Marshall County Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1856-1878, 1873-10-16
Forestry.

1t is matter of general knowledge
that vast reaches of land once luxuri-
antly fertile are, to-day, waste deserts.
Great tracts of Persia, Syria, and Greece,
for example, the gardens of antiquity,
now lie arid and desolate under kind
less skies. But if curse have fallen
on these regions, as superstition holds,
1t is the curse OF mans stupidity and
greed, not of Gods anger They are
deserts because great droughts bake
and calcine them. And these droughts
befall because the whole land is dis
forested.
When the mountains of the East were
clothed with trees from base to summit.
and groves of oak and willow sheltered
the little streams, grain fields and
orchards, olive and fig abounded, and
hillside vineyards ripened almost on the
topmOst rock. Husbandmen prospered.
Cities grew and multiplied. Day and
night the trees exhaled fertility, shell
tering the little vines and rootlets at
their feet that held the soil together,
and hid innumerable tiny reservoirs of
water; shading the brooks from the
fierceness of the southern sun drawing
the moisture for their own roots through
natural aqueducts of far-off springs
tossing into the heated air from every
lifting leaf vaporous GOODNESS to be
re-distilled into life-giving rain.
Dead to their usefulness, however,
and careless of their beauty, greedy men
took counsel together how soonest to
clear away those stately cumberers of
the ground. For the little money that
they brought, and the little area that
they covered, those wiseacres cut off
their splendid forests. AS man de-
stroyed his shelter the desert crept ON
him step by step, and destroyed his
works. Without the protection of the
trees all the luxuriant underground per-
ished. Then, when the rains fell, they
soaked through the powdery soil to
swell the rushing streams, making an
instant deluge to be followed by hope
less drought. Crops died. Husband
men starved or begged. Cities crumbled
into ruin. AS the rainfall dwindled
more, famines came that consumed
whole tribes of innocent men. And
fever and pestilence, following after
famine, cleaned what human harvest
that evil reaper left.
Terrible as is this retribution, how
ever, those ancient barbarians were not
much guiltier than are we modern
Cloths. The average American holds
that the providential destiny of tree is
to be cut down. The pioneers ak
would almost find its way alone to the
woods, there, automatically, to hew and
hack till the most innocent sapling fell,
so used is its brute strength to that
destruction. Every summer tourist
shudders to recall the endless miles of
parched road blistering in the sun, the
staring schoOlhouse at the crossroads
seeming to crackle with heat, the bare
farm-houses white-hot in their unshel-
tered yards, which everywhere dis
tinguished his dear, his native land.
And if some late relenting woodman
spare his tree, or if the forests of half
barren wastes escape the ak, is there
not a rushing locomotive ever ready to
drop its fatal spark into the tindery I'M
derbrush?
While this destruction sweeps on,
swift-paced, under the name of land i'm
provement or of accident, almost no
reparation is made. Our temperate
climate and vast territory will long defy
the famine and pestilence which we ig-
norantly invite. But they cannot post
pone the sterility which even now
threatens vast sections. Christian
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