WASTE OF THE WOELD'S FORESTS.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4678, 4 January 1884, Page 3

WASTE OF THE WOELD'S FORESTS.

When the forests of such a country as Cyprus were destroyed, said MrThisleton Dyer, in a discussion in the British Society of" Arts, it was like a burned cinder. Many of the West Indian Islands are in much the same condition, and the rate with which the destruction takes place when once commenced is almost incredible. In the island of Mauritius, in 1835,

about three-fourths of the soil was in the

condition of primeval forests, viz., 300,000 " acres ; ..in 1879, the acreage of wood was

reduced to .70,000 ; and. in the next year, when an extra survey was made hy an Indian forest officer, ho stated that the

■ only forest worth speaking about was -36,000 acres. Sir William Gregory says that in Ceylon, the eye, looking from the top. of a mountain in the. centre of an island, ranged in every direction, over an unbroken extent of forest. Six years later the whole forest had disappeared. The . denudation of the forests is accompained by 8 deterioration in the soil; and the Bey. R. Abbay, who went to Ceylon on . ..-the eclipse expedition, calculated, from „ the'percentage of solid matter in a stream, that one-third of an inch per annum was being washed away from the cultivated surface of the island. In some colonies the timber was being destroyed at such a rate as, would soon lead to economical difficulties. In Jamaica nearly all the -V timber required for building purposes has already to be imported In New Brunswick, the hem-lock-spruce is rapidly dis- : appearing, one manufacturer in Boiestown using the bark of ono hundred thousand trees erery year for tanniDg. In Demerara, one of the most important and valuable trees, the greenheart, is in a fair way of being exterminated. They actually cut down small saplings to make rollers on which to roll the large trunks. In New Zealand, Captain Walker says he fears thai the present generation will see the extermination of the Kauri pine, one of the most important-trees. All these facts Bbow that this is a most urgent question, which at no distant'date will have to be •rigorously dealt with.—Knowledge.