Connecticut western news., 1882-12-20
WOODMAN, SPARE THE TREE.
The Climatic Value of FOrests-Why They
 Should be Kept Intact.
From the New York Herald 1

From the New York Herald.]
 In valuable paper before an agricu1- tural meeting at Northampton, Mass. Prof. 0. s. Sargent pointed out the vast losses to the country annually by forest fires. The strongest point in his paper
 -on the permanent damage done by these fires-is that they destroy not only the growing wood, but the fertility of the soil itself" As this is the season for legislation it is timely to press on legislators the necessity for revising ex- isting enactments to better secure the wasted forests from the wholesale con- fagrations to which they are every year exposed. In recent article Professor Sargent takes the ground that ''forests do not produce rain; rain produces the forests, and without certain amount of rain they cannot exist" Rainfall may not be directly produced in large quan- titles by the condensation of atmospheric moisture caused by the cloud-chilling forest; but the indirect agency of the timbered land in augmenting the supply of rainfall which permeates the soil and becomes agriculturally beneficial is cer- tainly very considerable. The addition of single inch of rainfall to the amount which penetrates the soil instead of run ming off is on every acre over twenty-two thousand five hundred gallons.
 But there is another effect of forests which is generally overlooked even by scientists in discussing their physical importance. In historic times marked climatic changes have occurred in Flu rope and America which can be explained only by the progress of continental defor- esting. The able British physicist, Ad- miral Smyth, in his work on the physical geography of the mediterranean basin, clearly shows that great climatic changes have taken place. The effects of intense winter cold in Italy, Greece and Asia Minor, recorded by ancient writers, he notes, "have been in later ages un- known" In this country it is doubtful whether we will ever have as cold win ters as that of 1780, when the Chesa peake Bay "was frozen solid, according to MT. Jefferson, from its head to the mouth of the Potomac,'' and Washing tons troops securely crossed on solid ice from New Jersey to Staten Island. Max ing due allowance for historical inaccu- racies it seems clear that while the cold spells of late years have been as intense as those of 1780 and 1856 their duration has not been so protracted. Forests, of course, protect the soil from rapid radia- tion of it's heat and from the frigorifc downward currents of the great "cold , waves"
 But they must also materially retard the passage of these "polar waves" and serve to detain them longer on the con- tinent than would be the case were the soil cleared. The removal of the forests by the spread of civilization and con- fagrations thus exposes the soil to in. l creased fluctuations of abnormal cold and heat and enables the heavy masses 1 of cold air to roll over it with greater i velocity to the sea. We may congratu' late ourselves on the latter effect of soi denudation, and it probably gives us winters of higher mean temperature thar our ancestors had. But it is not i'm probable future investigation will dem onstrate that while we thus gain ''milde1 winters" the precipitation of winter and spring is reduced and the agriculture seasons open with disastrous droughts For it is seen that exceptionally milo winters, like those of 1877-79, 1879-9( and 1881-82, have been marked with de fciencies of winter rainfall and by wide spread droughts, with forest fires ane army worm invasions in the succeeding spring months, the aridity sometimes ex tending far into summer. It is to be hoped, therefore, that during the com ing winter the preservation of forests will be made matter of more effective and intelligent legislation than has yet been devised.