Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1865-10-20
STRIPPING A COUNTRY OF IT'S
TREES.


The following article is well worthy of a
perusal. We know not its source
The summer heats are beginning to dry
up the springs and brooks which were late
ly so full and noisy, and the attention of OBJ
serving people is again turned to the fact of
the diminution year by year, of the quanti-
| ty Of waters in our streams at certain sea-
sons, in consequence of stripping the eoun-
| try of its trees, and converting the forests
| into pastures and titled fields Almost eve
rywhere our riyulets and rivers show, by GER
tain indications in their channels, that they
once flowed towards the sea with a larger
current than now. If we go on as we now
do, we shall at length see many of our an
cient water courses as nearly obhterated as
Addison found them IN I.qly, when he
| wrote -
| Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful throng
| 1 look for streams immortalized in song
| That lost in silence and Oblivion lie
Dumb are their fountains, and their channels dry,
Yet run forever in the Mu ses' skill,
And in the smooth description murmur still"
This denuding country of its trees has
made the rivers of Spain for the most part
| Guadalquiver, which some poet calls a
mighty river, enters the sea at Malaga
without water enough to cover the loose
black stones that pave its bed The Holy
Land now often misses the latter rain, or
receives it but sparingly, aud the brook Ke-
dron is long, dry raVine, passing off to the
eastward from Jerusalem to descend between
perpendicular walls beside the monastery of
Mar Saba to the valley of the Jordan and
the Dead Sea. Mr. Marsh, in his very In
structiye book entitled Man and Nature,
has collected a vast number of instances
showing how, in the old world, the destruc-
tion of the forests has been followed by a
general aridity of the country which they
formerly overshadowed. Whether there are
any exam pies of frequent rains restored to a
country by planting groves and orchards.
we cannot say-but we remember when
travelling at the West thirty years
since, to have met with gentleman from
Kentucky who spoke of an instance within
his knowledge in which perennial stream
had made its appearance where at the early
settlement of the region there was none
Kentucky, when its first colonies planted
themselves within its limits was a region in
which extensive prairies, burnt over every
year by the Indians, predominated.
More than forty years since, poet of our
country, referring to the effect Of stripping
the soil of Its trees, put these lines into the
mouth of one of the aboriginal inhabitants:
s.Before these fields were shorn and titled,
FulI TO the brim eur rivers flowed;
The melody of waters filed
The fresh and bonndless wood
And torrents dashed, the rivulets played,
And fountains spOuted in the shade.
"Those grateful sounds are heard no more;
The springs silent in the sun
The rivers, by the baekencd shore,
With lessening current run,
The realm our tribes crushed to get
May be a barren desert yet"
The causes which operate to make the
rains more frequent and the springs more
regularly full in a well-wooded country, are
probably more than one. Under the trees
of forest covering of fallen leaves is
spread over the ground, by which the rains
are absorbed and gradually given out to the
springs and riyulets. The trees also take up
large quantities of this moisture in the
ground, and give it out to the air in the
| form of vapor, which afterwards condenses
into clouds and falls in showers All the
SHOWS, likewise, that fall in forests are more
slowly melted and sink more gradually and
certainly into the earth than when they fall
on the open fields, On the other hand, the
rains that fall in an unwooded region run off
rapidly By the water courses, aud that, por-
ton of them which should be reserved for u
dry season is lost.