VALUE OP FORESTS.

Patea Mail, 19 June 1882, Page 4

VALUE OP FORESTS.

A writer in the Harper’s Monthly observes : —A country cannot continue to be populous nor highly civilised when its forests, or their in coal are lost to it. But this loss has been experienced by nations. The whole Eastern world, as well as tho countries of which we have spoken, was once well wooded. The Jloman and Greek writers assure us of this. But vast regions of Europe and Asia, by Avars and wantonness and imprudence, have been stripped of their forests. A belt of woodland stretching from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas has been swept away, and that whole region once fertile and populous barely sustains a people in scanty numbers. It is a significant fact that great deserts now occupy the original seat of the human race, and extend on every route of their migrations. Humboldt is reported as saying—‘ men in all climates seem to bring upon future generations two calamities at once—a want of fuel and scarcity of water.’ The two come alike from the destruction of the forests.