DESTRUCTION' OF FOEESTS.

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 6, 5 July 1882, Page 3

DESTRUCTION' OF FOEESTS.

Mr George P. Marsh, one of the uiost CM'eful and competeut ..uthoriiies, saj's : — 'Theee are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where causes set in action by man have brought the face of the earth to a desolation as complete as that of the moon, and yet they are known to have been once covered with luxuriant woods, verdaut pus' ures, and fertile meadows, amiadense population formerly inhabited those now lonely districts. Tlie fairest and fruitfulest provinces of Hie Roman Empire, once endowed with the superiority of soil, climate, and position, ore completely exhausted of their fertility, are so diminished in their productiveness to be no longer capable of affording sustenance to civilised man If to this realm of desolation we add the now wasted and solitary soils of Persia aud the remote East, that once fed their millions with m'dk and honey, we shall see that a territory larger thau all Europe bas oeen entirely withdrawn from human use. The destructive changes occasioned by the agency of man upon the flanks of the Alps, the Appeunines, the Pyrenees, and other ruouotain ranges of Central aud Southern Europe, have become so rapid that in some localities a single generation has witnessed the beginning and the end of the mela icholy revolution. The destructive changes of which Mr Marsh speaks so strongly have been occasioned mainly by tlie removal of the forests, the natural friends and protectors of man and of the earth. Undisturbed by man, the woods would maintain themselves. The tree, falling in the forest by natural decay or f rom any ot er cause, would soon have its place filled by another, and so the succession of vegetable life would be maintained from age to age. But when ibe tree* are swept off in masses, whether by fire or by the axe, wheiher by an army seeking strategic advantage or the means of annoying or impoverishing an enemy, or as tbe result of tbe cupidity or carelessness of those intent upon pecuniary gain, the places thus denuded of trees often remain so. And when in any country large portions of its *rea are thus from any cause laid bare, it requires , but a little consideration of the subject I to see that such a changed condition of the surface may bring about great losses. — Homo Paper.