The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1885-05-21
Fleoss and Forests.

For two successive years the dwell
ers in the valley Of the Ohio River have
been visited by the disaster of destruc-
tive floods. Whole villages have been
submerged beneath the swelling waters.
Thousands of persons have been made
destitute by the ruin these floods have
wrought, and many lives have been
lost.
These floods we're rendered possible,
and even inevitable, by the reckless de-
struction of forests, which has been GO
ing on for years in the regions visited
by flood and tempest.
The same result, indeed, follows
wherever the woods are cut down re-
CARELESS of their uses to the land, and
of their protection of the safety and
health of man. Floods and cyclones
are now common in California, where
the forests have been wantonly de-
stroyed. Once these dread visitors
were almost unknown on our Pacific
Slope.
The bed of the beautiful river Ural
In Asiatic Russia has become in process
of time the channel of frightful tor
rents, which rush down and wreck the
human settlements on its picturesque
banks. The river used to be broad and
clear, and full of fish. The destruction
of forests in the upper valley has caused
it TO dry up to small and sluggish
stream, no longer navigable, and de-
prived of it's finny habitants. When
the deep SHOWS upon the Ural Noun
tains begin to thaw, there is no longer
any barrier to the freshets which come
roaring down tho river-basin.
The floods which, OVERLOOKING the
banks of the river Danube, carried such
havoc and misery to the Hungarian
jewellers on its banks few years ago,
must be attributed to the same cause
In many parts of Europe, Asia, and
America, indeed, regions may be found,
once fourishing and fruitful, which are
now dreary wastes, deserted long since
by human beings, as result of the cut
ting down of the forests.
In Norway alone, of European conn
tries, is great care taken by the Gov
eminent to restrict the wholesale de-
struction of timber growths; and it is
the only European country, perhaps,
where floods Of serious character are
unknown.
The reason why floods and wind
tempests invariably follow the disap-
pearance of forests is very simple one.
Forests hold the moisture which pro-
ceeds from heavy rainfalls. They en-
able that moisture to be gradually dis
tributed, and to filter slowly to the
river valleys, instead of rushing into
them from mountains and hills. They
hold the snow and protect it from the
rays of the sun, so that it takes weeks
for 1t to melt and flow down the slopes.
The rivers, when thus protected, are
supplied with only q moderate and nor
NAL amount of water. As soon as the
forest disappears the rivers and streams
inevitably dry up; and the floods pour
from the highlands down through the
channels, when the thaw comes. unim-
peded by the protecting tree.
1t is stated that for some years past
there has been wanton and reckless
cutting down of the forests in the re-
gion of the Alleghanies, and near the
sources Of the Ohio River; and we can
easily trace the floods to that unwise
policy.
Cyclones, too, are unnecessarily more
violent and desolating in districts where
they sweep, unchecked by the barrier
of dense forest growths, over many
miles of open country. They thus ac-
quire force which. if broken by meet
ing in their progress the obstacle which
the woods interpose, would lose much
OF its Violence YOUTHS Companion.