel
+Genunes, in the district of Ben Gasi, in Northern Africa. In this region
+the superficial stratum originally consisted of a thin sheet of rock
+covering a layer of fertile earth. This rock has been broken up, and,
+when not practicable to find use for it in fences, fortresses, or
+dwellings, heaped together in high piles, and the soil, thus bared of
+its stony shell, has been employed for agricultural purposes.[486] If we
+remember that gunpowder was unknown at the period when these remarkable
+improvements were executed, and of course that the rock could have been
+broken only with the chisel and wedge, we must infer that land had at
+that time a very great pecuniary value, and, of course, that the
+province, though now exhausted, and almost entirely deserted by man, had
+once a dense population.
+
+
+_Covering Rock with Earth._
+
+If man has, in some cases, broken up rock to reach productive ground
+beneath, he has, in many other instances, covered bare ledges, and
+sometimes extensive surfaces of solid stone, with fruitful earth,
+brought from no inconsiderable distance. Not to speak of the Campo Santo
+at Pisa, filled, or at least coated, with earth from the Holy Land, for
+quite a different purpose, it is affirmed that the garden of the
+monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai is composed of Nile mud,
+transported on the backs of camels from the banks of that river. Parthey
+and older authors state that all the productive soil of the Island of
+Malta was brought over from Sicily.[487] The accuracy of the
+information may be questioned in both cases, but similar practices, on a
+smaller scale, are matter of daily observation in many parts of Southern
+Europe. Much of the wine of the Moselle is derived from grapes grown on
+earth carried high up the cliffs on the shoulders of men. In China, too,
+rock has been artificially covered with earth to an extent which gives
+such operations a real geographical importance, and the accounts of the
+importation of earth at Malta, and the fertilization of the rocks on
+Mount Sinai with slime from the Nile, may be not wholly without
+foundation.
+
+
+_Wadies of Arabia, Petraea._
+
+In the latter case, indeed, river sediment might be very useful as a
+manure, but it could hardly be needed as a soil; for the growth of
+vegetation in the wadies of the Sinaitic Peninsula shows that the
+disintegrated rock of its mountains requires only water to stimulate it
+to considerable productiveness. The wadies present, not unfrequently,
+narrow gorges, which might easily be closed, and thus accumulations of
+earth, and reservoirs of water to irrigate it, might be formed which
+would convert many a square mile of desert into flourishing date gardens
+and cornfields. Not far from Wadi Feiran, on the most direct route to
+Wadi Esh-Sheikh, is a very narrow pass called by the Arabs El Bueb (El
+Bab) or, The Gate, which might be securely closed to a very considerable
+height, with little labor or expense. Above this pass is a wide and
+nearly level expanse, containing a hundred acres, perhaps much more.
+This is filled up to a certain regular level with deposits brought down
+by torrents before the Gate, or Bueb, was broken through, and they have
+now worn down a channel in the deposits to the bed of the wadi. If a dam
+were constructed at the pass, and reservoirs built to retain the winter
+rains, a great extent of valley might be rendered cultivable.
+
+
+_Incidental Effects of Human Action._
+
+I have more than once alluded to the collateral and unsought
+consequences of human action as being often more momentous than the
+direct and desired results. There are cases where such incidental, or,
+in popular speech, accidental, consequences, though of minor importance
+in themselves, serve to illustrate natural processes; others, where, by
+the magnitude and character of the material traces they leave behind
+them, they prove that man, in primary or in more advanced stages of
+social life, must have occupied particular districts for a longer period
+than has been supposed by popular chronology. "On the coast of Jutland,"
+says Forchhammer, "wherever a bolt from a wreck or any other fragment of
+iron is deposited in the beach sand, the particles are cemented
+together, and form a very solid mass around the iron. A remarkable
+formation of this sort was observed a few years ago in constructing the
+sea wall of the harbor of Elsineur. This stratum, which seldom exceeded
+a foot in thickness, rested upon common beach sand, and was found at
+various depths, less near the shore, greater at some distance from it.
+It was composed of pebbles and sand, and contained a great quantity of
+pins, and some coins of the reign of Christian IV, between the beginning
+and the middle of the seventeenth century. Here and there, a coating of
+metallic copper had been deposited by galvanic action, and the presence
+of completely oxydized metallic iron was often detected. An
+investigation undertaken by Councillor Reinhard and myself, at the
+instance of the Society of Science, made it in the highest degree
+probable that this formation owed its origin to the street sweepings of
+the town, which had been thrown upon the beach, and carried off and
+distributed by the waves over the bottom of the harbor."[488] These and
+other familiar observations of the like sort show that a sandstone reef,
+of no inconsiderable magnitude, might originate from the stranding of a
+ship with a cargo of iron,[489] or from throwing the waste of an
+establishment for working metals into running water which might carry it
+to the sea.
+
+Parthey records a singular instance of unforeseen mischief from an
+interference with the arrangements of nature. A landowner at Malta
+possessed a rocky plateau sloping gradually toward the sea, and
+terminating in a precipice forty or fifty feet high, through natural
+openings in which the sea water flowed into a large cave under the rock.
+The proprietor attempted to establish salt works on the surface, and cut
+shallow pools in the rock for the evaporation of the water. In order to
+fill the salt pans more readily, he sank a well down to the cave
+beneath, through which he drew up water by a windlass and buckets. The
+speculation proved a failure, because the water filtered through the
+porous bottom of the pans, leaving little salt behind. But this was a
+small evil, compared with other destructive consequences that followed.
+When the sea was driven into the cave by violent west or northwest
+winds, it shot a _jet d'eau_ through the well to the height of sixty
+feet, the spray of which was scattered far and wide over the neighboring
+gardens and blasted the crops. The well was now closed with stones, but
+the next winter's storms hurled them out again, and spread the salt
+spray over the grounds in the vicinity as before. Repeated attempts were
+made to stop the orifice, but at the time of Parthey's visit the sea had
+thrice burst through, and it was feared that the evil was without
+remedy.[490]
+
+I have mentioned the great extent of the heaps of oyster and other
+shells left by the American Indians on the Atlantic coast of the United
+States. Some of the Danish kitchen-middens, which closely resemble them,
+are a thousand feet long, from one hundred and fifty to two hundred
+wide, and from six to ten high. These piles have an importance as
+geological witnesses, independent of their bearing upon human history.
+Wherever the coast line appears, from other evidence, to have remained
+unchanged in outline and elevation since they were accumulated, they are
+found near the sea, and not more than about ten feet above its level. In
+some cases they are at a considerable distance from the beach, and in
+these instances, so far as yet examined, there are proofs that the coast
+has advanced in consequence of upheaval or of fluviatile or marine
+deposit. Where they are altogether wanting, the coast seems to have sunk
+or been washed away by the sea. The constancy of these observations
+justifies geologists in arguing, where other evidence is wanting, the
+advance of land or sea respectively, or the elevation or depression of
+the former, from the position or the absence of these heaps alone.
+
+Every traveller in Italy is familiar with Monte Testaccio, the mountain
+of potsherds, at Rome; but this deposit, large as it is, shrinks into
+insignificance when compared with masses of similar origin in the
+neighborhood of older cities. The castaway pottery of ancient towns in
+Magna Graecia composes strata of such extent and thickness that they have
+been dignified with the appellation of the ceramic formation. The Nile,
+as it slowly changes its bed, exposes in its banks masses of the same
+material, so vast that the population of the world during the whole
+historical period would seem to have chosen this valley as a general
+deposit for its broken vessels.
+
+The fertility imparted to the banks of the Nile by the water and the
+slime of the inundations, is such that manures are little employed.
+Hence much domestic waste, which would elsewhere be employed to enrich
+the soil, is thrown out into vacant places near the town. Hills of
+rubbish are thus piled up which astonish the traveller almost as much as
+the solid pyramids themselves. The heaps of ashes and other household
+refuse collected on the borders and within the limits of Cairo were so
+large, that the removal of them by Ibrahim Pacha has been looked upon as
+one of the great works of the age.
+
+The soil near cities, the street sweepings of which are spread upon the
+ground as manure, is perceptibly raised by them and by other effects of
+human industry, and in spite of all efforts to remove the waste, the
+level of the ground on which large towns stand is constantly elevated.
+The present streets of Rome are twenty feet above those of the ancient
+city. The Appian way between Rome and Albano, when cleared out a few
+years ago, was found buried four or five feet deep, and the fields along
+the road were elevated nearly or quite as much. The floors of many
+churches in Italy, not more than six or seven centuries old, are now
+three or four feet below the adjacent streets, though it is proved by
+excavations that they were built as many feet above them.
+
+
+_Resistance to Great Natural Forces._
+
+I have often spoken of the greater and more subtile natural forces, and
+especially of geological agencies, as powers beyond human guidance or
+resistance. This is no doubt at present true in the main, but man has
+shown that he is not altogether impotent to struggle with even these
+mighty servants of nature, and his unconscious as well as his deliberate
+action may in some cases have increased or diminished the intensity of
+their energies. It is a very ancient belief that earthquakes are more
+destructive in districts where the crust of the earth is solid and
+homogeneous, than where it is of a looser and more interrupted
+structure. Aristotle, Pliny the elder, and Seneca believed that not only
+natural ravines and caves, but quarries, wells, and other human
+excavations, which break the continuity of the terrestrial strata and
+facilitate the escape of elastic vapors, have a sensible influence in
+diminishing the violence and preventing the propagation of the earth
+waves. In all countries subject to earthquakes this opinion is still
+maintained, and it is asserted that, both in ancient and in modern
+times, buildings protected by deep wells under or near them have
+suffered less from earthquakes than those the architects of which have
+neglected this precaution.[491]
+
+If the commonly received theory of the cause of earthquakes is
+true--that, namely, which ascribes them to the elastic force of gases
+accumulated or generated in subterranean reservoirs--it is evident that
+open channels of communication between such reservoirs and the
+atmosphere might serve as a harmless discharge of gases that would
+otherwise acquire destructive energy. The doubt is whether artificial
+excavations can be carried deep enough to reach the laboratory where the
+elastic fluids are distilled. There are, in many places, small natural
+crevices through which such fluids escape, and the source of them
+sometimes lies at so moderate a depth that they pervade the superficial
+soil and, as it were, transpire from it, over a considerable area. When
+the borer of an ordinary artesian well strikes into a cavity in the
+earth, imprisoned air often rushes out with great violence, and this has
+been still more frequently observed in sinking mineral-oil wells. In
+this latter case, the discharge of a vehement current of inflammable
+fluid sometimes continues for hours and even longer periods. These facts
+seem to render it not wholly improbable that the popular belief of the
+efficacy of deep wells in mitigating the violence of earthquakes is well
+founded.
+
+In general, light, wooden buildings are less injured by earthquakes than
+more solid structures of stone or brick, and it is commonly supposed
+that the power put forth by the earth wave is too great to be resisted
+by any amount of weight or solidity of mass that man can pile up upon
+the surface. But the fact that in countries subject to earthquakes many
+very large and strongly constructed palaces, temples, and other
+monuments have stood for centuries, comparatively uninjured, suggests a
+doubt whether this opinion is sound. The earthquake of the first of
+November, 1755, which was felt over a twelfth part of the earth's
+surface, was probably the most violent of which we have any clear and
+distinct account, and it seems to have exerted its most destructive
+force at Lisbon. It has often been noticed as a remarkable fact, that
+the mint, a building of great solidity, was almost wholly unaffected by
+the shock which shattered every house and church in the city, and its
+escape from the common ruin can hardly be accounted for except upon the
+supposition that its weight, compactness, and strength of material
+enabled it to resist an agitation of the earth which overthrew all
+weaker structures. On the other hand, a stone pier in the harbor of
+Lisbon, on which thousands of people had taken refuge, sank with its
+foundations to a great depth during the same earthquake; and it is plain
+that where subterranean cavities exist, at moderate depths, the erection
+of heavy masses upon them would tend to promote the breaking down of the
+strata which roof them over.
+
+No physicist, I believe, has supposed that man can avert the eruption of
+a volcano or diminish the quantity of melted rock which it pours out of
+the bowels of the earth; but it is not always impossible to divert the
+course of even a large current of lava. "The smaller streams of lava
+near Catania," says Ferrara, in describing the great eruption of 1669,
+"were turned from their course by building dry walls of stone as a
+barrier against them. * * * It was proposed to divert the main current
+from Catania, and fifty men, protected by hides, were sent with hooks
+and iron bars to break the flank of the stream near Belpasso.[492] When
+the opening was made, fluid lava poured forth and flowed rapidly toward
+Paterno; but the inhabitants of that place, not caring to sacrifice
+their own town to save Catania, rushed out in arms and put a stop to the
+operation."[493] In the eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, the viceroy saved
+from impending destruction the town of Portici, and the valuable
+collection of antiquities then deposited there but since removed to
+Naples, by employing several thousand men to dig a ditch above the town,
+by which the lava current was carried off in another direction.[494]
+
+
+_Effects of Mining._
+
+The excavations made by man, for mining and other purposes, may
+sometimes occasion disturbance of the surface by the subsidence of the
+strata above them, as in the case of the mine of Fahlun, but such
+accidents must always be too inconsiderable in extent to deserve notice
+in a geographical point of view. Such excavations, however, may
+interfere materially with the course of subterranean waters, and it has
+even been conjectured that the removal of large bodies of metallic ore
+from their original deposits might, at least locally, affect the
+magnetic and electrical condition of the earth's crust to a sensible
+degree.
+
+Accidental fires in mines of coal or lignite sometimes lead to
+consequences not only destructive to large quantities of valuable
+material, but may, directly or indirectly, produce results important in
+geography. The coal occasionally takes fire from the miners' lights or
+other fires used by them, and, if long exposed to air in deserted
+galleries, may be spontaneously kindled. Under favorable circumstances,
+a stratum of coal will burn till it is exhausted, and a cavity may be
+burnt out in a few months which human labor could not excavate in many
+years. Wittwer informs us that a coal mine at St. Etienne in Dauphiny
+has been burning ever since the fourteenth century, and that a mine near
+Duttweiler, another near Epterode, and a third at Zwickau, have been on
+fire for two hundred years. Such conflagrations not only produce
+cavities in the earth, but communicate a perceptible degree of heat to
+the surface, and the author just quoted cites cases where this heat has
+been advantageously employed in forcing vegetation.[495]
+
+
+_Espy's Theories._
+
+Espy's well known suggestion of the possibility of causing rain
+artificially, by kindling great fires, is not likely to be turned to
+practical account, but the speculations of this able meteorologist are
+not, for that reason, to be rejected as worthless. His labors exhibit
+great industry in the collection of facts, much ingenuity in dealing
+with them, remarkable insight into the laws of nature, and a ready
+perception of analogies and relations not obvious to minds less
+philosophically constituted. They have unquestionably contributed very
+essentially to the advancement of meteorological science. The
+possibility that the distribution and action of electricity may be
+considerably modified by long lines of iron railways and telegraph
+wires, is a kindred thought, and in fact rests much on the same
+foundation as the belief in the utility of lightning rods, but such
+influence is too obscure and too small to have been yet detected.
+
+
+_River Sediment._
+
+The manifestation of the internal heat of the earth at any given point
+is conditioned by the thickness of the crust at such point. The deposits
+of rivers tend to augment that thickness at their estuaries. The
+sediment of slowly flowing rivers emptying into shallow seas is spread
+over so great a surface that we can hardly imagine the foot or two of
+slime they let fall over a wide area in a century to form an element
+among even the infinitesimal quantities which compose the terms of the
+equations of nature. But some swift rivers, rolling mountains of fine
+earth, discharge themselves into deeply scooped gulfs or bays, and in
+such cases the deposit amounts, in the course of a few years, to a mass
+the transfer of which from the surface of a large basin, and its
+accumulation at a single point, may be supposed to produce other
+effects than those measurable by the sounding line. Now, almost all the
+operations of rural life, as I have abundantly shown, increase the
+liability of the soil to erosion by water. Hence, the clearing of the
+valley of the Ganges by man must have much augmented the quantity of
+earth transported by that river to the sea, and of course have
+strengthened the effects, whatever they may be, of thickening the crust
+of the earth in the Bay of Bengal. In such cases, then, human action
+must rank among geological influences.
+
+
+_Nothing Small in Nature._
+
+It is a legal maxim that "the law concerneth not itself with trifles,"
+_de minimus non curat lex_; but in the vocabulary of nature, little and
+great are terms of comparison only; she knows no trifles, and her laws
+are as inflexible in dealing with an atom as with a continent or a
+planet.[496] The human operations mentioned in the last few paragraphs,
+therefore, do act in the ways ascribed to them, though our limited
+faculties are at present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their
+immediate, still more their ultimate consequences. But our inability to
+assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance of natural
+arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the existence of such causes
+in any general view of the relations between man and nature, and we are
+never justified in assuming a force to be insignificant because its
+measure is unknown, or even because no physical effect can now be traced
+to it as its origin. The collection of phenomena must precede the
+analysis of them, and every new fact, illustrative of the action and
+reaction between humanity and the material world around it, is another
+step toward the determination of the great question, whether man is of
+nature or above her.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+
+[1] In the Middle Ages, feudalism, and a nominal Christianity whose
+corruptions had converted the most beneficent of religions into the most
+baneful of superstitions, perpetuated every abuse of Roman tyranny, and
+added new oppressions and new methods of extortion to those invented by
+older despotisms. The burdens in question fell most heavily on the
+provinces that had been longest colonized by the Latin race, and these
+are the portions of Europe which have suffered the greatest physical
+degradation. "Feudalism," says Blanqui, "was a concentration of
+scourges. The peasant, stripped of the inheritance of his fathers,
+became the property of inflexible, ignorant, indolent masters; he was
+obliged to travel fifty leagues with their carts whenever they required
+it; he labored for them three days in the week, and surrendered to them
+half the product of his earnings during the other three; without their
+consent he could not change his residence, or marry. And why, indeed,
+should he wish to marry, when he could scarcely save enough to maintain
+himself? The Abbot Alcuin had twenty thousand slaves, called _serfs_,
+who were forever attached to the soil. This is the great cause of the
+rapid depopulation observed in the Middle Ages, and of the prodigious
+multitude of monasteries which sprang up on every side. It was doubtless
+a relief to such miserable men to find in the cloisters a retreat from
+oppression; but the human race never suffered a more cruel outrage,
+industry never received a wound better calculated to plunge the world
+again into the darkness of the rudest antiquity. It suffices to say that
+the prediction of the approaching end of the world, industriously spread
+by the rapacious monks at this time, was received without
+terror."--_Resume de l'Histoire du Commerce_, p. 156.
+
+The abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which, in the time of Charlemagne,
+had possessed a million of acres, was, down to the Revolution,
+still so wealthy, that the personal income of the abbot was 300,000
+livres. The abbey of Saint-Denis was nearly as rich as that of
+Saint-Germain-des-Pres.--LAVERGNE, _Economie Rurale de la France_,
+p. 104.
+
+Paul Louis Courier quotes from La Bruyere the following striking picture
+of the condition of the French peasantry in his time: "One sees certain
+dark, livid, naked, sunburnt, wild animals, male and female, scattered
+over the country and attached to the soil, which they root and turn over
+with indomitable perseverance. They have, as it were, an articulate
+voice, and when they rise to their feet, they show a human face. They
+are, in fact, men; they creep at night into dens, where they live on
+black bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the labor of
+ploughing, sowing, and harvesting, and therefore deserve some small
+share of the bread they have grown." "These are his own words," adds
+Courier; "he is speaking of the fortunate peasants, of those who had
+work and bread, and they were then the few."--_Petition a la Chambre des
+Deputis pour les Villageois que l'on empeche de danser._
+
+Arthur Young, who travelled in France from 1787 to 1789, gives, in the
+twenty-first chapter of his Travels, a frightful account of the burdens
+of the rural population even at that late period. Besides the regular
+governmental taxes, and a multitude of heavy fines imposed for trifling
+offences, he enumerates about thirty seignorial rights, the very origin
+and nature of some of which are now unknown, while those of some others,
+claimed and enforced by ecclesiastical as well as by temporal lords, are
+as repulsive to humanity and morality, as the worst abuses ever
+practised by heathen despotism. Most of these, indeed, had been commuted
+for money payments, and were levied on the peasantry as pecuniary
+imposts for the benefit of prelates and lay lords, who, by virtue of
+their nobility, were exempt from taxation. Who can wonder at the
+hostility of the French plebeian classes toward the aristocracy in the
+days of the Revolution?
+
+[2] The temporary depopulation of an exhausted soil may be, in some
+cases, a physical, though, like fallows in agriculture, a dear-bought
+advantage. Under favorable circumstances, the withdrawal of man and his
+flocks allows the earth to clothe itself again with forests, and in a
+few generations to recover its ancient productiveness. In the Middle
+Ages, worn-out fields were depopulated, in many parts of the Continent,
+by civil and ecclesiastical tyrannies, which insisted on the surrender
+of the half of a loaf already too small to sustain its producer. Thus
+abandoned, these lands often relapsed into the forest state, and, some
+centuries later, were again brought under cultivation with renovated
+fertility.
+
+[3] The subject of climatic change, with and without reference to human
+action as a cause, has been much discussed by Moreau de Jonnes, Dureau,
+de la Malle, Arago, Humboldt, Fuster, Gasparin, Becquerel, and many
+other writers in Europe, and by Noah Webster, Forry, Drake, and others
+in America. Fraas has endeavored to show, by the history of vegetation
+in Greece, not merely that clearing and cultivation have affected
+climate, but that change of climate has essentially modified the
+character of vegetable life. See his _Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der
+Zeit_.
+
+[4]
+
+  Gods Almagt wenkte van den troon,
+  En schiep elk volk een land ter woon:
+  Hier vestte Zij een grondgebied,
+  Dat Zij ons zelven scheppen liet.
+
+[5] The udometric measurements of Belgrand, reported in the _Annales
+Forestieres_ for 1854, and discussed by Valles in chap. vi of his
+_Etudes sur les Inondations_, constitute the earliest, and, in some
+respects, the most remarkable series known to me, of persevering and
+systematic observations bearing directly and exclusively upon the
+influence of human action on climate, or, to speak more accurately,
+on precipitation and natural drainage. The conclusions of Belgrand,
+however, and of Valles, who adopts them, have not been generally
+accepted by the scientific world, and they seem to have been, in part
+at least, refuted by the arguments of Hericourt and the observations
+of Cantegril, Jeandel, and Belland. See chapter iii: _The Woods_.
+
+[6] Verses addressed by G. C. to Sir Walter Raleigh.--HAKLUYT, i, p.
+668.
+
+[7]
+
+  ----I troer, at Synets Sands er lagt i Oeiet,
+  Mens dette kun er Redskab. Synet stroemmer
+  Fra Sjaelens Dyb, og Oeiets fine Nerver
+  Gaae ud fra Hjernens hemmelige Vaerksted.
+                     HENRIK HERTZ, _Kong Rene's Datter_, sc. ii.
+
+  In the material eye, you think, sight lodgeth!
+  The _eye_ is but an organ. _Seeing_ streameth
+  From the soul's inmost depths. The fine perceptive
+  Nerve springeth from the brain's mysterious workshop.
+
+[8] Skill in marksmanship, whether with firearms or with other
+projectile weapons, depends more upon the training of the eye than is
+generally supposed, and I have often found particularly good shots to
+possess an almost telescopic vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle,
+the barrel serves as a guide to the eye, but there are sportsmen who
+fire with the but of the gun at the hip. In this case, as in the use of
+the sling, the lasso, and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see BABINET,
+_Lectures_, vii, p. 84), in throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a
+stone, and in the employment of the blow pipe and the bow, the movements
+of the hand and arm are guided by that mysterious sympathy which exists
+between the eye and the unseeing organs of the body.
+
+In shooting the tortoises of the Amazon and its tributaries, the Indians
+use an arrow with a long twine and a float attached to it. Ave-Lallemant
+(_Die Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom_, p. 32) thus describes
+their mode of aiming: "As the arrow, if aimed directly at the floating
+tortoise, would strike it at a small angle, and glance from its flat and
+wet shell, the archers have a peculiar method of shooting. They are able
+to calculate exactly their own muscular effort, the velocity of the
+stream, the distance and size of the tortoise, and they shoot the arrow
+directly up into the air, so that it falls almost vertically upon the
+shell of the tortoise, and sticks in it." Analogous calculations--if
+such physico-mental operations can properly be so called--are made in
+the use of other missiles; for no projectile flies in a right line to
+its mark. But the exact training of the eye lies at the bottom of all of
+them, and marksmanship depends almost wholly upon the power of that
+organ, whose directions the blind muscles implicitly follow. It is
+perhaps not out of place to observe here that our English word aim comes
+from the Latin aestimo, I calculate or estimate. See WEDGWOOD'S
+_Dictionary of English Etymology_, and the note to the American edition,
+under _Aim_.
+
+Another proof of the control of the limbs by the eye has been observed
+in deaf-and-dumb schools, and others where pupils are first taught to
+write on large slates or blackboards. The writing is in large
+characters, the small letters being an inch or more high. They are
+formed with chalk or a slate pencil firmly grasped in the fingers, and
+by appropriate motions of the wrist, elbow, and shoulder, not of the
+finger joints. Nevertheless, when a pen is put into the hand of a pupil
+thus taught, his handwriting, though produced by a totally different set
+of muscles and muscular movements, is identical in character with that
+which he has practised on the blackboard.
+
+It has been much doubted whether the artists of the classic ages
+possessed a more perfect sight than those of modern times, or whether,
+in executing their minute mosaics and gem engravings, they used
+magnifiers. Glasses ground convex have been found at Pompeii, but they
+are too rudely fashioned and too imperfectly polished to have been of
+any practical use for optical purposes. But though the ancient artists
+may have had a microscopic vision, their astronomers cannot have had a
+telescopic power of sight; for they did not discover the satellites of
+Jupiter, which are often seen with the naked eye at Oormeeah, in Persia,
+and sometimes, as I can testify by personal observation, at Cairo.
+
+For a very remarkable account of the restoration of vision impaired from
+age, by judicious training, see _Lessons in Life_, by TIMOTHY TITCOMB,
+lesson xi.
+
+[9] _Antiquity of Man_, p. 377.
+
+[10] "One of them [the Indians] seated himself near me, and made from a
+fragment of quartz, with a simple piece of round bone, one end of which
+was hemispherical, with a small crease in it (as if worn by a thread)
+the sixteenth of an inch deep, an arrow head which was very sharp and
+piercing, and such as they use on all their arrows. The skill and
+rapidity with which it was made, without a blow, but by simply breaking
+the sharp edges with the creased bone by the strength of his hands--for
+the crease merely served to prevent the instrument from slipping,
+affording no leverage--was remarkable."--_Reports of Explorations and
+Surveys for Pacific Railroad_, vol. ii, 1855, _Lieut._ BECKWITH'S
+_Report_, p. 43.
+
+It has been said that stone weapons are not found in Sicily, except in
+certain caves half filled with the skeletons of extinct animals. If they
+have not been found in that island in more easily accessible localities,
+I suspect it is because eyes familiar with such objects have not sought
+for them. In January, 1854, I picked up an arrow head of quartz in a
+little ravine or furrow just washed out by a heavy rain, in a field near
+the Simeto. It is rudely fashioned, but its artificial character and its
+special purpose are quite unequivocal.
+
+[11] Probably no cultivated vegetable affords so good an opportunity of
+studying the laws of acclimation of plants as maize or Indian corn.
+Maize is grown from the tropics to at least lat. 47 deg. in Northeastern
+America, and farther north in Europe. Every two or three degrees of
+latitude brings you to a new variety, with new climatic adaptations, and
+the capacity of the plant to accommodate itself to new conditions of
+temperature and season seems almost unlimited. We may easily suppose a
+variety of this grain, which had become acclimated in still higher
+latitudes, to have been lost, and in such case the failure to raise a
+crop from seed brought from some distance to the south would not prove
+that the climate had become colder.
+
+Many persons now living remember that, when the common tomato was first
+introduced into Northern New England, it often failed to ripen; but, in
+the course of a very few years, it completely adapted itself to the
+climate, and now not only matures both its fruit and its seeds with as
+much certainty as any cultivated vegetable, but regularly propagates
+itself by self-sown seed. Meteorological observations, however, do not
+show any amelioration of the summer climate in those States within that
+period. See _Appendix_, No. 1.
+
+Maize and the tomato, if not new to human use, have not been long known
+to civilization, and were, very probably, reclaimed and domesticated at
+a much more recent period than the plants which form the great staples
+of agricultural husbandry in Europe and Asia. Is the great power of
+accomodation to climate possessed by them due to this circumstance?
+There is some reason to suppose that the character of maize has been
+sensibly changed by cultivation in South America; for, according to
+Poeppig, the ears of this grain found in old Peruvian tombs belong to
+varieties not now known in Peru.--_Travels in Peru_, chap. vii.
+
+[12] The cultivation of madder is said to have been introduced into
+Europe by an Oriental in the year 1765, and it was first planted in the
+neighborhood of Avignon. Of course, it has been grown in that district
+for less than a century; but upon soils where it has been a frequent
+crop, it is already losing much of its coloring properties.--LAVERGNE,
+_Economie Rurale de la France_, pp. 259-291.
+
+I believe there is no doubt that the cultivation of madder in the
+vicinity of Avignon is of recent introduction; but it appears from
+Fuller and other evidence, that this plant was grown in Europe before
+the middle of the seventeenth century. The madder brought to France from
+Persia may be of a different species, or, at least, variety. "Some two
+years since," says Fuller, "madder was sown by Sir Nicholas Crispe at
+Debtford, and I hope will have good success; first because it groweth in
+Zeland in the same (if not a more _northern_) _latitude_. Secondly,
+because _wild madder_ grows here in abundance; and why may not _tame
+madder_ if _cicurated_ by art. Lastly, because as good as any grew some
+thirty years since at Barn-Elms, in Surrey, though it quit not cost
+through some error in the first planter thereof, which now we hope will
+be rectified."--FULLER, _Worthies of England_, ii, pp. 57, 58.
+
+Perhaps the recent diseases of the olive, the vine, and the
+silkworm--the prevailing malady of which insect is supposed by some to
+be the effect of an incipient decay of the mulberry tree--may be, in
+part, due to changes produced in the character of the soil by exhaustion
+through long cultivation.
+
+[13] In many parts of New England there are tracts, miles in extent, and
+presenting all varieties of surface and exposure, which were partially
+cleared sixty or seventy years ago, and where little or no change in the
+proportion of cultivated ground, pasturage, and woodland has taken place
+since. In some cases, these tracts compose basins apparently scarcely at
+all exposed to any local influence in the way of percolation or
+infiltration of water toward or from neighboring valleys. But in such
+situations, apart from accidental disturbances, the ground is growing
+drier and drier, from year to year, springs are still disappearing, and
+rivulets still diminishing in their summer supply of water. A probable
+explanation of this is to be found in the rapid drainage of the surface
+of cleared ground, which prevents the subterranean natural reservoirs,
+whether cavities or merely strata of bibulous earth, from filling up.
+How long this process is to last before an equilibrium is reached, none
+can say. It may be, for years; it may be, for centuries.
+
+Livingstone states facts which favor the supposition that a secular
+desiccation is still going on in central Africa. When the regions where
+the earth is growing drier were cleared of wood, or, indeed, whether
+forests ever grew there, we are unable to say, but the change appears to
+have been long in progress. There is reason to suspect a similar
+revolution in Arabia Petraea. In many of the wadis, and particularly in
+the gorges between Wadi Feiran and Wadi Esh Sheikh, there are water-worn
+banks showing that, at no very remote period, the winter floods must
+have risen fifty feet in channels where the growth of acacias and
+tamarisks and the testimony of the Arabs concur to prove that they have
+not risen six feet within the memory or tradition of the present
+inhabitants. There is little probability that any considerable part of
+the Sinaitic peninsula has been wooded since its first occupation by
+man, and we must seek the cause of its increasing dryness elsewhere than
+in the removal of the forest.
+
+[14] The soil of newly subdued countries is generally in a high degree
+favorable to the growth of the fruits of the garden and the orchard, but
+usually becomes much less so in a very few years. Plums, of many
+varieties, were formerly grown, in great perfection and abundance, in
+many parts of New England where at present they can scarcely be reared
+at all; and the peach, which, a generation or two ago, succeeded
+admirably in the southern portion of the same States, has almost ceased
+to be cultivated there. The disappearance of these fruits is partly due
+to the ravages of insects, which have in later years attacked them; but
+this is evidently by no means the sole, or even the principal cause of
+their decay. In these cases, it is not to the exhaustion of the
+particular acres on which the fruit trees have grown that we are to
+ascribe their degeneracy, but to a general change in the condition of
+the soil or the air; for it is equally impossible to rear them
+successfully on absolutely new land in the neighborhood of grounds
+where, not long since, they bore the finest fruit.
+
+I remember being told, many years ago, by one of the earliest settlers
+of the State of Ohio, a very intelligent and observing person, that the
+apple trees raised there from seed sown soon after the land was cleared,
+bore fruit in less than half the time required to bring to bearing those
+reared from seed sown when the ground had been twenty years under
+cultivation.
+
+In the peat mosses of Denmark, Scotch firs and other trees not now
+growing in the same localities, are found in abundance. Every generation
+of trees leaves the soil in a different state from that in which it
+found it; every tree that springs up in a group of trees of another
+species than its own, grows under different influences of light and
+shade and atmosphere from its predecessors. Hence the succession of
+crops, which occurs in all natural forests, seems to be due rather to
+changes of condition than of climate. See chapter iii, _post_.
+
+[15] The nomenclature of meteorology is vague and sometimes equivocal.
+Not long since, it was suspected that the observers reporting to a
+scientific institution did not agree in their understanding of the mode
+of expressing the direction of the wind prescribed by their
+instructions. It was found, upon inquiry, that very many of them used
+the names of the compass-points to indicate the quarter _from_ which the
+wind blew, while others employed them to signify the quarter _toward_
+which the atmospheric currents were moving. In some instances, the
+observers were no longer within the reach of inquiry, and of course
+their tables of the wind were of no value.
+
+"Winds," says Mrs. Somerville, "are named from the points whence they
+blow, currents exactly the reverse. An easterly wind comes from the
+east; whereas an easterly current comes from the west, and flows toward
+the east."--_Physical Geography_, p. 229.
+
+There is no philological ground for this distinction, and it probably
+originated in a confusion of the terminations _-wardly_ and _-erly_,
+both of which are modern. The root of the former ending implies the
+direction _to_ or _to-ward_ which motion is supposed. It corresponds to,
+and is probably allied with, the Latin _versus_. The termination _-erly_
+is a corruption or softening of _-ernly_, easterly for easternly, and
+many authors of the seventeenth century so write it. In Hakluyt (i, p.
+2), _easterly_ is applied to place, "_easterly_ bounds," and means
+_eastern_. In a passage in Drayton, "_easterly_ winds" must mean winds
+_from_ the east; but the same author, in speaking of nations, uses
+_northerly_ for _northern_. Hakewell says: "The sonne cannot goe more
+_southernely_ from vs, nor come more _northernely_ towards vs." Holland,
+in his translation of Pliny, referring to the moon has: "When shee is
+_northerly_," and "shee is gone _southerly_." Richardson, to whom I am
+indebted for the above citations, quotes a passage from Dampier where
+_westerly_ is applied to the wind, but the context does not determine
+the direction. The only example of the termination in _-wardly_ given by
+this lexicographer is from Donne, where it means _toward_ the west.
+
+Shakspeare, in _Hamlet_ (v. ii), uses _northerly_ wind for wind _from_
+the north. Milton does not employ either of these terminations, nor were
+they known to the Anglo-Saxons, who, however, had adjectives of
+direction in _-an_ or _-en_, _-ern_ and _-weard_, the last always
+meaning the point _toward_ which motion is supposed, the others that
+_from_ which it proceeds.
+
+We use an _east_ wind, an _eastern_ wind, and an _easterly_ wind, to
+signify the same thing. The two former expressions are old, and constant
+in meaning; the last is recent, superfluous, and equivocal. See
+_Appendix_, No. 2.
+
+[16] I do not here speak of the vast prairie region of the Mississippi
+valley, which cannot properly be said ever to have been a field of
+British colonization; but of the original colonies, and their
+dependencies in the territory of the present United States, and in
+Canada. It is, however, equally true of the Western prairies as of the
+Eastern forest land, that they had arrived at a state of equilibrium,
+though under very different conditions.
+
+[17] The great fire of Miramichi in 1825, probably the most extensive
+and terrific conflagration recorded in authentic history, spread its
+ravages over nearly six thousand square miles, chiefly of woodland, and
+was of such intensity that it seemed to consume the very soil itself.
+But so great are the recuperative powers of nature, that, in twenty-five
+years, the ground was thickly covered again with trees of fair
+dimensions, except where cultivation and pasturage kept down the forest
+growth.
+
+[18] The English nomenclature of this geographical feature does not seem
+well settled. We have _bog_, _swamp_, _marsh_, _morass_,_ moor_, _fen_,
+_turf moss_, _peat moss_, _quagmire_, all of which, though sometimes
+more or less accurately discriminated, are often used interchangeably,
+or are perhaps employed, each exclusively, in a particular district. In
+Sweden, where, especially in the Lappish provinces, this terr-aqueous
+formation is very extensive and important, the names of its different
+kinds are more specific in their application. The general designation of
+all soils permanently pervaded with water is _Kaerr_. The elder Laestadius
+divides the _Kaerr_ into two genera: _Myror_ (sing. _myra_), and _Mossar_
+(sing. _mosse_). "The former," he observes, "are grass-grown, and
+overflowed with water through almost the whole summer; the latter are
+covered with mosses and always moist, but very seldom overflowed." He
+enumerates the following species of _Myra_, the character of which will
+perhaps be sufficiently understood by the Latin terms into which he
+translates the vernacular names, for the benefit of strangers not
+altogether familiar with the language and the subject: 1. _Hoemyror_,
+paludes graminosae. 2. _Dy_, paludes profundae. 3. _Flarkmyror_, or proper
+_kaerr_, paludes limosae. 4. _Fjaellmyror_, paludes uliginosae. 5.
+_Tufmyror_, paludes caespitosae. 6. _Rismyror_, paludes virgatae. 7.
+_Starraengar_, prata irrigata, with their subdivisions, dry _starraengar_
+or _risaengar_, wet _starraengar_ and _fraekengropar_. 8. _Poelar_, laeunae.
+9. _Goelar_, fossae inundatae. The _Mossar_, paludes turfosae, which are of
+great extent, have but two species: 1. _Torfmossar_, called also
+_Mossmyror_ and _Snottermyror_, and, 2. _Bjoernmossar_.
+
+The accumulations of stagnant or stagnating water originating in bogs
+are distinguished into _Tr[=a]sk_, stagna, and _Tjernar_ or _Tjaernar_
+(sing. _Tjern_ or _Tjaern_), stagnatiles. _Tr[=a]sk_ are pools fed by
+bogs, or water emanating from them, and their bottoms are slimy;
+_Tjernar_ are small _Traesk_ situated within the limits of _Mossar_.--L.
+L. LAESTADIUS, _om Moejligheten af Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, pp. 23, 24.
+
+[19] Although the quantity of bog land in New England is less than in
+many other regions of equal area, yet there is a considerable extent of
+this formation in some of the Northeastern States. Dana (_Manual of
+Geology_, p. 614) states that the quantity of peat in Massachusetts is
+estimated at 120,000,000 cords, or nearly 569,000,000 cubic yards, but
+he does not give either the area or the depth of the deposits. In any
+event, however, bogs cover but a small percentage of the territory in
+any of the Northern States, while it is said that one tenth of the whole
+surface of Ireland is composed of bogs, and there are still extensive
+tracts of undrained marsh in England.
+
+Bogs, independently of their importance in geology as explaining the
+origin of some kinds of mineral coal, have a present value as
+repositories of fuel. Peat beds have sometimes a thickness of ten or
+twelve yards, or even more. A depth of ten yards would give 48,000 cubic
+yards to the acre. The greatest quantity of firewood yielded by the
+forests of New England to the acre is 100 cords solid measure, or 474
+cubic yards; but this comprises only the trunks and larger branches. If
+we add the small branches and twigs, it is possible that 600 cubic yards
+might, in some cases, be cut on an acre. This is only one eightieth part
+of the quantity of peat sometimes found on the same area. It is true
+that a yard of peat and a yard of wood are not the equivalents of each
+other, but the fuel on an acre of deep peat is worth much more than that
+on an acre of the best woodland. Besides this, wood is perishable, and
+the quantity on an acre cannot be increased beyond the amount just
+stated; peat is indestructible, and the beds are always growing.
+
+[20] "Aquatic plants have a utility in raising the level of marshy
+grounds, which renders them very valuable, and may well be called a
+geological function. * * *
+
+"The engineer drains ponds at a great expense by lowering the surface of
+the water; nature attains the same end, gratuitously, by raising the
+level of the soil without depressing that of the water; but she proceeds
+more slowly. There are, in the Landes, marshes where this natural
+filling has a thickness of four metres, and some of them, at first lower
+than the sea, have been thus raised and drained so as to grow summer
+crops, such, for example, as maize."--BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des Terres
+pauvres_, p. 227.
+
+The bogs of Denmark--the examination of which by Steenstrup and Vaupell
+has presented such curious results with respect to the natural
+succession of forest trees--appear to have gone through this gradual
+process of drying, and the birch, which grows freely in very wet soils,
+has contributed very effectually by its annual deposits to raise the
+surface above the water level, and thus to prepare the ground for the
+oak.--VAUPELL, _Boegens Indvandring_, pp. 39, 40.
+
+[21] Careful examination of the peat mosses in North Sjaelland--which are
+so abundant in fossil wood that, within thirty years, they have yielded
+above a million of trees--shows that the trees have generally fallen
+from age and not from wind. They are found in depressions on the
+declivities of which they grew, and they lie with the top lowest, always
+falling toward the bottom of the valley.--VAUPELL, _Boegens Indvandring i
+de Danske Skove_, pp. 10, 14.
+
+[22] The locust insect, _Clitus pictus_, which deposits its eggs in the
+American locust, _Robinia pseudacacia_, is one of these, and its ravages
+have been and still are most destructive to that very valuable tree, so
+remarkable for combining rapidity of growth with strength and durability
+of wood. This insect, I believe, has not yet appeared in Europe, where,
+since the so general employment of the _Robinia_ to clothe and protect
+embankments and the scarps of deep cuts on railroads, it would do
+incalculable mischief. As a traveller, however, I should find some
+compensation for this evil in the destruction of these acacia hedges,
+which as completely obstruct the view on hundreds of miles of French and
+Italian railways, as the garden walls of the same countries do on the
+ordinary roads. See _Appendix_, No. 4.
+
+[23] In the artificial woods of Europe, insects are far more numerous
+and destructive to trees than in the primitive forests of America, and
+the same remark may be made of the smaller rodents, such as moles, mice,
+and squirrels. In the dense native wood, the ground and the air are too
+humid, the depth of shade too great for many tribes of these creatures,
+while near the natural meadows and other open grounds, where
+circumstances are otherwise more favorable for their existence and
+multiplication, their numbers are kept down by birds, serpents, foxes,
+and smaller predacious quadrupeds. In civilized countries, these natural
+enemies of the worm, the beetle and the mole, are persecuted, sometimes
+almost exterminated, by man, who also removes from his plantations the
+decayed or wind-fallen trees, the shrubs and underwood, which, in a
+state of nature, furnished food and shelter to the borer and the rodent,
+and often also to the animals that preyed upon them. Hence the insect
+and the gnawing quadruped are allowed to increase, from the expulsion of
+the police which, in the natural wood, prevent their excessive
+multiplication, and they become destructive to the forest because they
+are driven to the living tree for nutriment and cover. The forest of
+Fontainebleau is almost wholly without birds, and their absence is
+ascribed by some writers to the want of water, which, in the thirsty
+sands of that wood, does not gather into running brooks; but the want of
+undergrowth is perhaps an equally good reason for their scarcity. In a
+wood of spontaneous growth, ordered and governed by nature, the squirrel
+does not attack trees, or at least the injury he may do is too trifling
+to be perceptible, but he is a formidable enemy to the plantation. "The
+squirrels bite the cones of the pine and consume the seed which might
+serve to restock the wood; they do still more mischief by gnawing off,
+near the leading shoot, a strip of bark, and thus often completely
+girdling the tree. Trees so injured must be felled, as they would never
+acquire a vigorous growth. The squirrel is especially destructive to the
+pine in Sologne, where he gnaws the bark of tress twenty or twenty-five
+years old." But even here, nature sometimes provides a compensation, by
+making the appetite of this quadruped serve to prevent an excessive
+production of seed cones, which tends to obstruct the due growth of the
+leading shoot. "In some of the pineries of Brittany which produce cones
+so abundantly as to strangle the development of the leading shoot of the
+maritime pine, it has been observed that the pines are most vigorous
+where the squirrels are most numerous, a result attributed to the
+repression of the cones by this rodent."--BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des
+Terres pauvres_, p. 50. See _Appendix_, No. 5.
+
+[24] The terrible destructiveness of man is remarkably exemplified in
+the chase of large mammalia and birds for single products, attended with
+the entire waste of enormous quantities of flesh, and of other parts of
+the animal, which are capable of valuable uses. The wild cattle of South
+America are slaughtered by millions for their hides and horns; the
+buffalo of North America for his skin or his tongue; the elephant, the
+walrus, and the narwhal for their tusks; the cetacea, and some other
+marine animals, for their oil and whalebone; the ostrich and other large
+birds, for their plumage. Within a few years, sheep have been killed in
+New England by whole flocks, for their pelts and suet alone, the flesh
+being thrown away; and it is even said that the bodies of the same
+quadrupeds have been used in Australia as fuel for limekilns. What a
+vast amount of human nutriment, of bone, and of other animal products
+valuable in the arts, is thus recklessly squandered! In nearly all these
+cases, the part which constitutes the motive for this wholesale
+destruction, and is alone saved, is essentially of insignificant value
+as compared with what is thrown away. The horns and hide of an ox are
+not economically worth a tenth part as much as the entire carcass.
+
+One of the greatest benefits to be expected from the improvements of
+civilization is, that increased facilities of communication will render
+it possible to transport to places of consumption much valuable material
+that is now wasted because the price at the nearest market will not pay
+freight. The cattle slaughtered in South America for their hides would
+feed millions of the starving population of the Old World, if their
+flesh could be economically preserved and transported across the ocean.
+
+We are beginning to learn a better economy in dealing with the inorganic
+world. The utilization--or, as the Germans more happily call it, the
+Verwerthung, the _beworthing_--of waste from metallurgical, chemical,
+and manufacturing establishments, is among the most important results of
+the application of science to industrial purposes. The incidental
+products from the laboratories of manufacturing chemists often become
+more valuable than those for the preparation of which they were erected.
+The slags from silver refineries, and even from smelting houses of the
+coarser metals, have not unfrequently yielded to a second operator a
+better return than the first had derived from dealing with the natural
+ore; and the saving of lead carried off in the smoke of furnaces has, of
+itself, given a large profit on the capital invested in the works. A few
+years ago, an officer of an American mint was charged with embezzling
+gold committed to him for coinage. He insisted, in his defence, that
+much of the metal was volatilized and lost in refining and melting, and
+upon scraping the chimneys of the melting furnaces and the roofs of the
+adjacent houses, gold enough was found in the soot to account for no
+small part of the deficiency.
+
+[25] It is an interesting and not hitherto sufficiently noticed fact,
+that the domestication of the organic world, so far as it has yet been
+achieved, belongs, not indeed to the savage state, but to the earliest
+dawn of civilization, the conquest of inorganic nature almost as
+exclusively to the most advanced stages of artificial culture. It is
+familiarly known to all who have occupied themselves with the psychology
+and habits of the ruder races, and of persons with imperfectly developed
+intellects in civilized life, that although these humble tribes and
+individuals sacrifice, without scruple, the lives of the lower animals
+to the gratification of their appetites and the supply of their other
+physical wants, yet they nevertheless seem to cherish with brutes, and
+even with vegetable life, sympathies which are much more feebly felt by
+civilized men. The popular traditions of the simpler peoples recognize a
+certain community of nature between man, brute animals, and even plants;
+and this serves to explain why the apologue or fable, which ascribes the
+power of speech and the faculty of reason to birds, quadrupeds, insects,
+flowers, and trees, is one of the earliest forms of literary
+composition.
+
+In almost every wild tribe, some particular quadruped or bird, though
+persecuted as a destroyer of more domestic beasts, or hunted for food,
+is regarded with peculiar respect, one might almost say, affection. Some
+of the North American aboriginal nations celebrate a propitiatory feast
+to the manes of the intended victim before they commence a bear hunt;
+and the Norwegian peasantry have not only retained an old proverb which
+ascribes to the same animal "_ti M[oe]nds Styrke og tolv M[oe]nds Vid_,"
+ten men's strength and twelve men's cunning, but they still pay to him
+something of the reverence with which ancient superstition invested him.
+The student of Icelandic literature will find in the saga of _Finnbogi
+hinn rami_ a curious illustration of this feeling, in an account of a
+dialogue between a Norwegian bear and an Icelandic champion--dumb show
+on the part of Bruin, and chivalric words on that of Finnbogi--followed
+by a duel, in which the latter, who had thrown away his arms and armor
+in order that the combatants might meet on equal terms, was victorious.
+Drummond Hay's very interesting work on Morocco contains many amusing
+notices of a similar feeling entertained by the Moors toward the
+redoubtable enemy of their flocks--the lion.
+
+This sympathy helps us to understand how it is that most if not all the
+domestic animals--if indeed they ever existed in a wild state--were
+appropriated, reclaimed and trained before men had been gathered into
+organized and fixed communities, that almost every known esculent plant
+had acquired substantially its present artificial character, and that
+the properties of nearly all vegetable drugs and poisons were known at
+the remotest period to which historical records reach. Did nature bestow
+upon primitive man some instinct akin to that by which she teaches the
+brute to select the nutritious and to reject the noxious vegetables
+indiscriminately mixed in forest and pasture?
+
+This instinct, it must be admitted, is far from infallible, and, as has
+been hundreds of times remarked by naturalists, it is in many cases not
+an original faculty but an acquired and transmitted habit. It is a fact
+familiar to persons engaged in sheep husbandry in New England--and I
+have seen it confirmed by personal observation--that sheep bred where
+the common laurel, as it is called, _Kalmia angustifolia_, abounds,
+almost always avoid browsing upon the leaves of that plant, while those
+brought from districts where laurel is unknown, and turned into pastures
+where it grows, very often feed upon it and are poisoned by it. A
+curious acquired and hereditary instinct, of a different character, may
+not improperly be noticed here. I refer to that by which horses bred in
+provinces where quicksands are common avoid their dangers or extricate
+themselves from them. See BREMONTIER, _Memoire sur les Dunes, Annales
+des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1833: _premier semestre_, pp. 155-157.
+
+It is commonly said in New England, and I believe with reason, that the
+crows of this generation are wiser than their ancestors. Scarecrows
+which were effectual fifty years ago are no longer respected by the
+plunderers of the cornfield, and new terrors must from time to time be
+invented for its protection. See _Appendix_, No. 6.
+
+Civilization has added little to the number of vegetable or animal
+species grown in our fields or bred in our folds, while, on the
+contrary, the subjugation of the inorganic forces, and the consequent
+extension of man's sway over, not the annual products of the earth only,
+but her substance and her springs of action, is almost entirely the work
+of highly refined and cultivated ages. The employment of the elasticity
+of wood and of horn, as a projectile power in the bow, is nearly
+universal among the rudest savages. The application of compressed air to
+the same purpose, in the blowpipe, is more restricted, and the use of
+the mechanical powers, the inclined plane, the wheel and axle, and even
+the wedge and lever, seems almost unknown except to civilized man. I
+have myself seen European peasants to whom one of the simplest
+applications of this latter power was a revelation.
+
+[26] The difference between the relations of savage life, and of
+incipient civilization, to nature, is well seen in that part of the
+valley of the Mississippi which was once occupied by the mound builders
+and afterward by the far less developed Indian tribes. When the tillers
+of the fields, which must have been cultivated to sustain the large
+population that once inhabited those regions perished, or were driven
+out, the soil fell back to the normal forest state, and the savages who
+succeeded the more advanced race interfered very little, if at all, with
+the ordinary course of spontaneous nature.
+
+[27] There is a possible--but only a possible--exception in the case of
+the American bison. See note on that subject in chap. iii, _post_.
+
+[28] Whatever may be thought of the modification of organic species by
+natural selection, there is certainly no evidence that animals have
+exerted upon any form of life an influence analogous to that of
+domestication upon plants, quadrupeds, and birds reared artificially by
+man; and this is as true of unforeseen as of purposely effected
+improvements accomplished by voluntary selection of breeding animals.
+
+[29] ----"And it may be remarked that, as the world has passed through
+these several stages of strife to produce a Christendom, so by relaxing
+in the enterprises it has learnt, does it tend downwards, through
+inverted steps, to wildness and the waste again. Let a people give up
+their contest with moral evil; disregard the injustice, the ignorance,
+the greediness, that may prevail among them, and part more and more with
+the Christian element of their civilization; and in declining this
+battle with sin, they will inevitably get embroiled with men. Threats of
+war and revolution punish their unfaithfulness; and if then, instead of
+retracing their steps, they yield again, and are driven before the
+storm, the very arts they had created, the structures they had raised,
+the usages they had established, are swept away; 'in that very day their
+thoughts perish.' The portion they had reclaimed from the young earth's
+ruggedness is lost; and failing to stand fast against man, they finally
+get embroiled with nature, and are thrust down beneath her ever-living
+hand."--MARTINEAU'S _Sermon_, "_The Good Soldier of Jesus Christ_."
+
+[30] The dependence of man upon the aid of spontaneous nature, in his
+most arduous material works, is curiously illustrated by the fact that
+one of the most serious difficulties to be encountered in executing the
+proposed gigantic scheme of draining the Zuiderzee in Holland, is that
+of procuring brushwood for the fascines to be employed in the
+embankments. See DIGGELEN'S pamphlet, "_Groote Werken in Nederland_."
+
+[31] In heavy storms, the force of the waves as they strike against a
+sea wall is from one and a half to two tons to the square foot, and
+Stevenson, in one instance at Skerryvore, found this force equal to
+three tons per foot.
+
+The seaward front of the breakwater at Cherbourg exposes a surface of
+about 2,500,000 square feet. In rough weather the waves beat against
+this whole face, though at the depth of twenty-two yards, which is the
+height of the breakwater, they exert a very much less violent motive
+force than at and near the surface of the sea, because this force
+diminishes in geometrical, as the distance below the surface increases
+in arithmetical proportion. The shock of the waves is received several
+thousand times in the course of twenty-four hours, and hence the sum of
+impulse which the breakwater resists in one stormy day amounts to many
+thousands of millions of tons. The breakwater is entirely an artificial
+construction. If then man could accumulate and control the forces which
+he is able effectually to resist, he might be said to be, physically
+speaking, omnipotent.
+
+[32] Some well known experiments show that it is quite possible to
+accumulate the solar heat by a simple apparatus, and thus to obtain a
+temperature which might be economically important even in the climate of
+Switzerland. Saussure, by receiving the sun's rays in a nest of boxes
+blackened within and covered with glass, raised a thermometer enclosed
+in the inner box to the boiling point; and under the more powerful sun
+of the cape of Good Hope, Sir John Herschel cooked the materials for a
+family dinner by a similar process, using, however, but a single box,
+surrounded with dry sand and covered with two glasses. Why should not so
+easy a method of economizing fuel be resorted to in Italy, and even in
+more northerly climates?
+
+The unfortunate John Davidson records in his journal that he saved fuel
+in Morocco by exposing his teakettle to the sun on the roof of his
+house, where the water rose to the temperature of one hundred and forty
+degrees, and, of course, needed little fire to bring it to boil. But
+this was the direct and simple, not the accumulated heat of the sun.
+
+[33] In the successive stages of social progress, the most destructive
+periods of human action upon nature are the pastoral condition, and that
+of incipient stationary civilization, or, in the newly discovered
+countries of modern geography, the colonial, which corresponds to the
+era of early civilization in older lands. In more advanced states of
+culture, conservative influences make themselves felt; and if highly
+civilized communities do not always restore the works of nature, they at
+least use a less wasteful expenditure than their predecessors in
+consuming them.
+
+[34] The character of geological formation is an element of very great
+importance in determining the amount of erosion produced by running
+water, and, of course, in measuring the consequences of clearing off the
+forests. The soil of the French Alps yields very readily to the force of
+currents, and the declivities of the northern Apennines are covered with
+earth which becomes itself a fluid when saturated with water. Hence the
+erosion of such surfaces is vastly greater than on many other mountains
+of equal steepness of inclination. This point is fully considered by the
+authors referred to in chap. iii, _post_.
+
+[35] The Travels of Dr. Dwight, president of Yale College, which embody
+the results of his personal observations, and of his inquiries among the
+early settlers, in his vacation excursions in the Northern States of the
+American Union, though presenting few instrumental measurements or
+tabulated results, are of value for the powers of observation they
+exhibit, and for the sound common sense with which many natural
+phenomena, such for instance as the formation of the river meadows,
+called "intervales," in New England, are explained. They present a true
+and interesting picture of physical conditions, many of which have long
+ceased to exist in the theatre of his researches, and of which few other
+records are extant.
+
+[36] The general law of temperature is that it decreases as we ascend.
+But, in hilly regions, the law is reversed in cold, still weather, the
+cold air descending, by reason of its greater gravity, into the valleys.
+If there be wind enough, however, to produce a disturbance and
+intermixture of higher and lower atmospheric strata, this exception to
+the general law does not take place. These facts have long been familiar
+to the common people of Switzerland and of New England, but their
+importance has not been sufficiently taken into account in the
+discussion of meteorological observations. The descent of the cold air
+and the rise of the warm affect the relative temperatures of hills and
+valleys to a much greater extent than has been usually supposed. A
+gentleman well known to me kept a thermometrical record for nearly half
+a century, in a New England country town, at an elevation of at least
+1,500 feet above the sea. During these years his thermometer never fell
+lower than 26 deg. Fahrenheit, while at the shire town of the county,
+situated in a basin one thousand feet lower, and ten miles distant, as
+well as at other points in similar positions, the mercury froze several
+times in the same period.
+
+[37] Railroad surveys must be received with great caution where any
+motive exists for _cooking_ them. Capitalists are shy of investments in
+roads with steep grades, and of course it is important to make a fair
+show of facilities in obtaining funds for new routes. Joint-stock
+companies have no souls; their managers, in general, no consciences.
+Cases can be cited where engineers and directors of railroads, with long
+grades above one hundred feet to the mile, have regularly sworn in their
+annual reports, for years in succession, that there were no grades upon
+their routes exceeding half that elevation. In fact, every person
+conversant with the history of these enterprises knows that in their
+public statements falsehood is the rule, truth the exception.
+
+What I am about to remark is not exactly relevant to my subject; but it
+is hard to "get the floor" in the world's great debating society, and
+when a speaker who has anything to say once finds access to the public
+ear, he must make the most of his opportunity, without inquiring too
+nicely whether his observations are "in order." I shall harm no honest
+man by endeavoring, as I have often done elsewhere, to excite the
+attention of thinking and conscientious men to the dangers which
+threaten the great moral and even political interests of Christendom,
+from the unscrupulousness of the private associations that now control
+the monetary affairs, and regulate the transit of persons and property,
+in almost every civilized country. More than one American State is
+literally governed by unprincipled corporations, which not only defy the
+legislative power, but have, too often, corrupted even the
+administration of justice. Similar evils have become almost equally rife
+in England, and on the Continent; and I believe the decay of commercial
+morality, and indeed of the sense of all higher obligations than those
+of a pecuniary nature, on both sides of the Atlantic, is to be ascribed
+more to the influence of joint-stock banks and manufacturing and railway
+companies, to the workings, in short, of what is called the principle of
+"associate action," than to any other one cause of demoralization.
+
+The apophthegm, "the world is governed too much," though unhappily too
+truly spoken of many countries--and perhaps, in some aspects, true of
+all--has done much mischief whenever it has been too unconditionally
+accepted as a political axiom. The popular apprehension of being
+over-governed, and, I am afraid, more emphatically the fear of being
+over-taxed, has had much to do with the general abandonment of certain
+governmental duties by the ruling powers of most modern states. It is
+theoretically the duty of government to provide all those public
+facilities of intercommunication and commerce, which are essential to
+the prosperity of civilized commonwealths, but which individual means
+are inadequate to furnish, and for the due administration of which
+individual guaranties are insufficient. Hence public roads, canals,
+railroads, postal communications, the circulating medium of exchange,
+whether metallic or representative, armies, navies, being all matters in
+which the nation at large has a vastly deeper interest than any private
+association can have, ought legitimately to be constructed and provided
+only by that which is the visible personification and embodiment of the
+nation, namely, its legislative head. No doubt the organization and
+management of these institutions by government are liable, as are all
+things human, to great abuses. The multiplication of public
+placeholders, which they imply, is a serious evil. But the corruption
+thus engendered, foul as it is, does not strike so deep as the
+rottenness of private corporations; and official rank, position, and
+duty have, in practice, proved better securities for fidelity and
+pecuniary integrity in the conduct of the interests in question, than
+the suretyships of private corporate agents, whose bondsmen so often
+fail or abscond before their principal is detected.
+
+Many theoretical statesmen have thought that voluntary associations for
+strictly pecuniary and industrial purposes, and for the construction and
+control of public works, might furnish, in democratic countries, a
+compensation for the small and doubtful advantages, and at the same time
+secure an exemption from the great and certain evils, of aristocratic
+institutions. The example of the American States shows that private
+corporations--whose rule of action is the interest of the association,
+not the conscience of the individual--though composed of
+ultra-democratic elements, may become most dangerous enemies to rational
+liberty, to the moral interests of the commonwealth, to the purity of
+legislation and of judicial action, and to the sacredness of private
+rights.
+
+[38] It is impossible to say how far the abstraction of water from the
+earth by broad-leaved field and garden plants--such as maize, the gourd
+family, the cabbage, &c.--is compensated by the condensation of dew,
+which sometimes pours from them in a stream, by the exhalation of
+aqueous vapor from their leaves, which is directly absorbed by the
+ground, and by the shelter they afford the soil from sun and wind, thus
+preventing evaporation. American farmers often say that after the leaves
+of Indian corn are large enough to "shade the ground," there is little
+danger that the plants will suffer from drought; but it is probable that
+the comparative security of the fields from this evil is in part due to
+the fact that, at this period of growth, the roots penetrate down to a
+permanently humid stratum of soil, and draw from it the moisture they
+require. Stirring the ground between the rows of maize with a light
+harrow or cultivator, in very dry seasons, is often recommended as a
+preventive of injury by drought. It would seem, indeed, that loosening
+and turning over the surface earth might aggravate the evil by promoting
+the evaporation of the little remaining moisture; but the practice is
+founded partly on the belief that the hygroscopicity of the soil is
+increased by it to such a degree that it gains more by absorption than
+it loses by evaporation, and partly on the doctrine that to admit air to
+the rootlets, or at least to the earth near them, is to supply directly
+elements of vegetable growth.
+
+[39] The vine-wood planks of the ancient great door of the cathedral at
+Ravenna, which measured thirteen feet in length by a foot and a quarter
+in width, are traditionally said to have been brought from the Black
+Sea, by way of Constantinople, about the eleventh or twelfth century. No
+vines of such dimensions are now found in any other part of the East,
+and, though I have taken some pains on the subject, I never found in
+Syria or in Turkey a vine stock exceeding six inches in diameter, bark
+excluded.
+
+[40] The Northmen who--as I think it has been indisputably established
+by Professor Rafn of Copenhagen--visited the coast of Massachusetts
+about the year 1000, found grapes growing there in profusion, and the
+vine still flourishes in great variety and abundance in the southeastern
+counties of that State. The townships in the vicinity of the Dighton
+rock, supposed by many--with whom, however, I am sorry I cannot
+agree--to bear a Scandinavian inscription, abound in wild vines, and I
+have never seen a region which produced them so freely. I have no doubt
+that the cultivation of the grape will become, at no distant day, one of
+the most important branches of rural industry in that district.
+
+[41] _Les Etats Unis d'Amerique en 1863_, p. 360. By "improved" land, in
+the reports on the census of the United States, is meant "cleared land
+used for grazing, grass, or tillage, or which is now fallow, connected
+with or belonging to a farm."--_Instructions to Marshals and Assistants,
+Census of 1850_, schedule 4, Sec.Sec. 2, 3.
+
+[42] Cotton, though cultivated in Asia and Africa from the remotest
+antiquity, and known as a rare and costly product to the Latins and the
+Greeks, was not used by them to any considerable extent, nor did it
+enter into their commerce as a regular article of importation. The early
+voyagers found it in common use in the West Indies and in the provinces
+first colonized by the Spaniards; but it was introduced into the
+territory of the United States by European settlers, and did not become
+of any importance until after the Revolution. Cotton seed was sown in
+Virginia as early as 1621, but was not cultivated with a view to profit
+for more than a century afterward. Sea-island cotton was first grown on
+the coast of Georgia in 1786, the seed having been brought from the
+Bahamas, where it had been introduced from Anguilla.--BIGELOW, _Les
+Etats Unis en 1863_, p. 370.
+
+[43] The sugar cane was introduced by the Arabs into Sicily and Spain as
+early as the ninth century, and though it is now scarcely grown in those
+localities, I am not aware of any reason to doubt that its cultivation
+might be revived with advantage. From Spain it was carried to the West
+Indies, though different varieties have since been introduced into those
+islands from other sources. Tea is now cultivated with a certain success
+in Brazil, and promises to become an important crop in the Southern
+States of the American Union. The lemon is, I think, readily
+recognizable, by Pliny's description, as known to the ancients, but it
+does not satisfactorily appear that they were acquainted with the
+orange.
+
+[44] John Smith mentions, in his _Historie of Virginia_, 1624, pease and
+beans as having been cultivated by the natives before the arrival of the
+whites, and there is no doubt, I believe, that the pumpkin and several
+other cucurbitaceous plants are of American origin; but most, if not all
+the varieties of pease, beans, and other pod fruits now grown in
+American gardens, are from European and other foreign seed. See
+_Appendix_, No, 8.
+
+[45] There are some usages of polite society which are inherently low in
+themselves, and debasing in their influence and tendency, and which no
+custom or fashion can make respectable or fit to be followed by
+self-respecting persons. It is essentially vulgar to smoke or chew
+tobacco, and especially to take snuff; it is unbecoming a gentleman, to
+perform the duties of his coachman; it is indelicate in a lady to wear
+in the street skirts so long that she cannot walk without grossly
+soiling them. Not that all these things are not practised by persons
+justly regarded as gentlemen and ladies; but the same individuals would
+be, and feel themselves to be, much more emphatically gentlemen and
+ladies, if they abstained from them.
+
+[46] The name _portogallo_, so generally applied to the orange in Italy,
+seems to favor this claim. The orange, however, was known in Europe
+before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and, therefore, before
+the establishment of direct relations between Portugal and the East.
+
+A correspondent of the _Athenaeum_, in describing the newly excavated
+villa, which has been named Livia's Villa, near the Porta del Popolo at
+Rome, states that: "The walls of one of the rooms are, singularly
+enough, decorated with landscape paintings, a grove of palm and _orange_
+trees, with fruits and birds on the branches--the colors all as fresh
+and lively as if painted yesterday." The writer remarks on the character
+of this decoration as something very unusual in Roman architecture; and
+if the trees in question are really orange, and not lemon trees, this
+circumstance may throw some doubt on the antiquity of the painting. If,
+on the other hand, it proves really ancient, it shows that the orange
+was known to the Roman painters, if not gardeners. The landscape may
+perhaps represent Oriental, not European scenery. The accessories of the
+picture would probably determine that question.--_Athenaeum_, No. 1859,
+June 13, 1863.
+
+MUeLLER, _Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt_, p. 86, asserts that in 1802 the
+ancestor of all the mulberries in France, planted in 1500, was still
+standing in a garden in the village of Allan-Montelimart.
+
+[47] The vegetables which, so far as we know their history, seem to have
+been longest the objects of human care, can, by painstaking industry, be
+made to grow under a great variety of circumstances, and some of
+them--the vine for instance--prosper nearly equally well, when planted
+and tended, on soils of almost any geological character; but their seeds
+vegetate only in artificially prepared ground, they have little
+self-sustaining power, and they soon perish when the nursing hand of man
+is withdrawn from them. In range of climate, wild plants are much more
+limited than domestic, but much less so with regard to the state of the
+soil in which they germinate and grow. See _Appendix_, No. 9.
+
+Dr. Dwight remarks that the seeds of American forest trees will not
+vegetate when dropped on grassland. This is one of the very few errors
+of personal observation to be found in that author's writings. There are
+seasons, indeed, when few tree seeds germinate in the meadows and the
+pastures, and years favorable to one species are not always propitious
+to another; but there is no American forest tree known to me which does
+not readily propagate itself by seed in the thickest greensward, if its
+germs are not disturbed by man or animals.
+
+[48] Some years ago I made a collection of weeds in the wheatfields of
+Upper Egypt, and another in the gardens on the Bosphorus. Nearly all the
+plants were identical with those which grow under the same conditions in
+New England. I do not remember to have seen in America the scarlet wild
+poppy so common in European grainfields. I have heard, however, that it
+has lately crossed the Atlantic, and I am not sorry for it. With our
+abundant harvests of wheat, we can well afford to pay now and then a
+loaf of bread for the cheerful radiance of this brilliant flower.
+
+[49] Josselyn, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of the
+first British colony in New England, says that the settlers at Plymouth
+had observed more than twenty English plants springing up spontaneously
+near their improvements.
+
+Every country has many plants not now, if ever, made use of by man, and
+therefore not designedly propagated by him, but which cluster around his
+dwelling, and continue to grow luxuriantly on the ruins of his rural
+habitation after he has abandoned it. The site of a cottage, the very
+foundation stones of which have been carried off, may often be
+recognized, years afterward, by the rank weeds which cover it, though no
+others of the same species are found for miles.
+
+"Mediaeval Catholicism," says Vaupell, "brought us the red
+horsehoof--whose reddish-brown flower buds shoot up from the ground when
+the snow melts, and are followed by the large leaves--_laegekulsukker_
+and snake-root, which grow only where there were convents and other
+dwellings in the Middle Ages."--_Boegens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_,
+pp. 1, 2.
+
+[50] VAUPELL, _Boegens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, p. 2.
+
+[51] It is, I believe, nearly certain that the Turks inflicted tobacco
+upon Hungary, and probable that they in some measure compensated the
+injury by introducing maize also, which, as well as tobacco, has been
+claimed as Hungarian by patriotic Magyars.
+
+[52] Accidents sometimes limit, as well as promote, the propagation of
+foreign vegetables in countries new to them. The Lombardy poplar is a
+di[oe]cious tree, and is very easily grown from cuttings. In most of the
+countries into which it has been introduced the cuttings have been taken
+from the male, and as, consequently, males only have grown from them,
+the poplar does not produce seed in those regions. This is a fortunate
+circumstance, for otherwise this most worthless and least ornamental of
+trees would spread with a rapidity that would make it an annoyance to
+the agriculturist. See _Appendix_, No. 10.
+
+[53] Tempests, violent enough to destroy all cultivated plants, often
+spare those of spontaneous growth. During the present summer, I have
+seen in Northern Italy, vineyards, maize fields, mulberry and fruit
+trees completely stripped of their foliage by hail, while the forest
+trees scattered through the meadows, and the shrubs and brambles which
+sprang up by the wayside, passed through the ordeal with scarcely the
+loss of a leaflet.
+
+[54] The boar spear is provided with a short crossbar, to enable the
+hunter to keep the infuriated animal at bay after he has transfixed him.
+
+[55] Some botanists think that a species of water lily represented in
+many Egyptian tombs has become extinct, and the papyrus, which must have
+once been abundant in Egypt, is now found only in a very few localities
+near the mouth of the Nile. It grows very well and ripens its seeds in
+the waters of the Anapus near Syracuse, and I have seen it in garden
+ponds at Messina and in Malta. There is no apparent reason for believing
+that it could not be easily cultivated in Egypt, to any extent, if there
+were any special motive for encouraging its growth.
+
+[56] Although it is not known that man has extirpated any vegetable, the
+mysterious diseases which have, for the last twenty years, so
+injuriously affected the potato, the vine, the orange, the olive, and
+silk husbandry--whether in this case the malady resides in the mulberry
+or in the insect--are ascribed by some to a climatic deterioration
+produced by excessive destruction of the woods. As will be seen in the
+next chapter, a retardation in the period of spring has been observed in
+numerous localities in Southern Europe, as well as in the United States.
+This change has been thought to favor the multiplication of the obscure
+parasites which cause the injury to the vegetables just mentioned.
+
+Babinet supposes the parasites which attack the grape and the potato to
+be animal, not vegetable, and he ascribes their multiplication to
+excessive manuring and stimulation of the growth of the plants on which
+they live. They are now generally, if not universally, regarded as
+vegetable, and if they are so, Babinet's theory would be even more
+plausible than on his own supposition.--_Etudes et Lectures_, ii, p.
+269.
+
+It is a fact of some interest in agricultural economy, that the oidium,
+which is so destructive to the grape, has produced no pecuniary loss to
+the proprietors of the vineyards in France. "The price of wine," says
+Lavergne, "has quintupled, and as the product of the vintage has not
+diminished in the same proportion, the crisis has been, on the whole,
+rather advantageous than detrimental to the country."--_Economie Rurale
+de la France_, pp. 263, 264.
+
+France produces a considerable surplus of wines for exportation, and the
+sales to foreign consumers are the principal source of profit to French
+vinegrowers. In Northern Italy, on the contrary, which exports little
+wine, there has been no such increase in the price of wine as to
+compensate the great diminution in the yield of the vines, and the loss
+of this harvest is severely felt. In Sicily, however, which exports much
+wine, prices have risen as rapidly as in France. Waltershausen informs
+us that in the years 1838-'42, the red wine of Mount Etna sold at the
+rate of one kreuzer and a half, or one cent the bottle, and sometimes
+even at but two thirds that price, but that at present it commands five
+or six times as much.
+
+The grape disease has operated severely on small cultivators whose
+vineyards only furnished a supply for domestic use, but Sicily has
+received a compensation in the immense increase which it has occasioned
+in both the product and the profits of the sulphur mines. Flour of
+sulphur is applied to the vine as a remedy against the disease, and the
+operation is repeated from two to three or four--and even, it is said,
+eight or ten times--in a season. Hence there is a great demand for
+sulphur in all the vine-growing countries of Europe, and Waltershausen
+estimates the annual consumption of that mineral for this single purpose
+at 850,000 _centner_, or more than forty thousand tons. The price of
+sulphur has risen in about the same proportion as that of
+wine.--WALTERSHAUSEN, _Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau_, pp. 19, 20.
+
+[57] Some recent observations of the learned traveller Wetzstein are
+worthy of special notice. "The soil of the Hauran," he remarks,
+"produces, in its primitive condition, much wild rye, which is not known
+as a cultivated plant in Syria, and much wild barley and oats. These
+cereals precisely resemble the corresponding cultivated plants in leaf,
+ear, size, and height of straw, but their grains are sensibly flatter
+and poorer in flour."--_Reisebericht ueber Hauran und die Trachonen_, p.
+40.
+
+[58] This remark is much less applicable to fruit trees than to garden
+vegetables and the cerealia. The wild orange of Florida, though once
+considered indigenous, is now generally thought by botanists to be
+descended from the European orange introduced by the early colonists.
+The fig and the olive are found growing wild in every country where
+those trees are cultivated. The wild fig differs from the domesticated
+in its habits, its season of fructification, and its insect population,
+but is, I believe, not specifically distinguishable from the garden fig,
+though I do not know that it is reclaimable by cultivation. The wild
+olive, which is so abundant in the Tuscan Maremma, produces good fruit
+without further care, when thinned out and freed from the shade of other
+trees, and is particularly suited for grafting. See SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie
+sulle Maremme_, pp. 63-73. See _Appendix_, No. 12.
+
+FRAAS, _Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit_, pp. 35-38, gives, upon the
+authority of Link and other botanical writers, a list of the native
+habitats of most cereals and of many fruits, or at least of localities
+where these plants are said to be now found wild; but the data do not
+appear to rest, in general, upon very trustworthy evidence.
+Theoretically, there can be little doubt that all our cultivated plants
+are modified forms of spontaneous vegetation, but the connection is not
+historically shown, nor are we able to say that the originals of some
+domesticated vegetables may not be now extinct and unrepresented in the
+existing wild flora. See, on this subject, HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der
+Natur_, i, pp. 208, 209. The following are interesting incidents: "A
+negro slave of the great Cortez was the first who sowed wheat in New
+Spain. He found three grains of it among the rice which had been brought
+from Spain as food for the soldiers. In the Franciscan monastery at
+Quito, I saw the earthen pot which contained the first wheat sown there
+by Friar Jodoco Rixi, of Ghent. It was preserved as a relic."
+
+The Adams of modern botany and zoology have been put to hard shifts in
+finding names for the multiplied organisms which the Creator has brought
+before them, "to see what they would call them;" and naturalists and
+philosophers have shown much moral courage in setting at naught the laws
+of philology in the coinage of uncouth words to express scientific
+ideas. It is much to be wished that some bold neologist would devise
+English technical equivalents for the German _verwildert_, run-wild, and
+_veredelt_, improved by cultivation.
+
+[59] Could the bones and other relics of the domestic quadrupeds
+destroyed by disease or slaughtered for human use in civilized countries
+be collected into large deposits, as obscure causes have gathered
+together those of extinct animals, they would soon form aggregations
+which might almost be called mountains. There were in the United States,
+in 1860, as we shall see hereafter, nearly one hundred and two millions
+of horses, black cattle, sheep, and swine. There are great numbers of
+all the same animals in the British American Provinces, and in Mexico,
+and there are large herds of wild horses on the plains, and of tamed
+among the independent Indian tribes of North America. It would perhaps
+not be extravagant to suppose that all those cattle may amount to two
+thirds as many as those of the United States, and thus we have in North
+America a total of 170,000,000 domestic quadrupeds belonging to species
+introduced by European colonization, besides dogs, cats, and other
+four-footed household pets and pests, also of foreign origin.
+
+If we allow half a solid foot to the skeleton and other slowly
+destructible parts of each animal, the remains of these herds would form
+a cubical mass measuring not much short of four hundred and fifty feet
+to the side, or a pyramid equal in dimensions to that of Cheops, and as
+the average life of these animals does not exceed six or seven years,
+the accumulations of their bones, horns, hoofs, and other durable
+remains would amount to at least fifteen times as great a volume in a
+single century. It is true that the actual mass of solid matter, left by
+the decay of dead domestic quadrupeds and permanently added to the crust
+of the earth, is not so great as this calculation makes it. The greatest
+proportion of the soft parts of domestic animals, and even of the bones,
+is soon decomposed, through direct consumption by man and other
+carnivora, industrial use, and employment as manure, and enters into new
+combinations in which its animal origin is scarcely traceable; there is,
+nevertheless, a large annual residuum, which, like decayed vegetable
+matter, becomes a part of the superficial mould; and in any event, brute
+life immensely changes the form and character of the superficial strata,
+if it does not sensibly augment the quantity of the matter composing
+them.
+
+The remains of man, too, add to the earthy coating that covers the face
+of the globe. The human bodies deposited in the catacombs during the
+long, long ages of Egyptian history, would perhaps build as large a pile
+as one generation of the quadrupeds of the United States. In the
+barbarous days of old Moslem warfare, the conquerors erected large
+pyramids of human skulls. The soil of cemeteries in the great cities of
+Europe has sometimes been raised several feet by the deposit of the dead
+during a few generations. In the East, Turks and Christians alike bury
+bodies but a couple of feet beneath the surface. The grave is respected
+as long as the tombstone remains, but the sepultures of the ignoble
+poor, and of those whose monuments time or accident has removed, are
+opened again and again to receive fresh occupants. Hence the ground in
+Oriental cemeteries is pervaded with relics of humanity, if not wholly
+composed of them; and an examination of the soil of the lower part of
+the _Petit Champ des Morts_ at Pera, by the naked eye alone, shows the
+observer that it consists almost exclusively of the comminuted bones of
+his fellow man.
+
+[60] It is asserted that the bones of mammoths and mastodons, in many
+instances, appear to have been grazed or cut by flint arrow-heads or
+other stone weapons. These accounts have often been discredited, because
+it has been assumed that the extinction of these animals was more
+ancient than the existence of man. Recent discoveries render it highly
+probable, if not certain, that this conclusion has been too hastily
+adopted. Lyell observes: "These stories * * must in future be more
+carefully inquired into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon in
+North America lived down to a period when the mammoth coexisted with man
+in Europe."--_Antiquity of Man_, p. 354.
+
+On page 143 of the volume just quoted, the same very distinguished
+writer remarks that man "no doubt played his part in hastening the era
+of the extinction" of the large pachyderms and beasts of prey; but, as
+contemporaneous species of other animals, which man cannot be supposed,
+to have extirpated, have also become extinct, he argues that the
+disappearance of the quadrupeds in question cannot be ascribed to human
+action alone.
+
+On this point it may be observed that, as we cannot know what precise
+physical conditions were necessary to the existence of a given extinct
+organism, we cannot say how far such conditions may have been modified
+by the action of man, and he may therefore have influenced the life of
+such organisms in ways, and to an extent, of which we can form no just
+idea.
+
+[61] Evelyn thought the depasturing of grass by cattle serviceable to
+its growth. "The biting of cattle," he remarks, "gives a gentle
+loosening to the roots of the herbage, and makes it to grow fine and
+sweet, and their very breath and treading as well as soil, and the
+comfort of their warm bodies, is wholesome and marvellously
+cherishing."--_Terra, or Philosophical Discourse of Earth_, p. 36.
+
+In a note upon this passage, Hunter observes: "Nice farmers consider the
+lying of a beast upon the ground, for one night only, as a sufficient
+tilth for the year. The breath of graminivorous quadrupeds does
+certainly enrich the roots of grass; a circumstance worthy of the
+attention of the philosophical farmer."--_Terra_, same page.
+
+The "philosophical farmer" of the present day will not adopt these
+opinions without some qualification.
+
+[62] The rat and the mouse, though not voluntarily transported, are
+passengers by every ship that sails from Europe to a foreign port, and
+several species of these quadrupeds have, consequently, much extended
+their range and increased their numbers in modern times. From a story of
+Heliogabalus related by Lampridius, _Hist. Aug. Scriptores_, ed.
+Casaubon, 1690, p. 110, it would seem that mice at least were not very
+common in ancient Rome. Among the capricious freaks of that emperor, it
+is said that he undertook to investigate the statistics of the arachnoid
+population of the capital, and that 10,000 pounds of spiders (or
+spiders' webs--for aranea is equivocal) were readily collected; but when
+he got up a mouse show, he thought ten thousand mice a very fair number.
+I believe as many might almost be found in a single palace in modern
+Rome. Rats are not less numerous in all great cities, and in Paris,
+where their skins are used for gloves, and their flesh, it is whispered,
+in some very complex and equivocal dishes, they are caught by legions. I
+have read of a manufacturer who contracted to buy of the rat catchers,
+at a high price, all the rat skins they could furnish before a certain
+date, and failed, within a week, for want of capital, when the stock of
+peltry had run up to 600,000.
+
+[63] BIGELOW, _Les Etats Unis en_ 1863, pp. 379, 380. In the same
+paragraph this volume states the number of animals slaughtered in the
+United States by butchers, in 1859, at 212,871,653. This is an error of
+the press. Number is confounded with value. A reference to the tables of
+the census shows that the animals slaughtered that year were estimated
+at 212,871,653 _dollars_; the number of head is not given. The wild
+horses and horned cattle of the prairies and the horses of the Indians
+are not included in the returns.
+
+[64] Of this total number, 2,240,000, or nearly nine per cent., are
+reported as working oxen. This would strike European, and especially
+English agriculturists, as a large proportion; but it is explained by
+the difference between a new country and an old, in the conditions which
+determine the employment of animal labor. Oxen are very generally used
+in the United States and Canada for hauling timber and firewood through
+and from the forests; for ploughing in ground still full of rocks,
+stumps, and roots; for breaking up the new soil of the prairies with its
+strong matting of native grasses, and for the transportation of heavy
+loads over the rough roads of the interior. In all these cases, the
+frequent obstructions to the passage of the timber, the plough, and the
+sled or cart, are a source of constant danger to the animals, the
+vehicles, and the harness, and the slow and steady step of the ox is
+attended with much less risk than the swift and sudden movements of the
+impatient horse. It is surprising to see the sagacity with which the
+dull and clumsy ox--hampered as he is by the rigid yoke, the most absurd
+implement of draught ever contrived by man--picks his way, when once
+trained to forest work, among rocks and roots, and even climbs over
+fallen trees, not only moving safely, but drawing timber over ground
+wholly impracticable for the light and agile horse.
+
+Cows, so constantly employed for draught in Italy, are never yoked or
+otherwise used for labor in America, except in the Slave States.
+
+[65] "About five miles from camp we ascended to the top of a high hill,
+and for a great distance ahead every square mile seemed to have a herd
+of buffalo upon it. Their number was variously estimated by the members
+of the party; by some as high as half a million. I do not think it any
+exaggeration to set it down at 200,000."--STEVENS'S _Narrative and Final
+Report. Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Railroad to Pacific_,
+vol. xii, book i, 1860.
+
+The next day, the party fell in with a "buffalo trail," where at least
+100,000 were thought to have crossed a slough.
+
+[66] The most zealous and successful New England hunter of whom I have
+any personal knowledge, and who continued to indulge his favorite
+passion much beyond the age which generally terminates exploits in
+woodcraft, lamented on his deathbed that he had not lived long enough to
+carry up the record of his slaughtered deer to the number of one
+thousand, which he had fixed as the limit of his ambition. He was able
+to handle the rifle, for sixty years, at a period when the game was
+still nearly as abundant as ever, but had killed only nine hundred and
+sixty of these quadrupeds, of all species. The exploits of this Nimrod
+have been far exceeded by prairie hunters, but I doubt whether, in the
+originally wooded territory of the Union, any single marksman has
+brought down a larger number.
+
+[67] _Erdkunde_, viii. _Asien, 1ste Abtheilung_, pp. 660, 758.
+
+[68] See chapter iii, _post_; also HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_, i,
+p. 71. From the anatomical character of the bones of the urus, or
+auerochs, found among the relics of the lacustrine population of ancient
+Switzerland, and from other circumstances, it is inferred that this
+animal had been domesticated by that people; and it is stated, I know
+not upon what authority, in _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, that it had
+been tamed by the Veneti also. See LYELL, _Antiquity of Man_, pp. 24,
+25, and the last-named work, p. 489. This is a fact of much interest,
+because it is, I believe, the only known instance of the extinction of a
+domestic quadruped, and the extreme improbability of such an event gives
+some countenance to the theory of the identity of the domestic ox with,
+and its descent from, the urus.
+
+[69] In maintaining the recent existence of the lion in the countries
+named in the text, naturalists have, perhaps, laid too much weight on
+the frequent occurrence of representations of this animal in sculptures
+apparently of a historical character. It will not do to argue, twenty
+centuries hence, that the lion and the unicorn were common in Great
+Britain in Queen Victoria's time, because they are often seen "fighting
+for the crown" in the carvings and paintings of that period.
+
+[70]
+
+  Dar nach sloger schiere, einen wisent bat elch.
+  Starcher bore biere. but einen grimmen schelch.
+                                                _XVI Auentiure._
+
+The testimony of the _Nibelungen-Lied_ is not conclusive evidence that
+these quadrupeds existed in Germany at the time of the composition of
+that poem. It proves too much; for, a few lines above those just quoted,
+Sigfrid is said to have killed a lion, an animal which the most
+patriotic Teuton will hardly claim as a denizen of mediaeval Germany.
+
+[71] The wild turkey takes readily to the water, and is able to cross
+rivers of very considerable width by swimming. By way of giving me an
+idea of the former abundance of this bird, an old and highly respectable
+gentleman who was among the early white settlers of the West, told me
+that he once counted, in walking down the northern bank of the Ohio
+River, within a distance of four miles, eighty-four turkeys as they
+landed singly, or at most in pairs, after swimming over from the
+Kentucky side.
+
+[72] The wood pigeon has been observed to increase in numbers in Europe
+also, when pains have been taken to exterminate the hawk. The pigeons,
+which migrated in flocks so numerous that they were whole days in
+passing a given point, were no doubt injurious to the grain, but
+probably less so than is generally supposed; for they did not confine
+themselves exclusively to the harvests for their nourishment.
+
+[73] Pigeons were shot near Albany, in New York, a few years ago, with
+green rice in their crops, which it was thought must have been growing,
+a very few hours before, at the distance of seven or eight hundred
+miles.
+
+[74] Professor Treadwell, of Massachusetts, found that a half-grown
+American robin in confinement ate in one day sixty-eight earthworms,
+weighing together nearly once and a half as much as the bird himself,
+and another had previously starved upon a daily allowance of eight or
+ten worms, or about twenty per cent. of his own weight. The largest of
+these numbers appeared, so far as could be judged by watching parent
+birds of the same species, as they brought food to their young, to be
+much greater than that supplied to them when fed in the nest; for the
+old birds did not return with worms or insects oftener than once in ten
+minutes on an average. If we suppose the parents to hunt for food twelve
+hours in a day, and a nest to contain four young, we should have
+seventy-two worms, or eighteen each, as the daily supply of the brood.
+It is probable enough that some of the food collected by the parents may
+be more nutritious than the earthworms, and consequently that a smaller
+quantity sufficed for the young in the nest than when reared under
+artificial conditions.
+
+The supply required by growing birds is not the measure of their wants
+after they have arrived at maturity, and it is not by any means certain
+that great muscular exertion always increases the demand for
+nourishment, either in the lower animals or in man. The members of the
+English Alpine Club are not distinguished for appetites which would make
+them unwelcome guests to Swiss landlords, and I think every man who has
+had the personal charge of field or railway hands, must have observed
+that laborers who spare their strength the least are not the most
+valiant trencher champions. During the period when imprisonment for debt
+was permitted in New England, persons confined in country jails had no
+specific allowance, and they were commonly fed without stint. I have
+often inquired concerning their diet, and been assured by the jailers
+that their prisoners, who were not provided with work or other means of
+exercise, consumed a considerably larger supply of food than common
+out-door laborers.
+
+[75] I hope Michelet has good authority for this statement, but I am
+unable to confirm it.
+
+[76] Apropos of the sparrow--a single pair of which, according to
+Michelet, p. 315, carries to the nest four thousand and three hundred
+caterpillars or coleoptera in a week--I take from the _Record_, an
+English religious newspaper, of December 15, 1862, the following article
+communicated to a country paper by a person who signs himself "A real
+friend to the farmer:"
+
+"_Crawley Sparrow Club._--The annual dinner took place at the George Inn
+on Wednesday last. The first prize was awarded to Mr. I. Redford, Worth,
+having destroyed within the last year 1,467. Mr. Heayman took the second
+with 1,448 destroyed. Mr. Stone, third, with 982 affixed. Total
+destroyed, 11,944. Old birds, 8,663; young ditto, 722; eggs, 2,556."
+
+This trio of valiant fowlers, and their less fortunate--or rather less
+unfortunate, but not therefore less guilty--associates, have rescued by
+their prowess, it may be, a score of pecks of grain from being devoured
+by the voracious sparrow, but every one of the twelve thousand hatched
+and unhatched birds, thus sacrificed to puerile vanity and ignorant
+prejudice, would have saved his bushel of wheat by preying upon insects
+that destroy the grain. Mr. Redford, Mr. Heayman, and Mr. Stone ought to
+contribute the value of the bread they have wasted to the fund for the
+benefit of the Lancashire weavers; and it is to be hoped that the next
+Byron will satirize the sparrowcide as severely as the first did the
+prince of anglers, Walton, in the well known lines:
+
+  "The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb in his gullet
+  Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it."
+
+[77] SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane_, p. 143. The country
+about Naples is filled with slender towers fifteen or twenty feet high,
+which are a standing puzzle to strangers. They are the stations of the
+fowlers who watch from them the flocks of small birds and drive them
+down in to the nets by throwing stones over them. See _Appendix_, No.
+14.
+
+Tschudi has collected in his little work, _Ueber die
+Landwirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Voegel_, many interesting facts
+respecting the utility of birds, and the wanton destruction of them in
+Italy and elsewhere. Not only the owl, but many other birds more
+familiarly known as predacious in their habits, are useful by destroying
+great numbers of mice and moles. The importance of this last service
+becomes strikingly apparent when it is known that the burrows of the
+mole are among the most frequent causes of rupture in the dikes of the
+Po, and, consequently, of inundations which lay many square miles under
+water.--_Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1847, 1re semestre, p. 150.
+See also VOGT, _Nuetzliche u. schaedliche Thiere_.
+
+[78] Wild birds are very tenacious in their habits. The extension of
+particular branches of agriculture introduces new birds; but unless in
+the case of such changes in physical conditions, particular species seem
+indissolubly attached to particular localities. The migrating tribes
+follow almost undeviatingly the same precise line of flight in their
+annual journeys, and establish themselves in the same breeding places
+from year to year. The stork is a strong-winged bird and roves far for
+food, but very rarely establishes new colonies. He is common in Holland,
+but unknown in England. Not above five or six pairs of storks commonly
+breed in the suburbs of Constantinople along the European shore of the
+narrow Bosphorus, while--much to the satisfaction of the Moslems, who
+are justly proud of the marked partiality of so orthodox a bird--dozens
+of chimneys of the true believers on the Asiatic side are crowned with
+his nests. See _App._ No. 15.
+
+[79] It is not the unfledged and the nursing bird alone that are exposed
+to destruction by severe weather. Whole flocks of adult and
+strong-winged tribes are killed by hail. Severe winters are usually
+followed by a sensible diminution in the numbers of the non-migrating
+birds, and a cold storm in summer often proves fatal to the more
+delicate species. On the 10th of June, 184-, five or six inches of snow
+fell in Northern Vermont. The next morning I found a humming bird killed
+by the cold, and hanging by its claws just below a loose clapboard on
+the wall of a small wooden building where it had sought shelter.
+
+[80] LYELL, _Antiquity of Man_, p. 409, observes: "Of birds it is
+estimated that the number of those which die every year equals the
+aggregate number by which the species to which they respectively belong
+is, on the average, permanently represented."
+
+A remarkable instance of the influence of new circumstances upon birds
+was observed upon the establishment of a lighthouse on Cape Cod some
+years since. The morning after the lamps were lighted for the first
+time, more than a hundred dead birds of several different species,
+chiefly water fowl, were found at the foot of the tower. They had been
+killed in the course of the night by flying against the thick glass or
+grating of the lantern. See _Appendix_, No. 16.
+
+Migrating birds, whether for greater security from eagles, hawks, and
+other enemies, or for some unknown reason, perform a great part of their
+annual journeys by night; and it is observed in the Alps that they
+follow the high roads in their passage across the mountains. This is
+partly because the food in search of which they must sometimes descend
+is principally found near the roads. It is, however, not altogether for
+the sake of consorting with man, or of profiting by his labors, that
+their line of flight conforms to the paths he has traced, but rather
+because the great roads are carried through the natural depressions in
+the chain, and hence the birds can cross the summit by these routes
+without rising to a height where at the seasons of migration the cold
+would be excessive.
+
+The instinct which guides migratory birds in their course is not in all
+cases infallible, and it seems to be confounded by changes in the
+condition of the surface. I am familiar with a village in New England,
+at the junction of two valleys, each drained by a mill stream, where the
+flocks of wild geese which formerly passed, every spring and autumn,
+were very frequently lost, as it was popularly phrased, and I have often
+heard their screams in the night as they flew wildly about in perplexity
+as to the proper course. Perhaps the village lights embarrassed them, or
+perhaps the constant changes in the face of the country, from the
+clearings then going on, introduced into the landscape features not
+according with the ideal map handed down in the anserine family, and
+thus deranged its traditional geography.
+
+[81] The cappercailzie, or tjaeder, as he is called in Sweden, is a bird
+of singular habits, and seems to want some of the protective instincts
+which secure most other wild birds from destruction. The younger
+Laestadius frequently notices the tjaeder, in his very remarkable account
+of the Swedish Laplanders--a work wholly unsurpassed as a genial picture
+of semi-barbarian life, and not inferior in minuteness of detail to
+Schlatter's description of the manners of the Nogai Tartars, or even to
+Lane's admirable and exhaustive work on the Modern Egyptians. The
+tjaeder, though not a bird of passage, is migratory, or rather wandering
+in domicile, and appears to undertake very purposeless and absurd
+journeys. "When he flits," says Laestadius, "he follows a straight
+course, and sometimes pursues it quite out of the country. It is said
+that, in foggy weather, he sometimes flies out to sea, and, when tired,
+falls into the water and is drowned. It is accordingly observed that,
+when he flies westwardly, toward the mountains, he soon comes back
+again; but when he takes an eastwardly course, he returns no more, and
+for a long time is very scarce in Lapland. From this it would seem that
+he turns back from the bald mountains, when he discovers that he has
+strayed from his proper home, the wood; but when he finds himself over
+the Baltic, where he cannot alight to rest and collect himself, he flies
+on until he is exhausted and falls into the sea."--PETRUS LAESTADIUS,
+_Journal af foersta aret, etc._, p. 325.
+
+[82] _Die Herzogthuemer Schleswig und Holstein_, i, p. 203.
+
+[83] Gulls hover about ships in port, and often far out at sea,
+diligently watching for the waste of the caboose. "While the four great
+fleets, English, French, Turkish, and Egyptian, were lying in the
+Bosphorus, in the summer and autumn of 1853, a young lady of my family
+called my attention to the fact that the gulls were far more numerous
+about the ships of one of the fleets than about the others. This was
+verified by repeated observation, and the difference was owing no doubt
+to the greater abundance of the refuse from the cookrooms of the naval
+squadron most frequented by the birds. Persons acquainted with the
+economy of the navies of the states in question, will be able to
+conjecture which fleet was most favored with these delicate attentions.
+
+[84] Birds do not often voluntarily take passage on board ships bound
+for foreign countries, but I can testify to one such case. A stork,
+which had nested near one of the palaces on the Bosphorus, had, by some
+accident, injured a wing, and was unable to join his follows when they
+commenced their winter migration to the banks of the Nile. Before he was
+able to fly again, he was caught, and the flag of the nation to which
+the palace belonged was tied to his leg, so that he was easily
+identified at a considerable distance. As his wing grow stronger, he
+made several unsatisfactory experiments at flight, and at last, by a
+vigorous effort, succeeded in reaching a passing ship bound southward,
+and perched himself on a topsail yard. I happened to witness this
+movement, and observed him quietly maintaining his position as long as I
+could discern him with a spyglass. I suppose he finished the voyage, for
+he certainly did not return to the palace.
+
+[85] The enthusiasm of naturalists is not always proportioned to the
+magnitude or importance of the organisms they concern themselves with.
+It is not recorded that Adams, who found the colossal antediluvian
+pachyderm in a thick-ribbed mountain of Siberian ice, ran wild over his
+_trouvaille_; but Schmidl, in describing the natural history of the
+caves of the Karst, speaks of an eminent entomologist as "_der
+glueckliche Entdecker_," the _happy_ discoverer of a new coleopteron, in
+one of those dim caverns. How various are the sources of happiness!
+Think of a learned German professor, the bare enumeration of whose
+Rath-ships and scientific Mitglied-ships fills a page, made famous in
+the annals of science, immortal, happy, by the discovery of a beetle!
+Had that imperial _ennuye_, who offered a premium for the invention of a
+new pleasure, but read Schmidl's _Hoehlen des Karstes_, what splendid
+rewards would he not have heaped upon Kirby and Spence!
+
+[86] I believe there is no foundation for the supposition that
+earthworms attack the tuber of the potato. Some of them, especially one
+or two species employed by anglers as bait, if natives of the woods, are
+at least rare in shaded grounds, but multiply very rapidly after the
+soil is brought under cultivation. Forty or fifty years ago they were so
+scarce in the newer parts of New England, that the rustic fishermen of
+every village kept secret the few places where they were to be found in
+their neighborhood, as a professional mystery, but at present one can
+hardly turn over a shovelful of rich moist soil anywhere, without
+unearthing several of them. A very intelligent lady, born in the woods
+of Northern New England, told me that, in her childhood, these worms
+were almost unknown in that region, though anxiously sought for by the
+anglers, but that they increased as the country was cleared, and at last
+became so numerous in some places, that the water of springs, and even
+of shallow wells, which had formerly been excellent, was rendered
+undrinkable by the quantity of dead worms that fell into them. The
+increase of the robin and other small birds which follow the settler
+when he has prepared a suitable home for them, at last checked the
+excessive multiplication of the worms, and abated the nuisance.
+
+[87] I have already remarked that the remains of extant animals are
+rarely, if ever, gathered in sufficient quantities to possess any
+geographical importance by their mere mass; but the decayed exuviae of
+even the smaller and humbler forms of life are sometimes abundant enough
+to exercise a perceptible influence on soil and atmosphere. "The plain
+of Cumana," says Humboldt, "presents a remarkable phenomenon, after
+heavy rains. The moistened earth, when heated by the rays of the sun,
+diffuses the musky odor common in the torrid zone to animals of very
+different classes, to the jaguar, the small species of tiger cat, the
+cabiai, the gallinazo vulture, the crocodile, the viper, and the
+rattlesnake. The gaseous emanations, the vehicles of this aroma, appear
+to be disengaged in proportion as the soil, which contains the remains
+of an innumerable multitude of reptiles, worms, and insects, begins to
+be impregnated with water. Wherever we stir the earth, we are struck
+with the mass of organic substances which in turn are developed and
+become transformed or decomposed. Nature in these climes seems more
+active, more prolific, and so to speak, more prodigal of life."
+
+[88] It is remarkable that Palissy, to whose great merits as an acute
+observer I am happy to have frequent occasion to bear testimony, had
+noticed that vegetation was necessary to maintain the purity of water in
+artificial reservoirs, though he mistook the rationale of its influence,
+which he ascribed to the elemental "salt" supposed by him to play an
+important part in all the operations of nature. In his treatise upon
+Waters and Fountains, p. 174, of the reprint of 1844, he says: "And in
+special, thou shalt note one point, the which is understood of few: that
+is to say, that the leaves of the trees which fall upon the parterre,
+and the herbs growing beneath, and singularly the fruits, if any there
+be upon the trees, being decayed, the waters of the parterre shall draw
+unto them the salt of the said fruits, leaves, and herbs, the which
+shall greatly better the water of thy fountains, and hinder the
+putrefaction thereof."
+
+[89] Between the years 1851 and 1853, both inclusive, the United States
+exported 2,665,857 pounds of beeswax, besides a considerable quantity
+employed in the manufacture of candles for exportation. This is an
+average of more than 330,000 pounds per year. The census of 1850 gave
+the total production of wax and honey for that year at 14,853,128
+pounds. In 1860, it amounted to 26,370,813 pounds, the increase being
+partly due to the introduction of improved races of bees from Italy and
+Switzerland.--BIGELOW, _Les Etats Unis en 1863_, p. 376.
+
+[90] A few years ago, a laborer, employed at a North American port in
+discharging a cargo of hides from the opposite extremity of the
+continent, was fatally poisoned by the bite or the sting of an unknown
+insect, which ran out from a hide he was handling.
+
+[91] In many insects, some of the stages of life regularly continue for
+several years, and they may, under peculiar circumstances, be almost
+indefinitely prolonged. Dr. Dwight mentions the following remarkable
+case of this sort, which may be new to many readers: "While I was here
+[at Williamstown, Mass.], Dr. Fitch showed me an insect, about an inch
+in length, of a brown color tinged with orange, with two antennae, not
+unlike a rosebug. This insect came out of a tea table, made of the
+boards of an apple tree." Dr. Dwight examined the table, and found the
+"cavity whence the insect had emerged into the light," to be "about two
+inches in length, nearly horizontal, and inclining upward very little,
+except at the mouth. Between the hole, and the outside of the leaf of
+the table, there were forty grains of the wood." It was supposed that
+the sawyer and the cabinet maker must have removed at least thirteen
+grains more, and the table had been in the possession of its proprietor
+for twenty years.
+
+[92] It does not appear to be quite settled whether the termites of
+France are indigenous or imported. See QUATREFAGES, _Souvenirs d'un
+Naturaliste_, ii, pp. 400, 542, 543.
+
+[93] I have seen the larva of the dragon fly in an aquarium, bite off
+the head of a young fish as long as itself.
+
+[94] Insects and fish--which prey upon and feed each other--are the only
+forms of animal life that are numerous in the native woods, and their
+range is, of course, limited by the extent of the waters. The great
+abundance of the trout, and of other more or less allied genera in the
+lakes of Lapland, seems to be due to the supply of food provided for
+them by the swarms of insects which in the larva state inhabit the
+waters, or, in other stages of their life, are accidentally swept into
+them. All travellers in the north of Europe speak of the gnat and the
+mosquito as very serious drawbacks upon the enjoyments of the summer
+tourist, who visits the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to see the midnight
+sun, and the brothers Laestadius regard them as one of the great plagues
+of sub-Arctic life. "The persecutions of these insects," says Lars Levi
+Laestadius [_Culex pipiens_, _Culex reptans_, and _Culex pulicaris_],
+"leave not a moment's peace, by day or night, to any living creature.
+Not only man, but cattle, and even birds and wild beasts, suffer
+intolerably from their bite." He adds in a note, "I will not affirm that
+they have ever devoured a living man, but many young cattle, such as
+lambs and calves, have been worried out of their lives by them. All the
+people of Lapland declare that young birds are killed by them, and this
+is not improbable, for birds are scarce after seasons when the midge,
+the gnat, and the mosquito are numerous."--_Om Uppodlingar i
+Lappmarken_, p. 50.
+
+Petrus Laestadius makes similar statements in his _Journal foer foersta
+aret_, p. 285.
+
+[95] It is very questionable whether there is any foundation for the
+popular belief in the hostility of swine and of deer to the rattlesnake,
+and careful experiments as to the former quadruped seem to show that the
+supposed enmity is wholly imaginary. Observing that the starlings,
+_stornelli_, which bred in an old tower in Piedmont, carried something
+from their nests and dropped it upon the ground, about as often as they
+brought food to their young, I watched their proceedings, and found
+every day lying near the tower numbers of dead or dying slowworms, and,
+in a few cases, small lizards, which had, in every instance, lost about
+two inches of the tail. This part I believe the starlings gave to their
+nestlings, and threw away the remainder.
+
+[96] Russell denies the existence of poisonous snakes in Northern Syria,
+and states that the last instance of death known to have occurred from
+the bite of a serpent near Aleppo took place a hundred years before his
+time. In Palestine, the climate, the thinness of population, the
+multitude of insects and of lizards, all circumstances, in fact, seem
+very favorable to the multiplication of serpents, but the venomous
+species, at least, are extremely rare, if at all known, in that country.
+I have, however, been assured by persons very familiar with Mount
+Lebanon, that cases of poisoning from the bite of snakes had occurred
+within a few years, near Hasbeiyeh, and at other places on the southern
+declivities of Lebanon and Hermon. In Egypt, on the other hand, the
+cobra, the asp, and the cerastes are as numerous as ever, and are much
+dreaded by all the natives, except the professional snake charmers. See
+_Appendix_, No. 18.
+
+[97] I use _whale_ not in a technical sense, but as a generic term for
+all the large inhabitants of the sea popularly grouped under that name.
+
+[98] From the narrative of Ohther, introduced by King Alfred into his
+translation of Orosius, it is clear that the Northmen pursued the whale
+fishery in the ninth century, and it appears, both from the poem called
+The Whale, in the Codex Exoniensis, and from the dialogue with the
+fisherman in the Colloquies of Aelfric, that the Anglo-Saxons followed
+this dangerous chase at a period not much later. I am not aware of any
+evidence to show that any of the Latin nations engaged in this fishery
+until a century or two afterward, though it may not be easy to disprove
+their earlier participation in it. In mediaeval literature, Latin and
+Romance, very frequent mention is made of a species of vessel called in
+Latin, _baleneria_, _balenerium_, _balenerius_, _balaneria_, etc.; in
+Catalan, _balener_; in French, _balenier_; all of which words occur in
+many other forms. The most obvious etymology of these words would
+suggest the meaning, _whaler_, _baleinier_; but some have supposed that
+the name was descriptive of the great size of the ships, and others have
+referred it to a different root. From the fourteenth century, the word
+occurs oftener, perhaps, in old Catalan, than in any other language; but
+Capmany does not notice the whale fishery as one of the maritime
+pursuits of the very enterprising Catalan people, nor do I find any of
+the products of the whale mentioned in the old Catalan tariffs. The
+_whalebone_ of the mediaeval writers, which is described as very white,
+is doubtless the ivory of the walrus or of the narwhale.
+
+[99] In consequence of the great scarcity of the whale, the use of coal
+gas for illumination, the substitution of other fatty and oleaginous
+substances, such as lard, palm oil, and petroleum, for right-whale oil
+and spermaceti, the whale fishery has rapidly fallen off within a few
+years. The great supply of petroleum, which is much used for lubricating
+machinery as well as for numerous other purposes, has produced a more
+perceptible effect on the whale fishery than any other single
+circumstance. According to Bigelow, _Les Etats Unis en 1863_, p. 346,
+the American whaling fleet was diminished by 29 in 1858, 57 in 1860, 94
+in 1861, and 65 in 1862. The present number of American ships employed
+in that fishery is 353.
+
+[100] The Origin and History of the English Language, &c., pp. 423, 424.
+
+[101] Among the unexpected results of human action, the destruction or
+multiplication of fish, as well as of other animals, is a not unfrequent
+occurrence. I shall have occasion to mention on a following page the
+extermination of the fish in a Swedish river by a flood occasioned by
+the sudden discharge of the waters of a pond. Williams, in his _History
+of Vermont_, i, p. 149, quoted in Thompson's _Natural History of
+Vermont_, p. 142, records a case of the increase of trout from an
+opposite cause. In a pond formed by damming a small stream to obtain
+water power for a sawmill, and covering one thousand acres of primitive
+forest, the increased supply of food brought within reach of the fish
+multiplied them to that degree, that, at the head of the pond, where, in
+the spring, they crowded together in the brook which supplied it, they
+were taken by the hands at pleasure, and swine caught them without
+difficulty. A single sweep of a small scoopnet would bring up half a
+bushel, carts were filled with them as fast as if picked up on dry land,
+and in the fishing season they were commonly sold at a shilling
+(eightpence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) a bushel. The increase
+in the size of the trout was as remarkable as the multiplication of
+their numbers.
+
+[102] BABINET, _Etudes et Lectures_, ii, pp. 108, 110.
+
+[103] THOMPSON, _Natural History of Vermont_, p. 38, and Appendix,
+p. 13. There is no reason to believe that the seal breeds in Lake
+Champlain, but the individual last taken there must have been some
+weeks, at least, in its waters. It was killed on the ice in the widest
+part of the lake, on the 23d of February, thirteen days after the
+surface was entirely frozen, except the usual small cracks, and a month
+or two after the ice closed at all points north of the place where the
+seal was found.
+
+[104] See page 89, note, _ante_.
+
+[105] According to Hartwig, the United Provinces of Holland had, in
+1618, three thousand herring busses and nine thousand vessels engaged in
+the transport of these fish to market. The whole number of persons
+employed in the Dutch herring fishery was computed at 200,000.
+
+In the latter part of the eighteenth century, this fishery was most
+successfully prosecuted by the Swedes, and in 1781, the town of
+Gottenburg alone exported 136,649 barrels, each containing 1,200
+herrings, making a total of about 164,000,000; but so rapid was the
+exhaustion of the fish, from this keen pursuit, that in 1799 it was
+found necessary to prohibit the exportation of them altogether.--_Das
+Leben des Meeres_, p. 182.
+
+In 1855, the British fisheries produced 900,000 barrels, or enough to
+supply a fish to every human inhabitant of the globe.
+
+On the shores of Long Island Sound, the white fish, a species of herring
+too bony to be easily eaten, is used as manure in very great quantities.
+Ten thousand are employed as a dressing for an acre, and a single net
+has sometimes taken 200,000 in a day.--DWIGHT's _Travels_, ii, pp. 512,
+515.
+
+[106] The indiscriminate hostility of man to inferior forms of animated
+life is little creditable to modern civilization, and it is painful to
+reflect that it becomes keener and more unsparing in proportion to the
+refinement of the race. The savage slays no animal, not even the
+rattlesnake, wantonly; and the Turk, whom we call a barbarian, treats
+the dumb beast as gently as a child. One cannot live many weeks in
+Turkey without witnessing touching instances of the kindness of the
+people to the lower animals, and I have found it very difficult to
+induce even the boys to catch lizards and other reptiles for
+preservation as specimens. See _Appendix_, No. 19.
+
+The fearless confidence in man, so generally manifested by wild animals
+in newly discovered islands, ought to have inspired a gentler treatment
+of them; but a very few years of the relentless pursuit, to which they
+are immediately subjected, suffice to make them as timid as the wildest
+inhabitants of the European forest. This timidity, however, may easily
+be overcome. The squirrels introduced by Mayor Smith into the public
+parks of Boston are so tame as to feed from the hands of passengers, and
+they not unfrequently enter the neighboring houses.
+
+[107] A fact mentioned by Schubert--and which in its causes and many of
+its results corresponds almost precisely with those connected with the
+escape of Barton Pond in Vermont, so well known to geological
+students--is important, as showing that the diminution of the fish in
+rivers exposed to inundations is chiefly to be ascribed to the
+mechanical action of the current, and not mainly, as some have supposed,
+to changes of temperature occasioned by clearing. Our author states
+that, in 1796, a terrible inundation was produced in the Indalself,
+which rises in the Storsjoe in Jemtland, by drawing off into it the
+waters of another lake near Ragunda. The flood destroyed houses and
+fields; much earth was swept into the channel, and the water made turbid
+and muddy; the salmon and the smaller fish forsook the river altogether,
+and never returned. The banks of the river have never regained their
+former solidity, and portions of their soil are still continually
+falling into the water.--_Resa genom Sverge_, ii, p. 51.
+
+[108] WITTWER, _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 142.
+
+[109] To vary the phrase, I make occasional use of _animalcule_, which,
+as a popular designation, embraces all microscopic organisms. The name
+is founded on the now exploded supposition that all of them are
+animated, which was the general belief of naturalists when attention was
+first drawn to them. It was soon discovered that many of them were
+unquestionably vegetable, and there are numerous genera the true
+classification of which is matter of dispute among the ablest observers.
+There are cases in which objects formerly taken for living animalcules
+turn out to be products of the decomposition of matter once animated,
+and it is admitted that neither spontaneous motion nor even apparent
+irritability are sure signs of animal life.
+
+[110] See an interesting report on the coral fishery, by Sant' Agabio,
+Italian Consul-General at Algiers, in the _Bollettino Consolare_,
+published by the Department of Foreign Affairs, 1862, pp. 139, 151, and
+in the _Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio_, No. ii, pp. 360,
+373.
+
+[111] The fermentation of liquids, and in many cases the decomposition
+of semi-solids, formerly supposed to be owing purely to chemical action,
+are now ascertained to be due to vital processes of living minute
+organisms both vegetable and animal, and consequently to physiological,
+as well as to chemical forces. Even alcohol is stated to be an animal
+product. See an interesting article by Auguste Laugel on the recent
+researches of Pasteur, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for September
+15th, 1863.
+
+[112] The recorded evidence in support of the proposition in the text
+has been collected by L. F. Alfred Maury, in his _Histoire des grandes
+Forets de la Gaule et de l'ancienne France_, and by Becquerel, in his
+important work, _Des climats et de l'Influence qu'exercent les Sols
+boises et non boises_, livre ii, chap. i to iv.
+
+We may rank among historical evidences on this point, if not technically
+among historical records, old geographical names and terminations
+etymologically indicating forest or grove, which are so common in many
+parts of the Eastern Continent now entirely stripped of woods--such as,
+in Southern Europe, Breuil, Broglio, Brolio, Brolo; in Northern, Bruehl,
+-wald, -wold, -wood, -shaw, -skeg, and -skov.
+
+[113] The island of Madeira, whose noble forests were devastated by fire
+not long after its colonization by European settlers, derives its name
+from the Portuguese word for wood.
+
+[114] Browsing animals, and most of all the goat, are considered by
+foresters as more injurious to the growth of young trees, and,
+therefore, to the reproduction of the forest, than almost any other
+destructive cause. "According to Beatson's _Saint Helena_, introductory
+chapter, and Darwin's _Journal of Researches in Geology and Natural
+History_, pp. 582, 583," says Emsmann, in the notes to his translation
+of Foissac, p. 654, "it was the goats which destroyed the beautiful
+forests that, three hundred and fifty years ago, covered a continuous
+surface of not less than two thousand acres in the interior of the
+island [of St. Helena], not to mention scattered groups of trees. Darwin
+observes: 'During our stay at Valparaiso, I was most positively assured
+that sandal wood formerly grew in abundance on the island of Juan
+Fernandez, but that this tree had now become entirely extinct there,
+having been extirpated by the goats which early navigators had
+introduced. The neighboring islands, to which goats have not been
+carried, still abound in sandal wood.'"
+
+In the winter, the deer tribe, especially the great American moose deer,
+subsists much on the buds and young sprouts of trees; yet--though from
+the destruction of the wolves or from some not easily explained cause,
+these latter animals have recently multiplied so rapidly in some parts
+of North America, that, not long since, four hundred of them are said to
+have been killed, in one season, on a territory in Maine not comprising
+more than one hundred and fifty square miles--the wild browsing
+quadrupeds are rarely, if ever, numerous enough in regions uninhabited
+by man to produce any sensible effect on the condition of the forest. A
+reason why they are less injurious than the goat to young trees may be
+that they resort to this nutriment only in the winter, when the grasses
+and shrubs are leafless or covered with snow, whereas the goat feeds
+upon buds and young shoots principally in the season of growth. However
+this may be, the natural law of consumption and supply keeps the forest
+growth, and the wild animals which live on its products, in such a state
+of equilibrium as to insure the indefinite continuance of both, and the
+perpetuity of neither is endangered until man, who is above natural law,
+interferes and destroys the balance.
+
+When, however, deer are bred and protected in parks, they multiply like
+domestic cattle, and become equally injurious to trees. "A few years
+ago," says Clave, "there were not less than two thousand deer of
+different ages in the forest of Fontainebleau. For want of grass, they
+are driven to the trees, and they do not spare them. * * It is
+calculated that the browsing of these animals, and the consequent
+retardation of the growth of the wood, diminishes the annual product
+of the forest to the amount of two hundred thousand cubic feet per
+year, * * and besides this, the trees thus mutilated are soon exhausted
+and die. The deer attack the pines, too, tearing off the bark in long
+strips, or rubbing their heads against them when shedding their horns;
+and sometimes, in groves of more than a hundred hectares, not one pine
+is found uninjured by them."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, p.
+157. See also _Appendix_, No. 21.
+
+Beckstein computes that a park of 2,500 acres, containing 250 acres of
+marsh, 250 of fields and meadows, and the remaining 2,000 of wood, may
+keep 364 deer of different species, 47 wild boars, 200 hares, 100
+rabbits, and an indefinite number of pheasants. These animals would
+require, in winter, 123,000 pounds of hay, and 22,000 pounds of
+potatoes, besides what they would pick up themselves. The natural forest
+most thickly peopled with wild animals would not, in temperate climates,
+contain, upon the average, one tenth of these numbers to the same extent
+of surface.
+
+[115] Even the volcanic dust of Etna remains very long unproductive.
+Near Nicolosi is a great extent of coarse black sand, thrown out in
+1669, which, for almost two centuries, lay entirely bare, and can be
+made to grow plants only by artificial mixtures and much labor.
+
+The increase in the price of wines, in consequence of the diminution of
+the product from the grape disease, however, has brought even these
+ashes under cultivation. "I found," says Waltershausen, referring to the
+years 1861-'62, "plains of volcanic sand and half-subdued lava streams,
+which twenty years ago lay utterly waste, now covered with fine
+vineyards. The ashfield of ten square miles above Nicolosi, created by
+the eruption of 1669, which was entirely barren in 1835, is now planted
+with vines almost to the summits of Monte Rosso, at a height of three
+thousand feet."--_Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau_, p. 19.
+
+[116] _A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom._ 1610, lib. 4, p. 260,
+edition of 1627. The testimony of Sandys on this point is confirmed by
+that of Pighio, Braccini, Magliocco, Salimbeni, and Nicola di Rubeo, all
+cited by Roth, _Der Vesuv._, p. 9. There is some uncertainty about the
+date of the last eruption previous to the great one of 1631. Ashes,
+though not lava, appear to have been thrown out about the year 1500, and
+some chroniclers have recorded an eruption in the year 1306; but this
+seems to be an error for 1036, when a great quantity of lava was
+ejected. In 1139, ashes were thrown out for many days. I take those
+dates from the work of Roth just cited.
+
+[117] Except upon the banks of rivers or of lakes, the woods of the
+interior of North America, far from the habitations of man, are almost
+destitute of animal life. Dr. Newberry, describing the vast forests of
+the yellow pine of the West, _Pinus ponderosa_, remarks: "In the arid
+and desert regions of the interior basin, we made whole days' marches in
+forests of yellow pine, of which neither the monotony was broken by
+other forms of vegetation, nor its stillness by the flutter of a bird or
+the hum of an insect."--_Pacific Railroad Report_, vol. vi, 1857. Dr.
+NEWBERRY's _Report on Botany_, p. 37.
+
+The wild fruit and nut trees, the Canada plum, the cherries, the many
+species of walnut, the butternut, the hazel, yield very little,
+frequently nothing, so long as they grow in the woods; and it is only
+when the trees around them are cut down, or when they grow in pastures,
+that they become productive. The berries, too--the strawberry, the
+blackberry, the raspberry, the whortleberry, scarcely bear fruit at all
+except in cleared ground.
+
+The North American Indians did not inhabit the interior of the forests.
+Their settlements were upon the shores of rivers and lakes, and their
+weapons and other relics are found only in the narrow open grounds which
+they had burned over and cultivated, or in the margin of the woods
+around their villages.
+
+The rank forests of the tropics are as unproductive of human aliment as
+the less luxuriant woods of the temperate zone. In Strain's unfortunate
+expedition across the great American isthmus, where the journey lay
+principally through thick woods, several of the party died of
+starvation, and for many days the survivors were forced to subsist on
+the scantiest supplies of unnutritious vegetables perhaps never before
+employed for food by man. See the interesting account of that expedition
+in _Harper's Magazine_ for March, April, and May, 1855.
+
+Clave, as well as many earlier writers, supposes that primitive man
+derived his nutriment from the spontaneous productions of the wood. "It
+is to the forests," says he, "that man was first indebted for the means
+of subsistence. Exposed alone, without defence, to the rigor of the
+seasons, as well as to the attacks of animals stronger and swifter than
+himself, he found in them his first shelter, drew from them his first
+weapons. In the first period of humanity, they provided for all his
+wants: they furnished him wood for warmth, fruits for food, garments to
+cover his nakedness, arms for his defence."--_Etudes sur l'Economie
+Forestiere_, p. 13.
+
+But the history of savage life, as far as it is known to us, presents
+man in that condition as inhabiting only the borders of the forest and
+the open grounds that skirt the waters and the woods, and as finding
+only there the aliments which make up his daily bread.
+
+[118] The origin of the great natural meadows, or prairies as they are
+called, of the valley of the Mississippi, is obscure. There is, of
+course, no historical evidence on the subject, and I believe that
+remains of forest vegetation are seldom or never found beneath the
+surface, even in the _sloughs_, where the perpetual moisture would
+preserve such remains indefinitely. The want of trees upon them has been
+ascribed to the occasional long-continued droughts of summer, and the
+excessive humidity of the soil in winter; but it is, in very many
+instances, certain that, by whatever means the growth of forests upon
+them was first prevented or destroyed, the trees have been since kept
+out of them only by the annual burning of the grass, by grazing animals,
+or by cultivation. The groves and belts of trees which are found upon
+the prairies, though their seedlings are occasionally killed by drought,
+or by excess of moisture, extend themselves rapidly over them when the
+seeds and shoots are protected against fire, cattle, and the plough. The
+prairies, though of vast extent, must be considered as a local, and, so
+far as our present knowledge extends, abnormal exception to the law
+which clothes all suitable surfaces with forest; for there are many
+parts of the United States--Ohio, for example--where the physical
+conditions appear to be nearly identical with those of the States lying
+farther west, but where there were comparatively few natural meadows.
+The prairies were the proper feeding grounds of the bison, and the vast
+number of those animals is connected, as cause or consequence, with the
+existence of those vast pastures. The bison, indeed, could not convert
+the forest into a pasture, but he would do much to prevent the pasture
+from becoming a forest.
+
+There is positive evidence that some of the American tribes possessed
+large herds of domesticated bisons. See HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_,
+i, pp. 71-73. What authorizes us to affirm that this was simply the wild
+bison reclaimed, and why may we not, with equal probability, believe
+that the migratory prairie buffalo is the progeny of the domestic animal
+run wild?
+
+There are, both on the prairies, as in Wisconsin, and in deep forests,
+as in Ohio, extensive remains of a primitive people, who must have been
+more numerous and more advanced in art than the present Indian tribes.
+There can be no doubt that the woods where such earthworks are found in
+Ohio were cleared by them, and that the vicinity of these fortresses or
+temples was inhabited by a large population. Nothing forbids the
+supposition that the prairies were cleared by the same or a similar
+people, and that the growth of trees upon them has been prevented by
+fires and grazing, while the restoration of the woods in Ohio may be due
+to the abandonment of that region by its original inhabitants. The
+climatic conditions unfavorable to the spontaneous growth of trees on
+the prairies may be an effect of too extensive clearings, rather than a
+cause of the want of woods. See _Appendix_, No. 22.
+
+[119] In many parts of the North American States, the first white
+settlers found extensive tracts of thin woods, of a very park-like
+character, called "oak openings," from the predominance of different
+species of that tree upon them. These were the semi-artificial pasture
+grounds of the Indians, brought into that state, and so kept, by partial
+clearing, and by the annual burning of the grass. The object of this
+operation was to attract the deer to the fresh herbage which sprang up
+after the fire. The oaks bore the annual scorching, at least for a
+certain time; but if it had been indefinitely continued, they would very
+probably have been destroyed at last. The soil would have then been much
+in the prairie condition, and would have needed nothing but grazing for
+a long succession of years to make the resemblance perfect. That the
+annual fires alone occasioned the peculiar character of the oak
+openings, is proved by the fact, that as soon as the Indians had left
+the country, young trees of many species sprang up and grew luxuriantly
+upon them. See a very interesting account of the oak openings in
+DWIGHT's _Travels_, iv, pp. 58-63.
+
+[120] The practice of burning over woodland, at once to clear and manure
+the ground, is called in Swedish _svedjande_, a participial noun from
+the verb _att svedja_, to burn over. Though used in Sweden as a
+preparation for crops of rye or other grain, it is employed in Lapland
+more frequently to secure an abundant growth of pasturage, which follows
+in two or three years after the fire; and it is sometimes resorted to as
+a mode of driving the Laplanders and their reindeer from the vicinity of
+the Swedish backwoodsman's grass grounds and haystacks, to which they
+are dangerous neighbors. The forest, indeed, rapidly recovers itself,
+but it is a generation or more before the reindeer moss grows again.
+When the forest consists of pine, _tall_, the ground, instead of being
+rendered fertile by this process, becomes hopelessly barren, and for a
+long time afterward produces nothing but weeds and briers.--LAESTADIUS,
+_Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, p. 15. See also SCHUBERT, _Resa i
+Sverge_, ii, p. 375.
+
+In some parts of France this practice is so general that Clave says: "In
+the department of Ardennes it (_le sartage_) is the basis of
+agriculture. The northern part of the department, comprising the
+arrondissements of Rocroi and Mezieres, is covered by steep wooded
+mountains with an argillaceous, compact, moist and cold soil; it is
+furrowed by three valleys, or rather three deep ravines, at the bottom
+of which roll the waters of the Meuse, the Semoy, and the Sormonne, and
+villages show themselves wherever the walls of the valleys retreat
+sufficiently from the rivers to give room to establish them. Deprived of
+arable soil, since the nature of the ground permits neither regular
+clearing nor cultivation, the peasant of the Ardennes, by means of
+burning, obtains from the forest a subsistence which, without this
+resource, would fail him. After the removal of the disposable wood, he
+spreads over the soil the branches, twigs, briars, and heath, sets fire
+to them in the dry weather of July and August, and sows in September a
+crop of rye, which he covers by a light ploughing. Thus prepared, the
+ground yields from seventeen to twenty bushels an acre, besides a ton
+and a half or two tons of straw of the best quality for the manufacture
+of straw hats."--CLAVE, _Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere_, p. 21.
+
+Clave does not expressly condemn the _sartage_, which indeed seems the
+only practicable method of obtaining crops from the soil he describes,
+but, as we shall see hereafter, it is regarded by most writers as a
+highly pernicious practice.
+
+[121] The remarkable mounds and other earthworks constructed in the
+valley of the Ohio and elsewhere in the territory of the United States,
+by a people apparently more advanced in culture than the modern Indian,
+were overgrown with a dense clothing of forest when first discovered by
+the whites. But though the ground where they were erected must have been
+occupied by a large population for a considerable length of time, and
+therefore entirely cleared, the trees which grew upon the ancient
+fortresses and the adjacent lands were not distinguishable in species,
+or even in dimensions and character of growth, from the neighboring
+forests, where the soil seemed never to have been disturbed. This
+apparent exception to the law of change of crop in natural forest growth
+was ingeniously explained by General Harrison's suggestion, that the
+lapse of time since the era of the mound builders was so great as to
+have embraced several successive generations of trees, and occasioned,
+by their rotation, a return to the original vegetation.
+
+The successive changes in the spontaneous growth of the forest, as
+proved by the character of the wood found in bogs, is not unfrequently
+such as to suggest the theory of a considerable change of climate during
+the human period. But the laws which govern the germination and growth
+of forest trees must be further studied, and the primitive local
+conditions of the sites where ancient woods lie buried must be better
+ascertained, before this theory can be admitted upon the evidence in
+question. In fact, the order of succession--for a rotation or
+alternation is not yet proved--may move in opposite directions in
+different countries with the same climate and at the same time. Thus in
+Denmark and in Holland the spike-leaved firs have given place to the
+broad-leaved beech, while in Northern Germany the process has been
+reversed, and evergreens have supplanted the oaks and birches of
+deciduous foliage. The principal determining cause seems to be the
+influence of light upon the germination of the seeds and the growth of
+the young tree. In a forest of firs, for instance, the distribution of
+the light and shade, to the influence of which seeds and shoots are
+exposed, is by no means the same as in a wood of beeches or of oaks, and
+hence the growth of different species will be stimulated in the two
+forests. See BERG, _Das Verdraengen der Laubwaelder im Noerdlichen
+Deutschland_, 1844. HEYER, _Das Verhalten der Waldbaeume gegen Licht und
+Schatten_, 1852. STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, 1856, i, pp.
+120-200. VAUPELL, _Om Boegens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, 1857.
+KNORR, _Studien ueber die Buchen-Wirthschaft_, 1863.
+
+[122] There are, in Northern Italy and in Switzerland, joint-stock
+companies which insure against damage by hail, as well as by fire and
+lightning. Between the years 1854 and 1861, a single one of these
+companies, La Riunione Adriatica, paid, for damage by hail in Piedmont,
+Venetian Lombardy, and the Duchy of Parma, above 6,500,000 francs, or
+nearly $200,000 per year.
+
+[123] The _paragrandine_, or, as it is called in French, the
+_paragrele_, is a species of conductor by which it has been hoped to
+protect the harvests in countries particularly exposed to damage by
+hail. It was at first proposed to employ for this purpose poles
+supporting sheaves of straw connected with the ground by the same
+material; but the experiment was afterward tried in Lombardy on a large
+scale, with more perfect electrical conductors, consisting of poles
+secured to the top of tall trees and provided with a pointed wire
+entering the ground and reaching above the top of the pole. It was at
+first thought that this apparatus, erected at numerous points over an
+extent of several miles, was of some service as a protection against
+hail, but this opinion was soon disputed, and does not appear to be
+supported by well-ascertained facts. The question of a repetition of the
+experiment over a wide area has been again agitated within a very few
+years in Lombardy; but the doubts expressed by very able physicists as
+to its efficacy, and as to the point whether hail is an electrical
+phenomenon, have discouraged its advocates from attempting it.
+
+[124] _Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_, p. 6.
+
+[125] _Memoria sui Boschi, etc._, p. 44.
+
+[126] _Travels in Italy_, chap. iii.
+
+[127] _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, i, p. 377.
+
+[128] "Long before the appearance of man, * * * they [the forests] had
+robbed the atmosphere of the enormous quantity of carbonic acid it
+contained, and thereby transformed it into respirable air. Trees heaped
+upon trees had already filled up the ponds and marshes, and buried with
+them in the bowels of the earth--to restore it to us after thousands of
+ages in the form of bituminous coal and of anthracite--the carbon which
+was destined to become, by this wonderful condensation, a precious store
+of future wealth."--CLAVE, _Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere_, p. 13.
+
+This opinion of the modification of the atmosphere by vegetation is
+contested.
+
+[129] Schacht ascribes to the forest a specific, if not a measurable,
+influence upon the constitution of the atmosphere. "Plants imbibe from
+the air carbonic acid and other gaseous or volatile products exhaled by
+animals or developed by the natural phenomena of decomposition. On the
+other hand, the vegetable pours into the atmosphere oxygen, which is
+taken up by animals and appropriated by them. The tree, by means of its
+leaves and its young herbaceous twigs, presents a considerable surface
+for absorption and evaporation; it abstracts the carbon of carbonic
+acid, and solidifies it in wood, fecula, and a multitude of other
+compounds. The result is that a forest withdraws from the air, by its
+great absorbent surface, much more gas than meadows or cultivated
+fields, and exhales proportionally a considerably greater quantity of
+oxygen. The influence of the forests on the chemical composition of the
+atmosphere is, in a word, of the highest importance."--_Les Arbres_, p.
+111. See _Appendix_, No. 23.
+
+[130] Composition, texture and color of soil are important elements to
+be considered in estimating the effects of the removal of the forest
+upon its thermoscopic action. "Experience has proved," says Becquerel,
+"that when the soil is bared, it becomes more or less heated [by the
+rays of the sun] according to the nature and the color of the particles
+which compose it, and according to its humidity, and that, in the
+refrigeration resulting from radiation, we must take into the account
+the conducting power of those particles also. Other things being equal,
+silicious and calcareous sands, compared in equal volumes with different
+argillaceous earths, with calcareous powder or dust, with humus, with
+arable and with garden earth, are the soils which least conduct heat. It
+is for this reason that sandy ground, in summer, maintains a high
+temperature even during the night. We may hence conclude that when a
+sandy soil is stripped of wood, the local temperature will be raised.
+After the sands follow successively argillaceous, arable, and garden
+ground, then humus, which occupies the lowest rank. If we represent the
+power of calcareous sand to retain heat by 100, we have, according to
+Schubler,
+
+  For [silicious?] sand          95.6
+   "  arable calcareous soil     74.8
+   "  argillaceous earth         68.4
+   "  garden earth               64.8
+   "  humus                      49.0
+
+"The retentive power of humus, then, is but half as great as that of
+calcareous sand. We will add that the power of retaining heat is
+proportional to the density. It has also a relation to the magnitude of
+the particles. It is for this reason that ground covered with silicious
+pebbles cools more slowly than silicious sand, and that pebbly soils are
+best suited to the cultivation of the vine, because they advance the
+ripening of the grape more rapidly than chalky and clayey earths, which
+cool quickly. Hence we see that in examining the calorific effects of
+clearing forests, it is important to take into account the properties of
+the soil laid bare."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats et des Sols boises_, p.
+137.
+
+[131] "The Washington elm at Cambridge--a tree of no extraordinary
+size--was some years ago estimated to produce a crop of seven millions
+of leaves, exposing a surface of two hundred thousand square feet, or
+about five acres of foliage."--GRAY, _First Lessons in Botany and
+Vegetable Physiology_, as quoted by COULTAS, _What may be learned from a
+Tree_, p. 34.
+
+[132] See, on this particular point, and on the general influence of the
+forest on temperature, HUMBOLDT, _Ansichten der Natur_, i, 158.
+
+[133] The radiating and refrigerating power of objects by no means
+depends on their form alone. Melloni cut sheets of metal into the shape
+of leaves and grasses, and found that they produced little cooling
+effect, and were not moistened under atmospheric conditions which
+determined a plentiful deposit of dew on the leaves of vegetables.
+
+[134] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc., Discours Prelim._ vi.
+
+[135] _Travels_, i, p. 61.
+
+[136] _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, pp. 370, 371.
+
+[137] BERGSOeE, _Reventlovs Virksomhed_, ii, p. 125.
+
+[138] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 179.
+
+[139] Ibid., p. 116.
+
+[140] The following well-attested instance of a local change of climate
+is probably to be referred to the influence of the forest as a shelter
+against cold winds. To supply the extraordinary demand for Italian iron
+occasioned by the exclusion of English iron in the time of Napoleon I,
+the furnaces of the valleys of Bergamo were stimulated to great
+activity. "The ordinary production of charcoal not sufficing to feed the
+furnaces and the forges, the woods were felled, the copses cut before
+their time, and the whole economy of the forest was deranged. At
+Piazzatorre there was such a devastation of the woods, and consequently
+such an increased severity of climate, that maize no longer ripened.
+An association, formed for the purpose, effected the restoration
+of the forest, and maize flourishes again in the fields of
+Piazzatorre."--Report by G. ROSA, in _Il Politecnico_, Dicembre, 1861,
+p. 614.
+
+Similar ameliorations have been produced by plantations in Belgium. In
+an interesting series of articles by Baude, entitled "Les Cotes de la
+Manche," in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, I find this statement: "A
+spectator placed on the famous bell tower of the cathedral of Antwerp,
+saw, not long since, on the opposite side of the Schelde only a vast
+desert plain; now he sees a forest, the limits of which are confounded
+with the horizon. Let him enter within its shade. The supposed forest is
+but a system of regular rows of trees, the oldest of which is not forty
+years of age. These plantations have ameliorated the climate which had
+doomed to sterility the soil where they are planted. While the tempest
+is violently agitating their tops, the air a little below is still, and
+sands far more barren than the plateau of La Hague have been
+transformed, under their protection, into fertile fields."--_Revue des
+Deux Mondes_, January, 1859, p. 277.
+
+[141] _Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_, p. 31.
+
+[142] _La Provence au point de vue des Torrents et des Inondations_, p.
+19.
+
+[143] _Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge_, p. 28.
+
+[144] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 9.
+
+[145] SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane_,
+pp. xli, 124.
+
+[146] _Il Politecnico, Milano, Aprile e Maggio_, 1863, p. 35.
+
+[147] SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie sulle Maremme Toscane_, pp. 213, 214.
+
+[148] Except in the seething marshes of the tropics, where vegetable
+decay is extremely rapid, the uniformity of temperature and of
+atmospheric humidity renders all forests eminently healthful. See
+HOHENSTEIN's observations on this subject, _Der Wald_, p. 41.
+
+There is no question that open squares and parks conduce to the
+salubrity of cities, and many observers are of opinion that the trees
+and other vegetables with which such grounds are planted contribute
+essentially to their beneficial influence. See an article in _Aus der
+Natur_, xxii, p. 813.
+
+[149] _Memoria sui Boschi di Lombardia_, p. 45.
+
+[150] _Economie Rurale_, i, p. 22.
+
+[151] ROSSMAeSSLER, _Der Wald_, p. 158.
+
+[152] Ibid., p. 160.
+
+[153] The low temperature of air and soil at which, in the frigid zone,
+as well as in warmer latitudes under special circumstances, the
+processes of vegetation go on, seems to necessitate the supposition that
+all the manifestations of vegetable life are attended with an evolution
+of heat. In the United States, it is common to protect ice, in
+icehouses, by a covering of straw, which naturally sometimes contains
+kernels of grain. These often sprout, and even throw out roots and
+leaves to a considerable length, in a temperature very little above the
+freezing point. Three or four years since, I saw a lump of very clear
+and apparently solid ice, about eight inches long by six thick, on which
+a kernel of grain had sprouted in an icehouse, and sent half a dozen or
+more very slender roots into the pores of the ice and through the whole
+length of the lump. The young plant must have thrown out a considerable
+quantity of heat; for though the ice was, as I have said, otherwise
+solid, the pores through which the roots passed were enlarged to perhaps
+double the diameter of the fibres, but still not so much as to prevent
+the retention of water in them by capillary attraction. See _App._ 24.
+
+[154] BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, pp. 139-141.
+
+[155] Dr. Williams made some observations on this subject in 1789, and
+in 1791, but they generally belonged to the warmer months, and I do not
+know that any extensive series of comparisons between the temperature of
+the ground in the woods and the fields has been attempted in America.
+Dr. Williams's thermometer was sunk to the depth of ten inches, and gave
+the following results:
+
+  +-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
+  |             | Temperature  | Temperature  |             |
+  |  TIME.      | of ground in | of ground in | Difference. |
+  |             |   pasture.   |    woods.    |             |
+  +-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
+  | May   23    |      52      |      46      |     6       |
+  |  "    28    |      57      |      48      |     9       |
+  | June  15    |      64      |      51      |     13      |
+  |  "    27    |      62      |      51      |     11      |
+  | July  16    |      62      |      51      |     11      |
+  |  "    30    |      651/2     |      551/2     |     10      |
+  | Aug.  15    |      68      |      58      |     10      |
+  |  "    31    |      591/2     |      55      |      41/2     |
+  | Sept. 15    |      591/2     |      55      |      41/2     |
+  | Oct.   1    |      591/2     |      55      |      41/2     |
+  |  "    15    |      49      |      49      |      0      |
+  | Nov.   1    |      43      |      43      |      0      |
+  |  "    16    |      431/2     |      431/2     |      0      |
+  +-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------+
+
+On the 14th of January, 1791, in a winter remarkable for its extreme
+severity, he found the ground, on a plain open field where the snow had
+been blown away, frozen to the depth of three feet and five inches; in
+the woods where the snow was three feet deep, and where the soil had
+frozen to the depth of six inches before the snow fell, the thermometer,
+at six inches below the surface of the ground, stood at 39 deg.. In
+consequence of the covering of the snow, therefore, the previously
+frozen ground had been thawed and raised to seven degrees above the
+freezing point.--WILLIAMS'S _Vermont_, i, p. 74.
+
+Bodies of fresh water, so large as not to be sensibly affected by local
+influences of narrow reach or short duration, would afford climatic
+indications well worthy of special observation. Lake Champlain, which
+forms the boundary between the States of New York and Vermont, presents
+very favorable conditions for this purpose. This lake, which drains a
+basin of about 6,000 square miles, covers an area, excluding its
+islands, of about 500 square miles. It extends from lat. 43 deg. 30' to 45 deg.
+20', in very nearly a meridian line, has a mean width of four and a half
+miles, with an extreme breadth, excluding bays almost land-locked, of
+thirteen miles. Its mean depth is not well known. It is, however, 400
+feet deep in some places, and from 100 to 200 in many, and has few
+shoals or flats. The climate is of such severity that it rarely fails to
+freeze completely over, and to be safely crossed upon the ice, with
+heavy teams, for several weeks every winter. THOMPSON (_Vermont_, p. 14,
+and Appendix, p. 9) gives the following table of the times of the
+complete closing and opening of the ice, opposite Burlington, about the
+centre of the lake, and where it is ten miles wide.
+
+  +------+-------------+------------+-------+
+  | Year.|  Closing.   | Opening.   | Days  |
+  |      |             |            |closed.|
+  +------+-------------+------------+-------+
+  | 1816 | February 9  |            |       |
+  | 1817 | January 29  | April 16   |   78  |
+  | 1818 | February 2  | April 15   |   72  |
+  | 1819 | March 4     | April 17   |   44  |
+  | 1820 |{February 3  | February   |  } 4  |
+  |      |{March 8     | March 12   |  }    |
+  | 1821 | January 15  | April 21   |   95  |
+  | 1822 | January 24  | March 30   |   75  |
+  | 1823 | February 7  | April 5    |   57  |
+  | 1824 | January 22  | February 11|   20  |
+  | 1825 | February 9  |            |       |
+  | 1826 | February 1  | March 24   |   51  |
+  | 1827 | January 21  | March 31   |   68  |
+  | 1828 | not closed  |            |       |
+  | 1829 | January 31  | April      |       |
+  | 1832 | February 6  | April 17   |   70  |
+  | 1833 | February 2  | April 6    |   63  |
+  | 1834 | February 13 | February 20|    7  |
+  | 1835 |{January 10  | January 23 |   18  |
+  |      |{February 7  | April 12   |   64  |
+  | 1836 | January 27  | April 21   |   85  |
+  | 1837 | January 15  | April 26   |  101  |
+  | 1838 | February 2  | April 13   |   70  |
+  | 1839 | January 25  | April 6    |   71  |
+  | 1840 | January 25  | February 20|   26  |
+  | 1841 | February 18 | April 19   |   61  |
+  | 1842 | not closed  |            |       |
+  | 1843 | February 16 | April 22   |   65  |
+  | 1844 | January 25  | April 11   |   77  |
+  | 1845 | February 3  | March 26   |   51  |
+  | 1846 | February 10 | March 26   |   44  |
+  | 1847 | February 15 | April 23   |   68  |
+  | 1848 | February 13 | February 26|   13  |
+  | 1849 | February 7  | March 23   |   44  |
+  | 1850 | not closed  |            |       |
+  | 1851 | February 1  | March 12   |   89  |
+  | 1852 | January 18  | April 10   |   92  |
+  +------+-------------+------------+-------+
+
+In 1847, although, at the point indicated, the ice broke up on the 23d
+of April, it remained frozen much later at the North, and steamers were
+not able to traverse the whole length of the lake until May 6th.
+
+[156] We are not, indeed, to suppose that condensation of vapor and
+evaporation of water are going on in the same stratum of air at the same
+time, or, in other words, that vapor is condensed into raindrops, and
+raindrops evaporated, under the same conditions; but rain formed in one
+stratum, may fall through another, where vapor would not be condensed.
+Two saturated strata of different temperatures may be brought into
+contact in the higher regions, and discharge large raindrops, which, if
+not divided by some obstruction, will reach the ground, though passing
+all the time through strata which would vaporize them if they were in a
+state of more minute division.
+
+[157] It is perhaps too much to say that the influence of trees upon the
+wind is strictly limited to the mechanical resistance of their trunks,
+branches, and foliage. So far as the forest, by dead or by living
+action, raises or lowers the temperature of the air within it, so far it
+creates upward or downward currents in the atmosphere above it, and,
+consequently, a flow of air toward or from itself. These air streams
+have a certain, though doubtless a very small influence on the force and
+direction of greater atmospheric movements.
+
+[158] As a familiar illustration of the influence of the forest in
+checking the movement of winds, I may mention the well-known fact, that
+the sensible cold is never extreme in thick woods, where the motion of
+the air is little felt. The lumbermen in Canada and the Northern United
+States labor in the woods, without inconvenience, when the mercury
+stands many degrees below the zero of Fahrenheit, while in the open
+grounds, with only a moderate breeze, the same temperature is almost
+insupportable. The engineers and firemen of locomotives, employed on
+railways running through forests of any considerable extent, observe
+that, in very cold weather, it is much easier to keep up the steam while
+the engine is passing through the woods than in the open ground. As soon
+as the train emerges from the shelter of the trees the steam gauge
+falls, and the stoker is obliged to throw in a liberal supply of fuel to
+bring it up again.
+
+Another less frequently noticed fact, due, no doubt, in a great measure
+to the immobility of the air, is, that sounds are transmitted to
+incredible distances in the unbroken forest. Many instances of this have
+fallen under my own observation, and others, yet more striking, have
+been related to me by credible and competent witnesses familiar with a
+more primitive condition of the Anglo-American world. An acute observer
+of natural phenomena, whose childhood and youth were spent in the
+interior of one of the newer New England States, has often told me that
+when he established his home in the forest, he always distinctly heard,
+in still weather, the plash of horses' feet, when they forded a small
+brook nearly seven-eighths of a mile from his house, though a portion of
+the wood that intervened consisted of a ridge seventy or eighty feet
+higher than either the house or the ford.
+
+I have no doubt that, in such cases, the stillness of the air is the
+most important element in the extraordinary transmissibility of sound;
+but it must be admitted that the absence of the multiplied and confused
+noises, which accompany human industry in countries thickly peopled by
+man, contributes to the same result. We become, by habit, almost
+insensible to the familiar and never-resting voices of civilization in
+cities and towns; but the indistinguishable drone, which sometimes
+escapes even the ear of him who listens for it, deadens and often quite
+obstructs the transmission of sounds which would otherwise be clearly
+audible. An observer, who wishes to appreciate that hum of civic life
+which he cannot analyze, will find an excellent opportunity by placing
+himself on the hill of Capo di Monte at Naples, in the line of
+prolongation of the street called Spaccanapoli.
+
+It is probably to the stillness of which I have spoken, that we are to
+ascribe the transmission of sound to great distances at sea in calm
+weather. In June, 1853, I and my family were passengers on board a ship
+of war bound up the AEgean. On the evening of the 27th of that month, as
+we were discussing, at the tea table, some observations of Humboldt on
+this subject, the captain of the ship told us that he had once heard a
+single gun at sea at the distance of ninety nautical miles. The nest
+morning, though a light breeze had sprung up from the north, the sea was
+of glassy smoothness when we went on deck. As we came up, an officer
+told us that he had heard a gun at sunrise, and the conversation of the
+previous evening suggested the inquiry whether it could have been fired
+from the combined French and English fleet then lying at Beshika Bay.
+Upon examination of our position we were found to have been, at sunrise,
+ninety sea miles from that point. We continued beating up northward, and
+between sunrise and twelve o'clock meridian of the 28th, we had made
+twelve miles northing, reducing our distance from Beshika Bay to
+seventy-eight sea miles. At noon we heard several guns so distinctly
+that we were able to count the number. On the 29th we came up with the
+fleet, and learned from an officer who came on board that a royal salute
+had been fired at noon on the 28th, in honor of the day as the
+anniversary of the Queen of England's coronation. The report at sunrise
+was evidently the morning gun, those at noon the salute.
+
+Such cases are rare, because the sea is seldom still, and the
+[Greek: kymaton anerithmon gelasma] rarely silent, over so great a space
+as ninety or even seventy-eight nautical miles. I apply the epithet
+_silent_ to [Greek: gelasma] advisedly. I am convinced that AEschylus
+meant the audible laugh of the waves, which is indeed of _countless_
+multiplicity, not the visible smile of the sea, which, belonging to the
+great expanse as one impersonation, is single, though, like the human
+smile, made up of the play of many features.
+
+[159] "The presence of watery vapor in the air is general. * * *
+Vegetable surfaces are endowed with the power of absorbing gases,
+vapors, and also, no doubt, the various soluble bodies which are
+presented to them. The inhalation of humidity is carried on by the
+leaves upon a large scale; the dew of a cold summer night revives the
+groves and the meadows, and a single shower of rain suffices to refresh
+the verdure of a forest which a long drought had parched."--SCHACHT,
+_Les Arbres_, ix, p. 340.
+
+The absorption of the vapor of water by leaves is disputed. "The
+absorption of watery vapor by the leaves of plants is, according to
+Unger's experiments, inadmissible."--WILHELM, _Der Boden und das
+Wasser_, p. 19. If this latter view is correct, the apparently
+refreshing effects of atmospheric humidity upon vegetation must be
+ascribed to moisture absorbed by the ground from the air and supplied to
+the roots. In some recent experiments by Dr. Sachs, a porous flower-pot,
+with a plant growing in it, was left unwatered until the earth was dry,
+and the plant began to languish. The pot was then placed in a glass case
+containing air, which was kept always saturated with humidity, but no
+water was supplied, and the leaves of the plant were exposed to the open
+atmosphere. The soil in the flower pot absorbed from the air moisture
+enough to revive the foliage, and keep it a long time green, but not
+enough to promote development of new leaves.--Id., ibid., p. 18.
+
+[160] The experiments of Hales and others, on the absorption and
+exhalation of water by vegetables, are of the highest physiological
+interest; but observations on sunflowers, cabbages, hops, and single
+branches of isolated trees, growing in artificially prepared soils and
+under artificial conditions, furnish no trustworthy data for computing
+the quantity of water received and given off by the natural wood.
+
+[161] In the primitive forest, except where the soil is too wet for the
+dense growth of trees, the ground is generally too thickly covered with
+leaves to allow much room for ground mosses. In the more open woods of
+Europe, this form of vegetation is more frequent--as, indeed, are many
+other small plants of a more inviting character--than in the native
+American forest. See, on the cryptogams and wood plants, ROSSMAeSSLER,
+_Der Wald_, pp. 33 _et seqq._
+
+[162] Emerson (_Trees of Massachusetts_, p. 493) mentions a maple six
+feet in diameter, as having yielded a barrel, or thirty-one and a half
+gallons of sap in twenty-four hours, and another, the dimensions of
+which are not stated, as having yielded one hundred and seventy-five
+gallons in the course of the season. The _Cultivator_, an American
+agricultural journal, for June, 1842, states that twenty gallons of sap
+were drawn in eighteen hours from a single maple, two and a half feet in
+diameter, in the town of Warner, New Hampshire, and the truth of this
+account has been verified by personal inquiry made in my behalf. This
+tree was of the original forest growth, and had been left standing when
+the ground around it was cleared. It was tapped only every other year,
+and then with six or eight incisions. Dr. Williams (_History of
+Vermont_, i, p. 91) says: "A man much employed in making maple sugar,
+found that, for twenty-one days together, a maple tree discharged seven
+and a half gallons per day."
+
+An intelligent correspondent, of much experience in the manufacture of
+maple sugar, writes me that a second-growth maple, of about two feet in
+diameter, standing in open ground, tapped with four incisions, has, for
+several seasons, generally run eight gallons per day in fair weather. He
+speaks of a very large tree, from which sixty gallons were drawn in the
+course of a season, and of another, something more than three feet
+through, which made forty-two pounds of wet sugar, and must have yielded
+not less than one hundred and fifty gallons.
+
+[163] "The buds of the maple," says the same correspondent, "do not
+start till toward the close of the sugar season. As soon as they begin
+to swell, the sap seems less sweet, and the sugar made from it is of a
+darker color, and with less of the distinctive maple flavor."
+
+[164] "In this region, maples are usually tapped with a three-quarter
+inch bit, boring to the depth of one and a half or two inches. In the
+smaller trees, one incision only is made, two in those of eighteen
+inches in diameter, and four in trees of larger size. Two 3/4-inch holes
+in a tree twenty-two inches in diameter = 1/46 of the circumference, and
+1/169 of the area of section."
+
+"Tapping does not check the growth, but does injure the quality of the
+wood of maples. The wood of trees often tapped is lighter and less dense
+than that of trees which have not been tapped, and gives less heat in
+burning. No difference has been observed in the starting of the buds of
+tapped and untapped trees."--_Same correspondent._
+
+[165] Dr. Rush, in a letter to Jefferson, states the number of maples
+fit for tapping on an acre at from thirty to fifty. "This," observes my
+correspondent, "is correct with regard to the original growth, which is
+always more or less intermixed with other trees; but in second growth,
+composed of maples alone, the number greatly exceeds this. I have had
+the maples on a quarter of an acre, which I thought about an average of
+second-growth 'maple orchards,' counted. The number was found to be
+fifty-two, of which thirty-two were ten inches or more in diameter, and,
+of course, large enough to tap. This gives two hundred and eight trees
+to the acre, one hundred and twenty-eight of which were of proper size
+for tapping."
+
+According to the census returns, the quantity of maple sugar made
+in the United States in 1850 was 34,253,436 pounds; in 1860, it was
+38,863,884 pounds, besides 1,944,594 gallons of molasses. The cane
+sugar made in 1850 amounted to 237,133,000 pounds; in 1859, to
+302,205,000.--_Preliminary Report on the Eighth Census_, p. 88.
+
+According to Bigelow, _Les Etats Unis d'Amerique en 1863_, chap. iv, the
+sugar product of Louisiana alone for 1862 is estimated at 528,321,500
+pounds.
+
+[166] The correspondent already referred to informs me that a black
+birch, tapped about noon with two incisions, was found the next morning
+to have yielded sixteen gallons. Dr. Williams (_History of Vermont_, i,
+p. 91) says: "A large birch, tapped in the spring, ran at the rate of
+five gallons an hour when first tapped. Eight or nine days after, it was
+found to run at the rate of about two and a half gallons an hour, and at
+the end of fifteen days the discharge continued in nearly the same
+quantity. The sap continued to flow for four or five weeks, and it was
+the opinion of the observers that it must have yielded as much as sixty
+barrels [1,890 gallons]."
+
+[167] "The best state of weather for a good run," says my correspondent,
+"is clear days, thawing fast in the daytime and freezing well at night,
+with a gentle west or northwest wind; though we sometimes have clear,
+fine, thawing days followed by frosty nights, without a good run of sap,
+I have thought it probable that the irregular flow of sap on different
+days in the same season is connected with the variation in atmospheric
+pressure; for the atmospheric conditions above mentioned as those most
+favorable to a free flow of sap are also those in which the barometer
+usually indicates pressure considerably above the mean. With a south or
+southeast wind, and in lowering weather, which causes a fall in the
+barometer, the flow generally ceases, though the sap sometimes runs till
+after the beginning of the storm. With a _gentle_ wind, south of west,
+maples sometimes run all night. When this occurs, it is oftenest shortly
+before a storm. Last spring, the sap of a sugar orchard in a neighboring
+town flowed the greater part of the time for two days and two nights
+successively, and did not cease till after the commencement of a rain
+storm."
+
+The cessation of the flow of sap at night is perhaps in part to be
+ascribed to the nocturnal frost, which checks the melting of the snow,
+of course diminishing the supply of moisture in the ground, and
+sometimes congeals the strata from which the rootlets suck in water.
+From the facts already mentioned, however, and from other well-known
+circumstances--such, for example, as the more liberal flow of sap from
+incisions on the south side of the trunk--it is evident that the
+withdrawal of the stimulating influences of the sun's light and heat is
+the principal cause of the suspension of the circulation in the night.
+
+[168] "The flow ceases altogether soon after the buds begin to
+swell."--_Letter before quoted._
+
+[169] We might obtain a contribution to an approximate estimate of the
+quantity of moisture abstracted by forest vegetation from the earth and
+the air, by ascertaining, as nearly as possible, the quantity of wood on
+a given area, the proportion of assimilable matter contained in the
+fluids of the tree at different seasons of the year, the ages of the
+trees respectively, and the quantity of leaf and seed annually shed by
+them. The results would, indeed, be very vague, but they might serve to
+check or confirm estimates arrived at by other processes. The following
+facts are items too loose perhaps to be employed as elements in such a
+computation.
+
+Dr. Williams, who wrote when the woods of Northern New England were
+generally in their primitive condition, states the number of trees
+growing on an acre at from one hundred and fifty to six hundred and
+fifty, according to their size and the quality of the soil; the quantity
+of wood, at from fifty to two hundred cords, or from 238 to 952 cubic
+yards, but adds that on land covered with pines, the quantity of wood
+would be much greater. Whether he means to give the entire solid
+contents of the tree, or, as is usual in ordinary estimates in New
+England, the marketable wood only, the trunks and larger branches, does
+not appear. Next to the pine, the maple would probably yield a larger
+amount to a given area than any of the other trees mentioned by Dr.
+Williams, but mixed wood, in general, measures most. In a good deal of
+observation on this subject, the largest quantity of marketable wood I
+have ever known cut on an acre of virgin forest was one hundred and four
+cords, or 493 cubic yards, and half that amount is considered a very
+fair yield. The smaller trees, branches, and twigs would not increase
+the quantity more than twenty-five per cent., and if we add as much more
+for the roots, we should have a total of about 750 cubic yards. I think
+Dr. Williams's estimate too large, though it would fall much below the
+product of the great trees of the Mississippi Valley, of Oregon, and of
+California. It should be observed that these measurements are those of
+the wood as it lies when 'corded' or piled up for market, and exceed the
+real solid contents by not less than fifteen per cent.
+
+"In a soil of medium quality," says Clave, quoting the estimates of
+Pfeil, for the climate of Prussia, "the volume of a hectare of pines
+twenty years old, would exceed 80 cubic metres [421/2 cubic yards to
+the acre]; it would amount to but 24 in a meagre soil. This tree attains
+its maximum of mean growth at the age of seventy-five years. At that
+age, in the sandy earth of Prussia, it produces annually about 5 cubic
+metres, with a total volume of 311 cubic metres per hectare [166 cubic
+yards per acre]. After this age the volume increases, but the mean rate
+of growth diminishes. At eighty years, for instance, the volume is 335
+cubic metres, the annual production 4 only. The beech reaches its
+maximum of annual growth at one hundred and twenty years. It then has a
+total volume of 633 cubic metres to the hectare [335 cubic yards to the
+acre], and produces 5 cubic metres per year."--CLAVE, _Etudes_, p. 151.
+
+These measures, I believe, include the entire ligneous product of the
+tree, exclusive of the roots, and express the actual solid contents. The
+specific gravity of maple wood is stated to be 75. Maple sap yields
+sugar at the rate of about one pound _wet_ sugar to three gallons of
+sap, and wet sugar is to dry sugar in about the proportion of nineteen
+to sixteen. Besides the sugar, there is a small residuum of "sand,"
+composed of phosphate of lime, with a little silex, and it is certain
+that by the ordinary hasty process of manufacture, a good deal of sugar
+is lost; for the drops, condensed from the vapor of the boilers on the
+rafters of the rude sheds where the sap is boiled, have a decidedly
+sweet taste.
+
+[170] "The elaborated sap, passing out of the leaves, is received into
+the inner bark, * * * and a part of what descends finds its way even to
+the ends of the roots, and is all along diffused laterally into the
+stem, where it meets and mingles with the ascending crude sap or raw
+material. So there is no separate circulation of the two kinds of sap;
+and no crude sap exists separately in any part of the plant. Even in the
+root, where it enters, this mingles at once with some elaborated sap
+already there."--GRAY, _How Plants Grow_, Sec. 273.
+
+[171] Ward's tight glazed cases for raising, and especially for
+transporting plants, go far to prove that water only circulates through
+vegetables, and is again and again absorbed and transpired by organs
+appropriated to these functions. Seeds, growing grasses, shrubs, or
+trees planted in proper earth, moderately watered and covered with a
+glass bell or close frame of glass, live for months and even years, with
+only the original store of air and water. In one of Ward's early
+experiments, a spire of grass and a fern, which sprang up in a corked
+bottle containing a little moist earth introduced as a bed for a snail,
+lived and flourished for eighteen years without a new supply of either
+fluid. In these boxes the plants grow till the enclosed air is exhausted
+of the gaseous constituents of vegetation, and till the water has
+yielded up the assimilable matter it held in solution, and dissolved and
+supplied to the roots the nutriment contained in the earth in which they
+are planted. After this, they continue for a long time in a state of
+vegetable sleep, but if fresh air and water be introduced into the
+cases, or the plants be transplanted into open ground, they rouse
+themselves to renewed life, and grow vigorously, without appearing to
+have suffered from their long imprisonment. The water transpired by the
+leaves is partly absorbed by the earth directly from the air, partly
+condensed on the glass, along which it trickles down to the earth,
+enters the roots again, and thus continually repeats the circuit. See
+_Aus der Natur_, 21, B. S. 537.
+
+[172] WILHELM, _Der Boden und das Wasser_, p. 18. It is not ascertained
+in what proportions the dew is evaporated, and in what it is absorbed by
+the earth, in actual nature, but there can be no doubt that the amount
+of water taken up by the ground, both from vapor suspended in the air
+and from dew, is large. The annual fall of dew in England is estimated
+at five inches, but this quantity is much exceeded in many countries
+with a clearer sky. "In many of our Algerian campaigns," says Babinet,
+"when it was wished to punish the brigandage of the unsubdued tribes, it
+was impossible to set their grain fields on fire until a late hour of
+the day; for the plants were so wet with the night dew that it was
+necessary to wait until the sun had dried them."--_Etudes et Lectures_,
+ii, p. 212.
+
+[173] "It has been concluded that the dry land occupies about 49,800,000
+square statute miles. This does not include the recently discovered
+tracts of land in the vicinity of the poles, and allowing for yet
+undiscovered land (which, however, can only exist in small quantity), if
+we assign 51,000,000 to the land, there will remain about 146,000,000 of
+square miles for the extent of surface occupied by the ocean."--Sir J.
+F. W. HERSCHEL, _Physical Geography_, 1861, p. 19.
+
+It does not appear to which category Herschel assigns the inland seas
+and the fresh-water lakes and rivers of the earth; and Mrs. Somerville,
+who states that the "dry land occupies an area of 38,000,000 of square
+miles," and that "the ocean covers nearly three fourths of the surface
+of the globe," is equally silent on this point.--_Physical Geography_,
+fifth edition, p. 30. On the following page, Mrs. Somerville, in a note,
+cites Mr. Gardner as her authority, and says that, "according to his
+computation, the extent of land is about 37,673,000 square British
+miles, independently of Victoria Continent; and the sea occupies
+110,849,000. Hence the land is to the sea as 1 to 4 nearly." Sir John F.
+W. Herschel makes the area of dry land and ocean together 197,000,000
+square miles; Mrs. Somerville, or rather Mr. Gardner, 148,522,000. I
+suppose Sir John Herschel includes the islands in his aggregate of the
+"dry land," and the inland waters under the general designation of the
+"ocean," and that Mrs. Somerville excludes both.
+
+[174] It has been observed in Sweden that the spring, in many districts
+where the forests have been cleared off, now comes on a fortnight later
+than in the last century.--ASBJOeRNSEN, _Om Skovene i Norge_, p. 101.
+
+The conclusion arrived at by Noah Webster, in his very learned and able
+paper on the supposed change in the temperature of winter, read before
+the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799, was as follows:
+"From a careful comparison of these facts, it appears that the weather,
+in modern winters, in the United States, is more inconstant than when
+the earth was covered with woods, at the first settlement of Europeans
+in the country; that the warm weather of autumn extends further into the
+winter months, and the cold weather of winter and spring encroaches upon
+the summer; that, the wind being more variable, snow is less permanent,
+and perhaps the same remark may be applicable to the ice of the rivers.
+These effects seem to result necessarily from the greater quantity of
+heat accumulated in the earth in summer since the ground has been
+cleared of wood and exposed to the rays of the sun, and to the greater
+depth of frost in the earth in winter by the exposure of its uncovered
+surface to the cold atmosphere."--_Collection of Papers by_ NOAH
+WEBSTER, p. 162.
+
+[175] I have seen, in Northern New England, the surface of the open
+ground frozen to the depth of twenty-two inches, in the month of
+November, when in the forest earth no frost was discoverable; and later
+in the winter, I have known an exposed sand knoll to remain frozen six
+feet deep, after the ground in the woods was completely thawed.
+
+[176]
+
+        ----Det golde Stroeg i Afrika,
+  Der Intet voxe kan, da ei det regner,
+  Og, omvendt, ingen Regn kan falde, da
+  Der Intet voxer.
+                           PALUDAN-MUeLLER, _Adam Homo_, ii, 408.
+
+[177]
+
+  Und Stuerme brausen um die Wette
+  Vom Meer aufs Land, vom Land aufs Meer.
+                        GOETHE, _Faust, Song of the Archangels_.
+
+[178] _Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere_, pp. 45, 46.
+
+[179] I am not aware of any evidence to show that Malta had any woods of
+importance at any time since the cultivation of cotton was introduced
+there; and if it is true, as has been often asserted, that its present
+soil was imported from Sicily, it can certainly have possessed no
+forests since a very remote period. In Sandys's time, 1611, there were
+no woods in the island, and it produced little cotton. He describes it
+as "a country altogether champion, being no other than a rocke couered
+ouer with earth, but two feete deepe where the deepest; hauing but few
+trees but such as beare fruite. * * * So that their wood they haue from
+Sicilia." They have "an indifferent quantity of cotton wooll, but that
+the best of all other."--SANDYS, _Travels_, p. 228.
+
+[180] SCHACHT, _Les Arbres_, p. 412.
+
+[181] _What may be learned from a Tree_, p. 117.
+
+[182] _Der Wald_, p. 13.
+
+[183] _Om Skovene og deres Forhold til National[oe]conomien_, pp.
+131-133.
+
+[184] _Om Skovene og om et ordnet Skovbrug i Norge_, p. 106.
+
+[185] _Etudes et Lectures_, iv. p. 114.
+
+[186] The supposed increase in the frequency and quantity of rain in
+Lower Egypt is by no means established. I have heard it disputed on the
+spot by intelligent Franks, whose residence in that country began before
+the plantations of Mehemet Aali and Ibrahim Pacha, and I have been
+assured by them that meteorological observations, made at Alexandria
+about the beginning of this century, show an annual fall of rain as
+great as is usual at this day. The mere fact, that it did not rain
+during the French occupation, is not conclusive. Having experienced a
+gentle shower of nearly twenty-four hours' duration in Upper Egypt, I
+inquired of the local governor in relation to the frequency of this
+phenomenon, and was told by him that not a drop of rain had fallen at
+that point for more than two years previous.
+
+The belief in the increase of rain in Egypt rests almost entirely on the
+observations of Marshal Marmont, and the evidence collected by him in
+1836. His conclusions have been disputed, if not confuted, by Jomard and
+others, and are probably erroneous. See, FOISSAC, _Meteorologie_, German
+translation, pp. 634-639.
+
+It certainly sometimes rains briskly at Cairo, but evaporation is
+exceedingly rapid in Egypt--as any one, who ever saw a Fellah woman wash
+a napkin in the Nile, and dry it by shaking it a few moments in the air,
+can testify; and a heap of grain, wet a few inches below the surface,
+would probably dry again without injury. At any rate, the Egyptian
+Government often has vast quantities of wheat stored at Boulak, in
+uncovered yards through the winter, though it must be admitted that the
+slovenliness and want of foresight in Oriental life, public and private,
+are such that we cannot infer the safety of any practice followed in the
+East, merely from its long continuance.
+
+Grain, however, may be long kept in the open air in climates much less
+dry than that of Egypt, without injury, except to the superficial
+layers; for moisture does not penetrate to a great depth in a heap of
+grain once well dried, and kept well aired. When Louis IX was making his
+preparations for his campaign in the East, he had large quantities of
+wine and grain purchased in the Island of Cyprus, and stored up, for two
+years, to await his arrival. "When we were come to Cyprus," says
+Joinville, _Histoire de Saint Louis_, Sec.Sec. 72, 73, "we found there greate
+foison of the Kynge's purveyance. * * The wheate and the barley they had
+piled up in greate heapes in the feeldes, and to looke vpon, they were
+like vnto mountaynes; for the raine, the whyche hadde beaten vpon the
+wheate now a longe whyle, had made it to sproute on the toppe, so that
+it seemed as greene grasse. And whanne they were mynded to carrie it to
+Egypte, they brake that sod of greene herbe, and dyd finde under the
+same the wheate and the barley, as freshe as yf menne hadde but nowe
+thrashed it."
+
+[187] _Etude sur les Eaux au point de vue des Inondations_, p. 91.
+
+[188] _Economie Rurale_, ii, chap. xx, Sec. 4, pp. 756-759. See also p.
+733.
+
+[189] Jacini, speaking of the great Italian lakes, says: "A large
+proportion of the water of the lakes, instead of discharging itself by
+the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, the Mincio, filters through the
+silicious strata which underlie the hills, and follows subterranean
+channels to the plain, where it collects in the _fontanili_, and being
+thence conducted into the canals of irrigation, becomes a source of
+great fertility."--_La Proprieta Fondiaria, etc._, p. 144.
+
+[190] _Meteorologie_, German translation by EMSMANN, p. 605.
+
+[191] _Handbuch der Physischen Geographie_, p. 658.
+
+[192] _Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1854, 1st semestre, pp. 21 _et
+seqq._ See the comments of VALLES on these observations, in his _Etudes
+sur les Inondations_, pp. 441 _et seqq._
+
+[193] The passage in Pliny is as follows: "Nascuntur fontes, decisis
+plerumque silvis, quos arborum alimenta consumebant, sicut in Haemo,
+obsidente Gallos Cassandro, quum valli gratia cecidissent. Plerumque
+vero damnosi torrentes corrivantur, detracta collibus silva continere
+nimbos ac digerere consueta."--_Nat. Hist._, xxxi, 30.
+
+Seneca cites this case, and another similar one said to have been
+observed at Magnesia, from a passage in Theophrastus, not to be found in
+the extant works of that author; but he adds that the stories are
+incredible, because shaded grounds abound most in water: fere
+aquosissima sunt quaecumque umbrosissima.--_Quaest. Nat._, iii, 11. _See
+Appendix_, No. 26.
+
+[194] "Why go so far for the proof of a phenomenon that is repeated
+every day under our own eyes, and of which every Parisian may convince
+himself, without venturing beyond the Bois de Boulogne or the forest of
+Meudon? Let him, after a few rainy days, pass along the Chevreuse road,
+which is bordered on the right by the wood, on the left by cultivated
+fields. The fall of water and the continuance of the rain have been the
+same on both sides; but the ditch on the side of the forest will remain
+filled with water proceeding from the infiltration through the wooded
+soil, long after the other, contiguous to the open ground, has performed
+its office of drainage and become dry. The ditch on the left will have
+discharged in a few hours a quantity of water, which the ditch on the
+right requires several days to receive and carry down to the
+valley."--CLAVE, _Etudes, etc._, pp. 53, 54.
+
+[195] VALLES, _Etudes sur les Inondations_, p. 472.
+
+[196] _Economie Rurale_, p. 730.
+
+[197] _Ueber die Entwaldung der Gebirge_, pp. 20 _et seqq._
+
+[198] _Physische Geographie_, p. 32.
+
+[199] _The Trees of America_, pp. 50, 51.
+
+[200] THOMPSON's _Vermont_, appendix, p. 8.
+
+[201] _Trees of America_, p. 48.
+
+[202] Dumont, following Dansse, gives an interesting extract from the
+Misopogon of the Emperor Julian, showing that, in the fourth century,
+the Seine--the level of which now varies to the extent of thirty feet
+between extreme high and extreme low water mark--was almost wholly
+exempt from inundations, and flowed with a uniform current through the
+whole year. "Ego olim eram in hibernis apud caram Lutetiam, [sic] enim
+Galli Parisiorum oppidum appellant, quae insula est non magna, in fluvio
+sita, qui eam omni ex parte eingit. Pontes sublicii utrinque ad eam
+ferunt, raroque fluvius minuitur ae crescit; sed qualis aestate, talis
+esse solet hyeme."--_Des Travaux Publics dans leur Rapports avec
+l'Agriculture_, p. 361, note.
+
+As Julian was six years in Gaul, and his principal residence was at
+Paris, his testimony as to the habitual condition of the Seine, at a
+period when the provinces where its sources originate were well wooded,
+is very valuable.
+
+[203] Almost every narrative of travel in those countries which were the
+earliest seats of civilization, contains evidence of the truth of these
+general statements, and this evidence is presented with more or less
+detail in most of the special works on the forest which I have occasion
+to cite. I may refer particularly to HOHENSTEIN, _Der Wald_, 1860, as
+full of important facts on this subject. See also CAIMI, _Cenni sulla
+Importanza dei Boschi_, for some statistics not readily found elsewhere,
+on this and other topics connected with the forest.
+
+[204] Stanley, citing SELDEN, _De Jure Naturali_, book vi, and
+FABRICIUS, _Cod. Pseudap._ V. T., i, 874, mentions a remarkable Jewish
+tradition of uncertain but unquestionably ancient date, which is among
+the oldest evidences of public respect for the woods, and of enlightened
+views of their importance and proper treatment:
+
+"To Joshua a fixed Jewish tradition ascribed ten decrees, laying down
+precise rules, which were instituted to protect the property of each
+tribe and of each householder from lawless depredation. Cattle, of a
+smaller kind, were to be allowed to graze in thick woods, not in thin
+woods; in woods, no kind of cattle without the owner's consent. Sticks
+and branches might be gathered by any Hebrew, but not cut. * * * Woods
+might be pruned, provided they were not olives or fruit trees, and that
+there was sufficient shade in the place."--_Lectures on the History of
+the Jewish Church_, part i, p. 271.
+
+[205] There seems to have been a tendency to excessive clearing in
+Central and Western, earlier than in Southeastern France. Wise and good
+Bernard Palissy--one of those persecuted Protestants of the sixteenth
+century, whose heroism, virtue, refinement, and taste shine out in such
+splendid contrast to the brutality, corruption, grossness, and barbarism
+of their oppressors--in the _Recepte Veritable_, first printed in 1563,
+thus complains: "When I consider the value of the least clump of trees,
+or even of thorns, I much marvel at the great ignorance of men, who, as
+it seemeth, do nowadays study only to break down, fell, and waste the
+fair forests which their forefathers did guard so choicely. I would
+think no evil of them for cutting down the woods, did they but replant
+again some part of them; but they care nought for the time to come,
+neither reck they of the great damage they do to their children which
+shall come after them."--_[OE]uvres Completes de Bernard Palissy_, 1844,
+p. 88.
+
+[206] The great naval and commercial marines of Venice and of Genoa must
+have occasioned an immense consumption of lumber in the Middle Ages, and
+the centuries immediately succeeding those commonly embraced in that
+designation. The marine construction of that period employed larger
+timbers than the modern naval architecture of most commercial countries,
+but apparently without a proportional increase of strength. The old
+modes of ship building have been, to a considerable extent, handed down
+to the present day in the Mediterranean, and an American or an
+Englishman looks with astonishment at the huge beams and thick planks so
+often employed in the construction of very small vessels navigating that
+sea. According to Hummel, the desolation of the Karst, the high plateau
+lying north of Trieste, now one of the most parched and barren districts
+in Europe, is owing to the felling of its woods to build the navies of
+Venice. "Where the miserable peasant of the Karst now sees nothing but
+bare rock swept and scoured by the raging Bora, the fury of this wind
+was once subdued by mighty firs, which Venice recklessly cut down to
+build her fleets."--_Physische Geographie_, p. 32. See _Appendix_, No.
+27.
+
+[207] _Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia_, i, p. 367.
+
+[208] See the periodical _Politecnico_, published at Milan, for the
+month of May, 1862, p. 234.
+
+[209] _Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio_, vol. i, p. 77.
+
+[210] HOLINSHED, reprint of 1807, i, pp. 357, 358. It is evident from
+this passage, and from another on page 397 of the same volume, that,
+though sea coal was largely exported to the Continent, it had not yet
+come into general use in England. It is a question of much interest,
+when coal was first employed in England for fuel. I can find no evidence
+that it was used as a combustible until more than a century after the
+Norman conquest. It has been said that it was known to the Anglo-Saxon
+population, but I am acquainted with no passage in the literature of
+that people which proves this. The dictionaries explain the Anglo-Saxon
+word _graefa_ by sea coal. I have met with this word in no Anglo-Saxon
+work, except in the _Chronicle_, A. D. 852, from a manuscript certainly
+not older than the twelfth century, and in that passage it may as
+probably mean peat as coal, and quite as probably something else as
+either. Coal is not mentioned in King Alfred's Bede, in Glanville, or in
+Robert of Gloucester, though all these writers speak of jet as found in
+England, and are full in their enumeration of the mineral products of
+the island.
+
+England was anciently remarkable for its forests, but Caesar says it
+wanted the _fagus_ and the _abies_. There can be no doubt that _fagus_
+means the beech, which, as the remains in the Danish peat mosses show,
+is a tree of late introduction into Denmark, where it succeeded the fir,
+a tree not now native to that country. The succession of forest crops
+seems to have been the same in England; for Harrison, p. 359, speaks of
+the "great store of firre" found lying "at their whole lengths" in the
+"fens and marises" of Lancashire and other counties, where not even
+bushes grew in his time. We cannot be sure what species of evergreen
+Caesar intended by _abies_. The popular designations of spike-leaved
+trees are always more vague and uncertain in their application than
+those of broad-leaved trees. _Pinus_, _pine_, has been very loosely
+employed even in botanical nomenclature, and _Kiefer_, _Fichte_, and
+_Tanne_ are often confounded in German.--ROSSMAeSSLER, _Der Wald_, pp.
+256, 289, 324. If it were certain that the _abies_ of Caesar was the fir
+formerly and still found in peat mosses, and that he was right in
+denying the existence of the beech in England in his time, the
+observation would be very important, because it would fix a date at
+which the fir had become extinct, and the beech had not yet appeared in
+the island.
+
+The English oak, though strong and durable, was not considered generally
+suitable for finer work in the sixteenth century. There were, however,
+exceptions. "Of all in Essex," observes HARRISON, _Holinshed_, i, p.
+357, "that growing in Bardfield parke is the finest for ioiners craft:
+for oftentimes haue I seene of their workes made of that oke so fine and
+faire, as most of the wainescot that is brought hither out of Danske;
+for our wainescot is not made in England. Yet diuerse haue assaied to
+deale without [with our] okes to that end, but not with so good successe
+as they haue hoped, bicause the ab or iuice will not so soone be remoued
+and cleane drawne out, which some attribute to want of time in the salt
+water."
+
+This passage is also of interest as showing that soaking in salt water,
+as a mode of seasoning, was practised in Harrison's time.
+
+But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and
+otherwise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced three
+centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the _Liber
+Albus_--a book which could have been far more valuable if the editor had
+given us the texts, with his learned notes, instead of a
+translation--mention is made of "squared oak timber," brought in from
+the country by carts, and of course of domestic growth, as free of city
+duty or octroi, and of "planks of oak" coming in in the same way as
+paying one plank a cartload. But in the chapter on the "Customs of
+Billyngesgate," pp. 208, 209, relating to goods imported from foreign
+countries, a duty of one halfpenny is imposed on every hundred of boards
+called "weynscotte," and of one penny on every hundred of boards called
+"Rygholt." The editor explains "Rygholt" as "wood of Riga." This was
+doubtless pine or fir. The year in which these provisions were made does
+not appear, but they belong to the reign of Henry III.
+
+[211] In a letter addressed to the Minister of Public Works, after the
+terrible inundations of 1857, the Emperor thus happily expressed
+himself: "Before we seek the remedy for an evil, we inquire into its
+cause. Whence come the sudden floods of our rivers? From the water which
+falls on the mountains, not from that which falls on the plains. The
+waters which fall on our fields produce but few rivulets, but those
+which fall on our roofs and are collected in the gutters, form small
+streams at once. Now, the roofs are mountains--the gutters are valleys."
+
+"To continue the comparison," observes D'Hericourt, "roofs are smooth
+and impermeable, and the rain water pours rapidly off from their
+surfaces; but this rapidity of flow would be greatly diminished if the
+roofs were carpeted with mosses and grasses; more still, if they were
+covered with dry leaves, little shrubs, strewn branches, and other
+impediments--in short, if they were wooded."--_Annales Forestieres,
+Dec._, 1857, p. 311.
+
+[212] "The roots of vegetables," says D'Hericourt, "perform the office
+of a perpendicular drainage analogous to that which has been practised
+with success in Holland and in some parts of the British Islands. This
+system consists in driving down three or four thousand stakes upon a
+hectare; the rain water filters down along the stakes, and, in certain
+cases, as favorable results are obtained by this method as by horizontal
+drains."--_Annales Forestieres_, 1857, p. 312.
+
+[213] The productiveness of Egypt has been attributed too exclusively to
+the fertilizing effects of the slime deposited by the inundations of the
+Nile; for in that climate a liberal supply of water would produce good
+crops on almost any ordinary sand, while, without water, the richest
+soil would yield nothing. The sediment deposited annually is but a very
+small fraction of an inch in thickness. It is alleged that in quantity
+it would be hardly sufficient for a good top dressing, and that in
+quality it is not chemically distinguishable from the soil inches or
+feet below the surface. But to deny, as some writers have done, that the
+slime has any fertilizing properties at all, is as great an error as the
+opposite one of ascribing all the agricultural wealth of Egypt to that
+single cause of productiveness. Fine soils deposited by water are almost
+uniformly rich in all climates; those brought down by rivers, carried
+out into salt water, and then returned again by the tide, seem to be
+more permanently fertile than any others. The polders of the Netherland
+coast are of this character, and the meadows in Lincolnshire, which have
+been covered with slime by _warping_, as it is called, or admitting
+water over them at high tide, are remarkably productive. See _Appendix_,
+No. 28.
+
+[214] "The laws against clearing have never been able to prevent these
+operations when the proprietor found his advantage in them, and the long
+series of royal ordinances and decrees of parliaments, proclaimed from
+the days of Charlemagne to our own, with a view of securing forest
+property, have served only to show the impotence of legislative notion
+on this subject."--CLAVE, _Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere_, p. 32.
+
+"A proprietor can always contrive to clear his woods, whatever may be
+done to prevent him; it is a mere question of time, and a few imprudent
+cuttings, a few abuses of the right of pasturage, suffice to destroy a
+forest in spite of all regulations to the contrary."--DUNOYER, _De la
+Liberte du Travail_, ii, p. 452, as quoted by Clave, p. 353.
+
+Both authors agree that the preservation of the forests in France is
+practicable only by their transfer to the state, which alone can protect
+them and secure their proper treatment. It is much to be feared that
+even this measure would be inadequate to save the forests of the
+American Union. There is little respect for public property in America,
+and the Federal Government, certainly, would not be the proper agent of
+the nation for this purpose. It proved itself unable to protect the
+live-oak woods of Florida, which were intended to be preserved for the
+use of the navy, and it more than once paid contractors a high price for
+timber stolen from its own forests. The authorities of the individual
+States might be more efficient.
+
+[215] See the lively account of the sale of a communal wood in
+BERLEPSCH, _Die Alpen, Holzschlaeger und Floesser_.
+
+[216] Streffleur (_Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildbaeche_, p.
+3) maintains that all the observations and speculations of French
+authors on the nature of torrents had been anticipated by Austrian
+writers. In proof of this assertion he refers to the works of Franz von
+Zallinger, 1778, Von Arretin, 1808, Franz Duile, 1826, all published at
+Innsbruck, and HAGEN's _Beschreibung neuerer Wasserbauwerke_,
+Koenigsberg, 1826, none of which works are known to me. It is evident,
+however, that the conclusions of Surell and other French writers whom I
+cite, are original results of personal investigation, and not borrowed
+opinions.
+
+[217] Whether Palissy was acquainted with this ancient practice, or
+whether it was one of those original suggestions of which his works are
+so full, I know not; but in his treatise, _Des Eaux et Fontaines_, he
+thus recommends it, by way of reply to the objections of "Theorique,"
+who had expressed the fear that "the waters which rush violently down
+from the heights of the mountain would bring with them much earth, sand,
+and other things," and thus spoil the artificial fountain that
+"Practique" was teaching him to make: "And for hindrance of the
+mischiefs of great waters which may be gathered in few hours by great
+storms, when thou shalt have made ready thy parterre to receive the
+water, thou must lay great stones athwart the deep channels which
+lead to thy parterre. And so the force of the rushing currents
+shall be deadened, and thy water shall flow peacefully into his
+cisterns."--_[OE]uvres Completes_, p. 173.
+
+[218] Ladoucette says the peasant of Devoluy "often goes a distance of
+five hours over rocks and precipices for a single [man's] load of wood;"
+and he remarks on another page, that "the justice of peace of that
+canton had, in the course of forty-three years, but once heard the voice
+of the nightingale."--_Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes_, pp. 220, 434.
+
+[219] The valley of Embrun, now almost completely devastated, was once
+remarkable for its fertility. In 1806, Hericart de Thury said of it: "In
+this magnificent valley nature had been prodigal of her gifts. Its
+inhabitants have blindly revelled in her favors, and fallen asleep in
+the midst of her profusion."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 314.
+
+[220] In the days of the Roman empire the Durance was a navigable river,
+with a commerce so important that the boatmen upon it formed a distinct
+corporation.--LADOUCETTE, _Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes_, p. 354.
+
+Even as early as 1789, the Durance was computed to have already covered
+with gravel and pebbles not less than 130,000 acres, "which, but for its
+inundations, would have been the finest land in the province."--ARTHUR
+YOUNG, _Travels in France_, vol. i, ch. i.
+
+[221] Between 1851 and 1856 the population of Languedoc and Provence had
+increased by 101,000 souls. The augmentation, however, was wholly in the
+provinces of the plains, where all the principal cities are found. In
+these provinces the increase was 204,000, while in the mountain
+provinces there was a diminution of 103,000. The reduction of the area
+of arable land is perhaps even more striking. In 1842, the department of
+the Lower Alps possessed 99,000 hectares, or nearly 245,000 acres, of
+cultivated soil. In 1852, it had but 74,000 hectares. In other words, in
+ten years 25,000 hectares, or 61,000 acres, had been washed away or
+rendered worthless for cultivation, by torrents and the abuses of
+pasturage.--CLAVE, _Etudes_, pp. 66, 67.
+
+[222] The Skalaera-Tobel, for instance, near Coire. See the description
+in BERLEPSCH, _Die Alpen_, pp. 169 _et seqq_, or in Stephen's English
+translation.
+
+The recent change in the character of the Mella--a river anciently so
+remarkable for the gentleness of its current that it was specially
+noticed by Catullus as flowing _molli flumine_--deserves more than a
+passing remark. This river rises in the mountain chain east of Lake
+Iseo, and traversing the district of Brescia, empties into the Oglio
+after a course of about seventy miles. The iron works in the upper
+valley of the Mella had long created a considerable demand for wood, but
+their operations were not so extensive as to occasion any very sudden or
+general destruction of the forests, and the only evil experienced from
+the clearings was the gradual diminution of the volume of the river.
+Within the last twenty years, the superior quality of the arms
+manufactured at Brescia has greatly enlarged the sale of them, and very
+naturally stimulated the activity of both the forges and of the colliers
+who supply them, and the hillsides have been rapidly stripped of their
+timber. Up to 1850, no destructive inundation of the Mella had been
+recorded. Buildings in great numbers had been erected upon its margin,
+and its valley was conspicuous for its rural beauty and its fertility.
+But when the denudation of the mountains had reached a certain point,
+avenging nature began the work of retribution. In the spring and summer
+of 1850 several new torrents were suddenly formed in the upper tributary
+valleys, and on the 14th and 15th of August in that year, a fall of
+rain, not heavier than had been often experienced, produced a flood
+which not only inundated much ground never before overflowed, but
+destroyed a great number of bridges, dams, factories, and other valuable
+structures, and, what was a far more serious evil, swept off from the
+rocks an incredible extent of soil, and converted one of the most
+beautiful valleys of the Italian Alps into a ravine almost as bare and
+as barren as the savagest gorge of Southern France. The pecuniary damage
+was estimated at many millions of francs, and the violence of the
+catastrophe was deemed so extraordinary, even in a country subject to
+similar visitations, that the sympathy excited for the sufferers
+produced, in five months, voluntary contributions for their relief to
+the amount of nearly $200,000--_Delle Inondazioni del Mella, etc., nella
+notte del 14 al 15 Agosto_, 1850.
+
+The author of this remarkable pamphlet has chosen as a motto a passage
+from the Vulgate translation of Job, which is interesting as showing
+accurate observation of the action of the torrent: "Mons cadens definit,
+et saxum transfertur de loco suo; lapides excavant aquae et alluvione
+paullatim terra consumitur."--_Job_ xiv, 18, 19.
+
+The English version is much less striking, and gives a different sense.
+
+[223] Streffleur quotes from Duile the following observations: "The
+channel of the Tyrolese brooks is often raised much above the valleys
+through which they flow. The bed of the Fersina is elevated high above
+the city of Trient, which lies near it. The Villerbach flows at a much
+more elevated level than that of the market place of Neumarkt and Vill,
+and threatens to overwhelm both of them with its waters. The Talfer at
+Botzen is at least even with the roofs of the adjacent town, if not
+above them. The tower steeples of the villages of Schlanders, Kortsch,
+and Laas, are lower than the surface of the Gadribach. The Saldurbach at
+Schluderns menaces the far lower village with destruction, and the chief
+town, Schwaz, is in similar danger from the Lahnbach."--STREFFLEUR,
+_Ueber die Wildbaeche, etc._, p. 7.
+
+[224] The snow drifts into the ravines and accumulates to incredible
+depths, and the water resulting from its dissolution and from the
+deluging rains which fall in spring, and sometimes in the summer, being
+confined by rocky walls on both sides, rises to a very great height, and
+of course acquires an immense velocity and transporting power in its
+rapid descent to its outlet from the mountain. In the winter of
+1842--'3, the valley of the Doveria, along which the Simplon road
+passes, was filled with solid snowdrifts to the depth of a hundred feet
+above the carriage road, and the sledge track by which passengers and
+the mails were carried ran at that height.
+
+Other things being equal, the transporting power of the water is
+greatest where its flow is most rapid. This is usually in the direction
+of the axis of the ravine. As the current pours out of the gorge and
+escapes from the lateral confinement of its walls, it spreads and
+divides itself into numerous smaller streams, which shoot out from the
+mouth of the valley, as from a centre, in different directions, like the
+ribs of a fan from the pivot, each carrying with it its quota of stones
+and gravel. The plain below the point of issue from the mountain is
+rapidly raised by newly formed torrents, the elevation depending on the
+inclination of the bed and the form and weight of the matter
+transported. Every flood both increases the height of this central point
+and extends the entire circumference of the deposit. The stream
+retaining most nearly the original direction moves with the greatest
+momentum, and consequently transports the solid matter with which it is
+charged to the greatest distance.
+
+The untravelled reader will comprehend this the better when he is
+informed that the southern slope of the Alps generally rises suddenly
+out of the plain, with no intervening hill to break the abruptness of
+the transition, except those consisting of comparatively small heaps of
+its own debris brought down by ancient glaciers or recent torrents. The
+torrents do not wind down valleys gradually widening to the rivers or
+the sea, but leap at once from the flanks of the mountains upon the
+plains below. This arrangement of surfaces naturally facilitates the
+formation of vast deposits at their points of emergence, and the centre
+of the accumulation in the case of very small torrents is not
+unfrequently a hundred feet high, and sometimes very much more.
+
+Torrents and the rivers that receive them transport mountain debris to
+almost incredible distances. Lorentz, in an official report on this
+subject, as quoted by Marschand from the Memoirs of the Agricultural
+Society of Lyons, says: "The felling of the woods produces torrents
+which cover the cultivated soil with pebbles and fragments of rock, and
+they do not confine their ravages to the vicinity of the mountains, but
+extend them into the fertile fields of Provence and other departments,
+to the distance of forty or fifty leagues."--_Entwaldung der Gebirge_,
+p. 17.
+
+[225] The precipitous walls of the Val de Lys, and more especially of
+the Val Doveria, though here and there shattered, show in many places a
+smoothness of face over a large vertical plane, at the height of
+hundreds of feet above the bottom of the valley, which no known agency
+but glacier ice is capable of producing, and of course they can have
+undergone no sensible change at those points for a vast length of time.
+The beds of the rivers which flow through those valleys suffer lateral
+displacement occasionally, where there is room for the shifting of the
+channel; but if any elevation or depression takes place in them, it is
+too slow to be perceptible except in case of some merely temporary
+obstruction.
+
+[226] Lombardini found, twenty years ago, that the mineral matter
+brought down to the Po by its tributaries was, in general, comminuted to
+about the same degree of fineness as the sands of its bed at their
+points of discharge. In the case of the Trebbia, which rises high in the
+Apennines and empties into the Po at Piacenza, it was otherwise, that
+river rolling pebbles and coarse gravel into the channel of the
+principal stream. The banks of the other affluents--excepting some of
+those which discharge their waters into the great lakes--then either
+retained their woods, or had been so long clear of them, that the
+torrents had removed most of the disintegrated and loose rock in their
+upper basins. The valley of the Trebbia had been recently cleared, and
+all the forces which tend to the degradation and transportation of rock
+were in full activity.--_Notice sur les Rivieres de la Lombardie,
+Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1847, 1er semestre, p. 131.
+
+Since the date of Lombardini's observations, many Alpine valleys have
+been stripped of their woods. It would be interesting to know whether
+any sensible change has been produced in the character or quantity of
+the matter transported by them to the Po.
+
+[227] In proportion as the dikes are improved, and breaches and the
+escape of the water through them are less frequent, the height of the
+annual inundations is increased. Many towns on the banks of the river,
+and of course within the system of parallel embankments, were formerly
+secure from flood by the height of the artificial mounds on which they
+were built; but they have recently been obliged to construct ring dikes
+for their protection.--BAUMGARTEN, after LOMBARDINI, in the paper last
+quoted, pp. 141, 147.
+
+[228] Three centuries ago, when the declivities of the mountains still
+retained a much larger proportion of their woods, the moderate annual
+floods of the Po were occasioned by the melting of the snows, and, as
+appears by a passage of Tasso quoted by Castellani (_Dell' Influenza
+delle Selve_, i, p. 58, note), they took place in May. The much more
+violent inundations of the present century are due to rains, the waters
+of which are no longer retained by a forest soil, but conveyed at once
+to the rivers--and they occur almost uniformly in the autumn or late
+summer. Castellani, on the page just quoted, says that even so late as
+about 1780, the Po required a heavy rain of a week to overflow its
+banks, but that forty years later, it was sometimes raised to full flood
+in a single day.
+
+[229] This change of coast line cannot be ascribed to upheaval, for a
+comparison of the level of old buildings--as, for instance, the church
+of San Vitale and the tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna--with that of the
+sea, tends to prove a depression rather than an elevation of their
+foundations.
+
+A computation by a different method makes the deposits at the mouth of
+the Po 2,123,000 metres less; but as both of them omit the gravel and
+silt rolled, if not floated, down at ordinary and low water, we are safe
+in assuming the larger quantity.--_Article last quoted_, p. 174. (See
+note, p. 329)
+
+[230] Mengotti estimated the mass of solid matter annually "united to
+the waters of the Po" at 822,000,000 cubic metres, or nearly twenty
+times as much as, according to Lombardini, that river delivers into the
+Adriatic. Castellani supposes the computation of Mengotti to fall much
+below the truth, and there can be no doubt that a vastly larger quantity
+of earth and gravel is washed down from the Alps and the Apennines than
+is carried to the sea.--CASTELLANI, _Dell' Immediata Influenza delle
+Selve sul corso delle Acque_, i, pp. 42, 43.
+
+I have contented myself with assuming less than one fifth of Mengotti's
+estimate.
+
+[231] BAUMGARTEN, _An. des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1847, 1er semestre, p.
+175.
+
+[232] The total superficies of the basin of the Po, down to Ponte
+Lagoscuro [Ferrara]--a point where it has received all its affluents--is
+6,938,200 hectares, that is, 4,105,600 in mountain lands, 2,832,600 in
+plain lands.--DUMONT, _Travaux Publics, etc._, p. 272.
+
+These latter two quantities are equal respectively to 10,145,348, and
+6,999,638 acres, or 15,852 and 10,937 square miles.
+
+[233] I do not use the numbers I have borrowed or assumed as factors the
+value of which is precisely ascertained; nor, for the purposes of the
+present argument, is quantitative exactness important. I employ
+numerical statements simply as a means of aiding the imagination to form
+a general and certainly not extravagant idea of the extent of
+geographical revolutions which man has done much to accelerate, if not,
+strictly speaking, to produce.
+
+There is an old proverb, _Dolus latet in generalibus_, and Arthur Young
+is not the only public economist who has warned his readers against the
+deceitfulness of round numbers. I think, on the contrary, that vastly
+more error has been produced by the affectation of precision in cases
+where precision is impossible. In all the great operations of
+terrestrial nature, the elements are so numerous and so difficult of
+exact appreciation, that, until the means of scientific observation and
+measurement are much more perfected than they now are, we must content
+ourselves with general approximations. I say _terrestrial_ nature,
+because in cosmical movements we have fewer elements to deal with, and
+may therefore arrive at much more rigorous accuracy in determination of
+time and place than we can in fixing and predicting the quantities and
+the epochs of variable natural phenomena on the earth's surface.
+
+The value of a high standard of accuracy in scientific observation can
+hardly be overrated; but habits of rigorous exactness will never be
+formed by an investigator who allows himself to trust implicitly to the
+numerical precision of the results of a few experiments. The wonderful
+accuracy of geodetic measurements in modern times is, in general,
+attained by taking the mean of a great number of observations at every
+station, and this final precision is but the mutual balance and
+compensation of numerous errors.
+
+Travellers are often misled by local habits in the use of what may be
+called representative numbers, where a definite is put for an indefinite
+quantity. A Greek, who wished to express the notion of a great, but
+undetermined number, used "myriad, or ten thousand;" a Roman, "six
+hundred;" an Oriental, "forty," or, at present, very commonly, "fifteen
+thousand." Many a tourist has gravely repeated, as an ascertained fact,
+the vague statement of the Arabs and the monks of Mount Sinai, that the
+ascent from the convent of St. Catherine to the summit of Gebel Moosa
+counts "fifteen thousand" steps, though the difference of level is
+barely two thousand feet, and the "Forty" Thieves, the "forty" martyr
+monks of the convent of El Arbain--not to speak of a similar use of this
+numeral in more important cases--have often been understood as
+expressions of a known number, when in fact they mean simply _many_. The
+number "fifteen thousand" has found its way to Rome, and De Quincey
+seriously informs us, on the authority of a lady who had been at much
+pains to ascertain the _exact_ truth, that, including closets large
+enough for a bed, the Vatican contains fifteen thousand rooms. Any one
+who has observed the vast dimensions of most of the apartments of that
+structure will admit that we make a very small allowance of space when
+we assign a square rod, sixteen and a half feet square, to each room
+upon the average. On an acre, there might be one hundred and sixty such
+rooms, including partition walls; and, to contain fifteen thousand of
+them, a building must cover more than nine acres, and be ten stories
+high, or possess other equivalent dimensions, which, as every traveller
+knows, many times exceeds the truth.
+
+That most entertaining writer, About, reduces the number of rooms in the
+Vatican, but he compensates this reduction by increased dimensions, for
+he uses the word _salle_, which cannot be applied to closets barely
+large enough to contain a bed. According to him, there are in that
+"presbytere," as he irreverently calls it, twelve thousand large rooms
+[_salles_], thirty courts, and three hundred staircases.--_Rome
+Contemporaire_, p. 68.
+
+The pretended exactness of statistical tables is generally little better
+than an imposture; and those founded not on direct estimation by
+competent observers, but on the report of persons who have no particular
+interest in knowing, but often have a motive for distorting, the
+truth--such as census returns--are commonly to be regarded as but vague
+guesses at the actual fact.
+
+Fuller, who, for the combination of wit, wisdom, fancy, and personal
+goodness, stands first in English literature, thus remarks on the
+pretentious exactness of historical and statistical writers: "I approve
+the plain, country By-word, as containing much Innocent Simplicity
+therein,
+
+  _'Almost and very nigh
+  Have saved many a Lie.'_
+
+So have the Latines their _prope_, _fere_, _juxta_, _circiter_, _plus
+minus_, used in matters of fact by the most authentic Historians. Yea,
+we may observe that the Spirit of Truth itself, where _Numbers_ and
+_Measures_ are concerned, in Times, Places, and Persons, useth the
+aforesaid Modifications, save in such cases where some mystery contained
+in the number requireth a particular specification thereof:
+
+  In Times.      |  In Places.    |  In Person.
+                 |                |
+  Daniel, 5:33.  |  Luke, 24:13.  |  Exodus, 12:37.
+  Luke,   3:23.  |  John,  6:19.  |  Acts,    2:41.
+
+None therefore can justly find fault with me, if, on the like occasion,
+I have secured myself with the same Qualifications. Indeed, such
+Historians who grind their Intelligence to the _powder of fraction_,
+pretending to _cleave the pin_, do sometimes _misse the But_. Thus, one
+reporteth, how in the Persecution under _Dioeletian_, there were neither
+under nor over, but just _nine hundred ninety-nine_ martyrs. Yea,
+generally those that trade in such _Retail-ware_, and deal in such small
+parcells, may by the ignorant be commended for their _care_, but
+condemned by the judicious for their ridiculous _curiosity_."--_The
+History of the Worthies of England_, i, p. 59.
+
+[234] SURELL, _Les Torrents des Hautes Alpes_, chap. xxiv. In such
+cases, the clearing of the ground, which, in consequence of a temporary
+diversion of the waters, or from some other cause, has become rewooded,
+sometimes renews the ravages of the torrent. Thus, on the left bank of
+the Durance, a wooded declivity had been formed by the debris brought
+down by torrents, which had extinguished themselves after having swept
+off much of the superficial strata of the mountain of Morgon. "All this
+district was covered with woods, which have now been thinned out and are
+perishing from day to day; consequently, the torrents have recommenced
+their devastations, and if the clearings continue, this declivity, now
+fertile, will be ruined, like so many others."--Id., p. 155.
+
+[235] Where a torrent has not been long in operation, and earth still
+remains mixed with the rocks and gravel it heaps up at its point of
+eruption, vegetation soon starts up and prospers, if protected from
+encroachment. In Provence, "several communes determined, about ten years
+ago, to reserve the soils thus wasted, that is, to abandon them for a
+certain time, to spontaneous vegetation, which was not slow in making
+its appearance."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats_, p. 315.
+
+[236] Rock is permeable by water to a greater extent than is generally
+supposed. Freshly quarried marble, and even granite, as well as most
+other stones, are sensibly heavier, as well as softer and more easily
+wrought, than after they are dried and hardened by air-seasoning. Many
+sandstones are porous enough to serve as filters for liquids, and much
+of that of Upper Egypt and Nubia hisses audibly when thrown into water,
+from the escape of the air forced out of it by hydrostatic pressure and
+the capillary attraction of the pores for water. See _Appendix_, No. 29.
+
+[237] Palissy had observed the action of frost in disintegrating rock,
+and he thus describes it, in his essay on the formation of ice: "I know
+that the stones of the mountains of Ardennes be harder than marble.
+Nevertheless, the people of that country do not quarry the said stones
+in winter, for that they be subject to frost; and many times the rocks
+have been seen to fall without being cut, by means whereof many people
+have been killed, when the said rocks were thawing." Palissy was
+ignorant of the expansion of water in freezing--in fact he supposed that
+the mechanical force exerted by freezing water was due to compression,
+not dilatation--and therefore he ascribes to thawing alone effects
+resulting not less from congelation.
+
+Various forces combine to produce the stone avalanches of the higher
+Alps, the fall of which is one of the greatest dangers incurred by the
+adventurous explorers of those regions--the direct action of the sun
+upon the stone, the expansion of freezing water, and the loosening of
+masses of rock by the thawing of the ice which supported them or held
+them together.
+
+[238] WESSELY, _Die Oesterreichischen Alpenlaender und ihre Forste_, pp.
+125, 126. Wessely records several other more or less similar occurrences
+in the Austrian Alps. Some of them, certainly, are not to be ascribed to
+the removal of the woods, but in most cases they are clearly traceable
+to that cause.
+
+[239] BIANCHI, Appendix to the Italian translation of Mrs. SOMERVILLE's
+_Physical Geography_, p. xxxvi.
+
+[240] See in KOHL, _Alpenreisen_, i, 120, an account of the ruin of
+fields and pastures, and even of the destruction of a broad belt of
+forest, by the fall of rocks in consequence of cutting a few large
+trees. Cattle are very often killed in Switzerland by rock avalanches,
+and their owners secure themselves from loss by insurance against this
+risk as against damage by fire or hail.
+
+[241] _Entwaldung der Gebirge_, p. 41.
+
+[242] The importance of the wood in preventing avalanches is well
+illustrated by the fact that, where the forest is wanting, the
+inhabitants of localities exposed to snow slides often supply the place
+of the trees by driving stakes through the snow into the ground, and
+thus checking its propensity to slip. The woods themselves are sometimes
+thus protected against avalanches originating on slopes above them, and
+as a further security, small trees are cut down along the upper line of
+the forest, and laid against the trunks of larger trees, transversely to
+the path of the slide, to serve as a fence or dam to the motion of an
+incipient avalanche, which may by this means be arrested before it
+acquires a destructive velocity and force.
+
+[243] The tide rises at Quebec to the height of twenty-five feet, and
+when it is aided by a northeast wind, it flows with almost irresistible
+violence. Rafts containing several hundred thousand cubic feet of timber
+are often caught by the flood tide, torn to pieces, and dispersed for
+miles along the shores.
+
+[244] One of these, the Baron of Renfrew--so named from one of the
+titles of the kings of England--built thirty or forty years ago,
+measured 5,000 tons. They were little else than rafts, being almost
+solid masses of timber designed to be taken to pieces and sold as lumber
+on arriving at their port of destination.
+
+The lumber trade at Quebec is still very large. According to a recent
+article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, that city exported, in 1860,
+30,000,000 cubic feet of squared timber, and 400,000,000 square feet of
+"planches." The thickness of the boards is not stated, but I believe
+they are generally cut an inch and a quarter thick for the Quebec trade,
+and as they shrink somewhat in drying, we may estimate ten square for
+one cubic foot of boards. This gives a total of 70,000,000 cubic feet.
+The specific gravity of white pine is .554, and the weight of this
+quantity of lumber, very little of which is thoroughly seasoned, would
+exceed a million of tons, even supposing it to consist wholly of wood as
+light as pine. New Brunswick, too, exports a large amount of lumber.
+
+[245] This name, from the French _chantier_, which has a wider meaning,
+is applied in America to temporary huts or habitations erected for the
+convenience of forest life, or in connection with works of material
+improvement.
+
+[246] Trees differ much in their power of resisting the action of forest
+fires. Different woods vary greatly in combustibility, and even when
+their bark is scarcely scorched, they are, partly in consequence of
+physiological character, and partly from the greater or less depth at
+which their roots habitually lie below the surface, very differently
+affected by running fires. The white pine, _Pinus strobus_, as it is the
+most valuable, is also perhaps the most delicate tree of the American
+forest, while its congener, the Northern pitch pine, _Pinus rigida_, is
+less injured by fire than any other tree of that country. I have heard
+experienced lumbermen maintain that the growth of this pine was even
+accelerated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all other trees, and I
+have myself seen it still flourishing after a conflagration which had
+left not a green leaf but its own in the wood, and actually throwing out
+fresh foliage, when the old had been quite burnt off and the bark almost
+converted into charcoal. The wood of the pitch pine is of comparatively
+little value for the joiner, but it is useful for very many purposes.
+Its rapidity of growth in even poor soils, its hardihood, and its
+abundant yield of resinous products, entitle it to much more
+consideration, as a plantation tree, than it has hitherto received in
+Europe or America.
+
+[247] Between fifty and sixty years ago, a steep mountain with which I
+am very familiar, composed of metamorphic rock, and at that time covered
+with a thick coating of soil and a dense primeval forest, was
+accidentally burnt over. The fire took place in a very dry season, the
+slope of the mountain was too rapid to retain much water, and the
+conflagration was of an extraordinarily fierce character, consuming the
+wood almost entirely, burning the leaves and combustible portion of the
+mould, and in many places cracking and disintegrating the rock beneath.
+The rains of the following autumn carried off much of the remaining
+soil, and the mountain side was nearly bare of wood for two or three
+years afterward. At length, a new crop of trees sprang up and grew
+vigorously, and the mountain is now thickly covered again. But the depth
+of mould and earth is too small to allow the trees to reach maturity.
+When they attain to the diameter of about six inches, they uniformly
+die, and this they will no doubt continue to do until the decay of
+leaves and wood on the surface, and the decomposition of the subjacent
+rock, shall have formed, perhaps hundreds of years hence, a stratum of
+soil thick enough to support a full-grown forest.
+
+[248] The growth of the white pine, on a good soil and in open ground,
+is rather rapid until it reaches the diameter of a couple of feet, after
+which it is much slower. The favorite habitat of this tree is light
+sandy earth. On this soil, and in a dense wood, it requires a century to
+attain the diameter of a yard. Emerson (_Trees of Massachusetts_, p.
+65), says that a pine of this species, near Paris, "thirty years
+planted, is eighty feet high, with a diameter of three feet." He also
+states that ten white pines planted at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809
+or 1810, exhibited, in the winter of 1841 and 1842, an average of twenty
+inches diameter at the ground, the two largest measuring, at the height
+of three feet, four feet eight inches in circumference; and he mentions
+another pine growing in a rocky swamp, which, at the age of thirty-two
+years, "gave seven feet in circumference at the but, with a height of
+sixty-two feet six inches." This latter I suppose to be a seedling, the
+others _transplanted_ trees, which might have been some years old when
+placed where they finally grew.
+
+The following case came under my own observation: In 1824, a pine tree,
+so small that a young lady, with the help of a lad, took it up from the
+ground and carried it a quarter of a mile, was planted near a house in a
+town in Vermont. It was occasionally watered, but received no other
+special treatment. I measured this tree in 1860, and found it, at four
+feet from the ground, and entirely above the spread of the roots, two
+feet and four inches in diameter. It could not have been more than three
+inches through when transplanted, and must have increased its diameter
+twenty-five inches in thirty-six years.
+
+[249] WILLIAMS, _History of Vermont_, ii, p. 53. DWIGHT's _Travels_, iv,
+p. 21, and iii, p. 36. EMERSON, _Trees of Massachusetts_, p. 61. PARISH,
+_Life of President Wheelock_, p. 56.
+
+[250] The forest trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme
+longevity in the dense woods. Dr. Williams found that none of the huge
+pines, the age of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty
+or four hundred years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had
+noticed trees considerably older. The oak lives longer than the pine,
+and the hemlock spruce is perhaps equally long lived. A tree of this
+latter species, cut within my knowledge in a thick wood, counted four
+hundred and eighty-six, or, according to another observer, five hundred
+annual circles.
+
+Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly
+accompanied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not
+found in the crowded city; and in the tropics, where life is prolific
+and precocious, it is also short. The most ancient forest trees of which
+we have accounts have not been those growing in thick woods, but
+isolated specimens, with no taller neighbor to intercept the light and
+heat and air, and no rival to share the nutriment afforded by the soil.
+
+The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near the
+boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. "Long
+experience has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may
+be cut at sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same
+species, reared in the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We
+have often remarked, in our Alps, that the trunk of trees upon the
+border of a grove is most developed or enlarged upon the outer or open
+side, where the branches extend themselves farthest, while the
+concentric circles of growth are most uniform in those entirely
+surrounded by other trees, or standing entirely alone."--A. and G.
+VILLA, _Necessita dei Boschi_, pp. 17, 18.
+
+[251] Caimi states that "a single flotation in the Valtelline in 1839,
+caused damages alleged to amount to more than $800,000, and actually
+appraised at $250,000."--_Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_,
+p. 65.
+
+[252] Most physicists who have investigated the laws of natural
+hydraulics maintain that, in consequence of direct obstruction and
+frictional resistance to the flow of the water of rivers along their
+banks, there is both an increased rapidity of current and an elevation
+of the water in the middle of the channel, so that a river presents
+always a convex surface. The lumbermen deny this. They affirm that,
+while rivers are rising, the water is highest in the middle of the
+channel, and tends to throw floating objects shoreward; while they are
+falling, it is lowest in the middle, and floating objects incline toward
+the centre. Logs, they say, rolled into the water during the rise, are
+very apt to lodge on the banks, while those set afloat during the
+falling of the waters keep in the current, and are carried without
+hindrance to their destination.
+
+Foresters and lumbermen, like sailors and other persons whose daily
+occupations bring them into contact, and often, into conflict, with
+great natural forces, have many peculiar opinions, not to say
+superstitions. In one of these categories we must rank the universal
+belief of lumbermen, that with a given head of water, and in a given
+number of hours, a sawmill cuts more lumber by night than by day. Having
+been personally interested in several sawmills, I have frequently
+conversed with sawyers on this subject, and have always been assured by
+them that their uniform experience established the fact that, other
+things being equal, the action of the machinery of sawmills is more
+rapid by night than by day. I am sorry--perhaps I ought to be
+ashamed--to say that my scepticism has been too strong to allow me to
+avail myself of my opportunities of testing this question by passing a
+night, watch in hand, counting the strokes of a millsaw. More
+unprejudiced, and I must add, very intelligent and credible persons have
+informed me that they have done so, and found the report of the sawyers
+abundantly confirmed. A land surveyor, who was also an experienced
+lumberman, sawyer, and machinist, a good mathematician and an exact
+observer, has repeatedly told me, that he had very often "timed"
+sawmills, and found the difference in favor of night work above thirty
+per cent. _Sed quaere._
+
+[253] For many instances of this sort, see BECQUEREL, _Des Climats,
+etc._, pp. 301-303. In 1664, the Swedes made an incursion into Jutland
+and felled a considerable extent of forest. After they retired, a survey
+of the damage was had, and the report is still extant. The number of
+trees cut was found to be 120,000, and as an account was kept of the
+numbers of each species of tree, the document is of interest in the
+history of the forest, as showing the relative proportions between the
+different trees which composed the wood. See VAUPELL. _Boegens
+Indvandring_, p. 35, and _Notes_, p. 55.
+
+[254] Since writing this paragraph, I have fallen upon--and that in a
+Spanish author--one of those odd coincidences of thought which every man
+of miscellaneous reading so often meets with. Antonio Ponz (_Viage de
+Espana_, i, prologo, p. lxiii), says: "Nor would this be so great an
+evil, were not some of them declaimers against _trees_, thereby
+proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the works of God, who
+gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even
+now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it."
+
+I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their woods,
+but the Spaniard's proverbial "hatred of a tree" is of long standing.
+Herrera vigorously combats this foolish prejudice; and Ponz, in the
+prologue to the ninth volume of his journey, says that many carried it
+so far as wantonly to destroy the shade and ornamental trees planted by
+the municipal authorities. "Trees," they contended, and still believe,
+"breed birds, and birds eat up the grain." Our author argues against the
+supposition of the "breeding of birds by trees," which, he says, is as
+absurd as to believe that an elm tree can yield pears; and he charitably
+suggests that the expression is, perhaps, a _maniere de dire_, a popular
+phrase, signifying simply that trees harbor birds.
+
+[255] Religious intolerance had produced similar effects in France
+at an earlier period. "The revocation of the edict of Nantes and
+the dragonnades occasioned the sale of the forests of the unhappy
+Protestants, who fled to seek in foreign lands the liberty of
+conscience which was refused to them in France. The forests were
+soon felled by the purchasers, and the soil in part brought under
+cultivation."'--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 303.
+
+[256] The American reader must be reminded that, in the language of the
+chase and of the English law, a "forest" is not necessarily a wood. Any
+large extent of ground, withdrawn from cultivation, reserved for the
+pleasures of the chase, and allowed to clothe itself with a spontaneous
+growth, serving as what is technically called "cover" for wild animals,
+is, in the dialects I have mentioned, a forest. When, therefore, the
+Norman kings afforested the grounds referred to in the text, it is not
+to be supposed that they planted them with trees, though the protection
+afforded to them by the game laws would, if cattle had been kept out,
+soon have converted them into real woods.
+
+[257] _Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 190. The work of Bonnemere is of
+great value to those who study the history of mediaeval Europe from a
+desire to know its real character, and not in the hope of finding
+apparent facts to sustain a false and dangerous theory. Bonnemere is one
+of the few writers who, like Michelet, have been honest enough and bold
+enough to speak the truth with regard to the relations between the
+church and the people in the Middle Ages.
+
+[258] It is painful to add that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very
+few years ago, in one of the European states, by a prince of a family
+now dethroned. In this case, however, the prince killed the trespasser
+with his own hand, his sergeants refusing to execute his mandate.
+
+[259] GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, as quoted in the notes to JOINVILLE,
+_Nouvelle Collection des Memoires, etc._, par Michaud et Poujoulat,
+premiere serie, i, p. 335.
+
+Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the mediaeval
+clergy will hardly need to be informed that the ten thousand livres
+never found their way to the royal exchequer. It was easy to prove to
+the simple-minded king that, as the profits of sin were a monopoly of
+the church, he ought not to derive advantage from the commission of a
+crime by one of his subjects; and the priests were cunning enough both
+to secure to themselves the amount of the fine, and to extort from Louis
+large additional grants to carry out the purposes to which they devoted
+the money. "And though the king did take the moneys," says the
+chronicler, "he put them not into his treasury, but turned them into
+good works; for he builded therewith the maison-Dieu of Pontoise, and
+endowed the same with rents and lands; also the schools and the
+dormitory of the friars preachers of Paris, and the monastery of the
+Minorite friars."
+
+[260] _Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 200.
+
+[261] The following details from Bonnemere will serve to give a more
+complete idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of
+France. The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling
+up of thistles and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before
+St. John's day [24th June], in order that the nests of game birds might
+not be disturbed. It was unlawful to fence-in any grounds in the plains
+where royal residences were situated; thorns were ordered to be planted
+in all fields of wheat, barley, or oats, to prevent the use of ground
+nets for catching the birds which consumed, or were believed to consume,
+the grain, and it was forbidden to cut or pull stubble before the first
+of October, lest the partridge and the quail might be deprived of their
+cover. For destroying the eggs of the quail, a fine of one hundred
+livres was imposed for the first offence, double that amount for the
+second, and for the third the culprit was flogged and banished for five
+years to a distance of six leagues from the forest.--_Histoire des
+Paysans_, ii, p. 202, text and notes.
+
+Neither these severe penalties, nor any provisions devised by the
+ingenuity of modern legislation, have been able effectually to repress
+poaching. "The game laws," says Clave, "have not delivered us from the
+poachers, who kill twenty times as much game as the sportsmen. In the
+forest of Fontainebleau, as in all those belonging to the state,
+poaching is a very common and a very profitable offence. It is in vain
+that the gamekeepers are on the alert night and day, they cannot prevent
+it. Those who follow the trade begin by carefully studying the habits of
+the game. They will lie motionless on the ground, by the roadside or in
+thickets, for whole days, watching the paths most frequented by the
+animals," &c.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, p. 160.
+
+The writer adds many details on this subject, and it appears that, as
+there are "beggars on horseback" in South America, there are poachers in
+carriages in France.
+
+[262] "Whole trees were sacrificed for the most insignificant purposes;
+the peasants would cut down two firs to make a single pair of wooden
+shoes."--MICHELET, as quoted by CLAVE, _Etudes_, p. 24.
+
+A similar wastefulness formerly prevailed in Russia, though not from the
+same cause. In St. Pierre's time, the planks brought to St. Petersburg
+were not sawn, but hewn with the axe, and a tree furnished but a single
+plank.
+
+[263] "A hundred and fifty paces from my house is a hill of drift sand,
+on which stood a few scattered pines. _Pinus sylvestris_, and
+_Sempervivum tectorum_ in abundance, _Statice armeria_, _Ammone
+vernalis_, _Dianthus carthusianorum_, with other sand plants, were
+growing there. I planted the hill with a few birches, and all the plants
+I have mentioned completely disappeared, though there were many naked
+spots of sand between the trees. It should be added, however, that the
+hillock is more thickly wooded than before. * * * It seems then that
+_Sempervivum tectorum_, &c., will not bear the neighborhood of the
+birch, though growing well near the _Pinus sylvestris_. I have found the
+large red variety of _Agaricus deliciosus_ only among the roots of the
+pine; the greenish-blue _Agaricus deliciosus_ among alder roots, but not
+near any other tree. Birds have their partialities among trees and
+shrubs. The _Silviae_ prefer the _Pinus Larix_ to other trees. In my
+garden this _Pinus_ is never without them, but I never saw a bird perch
+on _Thuja occidenialis_ or _Juniperus sabina_, although the thick
+foliage of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the
+loose leafage of other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one
+of them. Perhaps the scent of the _Thuja_ and the _Juniperus_ is
+offensive to them. I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the
+bushes. It formerly bore grass four feet high, because many
+umbelliferous plants, such as _Heracleum spondylium_, _Spiraea ulmaria_,
+_Laserpitium latifolia_, &c., grew in it. Under the shelter of the
+bushes these plants ripened and bore seed, but they gradually
+disappeared as the shrubs were extirpated, and the grass now does not
+grow to the height of more than two feet, because it is no longer
+obliged to keep pace with the umbellifera which flourished among it."
+See a paper by J. G. BUeTTNER, of Kurland, in BERGHAUS' _Geographisches
+Jahrbuch_, 1852, No. 4, pp. 14, 15.
+
+These facts are interesting as illustrating the multitude of often
+obscure conditions upon which the life or vigorous growth of smaller
+organisms depends. Particular species of truffles and of mushrooms are
+found associated with particular trees, without being, as is popularly
+supposed, parasites deriving their nutriment from the dying or dead
+roots of those trees. The success of Rousseau's experiments seem
+decisive on this point, for he obtains larger crops of truffles from
+ground covered with young seedling oaks than from that filled with roots
+of old trees. See an article on Mont Ventoux, by Charles Martins, in the
+_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Avril, 1863, p. 626.
+
+It ought to be much more generally known than it is that most, if not,
+all mushrooms, even of the species reputed poisonous, may be rendered
+harmless and healthful as food by soaking them for two hours in
+acidulated or salt water. The water requires two or three spoonfuls of
+vinegar or two spoonfuls of gray salt to the quart, and a quart of water
+is enough for a pound of sliced mushrooms. After thus soaking, they are
+well washed in fresh water, thrown into cold water, which is raised to
+the boiling point, and, after remaining half an hour, taken out and
+again washed. Gerard, to prove that "crumpets is wholesome," ate one
+hundred and seventy-five pounds of the most poisonous mushrooms thus
+prepared, in a single month, fed his family _ad libitum_ with the same,
+and finally administered them, in heroic doses, to the members of a
+committee appointed by the Council of Health of the city of Paris. See
+FIGUIER, _L'Annee Scientifique_, 1862, pp. 353, 384. See _Appendix_, No.
+31.
+
+It has long been known that the Russian peasantry eat, with impunity,
+mushrooms of species everywhere else regarded as very poisonous. Is it
+not probable that the secret of rendering them harmless--which was known
+to Pliny, though since forgotten in Italy--is possessed by the rustic
+Muscovites?
+
+[264] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 486.
+
+[265] _Origin of Species_, American edition, p. 69.
+
+[266] Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where
+seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases,
+mentioned by Dr. Dwight (_Travels_, ii, pp. 438, 439), may be new to
+many readers:
+
+"The lands [in Panton, Vermont], which have here been once cultivated,
+and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and
+fine growth of hickory [_Carya porcina_]. Of this wood there is not, I
+believe, a single tree in any original forest within fifty miles from
+this spot. The native growth was here white pine, of which I did not see
+a single stem in a whole grove of hickory."
+
+The hickory is a walnut, bearing a fruit too heavy to be likely to be
+carried fifty miles by birds, and besides, I believe it is not eaten by
+any bird indigenous to Vermont.
+
+"A field, about five miles from Northampton, on an eminence called Rail
+Hill, was cultivated about a century ago. The native growth here, and in
+all the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, &c. As the field
+belonged to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its
+history. It contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular
+parallelogram. As the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was
+given up. On this ground there sprang up a grove of white pines covering
+the field and retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there
+was not in it a single oak or chestnut tree. * * * There was not a
+single pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been,
+sufficiently near to have been planted on this spot. The fact that these
+white pines covered this field exactly, so as to preserve both its
+extent and its figure, and that there were none in the neighborhood, are
+decisive proofs that cultivation brought up the seeds of a former forest
+within the limits of vegetation, and gave them an opportunity to
+germinate."
+
+[267] Quaint old Valvasor had observed the subduing influence of
+nature's solitudes. In describing the lonely Canker-Thal, which, though
+rocky, was in his time well wooded with "fir, larches, beeches, and
+other trees," he says: "Gladsomeness and beauty, which dwell in many
+valleys, may not be looked for there. The journey through it is
+cheerless, melancholy, wearisome, and serveth to temper and mortify
+over-joyousness of thought. * * * In sum it is a very wild, wherein the
+wildness of human pride doth grow tame."--_Ehre der Crain_, i, p. 136,
+b.
+
+[268] Valvasor says, in the same paragraph from which I have just
+quoted, "In my many journeys through this valley, I did never have sight
+of so much as a single bird."
+
+[269] Smela, in the government of Kiew, has, for some years, not
+suffered at all from the locusts, which formerly came every year in vast
+swarms, and the curculio, so injurious to the turnip crops, is less
+destructive there than in other parts of the province. This improvement
+is owing partly to the more thorough cultivation of the soil, partly to
+the groves which are interspersed among the plough lands. * * * When in
+the midst of the plains woods shall be planted and filled with
+insectivorous birds, the locusts will cease to be a plague and a terror
+to the farmer.--RENTZSCH, _Der Wald_, pp. 45, 46.
+
+[270] England is, I believe, the only country where private enterprise
+has pursued sylviculture on a really great scale, though admirable
+examples have been set in many others on both sides of the Atlantic. In
+England the law of primogeniture, and other institutions and national
+customs which tend to keep large estates long undivided and in the same
+line of inheritance, the wealth of the landholders, and the difficulty
+of finding safe and profitable investments of capital, combine to afford
+encouragements for the plantation of forests, which nowhere else exist
+in the same degree. The climate of England, too, is very favorable to
+the growth of forest trees, though the character of surface secures a
+large part of the island from the evils which have resulted from the
+destruction of the woods elsewhere, and therefore their restoration is a
+matter of less geographical importance in England than on the Continent.
+
+[271] The preservation of the woods on the eastern frontier of France,
+as a kind of natural abattis, is also recognized by the Government of
+that country as an important measure of military defence, though there
+have been conflicting opinions on the subject.
+
+[272] Let us take the supply of timber for railroad ties. According to
+Clave (p. 248), France has 9,000 kilometres of railway in operation,
+7,000 in construction, half of which is built with a double track.
+Adding turnouts and extra tracks at stations, the number of ties
+required for a single track is stated at 1,200 to the kilometre, or, as
+Clave computes, for the entire network of France, 58,000,000. As the
+schoolboys say, "this sum does not prove;" for 16,000 + 8,000 for the
+double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 x 1,200 = 28,800,000.
+According to Bigelow (_Les Etats Unis en 1863_, p. 439), the United
+States had in operation or construction on the first of January, 1862,
+51,000 miles, or about 81,000 kilometres of railroad, and the military
+operations of the present civil war are rapidly extending the system.
+Allowing the same proportion as in France, the American railroads
+required 97,200,000 ties in 1862. The consumption of timber in Europe
+and America during the present generation, occasioned by this demand,
+has required the sacrifice of many hundred thousand acres of forest, and
+if we add the quantity employed for telegraph posts, we have an amount
+of destruction, for entirely new purposes, which is really appalling.
+
+The consumption of wood for lucifer matches is enormous, and I have
+heard of several instances where tracts of pine forest, hundreds and
+even thousands of acres in extent, have been purchased and felled,
+solely to supply timber for this purpose.
+
+The demand for wood for small carvings and for children's toys is
+incredibly large. Rentzsch states the export of such objects from the
+town of Sonneberg alone to have amounted, in 1853, to 60,000 centner, or
+three thousand tons' weight.--_Der Wald_, p. 68. See _Appendix_, No. 33.
+
+The importance of so managing the forest that it may continue
+indefinitely to furnish an adequate supply of material for naval
+architecture is well illustrated by some remarks of the same author in
+the valuable little work just cited. He suggests that the prosperity of
+modern England is due, in no small degree, to the supplies of wood and
+other material for building and equipping ships, received from the
+forests of her colonies and of other countries with which she has
+maintained close commercial relations, and he adds: "Spain, which by her
+position seemed destined for universal power, and once, in fact,
+possessed it, has lost her political rank, because during the unwise
+administration of the successors of Philip II, the empty exchequer could
+not furnish the means of building new fleets; for the destruction of the
+forests had raised the price of timber above the resources of the
+state."--_Der Wald_, p. 63.
+
+The market price of timber, like that of all other commodities, may be
+said, in a general way, to be regulated by the laws of demand and
+supply, but it is also controlled by those seemingly unrelated accidents
+which so often disappoint the calculations of political economists in
+other branches of commerce. A curious case of this sort is noticed by
+CERINI, _Dell' Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi_, p. 17: "In the
+mountains on the Lago Maggiore, in years when maize is cheap, the
+woodcutters can provide themselves with corn meal enough for a week by
+three days' labor, and they refuse to work the remaining four. Hence the
+dealers in wood, not being able to supply the demand, for want of
+laborers, are obliged to raise the price for the following season, both
+for timber and for firewood; so that a low price of grain occasions a
+high price of building lumber and of fuel. The consequence is, that
+though the poor have supplied themselves cheaply with food, they must
+pay dear for firewood, and they cannot get work, because the high price
+of lumber has discouraged repairs and building, the expense of which
+landed proprietors cannot undertake when their incomes have been reduced
+by sales of grain at low rates, and hence there is not demand enough for
+lumber to induce the timber merchants to furnish employment to the
+woodmen."
+
+[273] Besides the substitution of iron for wood, a great saving of
+consumption of this latter material has been effected by the revival of
+ancient methods of increasing its durability, and the invention of new
+processes for the same purpose. The most effectual preservative yet
+discovered for wood employed on land, is sulphate of copper, a solution
+of which is introduced into the pores of the wood while green, by
+soaking, by forcing-pumps, or, most economically, by the simple pressure
+of a column of the fluid in a small pipe connected with the end of the
+piece of timber subjected to the treatment. Clave (_Etudes Forestieres_,
+pp. 240-249) gives an interesting account of the various processes
+employed for rendering wood imperishable, and states that railroad ties
+injected with sulphate of copper in 1846, were found absolutely
+unaltered in 1855; and telegraphic posts prepared two years earlier, are
+now in a state of perfect preservation.
+
+For many purposes, the method of injection is too expensive, and some
+simpler process is much to be desired. The question of the proper time
+of felling timber is not settled, and the best modes of air, water, and
+steam seasoning are not yet fully ascertained. Experiments on these
+subjects would be well worth the patronage of governments in new
+countries, where they can be very easily made, without the necessity of
+much waste of valuable material, and without expensive arrangements for
+observation.
+
+The practice of stripping living trees of their bark some years before
+they are felled, is as old as the time of Vitruvius, but is much less
+followed than it deserves, partly because the timber of trees so treated
+inclines to crack and split, and partly because it becomes so hard as to
+be wrought with considerable difficulty.
+
+In America, economy in the consumption of fuel has been much promoted by
+the substitution of coal for wood, the general use of stoves both for
+wood and coal, and recently by the employment of anthracite in the
+furnaces of stationary and locomotive steam-engines. All the objections
+to the use of anthracite for this latter purpose appear to have been
+overcome, and the improvements in its combustion have been attended with
+a great pecuniary saving, and with much advantage to the preservation of
+the woods.
+
+The employment of coal has produced a great reduction in the consumption
+of fire wood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of fire wood for the city
+required 1,200,000 steres, or cubic metres; in 1859, it had fallen to
+501,805, while, in the mean time, the consumption of coal had risen from
+600,000 to 432,000,000 metrical quintals. See CLAVE, _Etudes_, p. 212.
+
+I think there must be some error in this last sum, as 432 millions of
+metrical quintals would amount to 43 millions of tons, a quantity which
+it is difficult to suppose could be consumed in the city of Paris. The
+price of fire wood has scarcely advanced at all in Paris for half a
+century, though that of timber generally has risen enormously.
+
+[274] In the first two years of the present civil war in the United
+States, twenty-eight thousand walnut trees were felled to supply a
+single European manufactory of gunstocks for the American market.
+
+[275] Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of
+extensive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact, that wolves were
+abundant, not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are
+now neither wolves nor woods to shelter them. Arthur Young more than
+once speaks of the "innumerable multitudes" of these animals which
+infested France in 1789, and George Sand states, in the _Histoire de ma
+Vie_, that some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased
+travellers on horseback in the Southern provinces, and literally knocked
+at the doors of her father-in-law's country seat.
+
+[276] In the _Recepte Veritable_, Palissy having expressed his
+indignation at the folly of men in destroying the woods, his
+interlocutor defends the policy of felling them, by citing the example
+of "divers bishops, cardinals, priors, abbots, monkeries, and chapters,
+which, by cutting their woods, have made three profits," the sale of the
+timber, the rent of the ground, and the "good portion" they received of
+the grain grown by the peasants upon it. To this argument, Palissy
+replies: "I cannot enough detest this thing, and I call it not an error,
+but a curse and a calamity to all France; for when forests shall be cut,
+all arts shall cease, and they which practise them shall be driven out
+to eat grass with Nebuchadnezzar and the beasts of the field. I have
+divers times thought to set down in writing the arts which shall perish
+when there shall be no more wood; but when I had written down a great
+number, I did perceive that there could be no end of my writing, and
+having diligently considered, I found there was not any which could be
+followed without wood." * * "And truly I could well allege to thee a
+thousand reasons, but 'tis so cheap a philosophy, that the very chamber
+wenches, if they do but think, may see that without wood, it is not
+possible to exercise any manner of human art or cunning."--_[OE]uvres
+de_ BERNARD PALISSY, p. 89.
+
+[277] Since writing the above paragraph, I have found the view I have
+taken of this point confirmed by the careful investigations of Rentzsch,
+who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire surface at
+twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes that
+near the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation
+from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See
+Rentzsch's very valuable prize essay, _Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur
+und der Volkswirthschaft_, cap. viii.
+
+The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the
+German States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any
+growth but that of wood, because the form and geological character of
+her mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents,
+and because at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited
+both by extreme drought and by deluging rains.
+
+[278] _Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere_, p. 261. Clave adds (p. 262):
+"The Russian forests are very unequally distributed through the
+territory of this vast empire. In the north they form immense masses,
+and cover whole provinces, while in the south they are so completely
+wanting that the inhabitants have no other fuel than straw, dung,
+rushes, and heath." * * * "At Moscow, firewood costs thirty per cent.
+more than at Paris, while, at the distance of a few leagues, it sells
+for a tenth of that price."
+
+This state of things is partly due to the want of facilities of
+transportation, and some parts of the United States are in a similar
+condition. During a severe winter, six or seven years ago, the sudden
+freezing of the canals and rivers, before a large American town had
+received its usual supply of fuel, occasioned an enormous rise in the
+price of wood and coal, and the poor suffered severely for want of it.
+Within a few hours of the city were large forests and an abundant stock
+of firewood felled and prepared for burning. This might easily have been
+carried to town by the railroads which passed through the woods; but the
+managers of the roads refused to receive it as freight, because the
+opening of a new market for wood might raise the price of the fuel they
+employed for their locomotives.
+
+Hohenstein, who was long professionally employed as a forester in
+Russia, describes the consequences of the general war upon the woods in
+that country as already most disastrous, and as threatening still more
+ruinous evils. The river Volga, the life artery of Russian internal
+commerce, is drying up from this cause, and the great Muscovite plains
+are fast advancing to a desolation like that of Persia.--_Der Wald_, p.
+223.
+
+The level of the Caspian Sea is eighty-three feet lower than that of the
+Sea of Azoff, and the surface of Lake Aral is fast sinking. Von Baer
+maintains that the depression of the Caspian was produced by a sudden
+subsidence, from geological causes, and not gradually by excess of
+evaporation over supply. See _Kaspische Studien_, p. 25. But this
+subsidence diminished the area and consequently the evaporation of that
+sea, and the rivers which once maintained its ancient equilibrium ought
+to raise it to its former level, if their own flow had not been
+diminished. It is, indeed, not proved that the laying bare of a wooded
+country diminishes the total annual precipitation upon it; but it is
+certain that the summer evaporation from the surface of a champaign
+region, like that through which the Volga, its tributaries, and the
+feeders of Lake Aral flow, is increased by the removal of its woods.
+Hence, though as much rain may still fall in the valleys of those rivers
+as when their whole surface was covered with forests, a less quantity of
+water may be delivered by them since their basins were cleared, and
+therefore the present condition of the inland waters in question may be
+due to the removal of the forests in their basins.
+
+[279] Rentzsch _(Der Wald, etc._, pp. 123, 124) states the proportions
+of woodland in different European countries as follows:
+
+  ---------------+----------+-----------
+                 |          |Acres per
+                 | Per cent.| head of
+                 |          |population.
+  ---------------+----------+-----------
+  Germany        |   26.58  |  0.6638
+  Great Britain  |    5.    |  0.1
+  France         |   16.79  |  0.3766
+  Russia         |   30.90  |  4.28
+  Sweden         |   60.    |  8.55
+  Norway         |   66.    | 24.61
+  Denmark        |    5.50  |  0.22
+  Switzerland    |   15.    |  0.396
+  Holland        |    7.10  |  0.12
+  Belgium        |   18.52  |  0.186
+  Spain          |    5.52  |  0.291
+  Portugal       |    4.40  |  0.182
+  Sardinia       |   12.29  |  0.223
+  Naples         |    9.43  |  0.138
+  ---------------+----------+-----------
+
+Probably no European countries can so well dispense with the forests, in
+their capacity of conservative influences, as England and Ireland. Their
+insular position and latitude secure an abundance of atmospheric
+moisture, and the general inclination of surface is not such as to
+expose it to special injury from torrents. The due proportion of
+woodland in England and Ireland is, therefore, almost purely an
+economical question, to be decided by the comparative direct pecuniary
+return from forest growth, pasturage, and plough land.
+
+In Scotland, where the country is for the most part more broken and
+mountainous, the general destruction of the forests has been attended
+with very serious evils, and it is in Scotland that many of the most
+extensive British forest plantations have now been formed. But although
+the inclination of surface in Scotland is rapid, the geological
+constitution of the soil is not of a character to promote such
+destructive degradation by running water as in Southern France, and it
+has not to contend with the parching droughts by which the devastations
+of the torrents are rendered more injurious in that part of the French
+empire.
+
+In giving the proportion of woodland to population, I compute Rentzsch's
+Morgen at .3882 of an English acre, because I find, by Alexander's most
+accurate and valuable Dictionary of Weights and Measures, that this is
+the value of the Dresden Morgen, and Rentzsch is a Saxon writer. In the
+different German States, there are more than twenty different land
+measures known by the name of Morgen, varying from about one third of an
+acre to more than three acres in value. When will the world be wise
+enough to unite in adopting the French metrical and monetary systems? As
+to the latter, never while Christendom continues to be ruled by money
+changers, who can compel you to part with your sovereigns in France at
+twenty-five francs, and in England to accept fifteen shillings for your
+napoleons. I speak as a sufferer. _Experto crede Roberto._
+
+[280] According to the maxims of English jurisprudence, the common law
+consists of general customs so long established that "the memory of man
+runneth not to the contrary." In other words, long custom makes law. In
+new countries, the change of circumstances creates new customs, and, in
+time, new law, without the aid of legislation. Had the American
+colonists observed a more sparing economy in the treatment of their
+woods, a new code of customary forest law would have sprung up and
+acquired the force of a statute. Popular habit was fast elaborating the
+fundamental principles of such a code, when the rapid increase in the
+value of timber, in consequence of the reckless devastation of the
+woodlands, made it the interest of the proprietors to interfere with
+this incipient system of forest jurisprudence, and appeal to the rules
+of English law for the protection of their woods. The courts have
+sustained these appeals, and forest property is now legally as
+inviolable as any other, though common opinion still combats the course
+of judicial decision on such questions.
+
+In the United States, swarms of honey bees, on leaving the parent hive,
+often take up their quarters in hollow trees in the neighboring woods.
+By the early customs of New England, the finder of a "bee tree" on the
+land of another owner was regarded as entitled to the honey by right of
+discovery; and as a necessary incident of that right, he might cut the
+tree, at the proper season, without asking permission of the proprietor
+of the soil. The quantity of "wild honey" in a tree was often large, and
+"bee hunting" was so profitable that it became almost a regular
+profession. The "bee hunter" sallied forth with a small box containing
+honey and a little vermilion. The bees which were attracted by the honey
+marked themselves with the vermilion, and hence were more readily
+followed in their homeward flight, and recognized when they returned a
+second time for booty. When loaded with spoil, this insect returns to
+his hive by the shortest route, and hence a straight line is popularly
+called in America a "bee line." By such a line, the hunter followed the
+bees to their sylvan hive, marked the tree with his initials, and
+returned to secure his prize in the autumn. When the right of the "bee
+hunter" was at last disputed by the land proprietors, it was with
+difficulty that judgments could be obtained, in inferior courts, in
+favor of the latter, and it was only after repeated decisions of the
+higher legal tribunals that the superior right of the owner of the soil
+was at last acquiesced in.
+
+[281] _Etude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes_, p. 5.
+
+[282] "In America," says Clave (p. 124, 125), "where there is a vast
+extent of land almost without pecuniary value, but where labor is dear
+and the rate of interest high, it is profitable to till a large surface
+at the least possible cost; _extensive_ cultivation is there the most
+advantageous. In England, France, and Germany, where every corner of
+soil is occupied, and the least bit of ground is sold at a high price,
+but where labor and capital are comparatively cheap, it is wisest to
+employ _intensive_ cultivation. * * * All the efforts of the cultivator
+ought to be directed to the obtaining of a given result with the least
+sacrifice, and there is equally a loss to the commonwealth if the
+application of improved agricultural processes be neglected where
+they are advantageous, or if they be employed where they are not
+required. * * * In this point of view, sylviculture must follow the same
+laws as agriculture, and, like it, be modified according to the
+economical conditions of different states. In countries abounding in
+good forests, and thinly peopled, elementary and cheap methods must be
+pursued; in civilized regions, where a dense population requires that
+the soil shall be made to produce all it can yield, the regular
+artificial forest, with all the processes that science teaches, should
+be cultivated. It would be absurd to apply to the endless woods of
+Brazil and of Canada the method of the Spessart by "double stages," and
+not less so in our country, where every yard of ground has a high value,
+to leave to nature the task of propagating trees, and to content
+ourselves with cutting, every twenty or twenty-five years, the meagre
+growths that chance may have produced."
+
+[283] It is often laid down as a universal law, that the wood of trees
+of slow vegetation is superior to that of quick growth. This is one of
+those commonplaces by which men love to shield themselves from the labor
+of painstaking observation. It has, in fact, so many exceptions, that it
+may be doubted whether it is in any sense true. Most of the cedars are
+slow of growth; but while the timber of some of them is firm and
+durable, that of others is light, brittle, and perishable. The hemlock
+spruce is slower of growth than the pines, but its wood is of very
+little value. The pasture oak and beech show a breadth of grain--and, of
+course, an annual increment--twice as great as trees of the same species
+grown in the woods; and the American locust, _Robinia pseudacacia_, the
+wood of which is of extreme toughness and durability, is, of all trees
+indigenous to Northeastern America, by far the most rapid in growth.
+
+As an illustration of the mutual interdependence of the mechanic arts, I
+may mention that in Italy, where stone, brick, and plaster are almost
+the only materials used in architecture, and where the "hollow ware"
+kitchen implements are of copper or of clay, the ordinary tools for
+working wood are of a very inferior description, and the locust timber
+is found too hard for their temper. Southey informs us, in "Espriella's
+Letters," that when a small quantity of mahogany was brought to England,
+early in the last century, the cabinetmakers were unable to use it, from
+the defective temper of their tools, until the demand for furniture from
+the new wood compelled them to improve the quality of their implements.
+In America, the cheapness of wood long made it the preferable material
+for almost all purposes to which it could by any possibility be applied.
+The mechanical cutlery and artisans' tools of the United States are of
+admirable temper, finish, and convenience, and no wood is too hard, or
+otherwise too refractory, to be wrought with great facility, both by
+hand tools and by the multitude of ingenious machines which the
+Americans have invented for this purpose.
+
+[284] _Etudes Forestieres_, p. 7.
+
+[285] _Etudes Forestieres_, p. 7.
+
+[286] For very full catalogues of American forest trees, and remarks on
+their geographical distribution, consult papers on the subject by Dr. J.
+G. Cooper, in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1858, and
+the Report of the United States Patent Office, Agricultural Division,
+for 1860.
+
+[287] Although Spenser's catalogue of trees occurs in the first canto of
+the first book of the "Faery Queene"--the only canto of that exquisite
+poem actually read by most students of English literature--it is not so
+generally familiar as to make the quotation of it altogether
+superfluous:
+
+VII.
+
+  Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand,
+  A shadie grove not farr away they spide,
+  That promist ayde the tempest to withstand;
+  Whose loftie trees, yelad with sommers pride,
+  Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide,
+  Not perceable with power of any starr:
+  And all within were pathes and alleies wide,
+  With footing worne, and leading inward farr;
+  Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entred ar.
+
+VIII.
+
+  And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led,
+  Joying to heare the birdes sweete harmony,
+  Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred,
+  Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky.
+  Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy,
+  The sayling pine; the cedar stout and tall;
+  The vine-propp elm; the poplar never dry;
+  The builder oake, sole king of forrests all;
+  The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall;
+
+IX.
+
+  The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours
+  And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still;
+  The willow, worne of forlorn paramours;
+  The eugh, obedient to the benders will;
+  The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill;
+  The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound;
+  The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill;
+  The fruitfull olive; and the platane round;
+  The carver holme; the maple seeldom inward sound.
+
+
+[288] The walnut is a more valuable tree than is generally supposed. It
+yields one third of the oil produced in France, and in this respect
+occupies an intermediate position between the olive of the south, and
+the oleaginous seeds of the north. A hectare (about two and a half
+acres), will produce nuts to the value of five hundred francs a year,
+which cost nothing but the gathering. Unfortunately, its maturity must
+be long waited for, and more nut-trees are felled than planted. The
+demand for its wood in cabinet work is the principal cause of its
+destruction. See LAVERGNE, _Economie Rurale de la France_, p. 253.
+
+According to Cosimo Ridolfi (Lezioni Orali, ii. p. 424), France obtains
+three times as much oil from the walnut as from the olive, and nearly as
+much as from all oleaginous seeds together. He states that the walnut
+bears nuts at the age of twenty years, and yields its maximum product at
+seventy, and that a hectare of ground, with thirty trees, or twelve to
+the acre, is equal to a capital of twenty-five hundred francs.
+
+The nut of this tree is known in the United States as the "English
+walnut." The fruit and the wood much resemble those of the American
+black walnut, _Juglans nigra_, but for cabinet work the American is the
+more beautiful material, especially when the large knots are employed.
+The timber of the European species, when straight grained, and _clear_,
+or free from knots, is, for ordinary purposes, better than that of the
+American black walnut, but bears no comparison with the wood of the
+hickory, when strength combined with elasticity is required, and its nut
+is very inferior in taste to that of the shagbark, as well as to the
+butternut, which it somewhat resembles.
+
+"The chestnut is more valuable still, for it produces on a sterile soil,
+which, without it, would yield only ferns and heaths, an abundant
+nutriment for man."--LAVERGNE, _Economie Rurale de la France_, p. 253.
+
+I believe the varieties developed by cultivation are less numerous in
+the walnut than in the chestnut, which latter tree is often grafted in
+Southern Europe.
+
+[289] This fir is remarkable for its tendency to cicatrize or heal over
+its stumps, a property which it possesses in common with some other
+firs, the maritime pine, and the European larch. When these trees grow
+in thick clumps, their roots are apt to unite by a species of natural
+grafting, and if one of them be felled, although its own proper rootlets
+die, the stump may continue, sometimes for a century, to receive
+nourishment from the radicles of the surrounding trees, and a dome of
+wood and bark of considerable thickness be formed over it. The
+cicatrization is, however, only apparent, for the entire stump, except
+the outside ring of annual growth, soon dies, and even decays within its
+covering, without sending out new shoots.
+
+[290] At the age of twelve or fifteen years, the cork tree is stripped
+of its outer bark for the first time. This first yield is of inferior
+quality, and is employed for floats for nets and buoys, or burnt for
+lampblack. After this, a new layer of cork, an inch or an inch and a
+quarter in thickness, is formed about once in ten years, and is removed
+in large sheets without injury to the tree, which lives a hundred and
+fifty years or more. According to Clave (p. 252), the annual product of
+a forest of cork oaks is calculated at about 660 kilogrammes, worth 150
+francs, to the hectare, which, deducting expenses, leaves a profit of
+100 francs. This is about equal to 250 pound weight, and eight dollars
+profit to the acre. The cork oaks of the national domain in Algeria
+cover about 500,000 acres, and are let to individuals at rates which are
+expected, when the whole is rented, to yield to the state a revenue of
+about $2,000,000.
+
+George Sand, in the _Histoire de ma Vie_, speaks of the cork forests in
+Southern France as among the most profitable of rural possessions, and
+states, what I do not remember to have seen noticed elsewhere, that
+Russia is the best customer for cork. The large sheets taken from the
+trees are slit into thin plates, and used to line the walls of
+apartments in that cold climate.
+
+[291] The walnut, the chestnut, the apple, and the pear are common to
+the border between the countries I have mentioned, but the range of the
+other trees is bounded by the Alps, and by a well-defined and sharply
+drawn line to the west of those mountains. I cannot give statistical
+details as to the number of any of the trees in question, or as to the
+area they would cover if brought together in a given country. From some
+peculiarity in the sky of Europe, cultivated plants will thrive, in
+Northern Italy, in Southern France, and even in Switzerland, under a
+depth of shade where no crop, not even grass, worth harvesting, would
+grow in the United States with an equally high summer temperature. Hence
+the cultivation of all these trees is practicable in Europe to a greater
+extent than would be supposed reconcilable with the interests of
+agriculture. Some idea of the importance of the olive orchards may be
+formed from the fact that Sicily alone, an island scarcely exceeding
+10,000 square miles in area, of which one third at least is absolutely
+barren, has exported to the single port of Marseilles more than
+2,000,000 pounds weight of olive oil per year, for the last twenty
+years.
+
+[292] It is hard to say how far the peculiar form of the graceful crown
+of this pine is due to pruning. It is true that the extremities of the
+topmost branches are rarely lopped, but the lateral boughs are almost
+uniformly removed to a very considerable height, and it is not
+improbable that the shape of the top is thereby affected.
+
+[293] Besides this, in a country so diversified in surface--I wish we
+could with the French say _accidented_--as Italy with the exception of
+the champaign region drained by the Po, every new field of view requires
+either an extraordinary _coup d'[oe]il_ in the spectator, or a long
+study, in order to master its relief, its plans, its salient and
+retreating angles. In summer, the universal greenery confounds light and
+shade, distance and foreground; and though the impression upon a
+traveller, who journeys for the sake of "sensations," may be
+strengthened by the mysterious annihilation of all standards for the
+measurement of space, yet the superior intelligibility of the winter
+scenery of Italy is more profitable to those who see with a view to
+analyze.
+
+[294] Copse, or coppice, from the French _couper_, to cut, signifies
+properly a wood the trees of which are cut at certain periods of
+immature growth, and allowed to shoot up again from the roots; but it
+has come to signify, very commonly, a young wood, grove, or thicket,
+without reference to its origin, or to its character of a forest crop.
+
+[295] It has been recently stated, upon the evidence of the Government
+foresters of Greece, and of the queen's gardener, that a large wood has
+been discovered in Arcadia, consisting of a fir which has the property
+of sending up both vertical and lateral shoots from the stump of felled
+trees and forming a new crown. It was at first supposed that this forest
+grew only on the "mountains," of which the hero of About's most amusing
+story, _Le Roi des Montagnes_, was "king;" but it is now said that small
+stumps, with the shoots attached, have been sent to Germany, and
+recognized by able botanists as true natural products.
+
+[296] Natural forests are rarely, if ever, composed of trees of a single
+species, and experience has shown that oaks and other broad-leaved
+trees, planted as artificial woods, require to be mixed, or associated
+with others of different habits.
+
+In the forest of Fontainebleau, "oaks, mingled with beeches in due
+proportion," says Clave, "may arrive at the age of five or six hundred
+years in full vigor, and attain dimensions which I have never seen
+surpassed; when, however, they are wholly unmixed with other trees, they
+begin to decay and die at the top, at the age of forty or fifty years,
+like men, old before their time, weary of the world, and longing only to
+quit it. This has been observed in most of the oak plantations of which
+I have spoken, and they have not been able to attain to full growth.
+When the vegetation was perceived to languish, they were cut, in the
+hope that this operation would restore their vigor, and that the new
+shoots would succeed better than the original trees; and, in fact, they
+seemed to be recovering for the first few years. But the shoots were
+soon attacked by the same decay, and the operation had to be renewed at
+shorter and shorter intervals, until at last it was found necessary to
+treat as coppices plantations originally designed for the full-growth
+system. Nor was this all: the soil, periodically bared by these
+cuttings, became impoverished, and less and less suited to the growth of
+the oak. * * * It was then proposed to introduce the pine and plant with
+it the vacancies and glades. * * * By this means, the forest was saved
+from the ruin which threatened it, and now more than 10,000 acres of
+pines, from fifteen to thirty years old, are disseminated at various
+points, sometimes intermixed with broad-leaved trees, sometimes forming
+groves by themselves."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, pp. 153,
+154.
+
+The forests of Denmark, which, in modern times, have been succeeded by
+the beech--a species more inclined to be exclusive than any other
+broad-leaved tree--were composed of birches, oaks, firs, aspens,
+willows, hazel, and maple, the first three being the leading species. At
+present, the beech greatly predominates.--VAUPELL, _Boegens Indvandring_,
+pp. 19, 20.
+
+[297] _Etudes Forestieres_, p. 89.
+
+[298] The grounds which it is most important to clothe with wood as a
+conservative influence, and which, also, can best be spared from
+agricultural use, are steep hillsides. But the performance of all the
+offices of the forester to the tree--seeding, planting, thinning, and
+finally felling and removing for consumption--is more laborious upon a
+rapid declivity than on a level soil, and at the same time it is
+difficult to apply irrigation or manures to trees so situated.
+Experience has shown that there is great advantage in terracing the face
+of a hill before planting it, both as preventing the wash of the earth
+by checking the flow of water down its slope, and as presenting a
+surface favorable for irrigation, as well as for manuring and
+cultivating the tree. But even without so expensive a process, very
+important results have been obtained by simply ditching declivities. "In
+order to hasten the growth of wood on the flanks of a mountain, Mr.
+Eugene Chevandier divided the slope into zones forty or fifty feet wide,
+by horizontal ditches closed at both ends, and thereby obtained, from
+firs of different ages, shoots double the dimensions of those which grew
+on a dry soil of the same character, where the water was allowed to run
+off without obstruction."--DUMONT, _Des Travaux Publics, etc._, pp.
+94-96.
+
+The ditches were about two feet and a half deep, and three feet and a
+half wide, and they cost about forty francs the hectare, or three
+dollars the acre. This extraordinary growth was produced wholly by the
+retention of the rain water in the ditches, whence it filtered through
+the whole soil and supplied moisture to the roots of the trees. It may
+be doubted whether in a climate cold enough to freeze the entire
+contents of the ditches in winter, it would not be expedient to draw off
+the water in the autumn, as the presence of so large a quantity of ice
+in the soil might prove injurious to trees too young and small to
+shelter the ground effectually against frost.
+
+Chevandier computes that, if the annual growth of the pine in the marshy
+soil of the Vosges be represented by one, it will equal two in dry
+ground, four or five on slopes so ditched or graded as to retain the
+water flowing upon them from roads or steep declivities, and six where
+the earth is kept constantly moist by infiltration from running
+brooks.--_Comptes Rendus a l'Academie des Sciences_--t. xix, Juillet,
+Dec., 1844, p. 167.
+
+The effect of accidental irrigation is well shown in the growth of the
+trees planted along the canals of irrigation which traverse the fields
+in many parts of Italy. They flourish most luxuriantly, in spite of
+continual lopping, and yield a very important contribution to the stock
+of fuel for domestic use; while trees, situated so far from canals as to
+be out of the reach of infiltration from them, are of much slower
+growth, under circumstances otherwise equally favorable.
+
+In other experiments of Chevandier, under better conditions, the yield
+of wood was increased, by judicious irrigation, in the ratio of seven to
+one, the profits in that of twelve to one. At the Exposition of 1855,
+Chambrelent exhibited young trees, which, in four years from the seed,
+had grown to the height of sixteen and twenty feet, and the diameter of
+ten and twelve inches. Chevandier experimented with various manures, and
+found that some of them might be profitably applied to young, but not to
+old trees, the quantity required in the latter case being too great.
+Wood ashes and the refuse of soda factories are particularly
+recommended. I have seen an extraordinary growth produced in fir trees
+by the application of soapsuds.
+
+[299] Although the economy of the forest has received little attention
+in the United States, no lover of American nature can have failed to
+observe a marked difference between a native wood from which cattle are
+excluded and one where they are permitted to browse. A few seasons
+suffice for the total extirpation of the "underbrush," including the
+young trees on which alone the reproduction of the forest depends, and
+all the branches of those of larger growth which hang within reach of
+the cattle are stripped of their buds and leaves, and soon wither and
+fall off. These effects are observable at a great distance, and a wood
+pasture is recognized, almost as far as it can be seen, by the
+regularity with which its lower foliage terminates at what Ruskin
+somewhere calls the "cattle line." This always runs parallel to the
+surface of the ground, and is determined by the height to which domestic
+quadrupeds can reach to feed upon the leaves. In describing a visit to
+the grand-ducal farm of San Rossore near Pisa, where a large herd of
+camels is kept, Chateauvieux says: "In passing through a wood of
+evergreen oaks, I observed that all the twigs and foliage of the trees
+were clipped up to the height of about twelve feet above the ground,
+without leaving a single spray below that level. I was informed that the
+browsing of the camels had trimmed the trees as high as they could
+reach."--LULLIN DE CHATEAUVIEUX, _Lettres sur l'Italie_, p. 113.
+
+The removal of the shelter afforded by the brushwood and the pendulous
+branches of trees permits drying and chilling winds to parch and cool
+the ground, and of course injuriously affects the growth of the wood.
+But this is not all. The tread of quadrupeds exposes and bruises the
+roots of the trees, which often die from this cause, as any one may
+observe by following the paths made by cattle through woodlands.
+
+[300] I have remarked elsewhere that most insects which deposit and
+hatch their eggs in the wood of the natural forest confine themselves to
+dead trees. Not only is this the fact, but it is also true that many of
+the borers attack only freshly cut timber. Their season of labor is a
+short one, and unless the tree is cut during this period, it is safe
+from them. In summer you may hear them plying their augers in the wood
+of a young pine with soft green bark, as you sit upon its trunk, within
+a week after it has been felled, but the windfalls of the winter lie
+uninjured by the worm and even undecayed for centuries. In the pine
+woods of New England, after the regular lumberman has removed the
+standing trees, these old trunks are hauled out from the mosses and
+leaves which half cover them, and often furnish excellent timber. The
+slow decay of such timber in the woods, it may be remarked, furnishes
+another proof of the uniformity of temperature and humidity in the
+forest, for the trunk of a tree lying on grass or plough land, and of
+course exposed to all the alternations of climate, hardly resists
+complete decomposition for a generation. The forests of Europe exhibit
+similar facts. Wessely, in a description of the primitive wood of
+Neuwald in Lower Austria, says that the windfalls required from 150 to
+200 years for entire decay.-_-Die Oesterreichischen Alpenlaender und ihre
+Forste_, p. 312.
+
+[301] VAUPELL, _Boegens Indvandring i de Danske Skove_, pp. 29, 46.
+Vaupell further observes, on the page last quoted: "The removal of
+leaves is injurious to the forest, not only because it retards the
+growth of trees, but still more because it disqualifies the soil for the
+production of particular species. When the beech languishes, and the
+development of its branches is less vigorous and its crown less
+spreading, it becomes unable to resist the encroachments of the fir.
+This latter tree thrives in an inferior soil, and being no longer
+stifled by the thick foliage of the beech, it spreads gradually through
+the wood, while the beech retreats before it and finally perishes."
+
+The study of the natural order of succession in forest trees is of the
+utmost importance in sylviculture, because it guides us in the selection
+of the species to be employed in planting a new or restoring a decayed
+forest. When ground is laid bare both of trees and of vegetable mould,
+and left to the action of unaided and unobstructed nature, she first
+propagates trees which germinate and grow only under the influence of a
+full supply of light and air, and then, in succession, other species,
+according to their ability to bear the shade and their demand for more
+abundant nutriment. In Northern Europe, the larch, the white birch, the
+aspen, first appear; then follow the maple, the alder, the ash, the fir;
+then the oak and the linden; and then the beech. The trees called by
+these respective names in the United States are not specifically the
+same as their European namesakes, nor are they always even the
+equivalents of these latter, and therefore the order of succession in
+America would not be precisely as indicated by the foregoing list, but
+it nevertheless very nearly corresponds to it.
+
+It is thought important to encourage the growth of the beech in Denmark
+and Northern Germany, because it upon the whole yields better returns
+than other trees, and particularly because it appears not to exhaust,
+but on the contrary to enrich the soil; for by shedding its leaves it
+returns to it most of the nutriment it has drawn from it, and at the
+same time furnishes a solvent which aids materially in the decomposition
+of its mineral constituents.
+
+When the forest is left to itself, the order of succession is constant,
+and its occasional inversion is always explicable by some human
+interference. It is curious that the trees which require most light are
+content with the poorest soils, and _vice versa_. The trees which first
+appear are also those which propagate themselves farthest to the north.
+The birch, the larch, and the fir bear a severer climate than the oak,
+the oak than the beech. "These parallelisms," says Vaupell, "are very
+interesting, because they are entirely independent of each other," and
+each prescribes the same order of succession.--_Boegens Indvandring_, p.
+42.
+
+[302] When vigorous young locusts, of two or three inches in diameter,
+are polled, they throw out a great number of very thick-leaved shoots,
+which arrange themselves in a globular head, so unlike the natural crown
+of the acacia, that persons familiar only with the untrained tree often
+take them for a different species.
+
+[303] The two ideas expressed in the text are not exactly equivalent,
+because, though the consumption of animal food diminishes the amount of
+vegetable aliment required for human use, yet the animals themselves
+consume a great quantity of grain and roots grown on ground ploughed and
+cultivated as regularly and as laboriously as any other.
+
+The 170,000,000 bushels of oats raised in the United States in 1860, and
+fed to the 6,000,000 horses, the potatoes, the turnips, and the maize
+employed in fattening the oxen, the sheep, and the swine slaughtered the
+same year, occupied an extent of ground which, cultivated by hand labor
+and with Chinese industry and skill, would probably have produced a
+quantity of vegetable food equal in alimentary power to the flesh of the
+quadrupeds killed for domestic use. Hence, so far as the naked question
+of _amount_ of aliment is concerned, the meadows and the pastures might
+as well have remained in the forest condition.
+
+[304] According to Clave (_Etudes_, p. 159), the net revenue from the
+forests of the state in France, making no allowance for interest on the
+capital represented by the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it
+is about the same, though the cost of administration is twice as much as
+in France; in Wuertemberg it is about a dollar an acre; and in Prussia,
+where half the income is consumed in the expenses of administration, it
+sinks to less than half a dollar. This low rate in Prussia is partly
+explained by the fact that a considerable proportion of the annual
+product of wood is either conceded to persons claiming prescriptive
+rights, or sold, at a very small price, to the poor. Taking into account
+the capital invested in forest land, and adding interest upon it,
+Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with a view to felling it
+when eighty years old, would yield only one eighth of one per cent.
+annual profit; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one sixth of one per
+cent.; a beech wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one fourth of one
+per cent. The same author (p. 335) gives the net income of the New
+forest in England, over and above expenses, interest not computed, at
+twenty-five cents per acre only. In America, where no expense is
+bestowed upon the woods, the annual growth would generally be estimated
+much higher.
+
+[305] It is rare that a middle-aged American dies in the house where he
+was born, or an old man even in that which he has built; and this is
+scarcely less true of the rural districts, where every man owns his
+habitation, than of the city, where the majority live in hired houses.
+This life of incessant flitting is unfavorable for the execution of
+permanent improvements of every sort, and especially of those which,
+like the forest, are slow in repaying any part of the capital expended
+in them. It requires a very generous spirit in a landholder to plant a
+wood on a farm he expects to sell, or which he knows will pass out of
+the hands of his descendants at his death. But the very fact of having
+begun a plantation would attach the proprietor more strongly to the soil
+for which he had made such a sacrifice; and the paternal acres would
+have a greater value in the eyes of a succeeding generation, if thus
+improved and beautified by the labors of those from whom they were
+inherited. Landed property, therefore, the transfer of which is happily
+free from every legal impediment or restriction in the United States,
+would find, in the feelings thus prompted, a moral check against a too
+frequent change of owners, and would tend to remain long enough in one
+proprietor or one family to admit of gradual improvements which would
+increase its value both to the possessor and to the state.
+
+[306] It has been often asserted by eminent writers that a part of the
+fens in Lincolnshire was reclaimed by sea dikes under the government of
+the Romans. I have found no ancient authority in support of this
+allegation, nor can I refer to any passage in Roman literature in which
+sea dikes are expressly mentioned otherwise than as walls or piers,
+except that in Pliny (_Hist. Nat._ xxxvi, 24), where it is said that the
+Tyrrhenian sea was excluded from the Lucrine lake by dikes.
+
+[307] A friend has recently suggested to me an interesting illustration
+of the applicability of military instrumentalities to pacific art. The
+sale of gunpowder in the United States, he informs me, is smaller since
+the commencement of the present rebellion than before, because the war
+has caused the suspension of many public and private improvements, in
+the execution of which great quantities of powder were used for
+blasting.
+
+It is alleged that the same observation was made in France during the
+Crimean war, and that, in general, not ten per cent. of the powder
+manufactured on either side of the Atlantic is employed for military
+purposes.
+
+It is a fact not creditable to the moral sense of modern civilization,
+that very many of the most important improvements in machinery and the
+working of metals have originated in the necessities of war, and that
+man's highest ingenuity has been shown, and many of his most remarkable
+triumphs over natural forces achieved, in the contrivance of engines for
+the destruction of his fellow man. The military material employed by the
+first Napoleon has become, in less than two generations, nearly as
+obsolete as the sling and stone of the shepherd, and attack and defence
+now begin at distances to which, half a century ago, military
+reconnoissances hardly extended. Upon a partial view of the subject, the
+human race seems destined to become its own executioner--on the one
+hand, exhausting the capacity of the earth to furnish sustenance to her
+taskmaster; on the other, compensating diminished production by
+inventing more efficient methods of exterminating the consumer.
+
+But war develops great civil virtues, and brings into action a degree
+and kind of physical energy which seldom fails to awaken a new
+intellectual life in a people that achieves great moral and political
+results through great heroism and endurance and perseverance. Domestic
+corruption has destroyed more nations than foreign invasion, and a
+people is rarely conquered till it has deserved subjugation.
+
+[308] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 150.
+
+[309] Idem, p. 163. Much the largest proportion of the lands so
+reclaimed, though for the most part lying above low-water tidemark, are
+at a lower level than the Lincolnshire fens, and more subject to
+inundation from the irruptions of the sea.
+
+[310] _Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthuemer Schleswig und Holstein_,
+iii, p. 151.
+
+[311] The purely agricultural island of Pelworm, off the coast of
+Schleswig, containing about 10,000 acres, annually expends for the
+maintenance of its dikes not less than L6,000 sterling, or nearly
+$30,000.--J. G. KOHL, _Inseln und Marschen Schleswig's und Holstein's_,
+ii, p. 394.
+
+The original cost of the dikes of Pelworm is not stated.
+
+"The greatest part of the province of Zeeland is protected by dikes
+measuring 250 miles in length, the maintenance of which costs, in
+ordinary years, more than a million guilders [above $400,000]. * * * The
+annual expenditure for dikes and hydraulic works in Holland is from five
+to seven million guilders" [$2,000,000 to $2,800,000].--WILD, _Die
+Niederlande_, i, p. 62.
+
+One is not sorry to learn that the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands
+had some compensations. The great chain of ring dikes which surrounds a
+large part of Zeeland is due to the energy of Caspar de Robles, the
+Spanish governor of that province, who in 1570 ordered the construction
+of these works at the public expense, as a substitute for the private
+embankments which had previously partially served the same
+purpose.--WILD, _Die Niederlande_, i, p. 62.
+
+[312] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 163.
+
+[313] _Voormaals en Thans_, pp. 150, 151.
+
+[314] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 152. Kohl states that the
+peninsula of Diksand on the coast of Holstein consisted, at the close of
+the last century, of several islands measuring together less than five
+thousand acres. In 1837 they had been connected with the mainland, and
+had nearly doubled in area.--_Inseln u. Marschen Schlesw. Holst._, iii,
+p. 262.
+
+[315] The most instructive and entertaining of tourists, J. G. Kohl--so
+aptly characterized by Davies as the "Herodotus of modern
+Europe"--furnishes a great amount of interesting information on the
+dikes of the Low German seacoast, in his _Inseln und Marschen der
+Herzogthuemer Schleswig und Holstein_. I am acquainted with no popular
+work on this subject which the reader can consult with greater profit.
+See also STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, and _De Bodem van Nederland_, on
+the dikes of the Netherlands.
+
+[316] The inclination varies from one foot rise in four of base to one
+foot in fourteen.--KOHL, iii, p. 210.
+
+[317] The dikes are sometimes founded upon piles, and sometimes
+protected by one or more rows of piles driven deeply down into the bed
+of the sea in front of them. "Triple rows of piles of Scandinavian
+pine," says Wild, "have been driven down along the coast of Friesland,
+where there are no dunes, for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles.
+The piles are bound together by strong cross timbers and iron clamps,
+and the interstices filled with stones. The ground adjacent to the
+piling is secured with fascines, and at exposed points heavy blocks of
+stone are heaped up as an additional protection. The earth dike is built
+behind the mighty bulwark of this breakwater, and its foot also is
+fortified with stones." * * * "The great Helder dike is about five miles
+long and forty feet wide at the top, along which runs a good road. It
+slopes down two hundred feet into the sea, at an angle of forty degrees.
+The highest waves do not reach the summit, the lowest always cover its
+base. At certain distances, immense buttresses, of a height and width
+proportioned to those of the dike, and even more strongly built, run
+several hundred feet out into the rolling sea. This gigantic artificial
+coast is entirely composed of Norwegian granite."--WILD, _Die
+Niederlande_, i, pp. 61, 62.
+
+[318] The shaking of the ground, even when loaded with large buildings,
+by the passage of heavy carriages or artillery, or by the march of a
+body of cavalry or even infantry, shows that such causes may produce
+important mechanical effects on the condition of the soil. The bogs in
+the Netherlands, as in most other countries, contain large numbers of
+fallen trees, buried to a certain depth by earth and vegetable mould.
+When the bogs are dry enough to serve as pastures, it is observed that
+trunks of these ancient trees rise of themselves to the surface. Staring
+ascribes this singular phenomenon to the agitation of the ground by the
+tread of cattle. "When roadbeds," observes he, "are constructed of
+gravel and pebbles of different sizes, and these latter are placed at
+the bottom without being broken and rolled hard together, they are soon
+brought to the top by the effect of travel on the road. Lying loosely,
+they undergo some motion from the passage of every wagon wheel and the
+tread of every horse that passes over them. This motion is an
+oscillation or partial rolling, and as one side of a pebble is raised, a
+little fine sand or earth is forced under it, and the frequent
+repetition of this process by cattle or carriages moving in opposite
+directions brings it at last to the surface. We may suppose that a
+similar effect is produced on the stems of trees in the bogs by the
+tread of animals."--_De Bodem van Nederland_, i, pp. 75, 76.
+
+It is observed in the Northern United States, that when soils containing
+pebbles are cleared and cultivated, and the stones removed from the
+surface, new pebbles, and even bowlders of many pounds weight, continue
+to show themselves above the ground, every spring, for a long series of
+years. In clayey soils the fence posts are thrown up in a similar way,
+and it is not uncommon to see the lower rail of a fence thus gradually
+raised a foot or even two feet above the ground. This rising of stones
+and fences is popularly ascribed to the action of the severe frosts of
+that climate. The expansion of the ground, in freezing, it is said,
+raises its surface, and, with the surface, objects lying near or
+connected with it. When the soil thaws in the spring, it settles back
+again to its former level, while the pebbles and posts are prevented
+from sinking as low as before by loose earth which has fallen under
+them. The fact that the elevation spoken of is observed only in the
+spring, gives countenance to this theory, which is perhaps applicable
+also to the cases stated by Staring, and it is probable that the two
+causes above assigned concur in producing the effect.
+
+The question of the subsidence of the Netherlandish coast has been much
+discussed. Not to mention earlier geologists, Venema, in several essays,
+and particularly in _Het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons
+Land_, 1854, adduces many facts and arguments to prove a slow sinking of
+the northern provinces of Holland. Laveleye (_Affaissement du sol et
+envasement des fleuves survenus dans les temps historiques_, 1859), upon
+a still fuller investigation, arrives at the same conclusion. The
+eminent geologist Staring, however, who briefly refers to the subject in
+_De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 356 _et seqq._, does not consider the
+evidence sufficient to prove anything more than the sinking of the
+surface of the polders from drying and consolidation.
+
+[319] The elevation of the lands enclosed by dikes--or _polders_, as
+they are called in Holland--above low water mark, depends upon the
+height of the tides, or, in other words, upon, the difference between
+ebb and flood. The tide cannot deposit earth higher than it flows, and
+after the ground is once enclosed, the decay of the vegetables grown
+upon it and the addition of manures do not compensate the depression
+occasioned by drying and consolidation. On the coast of Zeeland and the
+islands of South Holland, the tides, and of course the surface of the
+lands deposited by them, are so high that the polders can be drained by
+ditching and sluices, but at other points, as in the enclosed grounds of
+North Holland on the Zuiderzee, where the tide rises but three feet or
+even less, pumping is necessary from the beginning.--STARING, _Voormaals
+en Thans_, p. 152.
+
+[320] The principal engine--called the Leeghwater, from the name of an
+engineer who had proposed the draining of the lake in 1641--was of 500
+horse power, and drove eleven pumps making six strokes per minute. Each
+pump raised six cubic metres, or nearly eight cubic yards of water to
+the stroke, amounting in all to 23,760 cubic metres, or above 31,000
+cubic yards, the hour.--WILD, _Die Niederlande_, i, p. 87.
+
+[321] In England and New England, where the marshes have been already
+drained or are of comparatively small extent, the existence of large
+floating islands seems incredible, and has sometimes been treated as a
+fable, but no geographical fact is better established. Kohl (_Inseln und
+Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins_, iii, p. 309) reminds us that Pliny
+mentions among the wonders of Germany the floating islands, covered with
+trees, which met the Roman fleets at the mouths of the Elbe and the
+Weser. Our author speaks also of having visited, in the territory of
+Bremen, floating moors, bearing not only houses but whole villages. At
+low stages of the water these moors rest upon a bed of sand, but are
+raised from six to ten feet by the high water of spring, and remain
+afloat until, in the course of the summer, the water beneath is
+exhausted by evaporation and drainage, when they sink down upon the sand
+again. See _Appendix_, No. 40.
+
+Staring explains, in an interesting way, the whole growth, formation,
+and functions of floating fens or bogs, in his very valuable work, _De
+Bodem van_ _Nederland_, i, pp. 36-43. The substance of his account is as
+follows: The first condition for the growth of the plants which compose
+the substance of turf and the surface of the fens, is stillness of the
+water. Hence they are not found in running streams, nor in pools so
+large as to be subject to frequent agitation by the wind. For example,
+not a single plant grew in the open part of the Lake of Haarlem, and
+fens cease to form in all pools as soon as, by the cutting of the turf
+for fuel or other purposes, their area is sufficiently enlarged to be
+much acted on by wind. When still water above a yard deep is left
+undisturbed, aquatic plants of various genera, such us Nuphar, Nymphaea,
+Limnanthemum, Stratiotes, Polygonum, and Potamogeton, fill the bottom
+with roots and cover the surface with leaves. Many of the plants die
+every year, and prepare at the bottom a soil fit for the growth of a
+higher order of vegetation, Phragmites, Acorus, Sparganium, Rumex,
+Lythrum, Pedicularis, Spiraea, Polystichum, Comarum, Caltha, &c., &c. In
+the course of twenty or thirty years the muddy bottom is filled with
+roots of aquatic and marsh plants, which are lighter than water, and if
+the depth is great enough to give room for detaching this vegetable
+network, a couple of yards for example, it rises to the surface, bearing
+with it, of course, the soil formed above it by decay of stems and
+leaves. New genera now appear upon the mass, such as Carex, Menyanthes,
+and others, and soon thickly cover it. The turf has now acquired a
+thickness of from two to four feet, and is called in Groningen _lad_; in
+Friesland, _til_, _tilland_, or _drijftil_; in Overijssel, _krag_; and
+in Holland, _rietzod_. It floats about as driven by the wind, gradually
+increasing in thickness by the decay of its annual crops of vegetation,
+and in about half a century reaches the bottom and becomes fixed. If it
+has not been invaded in the mean time by men or cattle, trees and
+arborescent plants, Alnus, Salix, Myrica, &c. appear, and these
+contribute to hasten the attachment of the turf to the bottom, both by
+their weight and by sending their roots quite through into the ground.
+
+This is the regular method employed by nature for the gradual filling up
+of shallow lakes and pools, and converting them first into morass and
+then into dry land. Whenever therefore man removes the peat or turf, he
+exerts an injurious geographical agency, and, as I have already said,
+there is no doubt that the immense extension of the inland seas of
+Holland in modern times is owing to this and other human imprudences.
+"Hundreds of hectares of floating pastures," says our author, "which
+have nothing in their appearance to distinguish them from grass lands
+resting on solid bog, are found in Overijssel, in North Holland and near
+Utrecht. In short, they occur in all deep bogs, and wherever deep water
+is left long undisturbed."
+
+In one case, a floating island, which had attached itself to the shore,
+continued to float about for a long time after it was torn off by a
+flood, and was solid enough to keep a pond of fresh water upon it sweet,
+though the water in which it was swimming had become brackish from the
+irruption of the sea. After the hay is cut, cattle are pastured upon
+those islands, and they sometimes have large trees growing upon them.
+
+When the turf or peat has been cut, leaving water less than a yard deep,
+Equisetum limosum grows at once, and is followed by the second class of
+marsh plants mentioned above. Their roots do not become detached from
+the bottom in such shallow water, but form ordinary turf or peat. These
+processes are so rapid that a thickness of from three to six feet of
+turf is formed in half a century, and many men have lived to mow grass
+where they had fished in their boyhood, and to cut turf twice in the
+same spot.
+
+Captain Gilliss says that before Lake Taguataga in Chili was drained,
+there were in it islands composed of dead plants matted together to a
+thickness of from four to six feet, and with trees of medium size
+growing upon them. These islands floated before the wind "with their
+trees and browsing cattle."--_United States Naval Astronomical
+Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere_, i, pp. 16, 17.
+
+[322] A considerable work of this character is mentioned by Captain
+Gilliss as having been executed in Chili, a country to which we should
+have hardly looked for an improvement of such a nature. The Lake
+Taguataga was partially drained by cutting through a narrow ridge of
+land, not at the natural outlet, but upon one side of the lake, and
+eight thousand acres of land covered by it were gained for
+cultivation.--_U. S. Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern
+Hemisphere_, i, pp. 16, 17.
+
+[323] _Economie Rurale de la France_, p. 289.
+
+[324] In a note on a former page of this volume I noticed an observation
+of Jacini, to the effect that the great Italian lakes discharge
+themselves partly by infiltration beneath the hills which bound them.
+The amount of such infiltration must depend much upon the hydrostatic
+pressure on the walls of the lake basins, and, of course, the lowering
+of the surface of these lakes, by diminishing that pressure, would
+diminish also the infiltration. It is now proposed to lower the level of
+the Lake of Como some feet by deepening its outlet. It is possible that
+the effect of this may manifest itself in a diminution of the water in
+springs and _fontanili_ or artesian wells in Lombardy. See _Appendix_,
+No. 43.
+
+[325] Simonde, speaking of the Tuscan canals, observes: "But inundations
+are not the only damage caused by the waters to the plains of Tuscany.
+Raised, as the canals are, above the soil, the water percolates through
+their banks, penetrates every obstruction, and, in spite of all the
+efforts of industry, sterilizes and turns to morasses fields which
+nature and the richness of the soil seemed to have designed for the most
+abundant harvests. In ground thus pervaded with moisture, or rendered
+_cold_, as the Tuscans express it, by the filtration of the canal water,
+the vines and the mulberries, after having for a few years yielded fruit
+of a saltish taste, rot and perish. The wheat decays in the ground, or
+dies as soon as it sprouts. Winter crops are given up, and summer
+cultivation tried for a time; but the increasing humidity, and the
+saline matter communicated to the earth--which affects the taste of all
+its products, even to the grasses, which the cattle refuse to touch--at
+last compel the husbandman to abandon his fields, and leave uncultivated
+a soil that no longer repays his labor."--_Tableau de l'Agriculture
+Toscane._ pp. 11, 12.
+
+[326] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 288. Draining by driving down
+stakes, mentioned in a note in a chapter on the woods, _ante_, is a
+process of the same nature.
+
+[327] "The simplest backwoodsman knows by experience that all
+cultivation is impossible in the neighborhood of bogs and marshes. Why
+is a crop near the borders of a marsh cut off by frost, while a field
+upon a hillock, a few stone's throws from it, is spared?"--LARS LEVI
+LAESTADIUS, _Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken_, pp. 69, 74.
+
+[328] Babinet condemns even the general draining of marshes. "Draining,"
+says he, "has been much in fashion for some years. It has been a special
+object to dry and fertilize marshy grounds. My opinion has always been
+that excessive dryness is thus produced, and that other soils in the
+neighborhood are sterilized in proportion."
+
+[329] I ought perhaps to except the Mexicans and the Peruvians, whose
+arts and institutions are not yet shown to be historically connected
+with those of any more ancient people. The lamentable destruction of so
+many memorials of these tribes, by the ignorance and bigotry of the
+so-called Christian barbarians who conquered them, has left us much in
+the dark as to many points of their civilization; but they seem to have
+reached that stage where continued progress in knowledge and in power
+over nature is secure, and a few more centuries of independence might
+have brought them to originate for themselves most of the great
+inventions which the last four centuries have bestowed upon man.
+
+[330] The necessity of irrigation in the great alluvial plain of
+Northern Italy is partly explained by the fact that the superficial
+stratum of fine earth and vegetable mould is very extensively underlaid
+by beds of pebbles and gravel brought down by mountain torrents at a
+remote epoch. The water of the surface soil drains rapidly down into
+these loose beds, and passes off by subterranean channels to some
+unknown point of discharge; but this circumstance alone is not a
+sufficient solution. Is it not possible that the habits of vegetables,
+grown in countries where irrigation has been immemorially employed, have
+been so changed that they require water under conditions of soil and
+climate where their congeners, which have not been thus indulgently
+treated, do not?
+
+There are some atmospheric phenomena in Northern Italy, which an
+American finds it hard to reconcile with what he has observed in the
+United States. To an American eye, for instance, the sky of Piedmont,
+Lombardy, and the northern coast of the Mediterranean, is always whitish
+and curdled, and it never has the intensity and fathomless depth of the
+blue of his native heavens. And yet the heat of the sun's rays, as
+measured by sensation, and, at the same time, the evaporation, are
+greater than they would be with the thermometer at the same point in
+America. I have frequently felt in Italy, with the mercury below 60 deg.
+Fahrenheit, and with a mottled and almost opaque sky, a heat of solar
+irradiation which I can compare to nothing but the scorching sensation
+experienced in America at a temperature twenty degrees higher, during
+the intervals between showers, or before a rain, when the clear blue of
+the sky seems infinite in depth and transparency. Such circumstances may
+create a necessity for irrigation where it would otherwise be
+superfluous, if not absolutely injurious.
+
+In speaking of the superior apparent clearness of the _sky_ in America,
+I confine myself to the concave vault of the heavens, and do not mean to
+assert that terrestrial objects are generally visible at greater
+distances in the United States than in Italy. Indeed I am rather
+disposed to maintain the contrary; for though I know that the lower
+strata of the atmosphere in Europe never equal in transparency the air
+near the earth in New Mexico, Peru, and Chili, yet I think the accidents
+of the coast line of the Riviera, as, for example, between Nice and La
+Spezia, and those of the incomparable Alpine panorama seen from Turin,
+are distinguishable at greater distances than they would be in the
+United States.
+
+[331] In Egypt, evaporation and absorption by the earth are so rapid,
+that all annual crops require irrigation during the whole period of
+their growth. As fast as the water retires by the subsidence of the
+annual inundation, the seed is sown upon the still moist uncovered soil,
+and irrigation begins at once. Upon the Nile, you hear the creaking of
+the water wheels, and sometimes the movement of steam pumps, through the
+whole night, while the poorer cultivators unceasingly ply the simple
+_shadoof_, or bucket-and-sweep, laboriously raising the water from
+trough to trough by as many as six or seven stages when the river is
+low. The bucket is of flexible leather, with a stiff rim, and is emptied
+into the trough, not by inverting it like a wooden bucket, but by
+putting the hand beneath and pushing the bottom up till the water all
+runs out over the brim, or, in other words, by turning the vessel inside
+out.
+
+The quantity of water thus withdrawn from the Nile is enormous. Most of
+this is evaporated directly from the surface or the superficial strata,
+but some moisture percolates down and oozes through the banks into the
+river again, while a larger quantity sinks till it joins the slow
+current of infiltration by which the Nile water pervades the earth of
+the valley to the distance, at some points, of not less than fifty
+miles.
+
+[332] "Forests," "woods," and "groves," are very frequently mentioned in
+the Old Testament as existing at particular places, and they are often
+referred to by way of illustration, as familiar objects. "Wood" is twice
+spoken of as a material in the New Testament, but otherwise--at least
+according to Cruden--not one of the above words occurs in that volume.
+
+This interesting fact, were other evidence wanting, would go far to
+prove that a great change had taken place in this respect between the
+periods when the Old Testament and the New were respectively composed;
+for the scriptural writers, and the speakers introduced into their
+narratives, are remarkable for their frequent allusions to the natural
+objects and the social and industrial habits which characterized their
+ages and their country. See _Appendix_, No. 44.
+
+Solomon anticipated Chevandier in the irrigation of forest trees: "I
+made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth
+trees."--_Ecclesiastes_ ii, 6.
+
+[333] One of these, upon Mount Hor, two stories in height, is still in
+such preservation that I found not less than ten feet of water in it in
+the month of June, 1851.
+
+The brook Ain Musa, which runs through the city of Petra and finally
+disappears in the sands of Wadi el Araba, is a considerable river in
+winter, and the inhabitants of that town were obliged to excavate a
+tunnel through the rock near the right bank, just above the upper
+entrance of the Sik, to discharge a part of its swollen current. The
+sagacity of Dr. Robinson detected the necessity of this measure, though
+the tunnel, the mouth of which was hidden by brushwood, was not
+discovered till some time after his visit. I even noticed unequivocal
+remains of a sluice by which the water was diverted to the tunnel near
+the arch that crosses the Sik. Immense labor was also expended in
+widening the natural channel at several points below the town, to
+prevent the damming up and setting back of the water--a fact I believe
+not hitherto noticed by travellers.
+
+The Fellahheen above Petra still employ the waters of Ain Musa for
+irrigation, and in summer the superficial current is wholly diverted
+from its natural channel for that purpose. At this season, the bed of
+the brook, which is composed of pebbles, gravel, and sand, is dry in the
+Sik and through the town; but the infiltration is such that water is
+generally found by digging to a small depth in the channel. Observing
+these facts in a visit to Petra in the summer, I was curious to know
+whether the subterranean waters escaped again to daylight, and I
+followed the ravine below the town for a long distance. Not very far
+from the upper entrance of the ravine, arborescent vegetation appeared
+upon its bottom, and as soon as the ground was well shaded, a thread of
+water burst out. This was joined by others a little lower down, and, at
+the distance of a mile from the town, a strong current was formed and
+ran down toward Wadi el Araba.
+
+[334] The authorities differ as to the extent of the cultivable and the
+cultivated soil of Egypt. Lippincott's, or rather Thomas and Baldwin's,
+_Gazetteer_--a work of careful research--estimates "the whole area
+comprised in the valley [below the first cataract] and delta," at 11,000
+square miles. Smith's _Dictionary of the Bible_, article "Egypt," says:
+"Egypt has a superficies of about 9,582 square geographical miles of
+soil, which the Nile either does or can water and fertilize. This
+computation includes the river and lakes as well as sundry tracts which
+can be inundated, and the whole space either cultivated or fit for
+cultivation is no more than about 5,626 square miles." By geographical
+mile is here meant, I suppose, the nautical mile of sixty to an
+equatorial degree, or about 2,025 yards. The whole area, then, by this
+estimate, is 12,682 square statute or English miles, that of the space
+"cultivated or fit for cultivation," 7,447. Smith's _Dictionary of Greek
+and Roman Geography_, article "AEgyptus," gives 2,255 square miles as the
+area of the valley between Syene and the bifurcation of the Nile,
+exclusive of the Fayoom, which is estimated at 340. The area of the
+Delta is stated at 1,976 square miles between the main branches of the
+river, and, including the irrigated lands east and west of those
+branches, at 4,500 square miles. This latter work does not inform us
+whether these are statute or nautical miles, but nautical miles must be
+intended.
+
+Other writers give estimates differing considerably from those just
+cited. The latest computations I have seen are those in the first volume
+of Kremer's _AEgypten_, 1863. This author (pp. 6, 7) assigns to the Delta
+an area of 200 square German geographical miles (fifteen to the degree);
+to all Lower Egypt, including, of course, the Delta, 400 such miles.
+These numbers are equal, respectively, to 4,239 and 8,478 square statute
+miles, and the great lagoons are embraced in the areas computed. Upper
+Egypt (above Cairo) is said (p. 11) to contain 4,000,000 feddan of
+_culturflaeche_, or cultivable land. The feddan is stated (p. 37) to
+contain 7,333 square piks, the pik being 75 centimetres, and it
+therefore corresponds almost exactly to the English acre. Hence,
+according to Kremer, the cultivable soil of Upper Egypt is 6,250 square
+statute miles, or twice as much as the whole area of the valley between
+Syene and the bifurcation of the Nile, according to Smith's _Dictionary
+of Greek and Roman Geography_. I suspect that 4,000,000 feddan is
+erroneously given as the cultivable area of Upper Egypt alone, when in
+fact it should be taken for the arable surface of both Lower and Upper
+Egypt; for from the statistical tables in the same volume, it appears
+that 3,317,125 feddan, or 5,253 square statute miles, were cultivated,
+in both geographical divisions, in the year referred to in the tables,
+the date of which is not stated.
+
+The area which the Nile would now cover at high water, if left to
+itself, is greater than in ancient times, because the bed of the river
+has been elevated, and consequently the lateral spread of the inundation
+increased. See SMITH'S _Dictionary of Geography_, article "AEgyptus." But
+the industry of the Egyptians in the days of the Pharaohs and the
+Ptolomies carried the Nile-water to large provinces which have now been
+long abandoned and have relapsed into the condition of a desert.
+"Anciently," observes the writer of the article "Egypt" in Smith's
+_Dictionary of the Bible_, "2,735 square miles more [about 3,700 square
+statute miles] may have been cultivated. In the best days of Egypt,
+probably all the land was cultivated that could be made available for
+agricultural purposes, and hence we may estimate the ancient arable area
+of that country at not less than 11,000 square statute miles, or fully
+double its present extent."
+
+[335] A canal has been constructed, and new ones are in progress, to
+convey water from the Nile to the city of Suez, and to various points on
+the line of the ship canal, with the double purpose of supplying fresh
+water to the inhabitants and laborers, and of irrigating the adjacent
+soil. The area of land which may be thus reclaimed and fertilized is
+very large, but the actual quantity which it will be found economically
+expedient to bring under cultivation cannot now be determined.
+
+[336] The so-called spring at Heliopolis is only a thread of water
+infiltrated from the Nile or the canals.
+
+[337] The date and the doum palm, the _sont_ and many other acacias, the
+caroub, the sycamore, and other trees, grow well in Egypt without
+irrigation, and would doubtless spread through the entire valley in a
+few years.
+
+[338] Wilkinson has shown that the cultivable soil of Egypt has not been
+diminished by encroachment of the desert sands, or otherwise, but that,
+on the contrary, it must have been increased since the age of the
+Pharaohs. The Gotha _Almanac_ for 1862 states the population of Egypt in
+1859 at 5,125,000 souls; but this must be a great exaggeration, even
+supposing the estimate to include the inhabitants of Nubia, and of much
+other territory not geographically belonging to Egypt. In general, the
+population of that country has been estimated at something more than
+three millions, or about six hundred to the square mile; but with a
+better government and better social institutions, the soil would sustain
+a much greater number, and in fact it is believed that in ancient times
+its inhabitants were twice, perhaps even thrice, as numerous as at
+present.
+
+Wilkinson (_Handbook for Travellers in Egypt_, p. 10) observes that the
+total population, which two hundred years ago was estimated at
+4,000,000, amounted till lately only to about 1,800,000 souls, having
+been reduced since 1800 from 2,500,000 to that number.
+
+[339] Ritter supposes Egypt to have been a sandy desert when it was
+first occupied by man. "The first inhabitant of the sandy valley of the
+Nile was a desert dweller, as his neighbors right and left, the Libyan,
+the nomade Arab, still are. But the civilized people of Egypt
+transformed, by canals, the waste into the richest granary of the world;
+they liberated themselves from the shackles of the rock and sand desert,
+in the midst of which, by a wise distribution of the fluid through the
+solid geographical form, by irrigation in short, they created a region
+of culture most rich in historical monuments."--_Einleitung zur
+allgemeinen vergleichenden Geographie_, pp. 165, 166.
+
+This view seems to me highly improbable; for though, by canals and
+embankments, man has done much to modify the natural distribution of the
+waters of the Nile, and possibly has even transferred its channel from
+one side of the valley to the other, yet the annual inundation is not
+his work, and the river must have overflowed its banks and carried
+spontaneous vegetation with its waters, as well before as since Egypt
+was first occupied by the human family. There is, indeed, some reason to
+suppose that man lived upon the banks of the Nile when its channel was
+much lower, and the spread of its inundations much narrower than at
+present; but wherever its flood reached, there the forest would
+propagate itself, and its shores are much more likely to have been
+morasses than sands.
+
+[340] _Memorie sui progetti per l'estensione dell' Irrigazione, etc., il
+Politecnico_, for January, 1863, p. 6.
+
+[341] NIEL, _L'Agriculture des Etats Sardes_, p. 232.
+
+[342] NIEL, _Agriculture des Etats Sardes_, p. 237. Lombardini's
+computation just given allows eighty-one cubic metres per day to the
+hectare, which, supposing the season of irrigation to be one hundred
+days, is equal to a precipitation of thirty-two inches. But in Lombardy,
+water is applied to some crops during a longer period than one hundred
+days; and in the _marcite_ it flows over the ground even in winter.
+
+According to Boussingault (_Economie Rurale_, ii, p. 246) grass grounds
+ought to receive, in Germany, twenty-one centimetres of water per week,
+and with less than half that quantity it is not advisable to incur the
+expense of supplying it. The ground is irrigated twenty-five or thirty
+times, and if the full quantity of twenty-one centimetres is applied, it
+receives about two hundred inches of water, or six times the total
+amount of precipitation. Puvis, quoted by Boussingault, after much
+research comes to the conclusion that a proper quantity is twenty
+centimetres applied twenty-five or thirty times, which corresponds with
+the estimate just stated. Puvis adds--and, as our author thinks, with
+reason--that this amount might be doubled without disadvantage.
+
+Boussingault observes that rain water is vastly more fertilizing than
+the water of irrigating canals, and therefore the supply of the latter
+must be greater. This is explained partly by the different character of
+the substances held in solution or suspension by the waters of the earth
+and of the sky, partly by the higher temperature of the latter, and,
+possibly, partly also by the mode of application--the rain being finely
+divided in its fall or by striking plants on the ground, river water
+flowing in a continuous sheet.
+
+The temperature of the water is thought even more important than its
+composition. The sources which irrigate the _marcite_ of
+Lombardy--meadows so fertile that less than an acre furnishes grass for
+a cow the whole year--are very warm. The ground watered by them never
+freezes, and a first crop, for soiling, is cut from it in January or
+February. The Canal Cavour, just now commenced--which is to take its
+supply from the Po at Chivasso, fourteen or fifteen miles below
+Turin--will furnish water of much higher fertilizing power than that
+derived from the Dora Baltea and the Sesia, both because it is warmer,
+and because it transports a more abundant and a richer sediment than the
+latter streams, which are fed by Alpine icefields and melting snows, and
+which flow, for long distances, in channels ground smooth and bare by
+ancient glaciers, and not now contributing much vegetable mould or fine
+slime to their waters.
+
+[343] It belongs rather to agriculture than to geography to discuss the
+quality of the crops obtained by irrigation, or the permanent effects
+produced by it on the productiveness of the soil. There is no doubt,
+however, that all crops which can be raised without watering are
+superior in flavor and in nutritive power to those grown by the aid of
+irrigation. Garden vegetables, particularly, profusely watered, are so
+insipid as to be hardly eatable. Wherever irrigation is practised, there
+is an almost irresistible tendency, especially among ignorant
+cultivators, to carry it to excess; and in Piedmont and Lombardy, if the
+supply of water is abundant, it is so liberally applied as sometimes not
+only to injure the quality of the product, but to drown the plants and
+diminish the actual weight of the crop.
+
+Professor Liebig, in his _Modern Agriculture_, says: "There is not to be
+found in chemistry a more wonderful phenomenon, one which more confounds
+all human wisdom, than is presented by the soil of a garden or field. By
+the simplest experiment, any one may satisfy himself that rain water
+filtered through field or garden soil does not dissolve out a trace of
+potash, silicic acid, ammonia, or phosphoric acid. The soil does not
+give up to the water one particle of the food of plants which it
+contains. The most continuous rains cannot remove from the field, except
+mechanically, any of the essential constituents of its fertility."
+
+"The soil not only retains firmly all the food of plants which is
+actually in it, but its power to preserve all that may be useful to them
+extends much farther. If rain or other water holding in solution
+ammonia, potash, and phosphoric and silicic acids, be brought in contact
+with soil, these substances disappear almost immediately from the
+solution; the soil withdraws them from the water. Only such substances
+are completely withdrawn by the soil as are indispensable articles of
+food for plants; all others remain wholly or in part in solution."
+
+The first of the paragraphs just quoted is not in accordance with the
+alleged experience of agriculturists in those parts of Italy where
+irrigation is most successfully applied. They believe that the
+constituents of vegetable growth are washed out of the soil by excessive
+and long-continued watering. They consider it also established as a fact
+of observation, that water which has flowed through or over rich ground
+is far more valuable for irrigation than water from the same source,
+which has not been impregnated with fertilizing substances by passing
+through soils containing them; and, on the other hand, that water, rich
+in the elements of vegetation, parts with them in serving to irrigate a
+poor soil, and is therefore less valuable as a fertilizer of lower
+grounds to which it may afterward be conducted.
+
+The practice of irrigation--except in mountainous countries where
+springs and rivulets are numerous--is attended with very serious
+economical, social, and political evils. The construction of canals and
+their immensely ramified branches, and the grading and scarping of the
+ground to be watered, are always expensive operations, and they very
+often require an amount of capital which can be commanded only by the
+state, by moneyed corporations, or by very wealthy proprietors; the
+capacity of the canals must be calculated with reference to the area
+intended to be irrigated, and when they and their branches are once
+constructed, it is very difficult to extend them, or to accommodate any
+of their original arrangements to changes in the condition of the soil,
+or in the modes or objects of cultivation; the flow of the water being
+limited by the abundance of the source or the capacity of the canals,
+the individual proprietor cannot be allowed to withdraw water at will,
+according to his own private interest or convenience, but both the time
+and the quantity of supply must be regulated by a general system
+applicable, as far as may be, to the whole area irrigated by the same
+canal, and every cultivator must conform his industry to a plan which
+may be quite at variance with his special objects or with his views of
+good husbandry. The clashing interests and the jealousies of proprietors
+depending on the same means of supply are a source of incessant
+contention and litigation, and the caprices or partialities of the
+officers who control, or of contractors who farm the canals, lead not
+unfrequently to ruinous injustice toward individual landholders. These
+circumstances discourage the division of the soil into small properties,
+and there is a constant tendency to the accumulation of large estates of
+irrigated land in the hands of great capitalists, and consequently to
+the dispossession of the small cultivators, who pass from the condition
+of owners of the land to that of hireling tillers. The farmers are no
+longer yeomen, but peasants. Having no interest in the soil which
+composes their country, they are virtually expatriated, and the middle
+class, which ought to constitute the real physical and moral strength of
+the land, ceases to exist as a rural estate, and is found only among the
+professional, the mercantile, and the industrial population of the
+cities.
+
+[344] BOUSSINGAULT, _Economie Rurale_, ii, pp. 248, 249.
+
+[345] The cultivation of rice is so prejudicial to health everywhere
+that nothing but the necessities of a dense population can justify the
+sacrifice of life it costs in countries where it is pursued.
+
+It has been demonstrated by actual experiment, that even in Mississippi,
+cotton can be advantageously raised by the white man without danger to
+health; and in fact, a great deal of the cotton brought to the Vicksburg
+market for some years past has been grown exclusively by white labor.
+There is no reason why the cultivation of cotton should be a more
+unhealthy occupation in America than it is in other countries where it
+was never dreamed of as dangerous, and no well-informed American, in the
+Slave States or out of them, believes that the abolition of slavery in
+the South would permanently diminish the cotton crop of those States.
+
+[346] _L'Italie a propos de l'Exposition de Paris_, p. 92.
+
+[347] The very valuable memoirs of Lombardini, _Cenni idrografi sulla
+Lombardia, Intorno al sistema idraulico del Po_, and other papers on
+similar subjects, were published in periodicals little known out of
+Italy; and the _Idraulica Pratica_ of Mari has not, I believe, been
+translated into French or English. These works, and other sources of
+information equally inaccessible out of Italy, have been freely used by
+Baumgarten, in a memoir entitled _Notice sur les Rivieres de la
+Lombardie_, in the _Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1847, 1er semestre,
+pp. 129 _et seqq._, and by Dumont, _Des Travaux Publics dans leurs
+Rapports avec l'Agriculture_, note, viii, pp. 269 _et seqq._ For the
+convenience of my readers, I shall use these two articles instead of the
+original authorities on which they are founded.
+
+[348] Sir John F. W. Herschel, citing Talabot as his authority,
+_Physical Geography_ (24).
+
+In an elaborate paper on "Irrigation," printed in the _United States
+Patent Report_ for 1860, p. 169, it is stated that the volume of water
+poured into the Mediterranean by the Nile in twenty-four hours, at low
+water, is 150,566,392,368 cubic metres; at high water, 705,514,667,440
+cubic metres. Taking the mean of these two numbers, the average daily
+delivery of the Nile would be 428,081,059,808 cubic metres, or more than
+550,000,000,000 cubic yards. There is some enormous mistake, probably a
+typographical error, in this statement, which makes the delivery of the
+Nile seventeen hundred times as great as computed by Talabot, and many
+times more than any physical geographer has ever estimated the quantity
+supplied by all the rivers on the face of the globe.
+
+[349] The Drac, a torrent emptying into the Isere a little below
+Grenoble, has discharged 5,200, the Isere, which receives it,
+7,800 cubic yards, and the Durance an equal quantity, per
+second.--MONTLUISANT, _Note sur les Dessechements, etc., Annales
+des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1833, 2me semestre, p. 288.
+
+The floods of some other French rivers scarcely fall behind those of the
+Rhone. The Loire, above Roanne, has a basin of 2,471 square miles, or
+about twice and a half the area of that of the Ardeche. In some of its
+inundations it has delivered above 9,500 cubic yards per
+second.--BELGRAND, _De l'Influence des Forets, etc., Annales des Ponts
+et Chaussees_, 1854, 1er semestre, p. 15, note.
+
+[350] The original forests in which the basin of the Ardeche was rich
+have been rapidly disappearing, for many years, and the terrific
+violence of the inundations which are now laying it waste is ascribed,
+by the ablest investigators, to that cause. In an article inserted in
+the _Annales Forestieres_ for 1843, quoted by Hohenstein, _Der Wald_, p.
+177, it is said that about one third of the area of the department had
+already become absolutely barren, in consequence of clearing, and that
+the destruction of the woods was still going on with great rapidity. New
+torrents were constantly forming, and they were estimated to have
+covered more than 70,000 acres of good land, or one eighth of the
+surface of the department, with sand and gravel.
+
+[351] "There is no example of a coincidence between great floods of the
+Ardeche and of the Rhone, all the known inundations of the former having
+taken place when the latter was very low."--MARDIGNY, _Memoire sur les
+Inondations des Rivieres de l'Ardeche_, p. 26.
+
+I take this occasion to acknowledge myself indebted to the interesting
+memoir just quoted for all the statements I make respecting the floods
+of the Ardeche, except the comparison of the volume of its waters with
+that of the Nile, and the computation with respect to the capacity
+required for reservoirs to be constructed in its basin.
+
+[352] In some cases where the bed of rapid Alpine streams is composed of
+very hard rock--as is the case in many of the valleys once filled by
+ancient glaciers--and especially where they are fed by glaciers not
+overhung by crumbling cliffs, the channel may remain almost unchanged
+for centuries. This is observable in many of the tributaries of the Dora
+Baltea, which drains the valley of the Aosta. Several of these small
+rivers are spanned by more or less perfect Roman bridges--one of which,
+that over the Lys at Pont St. Martin, is still in good repair and in
+constant use. An examination of the rocks on which the abutments of this
+and some other similar structures are founded, and of the channels of
+the rivers they cross, shows that the beds of the streams cannot have
+been much elevated or depressed since the bridges were built. In other
+cases, as at the outlet of the Val Tournanche at Chatillon, where a
+single rib of a Roman bridge still remains, there is nothing to forbid
+the supposition that the deep excavation of the channel may have been
+partly effected at a much later period. See _App._, No. 45.
+
+[353] _Memoire sur les Inondations des Rivieres de l'Ardeche_, p. 16.
+"The terrific roar, the thunder of the raging torrents proceeds
+principally from the stones which are rolled along in the bed of the
+stream. This movement is attended with such powerful attrition that, in
+the Southern Alps, the atmosphere of valleys where the limestone
+contains bitumen, has, at the time of floods, the marked bituminous
+smell produced by rubbing pieces of such limestone together."--WESSELY,
+_Die Oesterreichischien Alpenlaender_, i, p. 113. See _Appendix_, No. 48.
+
+[354] FRISI, _Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti_, pp. 4-19.
+
+[355] SURELL, _Etude sur les Torrents_, pp. 31-36.
+
+[356] CHAMPION, _Les Inondations en France_, iii, p. 156, note.
+
+[357] Notwithstanding this favorable circumstance, the damage done by
+the inundation of 1840 in the valley of the Rhone was estimated at
+seventy-two millions of francs.--CHAMPION, _Les Inondations en France_,
+iv, p. 124.
+
+Several smaller floods of the Rhone, experienced at a somewhat earlier
+season of the year in 1846, occasioned a loss of forty-five millions of
+francs. "What if," says Dumont, "instead of happening in October, that
+is between harvest and seedtime, they had occurred before the crops were
+secured? The damage would have been counted by hundreds of
+millions."--_Des Travaux Publics_, p. 99, note.
+
+[358] TROY, _Etude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes_, Sec.Sec. 6, 7, 21.
+
+[359] For accounts of damage from the bursting of reservoirs, see
+VALLEE, _Memoire sur les Reservoirs d'Alimentation des Canaux, Annales
+des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1833, 1er semestre, p. 261.
+
+[360] Some geographical writers apply the term _bifurcation_ exclusively
+to this intercommunication of rivers; others, with more etymological
+propriety, use it to express the division of great rivers into branches
+at the head of their deltas. A technical term is wanting to designate
+the phenomenon mentioned in the text.
+
+[361] MARDIGNY, _Memoire sur les Inondations de l'Ardeche_, p. 13.
+
+[362] In the case of rivers flowing through wide alluvial plains and
+much inclined to shift their beds, like the Po, the embankments often
+leave a very wide space between them. The dikes of the Po are sometimes
+three or four miles apart.--BAUMGARTEN, after LOMBARDINI, _Annales des
+Ponts et Chaussees_, 1847, 1er semestre, p. 149.
+
+[363] It appears from the investigations of Lombardini that the rate of
+elevation of the bed of the Po has been much exaggerated by earlier
+writers, and in some parts of its course the change is so slow that its
+level may be regarded as nearly constant.--BAUMGARTEN, volume before
+cited, pp. 175, et seqq. See _Appendix_, No. 49.
+
+If the western coast of the Adriatic is undergoing a secular depression,
+as many circumstances concur to prove, the sinking of the plain near the
+coast may both tend to prevent the deposit of sediment in the river bed
+by increasing the velocity of its current, and compensate the elevation
+really produced by deposits, so that no sensible elevation would result,
+though much gravel and slime might be let fall.
+
+[364] To secure the city of Sacramento in California from the
+inundations to which it is subject, a dike or levee was built upon the
+bank of the river and raised to an elevation above that of the highest
+known floods, and it was connected, below the town, with grounds lying
+considerably above the river. On one occasion a breach in the dike
+occurred above the town at a very high stage of the flood. The water
+poured in behind it, and overflowed the lower part of the city, which
+remained submerged for some time after the river had retired to its
+ordinary level, because the dike, which had been built to keep the water
+_out_, now kept it _in_.
+
+According to Arthur Young, on the lower Po, where the surface of the
+river has been elevated much above the level of the adjacent fields by
+diking, the peasants in his time frequently endeavored to secure their
+grounds against threatened devastation through the bursting of the
+dikes, by crossing the river when the danger became imminent and opening
+a cut in the opposite bank, thus saving their own property by flooding
+their neighbors'. He adds, that at high water the navigation of the
+river was absolutely interdicted, except to mail and passenger boats,
+and that the guards fired upon all others; the object of the prohibition
+being to prevent the peasants from resorting to this measure of
+self-defence.--_Travels in Italy and Spain_, Nov. 7, 1789.
+
+In a flood of the Po in 1839, a breach of the embankment took place at
+Bonizzo. The water poured through and inundated 116,000 acres, or 181
+square miles, of the plain, to the depth of from twenty to twenty-three
+feet in its lower parts.--BAUMGARTEN, after LOMBARDINI, volume before
+cited, p. 152.
+
+[365] MOYENS _de forcer les Torrents de rendre une partie du sol qu'ils
+ravagent, et d'empecher les grandes Inondations_.
+
+[366] The effect of trees and other detached obstructions in checking
+the flow of water is particularly noticed by Palissy in his essay on
+_Waters and Fountains_, p. 173, edition of 1844. "There be," says he,
+"in divers parts of France, and specially at Nantes, wooden bridges,
+where, to break the force of the waters and of the floating ice, which
+might endamage the piers of the said bridges, they have driven upright
+timbers into the bed of the rivers above the said piers, without the
+which they should abide but little. And in like wise, the trees which be
+planted along the mountains do much deaden the violence of the waters
+that flow from them."
+
+[367] I do not mean to say that all rivers excavate their own valleys,
+for I have no doubt that in the majority of cases such depressions of
+the surface originate in higher geological causes, and hence the valley
+makes the river, not the river the valley. But even if we suppose a
+basin of the hardest rock to be elevated at once, completely formed,
+from the submarine abyss where it was fashioned, the first shower of
+rain that falls upon it after it rises to the air, while its waters will
+follow the lowest lines of the surface, will cut those lines deeper, and
+so on with every successive rain. The disintegrated rock from the upper
+part of the basin forms the lower by alluvial deposit, which is
+constantly transported farther and farther until the resistance of
+gravitation and cohesion balances the mechanical force of the running
+water. Thus plains, more or less steeply inclined, are formed, in which
+the river is constantly changing its bed, according to the perpetually
+varying force and direction of its currents, modified as they are by
+ever-fluctuating conditions. Thus the Po is said to have long inclined
+to move its channel southward in consequence of the superior mechanical
+force of its northern affluents. A diversion of these tributaries from
+their present beds, so that they should enter the main stream at other
+points and in different directions, might modify the whole course of
+that great river. But the mechanical force of the tributary is not the
+only element of its influence on the course of the principal stream. The
+deposits it lodges in the bed of the latter, acting as simple
+obstructions or causes of diversion, are not less important agents of
+change.
+
+[368] The distance to which a new obstruction to the flow of a river,
+whether by a dam or by a deposit in its channel, will retard its
+current, or, in popular phrase, "set back the water," is a problem of
+more difficult practical solution than almost any other in hydraulics.
+The elements--such as straightness or crookedness of channel, character
+of bottom and banks, volume and previous velocity of current, mass of
+water far above the obstruction, extraordinary drought or humidity of
+seasons, relative extent to which the river may be affected by the
+precipitation in its own basin, and by supplies received through
+subterranean channels from sources so distant as to be exposed to very
+different meteorological influences, effects of clearing and other
+improvements always going on in new countries--are all extremely
+difficult, and some of them impossible, to be known and measured. In the
+American States, very numerous watermills have been erected within a few
+years, and there is scarcely a stream in the settled portion of the
+country which has not several milldams upon it. When a dam is raised--a
+process which the gradual diminution of the summer currents renders
+frequently necessary--or when a new dam is built, it often happens that
+the meadows above are flowed, or that the retardation of the stream
+extends back to the dam next above. This leads to frequent lawsuits.
+From the great uncertainty of the facts, the testimony is more
+conflicting in these than in any other class of cases, and the obstinacy
+with which "water causes" are disputed has become proverbial.
+
+The subterranean courses of the waters form a subject very difficult of
+investigation, and it is only recently that its vast importance has been
+recognized. The interesting observations of Schmidt on the caves of the
+Karst and their rivers throw much light on the underground hydrography
+of limestone districts, and serve to explain how, in the low peninsula
+of Florida, rivers, which must have their sources in mountains a hundred
+or more miles distant, can pour out of the earth in currents large
+enough to admit of steamboat navigation to their very basins of
+eruption. Artesian wells are revealing to us the existence of
+subterranean lakes and rivers sometimes superposed one above another in
+successive sheets; but the still more important subject of the
+absorption of water by earth and its transmission by infiltration is yet
+wrapped in great obscurity.
+
+[369] The sediment of the Po has filled up some lagoons and swamps in
+its delta, and converted them into comparatively dry land; but, on the
+other hand, the retardation of the current from the lengthening of its
+course, and the diminution of its velocity by the deposits at its mouth,
+have forced its waters at some higher points to spread in spite of
+embankments, and thus fertile fields have been turned into unhealthy and
+unproductive marshes.--See BOTTER, _Sulla condizione dei Terreni
+Maremmani nel Ferrarese. Annali di Agricoltura, etc._, Fasc. v, 1863.
+
+[370] Deep borings have not detected any essential difference in the
+quantity or quality of the deposits of the Nile for forty or fifty, or,
+as some compute, for a hundred centuries. From what vast store of rich
+earth does this river derive the three or four inches of fertilizing
+material which it spreads over the soil of Egypt every hundred years?
+Not from the White Nile, for that river drops nearly all its suspended
+matter in the broad expansions and slow current of its channel south of
+the tenth degree of north latitude. Nor does it appear that much
+sediment is contributed by the Bahr-el-Azrek, which flows through
+forests for a great part of its course. I have been informed by an old
+European resident of Egypt who is very familiar with the Upper Nile,
+that almost the whole of the earth with which its waters are charged is
+brought down by the Takazze.
+
+[371] It is very probably true that, as Lombardini supposes, the plain
+of Lombardy was anciently covered with forests and morasses (Baumgarten,
+l. c. p. 156); but, had the Po remained unconfined, its deposits would
+have raised its banks as fast as its bed, and there is no obvious reason
+why this plain should be more marshy than other alluvial flats traversed
+by great rivers. Its lower course would possibly have become more marshy
+than at present, but the banks of its middle and upper course would have
+been in a better condition for agricultural use than they now are.
+
+[372] From daily measurements during a period of fourteen years--1827 to
+1840--the mean delivery of the Po at Ponte Lagoscuro, below the entrance
+of its last tributary, is found to be 1,720 cubic metres, or 60,745
+cubic feet, per second. Its smallest delivery is 186 cubic metres, or
+6,569 cubic feet, its greatest 5,156 cubic metres, or 182,094 cubic
+feet.--BAUMGARTEN, following LOMBARDINI, volume before cited, p. 159.
+
+The average delivery of the Nile being 101,000 cubic feet per second, it
+follows that the Po contributes to the Adriatic six tenths as much water
+as the Nile to the Mediterranean--a result which will surprise most
+readers.
+
+[373] We are quite safe in supposing that the valley of the Nile has
+been occupied by man at least 5,000 years. The dates of Egyptian
+chronology are uncertain, but I believe no inquirer estimates the age of
+the great pyramids at less than forty centuries, and the construction of
+such works implies an already ancient civilization.
+
+[374] There are many dikes in Egypt, but they are employed in but a very
+few cases to exclude the waters of the inundation. Their office is to
+retain the water received at high Nile into the inclosures formed by
+them until it shall have deposited its sediment or been drawn out for
+irrigation; and they serve also as causeways for interior communication
+during the floods. The Egyptian dikes, therefore, instead of forcing the
+river, like those of the Po, to transport its sediment to the sea, help
+to retain the slime, which, if the flow of the current over the land
+were not obstructed, might be carried back into the channel, and at last
+to the Mediterranean.
+
+[375] The Mediterranean front of the Delta may be estimated at one
+hundred and fifty miles in length. Two cubic miles of earth would more
+than fill up the lagoons on the coast, and the remaining ten, even
+allowing the mean depth of the water to be twenty fathoms, which is
+beyond the truth, would have been sufficient to extend the coast line
+about three miles farther seaward, and thus, including the land gained
+by the filling up of the lagoons, to add more than five hundred square
+miles to the area of Egypt. Nor is this all; for the retardation of the
+current, by lengthening the course and consequently diminishing the
+inclination of the channel, would have increased the deposit of
+suspended matter, and proportionally augmented the total effect of the
+embankment.
+
+[376] For the convenience of navigation, and to lessen the danger of
+inundation by giving greater directness, and, of course, rapidity to the
+current, bends in rivers are sometimes cut off and winding channels made
+straight. This process has the same general effects as diking, and
+therefore cannot be employed without many of the same results.
+
+This practice has often been resorted to on the Mississippi with
+advantage to navigation, but it is quite another question whether that
+advantage has not been too dearly purchased by the injury to the banks
+at lower points. If we suppose a river to have a navigable course of
+1,600 miles as measured by its natural channel, with a descent of 800
+feet, we shall have a fall of six inches to the mile. If the length of
+channel be reduced to 1,200 miles by cutting off bends, the fall is
+increased to eight inches per mile. The augmentation of velocity
+consequent upon this increase of inclination is not computable without
+taking into account other elements, such as depth and volume of water,
+diminution of direct resistance, and the like, but in almost any
+supposable case, it would be sufficient to produce great effects on the
+height of floods, the deposit of sediment in the channel, on the shores,
+and at the outlet, the erosion of banks and other points of much
+geographical importance.
+
+The Po, in those parts of its course where the embankments leave a wide
+space between, often cuts off bends in its channel and straightens its
+course. These short cuts are called _salti_, or leaps, and sometimes
+reduce the distance between their termini by several miles. In 1777, the
+salto of Cottaro shortened a distance of 7,000 metres by 5,000, or, in
+other words, reduced the length of the channel more than three miles;
+and in 1807 and 1810 the two salti of Mezzanone effected a reduction of
+distance to the amount of between seven and eight miles.--BAUMGARTEN, l.
+c. p. 38.
+
+[377] The fact, that the mixing of salt and fresh water in coast marshes
+and lagoons is deleterious to the sanitary condition of the vicinity,
+seems almost universally admitted, though the precise reason why a
+mixture of both should be more injurious than either alone, is not
+altogether clear. It has been suggested that the admission of salt water
+to the lagoons and rivers kills many fresh water plants and animals,
+while the fresh water is equally fatal to many marine organisms, and
+that the decomposition of the remains originates poisonous miasmata.
+Other theories however have been proposed. The whole subject is fully
+and ably discussed by Dr. Salvagnoli Marchetti in the appendix to his
+valuable _Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane_. See also
+the _Memorie Economico-Statistiche sulle Maremme Toscane_, of the same
+author.
+
+[378] This curious fact is thus stated in the preface to Fossombroni
+(_Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana_, edition of 1835, p. xiii), from which
+also I borrow most of the data hereafter given with respect to that
+valley: "It is perhaps not universally known, that the swallows, which
+come from the north [south] to spend the summer in our climate, do not
+frequent marshy districts with a malarious atmosphere. A proof of the
+restoration of salubrity in the Val di Chiana is furnished by these
+aerial visitors, which had never before been seen in those low grounds,
+but which have appeared within a few years at Forano and other points
+similarly situated."
+
+Is the air of swamps destructive to the swallows, or is their absence in
+such localities merely due to the want of human habitations, near which
+this half-domestic bird loves to breed, perhaps because the house fly
+and other insects which follow man are found only in the vicinity of his
+dwellings?
+
+In almost all European countries, the swallow is protected, by popular
+opinion or superstition, from the persecution to which almost all other
+birds are subject. It is possible that this respect for the swallow is
+founded upon ancient observation of the fact just stated on the
+authority of Fossombroni. Ignorance mistakes the effect for the cause,
+and the absence of this bird may have been supposed to be the occasion,
+not the consequence, of the unhealthiness of particular localities. This
+opinion once adopted, the swallow would become a sacred bird, and in
+process of time fables and legends would be invented to give additional
+sanction to the prejudices which protected it. The Romans considered the
+swallow as consecrated to the Penates, or household gods, and according
+to Peretti (_Le Serate del Villaggio_, p. 168) the Lombard peasantry
+think it a sin to kill them, because they are _le gallinelle del
+Signore_, the chickens of the Lord.
+
+The following little Tuscan _rispetto_ from Gradi (_Racconti Popolari_,
+p. 33) well expresses the feeling of the peasantry toward this bird:
+
+  O rondinella che passi lo mare
+  Torna 'ndietro, vo' dirti du' parole;
+  Dammi 'na penna delle tue bell' ale,
+  Vo' scrivere 'na lettera al mi' amore;
+  E quando l' avro scritta 'n carta bella,
+  Ti rendero la penna, o rondinella;
+  E quando l' avro scritta 'n carta bianca,
+  Ti rendero la penna che ti manca;
+  E quando l' avro scritta in carta d' oro,
+  Ti rendero la penna al tuo bel volo.
+
+  O swallow, that fliest beyond the sea,
+  Turn back! I would fain have a word with thee.
+  A feather oh grant, from thy wing so bright!
+  For I to my sweetheart a letter would write;
+  And when it is written on paper fine
+  I'll give thee, O swallow, that feather of thine;
+  --On paper so white, and I'll give thee back,
+  O pretty swallow, the pen thou dost lack;
+  --On paper of gold, and then I'll restore
+  To thy beautiful pinion the feather once more.
+
+Popular traditions and superstitions are so closely connected with
+localities, that, though an emigrant people may carry them to a foreign
+land, they seldom survive a second generation. The swallow, however, is
+still protected in New England by prejudices of transatlantic origin;
+and I remember hearing, in my childhood, that if the swallows were
+killed, the cows would give bloody milk.
+
+[379] MOROZZI, _Dello stato antico e moderno del fiume Arno_, ii, p. 42.
+
+[380] MOROZZI, _Dello stato, etc., dell' Arno_, ii, pp. 39, 40.
+
+[381] Torricelli thus expressed himself on this point: "If we content
+ourselves with what nature has made practicable to human industry, we
+shall endeavor to control, as far as possible, the outlets of these
+streams, which, by raising the bed of the valley with their deposits,
+will realize the fable of the Tagus and the Pactolus, and truly roll
+golden sands for him that is wise enough to avail himself of
+them."--FOSSOMBRONI, _Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana_, p. 219.
+
+[382] Arrian observes that at the junction of the Hydaspes and the
+Acesines, both of which are described as wide streams, "one very narrow
+river is formed of two confluents, and its current is very
+swift."--ARRIAN, _Alex. Anab._, vi, 4.
+
+[383] This difficulty has been remedied as to one important river of the
+Maremma, the Pecora, by clearings recently executed along its upper
+course. "The condition of this marsh and of its affluents are now,
+November, 1859, much changed, and it is advisable to prosecute its
+improvement by deposits. In consequence of the extensive felling of the
+woods upon the plains, hills, and mountains of the territory of Massa
+and Scarlino, within the last ten years, the Pecora and other affluents
+of the marsh receive, during the rains, water abundantly charged with
+slime, so that the deposits within the first division of the marsh are
+already considerable, and we may now hope to see the whole marsh and
+pond filled up in a much shorter time than we had a right to expect
+before 1850. This circumstance totally changes the terms of the
+question, because the filling of the marsh and pond, which then seemed
+almost impossible on account of the small amount of sediment deposited
+by the Pecora, has now become practicable."--SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto sul
+Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane_, pp. li, lii.
+
+The annual amount of sediment brought down by the rivers of the Maremma
+is computed at more than 12,000,000 cubic yards, or enough to raise an
+area of four square miles one yard. Between 1830 and 1859 more than
+three times that quantity was deposited in the marsh and shoal water
+lake of Castiglione alone.--SALVAGNOLI, _Raccolta di Documenti_, pp. 74,
+75.
+
+[384] The tide rises ten inches on the coast of Tuscany. See Memoir by
+FANTONI, in the appendix to SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto_, p. 189.
+
+On the tides of the Mediterranean, see BOeTTGER, _Das Mittelmeer_, p.
+190. Not having Admiral Smyth's Mediterranean--on which Boettger's work
+is founded--at hand, I do not know how far credit is due to the former
+author for the matter contained in the chapter referred to.
+
+[385] In Catholic countries, the discipline of the church requires a
+_meagre_ diet at certain seasons, and as fish is not flesh, there is a
+great demand for that article of food at those periods. For the
+convenience of monasteries and their patrons, and as a source of
+pecuniary emolument to ecclesiastical establishments and sometimes to
+lay proprietors, great numbers of artificial fish ponds were created
+during the Middle Ages. They were generally shallow pools formed by
+damming up the outlet of marshes, and they were among the most fruitful
+sources of endemic disease, and of the peculiar malignity of the
+epidemics which so often ravaged Europe in those centuries. These ponds,
+in religious hands, were too sacred to be infringed upon for sanitary
+purposes, and when belonging to powerful lay lords they were almost as
+inviolable. The rights of fishery were a standing obstacle to every
+proposal of hydraulic improvement, and to this day large and fertile
+districts in Southern Europe remain sickly and almost unimproved and
+uninhabited, because the draining of the ponds upon them would reduce
+the income of proprietors who derive large profits by supplying the
+faithful, in Lent, with fish, and with various species of waterfowl
+which, though very fat, are, ecclesiastically speaking, meagre.
+
+[386] Macchiavelli advised the Government of Tuscany "to provide that
+men should restore the wholesomeness of the soil by cultivation, and
+purify the air by fires."--SALVAGNOLI, _Memorie_, p. 111.
+
+[387] GIORGINI, _Sur les causes de l'Insalubrite de l'air dans le
+voisinage des marais, etc., lue a l'Academie des Sciences a Paris_, le
+12 Juillet, 1825. Reprinted in SALVAGNOLI, _Rapporto, etc._, appendice,
+p. 5, _et seqq._
+
+[388] See the careful estimates of ROSET, _Moyens de forcer les
+Torrents, etc._, pp. 42, 44.
+
+[389] Rivers which transport sand, gravel, pebbles, heavy mineral matter
+in short, tend to raise their own beds; those charged only with fine,
+light earth, to cut them deeper. The prairie rivers of the West have
+deep channels, because the mineral matter they carry down is not heavy
+enough to resist the impulse of even a moderate current, and those
+tributaries of the Po which deposit their sediment in the lakes--the
+Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, and the Mincio--flow, in deep cuts, for the
+same reason.--BAUMGARTEN, l. c., p. 132.
+
+[390] "The stream carries this mud, &c., at first farther to the east,
+and only lets it fall where the force of the current becomes weakened.
+This explains the continual advance of the land seaward along the Syrian
+coast, in consequence of which Tyre and Sidon no longer lie on the
+shore, but some distance inland. That the Nile contributes to this
+deposit may easily be seen, even by the unscientific observer, from the
+stained and turbid character of the water for many miles from its
+mouths. A somewhat alarming phenomenon was observed in this neighborhood
+in 1801, on board the English frigate Romulus, Captain Culverhouse, on a
+voyage from Acre to Abukir. Dr. E. D. Clarke, who was a passenger on
+board this ship, thus describes it:
+
+"'26th July.--To-day, Sunday, we accompanied the captain to the wardroom
+to dine, as usual, with his officers. While we were at table, we heard
+the sailors who were throwing the lead suddenly cry out: "Three and a
+half!" The captain sprang up, was on deck in an instant, and, almost at
+the same moment, the ship slackened her way, and veered about. Every
+sailor on board supposed she would ground at once. Meanwhile, however,
+as the ship came round, the whole surface of the water was seen to be
+covered with thick, black mud, which extended so far that it appeared
+like an island. At the same time, actual land was nowhere to be
+seen--not even from the masthead--nor was any notice of such a shoal to
+be found on any chart on board. The fact is, as we learned afterward,
+that a stratum of mud, stretching from the mouths of the Nile for many
+miles out into the open sea, forms a movable deposit along the Egyptian
+coast. If this deposit is driven forward by powerful currents, it
+sometimes rises to the surface, and disturbs the mariner by the sudden
+appearance of shoals where the charts lead him to expect a considerable
+depth of water. But these strata of mud are, in reality, not in the
+least dangerous. As soon as a ship strikes them they break up at once,
+and a frigate may hold her course in perfect safety where an
+inexperienced pilot, misled by his soundings, would every moment expect
+to be stranded.'"--BOeTTGER, _Das Mittelmeer_, pp. 188, 189.
+
+[391] The caves of Carniola receive considerable rivers from the surface
+of the earth, which cannot, in all cases, be identified with streams
+flowing out of them at other points, and like phenomena are not uncommon
+in other limestone countries.
+
+The cases are certainly not numerous where marine currents are known to
+pour continuously into cavities beneath the surface of the earth, but
+there is at least one well-authenticated instance of this sort--that of
+the mill streams at Argostoli in the island of Cephalonia. It had been
+long observed that the sea water flowed into several rifts and cavities
+in the limestone rocks of the coast, but the phenomenon has excited
+little attention until very recently. In 1833, three of the entrances
+were closed, and a regular channel, sixteen feet long and three feet
+wide, with a fall of three feet, was cut into the mouth of a larger
+cavity. The sea water flowed into this canal, and could be followed
+eighteen or twenty feet beyond its inner terminus, when it disappeared
+in holes and clefts in the rock.
+
+In 1858, the canal had been enlarged to the width of five feet and a
+half, and a depth of a foot. The water pours rapidly through the canal
+into an irregular depression and forms a pool, the surface of which is
+three or four feet below the adjacent soil, and about two and a half or
+three feet below the level of the sea. From this pool it escapes through
+several holes and clefts in the rock, and has not yet been found to
+emerge elsewhere.
+
+There is a tide at Argostoli of about six inches in still weather, but
+it is considerably higher with a south wind. I do not find it stated
+whether water flows through the canal into the cavity at low tide, but
+it distinctly appears that there is no refluent current, as of course
+there could not be from a basin so much below the sea. Mousson found the
+delivery through the canal to be at the rate of 24.88 cubic feet to the
+second; at what stage of the tide does not appear. Other mills of the
+same sort have been erected, and there appear to be several points on
+the coast where the sea flows into the land.
+
+Various hypotheses have been suggested to explain this phenomenon, some
+of which assume that the water descends to a great depth beneath the
+crust of the earth, but the supposition of a difference of level in the
+surface of the sea on the opposite sides of the island, which seems
+confirmed by other circumstances, is the most obvious method of
+explaining these singular facts. If we suppose the level of the water on
+one side of the island to be raised by the action of currents three or
+four feet higher than on the other, the existence of cavities and
+channels in the rock would easily account for a subterranean current
+beneath the island, and the apertures of escape might be so deep or so
+small as to elude observation. See _Aus der Natur_, vol. 19, pp. 129,
+_et seqq._ See _Appendix_, No. 53.
+
+[392] "The affluents received by the Seine below Rouen are so
+inconsiderable, that the augmentation of the volume of that river must
+be ascribed principally to springs rising in its bed. This is a point of
+which engineers now take notice, and M. Belgrand, the able officer
+charged with the improvement of the navigation of the Seine between
+Paris and Rouen, has devoted much attention to it."--BABINET, _Etudes et
+Lectures_, iii, p. 185.
+
+On page 232 of the volume just quoted, the same author observes: "In the
+lower part of its course, from the falls of the Oise, the Seine receives
+so few important affluents, that evaporation alone would suffice to
+exhaust all the water which passes under the bridges of Paris."
+
+This supposes a much greater amount of evaporation than has been usually
+computed, but I believe it is well settled that the Seine conveys to the
+sea much more water than is discharged into it by all its superficial
+branches.
+
+[393] Girard and Duchatelet maintain that the subterranean waters of
+Paris are absolutely stagnant. See their report on drainage by artesian
+wells, _Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1833, 2me semestre, pp. 313,
+_et seqq._
+
+This opinion, if locally true, cannot be generally so, for it is
+inconsistent with the well-known fact that the very first eruption of
+water from a boring often brings up leaves and other objects which must
+have been carried into the underground reservoirs by currents.
+
+[394] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 286. It does not appear whether
+this inference is Mariotte's or Wittwer's. I suppose it is a conclusion
+of the latter.
+
+[395] _Physical Geography of the Sea._ Tenth edition. London, 1861, Sec.
+274.
+
+[396] PARAMELLE, _Quellenkunde, mit einem Vorwort von_ B. COTTA, 1856.
+
+[397] _Etudes et Lectures_, vi, p. 118.
+
+[398] "The area of soil dried by draining is constantly increasing, and
+the water received by the surface from atmospheric precipitation is
+thereby partly conducted into new channels, and, in general, carried off
+more rapidly than before. Will not this fact exert an influence on the
+condition of many springs, whose basin of supply thus undergoes a
+partial or complete transformation? I am convinced that it will, and it
+is important to collect data for solving the question." BERNHARD COTTA,
+Preface to PARAMELLE, _Quellenkunde_ (German translation), pp. vii,
+viii. See _Appendix_, No. 54.
+
+[399] See the interesting observations of KRIEGK on this subject,
+_Schriften zur allgemeinen Erdkunde_, cap. iii, Sec. 6, and especially the
+passages in RITTER'S _Erdkunde_, vol. i, there referred to.
+
+Laurent, (_Memoires sur le Sahara Oriental_, pp. 8, 9), in speaking of a
+river at El-Faid, "which, like all those of the desert, is, most of the
+time, without water," observes, that many wells are dug in the bed of
+the river in the dry season, and that the subterranean current thus
+reached appears to extend itself laterally, at about the same level, at
+least a kilometre from the river, as water is found by digging to the
+depth of twelve or fifteen metres at a village situated at that distance
+from the bank.
+
+The most remarkable case of infiltration known to me by personal
+observation is the occurrence of fresh water in the beach sand on the
+eastern side of the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern arm of the Red Sea. If
+you dig a cavity in the beach near the sea level, it soon fills with
+water so fresh as not to be undrinkable, though the sea water two or
+three yards from it contains even more than the average quantity of
+salt. It cannot be maintained that this is sea water freshened by
+filtration through a few feet or inches of sand, for salt water cannot
+be deprived of its salt by that process. It can only come from the
+highlands of Arabia, and it would seem that there must exist some large
+reservoir in the interior to furnish a supply which, in spite of
+evaporation, holds out for months after the last rains of winter, and
+perhaps even through the year. I observed the fact in the month of June.
+
+The precipitation in the mountains that border the Red Sea is not known
+by pluviometric measurement, but the mass of debris brought down the
+ravines by the torrents proves that their volume must be large. The
+proportion of surface covered by sand and absorbent earth, in Arabia
+Petraea and the neighboring countries, is small, and the mountains drain
+themselves rapidly into the wadies or ravines where the torrents are
+formed; but the beds of earth and disintegrated rock at the bottom of
+the valleys are of so loose and porous texture, that a great quantity of
+water is absorbed in saturating them before a visible current is formed
+on their surface. In a heavy thunder storm, accompanied by a deluging
+rain, which I witnessed at Mount Sinai in the month of May, a large
+stream of water poured, in an almost continuous cascade, down the steep
+ravine north of the convent, by which travellers sometimes descend from
+the plateau between the two peaks, but after reaching the foot of the
+mountain, it flowed but a few yards before it was swallowed up in the
+sands.
+
+[400] It is conceivable that in large and shallow subterranean basins
+the superincumbent earth may rest upon the water and be partly supported
+by it. In such case the weight of the earth would be an additional, if
+not the sole, cause of the ascent of the water through the tubes of
+artesian wells. The elasticity of gases in the cavities may also aid in
+forcing up water.
+
+A French engineer, M. Mullot, invented a simple method of bringing to
+the surface water from any one of several successive accumulations at
+different depths, or of raising it, unmixed, from two or more of them at
+once. It consists in employing concentric tubes, one within the other,
+leaving a space for the rise of water between them, and reaching each to
+the sheet from which it is intended to draw.
+
+[401] Many more or less probable conjectures have been made on this
+subject, but thus far I am not aware that any of the apprehended results
+have been actually shown to have happened. In an article in the _Annales
+des Ponts et Chaussees_ for July and August, 1839, p. 131, it was
+suggested that the sinking of the piers of a bridge at Tours in France
+was occasioned by the abstraction of water from the earth by artesian
+wells, and the consequent withdrawal of the mechanical support it had
+previously given to the strata containing it. A reply to this article
+will be found in VIOLETT, _Theorie des Puits Artesiens_, p. 217.
+
+In some instances the water has rushed up with a force which seemed to
+threaten the inundation of the neighborhood, and even the washing away
+of much soil; but in those cases the partial exhaustion of the supply,
+or the relief of hydrostatic or elastic pressure, has generally produced
+a diminution of the flow in a short time, and I do not know that any
+serious evil has ever been occasioned in this way.
+
+[402] See a very interesting account of these wells, and of the workmen
+who clean them out when obstructed by sand brought up with the water, in
+Laurent's memoir on the artesian wells recently bored by the French
+Government in the Algerian desert, _Memoire sur le Sahara Oriental,
+etc._, pp. 19, _et seqq._ Some of the men remained under water from two
+minutes to two minutes and forty seconds. Several officers are quoted as
+having observed immersions of three minutes' duration, and M. Berbrugger
+alleges that he witnessed one of five minutes and fifty-five seconds.
+The shortest of these periods is longer than the best pearl diver can
+remain below the surface of salt water. The wells of the Sahara are from
+twenty to eighty metres deep.
+
+It has often been asserted that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted
+with the art of boring artesian wells. Parthey, describing the Little
+Oasis, mentions ruins of a Roman aqueduct, and observes: "It appears
+from the recent researches of Aim, a French engineer, that these
+aqueducts are connected with old artesian wells, the restoration of
+which would render it practicable to extend cultivation much beyond its
+present limits. This agrees with ancient testimony. It is asserted that
+the inhabitants of the oases sunk wells to the depth of 200, 300, and
+even 500 ells, from which affluent streams of water poured out. See
+OLYMPIODORUS in _Photii Bibl._, cod. 80, p. 61, l. 17, ed.
+Bekk."--PARTHEY, _Wanderungen_, ii, p. 528.
+
+In a paper entitled, _Note relative a l'execution d'un Puits Artesien en
+Egypte sous la XVIII dynastie_, presented to the Academie des
+Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, on the 12th of November, 1852, M.
+Lenormant endeavors to show that a hieroglyphic inscription found at
+Contrapscelcis proves the execution of a work of this sort in the Nubian
+desert, at the period indicated in the title to his paper. The
+interpretation of the inscription is a question for Egyptologists; but
+if wells were actually bored through the rock by the Egyptians after the
+Chinese or the European fashion, it is singular that among the numerous
+and minute representations of their industrial operations, painted or
+carved on the walls of their tombs, no trace of the processes employed
+for so remarkable and important a purpose should have been discovered.
+See _Appendix_, No. 56.
+
+It is certain that artesian wells have been common in China from a very
+remote antiquity, and the simple method used by the Chinese--where the
+borer is raised and let fall by a rope, instead of a rigid rod--has been
+lately been employed in Europe with advantage. Some of the Chinese wells
+are said to be 3,000 feet deep; that of Neusalzwerk in Silesia--the
+deepest in Europe--is 2,300. A well was bored at St. Louis, in Missouri,
+a few years ago, to supply a sugar refinery, to the depth of 2,199 feet.
+This was executed by a private firm in three years, at the expense of
+only $10,000. Another has since been bored at the State capitol at
+Columbus, Ohio, 2,500 feet deep, but without obtaining the desired
+supply of water.
+
+[403] "In the anticipation of our success at Oum-Thiour, every thing had
+been prepared to take advantage of this new source of wealth without a
+moment's delay. A division of the tribe of the Selmia, and their sheikh,
+Aissa ben Sha, laid the foundation of a village as soon as the water
+flowed, and planted twelve hundred date palms, renouncing their
+wandering life to attach themselves to the soil. In this arid spot, life
+had taken the place of solitude, and presented itself, with its smiling
+images, to the astonished traveller. Young girls were drawing water at
+the fountain; the flocks, the great dromedaries with their slow pace,
+the horses led by the halter, were moving to the watering trough; the
+hounds and the falcons enlivened the group of party-colored tents, and
+living voices and animated movement had succeeded to silence and
+desolation."--LAURENT, _Memoires sur le Sahara_, p. 85.
+
+[404] The variety of hues and tones in the local color of the desert is,
+I think, one of the phenomena which most surprise and interest a
+stranger to those regions. In England and the United States, rock is so
+generally covered with moss or earth, and earth with vegetation, that
+untravelled Englishmen and Americans are not very familiar with naked
+rock as a conspicuous element of landscape. Hence, in their conception
+of a bare cliff or precipice, they hardly ascribe definite color to it,
+but depict it to their imagination as wearing a neutral tint not
+assimilable to any of the hues with which nature tinges her atmospheric
+or paints her organic creations. There are certainly extensive desert
+ranges, chiefly limestone formations, where the surface is either white,
+or has weathered down to a dull uniformity of tone which can hardly be
+called color at all; and there are sand plains and drifting hills of
+wearisome monotony of tint. But the chemistry of the air, though it may
+tame the glitter of the limestone to a dusky gray, brings out the green
+and brown and purple of the igneous rocks, and the white and red and
+blue and violet and yellow of the sandstone. Many a cliff in Arabia
+Petraea is as manifold in color as the rainbow, and the veins are so
+variable in thickness and inclination, so contorted and involved in
+arrangement, as to bewilder the eye of the spectator like a disk of
+party-colored glass in rapid revolution.
+
+In the narrower wadies, the mirage is not common; but on broad expanses,
+as at many points between Cairo and Suez, and in Wadi el Araba, it mocks
+you with lakes and land-locked bays, studded with islands and fringed
+with trees, all painted with an illusory truth of representation
+absolutely indistinguishable from the reality. The checkered earth, too,
+is canopied with a heaven as variegated as itself. You see, high up in
+the sky, rosy clouds at noonday, colored probably by reflection from the
+ruddy mountains, while near the horizon float cumuli of a transparent
+ethereal blue, seemingly balled up out of the clear cerulean substance
+of the firmament, and detached from the heavenly vault, not by color or
+consistence, but solely by the light and shade of their prominences.
+
+[405] _[OE]uvres de Palissy, Des Eaux et Fontaines_, p. 157.
+
+[406] Id., p. 166. See _Appendix_, No. 57.
+
+[407] BABINET, _Etudes et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Observation_, ii,
+p. 225. Our author precedes his account of his method with a complaint
+which most men who indulge in thinking have occasion to repeat many
+times in the course of their lives. "I will explain to my readers the
+construction of artificial fountains according to the plan of the famous
+Bernard de Palissy, who, a hundred and fifty [three hundred] years ago,
+came and took away from me, a humble academician of the nineteenth
+century, this discovery which I had taken a great deal of pains to make.
+It is enough to discourage all invention when one finds plagiarists in
+the past as well as in the future!" (P. 224.)
+
+[408] M. G. DUMAS, _La Science des Fontaines_, 1857.
+
+[409] In the curiously variegated sandstone of Arabia Petraea--which is
+certainly a reaggregation of loose sand derived from particles of older
+rocks--the contiguous veins frequently differ very widely in color, but
+not sensibly in specific gravity or in texture; and the singular way in
+which they are now alternated, now confusedly intermixed, must be
+explained otherwise than by the weight of the respective grains which
+compose them. They seem, in fact, to have been let fall by water in
+violent ebullition or tumultuous mechanical agitation, or by a
+succession of sudden aquatic or aerial currents flowing in different
+directions and charged with differently colored matter.
+
+[410] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, pp. 243, 246-377, _et seqq._ See also
+the arguments of Bremontier as to the origin of the dune sands of
+Gascony, _Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1833, 1er semestre, pp. 158,
+161. Bremontier estimates the sand annually thrown up on that coast at
+five cubic toises and two feet to the running toise (ubi supra, p. 162),
+or rather more than two hundred and twenty cubic feet to the running
+foot. Laval, upon observations continued through seven years, found the
+quantity to be twenty-five metres per running metre, which is equal to
+two hundred and sixty-eight cubic feet to the running foot.--_Annales
+des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1842, 2me semestre, p. 229. These computations
+make the proportion of sand deposited on the coast of Gascony three or
+four times as great as that observed by Andresen on the shores of
+Jutland. Laval estimates the total quantity of sand annually thrown up
+on the coast of Gascony at 6,000,000 cubic metres, or more than
+7,800,000 cubic yards.
+
+[411] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 339.
+
+[412] The conditions favorable to the production of sand from
+disintegrated rock, by causes now in action, are perhaps nowhere more
+perfectly realized than in the Sinaitic Peninsula. The mountains are
+steep and lofty, unprotected by vegetation or even by a coating of
+earth, and the rocks which compose them are in a shattered and
+fragmentary condition. They are furrowed by deep and precipitous
+ravines, with beds sufficiently inclined for the rapid flow of water,
+and generally without basins in which the larger blocks of stone rolled
+by the torrents can be dropped and left in repose; there are severe
+frosts and much snow on the higher summits and ridges, and the winter
+rains are abundant and heavy. The mountains are principally of igneous
+formation, but many of the less elevated peaks are capped with
+sandstone, and on the eastern slope of the peninsula you may sometimes
+see, at a single glance, several lofty pyramids of granite, separated by
+considerable intervals, and all surmounted by horizontally stratified
+deposits of sandstone often only a few yards square, which correspond to
+each other in height, are evidently contemporaneous in origin, and were
+once connected in continuous beds. The degradation of the rock on which
+this formation rests is constantly bringing down masses of it, and
+mingling them with the basaltic, porphyritic, granitic, and calcareous
+fragments which the torrents carry down to the valleys, and, through
+them, in a state of greater or less disintegration, to the sea. The
+quantity of sand annually washed into the Red Sea by the larger torrents
+of the Lesser Peninsula, is probably at least equal to that contributed
+to the ocean by any streams draining basins of no greater extent.
+Absolutely considered, then, the mass may be said to be large, but it is
+apparently very small as compared with the sand thrown up by the German
+Ocean and the Atlantic on the coasts of Denmark and of France. There
+are, indeed, in Arabia Petraea, many torrents with very short courses,
+for the sea waves in many parts of the peninsular coast wash the base of
+the mountains. In these cases, the debris of the rocks do not reach the
+sea in a sufficiently comminuted condition to be entitled to the
+appellation of sand, or even in the form of well-rounded pebbles. The
+fragments retain their angular shape, and, at some points on the coast,
+they become cemented together by lime or other binding substances held
+in solution or mechanical suspension in the sea water, and are so
+rapidly converted into a singularly heterogeneous conglomerate, that one
+deposit seems to be consolidated into a breccia before the next winter's
+torrents cover it with another.
+
+In the northern part of the peninsula there are extensive deposits of
+sand intermingled with agate pebbles and petrified wood, but these are
+evidently neither derived from the Sinaitic group, nor products of local
+causes known to be now in action.
+
+I may here notice the often repeated but mistaken assertion, that the
+petrified wood of the Western Arabian desert consists wholly of the
+stems of palms, or at least of endogenous vegetables. This is an error.
+I have myself picked up in that desert, within the space of a very few
+square yards, fragments both of fossil palms, and of at least two
+petrified trees distinctly marked as of exogenous growth both by annular
+structure and by knots. In ligneous character, one of these almost
+precisely resembles the grain of the extant beech, and this specimen was
+wormeaten before it was converted into silex.
+
+[413] BOeTTGER, _Das Mittelmeer_, p. 128.
+
+[414] The testimony of divers and of other observers on this point is
+conflicting, as might be expected from the infinite variety of
+conditions by which the movement of water is affected. It is generally
+believed that the action of the wind upon the water is not perceptible
+at greater depths than from fifteen feet in ordinary, to eighty or
+ninety in extreme cases; but these estimates are probably very
+considerably below the truth. Andresen quotes Bremontier as stating that
+the movement of the waves sometimes extends to the depth of five hundred
+feet, and he adds that others think it may reach to six or even seven
+hundred feet below the surface.--ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, p. 20.
+
+Many physicists now suppose that the undulations of great bodies of
+water reach even deeper. But a movement of undulation is not necessarily
+a movement of translation, and besides, there is very frequently an
+undertow, which tends to carry suspended bodies out to sea as powerfully
+as the superficial waves to throw them on shore. Sandbanks sometimes
+recede from the coast, instead of rolling toward it. Reclus informs us
+that the Mauvaise, a sandbank near the Point de Grave, on the Atlantic
+coast of France, has moved five miles to the west in less than a
+century.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, for December, 1862, p. 905.
+
+The action of currents may, in some cases, have been confounded with
+that of the waves. Sea currents, strong enough, possibly, to transport
+sand for some distance, flow far below the surface in parts of the open
+ocean, and in narrow straits they have great force and velocity. The
+divers employed at Constantinople in 1853 found in the Bosphorus, at the
+depth of twenty-five fathoms and at a point much exposed to the wash
+from Galata and Pera, a number of bronze guns supposed to have belonged
+to a ship of war blown up about a hundred and fifty years before. These
+guns were not covered by sand or slime, though a crust of earthy matter,
+an inch in thickness, adhered to their upper surfaces, and the bottom of
+the strait appeared to be wholly free from sediment. The current was so
+powerful at this depth that the divers were hardly able to stand, and a
+keg of nails, purposely dropped into the water, in order that its
+movements might serve as a guide in the search for a bag of coin
+accidentally lost overboard from a ship in the harbor, was rolled by the
+stream several hundred yards before it stopped.
+
+[415] Few seas have thrown up so much sand as the shallow German Ocean;
+but there is some reason to think that the amount of this material now
+cast upon its northern shores is less than at some former periods,
+though no extensive series of observations on this subject has been
+recorded. On the Spit of Agger, at the present outlet of the Liimfjord,
+Andresen found the quantity during ten years, on a beach about five
+hundred and seventy feet broad, equal to an annual deposit of an inch
+and a half over the whole surface.--_Om Klitformationen_, p. 56.
+
+This gives seventy-one and a quarter cubic feet to the running foot--a
+quantity certainly much smaller than that cast up by the same sea on the
+shores of the Dano-German duchies and of Holland, and, as we have seen,
+scarcely one fourth of that deposited by the Atlantic on the coast of
+Gascony. See _ante_, p. 453, note.
+
+[416] Sand heaps, three and even six hundred feet high, are indeed
+formed by the wind, but this is effected by driving the particles up an
+inclined plane, not by lifting them. Bremontier, speaking of the sand
+hills on the western coast of France, says: "The particles of sand
+composing them are not large enough to resist wind of a certain force,
+nor small enough to be taken up by it, like dust; they only roll along
+the surface from which they are detached, and, though moving with great
+velocity, they rarely rise to a greater height than three or four
+inches."--_Memoire sur les Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1833,
+1er semestre, p. 148.
+
+Andresen says that a wind, having a velocity of forty feet per second,
+is strong enough to raise particles of sand as high as the face and eyes
+of a man, but that, in general, it rolls along the ground, and is
+scarcely ever thrown more than to the height of a couple of yards from
+the surface. Even in these cases, it is carried forward by a hopping,
+not a continuous, motion; for a very narrow sheet or channel of water
+stops the drift entirely, all the sand dropping into it until it is
+filled up.
+
+The character of the motion of sand drifts is well illustrated by an
+interesting fact not much noticed hitherto by travellers in the East. In
+situations where the sand is driven through depressions in rock beds, or
+over deposits of silicious pebbles, the surface of the stone is worn and
+smoothed much more effectually than it could be by running water, and
+you may pick up, in such localities, rounded, irregularly broken
+fragments of agate, which have received from the attrition of the sand
+as fine a polish as could be given them by the wheel of the lapidary.
+
+Very interesting observations on the polishing of hard stones by
+drifting sand will be found in the Geological Report of William P.
+Blake: _Pacific Railroad Report_, vol. v, pp. 92, 230, 231. The same
+geologist observes, p. 242, that the sand of the Colorado desert does
+not rise high in the air, but bounds along on the surface or only a few
+inches above it.
+
+[417] Wilkinson says that, in much experience in the most sandy parts of
+the Libyan desert, and much inquiry of the best native sources, he never
+saw or heard of any instance of danger to man or beast from the mere
+accumulation of sand transported by the wind. Chesney's observations in
+Arabia, and the testimony of the Bedouins he consulted, are to the same
+purpose. The dangers of the simoom are of a different character, though
+they are certainly aggravated by the blinding effects of the light
+particles of dust and sand borne along by it, and by that of the
+inhalation of them upon the respiration.
+
+[418] In the narrow valley of the Nile, bounded as it is, above the
+Delta, by high cliffs, all air currents from the northern quarter become
+north winds, though, of course varying in partial direction, in
+conformity with the sinuosities of the valley. Upon the desert plateau
+they incline westward, and have already borne into the valley the sands
+of the eastern banks, and driven those of the western quite out of the
+Egyptian portion of the Nile basin.
+
+[419] "The North African desert falls into two divisions: the Sahel, or
+western, and the Sahar, or eastern. The sands of the Sahar were, at a
+remote period, drifted to the west. In the Sahel, the prevailing east
+winds drive the sand-ocean with a progressive westward motion. The
+eastern half of the desert is swept clean."--NAUMANN, _Geognosie_, ii,
+p. 1173.
+
+[420] In parts of the Algerian desert, some efforts are made to retard
+the advance of sand dunes which threaten to overwhelm villages. "At
+Debila," says Laurent, "the lower parts of the lofty dunes are planted
+with palms, * * * but they are constantly menaced with burial by the
+sands. The only remedy employed by the natives consists in little dry
+walls of crystallized gypsum, built on the crests of the dunes, together
+with hedges of dead palm leaves. These defensive measures are aided by
+incessant labor; for every day the people take up in baskets the sand
+blown over to them the night before and carry it back to the other side
+of the dune."--_Memoires sur le Sahara_, p. 14.
+
+[421] Organic constituents, such as comminuted shells, and silicious and
+calcareous exuviae of infusorial animals and plants, are sometimes found
+mingled in considerable quantities with mineral sands. These are usually
+the remains of aquatic vegetables or animals, but not uniformly so, for
+the microscopic organisms, whose flinty cases enter so largely into the
+sandbeds of the Mark of Brandenburg, are still living and prolific in
+the dry earth. See WITTWER, _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 142.
+
+The desert on both sides of the Nile is inhabited by a land snail, and
+thousands of its shells are swept along and finally buried in the drifts
+by every wind. Every handful of the sand contains fragments of them.
+FORCHHAMMER, in LEONHARD Und BRONN's _Jahrbuch_, 1841, p. 8, says of the
+sand hills of the Danish coast: "It is not rare to find, high in the
+knolls, marine shells, and especially those of the oyster. They are due
+to the oyster eater [_Haemalopus ostralegus_], which carries his prey to
+the top of the dunes to devour it." See also STARING, _De Bodem van_, N.
+I. p. 321.
+
+[422] There are various reasons why the formation of dunes is confined
+to low shores, and this law is so universal, that when bluffs are
+surmounted by them, there is always cause to suspect upheaval, or the
+removal of a sloping beach in front of the bluff, after the dunes were
+formed. Bold shores are usually without a sufficient beach for the
+accumulation of large deposits; they are commonly washed by a sea too
+deep to bring up sand from its bottom; their abrupt elevation, even if
+moderate in amount, would still be too great to allow ordinary winds to
+lift the sand above them; and their influence in deadening the wind
+which blows toward them would even more effectually prevent the raising
+of sand from the beach at their foot.
+
+Forchhammer, describing the coast of Jutland, says that, in high winds,
+"one can hardly stand upon the dunes, except when they are near the
+water line and have been cut down perpendicularly by the waves. Then the
+wind is little or not at all felt--a fact of experience very common on
+our coasts, observed on all the steep shore bluffs of two hundred feet
+in height, and, in the Faroe Islands, on precipices two thousand feet
+high. In heavy gales in those islands, the cattle fly to the very edge
+of the cliffs for shelter, and frequently fall over. The wind, impinging
+against the vertical wall, creates an ascending current which shoots
+somewhat past the crest of the rock, and thus the observer or the animal
+is protected against the tempest by a barrier of air."--LEONHARD und
+BRONN, _Jahrbuch_, 1841, p. 3.
+
+The calming, or rather diversion, of the wind by cliffs extends to a
+considerable distance in front of them, and no wind would have
+sufficient force to raise the sand vertically, parallel to the face of a
+bluff, even to the height of twenty feet.
+
+It is very commonly believed that it is impossible to grow forest trees
+on sea-shore bluffs, or points much exposed to strong winds. The
+observations just cited tend to show that it would not be difficult to
+protect trees from the mechanical effect of the wind, by screens much
+lower than the height to which they are expected to grow. Recent
+experiments confirm this, and it is found that, though the outer row or
+rows may suffer from the wind, every tree shelters a taller one behind
+it. Extensive groves have thus been formed in situations where an
+isolated tree would not grow at all.
+
+Piper, in his _Trees of America_, p. 19, gives an interesting account of
+Mr. Tudor's success in planting trees on the bleak and barren shore of
+Nahant. "Mr. Tudor," observes he, "has planted more than ten thousand
+trees at Nahant, and, by the results of his experiments, has fully
+demonstrated that trees, properly cared for in the beginning, may be
+made to grow up to the very bounds of the ocean, exposed to the biting
+of the wind and the spray of the sea. The only shelter they require is,
+at first, some interruption to break the current of the wind, such as
+fences, houses, or other trees."
+
+[423] The careful observations of Colonel J. D. Graham, of the United
+States Army, show a tide of about three inches in Lake Michigan. See "A
+Lunar Tidal Wave in the North American Lakes," demonstrated by
+Lieut.-Colonel J. D. Graham, in the fourteenth volume of the
+_Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of
+Science_.
+
+[424] STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 327, note.
+
+[425] The principal special works and essays on this subject known to me
+are:
+
+BREMONTIER, _Memoire sur les Dunes, etc._, 1790, reprinted in _Annales
+des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1833, 1er semestre, pp. 145-186.
+
+_Rapport sur les differents Memoires de M. Bremontier_, par LAUMONT et
+autres, 1806, same volume, pp. 192, 224.
+
+LEFORT, _Notice sur les Travaux de Fixation des Dunes, Annales des Ponts
+et Chaussees_, 1831, 2me semestre, pp. 320-332.
+
+FORCHHAMMER, _Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer_, in LEONHARD und
+BRONN, _Jahrbuch, etc._, 1841, pp. 1, 38.
+
+J. G. KOHL, _Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthuemer Schleswig und
+Holstein_, 1846, vol. ii, pp. 112-162, 193-204.
+
+LAVAL, _Memoire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et
+Chaussees_, 1847, 2me semestre, pp. 218-268.
+
+G. C. A. KRAUSE, _Der Duenenbau auf den Ostsee-Kuesten West-Preussens_,
+1850, 1 vol. 8vo.
+
+W. C. H. STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, 1856, vol. i, pp. 310-341,
+and 424-431.
+
+Same author, _Voormaals en Thans_, 1858, pages cited.
+
+C. C. ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen og Klittens Behandling og
+Bestyrelse_, 1861, 1 vol. 8vo, x, 392 pp., much the most complete
+treatise on the subject.
+
+ANDRESEN cites, upon the origin of the dunes: HULL, _Over den Oorsprong
+en de Geschiedenis der Hollandsche Duinen_, 1838, and GROSS's
+_Veiledning ved Behandlingen af Sandflugtstraekningerne_, 1847; and upon
+the improvement of sand plains by planting, PANNEWITZ, _Anleitung zum
+Anbau der Sandflaechen_, 1832. I am not acquainted with either of the
+latter two works but I have consulted with advantage, on this subject,
+DELAMARRE, _Historique de la Creation d'une Richesse millionaire par la
+culture des Pins_, 1827; BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des terres pauvres par
+le Pin maritime_, 1857; and BRINCKEN, _Ansichten ueber die Bewaldung der
+Steppen des Europaeischen Russlands_, 1854.
+
+[426] "Dunes are always full of water, from the action of capillary
+attraction. Upon the summits, one seldom needs to dig more than a foot
+to find the sand moist, and in the depressions, fresh water is met with
+near the surface."--FORCHHAMMER, in LEONHARD und BRONN, for 1841, p. 5,
+note.
+
+On the other hand, Andresen, who has very carefully investigated this as
+well as all other dune phenomena, maintains that the humidity of the
+sand ridges cannot be derived from capillary attraction. He found by
+experiment that drift sand was not moistened to a greater height than
+eight and a half inches, after standing a whole night in water. He
+states the minimum of water contained by the sand of the dunes, one foot
+below the surface, after a long drought, at two per cent., the maximum,
+after a rainy month, at four per cent. At greater depths the quantity is
+larger. The hygroscopicity of the sand of the coast of Jutland he found
+to be thirty-three per cent. by measure, or 21.5 by weight. The annual
+precipitation on that coast is twenty-seven inches, and, as the
+evaporation is about the same, he argues that rain water does not
+penetrate far beneath the surface of the dunes, and concludes that their
+humidity can be explained only by evaporation from below.--_Om
+Klitformationen_, pp. 106-110.
+
+In the dunes of Algeria, water is so abundant that wells are constantly
+dug in them at high points on their surface. They are sunk to the depth
+of three or four metres only, and the water rises to the height of a
+metre in them.--LAURENT, _Memoire sur le Sahara_, pp. 11, 12, 13.
+
+The same writer observes (p. 14) that the hollows in the dunes are
+planted with palms which find moisture enough a little below the
+surface. It would hence seem that the proposal to fix the dunes which
+are supposed to threaten the Suez Canal, by planting the maritime pine
+and other trees upon them, is not altogether so absurd as it is thought
+to be by some of those disinterested philanthropists of other nations
+who are distressed with fears that French capitalists will lose the
+money they have invested in that great undertaking.
+
+Ponds of water are often found in the depressions between the sand hills
+of the dune chains in the North American desert.
+
+[427] According to the French authorities, the dunes of France are not
+always composed of quartzose sand. "The dune sands" of different
+characters, says Bremontier, "partake of the nature of the different
+materials which compose them. At certain points on the coast of Normandy
+they are found to be purely calcareous; they are of mixed composition on
+the shores of Brittany and Saintonge, and generally quartzose between
+the mouth of the Gironde and that of the Adour."--_Memoire sur les
+Dunes, Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, t. vii, 1833, 1er semestre, p.
+146.
+
+In the dunes of Long Island and of Jutland, there are considerable veins
+composed almost wholly of garnet. For a very full examination of the
+mechanical and chemical composition of the dune sands of Jutland, see
+ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, p. 110.
+
+[428] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 323.
+
+[429] J. G. KOHL, _Die Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthuemer Schleswig
+und Holstein_, ii, p. 200.
+
+[430] STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 317. See also, BERGSOeE,
+_Reventov's Virksomhed_, ii, p. 11.
+
+"In the sand-hill ponds mentioned in the text, there is a vigorous
+growth of bog plants accompanied with the formation of peat, which goes
+on regularly as long as the dune sand does not drift. But if the surface
+of the dunes is broken, the sand blows into the ponds, covers the peat,
+and puts an end to its formation. When, in the course of time, marine
+currents cut away the coast, the dunes move landward and fill up the
+ponds, and thus are formed the remarkable strata of fossile peat called
+Martoerv, which appears to be unknown to the geologists of other parts of
+Europe."--FORCHHAMMER, in LEONHARD und BRONN, 1841, p. 13.
+
+[431] The lower strata must be older than the superficial layers, and
+the particles which compose them may in time become more disintegrated,
+and therefore finer than those deposited later and above them.
+
+[432] "On the west coast of Africa the dunes are drifting seawards, and
+always receiving new accessions from the Sahara. They are constantly
+advancing out into the sea." See _ante_, p. 16, note.--NAUMANN,
+_Geognosie_, ii, p. 1172. See _Appendix_, No. 58.
+
+[433] Forchhammer, after pointing out the coincidence between the
+inclined stratification of dunes and the structure of ancient tilted
+rocks, says: "But I am not able to point out a sandstone formation
+corresponding to the dunes. Probably most ancient dunes have been
+destroyed by submersion before the loose sand became cemented to solid
+stone, but we may suppose that circumstances have existed somewhere
+which have preserved the characteristics of this formation."--LEONHARD
+und BRONN, 1841, p. 8, 9.
+
+Such formations, however, certainly exist. I find from Laurent (_Memoire
+sur le Sahara, etc._, p. 12), that in the Algerian desert there exist
+"sandstone formations" not only "corresponding to the dunes," but
+actually consolidated within them. "A place called El-Mouia-Tadjer
+presents a repetition of what we saw at El-Baya; one of the funnels
+formed in the middle of the dunes contains wells from two metres to two
+and a half in depth, dug in a sand which pressure, and probably the
+presence of certain salts, have cemented so as to form true sandstone,
+soft indeed, but which does not yield except to the pickaxe. These
+sandstones exhibit an inclination which seems to be the effect of wind;
+for they conform to the direction of the sands which roll down a scarp
+occasioned by the primitive obstacle." See _Appendix_, No. 59.
+
+The dunes near the mouth of the Nile, the lower sands of which have been
+cemented together by the infiltration of Nile water, would probably show
+a similar stratification in the sandstone which now forms their base.
+
+[434] Forchhammer ascribes the resemblance between the furrowing of the
+dune sands and the beach ripples, not to the similarity of the effect of
+wind and water upon sand, but wholly to the action of the former fluid;
+in the first instance, directly, in the latter, through the water. "The
+wind ripples on the surface of the dunes precisely resemble the water
+ripples of sand flats occasionally overflowed by the sea; and with the
+closest scrutiny, I have never been able to detect the slightest
+difference between them. This is easily explained by the fact, that the
+water ripples are produced by the action of light wind on the water
+which only transmits the air waves to the sand."--LEONHARD und BRONN,
+1841, pp. 7, 8.
+
+[435] American observers do not agree in their descriptions of the form
+and character of the sand grains which compose the interior dunes of the
+North American desert. C. C. Parry, geologist to the Mexican Boundary
+Commission, in describing the dunes near the station at a spring
+thirty-two miles west from the Rio Grande at El Paso, says: "The
+separate grains of the sand composing the sand hills are seen under a
+lens to be angular, and not rounded, as would be the case in regular
+beach deposits."--_U. S. Mexican Boundary Survey, Report of_, vol. i,
+_Geological Report of C. C. Parry_, p. 10.
+
+In the general description of the country traversed, same volume, p. 47,
+Colonel Emory says that on an "examination of the sand with a microscope
+of sufficient power," the grains are seen to be angular, not rounded by
+rolling in water.
+
+On the other hand, Blake, in _Geological Report, Pacific Railroad Rep._,
+vol. v, p. 119, observes that the grains of the dune sand, consisting of
+quartz, chalcedony, carnelian, agate, rose quartz, and probably
+chrysolite, were much rounded; and on page 241, he says that many of the
+sand grains of the Colorado desert are perfect spheres.
+
+On page 20 of a report in vol. ii of the _Pacific Railroad Report_, by
+the same observer, it is said that an examination of dune sands brought
+from the Llano Estacado by Captain Pope, showed the grains to be "much
+rounded by attrition."
+
+The sands described by Mr. Parry and Colonel Emory are not from the same
+localities as those examined by Mr. Blake, and the difference in their
+character may denote a difference of origin or of age.
+
+[436] LAURENT (_Memoire sur le Sahara_, pp. 11, 12, and elsewhere)
+speaks of a funnel-shaped depression at a high point in the dunes, as a
+characteristic feature of the sand hills of the Algerian desert. This
+seems to be an approximation to the crescent form noticed by Meyen and
+Poeppig in the inland dunes of Peru.
+
+[437] _Travels in Peru_, New York, 1848, chap. ix.
+
+[438] Notwithstanding the general tendency of isolated coast dunes and
+of the peaks of the sand ridges to assume a conical form, Andresen
+states that the hills of the inner or landward rows are sometimes
+_bow-shaped_, and sometimes undulating in outline.--_Om
+Klitformationen_, p. 84. He says further that: "Before an obstruction,
+two or three feet high and considerably longer, lying perpendicularly to
+the direction of the wind, the sand is deposited with a windward angle
+of from 6 deg. to 12 deg., and the bank presents a concave face to the wind,
+while, behind the obstruction, the outline is convex;" and he lays it
+down as a general rule, that a slope, _from_ which sand is blown, is
+left with a concavity of about one inch of depth to four feet of
+distance; a slope, _upon_ which sand is dropped by the wind, is convex.
+It appears from Andresen's figures, however, that the concavity and
+convexity referred to, apply, not to the _horizontal longitudinal_
+section of the sand bank, as his language unexplained by the drawings
+might be supposed to mean, but to the _vertical cross-section_, and
+hence the dunes he describes, with the exception above noted, do not
+correspond to those of the American deserts.--_Om Klitformationen_, p.
+86.
+
+The dunes of Gascony, which sometimes exceed three hundred feet in
+height, present the same concavity and convexity of _vertical_
+cross-section. The slopes of these dunes are much steeper than those of
+the Netherlands and the Danish coast; for while all observers agree in
+assigning to the seaward and landward faces of those latter,
+respectively, angles of from 5 deg. to 12 deg., and 30 deg. with the horizon, the
+corresponding faces of the dunes of Gascony present angles of from 10 deg.
+to 25 deg., and 50 deg. to 60 deg..--LAVAL, _Memoire sur les Dunes de Gascogne,
+Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1847, 2me semestre.
+
+[439] Krause, speaking of the dunes on the coast of Prussia, says:
+"Their origin belongs to three different periods, in which important
+changes in the relative level of sea and land have unquestionably taken
+place. * * * Except in the deep depressions between them, the dunes are
+everywhere sprinkled, to a considerable height, with brown oxydulated
+iron, which has penetrated into the sand to the depth of from three to
+eighteen inches, and colored it red. * * * Above the iron is a stratum
+of sand differing in composition from ordinary sea sand, and on this,
+growing woods are always found. * * * The gradually accumulated forest
+soil occurs in beds of from one to three feet thick, and changes,
+proceeding upward, from gray sand to black humus." Even on the third or
+seaward range, the sand grasses appear and thrive luxuriantly, at least
+on the west coast, though. Krause doubts whether the dunes of the east
+coast were ever thus protected.--_Der Duenenbau_, pp. 8, 11.
+
+[440] LAVAL, _Memoire sur les Dunes de Gascogne, Annales des Ponts et
+Chaussees_, 1847, 2me semestre, p. 231. The same opinion had been
+expressed by BREMONTIER, _Annales des Ponts et Chaussees_, 1833, 1er
+semestre, p. 185.
+
+[441] "In the Middle Ages," says Willibald Alexis, as quoted by Mueller,
+_Das Buch der Pflanzenwelt_ i, p. 16, "the Nehrung was extending itself
+further, and the narrow opening near Lochstadt had filled itself up with
+sand. A great pine forest bound with its roots the dune sand and the
+heath uninterruptedly from Danzig to Pillau. King Frederick William I
+was once in want of money. A certain Herr von Korff promised to procure
+it for him, without loan or taxes, if he could be allowed to remove
+something quite useless. He thinned out the forests of Prussia, which
+then, indeed, possessed little pecuniary value; but he felled the entire
+woods of the Frische Nehrung, so far as they lay within the Prussian
+territory. The financial operation was a success. The king had money,
+but in the elementary operation which resulted from it, the state
+received irreparable injury. The sea winds rush over the bared hills;
+the Frische Haff is half-choked with sand; the channel between Elbing,
+the sea, and Koenigsberg is endangered, and the fisheries in the Haff
+injured. The operation of Herr von Korff brought the king 200,000
+thalers. The state would now willingly expend millions to restore the
+forests again."
+
+[442] STARING, _Voormaals en Thans_, p. 231. Had the dunes of the
+Netherlandish and French coasts, at the period of the Roman invasion,
+resembled the moving sand hills of the present day, it is inconceivable
+that they could have escaped the notice of so acute a physical
+geographer as Strabo; and the absolute silence of Caesar, Ptolemy, and
+the encyclopaedic Pliny, respecting them, would be not less inexplicable.
+
+The Old Northern language, the ancient tongue of Denmark, though rich in
+terms descriptive of natural scenery, had no name for dune, nor do I
+think the sand hills of the coast are anywhere noticed in Icelandic
+literature. The modern Icelanders, in treating of the dunes of Jutland,
+call them _klettr_, hill, cliff, and the Danish _klit_ is from that
+source. The word Duene is also of recent introduction into German. Had
+the dunes been distinguished from other hillocks, in ancient times, by
+so remarkable a feature as the propensity to drift, they would certainly
+have acquired a specific name in both Old Northern and German. So long
+as they were wooded knolls, they needed no peculiar name; when they
+became formidable, from the destruction of the woods which confined
+them, they acquired a designation.
+
+[443] The sands of Cape Cod were partially, if not completely, covered
+with vegetation by nature. Dr. Dwight, describing the dunes as they were
+in 1800, says: "Some of them are covered with beach grass; some fringed
+with whortleberry bushes; and some tufted with a small and singular
+growth of oaks. * * * The parts of this barrier, which are covered with
+whortleberry bushes and with oaks, have been either not at all, or very
+little blown. The oaks, particularly, appear to be the continuation of
+the forests originally formed on this spot. * * * They wore all the
+marks of extreme age; were, in some instances, already decayed, and in
+others decaying; were hoary with moss, and were deformed by branches,
+broken and wasted, not by violence, but by time."--_Travels_, iii, p.
+91.
+
+[444] Bergsoee (_Reventlovs Virksomhed_, ii, 3) states that the dunes on
+the west coast of Jutland were stationary before the destruction of the
+forests to the east of them. The felling of the tall trees removed the
+resistance to the lower currents of the westerly winds, and the sands
+have since buried a great extent of fertile soil. See also same work,
+ii, p. 124.
+
+[445] "We must, therefore, not be surprised to see the people here deal
+as gingerly with their dunes, as if treading among eggs. He who is lucky
+enough to own a molehill of dune pets it affectionately, and spends his
+substance in cherishing and fattening it. That fair, fertile, rich
+province, the peninsula of Eiderstaedt in the south of Friesland, has, on
+the point toward the sea, only a tiny row of dunes, some six miles long
+or so; but the people talk of their fringe of sand hills as if it were a
+border set with pearls. They look upon it as their best defence against
+Neptune. They have connected it with their system of dikes, and for
+years have kept sentries posted to protect it against wanton
+injury."--J. G. KOHL, _Die Inseln u. Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins_, ii,
+p. 115.
+
+[446] Sand banks sometimes connect themselves with the coast at both
+ends, and thus cut off a portion of the sea. In this case, as well as
+when salt water is enclosed by sea dikes, the water thus separated from
+the ocean gradually becomes fresh, or at least brackish. The Haffs, or
+large expanses of fresh water in Eastern Prussia--which are divided from
+the Baltic by narrow sand banks called Nehrungen, or, at sheltered
+points of the coast, by fluviatile deposits called Werders--all have one
+or more open passages, through which the water of the rivers that supply
+them at last finds its way to the sea.
+
+[447] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 68-72.
+
+[448] Id., pp. 231, 232. Andresen's work, though printed in 1861, was
+finished in 1859. Lyell (_Antiquity of Man_, 1863, p. 14) says: "Even in
+the course of the present century, the salt waters have made one
+eruption into the Baltic by the Liimfjord, although they have been now
+again excluded."
+
+[449] FORCHHAMMER, _Geognostische Studien am Meeres-Ufer_. LEONHARD und
+BRONN, _Jahrbuch_, 1841, pp. 11, 13.
+
+[450] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 68, 72.
+
+[451] _Voormaals en Thans_, pp. 126, 170.
+
+[452] See a very interesting article entitled "Le Littoral de la
+France," by ELISEE RECLUS, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for December,
+1862, pp. 901, 936.
+
+[453] _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, p. 425. See _Appendix_, No. 60.
+
+[454] The movement of the dunes has been hardly less destructive on the
+north side of the Gironde. Sea the valuable article of ELISEE RECLUS
+already referred to, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, for December, 1862,
+entitled "Le Littoral de la France."
+
+[455] LAVAL, _Memoire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des
+Ponts et Chaussees_, 1847, p. 223. The author adds, as a curious and
+unexplained fact, that some of these pools, though evidently not
+original formations but mere accumulations of water dammed up by the
+dunes, have, along their western shore, near the base of the sand hills,
+a depth of more than one hundred and thirty feet, and hence their
+bottoms are not less than eighty feet below the level of the lowest
+tides. Their western banks descend steeply, conforming nearly to the
+slope of the dunes, while on the northeast and south the inclination of
+their beds is very gradual. The greatest depth of these pools
+corresponds to that of the sea ten miles from the shore. Is it possible
+that the weight of the sands has pressed together the soil on which they
+rest, and thus occasioned a subsidence of the surface extending beyond
+their base? See _Appendix_, No. 61.
+
+[456] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationem_, pp. 56, 79, 82.
+
+[457] STARING, _De Bodem van Nederland_, i, pp. 329-331. Id., _Voormaals
+en Thans_, p. 163. ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 280, 295.
+
+The creation of new dunes, by the processes mentioned in the text, seems
+to be much older in Europe than the adoption of measures for securing
+them by planting. Dr. Dwight mentions a case in Massachusetts, where a
+beach was restored, and new dunes formed, by planting beach grass.
+"Within the memory of my informant, the sea broke over the beach which
+connects Truro with Province Town, and swept the body of it away for
+some distance. The beach grass was immediately planted on the spot; in
+consequence of which the beach was again raised to a sufficient height,
+and in various places into hills."--_Dwight's Travels_, iii, p. 93.
+
+[458] STARING, i, pp. 310, 332.
+
+[459] There is some confusion in the popular use of these names, and in
+the scientific designations of sand plants, and they are possibly
+applied to different plants in different places. Some writers style the
+gourbet _Calamagrostis arenaria_, and distinguish it from the Danish
+Klittetag or Hjelme.
+
+[460] Bread, not indeed very palatable, has been made of the seeds of
+the arundo, but the quantity which can be gathered is not sufficient to
+form an important economical resource.----ANDRESEN, _Om
+Klitformationen_, p. 160.
+
+[461] BERGSOeE, _Reventlovs Virksomhed_, ii, p. 4.
+
+[462] Measures were taken for the protection of the dunes of Cape Cod,
+in Massachusetts, during the colonial period, though I believe they are
+now substantially abandoned. A hundred years ago, before the valley of
+the Mississippi, or even the rich plains of Central and Western New
+York, were opened to the white settler, the value of land was relatively
+much greater in New England than it is at present, and consequently some
+rural improvements were then worth making, which would not now yield
+sufficient returns to tempt the investment of capital. The money and the
+time required to subdue and render productive twenty acres of sea sand
+on Cape Cod, would buy a "section" and rear a family in Illinois. The
+son of the Pilgrims, therefore, abandons the sand hills, and seeks a
+better fortune on the fertile prairies of the West.
+
+Dr. Dwight, who visited Cape Cod in the year 1800, after describing the
+"beach grass, a vegetable bearing a general resemblance to sedge, but of
+a light bluish-green, and of a coarse appearance," which "flourishes
+with a strong and rapid vegetation on the sands," observes that he
+received "from a Mr. Collins, formerly of Truro, the following
+information:" "When he lived at Truro, the inhabitants were, under the
+authority of law, regularly warned in the month of April, yearly, to
+plant beach grass, as, in other towns of New England, they are warned to
+repair highways. It was required by the laws of the State, and under the
+proper penalties for disobedience; being as regular a public tax as any
+other. The people, therefore, generally attended and performed the
+labor. The grass was dug in bunches, as it naturally grows; and each
+bunch divided into a number of smaller ones. These were set out in the
+sand at distances of three feet. After one row was set, others were
+placed behind it in such a manner as to shut up the interstices; or, as
+a carpenter would say, so as to break the joints. * * * When it is once
+set, it grows and spreads with rapidity. * * * The seeds are so heavy
+that they bend down the heads of the grass; and when ripe, drop directly
+down by its side, where they immediately vegetate. Thus in a short time
+the ground is covered.
+
+"Where this covering is found, none of the sand is blown. On the
+contrary, it is accumulated and raised continually as snow gathers and
+rises among bushes, or branches of trees cut and spread upon the earth.
+Nor does the grass merely defend the surface on which it is planted; but
+rises, as that rises by new accumulations; and always overtops the sand,
+however high that may be raised by the wind."--_Dwight's Travels in New
+England and New York_, ii, p. 92, 93.
+
+This information was received in 1800, and it relates to a former state
+of things, probably more than twenty years previous, and earlier than
+1779, when the Government of Denmark first seriously attempted the
+conquest of the dunes.
+
+The depasturing of the beach grass--a plant allied in habits, if not in
+botanical character, to the arundo--has been attended with very
+injurious effects in Massachusetts. Dr. Dwight, after referring to the
+laws for its propagation, already cited, says: "The benefit of this
+useful plant, and of these prudent regulations, is, however, in some
+measure lost. There are in Province Town, as I was informed, one hundred
+and forty cows. These animals, being stinted in their means of
+subsistence, are permitted to wander, at times, in search of food. In
+every such case, they make depredations on the beach grass, and prevent
+its seeds from being formed. In this manner the plant is ultimately
+destroyed."--_Travels_, iii, p. 94.
+
+On page 101 of the same volume, the author mentions an instance of great
+injury from this cause. "Here, about one thousand acres were entirely
+blown away to the depth, in many places, of ten feet. * * * Not a green
+thing was visible except the whortleberries, which tufted a few lonely
+hillocks rising to the height of the original surface and prevented by
+this defence from being blown away also. These, although they varied the
+prospect, added to the gloom by their strongly picturesque appearance,
+by marking exactly the original level of the plain, and by showing us in
+this manner the immensity of the mass which had been thus carried away
+by the wind. The beach grass had been planted here, and the ground had
+been formerly enclosed; but the gates had been left open, and the cattle
+had destroyed this invaluable plant."
+
+[463] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 237, 240.
+
+[464] "These plantations, perseveringly continued from the time of
+Bremontier now cover more than 40,000 hectares, and compose forests
+which are not only the salvation of the department, but constitute its
+wealth."--CLAVE, _Etudes Forestieres_, p. 254.
+
+Other authors have stated the plantations of the French dunes to be much
+more extensive.
+
+[465] KRUSE, _Duenenbau_, pp. 34, 38, 40.
+
+[466] These processes are substantially similar to those employed in the
+pineries of the Carolinas, but they are better systematized and more
+economically conducted in France. In the latter country, all the
+products of the pine, even to the cones, find a remunerating market,
+while, in America, the price of resin is so low, that in the fierce
+steamboat races on the great rivers, large quantities of it are thrown
+into the furnaces to increase the intensity of the fires. In a carefully
+prepared article on the Southern pineries published in an American
+magazine--I think Harper's--a few years ago, it was stated that the
+resin from the turpentine distilleries was sometimes allowed to run to
+waste; and the writer, in one instance, observed a mass, thus rejected
+as rubbish, which was estimated to amount to two thousand barrels. See
+_Appendix_, No. 62.
+
+[467] ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 78, 262, 275.
+
+[468] LAVAL, _Memoire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne, Annales des
+Ponts et Chaussees_, 1847, 2me semestre, p. 261. See _Appendix_, No.
+63.
+
+[469] There are extensive ranges of dunes on various parts of the coasts
+of the British Islands, but I find no estimate of their area. Pannewitz
+(_Anleitung zam Anbau der Sandflaechen_), as cited by Andresen (_Om
+Klitformationen_, p. 45), states that the drifting sands of Europe,
+including, of course, sand plains as well as dunes, cover an extent of
+21,000 square miles. This is, perhaps, an exaggeration, though there is,
+undoubtedly, much more desert land of this description on the European
+continent than has been generally supposed. There is no question that
+most of this waste is capable of reclamation by simple planting, and no
+mode of physical improvement is better worth the attention of civilized
+Governments than this.
+
+There are often serious objections to extensive forest planting on soils
+capable of being otherwise made productive, but they do not apply to
+sand wastes, which, until covered by woods, are not only a useless
+incumbrance, but a source of serious danger to all human improvements in
+the neighborhood of them.
+
+[470] BOITEL, _Mise en valeur des Terres pauvres par le Pin maritime_,
+pp. 212, 218.
+
+[471] See _Appendix_, No. .
+
+[472] For details, consult ANDRESEN, _Om Klitformationen_, pp. 223, 236.
+
+[473] When the deposit is not very deep, and the adjacent land lying to
+the leeward of the prevailing winds is covered with water, or otherwise
+worthless, the surface is sometimes freed from the drifts by repeated
+harrowings, which loosen the sand, so that the wind takes it up and
+transports it to grounds where accumulations of it are less injurious.
+
+[474] _Travels and Researches in Chaldaea_, chap. ix.
+
+[475] _Etudes Forestieres_, p. 253.
+
+[476] LAVERGNE, _Economie Rurale de la France_, p. 300, estimates the
+area of the Landes of Gascony at 700,000 hectares, or about 1,700,000
+acres. The same author states (p. 304), that when the Moors were driven
+from Spain by the blind cupidity and brutal intolerance of the age, they
+demanded permission to establish themselves in this desert; but
+political and religious prejudices prevented the granting of this
+liberty. At this period the Moors were a far more cultivated people than
+their Christian persecutors, and they had carried many arts, that of
+agriculture especially, to a higher pitch than any other European
+nation. But France was not wise enough to accept what Spain had cast
+out, and the Landes remained a waste for three centuries longer. See
+_Appendix_, No. 64.
+
+The forest of Fontainebleau, which contains above 40,000 acres, is not a
+plain, but its soil is composed almost wholly of sand, interspersed with
+ledges of rock. The sand forms not less than ninety-eight per cent. of
+the earth, and, as it is almost without water, it would be a drifting
+desert but for the artificial propagation of forest trees upon it.
+
+[477] _Economie Rurale de la Belgique, par_ EMILE DE LAVELEYE, _Revue
+des Deux Mondes_, Juin, 1861, pp. 617-644.
+
+[478] _Geognosie_, ii, p. 1173.
+
+[479] According to HOHENSTEIN, _Der Wald_, pp. 228, 229, an extensive
+plantation of pines--a tree new to Southern Russia--was commenced in
+1842, on the barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisabethgrod,
+and has met with very flattering success. Other experiments in
+sylviculture at different points on the steppes promise valuable
+results.
+
+[480] "Sixteen years ago," says an Odessa landholder, "I attempted to
+fix the sand of the steppes, which covers the rocky ground to the depth
+of a foot, and forms moving hillocks with every change of wind. I tried
+acacias and pines in vain; nothing would grow in such a soil. At length
+I planted the varnish tree, or _ailanthus_, which succeeded completely
+in binding the sand." This result encouraged the proprietor to extend
+his plantations over both dunes and sand steppes, and in the course of
+sixteen years this rapidly growing tree had formed real forests. Other
+landowners have imitated his example with great advantage.--RENTSCH,
+_Der Wald_, p. 44, 45.
+
+[481] _Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste_, i, pp. 204 _et seqq._
+
+[482] "If we suppose the narrow isthmus of Central America to be sunk in
+the ocean, the warm equatorial current would no longer follow its
+circuitous route around the Gulf of Mexico, but pour itself through the
+new opening directly into the Pacific. We should then lose the warmth of
+the Gulf Stream, and cold polar currents flowing farther southward would
+take its place and be driven upon our coasts by the western winds. The
+North Sea would resemble Hudson's Bay, and its harbors be free from ice
+at best only in summer. The power and prosperity of its coasts would
+shrivel under the breath of winter, as a medusa thrown on shore shrinks
+to an insignificant film under the influence of the destructive
+atmosphere. Commerce, industry, fertility of soil, population, would
+disappear, and the vast waste--a new Labrador--would become a worthless
+appendage of some clime more favored by nature."--HARTWIG, _Das Leben
+des Meeres_, p. 70.
+
+[483] I know nothing of Captain Allen's work but its title and its
+subject. Very probably he may have anticipated many of the following
+speculations, and thrown light on points upon which I am ignorant.
+
+[484] "Some haue writt[=e], that by certain kings inhabiting aboue, the
+_Nilus_ should there be stopped; & at a time prefixt, let loose vpon a
+certaine tribute payd them by the _Aegyptians_. The error springing
+perhaps fr[=o] a truth (as all wandring reports for the most part doe)
+in that the _Sultan_ doth pay a certaine annuall summe to the _Abissin_
+Emperour for not diuerting the course of the Riuer, which (they say) he
+may, or impouerish it at the least."--GEORGE SANDYS, _A Relation of a
+Journey, etc._, p. 98.
+
+[485] The Recca, a river with a considerable current, has been
+satisfactorily identified with a stream flowing through the cave of
+Trebich, and with the Timavo--the Timavus of Virgil and the ancient
+geographers--which empties through several mouths into the Adriatic
+between Trieste and Aquileia. The distance from Trieste to a suitable
+point in the grotto of Trebich is thought to be less than three miles,
+and the difficulties in the way of constructing a tunnel do not seem
+formidable. The works of Schmidl, _Die Hoehlen des Karstes_, and _Der
+unterirdische Lauf der Recca_, are not common out of Germany, but the
+reader will find many interesting facts derived from them in two
+articles entitled _Der unterirdische Lauf der Recca_, in _Aus der
+Natur_, xx, pp. 250-254, 263-266.
+
+[486] BARTH, _Wanderungen durch die Kuesten des Mittelmeeres_, i, p. 353.
+In a note on page 380, of the same volume, Barth cites Strabo as
+asserting that a similar practice prevailed in Iapygia; but it may be
+questioned whether the epithet [Greek: tracheia], applied by Strabo to
+the original surface, necessarily implies that it was covered with a
+continuous stratum of rock.
+
+[487] PARTHEY, _Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante_, i, p. 404.
+
+[488] _Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer_, LEONHARD und BRONN,
+_Jahrbuch_, 1841, pp. 25, 26.
+
+[489] KOHL, _Schleswig-Holstein_, ii, p. 45.
+
+[490] _Wanderungen durch Sicilien und die Levante_, i, p. 406.
+
+[491] LANDGREBE, _Naturgeschichte der Vulkane_, ii, pp. 19, 20.
+
+[492] Soon after the current issues from the volcano, it is covered
+above and at its sides, and finally in front, with scoriae, formed by the
+cooling of the exposed surface, which bury and conceal the fluid mass.
+The stream rolls on under the coating, and between the walls of scoriae,
+and it was the lateral crust which was broken through by the workmen
+mentioned in the text.
+
+The distance to which lava flows, before its surface begins to solidify,
+depends on its volume, its composition, its temperature and that of the
+air, the force with which it is ejected, and the inclination of the
+declivity over which it runs. In most cases it is difficult to approach
+the current at points where it is still entirely fluid, and hence
+opportunities of observing it in that condition are not very frequent.
+In the eruption of February, 1850, on the east side of Vesuvius, I went
+quite up to one of the outlets. The lava shot out of the orifice upward
+with great velocity, like the water from a spring, in a stream eight or
+ten feet in diameter, throwing up occasionally volcanic bombs, but it
+immediately spread out on the declivity down which it flowed, to the
+width of several yards. It continued red hot in broad daylight, and
+without a particle of scoriae on its surface, for a course of at least
+one hundred yards. At this distance, the suffocating, sulphurous vapors
+became so dense that I could follow the current no farther. The
+undulations of the surface were like those of a brook swollen by rain. I
+estimated the height of the waves at five or six inches by a breadth of
+eighteen or twenty. To the eye, the fluidity of the lava seemed as
+perfect as that of water, but masses of cold lava weighing ten or
+fifteen pounds floated upon it like cork.
+
+The heat emitted by lava currents seems extremely small when we consider
+the temperature required to fuse such materials and the great length of
+time they take in cooling. I saw at Nicolosi ancient oil jars, holding a
+hundred gallons or more, which had been dug out from under a stream of
+old lava above that town. They had been very slightly covered with
+volcanic ashes before the lava flowed over them, but the lead with which
+holes in them had been plugged was not melted. The current that buried
+Mompiliere in 1669 was thirty-five feet thick, but marble statues, in a
+church over which the lava formed an arch, were found uncalcined and
+uninjured in 1704. See SCROPE, _Volcanoes_, chap. VI. Sec. 6.
+
+[493] FERRARA, _Descrizione dell' Etna_, p. 108.
+
+[494] LANGREBE, _Naturgeschichte der Vulkane_, ii, p. 82.
+
+[495] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 168. Beds of peat, accidentally set
+on fire, sometimes continue to burn for months. I take the following
+account of a case of this sort from a recent American journal:
+
+"A CURIOUS PHENOMENON.--When the track of the railroad between Brunswick
+and Bath was being graded, in crossing a meadow near the populous
+portion of the latter city, the 'dump' suddenly took on a sinking
+symptom, and down went the twenty feet fill of gravel, clay, and broken
+rocks, out of sight, and it was a long, _long_ time before dirt trains
+could fill the capacious stomach that seemed ready to receive all the
+solid material that could be turned into it. The difficulty was at
+length overcome, but all along the side of the sinkage the earth was
+thrown up, broken into yawning chasms, and the surface was thus elevated
+above its old watery level. Since that time this ground, thus slightly
+elevated, has been cultivated, and has yielded enormously of whatever
+the owner seemed disposed to plant upon it. Some three months ago, by
+some means unknown to us, the underlying peat took fire, and for weeks,
+as we had occasion to pass it, we noticed the smoke arising from the
+smouldering combustion beneath the surface. Rains fell, but the fire
+burned, and the smoke continued to arise. Monday we had occasion to pass
+the spot, and though nearly a week's rain had been drenching the ground,
+and though the surface was whitened with snow, and though pools of water
+were standing upon the surface in the immediate neighborhood, still the
+everlasting subterranean fire was burning, and the smoke arising through
+the snow."
+
+[496] One of the sublimest, and at the same time most fearful
+suggestions that have been prompted by the researches of modern science,
+was made by Babbage in the ninth chapter of his _Ninth Bridgewater
+Treatise_. I have not the volume at hand, but the following explanation
+will recall to the reader, if it does not otherwise make intelligible,
+the suggestion I refer to.
+
+No atom can be disturbed in place, or undergo any change of temperature,
+of electrical state, or other material condition, without affecting, by
+attraction or repulsion or other communication, the surrounding atoms.
+These, again, by the same law, transmit the influence to other atoms,
+and the impulse thus given extends through the whole material universe.
+Every human movement, every organic act, every volition, passion, or
+emotion, every intellectual process, is accompanied with atomic
+disturbance, and hence every such movement, every such act or process
+affects all the atoms of universal matter. Though action and reaction
+are equal, yet reaction does not restore disturbed atoms to their former
+place and condition, and consequently the effects of the least material
+change are never cancelled, but in some way perpetuated, so that no
+action can take place in physical, moral, or intellectual nature,
+without leaving all matter in a different state from what it would have
+been if such action had not occurred. Hence, to use language which I
+have employed on another occasion: there exists, not alone in the human
+conscience or in the omniscience of the Creator, but in external
+material nature, an ineffaceable, imperishable record, possibly legible
+even to created intelligence, of every act done, every word uttered,
+nay, of every wish and purpose and thought conceived by mortal man, from
+the birth of our first parent to the final extinction of our race; so
+that the physical traces of our most secret sins shall last until time
+shall be merged in that eternity of which not science, but religion
+alone, assumes to take cognizance.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+No. 1 (page 19, _note_). It may be said that the cases referred to in
+the note on p. 19--and indeed all cases of a supposed acclimation
+consisting in physiological changes--are instances of the origination of
+new varieties by natural selection, the hardier maize, tomato, and other
+vegetables of the North, being the progeny of seeds of individuals
+endowed, exceptionally, with greater power of resisting cold than
+belongs in general to the species which produced them. But, so far as
+the evidence of change of climate, from a difference in vegetable
+growth, is concerned, it is immaterial whether we adopt this view or
+maintain the older and more familiar doctrine of a local modification of
+character in the plants in question.
+
+No. 2 (page 24, _note_). The adjectives of direction in _-erly_ are not
+unfrequently used to indicate, in a loose way, the course of winds
+blowing from unspecified points between N.E. and S.E.; S.E. and S.W.;
+S.W. and N.W. or N.W. and N.E. If the employment of these words were
+understood to be limited to thus expressing a direction nearer to the
+cardinal point from whose name the adjective is taken than to any other
+cardinal point, they would be valuable elements of English
+meteorological nomenclature.
+
+No. 3 (page 31). I find a confirmation of my observations on the habits
+of the beaver as a geographical agency, in a report of the proceedings
+of the British Association, in the London Athenaeum of October 8, 1864,
+p. 469. It is there stated that Viscount Milton and Dr. Cheadle, in an
+expedition across the Rocky Mountains by the Yellow Head, or Leather
+Pass, observed that "a great portion of the country to the east of the
+mountains" had been "completely changed in character by the agency of
+the beaver, which formerly existed here in enormous numbers. The shallow
+valleys were formerly traversed by rivers and chains of lakes which,
+dammed up along their course at numerous points, by the work of those
+animals, have become a series of marshes in various stages of
+consolidation. So complete has this change been, that hardly a stream is
+found for a distance of two hundred miles, with the exception of the
+large rivers. The animals have thus destroyed, by their own labors, the
+waters necessary to their own existence."
+
+When the process of "consolidation" shall have been completed, and the
+forest reestablished upon the marshes, the water now diffused through
+them will be collected in the lower or more yielding portions, cut new
+channels for their flow, become running brooks, and thus restore the
+ancient aspect of the surface.
+
+No. 4 (page 33, _note_). The lignivorous insects that attack living
+trees almost uniformly confine their ravages to trees already unsound or
+diseased in growth from the depredations of leaf-eaters, such as
+caterpillars and the like, or from other causes. The decay of the tree,
+therefore, is the cause not the consequence of the invasions of the
+borer. This subject has been discussed by Perris in the _Annales de la
+Societe Entomologique de la France_, for 1851 (?), and his conclusions
+are confirmed by the observations of Samanos, who quotes, at some
+length, the views of Perris. "Having, for fifteen years," says the
+latter author, "incessantly studied the habits of lignivorous insects in
+one of the best wooded regions of France, I have observed facts enough
+to feel myself warranted in expressing my conclusions, which are: that
+insects in general--I am not speaking of those which confine their
+voracity to the leaf--do not attack trees in sound health, and they
+assail those only whose normal conditions and functions have been by
+some cause impaired."
+
+See, more fully, Samanos, _Traite de la Culture du Pin Maritime_, Paris,
+1864, pp. 140-145.
+
+No. 5 (page 34, _note_). Very interesting observations, on the agency of
+the squirrel and other small animals in planting and in destroying nuts
+and other seeds of trees, may be found in a paper on the Succession of
+Forests in Thoreau's _Excursions_, pp. 135 _et seqq._
+
+I once saw several quarts of beech-nuts taken from the winter quarters
+of a family of flying squirrels in a hollow tree. The kernels were
+neatly stripped of their shells and carefully stored in a dry cavity.
+
+No. 6 (page 40, _note_). Schroeder van der Kolk, in _Het Verschil
+tusschen den Psychischen Aanleg van het Dier en van den Mensch_, cites
+from Burdach and other authorities many interesting facts respecting
+instincts lost, or newly developed and become hereditary, in the lower
+animals, and he quotes Aristotle and Pliny as evidence that the common
+quadrupeds and fowls of our fields and our poultry yards were much less
+perfectly domesticated in their times than long, long ages of servitude
+have now made them.
+
+Perhaps the half-wild character ascribed by P. Laestadius and other
+Swedish writers to the reindeer of Lapland, may be in some degree due to
+the comparative shortness of the period during which he has been
+partially tamed. The domestic swine bred in the woods of Hungary and
+the buffaloes of Southern Italy are so wild and savage as to be very
+dangerous to all but their keepers. The former have relapsed into their
+original condition, the latter have not yet been reclaimed from it.
+
+Among other instances of obliterated instincts, Schroeder van der Kolk
+states that in Holland, where, for centuries, the young of the cow has
+been usually taken from the dam at birth and fed by hand, calves, even
+if left with the mother, make no attempt to suck; while in England,
+where calves are not weaned until several weeks old, they resort to the
+udder as naturally as the young of wild quadrupeds.--_Ziel en Ligchaam_,
+p. 128, _n._
+
+No. 7 (page 60, _first note_). At Pie di Mulera, at the outlet of the
+Val Anzasca, near the principal hotel, is a vine measuring thirty-one
+inches in circumference. The door of the chapter-hall in the cloister of
+the church of San Giovanni, at Saluzzo, is of vine wood, and the boards
+of which the panels were made could not have been less than ten inches
+wide. Statues and other objects of considerable dimensions, of vine
+wood, are mentioned by ancient writers.
+
+No. 8 (page 63, _second note_). Cartier, A. D. 1535-'6, mentions "vines,
+great melons, cucumbers, gourds [courges], pease, beans of various
+colors, but not like ours," as common among the Indians of the banks of
+the St. Lawrence.--_Bref Recit_, etc., reprint. Paris, 1863, pp. 13, a;
+14, b; 20, b; 31, a.
+
+No. 8 (page 65, _second paragraph_). It may be considered very highly
+probable, if not certain, that the undiscriminating herbalists of the
+sixteenth century must have overlooked many plants native to this
+island. An English botanist, in an hour's visit to Aden, discovered
+several species of plants on rocks always reported, even by scientific
+travellers, as absolutely barren. But after all, it appears to be well
+established that the original flora of St. Helena was extremely limited,
+though now counting hundreds of species.
+
+No. 9 (page 66, _first note_). Although the vine _genus_ is very
+catholic and cosmopolite in its habits, yet particular _varieties_ are
+extremely fastidious and exclusive in their requirements as to soil and
+climate. The stocks of many celebrated vineyards lose their peculiar
+qualities by transplantation, and the most famous wines are capable of
+production only in certain well-defined, and for the most part narrow
+districts. The Ionian vine which bears the little stoneless grape known
+in commerce as the Zante currant, has resisted almost all efforts to
+naturalize it elsewhere, and is scarcely grown except in two or three of
+the Ionian islands and in a narrow territory on the northern shores of
+the Morea.
+
+No. 10 (page 68, _first note_). In most of the countries of Southern
+Europe, sheep and beeves are wintered upon the plains, but driven in the
+summer to mountain pastures at many days' distance from the homesteads
+of their owners. They transport seeds in their coats in both directions,
+and hence Alpine plants often shoot up at the foot of the mountains, the
+grasses of the plain on the borders of the glaciers; but in both cases,
+they usually fail to propagate themselves by ripening their seed. This
+explains the scattered tufts of common clover, with pale and flaccid
+blossoms, which are sometimes seen at heights exceeding 7,000 feet above
+the sea.
+
+No. 11 (page 73, _last paragraph_). The poisonous wild parsnip, which is
+very common in New England, is popularly believed to be identical with
+the garden parsnip, and differenced only by conditions of growth, a
+richer soil depriving it, it is said, of its noxious properties. Many
+wild medicinal plants, such as pennyroyal for example, are so much less
+aromatic and powerful, when cultivated in gardens, than when self-sown
+on meagre soils, as to be hardly fit for use.
+
+No. 12 (page 74, _second note_). See in Thoreau's _Excursions_, an
+interesting description of the wild apple-trees of Massachusetts.
+
+No. 13 (page 86, _first paragraph_). It is said at Courmayeur that a
+very few ibexes of a larger variety than those of the Cogne mountains,
+still linger about the Grande Jorasse.
+
+No. 14 (page 92, _first note_). In Northern and Central Italy, one often
+sees hillocks crowned with grove-like plantations of small trees, much
+resembling large arbors. These serve to collect birds, which are
+entrapped in nets in great numbers. These plantations are called
+_ragnaje_, and the reader will find, in Bindi's edition of Davanzati, a
+very pleasant description of a ragnaja, though its authorship is not now
+ascribed to that eminent writer.
+
+No. 15 (page 93, _second note_). The appearance of the dove-like grouse,
+_Tetrao paradoxus_, or _Syrrhaptes Pallasii_, in various parts of
+Europe, in 1859 and the following years, is a noticeable exception to
+the law of regularity which seems to govern the movements and determine
+the habitat of birds. The proper home of this bird is the steppes of
+Tartary, and it is not recorded to have been observed in Europe, or at
+least west of Russia, until the year abovementioned, when many flocks of
+twenty or thirty, and even a hundred individuals, were seen in Bohemia,
+Germany, Holland, Denmark, England, Ireland, and France. A considerable
+flock frequented the Frisian island of Borkum for more than five months.
+It was hoped they would breed and remain permanently in the island, but
+this expectation has been disappointed, and the steppe-grouse seems to
+have disappeared again altogether.
+
+No. 16 (page 94, _note_). From an article by A. Esquiros, in the _Revue
+des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 1, 1864, entitled, _La vie Anglaise_, p. 119,
+it appears that such occurrences as that stated in the note are not
+unfrequent on the British coast.
+
+No. 17 (page 100, _first paragraph_). I cannot learn that caprification
+is now practised in Italy, but it is still in use in Greece.
+
+No. 18 (page 112, _first note_). The recent great multiplication of
+vipers in some parts of France, is a singular and startling fact.
+
+Toussenel, quoting from official documents, states, that upon the offer
+of a reward of fifty centimes, or ten cents, a head, _twelve thousand_
+vipers were brought to the prefect of a single department, and that in
+1859 fifteen hundred snakes and twenty quarts of snakes' eggs were found
+under a farm-house hearthstone. The granary, the stables, the roof, the
+very beds swarmed with serpents, and the family were obliged to abandon
+its habitation. Dr. Viaugrandmarais, of Nantes, reported to the prefect
+of his department more than two hundred recent cases of viper bites,
+twenty-four of which proved fatal.--_Tristia_, p. 176 _et seqq._
+
+No. 19 (page 121, _first note_). The Beduins are little given to the
+chase, and seldom make war on the game birds and quadrupeds of the
+desert. Hence the wild animals of Arabia are less timid than those of
+Europe. On one occasion, when I was encamped during a sand storm of some
+violence in Arabia Petraea, a wild pigeon took refuge in one of our tents
+which had not been blown down, and remained quietly perched on a boy in
+the midst of four or five persons, until the storm was over, and then
+took his departure, _insalutato hospite_.
+
+No. 20 (page 122). It is possible that time may modify the habits of the
+fresh water fish of the North American States, and accommodate them to
+the now physical conditions of their native waters. Hence it may be
+hoped that nature, even unaided by art, will do something toward
+restoring the ancient plenty of our lakes and rivers. The decrease of
+our fresh water fish cannot be ascribed alone to exhaustion by fishing,
+for in the waters of the valleys and flanks of the Alps, which have been
+inhabited and fished ten times as long by a denser population, fish are
+still very abundant, and they thrive and multiply under circumstances
+where no American species could live at all. On the southern slope of
+those mountains, trout are caught in great numbers, in the swift streams
+which rush from the glaciers, and where the water is of icy coldness,
+and so turbid with particles of fine-ground rock, that you cannot see an
+inch below the surface. The glacier streams of Switzerland, however, are
+less abundant in fish.
+
+No. 21 (page 131, _note_). Vaupell, though agreeing with other writers
+as to the injury done to the forest by most domestic animals--which he
+illustrates in an interesting way in his posthumous work, _The Danish
+Woods_--thinks, nevertheless, that at the season when the mast is
+falling swine are rather useful than otherwise to forests of beech and
+oak, by treading into the ground and thus sowing beechnuts and acorns,
+and by destroying moles and mice.--_De Danske Skore_, p. 12.
+
+No. 22 (page 135, _note_). The able authors of Humphreys and Abbot's
+most valuable Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi,
+conclude that the delta of that river began its encroachments on the
+Gulf of Mexico not more than 4,400 years ago, before which period they
+suppose the Mississippi to have been "a comparatively clear stream,"
+conveying very little sediment to the sea. The present rate of advance
+of the delta is 262 feet a year, and there are reasons for thinking that
+the amount of deposit has long been approximately constant.--_Report_,
+pp. 435, 436.
+
+The change in the character of the river must, if this opinion is well
+founded, be due to some geological revolution, or at least convulsion,
+and the hypothesis of the former existence of one or more great lakes in
+its upper valley, whose bottoms are occupied by the present prairie
+region, has been suggested. The shores of these supposed lakes have not,
+I believe, been traced, or even detected, and we cannot admit the truth
+of this hypothesis without supposing changes much more extensive than
+the mere bursting of the barrier which confined the waters.
+
+No. 23 (page 143, _note_). See on this subject a paper by J. Jamin, in
+the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for Sept. 15, 1864; and, on the effects of
+human industry on the atmosphere, an article in _Aus der Natur_, vol.
+29, 1864, pp. 443, 449, 465 _et seqq._
+
+No. 24 (page 159, _second paragraph_). All evergreens, even the
+broad-leaved trees, resist frosts of extraordinary severity better than
+the deciduous trees of the same climates. Is not this because the vital
+processes of trees of persistent foliage are less interrupted during
+winter than those of trees which annually shed their leaves, and
+therefore more organic heat is developed?
+
+No. 25 (page 191, _first paragraph_). In discussing the influence of
+mountains on precipitation, meteorologists have generally treated the
+popular belief, that mountains "attract" to them clouds floating within
+a certain distance from them, as an ignorant prejudice, and they ascribe
+the appearance of clouds about high peaks solely to the condensation of
+the humidity of the air carried by atmospheric currents up the slopes of
+the mountain to a colder temperature. But if mountains do not really
+draw clouds and invisible vapors to them, they are an exception to the
+universal law of attraction. The attraction of the small Mount
+Shehallien was found sufficient to deflect from the perpendicular, by a
+measurable quantity, a plummet weighing but a few ounces. Why, then,
+should not greater masses attract to them volumes of vapor weighing
+hundreds of tons, and floating freely in the atmosphere within moderate
+distances of the mountains?
+
+No. 26 (page 198, _note_). Elisee Redus ascribes the diminution of the
+ponds which border the dunes of Gascony to the absorption of their water
+by the trees which have been planted upon the sands.--_Revue des Deux
+Mondes_, 1 Aug., 1863, p. 694.
+
+No. 27 (page 219, _note_). The waste of wood in European carpentry was
+formerly enormous, the beams of houses being both larger and more
+numerous than permanence or stability required. In examining the
+construction of the houses occupied by the eighty families which inhabit
+the village of Faucigny, in Savoy, in 1834, the forest inspector found
+that _fifty thousand_ trees had been employed in building them. The
+builders "seemed," says Hudry-Menos, "to have tried to solve the problem
+of piling upon the walls the largest quantity of timber possible without
+crushing them."--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 June, 1864, p. 601.
+
+No. 28 (page 231, _note_). In a remarkable pamphlet, to which I shall
+have occasion to refer more than once hereafter, entitled _Avant-projet
+pour la creation d'un sol fertile a la surface des Landes de Gascogne_,
+Duponchel argues with much force, that the fertilizing properties of
+river-slime are generally due much more to its mineral than to its
+vegetable constituents.
+
+No. 29 (page 265, _note_). Even the denser silicious stones are
+penetrable by fluids and the coloring matter they contain, to such an
+extent that agates and other forms of silex may be artificially stained
+through their substance. This art was known to and practised by the
+ancient lapidaries, and it has been revived in recent times.
+
+No. 30 (page 268). There is good reason for thinking that many of the
+earth and rock slides in the Alps occurred at an earlier period than the
+origin of the forest vegetation which, in later ages, covered the flanks
+of those mountains. See _Bericht ueber die Untersuchung der
+Schweizerischen Hochgebirgswaldungen_. 1862. P. 61.
+
+Where more recent slides have been again clothed with woods, the trees,
+shrubs, and smaller plants which spontaneously grow upon them are
+usually of different species from those observed upon soil displaced at
+remote periods. This difference is so marked that the site of a slide
+can often be recognized at a great distance by the general color of the
+foliage of its vegetation.
+
+No. 31 (page 286, _note_). It should have been observed that the
+venomous principle of poisonous mushrooms is not decomposed and rendered
+innocent by the process described in the _note_. It is merely extracted
+by the acidulated or saline water employed for soaking the plants, and
+care should be taken that this water be thrown away out of the reach of
+mischief.
+
+No. 32 (page 293, _note_). Gaudry estimates the ties employed in the
+railways of France at thirty millions, to supply which not less than two
+millions of large trees have been felled. These ties have been, upon the
+average, at least once renewed, and hence we must double the number of
+ties and of trees required to furnish them.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15
+July, 1863, p. 425.
+
+No. 33 (page 294, _second paragraph of note_). After all, the present
+consumption of wood and timber for fuel and other domestic and rural
+purposes, in many parts of Europe, seems incredibly small to an
+American. In rural Switzerland, the whole supply of firewood,
+fuel for small smitheries, dairies, breweries, brick and lime
+kilns, distilleries, fences, furniture, tools, and even house
+building--exclusive of the small quantity derived from the trimmings
+of fruit trees, grape vines and hedges, and from decayed fences and
+buildings--does not exceed an average of _two hundred and thirty cubic
+feet_, or less than two cords, a year per household. The average
+consumption of wood in New England for domestic fuel alone, is from five
+to ten times as much as Swiss families require for all the uses above
+enumerated. But the existing habitations of Switzerland are sufficient
+for a population which increases but slowly, and in the peasants' houses
+but a single room is usually heated. See _Bericht ueber die Untersuchung
+der Schweiz. Hochgebirgswaldungen_, pp. 85-89.
+
+No. 34 (page 304). Among more recent manuals may be mentioned: _Les
+Etudes de Maitre Pierre._ Paris, 1864. 12mo; BAZELAIRE, _Traite de
+Reboisement_. 2d edition, Paris, 1864; and, in Italian, SIEMONI,
+_Manuale teorico-pratico d'arte Forestale_. Firenze, 1864. 8vo. A very
+important work has lately been published in France by Viscount de
+Courval, which is known to me only by a German translation published at
+Berlin, in 1864, under the title, _Das Aufaesten der Waldbaeume_. The
+principal feature of De Courval's very successful system of
+sylviculture, is a mode of trimming which compels the tree to develop
+the stem by reducing the lateral ramification. Beginning with young
+trees, the buds are rubbed off from the stems, and superfluous lateral
+shoots are pruned down to the trunk. When large trees are taken in hand,
+branches which can be spared, and whose removal is necessary to obtain a
+proper length of stem, are very smoothly cut off quite close to the
+trunk, and the exposed surface is _immediately_ brushed over with
+mineral-coal tar. When thus treated, it is said that the healing of the
+wound is perfect, and without any decay of the tree.
+
+No. 35 (page 313). The most gorgeous autumnal coloring I have observed
+in the vegetation of Europe, has been in the valleys of the Durance and
+its tributaries in Dauphiny. I must admit that neither in variety nor in
+purity and brilliancy of tint, does this coloring fall much, if at all,
+short of that of the New England woods. But there is this difference: in
+Dauphiny, it is only in small shrubs that this rich painting is seen,
+while in North America the foliage of large trees is dyed in full
+splendor. Hence the American woodland has fewer broken lights and more
+of what painters call breadth of coloring. Besides this, the arrangement
+of the leafage in large globular or conical masses, affords a wider
+scale of light and shade, thus aiding now the gradation, now the
+contrast of tints, and gives the American October landscape a softer and
+more harmonious tone than marks the humble shrubbery of the forest
+hill-sides of Dauphiny.
+
+Thoreau--who was not, like some very celebrated landscape critics of the
+present day, an outside spectator of the action and products of natural
+forces, but, in the old religious sense, an _observer_ of organic
+nature, living, more than almost any other descriptive writer, among and
+with her children--has a very eloquent paper on the "Autumnal Tints" of
+the New England landscape.--See his _Excursions_, pp. 215 _et seqq._
+
+Few men have personally noticed so many facts in natural history
+accessible to unscientific observation as Thoreau, and yet he had never
+seen that very common and striking spectacle, the phosphorescence of
+decaying wood, until, in the latter years of his life, it caught his
+attention in a bivouac in the forests of Maine. He seems to have been
+more excited by this phenomenon than by any other described in his
+works. It must be a capacious eye that takes in all the visible facts in
+the history of the most familiar natural object.--_The Maine Woods_, p.
+184.
+
+"The luminous appearance of bodies projected against the sky adjacent to
+the rising" or setting sun, so well described in Professor Necker's
+Letter to Sir David Brewster, is, as Tyndall observes, "hardly ever seen
+by either guides or travellers, though it would seem, _prima facie_,
+that it must be of frequent occurrence." See TYNDALL, _Glaciers of the
+Alps_. Part I. Second ascent of Mont Blanc.
+
+Judging from my own observation, however, I should much doubt whether
+this brilliant phenomenon can be so often seen in perfection as would be
+expected; for I have frequently sought it in vain at the foot of the
+Alps, under conditions apparently otherwise identical with those where,
+in the elevated Alpine valleys, it shows itself in the greatest
+splendor.
+
+No. 36 (page 314). European poets, whose knowledge of the date palm is
+not founded on personal observation, often describe its trunk as not
+only slender, but particularly _straight_. Nothing can be farther from
+the truth. When the Orientals compare the form of a beautiful girl to
+the stem of the palm, they do not represent it as rigidly straight, but
+on the contrary as made up of graceful curves, which seem less like
+permanent outlines than like flowing motion. In a palm grove, the
+trunks, so far from standing planted upright like the candles of a
+chandelier, bend in a vast variety of curves, now leaning towards, now
+diverging from, now crossing, each other, and among a hundred you will
+hardly see two whose axes are parallel.
+
+No. 37 (page 316, _first note_). Charles Martin ascribes the power of
+reproduction by shoots from the stump to the cedar of Mount Atlas, which
+appears to be identical with the cedar of Lebanon.--_Revue des Deux
+Mondes_, 15 July, 1864, p. 315.
+
+No. 38 (page 332). In an interesting article on recent internal
+improvements in England, in the London Quarterly Review for January,
+1858, it is related that in a single rock cutting on the Liverpool and
+Manchester railway, 480,000 cubic yards of stone were removed; that the
+earth excavated and removed in the construction of English railways up
+to that date, amounted to a hundred and fifty million cubic yards, and
+that at the Round Down Cliff, near Dover, a single blast of nineteen
+thousand pounds of powder blew down a thousand million tons of chalk,
+and covered fifteen acres of land with the fragments.
+
+No. 39 (page 339). According to Reventlov, whose work is one of the best
+sources of information on the subject of diking-in tide-washed flats,
+_Salicornia herbacea_ appears as soon as the flat is raised high enough
+to be dry for three hours at ordinary ebb tide, or, in other words,
+where the ordinary flood covers it to a depth of not more than two feet.
+At a flood depth of one foot, the _Salicornia_ dies and is succeeded by
+various sand plants. These are followed by _Poa distans_ and _Poa
+maritima_ as the ground is raised by further deposits, and these plants
+finally by common grasses. The _Salicornia_ is preceded by _confervae_,
+growing in deeper water, which spread over the bottom, and when covered
+by a fresh deposit of slime reappear above it, and thus vegetable and
+alluvial strata alternate until the flat is raised sufficiently high for
+the growth of _Salicornia_.--_Om Marskdannelsen paa Vestkysten af
+Hertugdoemmet Slesvig_, pp. 7, 8.
+
+No. 40 (page 348, _note_). The drijftil employed for the ring dike of
+the Lake of Haarlem, was in part cut in sections fifty feet long by six
+or seven wide, and these were navigated like rafts to the spot where
+they were sunk to form the dike.--EMILE DE LAVELEYE, _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_, 15 Sept., 1863, p. 285.
+
+No. 41 (page 352, _last paragraph_). See on the influence of the
+improvements in question on tidal and other marine currents, Staring,
+_De Bodem van Nederland_, I. p. 279.
+
+Although the dikes of the Netherlands and the adjacent states have
+protected a considerable extent of coast from the encroachments of the
+sea, and have won a large tract of cultivable land from the dominion of
+the waters, it has been questioned whether a different method of
+accomplishing these objects might not have been adopted with advantage.
+It has been suggested that a system of inland dikes and canals, upon the
+principle of those which, as will be seen in a subsequent part of the
+chapter on the waters, have been so successfully employed in the Val di
+Chiana and in Egypt, might have elevated the low grounds above the ocean
+tides, by spreading over them the sediment brought down by the Rhine,
+the Maes, and the Scheld. If this process had been introduced in the
+Middle Ages and constantly pursued to our times, the superficial and
+coast geography, as well as the hydrography of the countries in
+question, would undoubtedly have presented an aspect very different from
+their present condition; and by combining the process with a system of
+maritime dikes, which would have been necessary, both to resist the
+advance of the sea and to retain the slime deposited by river overflows,
+it is possible that the territory of those states would have been as
+extensive as it now is, and, at the same time, more elevated by several
+feet. But it must be borne in mind that we do not know the proportions
+in which the marine deposits that form the polders have been derived
+from materials brought down by these rivers or from other more remote
+sources. Much of the river slime has no doubt been transported by marine
+currents quite beyond the reach of returning streams, and it is
+uncertain how far this loss has been balanced by earth washed by the sea
+from distant shores and let fall on the coasts of the Netherlands and
+other neighboring countries.
+
+We know little or nothing of the quantity of solid matter brought down
+by the rivers of Western Europe in early ages, but, as the banks of
+those rivers are now generally better secured against wash and abrasion
+than in former centuries, the sediment transported by them must be less
+than at periods nearer the removal of the primitive forests of their
+valleys. Kloeden states the quantity of sedimentary matter now annually
+brought down by the Rhine at Bonn to be sufficient only to cover a
+square English mile to the depth of a little more than a
+foot.--_Erdkunde_, I. p. 384.
+
+No. 42 (page 358, _first paragraph_). Meteorological observations have
+been regularly recorded at Zwanenburg, near the north end of the Lake of
+Haarlem, for more than a century, and since 1845 a similar register has
+been kept at the Helder, forty or fifty miles farther north. In
+comparing these two series of observations, it is found that about the
+end of the year 1852, when the drawing off of the waters of the Lake of
+Haarlem was completed, and the preceding summer had dried the grounds
+laid bare so as greatly to reduce the evaporable surface, a change took
+place in the relative temperature of the two stations. Taking the mean
+of every successive period of five days from 1845 to 1852, the
+temperature at Zwanenburg was thirty-three hundredths of a centigrade
+degree _lower_ than at the Helder. Since the end of 1852, the
+thermometer at Zwanenburg has stood, from the 11th of April to the 20th
+of September inclusive, twenty-two hundredths of a degree _higher_ than
+at the Helder, but from the 14th of October to the 17th of March, it has
+averaged one-tenth of a degree _lower_ than its mean between the same
+dates before 1853.
+
+There is no reasonable doubt that these differences are due to the
+draining of the lake. There has been less refrigeration from evaporation
+in summer, and the ground has absorbed more solar heat at the same
+period, while in the winter it has radiated more warmth then when it was
+covered with water. Doubtless the quantity of humidity contained in the
+atmosphere has also been affected by the same cause, but observations do
+not appear to have been made on that point. See KRECKE, _Het Klimaat van
+Nederland_, II. 64.
+
+No. 43 (page 358, _note_). In the course of the present year (1864),
+there have been several land slips on the borders of the Lake of Como,
+and in one instance the grounds of a villa lying upon the margin of the
+water suffered a considerable displacement. If the lake should be
+lowered to any considerable extent, in pursuance of the plan mentioned
+in the note on page 358, there is ground to fear that the steep shores
+of the lake might, at some points, be deprived of a lateral pressure
+requisite to their stability, and slide into the water as on the Lake of
+Lungern. See p. 356.
+
+No. 44 (page 369, _last paragraph but one of note_). In like manner,
+while the box, the cedar, the fir, the oak, the pine, "beams," and
+"timber," are very frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, not one of
+these words is found in the New, _except_ the case of the "beam in the
+eye," in the parable in Matthew and Luke.
+
+No. 45 (page 375, _note_). In all probability, the real change effected
+by human art in the superficial geography of Egypt, is the conversion of
+pools and marshes into dry land, by a system of transverse dikes, which
+compelled the flood water to deposit its sediment on the banks of the
+river instead of carrying it to the sea. The _colmate_ of modern Italy
+were thus anticipated in ancient Egypt.
+
+No. 46 (page 378). We have seen in _Appendix_, No. 42, _ante_, that the
+mean temperature of a station on the borders of the Lake of Haarlem--a
+sheet of water formerly covering sixty-two and a half square English
+miles--for the period between the 11th of April and the 20th of
+September, had been raised not less than a degree of Fahrenheit by the
+draining of that lake; or, to state the case more precisely, that the
+formation of the lake, which was a consequence of man's improvidence,
+had reduced the temperature one degree F. below the natural standard.
+The artificially irrigated lands of France, Piedmont, and Lombardy,
+taken together, are fifty times as extensive as the Lake of Haarlem, and
+they are situated in climates where evaporation is vastly more rapid
+than in the Netherlands. They must therefore, no doubt, affect the local
+climate to a far greater extent than has been observed in connection
+with the draining of the lake in question. I do not know that special
+observations have been made with a view to measure the climatic effects
+of irrigation, but in the summer I have often found the _morning_
+temperature, when the difference would naturally be least perceptible,
+on the watered plains of Piedmont, nine miles south of Turin, several
+degrees lower than that recorded at an observatory in the city.
+
+No. 47 (page 391, _note_). The Roman aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard,
+near Nismes, was built, in all probability, nineteen centuries ago. The
+bed of the river Gardon, a rather swift stream, which flows beneath it,
+can have suffered but a slight depression since the piers of the
+aqueduct were founded.
+
+No. 48 (page 393, _first note_). Duponchel makes the following
+remarkable statement: "The river Herault rises in a granitic region, but
+soon reaches calcareous formations, which it traverses for more than
+sixty kilometres, rolling through deep and precipitous ravines, into
+which the torrents are constantly discharging enormous masses of pebbles
+belonging to the hardest rocks of the Jurassian period. These debris,
+continually renewed, compose, even below the exit of the gorge where the
+river enters into a regular channel cut in a tertiary deposit, broad
+beaches, prodigious accumulations of rolled pebbles, extending several
+kilometres down the stream, but they diminish in size and weight so
+rapidly that above the mouth of the river, which is at a distance of
+thirty or thirty-five kilometres from the gorge, every trace of
+calcareous matter has disappeared from the sands of the bottom, which
+are exclusively silicious."--_Avant-projet pour la creation d'un sol
+fertile_, etc., p. 20.
+
+No. 49 (page 404, _first paragraph of second note_). The length of the
+lower course of the Po having been considerably increased by the filling
+up of the Adriatic with its deposits, the velocity of the current ought,
+_prima facie_, to have been diminished and its bed raised in proportion.
+There are grounds for believing that this has happened in the case of
+the Nile, and one reason why the same effect has not been more sensibly
+perceptible in the Po is, that the confinement of the current by
+continuous embankments gives it a high-water velocity sufficient to
+sweep out deposits let fall at lower stages and slower movements of the
+water. Torrential streams tend first to excavate, then to raise, their
+beds. No general law on this point can be stated in relation to the
+middle and lower course of rivers. The conditions which determine the
+question of the depression or elevation of a river bed are too
+multifarious, variable, and complex to be subjected to formulae, and they
+can scarcely even be enumerated. See, however, note on p. 431.
+
+No. 50 (page 406, _first paragraph_). The system proposed in the text is
+substantially the Egyptian method, the Nile dikes having been
+constructed rather to retain than to exclude the water. The waters of
+rivers which flow down planes of gentle inclination, deposit in their
+inundations the largest proportion of their sediment as soon as, by
+overflowing their banks, they escape from the swift current of the
+channel, and consequently the immediate banks of such rivers become
+higher than the grounds lying farther from the stream. In the
+"intervals," or "bottoms," of the great North American rivers, the
+alluvial banks are elevated and dry, the flats more remote from the
+river lower and swampy. This is generally observable in Egypt, though
+less so than in the valley of the Mississippi, where, below Cape
+Girardeau, the alluvial banks constitute natural glacis descending as
+you recede from the river, at an average of seven feet in the first
+mile.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S _Report_, pp. 96, 97.
+
+The Egyptian crossdikes, by retaining the water of the inundations,
+compel it to let fall its remaining slime, and hence the elevation of
+the remoter land goes on at a rate not very much slower than that of the
+immediate banks. Probably transverse embankments would produce the same
+effect in the Mississippi valley. In the great floods of this river, it
+is observed that, at a certain distance from the channel, the bottoms,
+though lower than the banks, are flooded to a less depth. See cross
+sections in Plate IV. of Humphreys and Abbot's Report. This apparently
+anomalous fact is due, I suppose, to the greater swiftness of the
+current of the overflowing water in the low grounds, which are often
+drained through the channels of rivers whose beds lie at a lower level
+than that of the Mississippi, or by the bayous which are so
+characteristic a feature of the geography of that valley. A judicious
+use of dikes would probably convert the swamps of the lower Mississippi
+valley into a region like Egypt.
+
+No. 51 (_second note_). The mean discharge of the Mississippi is 675,000
+cubic feet per second, and, accordingly, that river contributes to the
+sea about eleven times as much water as the Po, and more than sis and
+a half times as much as the Nile. The discharge of the Mississippi
+is estimated at one-fourth of the precipitation in its basin,
+certainly a very large proportion, when we consider the rapidity of
+evaporation in many parts of the basin, and the probable loss by
+infiltration.--HUMPHREYS AND ABBOT'S _Report_, p. 93.
+
+No. 52 (page 423, _first paragraph_). Artificially directed currents of
+water have been advantageously used in civil engineering for displacing
+and transporting large quantities of earth, and there is no doubt that
+this agency might be profitably employed to a far greater extent than
+has yet been attempted. Some of the hydraulic works in California for
+washing down masses of auriferous earth are on a scale stupenduous
+enough to produce really important topographical changes.
+
+No. 53 (page 435, _first note_). I have lately been informed by a
+resident of the Ionian Islands, who is familiar with this phenomenon,
+that the sea flows uninterruptedly into the sub-insular cavities, at all
+stages of the tide.
+
+No. 54 (page 438, _note_). It is observed in Cornwall that deep mines
+are freer from water in artificially well-drained, than in undrained
+agricultural districts.--ESQUIROS, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Nov. 15,
+1863, p. 430.
+
+No. 55 (page 441). See, on the Artesian wells of the Sahara, and
+especially on the throwing up of living fish by them, an article
+entitled, _Le Sahara_, etc., by Charles Martins, in the _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_ for August 1, 1864, pp. 618, 619.
+
+No. 56 (page 444, _first note_). From the article in the _Rev. des Deux
+Mondes_, referred to in the preceding note, it appears that the wells
+discovered by Ayme were truly artesian. They were bored in rock, and
+provided at the outlet with a pear-shaped valve of stone, by which the
+orifice could be closed or opened at pleasure.
+
+No. 57 (page 447, _second note_). Hull ingeniously suggests that,
+besides other changes, fine sand intermixed with or deposited above a
+coarser stratum, as well as the minute particles resulting from the
+disintegration of the latter, may be carried by rain in the case of
+dunes, or by the ordinary action of sea water in that of subaqueous
+sandbanks, down through the interstices in the coarser layer, and thus
+the relative position of fine sand and gravel may be more or less
+changed.--_Oorsprong der Hollandsche Duinen_, p. 103.
+
+No. 58 (page 479). It appears from Laurent, that marine shells, of
+extant species, are found in the sands of the Sahara, far from the sea,
+and even at considerable depths below the surface.--_Memoires sur le
+Sahara Oriental_, p. 62.
+
+This observation has been confirmed by late travellers, and is an
+important link in the chain of evidence which tends to prove that the
+upheaval of the Libyan desert is of comparatively recent date.
+
+No. 59 (p. 480). "At New Quay [in England] the dune sands are converted
+to stone by an oxyde of iron held in solution by the water which
+pervades them. This stone, which is formed, so to speak, under our eye,
+has been found solid enough to be employed for building."--ESQUIROS,
+_L'Angleterre et la vie Anglaise_, _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1 March,
+1864, pp. 44, 45.
+
+No. 60 (page 496, _first paragraph_). In Ditmarsh, the breaking of the
+surface by the man[oe]uvering of a corps of cavalry let loose a
+sand-drift which did serious injury before it was subdued.--KOHL,
+_Inseln u. Marschen._ etc., III. p. 282.
+
+Similar cases have occurred in Eastern Massachusetts, from equally
+slight causes.--See THOREAU, _A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
+Rivers_, pp. 151-208.
+
+No. 61 (page 497, _last note_). A more probable explanation of the fact
+stated in the note is suggested by Elisee Reclus, in an article
+entitled, _Le Littoral de la France_, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for
+Sept. 1, 1864, pp. 193, 194. This able writer believes such pools to be
+the remains of ancient maritime bays, which have been cut off from the
+ocean by gradually accumulated sand banks raised by the waves and winds
+to the character of dunes.
+
+No. 62 (page 506, _note_). The statement in the note is confirmed by
+Olmsted: "There is not a sufficient demand for rosin, except of the
+first qualities, to make it worth transporting from the inland
+distilleries; it is ordinarily, therefore, conducted off to a little
+distance, in a wooden trough, and allowed to flow from it to waste upon
+the ground. At the first distillery I visited, which had been in
+operation but one year, there lay a congealed pool of rosin, estimated
+to contain over three thousand barrels."--_A Journey in the Seaboard
+Slave States_, 1863, p. 345.
+
+No. 63 (page 507). In an article on the dunes of Europe, in Vol. 29
+(1864) of _Aus der Natur_, p. 590, the dunes are estimated to cover, on
+the islands and coasts of Schleswig Holstein, in Northwest Germany,
+Denmark, Holland, and France, one hundred and eighty-one German, or
+nearly four thousand English square miles; in Scotland, about ten
+German, or two hundred and ten English miles; in Ireland, twenty German,
+or four hundred and twenty English miles; and in England, one hundred
+and twenty German, or more than twenty-five hundred English miles.
+
+No. 64 (page 512, _last paragraph_). For a brilliant account of the
+improvement of the Landes, see Edmond About, _Le Progres_, Chap, VII.
+
+In the memoir referred to in _Appendix_, No. 48, _ante_, Duponchel
+proposes the construction of artificial torrents to grind calcareous
+rock to slime by rolling and attrition in its bed, and, at the same
+time, the washing down of an argillaceous deposit which is to be mixed
+with the calcareous slime and distributed over the Landes by
+watercourses constructed for the purpose. By this means, he supposes
+that a highly fertile soil could be formed on the surface, which would
+also be so raised by the process as to admit of freer drainage. That
+nothing may be wanting to recommend this project, Duponchel suggests
+that, as some of the rivers of Western France are auriferous, it is
+probable that gold enough may be collected from the washings to reduce
+the cost of the operations materially.
+
+No. 65 (page 528, _first paragraph_). The opening of a channel across
+Cape Cod would have, though perhaps to a smaller extent, the same
+effects in interchanging the animal life of the southern and northern
+shores of the isthmus, as in the case of the Suez canal; for although
+the breadth of Cape Cod does not anywhere exceed twenty miles, and is in
+some places reduced to one, it appears from the official reports on the
+Natural History of Massachusetts, that the population of the opposite
+waters differs widely in species.
+
+Not having the original documents at hand, I quote an extract from the
+_Report on the Invertebrate Animals of Mass._, given by Thoreau,
+_Excursions_, p. 69: "The distribution of the marine shells is well
+worthy of notice as a geological fact. Cape Cod, the right arm of the
+Commonwealth, reaches out into the ocean some fifty or sixty miles. It
+is nowhere many miles wide; but this narrow point of land has hitherto
+proved a barrier to the migration of many species of mollusca. Several
+genera and numerous species, which are separated by the intervention of
+only a few miles of land, are effectually prevented from mingling by the
+Cape, and do not pass from one side to the other * * * * Of the one
+hundred and ninety-seven marine species, eighty-three do not pass to the
+south shore, and fifty are not found on the north shore of the Cape."
+
+Probably the distribution of the species of mollusks is affected by
+unknown local conditions, and therefore an open canal across the Cape
+might not make every species that inhabits the waters on one side
+common to those of the other; but there can be no doubt that there would
+be a considerable migration in both directions.
+
+The fact stated in the report may suggest an important caution in
+drawing conclusions upon the relative age of formations from the
+character of their fossils. Had a geological movement or movements
+upheaved to different levels the bottoms of waters thus separated by a
+narrow isthmus, and dislocated the connection between those bottoms,
+naturalists, in after ages, reasoning from the character of the fossil
+faunas, might have assigned them to different, and perhaps very widely
+distant, periods.
+
+No. 66 (page 548, _first paragraph_). To the geological effects of the
+thickening of the earth's crust in the Bay of Bengal, are to be added
+those of thinning it on the highlands where the Ganges rises. The same
+action may, as a learned friend suggests to me, even have a cosmical
+influence. The great rivers of the earth, taken as a whole, transport
+sediment from the polar regions in an equatorial direction, and hence
+tend to increase the equatorial diameter, and at the same time, by their
+inequality of action, to a continual displacement of the centre of
+gravity, of the earth. The motion of the globe and of all bodies
+affected by its attraction, is modified by every change of its form, and
+in this case we are not authorized to say that such effects are in any
+way compensated.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbeys of St. Germain and St. Denis, revenues of, 6.
+
+  Adirondack forest, 235;
+    lakes of, 357.
+
+  Ailanthus glandulosa, 515.
+
+  Akaba, gulf of, infiltration of fresh water in, 440.
+
+  Albano, lake of, artificial lowering of, 353.
+
+  Algeria, deserts of, artesian wells in, 443;
+    sand dunes of, 463;
+    consolidated dunes, 480.
+
+  Alpaca, South American, 83.
+
+  Amazon, Indians of, 11.
+
+  Ameland, island of, 499.
+
+  America, North, primitive physical condition of, 27, 43;
+    forests of, 28;
+    possibility of noting its physical changes, 52;
+    by scientific observation, 53;
+    forest trees of, 274;
+    sand dunes of, 469;
+    proposed changes in hydrography of, 532.
+
+  Animal life, sympathy of ruder races with, 39;
+    instinct, fallibility of, 40;
+    hostility of civilized man to inferior forms of, 121.
+
+  Animals, wild, action of on vegetation, 78.
+
+  Aphis, the European, 104.
+
+  Apennines, effects of felling the woods on, 150, 152.
+
+  Appian way, the, 542.
+
+  Aqueducts, geographical and climatic effects of, 358.
+
+  Arabia Petraea, surface drainage of, 440;
+    sandstone of, 452;
+    sands and petrified wood of, 455;
+    wadies of, 538.
+
+  Aragua, valley of, Venezuela, 202.
+
+  Ararat, Mt., phenomenon of vegetation on, 287.
+
+  Ardeche, l', department of, 152;
+    destruction of forests in, 389.
+
+  -- river and basin, floods of, 386;
+    supply of water to the Rhone, 388, 398;
+    violence of inundations of, 388;
+    damage done by, 390;
+    effect on river beds, 391;
+    force of its affluents, 392.
+
+  Argostoli, Cephalonia, millstreams of, 434.
+
+  Armenia, ancient irrigation of, 366.
+
+  Arno, the river, deposits of, 414;
+    upper course of in the Val di Chiana, 417, 420.
+
+  Artesian wells, their sources, 441;
+    usual objects, 442;
+    occasional effects, 442;
+    employment in the Algerian desert, 443;
+    by the French Government, 444;
+    success and probable results of, 445;
+    known to the ancients, 443;
+    depth of, 444.
+
+  Arundo arenaria, 501.
+
+  Ascension, island of, 205.
+
+  Auk, the wingless, extirpation of, 95.
+
+  Australia a field of physical observation, 51.
+
+  Avalanches, Alpine, various causes of, 266;
+    by felling trees, 270.
+
+  Azoff, sea of, proposed changes, 531.
+
+
+  Babinet, plan for artificial springs, by, 448.
+
+  Baikal Lake, the fish of, 117.
+
+  Baltic Sea, sand dunes of, 467.
+
+  Barcelonette, valley of, former fertility, 243;
+    present degradation of, 244.
+
+  Bavaria, scarcity of fuel in, 299.
+
+  Bear, the mythical character of, 40.
+
+  Beaver, the, agency in forming bogs, 31;
+    cause of its increased numbers, 84.
+
+  Bee, the honey, products of, 105;
+    introduction in United States, 106.
+
+  Belgium, effect of plantations in, 152;
+    Campine of, 513.
+
+  Ben Gasi, district of, rock formation in, 537.
+
+  Bergamo, change of climate in the valley of, 151.
+
+  Bibliographical list of authorities, vii.
+
+  Birch tree (black and yellow), produce of, 171.
+
+  Birds, number of, in United States, 86;
+    the turkey, dove, pigeon, 87;
+    as sowers and consumers of seeds, 87;
+    as destroyers of insects, 89;
+    injurious extirpation of, 90;
+    wanton destruction of, 92;
+    weakness of, 93;
+    instinct of migratory, 94;
+    extinction of species, 95;
+    commercial value of, 97;
+    introduction of species, 98.
+
+  Bison, the American, 78;
+    number and migrations of, 81, 83;
+    domesticated, 135.
+
+  Blackbird, the proscription of, 91.
+
+  Bogs, formation and nomenclature of, 29-32;
+    of New England, 29;
+    repositories of fuel, 30.
+
+  Bremontier, system of dune plantations of, 503;
+    a benefactor to his race, 515.
+
+  Breton, Cap, dune vineyards of, 508.
+
+  Busbequius' letters, 64.
+
+
+  Camel, the, transfer and migrations of, 83;
+    injurious to vegetation, 132.
+
+  Campine of Belgium, 513.
+
+  Canada thistle, the, 68.
+
+  Canals, geographic and climatic effects of, 359;
+    injurious effects of Tuscan, 359;
+    projected, Suez, 519;
+    Isthmus of Darien, 522;
+    to the Dead Sea, 524;
+    maritime, in Greece, 526;
+    Saros, 527;
+    Cape Cod, 528;
+    the Don and the Volga, 531;
+    Lake Erie and the Genesee, 532;
+    Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, 533.
+
+  Cape Cod, sand dunes of, 487;
+    legislative protection of, 502;
+    vegetation of, 503;
+    projected canal through, 528.
+
+  Cappercailzie, the, extinction of, in Britain, 96.
+
+  Carniola, caves of, 434.
+
+  Caspian Sea, proposed changes in its basin, 531.
+
+  Catania, lava streams of, 544.
+
+  Catavothra of Greece, 536.
+
+  Cevennes, effects of clearing the, 153.
+
+  Champlain, lake, dates of its congelation, 163.
+
+  Cherbourg, breakwater of, 46, 332.
+
+  Chiana, Val di, description and character of, 417-420;
+    plans for its restoration, 420;
+    artificial drainage of, attempted, 421;
+    successfully executed, 423.
+
+  Clergy, mediaeval, their character, 282.
+
+  Climatic change, discussions of, 9;
+    how tested, 20;
+    causes producing, in New England, Africa, Arabia Petraea, 20-22;
+    man's action on, difficult to ascertain, 51;
+    deterioration, 71.
+
+  Coal mines, combustion of, 546.
+
+  Coal, sea, early use of, for fuel, 222;
+    increased use of, in Paris, 295.
+
+  Coast line, change of, from natural causes, 331;
+    subject to human guidance, 332.
+
+  Cochineal insect transferred to Spain, 105.
+
+  Cochituate Aqueduct, Boston, 103.
+
+  Col Isoard, valley of, devastated, 242.
+
+  Commerce, modern, on what dependent, 60.
+
+  Como, lake of, proposed lowering of, 358.
+
+  Constance, lake of, 534.
+
+  Cork-oak tree, yield of, 311.
+
+  Corporations, social and political, influence of, 54.
+
+  Cosmical influences, 13.
+
+  Cotton, early cultivation of, 61;
+    can be raised by white labor, 381.
+
+  Crawley Sparrow Club, 90.
+
+  Currents, sea, strength of, 456;
+    in the Bosphorus, 457.
+
+  Cuyahoga river, 208.
+
+  Cypress tree, its beauty, 314.
+
+
+  Darien, Isthmus of, proposed canal across, 522;
+    conjectural effects of, 523.
+
+  Dead Sea, projected canals to, 524;
+    possible results of, 525.
+
+  Deer, numbers of, in United States; 82;
+    tame, injurious to trees, 130.
+
+  Denmark, peat mosses of, 22;
+    dunes of, 497;
+    extent and movement of, 498;
+    legislative protection of, 501, 504.
+
+  Desert, the, richness of local color, 445;
+    mirage in, 446.
+
+  Des Plaines river, 533.
+
+  Despotism a cause of physical decay, 5.
+
+  Dikes, recovery of land by, in the Netherlands, 335;
+    early usage and immense extent of, 336;
+    encouraged by the Spaniards, 337;
+    details of their construction and effect on the land
+          gained, 340-345;
+    in Egypt, 413.
+
+  Dinornis, or moa, recent extirpation of, in New Zealand, 95.
+
+  Dodo, the, extirpation of, 95.
+
+  Domestic animals, action of, on vegetation, 79;
+    origin and transfer of, 82;
+    injurious to the forest growth, 130.
+
+  Don river, proposed diversion of, 531.
+
+  Draining a geographical element, 360;
+    superficial, its necessity in forest lands, 363;
+    effect on temperature, 364;
+    underground, _ib._;
+    extensive use of, in England, 362;
+    affects the atmosphere, 364;
+    disturbs the equilibrium of river supply, 365;
+    by boring, 362;
+    in France, &c., 362;
+    Paris, 363.
+
+  Drance, Switzerland, glacier lake of, 403.
+
+  Dry land and water, relative extent of, 178.
+
+  Dwight, Dr., Travels in the United States, characterized, 52.
+
+
+  Earth, fertile, below the rock, 537;
+    transported to cover rocky surfaces, 537.
+
+  Earthquakes, effects of, 542;
+    causes and possible prevention of, 543;
+    of Lisbon, 544.
+
+  Earthworm, utility of, in agriculture, 100;
+    multiplication of, in New England, 101.
+
+  Egypt, catacombs, 70;
+    papyrus or water lily, 70;
+    poisonous snakes of, 112;
+    supposed increase of rain in, 190;
+    productiveness of, 230;
+    necessity and extent of irrigation in, 368, 373;
+    cultivated soil of, 372, 374;
+    population of, 374;
+    amount of water used for irrigation, 380;
+    saline deposits, 382;
+    artificial river courses of, 402;
+    cultivated area of, 412;
+    sands of, 458;
+    their prevalence and extent, 459;
+    source of, 461;
+    action on the Delta and cultivated land, 462;
+    effect of the diversion of the Nile on, 529;
+    refuse heaps near Cairo, 541.
+
+  Eland, the, preserved in Prussia, 86.
+
+  Elm, the Washington, Cambridge, 146.
+
+  Elsineur, artificial formation in harbor of, 539.
+
+  England, forest economy of, 221;
+    large extent of ornamental plantations, 222;
+    Forests of, described by Caesar, 222;
+    private enterprise in sylviculture, 292;
+    sand dunes of, 507.
+
+  Enguerrand de Coucy, cruelty of, 281.
+
+  Erie Canal, the, influence on the fauna and flora of its region, 116;
+    lake, depth and level of, 532;
+    proposed canal from, 532.
+
+  Espy's theories of artificial rain, 547.
+
+  Etna, volcanic lava and dust, 131.
+
+  Euphrates, sand plains in the valley of, 511.
+
+  Eye, cultivation of the, 11;
+    control of the limbs by, 12;
+    trained by the study of physical geography, 12.
+
+
+  Feudalism, pernicious influence of, 6.
+
+  Fir tree, the, its products, 311.
+
+  Fire weed, in burnt forests of the United States, 287.
+
+  Fish, destruction of, by man, 112, 114, 120, 122;
+    voracity of, 114;
+    introduction and breeding of foreign, 116;
+    naturalization of, 117;
+    inferiority of the artificially fattened, 121.
+
+  Fish, shell, extensive remains of, in United States, 117;
+    of Indian origin, 128.
+
+  Fish ponds of Catholic countries, 426.
+
+  Fontainebleau, forest of, 34, 130;
+    poaching in, 284;
+    its renovation, 316;
+    soil of, 513.
+
+  Food, ancient arts of preservation of, 18.
+
+  Forest, the, influence of, on the humidity of air, 162;
+    do. of earth, 165;
+    as organic, 166;
+    balance of conflicting influences in, 176;
+    influence on temperature, 178;
+    on precipitation, 181, 196;
+    in South America, 184;
+    the Canary Islands and Asia Minor, 185;
+    Peru, 188;
+    Palestine, Southern France, Scotland and Egypt, 189;
+    influence of, on humidity of soil, 196;
+    on springs, 197;
+    in Venezuela, 202;
+    New Granada, 204;
+    Switzerland and France, 205, 208;
+    United States, 207;
+    in winter, 210;
+    general consequences of its destruction, 214;
+    on the earth, springs, rivers, 215;
+    literature of, in France, 217;
+    Germany, 218;
+    Italy, 218;
+    England, 221;
+    influence of, on inundations, 223;
+    in North America, 225;
+    disputed effects of, in Europe, 228;
+    principal causes of its destruction, 270;
+    in British America, 271;
+    in Europe, 279;
+    royal forests, 280;
+    effects of the Revolution on, in France, 284;
+    utility of, for the preservation of smaller plants, 286, 290;
+    do. of birds, 291;
+    economic utility of, and necessity for its restoration, 292;
+    extent of, in Europe, 296;
+    proportion in different countries of, 300;
+    of the United States and Canada, 300;
+    economy of, 303;
+    management of, in France, 304;
+    European forests, all of artificial growth, 305;
+    artificial and natural, their respective advantages, 307;
+    American do., their peculiar characteristics, 313;
+    economic action of cattle on, 325;
+    duty of preserving, 327;
+    average revenue from, 327;
+    regulated by laws in France, 395.
+    See _Trees_, _Woods_.
+
+  Forests of North America, balance of geographical elements in, 27;
+    agency of quadrupeds and insects in, 32;
+    injury to, by insects, 33;
+    meteorological importance of, 139.
+
+  Forest laws, mediaeval, character of, 217;
+    do. Jewish, 217;
+    severity of, in France and England, 280;
+    under Louis IX., 281;
+    of America, created by circumstances, 302.
+
+  France, forest literature and economy of, 217;
+    legislation on forests, 233;
+
+  -- Southeastern, former physical state of, 237;
+    altered condition of, 239;
+    royal forests of, and forest laws, 280;
+    extent of, in, 296;
+    ancient lakes of, 357;
+    inundations of 1856 in, 393;
+    remedies against inundations in, 395;
+    sand dunes of Western, 485;
+    encroachments of the sea on, 494.
+
+  French peasantry, described by La Bruyere, 6;
+    do. Arthur Young, 7;
+    of Chambord, 283.
+
+  Friesland, sand dunes of, 489.
+
+  Fucinus Lake (Lago di Celano), drainage of, by the Romans, 354;
+    moderns, 355.
+
+
+  Game Laws, effect on the numbers of birds in France, 91;
+    in England and Italy, 92;
+    severity of, in France, 283;
+    unable to stop poaching, 284.
+
+  Ganges, valley of the, 548.
+
+  Gascony, coast sands of, 453;
+    dunes of, 496;
+    extent and advance of, 497;
+    fixing and reclaiming of, 504;
+    Landes of, 511;
+    their reclamation, 512.
+
+  Geological influences, 13.
+
+  Geographers, new school of, 8.
+
+  Geographical influence of changes produced by man, 352.
+
+  Geography, modern, improved form of, 57.
+
+  German Ocean, sands of, 454, 457.
+
+  Germany, extent of forests in, 299.
+
+  Glacier lakes in Switzerland, 403.
+
+  Goat, the Cashmere or Thibet, 83.
+
+  Gold fish, the migration from China, 116.
+
+  Goldau, Switzerland, destruction of, 268.
+
+  Grape disease, its economic effect in France, Italy, Sicily, 72.
+
+  Grasshopper, the rapid increase in America, 291.
+
+  Gravedigger beetle, the, 107.
+
+  Greece,
+    proposed maritime canals in, through the Corinthian Isthmus, 526;
+    Mount Athos, 527;
+    subterranean waters of, 536.
+
+  Gulls, sea, habits of, 98.
+
+  Gulf stream, the, 523.
+
+  Gunpowder chiefly used for industrial purposes, 335.
+
+
+  Haarlem Lake, origin and extent of, 346, 347;
+    reasons for draining it, 348;
+    means employed, 349;
+    successful results, 350.
+
+  Hauran, the productions of, its soil, 74.
+
+  Heilbronn, springs at, 207.
+
+  Herring fishery, produce of, 120.
+
+  Hessian fly, introduction of in the United States, 104.
+
+  Honey bee, the wild, New England, legal usage, 302.
+
+  Humid air, movement of, 183.
+
+  Hunter in New England, exploits of, 82.
+
+
+  Ibex, the Alpine, 86.
+
+  India, saline efflorescence of its soil, 382;
+    natural connection of rivers in, 401.
+
+  Insects, injurious to vegetable life, 33;
+    utility of, 99;
+    agency in the fertilization of orchids, 102;
+    mass of their exuviae in South America, 102;
+    introduction of injurious species, 104, 106;
+    ravages of, 105;
+    tenacity of life in, 106;
+    the carnivorous, useful to man, 107;
+    destruction of, by fish, 108;
+    abundance of, in Northern Europe, 108;
+    destruction of, by birds, 109;
+    do. quadrupeds, 110;
+    do. reptiles, 110;
+    do not multiply in the forest, 291;
+    confine themselves to dead trees, 322.
+
+  Inundations, influence of the forest on, 223;
+    of the German Ocean, 334;
+    means for obviating, 384;
+    of 1856 in France, 393;
+    remedies against, 395;
+    legislative regulation of the woodlands in France for
+          prevention of, 396;
+    proposed basins of reception, 398;
+    do. in Peru and Spain, 400;
+    Rozet's plan for diminishing, 406.
+
+  Irrigation, remote date of in ancient nations, 366;
+    among Mexicans and Peruvians, 366;
+    its necessity in hot climates, 367;
+    in Europe, 367;
+    in Palestine, 368;
+    in Idumaea, 370;
+    Egypt, 371, 373;
+    quantity of water so applied, 376, 377;
+    extent of lands irrigated, 396;
+    effects of, 378;
+    on river supply, 380;
+    on human health, 381;
+    saline deposits from, in India and Egypt, 382;
+    effect of, on vegetable crops, 378;
+    on the soil, 379;
+    economic evils of, 379.
+
+  Islands, floating, in Holland and South America, 349, 351.
+
+  Ijssel river, Holland, 535.
+
+  Italy, effects of the denudation of its forests, 220;
+    political condition adverse to their preservation, 219;
+    beauty of its winter scenery, 314;
+    extent of irrigation in, 368;
+    atmospheric phenomena of Northern, 368.
+
+
+  Jupiter, satellites of, visible to the eye, 12.
+
+  Jutland, effects of felling the woods in, 150;
+    destruction of forests in, 279;
+    encroachments of the sea on, 491.
+
+
+  Kander river, Switzerland, artificial course of, 403.
+
+  Karst, the subterranean waters of, 536.
+
+  Kjoekkenmoeddinger in Denmark, 16;
+    their extent, 540.
+
+  Kohl, J. G., "the Herodotus of modern Europe," 340;
+   on dune sand, 475.
+
+
+  Labruguiere, commune of, 208.
+
+  Laestadius, account of the Swedish Laplanders, 96.
+
+  Lakes, draining of, by steam hydraulic engines, 346;
+    natural process of filling up by aquatic vegetation, 349;
+    lowering of, in ancient and modern times, 353;
+    in Italy, 354;
+    in Switzerland, 356;
+    inconvenient consequences of, 356;
+    mountain, their disappearance, 357.
+
+  Landscape beauty, insensibility of the ancients to, 2;
+    of the oasis and the desert, 445.
+
+  Lava currents, diversion of their course, 544;
+    from Vesuvius, phenomena of, 545;
+    heat emitted by, 545.
+
+  Life, balance of animal and vegetable, 103.
+
+  Liimfjord, the, irruption of the sea into, 491;
+    aquatic vegetation of, 492;
+    original state of, 519.
+
+  Lion, an inhabitant of Europe, 85.
+
+  Lisbon, earthquake of, 544.
+
+  Locust, the, does not multiply in woods, 296;
+    tree and insect, 32.
+
+  Lombardy, statistics of irrigation in, 376.
+
+  Louis IX., of France, clemency of, 282.
+
+  Lower Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, 246.
+
+  Lumber trade of Quebec, 271;
+    of United States, 1850-'60, 301.
+
+  Lungern, lake of, lowering of, 356.
+
+
+  Madagascar, gigantic bird of, 96;
+    the ai-ai of, 110.
+
+  Madder, early cultivation of, in Europe, 20.
+
+  Madeira, named from its forests, 129.
+
+  Maize, early cultivation of, law of its acclimation, 19;
+    native country of, 73.
+
+  Malta, transported soil of, 538;
+    salt works at, 540.
+
+  Man, reaction of, on nature, 8;
+    insufficiency of data, 9;
+    geographical influence of, 13;
+    physical revolutions wrought by, 14;
+    unpremeditated results of conscious action, 15;
+    ancient relics of, in old geological formations, 16;
+    mechanical effects of, on the earth's surface, 25;
+    destructiveness of, 35;
+    in animal life and inorganic nature, 36-39;
+    character of his action compared with that of brutes, 42;
+    subversive of the balance of nature, 43;
+    sometimes exercised for good, 44;
+    present limits to, 45;
+    transfer of vegetable life by, 59;
+    remains of, 76;
+    contemporary with the mammoth, 77;
+    agency in the extermination of birds, 96;
+    do. introduction of species, 98;
+    increase of insect life, 104;
+    introduction of new forms of do. by, 105;
+    destruction of fish by, 112, 120, 122;
+    extirpation of aquatic animals by, 119;
+    possible control of minute organisms, 125;
+    his first physical conquest, 135;
+    his action on land and the waters, 330;
+    possible geographical changes by, 517;
+    incidental effects of his action, 539;
+    illimitable and ever enduring do., 548.
+
+  Maremme of Tuscany, ancient and mediaeval state of, 425;
+    extent of, 427;
+    inhabitants, 428;
+    improvement of, 429;
+    sedimentary deposits of, 425, 430.
+
+  Marine isthmuses, cutting of, 517;
+    its difficulties, 518;
+    sometimes done by nature, 519.
+
+  Marmato in Popayan, 205.
+
+  Marshes, climatic effects of draining, 358;
+    insalubrity of mixture of fresh and salt water in, 417.
+
+  Mechanic arts, illustration of their mutual interdependence, 307.
+
+  Medanos of the South American desert, 482.
+
+  Mediterranean Sea, tides of, 425;
+    sand dunes of, 467;
+    poor in organic life, 520.
+
+  Mella, the river, Italy, 248.
+
+  Meteorology, uncertainty and late rise of, 16, 22;
+    varying nomenclature of, 23;
+    precipitation and evaporation, 24.
+
+  Michigan, lake, sand dunes of, 467;
+    originally wooded, 487;
+    proposed diversion of its waters, 532.
+
+  Mining excavations, effects of, 545.
+
+  Minute organisms, their offices, 123;
+    universal diffusion and products of, 124, 127;
+    possible control of their agency by man, 125;
+    the coral insect, 125;
+    the diatomaceae, 126.
+
+  Miramichi, great fire of, 28.
+
+  Mistral in France, 153.
+
+  Mississippi river, "cut offs" and their effect, 415;
+    precipitation in the valley of, 436;
+    projected canal to, 533.
+
+  Mountain slides, their cause, 265, 268;
+    their frequency in the Alps, 267.
+
+  Mountainous countries, their liability to physical degradation, 50.
+
+  Monte Testaccio, Rome, 541.
+
+  Moose deer, the American, rapid multiplication of, 130.
+
+  Mushrooms, poisonous, how to render harmless, 286.
+
+
+  Natural forces, accumulation of, 46;
+    resistance to, 542.
+
+  Nature, man's reaction on, 8;
+    observation of, 10;
+    stability of, 27, 34;
+    restoration of disturbed harmonies of, 35;
+    nothing small in, 548.
+
+  Naturalists, enthusiasm of, 99.
+
+  Netherlands, ancient inundations of, 334;
+    recovery of land by diking, 334;
+    the practice derived from the Romans, 335;
+    extent of land gained from the sea, 336;
+    do. lost by incursions of do., 337;
+    character of lands gained, 338;
+    natural process of recovery, 339;
+    grandeur of the dike system of, 340;
+    method of their construction in, 341;
+    modes of protection, 343;
+    various uses of, 343;
+    effect on the level of the land, 344;
+    drainage of do., 345;
+    primitive condition of, 351;
+    effects on the social, moral, and economic interests of the
+          people of, 351;
+    sand dunes of, 486;
+    encroachments of the sea on, 494;
+    artificial dunes in, 499;
+    protection of dunes in, 500;
+    removal of do., 509.
+
+  Nile, the river, valley of, 374;
+    its ancient state, 375;
+    inundations of, 385;
+    water delivery of, 387;
+    artificial mouths of, 402;
+    consequences of diking, 410, 413;
+    richness of its deposits, 411;
+    extent of do., 412;
+    mud banks caused by its deposits, 433;
+    sand dunes at its mouths, 468;
+    conduits for irrigation, 521;
+    proposed diversion of, 528;
+    not impossible, 529;
+    effects of, 530;
+    ceramic banks of, 541.
+
+  Northmen in New England, 60.
+
+  Nubians, Nile boats of the, 17.
+
+  Numbers, the frequent error in too definite statements of, 260;
+    oriental and Italian usage of, 261.
+
+
+  Oak, the English, early uses in the arts, 223;
+    "openings" of North America, 136.
+
+  Ohio, mounds of, 18;
+    remains of a primitive people in, 135, 138;
+    apple trees of, 22.
+
+  Old World, former populousness of, 4;
+    physical decay of, 3;
+    present desolation of, 5;
+    its causes, 5;
+    ancient climate of, 19;
+    physical restoration of, 47.
+
+  Olive tree, the wild, 74;
+    importance of, 312.
+
+  Orange tree known to the ancients, 64;
+    the wild, 74.
+
+  Orchids, fertilization of, by insects, 102.
+
+  Organic life embraced in modern geography, 57;
+    its geological agency, 75;
+    geographical importance of, 7;
+    bones and relics of, human and animal, 76.
+
+  Ostrich, the, diminution of its numbers, 97.
+
+  Ottaquechee river, Vermont, transporting power of, 253.
+
+  Otter, the American, voracity of, 120.
+
+  Oxen, agricultural uses of, in United States, 80.
+
+  Oyster, the, transplantation of, 118.
+
+
+  Palestine, ancient terrace culture and irrigation of, 369;
+    disastrous effects of its neglect, 370.
+
+  Palissy, Bernard, character of, 218;
+    plan for artificial springs, 447.
+
+  Paragrandini of Lombardy, 141.
+
+  Paramelle, the Abbe, on fountains, 437.
+
+  Peat beds, accidental burning of, 546;
+    -- mosses of Denmark, 32.
+
+  Pecora, river of the Maremma, its deposits, 425.
+
+  Peru, ancient progress in the arts, 366;
+    basins of reception in, 400.
+
+  Petra, in Idumaea, ancient irrigation at, 370.
+
+  Phosphorescence of the sea unknown to the ancients, 114.
+
+  Physical decay of the earth's surface, 3;
+    its causes, 5;
+    arrest of, in new countries, 48;
+    forms and formations predisposing to, 49.
+
+  Physical geography, study of recommended, 12;
+    restoration of the earth, 8;
+    importance and possibility of, 26;
+    of disturbed harmonies, 35;
+    of the Old World, 47.
+
+  Pine, the American, former ordinary dimensions of, 275;
+    how affected by the accidents of its growth, 306;
+    the maritime, on dune sands in France, 506;
+    the pitch, hardihood of, 273;
+    umbrella, the, most elegant of trees, 309, 313;
+    the white, rapidity of its growth, 274.
+
+  Pinus cembra of Switzerland, 309.
+
+  Pisciculture, its valuable results, 118.
+
+  Plants, cultivated, uncertain identity of ancient and modern, 19;
+    do. of wild and domestic species, 73;
+    changes of habit by domestication, 19;
+    geographical influence of, 58;
+    foreign, grown in United States, 61;
+    American, grown in Europe, 63;
+    modes of introduction, 64;
+    accidental do., 66;
+    power of accommodation of, 65;
+    how affected by transfer, 68;
+    tenacity of life in wild species, 69;
+    extirpation of, 70;
+    domestic origin of, 72;
+    species employed for protection of sand dunes, 500.
+
+  Pliny, the elder, theory of springs, 198, 216.
+
+  Po, river, ancient state of its basin, 255;
+    modern changes, 256;
+    its floods, tributaries, and deposits, 256-261, 405;
+    embankments of, 385, 404;
+    sediment of, 410;
+    age and consequences of its embankments, 411;
+    mean delivery of, 412;
+    _salti_ of, 415.
+
+  Poland, sand plains of, 514.
+
+  Poplar, the Lombardy, 68;
+    characterized, 313.
+
+  Potato, native country of, 73.
+
+  Prairies, conjectural origin of, 134.
+
+  Provence, physical structure of, 237;
+    ancient state of, 238;
+    destructive action of torrents on, 236;
+    Alps of, 245.
+
+  Prussia, sand dunes of, 485;
+    drifting of, 498;
+    measures for reclaiming of, 505.
+
+
+  Quadrupeds, number in United States, 79;
+    extirpation of, 84.
+
+  Quebec, high tides of, 271;
+    lumber trade of, 272.
+
+
+  Railways, scientific uses of, 53.
+
+  Rain water, its absorption and infiltration, 438, 439;
+    economizing its precipitation, 449.
+
+  Ravenna, cathedral of, 60;
+    pine woods of, 150.
+
+  Red Sea, richness of, in organic life, 320;
+    diversion of the Nile to, its effects, 530.
+
+  Reindeer, the, 83.
+
+  Reservoirs, geographic and climatic effects of, 258.
+
+  Reventlov's organization of dune economy in Denmark, 504;
+    a benefactor to his race, 515.
+
+  Rhine, river, proposed diversion of, 533.
+
+  Rice, cultivation of, 381.
+
+  Rivers, transporting power of, 252;
+    in Vermont, 253;
+    their origin, 262;
+    injury to their banks by lumbermen, 277;
+    conditions of their rise and fall, 278;
+    mutual action of rivers and valleys, 408;
+    effect of obstructions in, 409;
+    subterranean course of, 409;
+    confluences of, effect on the current below, 424;
+    sediment of, its extent, 547.
+
+  River beds, natural change of, 401;
+    artificial do. in Egypt, 402;
+    Italy and Switzerland, 403.
+
+  River deposits, 408;
+    of the Nile, 410;
+    the Po, 411;
+    the Tuscan rivers, 414.
+
+  River embankments, 384;
+    their use, 404;
+    disadvantages, 405;
+    transverse do., superiority of, 406;
+    effects of, 409.
+
+  River mouths, obstructions of, 430;
+    by sand banks, 431;
+    accelerated by man's influence, 432;
+    effect of tidal movements, 432.
+
+  Robin, the American, voracity of, 88.
+
+  Rock generally permeable by water, 265.
+
+  Roman empire, natural advantages of its territory, 1;
+    increased by intelligent labor, 2;
+    physical decay of, 3;
+    present desolation, 4;
+    caused by its despotism and oppression, 5.
+
+  Rozet's plan for diminishing inundations, 406.
+
+  Rude tribes, continuity of arts among, 17;
+    commerce of, 18;
+    relations to organic life, 39;
+    and to nature, 41.
+
+  Russia, diminution of forests in, 298;
+    effects of, on rivers and lakes, 299;
+    sand drifts of the steppes of, 514;
+    attempts to reclaim them, 515.
+
+
+  Sacramento City, California, effect of river dike at, 405.
+
+  Sand, its composition and origin, 452;
+    action of rivers, 453;
+    ancient deposits of, 454, 456;
+    amount of, carried to the Mediterranean, 455;
+    of Egypt, 458, 461;
+    movement of, by the wind, 459;
+    drifts of, from the sea, 461;
+    dangers of accumulation of, 463;
+    two forms of deposit, 463;
+    drifting of dune, 495.
+
+  Sand banks, aquatic, 468;
+    movement of, 469;
+    connect themselves with the coast, 490.
+
+  Sand dunes, how formed, 464;
+    utilization of, 465;
+    inland, of the South American desert, 482;
+    their peculiarities, 483;
+    age, character, and permanence of, 484;
+    naturally wooded, 486;
+    not noticed by ancient writers, 487;
+    management of, 488;
+    coast, sources of supply, 465;
+    law of their formation, 466, 471, 483;
+    of the Mediterranean, 467;
+    of Lake Michigan, 467;
+    of the Nile mouths, 468;
+    of America, 469;
+    of Western Europe, 470;
+    literature of, 471;
+    height of, 472;
+    humidity of, 473;
+    of Cape Cod, 487;
+    character of their sand, 474, 481;
+    concretion within, 476;
+    interior structure of, 477;
+    general form of, 478;
+    geological importance of, 479;
+    composition of sandstone, 481;
+    as barriers against the sea, 489;
+    in Western Europe, 490;
+    extent of, 507;
+    of Gascony, 496;
+    of Denmark, 497;
+    of Prussia, 497;
+    artificial formation of, in Holland, 499;
+    protection of, 500;
+    by vegetation, 501;
+    trees adapted to, 505;
+    removal of, 509.
+
+  Sand-dune vineyard of Cap Breton, 508.
+
+  Sand plains, mode of deposit, 464;
+    constituent parts, 464;
+    inland, of Europe, 509;
+    landes of Gascony, 511;
+    Belgium, 513;
+    Eastern Europe, 513;
+    advantages of reclaiming, 515;
+    private and public enterprise, 516.
+
+  Sand springs, 511.
+
+  Sandal wood extirpated in Juan Fernandez, 130.
+
+  Saros, projected canal of, 527.
+
+  Sawmills, action of their machinery more rapid by night, 278.
+
+  Schelk, the extirpation of, 85.
+
+  Schleswig-Holstein, encroachments of the sea on, 493.
+
+  Scientific observation, practical lessons of, 54-56.
+
+  Sea, the, exclusion of, by dikes, in Lincolnshire, 333;
+    encroachments of, 490;
+    coast, 491;
+    the Liimfjord, 491;
+    Schleswig-Holstein, 493;
+    Holland, 494;
+    France, 494.
+
+  Sea cow, Steller's, extirpation of, 119.
+
+  Seal, the, in Lake Champlain, 117;
+    voracity of, 120.
+
+  Seeds, vitality of, as preserved by the forest, 287, 289.
+
+  Seine river, ancient level of, 214;
+    affluents of, 435.
+
+  Ship building of the middle ages, Venice and Genoa, 218.
+
+  Siberia, ice ravine in, 158.
+
+  Sicily, stone weapons found in, 18;
+    sulphur mines of, 72;
+    olive oil crop of, 312.
+
+  Silkworm, introduction in South America, 105.
+
+  Sinai, Mt., rain torrent at, 441;
+    production of sand in peninsula of, 454;
+    garden of monastery at, 537.
+
+  Snakes, destructive to insects, 110;
+    tenacity of species, 111;
+    number of, in Palestine and Egypt, 111.
+
+  Snow, action of the woods on, 211;
+    experiments on, 212.
+
+  Soils, amount of thermoscopic action on various, 144;
+    mechanical effects of shaking in the Netherlands, 344;
+    effect of frost on, in United States, 344.
+
+  Solar heat, economic employment of, 47.
+
+  Solitary, the, extirpation of, 95.
+
+  Sound, transmission of, in still air, 165.
+
+  Springs, artificial, proposed by Palissy, 447;
+    by Babinet, 448.
+
+  Spain, neglect of forest culture in, 279.
+
+  Squirrel, the, destructiveness of, in forests, 34;
+    of Boston, 121.
+
+  St. Helena, flora of, 65;
+    destruction of its forests, 130.
+
+  Staffordshire, phenomena of vegetation in, 288.
+
+  Starlings, habits of, in Piedmont, 111.
+
+  Stork, the, geographical range of, 93;
+    anecdote of a, 99.
+
+  Subterranean waters, their origin, 434;
+    sources of supply, 435;
+    reservoirs and currents of, 438;
+    diffusion of, in the soil, 439;
+    importance, 440;
+    of the Karst, 535;
+    of Greece, 536.
+
+  Suez canal, the, danger from sand drifts, 461;
+    effect on the Mediterranean and Red Sea basins, 520.
+
+  Sugar cane, culture of, 62.
+
+  Sugar-maple tree, produce of, 169.
+
+  Summer dikes of Holland, 342.
+
+  Sunflowers, effect of plantations of, 154.
+
+  Swallow, the, popular superstitions respecting, 418.
+
+  Switzerland, ancient lacustrine habitations of, 16, 70, 83.
+
+  Sylt Island, sand dunes of, 474;
+    encroachments of the sea on, 493.
+
+  Sylviculture, best manuals of practice of, 304;
+    when and how profitable, 305;
+    its methods, 315;
+    the _taillis_ treatment, 315;
+    the _futaie_ do., 317;
+    beneficial effects of irrigation, 319;
+    exclusion of animals, 321;
+    removal of leaves, &c., 322;
+    topping and trimming, 324.
+
+
+  Taguataga Lake, Chili, 355.
+
+  Tea plant, the, cultivated in America, 62.
+
+  Temperature, general law of, 52.
+
+  Teredo, the general diffusion of, 107.
+
+  Termite, or white ant, ravages of, 107.
+
+  Teverone, cascade of, Tivoli, 402.
+
+  Timber, general superiority of cultivated, 305;
+    slow decay of, in forest, 322.
+
+  Tobacco an American plant, 68;
+    introduction in Hungary, 67.
+
+  Tocat, Asia Minor, oak woods of, 186.
+
+  Tomato, the, introduction to New England, 19.
+
+  Torricelli, successful plan for draining the Val di Chiana, 421.
+
+  Torrents, destructive action of, 231;
+    means of prevention, 233;
+    ravages of, in Southeastern France, 237;
+    Provence, 239;
+    Upper Alps, 240;
+    Lower Alps, 246;
+    action of, in elevating the beds of mainland streams, 249;
+    in excavating ravines, 250;
+    transporting power of, 251;
+    signs of, extinguished, 263;
+    crushing force of, 392.
+
+  Trees, as organisms, specific temperature of, 156;
+    moisture given out by, 158;
+    total influence on temperature, 159;
+    absorption of water by, 166;
+    flow of sap, 169;
+    absorption of moisture by foliage of, 172;
+    exhalation of do., 174;
+    consequent refrigeration, 175;
+    amount of ligneous products of, 173;
+    protection against avalanches afforded by, 269;
+    power of resisting the action of fire, 273;
+    American forest trees, 274;
+    their dimensions, 275;
+    change in relative proportions of height and diameter, 276;
+    comparative longevity of, 277;
+    European and American compared, 308;
+    species more numerous in America, 309;
+    Spenser's catalogue of, 308;
+    interchange of European and American species, 310;
+    species of Southern Europe and their extent, 312;
+    natural order of succession in, 323.
+    See _Forest_, _Woods_.
+
+  Trieste, proposed supply of water to, 536.
+
+  Trout, the American, 115, 117, 121.
+
+  Tuscany, rivers of, their deposits, 414;
+    physical restoration in, 416;
+    improvements in Val di Chiana, 417;
+    do. in the Maremma, 424.
+
+  Tyrolese rivers, elevation of their beds, 249.
+
+
+  Ubate, lakes of, New Granada, 204.
+
+  Undulation of water, 456.
+
+  United States, foreign plants grown in, 61;
+    weight of annual harvest in, 62;
+    number of quadrupeds in, 79;
+    of birds, 86;
+    effect of felling woods on its climate, 180;
+    forests of, 300;
+    instability of life in, 328.
+
+  Upper Alps, department of, ravages of torrents in, 240.
+
+  Urus, or auerochs, domesticated by man, 83;
+    extirpation of, 85.
+
+
+  Val de Lys, evidence of glacier action in, 252.
+
+  Vegetable life, transfer by man's action, 59.
+
+  Velino, cascade of, Tivoli, 402.
+
+  Vesuvius, vegetation on, 131;
+    eruption of February, 1851, 544.
+
+  Volcanic action, resistance to, 544;
+    matter, vegetation in, 131.
+
+  Volga river, proposed diversion of, 531.
+
+
+  Walcheren, formation of the island, 340.
+
+  Wallenstadt, lake of, 534.
+
+  Walnut tree, consumption of, for gun stocks, 296;
+    oil yielded by, 310.
+
+  Ward's cases for plants, 175.
+
+  Waste products, utilization of, 37.
+
+  Weeds common to Old and New World, 66;
+    extirpated in China, &c., 71.
+
+  Whale, the, food of, 113;
+    destruction of, 114.
+
+  Whale fishery, date of its commencement unknown, 112;
+    in the middle ages, 112;
+    American, 113.
+
+  Wheat, its asserted origin, 73;
+    introduction to America, 74.
+
+  Wild animals, number of, 84.
+
+  Wild organisms, vegetable and animal, tenacity of life in, 69.
+
+  Willow, the weeping, introduction in Europe, 64.
+
+  Wolf, increase of the, 84;
+    prevalence in forests of France, 296.
+
+  Wolf Spring, Soubey, 206.
+
+  Wood, increased demand for, 293;
+    ship building, railroads, &c., 294;
+    market price of, 294;
+    replaced by iron in the arts, 295;
+    means of increasing its durability, 295;
+    how affected by rapid growth, 306;
+    facilities for working, 307.
+
+  Woods, habitable earth originally covered by, 128;
+    conditions of their propagation, 131;
+    destructive agency of man and domestic animals, 132;
+    do not furnish food for man, 133;
+    first removal of, 134;
+    burning of, 136;
+    in Sweden and France, 137;
+    effect on the soil, 138;
+    destruction of, its effect, 139;
+    electrical influence of, 140;
+    chemical influence of, 142;
+    influence on temperature, 143;
+    absorbing and emitting surface of, 144;
+    in summer and winter, 147;
+    dead products of, 148;
+    as a shelter, 149;
+    in France, 149, 151;
+    New England, 149;
+    Italy and Jutland, 150;
+    as a protection against malaria, 154;
+    tend to mitigate extremes of temperature, 155.
+    See _Forest_, _Trees_.
+
+  Wood mosses and fungi, absorbent of moisture, 168.
+
+  Woodpecker, the, destroyer of insects, 109.
+
+
+  Yak, or Tartary ox, the, 83.
+
+  Yew tree, geographical range of, 70.
+
+
+  Zeeland, province, formation of, 339.
+
+  Zostera marina, 492.
+
+  Zuiderzee, proposed drainage of, 534;
+    means of, and geographical results, 535.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+FORSYTH'S "CICERO."
+
+A New Life of Cicero.
+
+BY WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C.
+
+With Twenty Illustrations. 2 vols. crown octavo. Printed on tinted and
+laid paper. Price, $5.00.
+
+
+The object of this work is to exhibit Cicero not merely as a Statesman
+and an Orator, but as he was at home in the relations of private life,
+as a Husband, a Father, a Brother, and a Friend. His letters are full of
+interesting details, which enable us to form a vivid idea of how the old
+Romans lived 2,000 years ago; and the Biography embraces not only a
+History of Events, as momentous as any in the annals of the world, but a
+large amount of Anecdote and Gossip, which amused the generation that
+witnessed the downfall of the Republic.
+
+The _London Athenaeuem_ says: "Mr. Forsyth has rightly aimed to set
+before us a portrait of Cicero in the modern style of biography,
+carefully gleaning from his extensive correspondence all those little
+traits of character and habit which marked his private and domestic
+life. These volumes form a very acceptable addition to the classic
+library. The style is that of a scholar and a man of taste."
+
+From the _Saturday Review_:--"Mr. Forsyth has discreetly told his story,
+evenly and pleasantly supplied it with apt illustrations from modern
+law, eloquence, and history, and brought Cicero as near to the present
+time as the differences of age and manners warrant. * * * These volumes
+we heartily recommend as both a useful and agreeable guide to the
+writings and character of one who was next in intellectual and political
+rank to the foremost man of all the world, at a period when there were
+many to dispute with him the triple crown of forensic, philosophic, and
+political composition."
+
+"A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, Mr. Forsyth
+seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the precise attitude which
+it behoves a biographer to take when narrating the life, the personal
+life, of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth produces what we venture to say will become
+one of _the classics of English biographical literature_, and will be
+welcomed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions and
+of no profession at all."--_London Quarterly._
+
+"This book is a valuable contribution to our Standard Literature. It is
+a work which will aid our progress towards the truth; it lifts a corner
+of the veil which has hung over the scenes and actors of times so full
+of ferment, and allows us to catch a glimpse of the stage upon which the
+great drama was played."--_North American Review._
+
+
+_Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price._
+
+
+
+
+LORD DERBY'S "HOMER."
+
+The Iliad of Homer.
+
+RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE BY EDWARD, EARL OF DERBY.
+
+From the fifth London Edition.
+
+Two volumes, royal octavo, on tinted paper. Price $7.50 per vol.
+
+
+Extracts from Notices and Reviews from the English Quarterlies, &c.
+
+"The merits of Lord Derby's translation may be summed up in one word:
+"it is eminently attractive; it is instinct with life; it may be read
+with fervent interest; it is immeasurably nearer than Pope to the text
+of the original. * * * We think that Lord Derby's translation will not
+only be read, but read over and over again. * * * Lord Derby has given
+to England a version far more closely allied to the original, and
+superior to any that has yet been attempted in the blank verse of our
+language."--_Edinburgh Review, January 1865._
+
+"As often as we return from even the best of them (other translations)
+to the translation before us, we find ourselves in a purer atmosphere
+of taste. We find more spirit, more tact in avoiding either trivial
+or conceited phrases, and altogether a presence of merits, and an
+absence of defects which continues, as we read, to lengthen more
+and more the distance between Lord Derby and the foremost of his
+competitors."--_London Quarterly Review, January, 1865._
+
+"While the versification of Lord Derby is such as Pope himself would
+have admired, his Iliad is in all other essentials superior to that of
+his great rival. For the rest, if Pope is dethroned what remains? * * *
+It is the Iliad we would place in the hands of English readers as the
+truest counterpart of the original, the nearest existing approach to a
+reproduction of that original's matchless feature."--_Saturday Review._
+
+"Among those curiosities of literature which are also its treasures,
+Lord Derby's translation of Homer must occupy a very conspicuous
+place. * * * Lord Derby's work is, on the whole, more remarkable for
+the constancy of its excellence and the high level which it maintains
+throughout, than for its special bursts of eloquence. It is uniformly
+worthy of itself and its author."--_The Reader._
+
+"Whatever may be the ultimate fate of this poem--whether it take
+sufficient hold of the public mind to satisfy that demand for a
+translation of Homer which we have alluded to, and thus become a
+permanent classic of the language, or whether it give place to the still
+more perfect production of some yet unknown poet--it must equally be
+considered a splendid performance; and for the present we have no
+hesitation in saying that it is by far the best representation of
+Homer's Iliad in the English language."
+
+
+AMERICAN NOTICES.
+
+The _Publishers Circular_ says:--At the advanced age of sixty-five, the
+Earl of Derby, leader of the Tory party in England, has published a
+translation of Homer, in blank verse. Nearly all the London critics
+unite in declaring, with _The Times_, "that it is by far the best
+representation of Homer's 'Iliad' in the English language." His purpose
+was to produce a translation, and not a paraphrase--fairly and honestly
+giving the sense of every passage and of every line. Without doubt the
+greatest of all living British orators, he has now shown high poetic
+power as well as great scholarship.
+
+From the _New York World_:--"The reader of English, who seeks to know
+what Homer really was, and in what fashion he thought and felt and
+wrote, will owe to Lord Derby his first honest opportunity of doing so.
+The Earl's translation is devoid alike of pretension and of prettiness.
+It is animated in movement, simple and representative to phraseology,
+breezy in atmosphere, if we may so speak, and pervaded by a refinement
+of taste which is as far removed from daintiness or effeminacy as can
+well be imagined."
+
+
+_Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price._
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+
+1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+2. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version
+these letters have been replaced with transliterations.
+
+3. Certain words use "oe" ligature in the original, indicated by [oe]
+and [OE].
+
+4. The letters with macron are represented within square braces with an
+equals sign preceding it. For example, letter a with macron is indicated
+by [=a].
+
+5. In this text version, some of the references to appendix notes within
+footnotes were incorrect which have been corrected. Also, errors found
+in page references within Appendix have been corrected.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Man and Nature, by George P. Marsh
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN AND NATURE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 37957.txt or 37957.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/9/5/37957/
+
+Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/37957.zip b/37957.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fc2ab6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/37957.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b05b811
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #37957 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37957)