Fayetteville observer. [volume] (Fayetteville, Tenn.) 1850-1966, 1870-03-31

sections of Utah, rains IN sum-
mer are no longer rare, and Salt
Lake evinces, by aconstant though
moderate increase of her volume
of waters, that the equilibrium of
rainfall with evaporation in the
Great Basin has been fully restored
or rather, that the rainfall is
taking the lead.
/ have q firm faith that all the
great deserts of the Temperate
and Torrid Zones will yet be re-
claimed by irrigation aud tree
planting. The bill which Con-
gress did not pass, nor really con-
slider, whereby it was proposed,
some years since, to give a section
of the woodless Public Lands re-
mote from settlements to every
one who, in a separate township,
would plant and cherish a'quar,
ter-section of forest trees, ought to
have been passed-with modi6ca-
tons, perhaps, but preserving the
central idea. Had ten thousand
quarter-sections, in so many dif
ferent townships of the Plains.
been thus planted to timber ten &c
twenty years ago, and protected
from fire and devastation till now,
the value of those Plains for set
Element would have been nearly
or quite doubled.
A capital mistake, it seems tc
me, is being made by some of the
dairy farmers of our own State
lone who has hundred acres of
good soil, whereof twenty or thir.
ty are wooded, cuts off his tim;
Der entirely, calculating that the
additional grass that he may grow
in its stead will pay for all the
coal he needs tor fuel, so that he
will make a net gain of the time
that be mas hitherto devoted each
winter to cutting and hauling wood
He does not consider how much
his soil will lose in summer mois
ture, or how his springs and run
nels will be dried up, or how the
sweep of harsh winds will be in
tensifed, by barring his hill-tope
and raviues to sun and breeze sc
utterly. In my deliberate judg'
ment farm of one hundred acres
will yield more feed, with far
great uniformity of produce from
year to year, if twenty acres of
ridge-crests, ravine-sides and rocky
places, are thickly covered with
timber, than if it be swept clean
of trees and all devoted to grass.
Hence, | insist that the farmer
who sweeps off his wood and re-
solves to depend upon coal for
fuel, hoping to increase permanent.
ly the product of his dairy, makes
a sad miscalculation.
Spain, Italy, and portions Of
France. are now suffering from
the improYidence that deVoured
their forests, leaving the future
to take care of itself. / presume
the great empires : of antiquity
suffered from the same folly,
though to much greater extent
The remains of now extinct races
who formerly peopled and titled
the central valleys of this cont.
nent, and especially the Territory
Of Arizona, probably bear witness
to similar recklessness, which is
parallel by our fathers and our
own determination of the magnif.
cent forests of White Pine which,
barely century ago, covered SO
large q portion of the soil of our
Northern States. Vermont sold
White Pine abundantly to Eng.
land through Canada within my
day: she is now supplying her
own wants from Canada at a cost
of not less than five times the
price she sold for; and she will be
paying still higher rates before the
close of this century. / entreat
our farmers not to.preserve every
tree, good, bad or Indifferent, that
may happen to be growing on
their lands--but, outside of the
limited districts wherein the prim-
tive forest must still be cut away