The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1888-07-03

generous abundance supplies. We
speak into the phonograph and our
voice perhaps makes record which
can be reproduced in all it's peculiar
tones, a generation or a century hence
but we know that there is somewhere
exerted upon the machine an elemen.
tai power of nature that is as necessary
to the result as the added ingenuity OF
the inventor. We apply our ear to
the telephone, and have confidential
interview with distant friend; but
we cannot forget here also that some
where not far away from this magic
instrument there is battery in con-
stant process of exhaustion that must
from time to time be renewed, or the
telephone will become as silent as the
dead materials that make up it's parts.
In the fertility of the soil nature
seems to be beneicent and an all
bountiful mother. But here, too, she
places around us the same limiting
conditions. 1t is the all prevailing
law of nature that the mother that
feeds us requires in turn to be fed. AS
soon as we begin to withhold supplies
from her, she ceases to nourish us;
and, in the end, we are either left to
starve, or to betake ourselves to other
sources of support.
What impressive illustrations of
this great law does the history of the
world afford The valley of the
Tigris and Euphrates, once the seat of
great nations, and the abode of plenty
and splendor has been given over to
the owl and the bittern. Palestine
once the home of a great people, is
now the abode of desolation. Tyre
was great maritime power, whose
people were fed with an abundant
agriculture, whose miners brought tin
from Cornwall, and whose sailors
brought amber from the Baltic Asia
Minor was the sufficient abode of a
hundred cities, the splendors of which
are only in these later years coming to
be revealed to the curious explorer
The north of Africa was the seat of
great empire which long made it un-
certain whether civilization was to
have it's abode on the north side of
the Mediterranean or on the south.
But in all of those vast regions it may
be said that the last sob of civilization
was long since hushed, and that every
where there is now little but barbarism
and desolation.
If we look carefully into the causes
of these results we shall find not the
least important of them to be the fact
that knowingly or ignorantly sys-
tematic attempt has been made to de-
fraud nature of the operations of that
law to which | have just alluded. The
trees have been ruthlessly swept away,
and thus evaporation has been dimin
ished; so that the amount of rainfall
has declined until it has perhaps
ceased altogether For even the clouds
are obedient unto this law of supply
and demand. If the verdure of the
fields, and the leaves of the forest do
not send up their vapors into the sky,
the clouds soon cease to give rain;
while on the other hand Egypt has
recently shown that the judicious
planting of trees may bring rain again
after drought of three thousand
years. Gradually the east was de-
nuded of trees. The streams shrivelled
into rivulets, the clouds refused the
rains of heaven, and the climate was
gradually but effectually, if not per-
manently, changed
But this was not all. The contin
uous drafts made upon the energies
of the soil met with no corresponding
returns. The nourishment that is
ever present in the. atmosphere kept
up the supply for time, and thus
nature did what she could to repair
the ravages that were inflicted by man.
But at length even this resource failed.
In the place of the rich soils that
formerly were abundant throughout
the east we now find naught but sterile
wastes. The sands have drifted over
the palaces of kings, and the fertile
fields have been given over to the
wanderers of the desert.
Is this result necessary is the
melancholy fact confronting modern
nations that they, too, must sink into
decay and ultimate ruin Is the day
to come when the New Zeelander
will sketch the ruins of St. Paul from