A torrent is a stream liable to extreme and sudden increase and decrease—usually very small or quite dry in a dry time, but liable to rise suddenly to a great height, and as quickly to shrink to its former size. By the loss of its once rich forests, the Ardêche, a tributary of the Rhone, became such a torrent, its principal branch often being entirely dry. It has been known to rise sixty feet and dwindle back to almost nothing within a few days. The upper Hudson has apparently all the conditions necessary for becoming such a torrent if once its forests are exterminated. It descends some 4,000 feet in a short and steep course, from a region where there falls a great deal of rain and snow.
As the headwaters of this important river, unlike those of the Ohio, lie almost within the limits of a single state, and the control of a single legislature, great efforts have, within the last two years, been made to secure the appropriation of the great Adirondack region, which is entirely unsuited for farming, to be kept forever as a forest. It has been objected that this would cost too much, and that if such laws were enacted as would enable the State (which now holds mostly by tax title some 750,000 acres) and the permanent owners of large tracts to protect their land from fire and timber stealing, those who hold smaller lots, and do not care to keep them after cutting off the spruce and hemlock they contain, would let them pass into the possession of the State by non-payment of taxes. But a recent judicial decision renders it very doubtful whether in this way a sufficiently valid title could be secured. There are strong arguments against any effective measures. Most men who have invested money in lumbering, tanning and pulp mills, and iron works requiring charcoal, have been accustomed to carry on their work in such a way that it has made the destruction of the woods liable or almost certain to occur sooner or later; and they are not willing—indeed, they declare they are not able—to go on with their business if there is added the cost which would be involved in the changing to safer methods. They are certainly mistaken in their violent opposition to legislation which aims to protect the woods. They would, were a proper system of forestry once put in practice, find that their tracts of land would yield so much more, and so much better material, and that their losses from fires, floods, etc., would be so diminished, that in the long run they would be gainers, and at any rate the damage which would result from the denudation of those mountains would be so vast and so lasting that all the possible cost of paying these men a fair equivalent for any loss such protective measures might occasion would be a mere trifle in the comparison.
As to the value of forests in preventing damage done by drying, chilling or malarious winds (d), there can be no doubt that it is very great. It is probable that all through the region between the eastern boundary of the Indian Territory, Kansas and Nebraska, and 105° west longitude, dry winds from the south and west are very detrimental to both vegetable and animal life. If any species of trees can be made to grow there—and by doing this over areas large enough to warrant the cost of irrigation and other protective measures the undertaking might succeed where it would not if attempted on a smaller scale—it is very probable that in the line of such belts of timber other species and many crops might thrive which can not now be raised.
It is certain that everywhere in the northern prairie states a grove that breaks the force of the cold winds from the north and west adds greatly to the value of a farm. And it is gratifying to learn that so much tree planting has already been done in those states. Some have even been so sanguine as to predict that when the soft and hard timber of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota is gone these new prairie states may be able—at least partially—to supply the needs of those just named, whose forests were confidently asserted to be inexhaustible.
The effect of certain trees—indeed, of almost any—as fences against malarious winds has been carefully studied in France and Italy, and the verdict is that it is very great.
Marsh (“Earth as Modified by Human Action,” p. 159) says: “It is well known that the great swamps of Virginia and the Carolinas, in climates nearly similar to that of Italy, are healthy even to the white man, so long as the forests in and around them remain, but become very insalubrious when the woods are felled.” He quotes Jules Clavé, a French expert, as authority for the statement that “the flat and marshy district of the Sologne, in France, was salubrious till its woods were felled. It then became pestilential, but within the last few years its healthfulness has been restored by forest plantations.” Marsh also thinks that in Germany and India belts of trees have been found very beneficial in warding off cholera. A lumber journal recently asserted that cholera has never prevailed in pine-producing districts.
Lanisci says that in the time of Gregory VIII. (who came to the papal chair in 1572 and reformed the calendar) Rome became much more unhealthful when a pine forest lying to the south was cut down because infested by brigands. The abbey of Trois Fontaines, considered one of the worst places in the fever infested Roman campagna, was much improved in three years by plantations of the Eucalyptus, and this tree has been used with good effect for the same purpose in the French settlements in Algeria (Hough, U.S. Forestry Report for 1877, p. 285).
Of the service rendered by forests in preventing the drifting of sands (e) the most remarkable instance is afforded by the once dreary regions in the extreme southwestern part of France, where plantations of the maritime pine have, in the departments of the Landes and Gironde transformed over 4,000 square miles of poverty-stricken country into populous hives of an intelligent and thrifty population. In the lower part of the valley of the Wisconsin river, much loss and inconvenience is experienced by the drifting of the sand which, driven by the prevailing west winds, covers and ruins fields and gardens, and in many cases, even fences. A few belts of timber running across that valley would be worth many times their cost in preventing this nuisance.
Woods prevent the increase of noxious insects (f) in two ways: They shelter birds, nature’s great insect-police, and they stop the progress of many species, such as the grasshoppers, which scourge some of the western states, and the chinch-bug, so much dreaded by wheat growers. It is said that the latter pest never traverses a belt of thick trees as much as seven or eight rods in width. So, too, it is affirmed on apparently good authority, that winds carrying the fungus called wheat-rust deposit their baleful load if they find a forest in their track.
III. Scarcely any room remains to speak of the important service which forests render in beautifying a region. Besides preventing the disfiguring ravages of wind and water, they add a positive element of beauty. No one accustomed to the palpitating glow of autumn color in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts; or to the more subtle attractions of the shifting half-tints in which spring drapes budding trees in the same region; or to the splendor of a wooded mountain side with the diamonds of an ice-storm glittering in the sun; or to the restful coolness of a dark hemlock grove in July heat, can ever feel quite at home in a treeless region.