The Influences of Forests on Climate

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 125, 11 April 1893, Page 4

The Influences of Forests on Climate

» The conservation of the forests of every country ranks amongst the first duties of every intelligent government. All great irregularities or deficiencies in the rainfall exercise, as is well-known, the most detrimental influence on the progress and prosperity of the country where they occur. Instances, almost without number, can be cited where at one period the population was dense and the community prosperous, have, through the cutting down of the forests, lost their former flourishing condition through the permanently deficient rainfall. A French writer on this subject remarks : — " Necessary as are the forests of a country to the individual, they are no leas ao to the State. All t^fi wants of life are closely related to their conservation, and their existence is of itself an incalculable benefit to the country that possesses them ; as well in the feeding of the springs and rivers as in their prevention against the washing away of the soil upon the mountains, and in the beneficial and healthy influences which tiiey exert upon the atmosphere. Large forests deaden and break the force of high winds that beat out the seed and injure the growth of plants ; they form reservoirs of moisture ; they shelter the soil of the field ; and upon hill • side?, when the rain - water, checked in its descent by the thousand obstacles they present by their roots and trunks, has time to filter into the soil, and only finds its way by slow degrees to the rivers. They regulate, iv a certain degree, the flow of the water, and the hydrometrical condition of the atmosphere, and their destruction accordingly increases the duration of droughts, and give rise to the evils of inundations.''