causes which led to action taken in France for reforestation and what results have been accomplished. Mr. Powell says:

"In the year 1860, France began upon a new and successful plan a fight with certain lawless torrents, many of them tributary to the Rhone. For more than three hundred years the improvident wood cutting has been going on, which at last changed many of the streams of that region into torrents. The lower-lying and generally steeper slopes of their basins had been robbed by short-sighted owners of their protecting forests. Next, as the income from woodland became less, the impoverished peasants were tempted to overstock the higher and more level upland pastures with sheep and goats. The sharp hoofs of these animals, and their close bite when pressed by hunger, soon weakened the turf, which with more or less of the thin soil underneath, started down hill. Arriving at the steeper slopes formerly protected by the trees with their fallen leaves, roots and undergrowth- the water found nothing to check it till part of it could find the crevices leading to the springs, and there was nothing else to keep the rest from rushing too suddenly to the stream bed; but carrying with it the scanty soil of these denuded slopes, every yard of its descent would add to its volume, velocity and eroding power. By the time the stream was reached each drop would contain some grains of precious soil, to be washed. down to the sea, or on its way there to be deposited where it would spoil rivers, channels and harbors. Besides this washing of soil, rocks and boulders imbedded in it would be loosened, tumbled down into the channels, and in flood-time ground up into gravel and spread over fertile ground in the valley. In one province, Ardêche, 70,000 acres, one-eighth its total area, were thus rendered almost worthless by flood deposits. In addition, costly roads, bridges, aqueducts and buildings were undermined and washed away. Large regions, formerly populous, became solitudes, across which it was hard and often unsafe to travel. Meantime rainfall was becoming irregular; floods and droughts alternated; the rapid heating and cooling of the bare slopes caused violent winds; and these, with the sudden changes of temperature, wrenched, so to speak, the moisture from the clouds, causing local floods of terrible fury. * "In a mountain region the mischief resulting from clearing steep land, and from unregulated pasturage afterwards are circulative, and, although for three hundred years observing men like

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Bernard Palissy, the almost inspired potter of Saintonge, had predicted the calamities of timber famine, the direct damage done by floods became intolerable only within the present century. The great floods of 1840 in the valley of the Rhone, and in 1856 over almost the whole of France, tended to bring matters to a crisis. * * * Great sums have been spent in such works as retaining dams built across the mouth of the gorges; rows of stone pillars lining the borders of streams, and, at right angles to these, walls of pebbles and rows of trees, and many other expedients, none of which cured the evil; $24,000,000 was annually spent on roads and bridges, and much of this outlay was made necessary by the gullying, undermining and covering with debris done by the torrents. * But, now, at last, after these costly efforts to cure an evil which grew constantly worse and worse, a step was taken towards prevention. In 1859 a law was passed regulating the clearing of land, and organizing a police for its protection, and in 1860 was enactedthe famous rèboisement* law which provided for the réboisement or reforesting of the waste lands. Beginning with the trifling sum of 200,000 francs a year for ten years, before the end of that time the success was so marked that all the money that could wisely be expended was readily voted by the Corps Legislatif, and nearly all local opposition vanished. * It was estimated that the great flood in the Garonne in June, 1875, did damage to the extent of 300,000,000 francs, besides destroying more than one thousand lives. Careful investigations afterward showed that had the work of rèboisement contemplated in the original act of 1860- and which it was supposed would take one hundred and forty years to finish-been completed, that awful flood would have been comparatively harmless."

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These works, so ingenious in their very simplicity, form a net work of horizontal lines, like the alleys of a garden. The green edgings and linings develop themselves among the innumerable sinuousities of the combes (valleys), embracing from the rocky beds of the torrents to the very summit of the mountain crests those ravines which were but lately inaccessible, and presented an aspect full of horror. On seeing what has been done, one immediately understands how such a combination should be effectual. Every liquid molecule, so to speak, is seized individually, the thin sheet

* Réboisement literally means re-wooding.

of water flowing down is retarded in its course by a thousand thirsty little plants, by the lines of cultivated herbage, and by the hedges of shoots and trees. It is compelled to tarry a little on each terrace to slake the thirst of the ground, and when it reaches the lower end of a furrow, it spreads itself out on the flattened bed there prepared for it. Stopped at every barrier, it loses its vital force on every hand, and finally, from resting place to resting place, and from descent to descent, it arrives, after a thousand retardations, and still limpid, in the channel which conveys it to the river. The violence of torrents is occasioned by the combination of an infinitude of elements infinitely minute, and the system of extinction consists in extinguishing each of these elements without disregarding one; it is an accumulation of infinitesimal littles. The secondary ravines are blocked up, their minute ramifications are intercepted, the lesser flanks are filled up, and finally there are spread over the soil, completely to diffuse them, the innumerable threadlets (of water), divided and subdivided like the fibres of a root.*

INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON AGRICULTURE

From what has been said in the foregoing pages the thoughtful reader will readily see the logical tendency of facts, viz.: to prove the close connection that exists between forests and agriculture. The evidences are abundant that a successful agriculture depends on a judicious distribution of forests. Dr. Oswald, in the Popular Science Monthly, points to the aridity of the soil all over Spain, Portugal, Southern Italy, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor and Western Africa, from Morocco to the Nile, and asserts of our country that the States of Ohio and Indiana and the southern portion of Kentucky and Michigan, so recently a part of the great east American forest have even now a greater percentage of treeless area than Austria and the North German Empire, that have been settled and cultivated for more than a thousand years. He believes the central portion of these districts are unproductive from lack of moisture that was once supplied by the forests.

A deep, rich soil is one of the first essentials to successful agriculture. But there are other conditions quite as important—a sufficient and timely rainfall, general distribution and retention of

*From the French of M. Cézanne.

moisture in the soil, and better protection from devastating winds and from injury by early and late frost. These conditions cannot be well and thoroughly secured without a considerable proportion of forest growth distributed throughout cultivated districts. Large forests on mountainous districts and along streams, may favorably affect the plain below, even hundreds of miles distant, by gradually letting off its moisture during summer from the accumulated snow of winter. Yet small groves, at a few miles distant from each other, would add to the productiveness and to the wealth, of even such a favored district. It is not simply the extent of the forestarea of the nation that would render it rich in wood products, or secure its best agricultural resources, but a thorough and general distribution of forest growth in all parts of the country.*

An eminent English writer,† in speaking of this subject, says: "When plantations and strips of wood of considerable extent are so arranged as to obstruct the wind in its course, shelter is afforded both to cultivated and pasture land, and in appearance as well as in productiveness the character of the estate undergoes a thorough change. It cannot be doubted, by any one acquainted with the losses which are frequently sustained on high-lying farms from nipping frosts and withering winds, that in cold, late districts shelter is of the greatest value to the farmer. Various kinds of crops are liable at the time of flowering to be seriously injured if exposed to strong winds, and frequently cereal crops, which are just beginning to ripen, suddenly assume a premature whiteness after being loosened about the roots by severe wind storms; the crop is imperfectly developed, and the farmer is the loser. Shelter will, to a very large extent, prevent this evil. Then, at harvest, it has been found that a line of plantations running transverse to the wind, though at the distance of half a mile, has materially diminished the loss from shedding. Along the eastern coast of Great Britain a proper increase of shelter would not fail to add several bushels of grain to the yield per acre; and in Caithness and Orkney, where, simply from the want of shelter at first, ordinary timber trees rarely ever become more than stinted bushes, the increase would be a great deal more. The only way in which either forest or hedge plants can be

*See article in American Journal of Forestry, 1882-83, by Dr. A. G. Humphrey, of Galesburgh, Ill.

+ Morton's "Resources of Estates." London, 1858.

started into growth in these northern countries is to afford them at once the shelter of a stone wall or earth embankment, and often when their tops appear above the upper surface of the protecting dyke they are cut over by the winds as by a knife. This shows in its extreme aspect the importance of that shelter, which, in all exposed situations, must in a greater or less degree promote the development of crops.

"The value of shelter for pasture stock is no less deserving of careful consideration. It is well known to the veterinary practitioners that cattle grazing in high and exposed situations are generally more predisposed to consumptive and cutaneous diseases than animals pastured on low and sheltered farms. In cold, backward springs the shelter conferred even by a very small plantation is to the sheep farmer in the highland districts of the greatest practical service. On grazings much exposed to withering winds the large number of lambs deserted by their mothers in late seasons, in consequence of a scarcity of milk, is sometimes a severe loss to the flock-master. But it is well known that on hill farms, partially sheltered by growing timber, the percentage of deaths from this: cause is considerably reduced. The pasturage, when sheltered even in a very partial manner, is both earlier and more nutritive than if exposed to the full effects of unchecked winds, and in their haunts, flocks rarely fail to indicate the situations which are really benefited by plantations, either near at hand or at a considerable distance.. It is a well known principle of animal nutrition that the radiation of heat from the system is greater in a cold than in a warm temperature, and that more food is necessary in the former situa-tion than in the latter to maintain vital heat. If it is practicable, therefore, in the formation of plantations to elevate the mean temperature of any particular district two or three degrees, it. follows that its grazing will not only be improved, but that, in pro-portion as it is consumed, fattening animals will make greater progress than under less favorable circumstances.

It appears conclusive, therefore, that the relation that exists between forestry and agriculture is a very intimate one; and yet, while great exertions are being made to develop the agricultural resources of the country, the inactivity which has long prevailed in respect to the management of timber continues the same and resents, in some respects, an aspect hopeless enough."