Arizona citizen., 1877-10-06
Trees and Rainfall.

by the cutting away of trees, F. c. Os- wald has an article Tn the Popular Science Monthly. We draw therefrom certain points which are worthy of consideration:
 Since the Christian era the physical history of the planet records the steady growth of a desert which made its first appearance on the dry table-land of Southern Syria, and which extended eastward down the Euphrates, and westward along both shores of the Mediterranean into France and Soutn- ern Russia The sand drifts of Moab have dried up the life of the world in the "cradle of civilization"
 Prince de Ligne, in locating the earthly Paradise, fixes the latitude near the snow-5oundary which passes through Northern Persia and Asia Mi nor, and reaches the meridian of Flu rope near the center of the Mediterra mean. The nations that celebrated | life as a festival" have lived along this line; but such is the aridIty of the soil at the present time, that the strug- gle for existence is so hard to the vast majority of the inhabitants, that life is converted from blessing to a curse
 pr. Oswald doubts "if in the most ia vored regions of the New World human industry, with all the aids of modern science, will ever reunite the oppor- tunities of happiness which nature once layished on lands that now entail only misery on their cultivators."
 Southern Spain supports now about one-tenth of its former inhabitants Greece about one twentieth. About 1000 years ago, after the rise of Mo hammedan power, the country now known as Tripoli, separated from the Sahara by a ridge of mountains, sup ported population of 6,0OO,000; there are now but 45,000 The climate, which is supposed to have resembled that of our Southern Alleghanies, isI now so intOlerable that open-air labor is not exacted, even by the most inhu- man African despot, between a. m and p. m. The rivers of some off these countries have shrunken toI the size of their former tributaries. From Gibralter to Samarcand the an- nual rainfall has decreased till failureI of crops is the rule. The climate of Rome has been changed from theI summer temperature of Western Vir- ginia 10 the furnace heat of Mexico. These disastrous results have been brought about by the destruction of forests. The great woodlands extend ing from the Pyrennes to the HimalayaI have disappeared. Of the forest area of Spain and Italy, about two acres toI a hundred are left Greece hardly one. This devastation is exceeded in theI provinces; in some localities not al stick or bush can grow up but necessi- ty plucks it. The Mediterranean, onceI a forest lake, is now surrounded byl dusty and burning coasts, often hun dreds of miles without a vestige of organic life. But even the nakedness of the most sterile tracts of SOuthernI Europe IS exceeded by the utter deso- lation of the Ottoman prvoinces.
 Champollion traced on the Great Sahara desert the course of former riv- CTS and creeks by the depressions in the soil and the shape of the pebbles. He found tree stumps, almost petrlfied, covered by a stratum of burning sand. And so the astonishing truth" he re- marks, "dawns upon Us that this des- ert may once have been a region of groves and fountains, and the abode of happy millions. Is there a more ter rible crime than that of stripping our Mother Earth of her sylvan covering ? The hand of man has produced this desert, and, I verify believe, every Oth- CT desert on the surface of this earth. $ The burning sun of the des- ert is the angel with the flaming sword who stands between us and Paradise"
 That the inhabitants of these dis tricts have failed to recognize the cause of their misery, implies infatuation and mental blindness. But this blind | ness, though not justified, is explained by the fatalism of their religion, which assumes a meddlesOme Providence that rules the world ill spite of man, and which produces indifference to or con- tempt for all physical sciences what ever. But our own indifference to the disappearance of the forests seems much more uaccountable, since 1t has been demonstrated that an animal fay ed or a tree stripped of its bark does not perish more surely than land de prived of its trees.
 The rule of "one-third to the hunter, two.thirds 10 the husbandman," ex- presses the most desirable proportion of woodland and cultivated fields. In a country blessed with such plethora of woods as the United States was a hundred years ago, between the Valley of the Mississippi and the Atlantic, the work of clearing could be pursued with positive benefit to the climate, inas- much as it would counteract the excess of moisture and miasmatic tendencies. | In some of the Southern and Central