But this prosperous reclamation of the waste lands of South Jersey has already received a check from an insidious but terrible enemy, destined to undo the labor of years unless promptly and wisely attacked. This enemy is drought, traceable directly to the destruction of the forests. Formerly, glass-manufacturing companies established themselves in well-wooded regions, used the forests for their furnaces, and when these were exhausted migrated to new places to repeat the work of devastation. Then the settlers "cleared up" the land extensively, and since the railroads have been built the burning of the woods along their routes by cinders from the locomotives has been terribly frequent, and often extensive. A conductor on the Camden and Atlantic stated last year that he had counted fifteen forest-fires during one trip from Camden to the sea.
Yet nothing is done to prevent these ever-recurring calamities. The citizens complain, mourn over the destruction, grumble at the railroads, and thank God when the fires are at a safe distance from their own homes. When personally threatened, they turn out, men, women and children, aided by terror-stricken and sympathizing neighbors, and "fight the fire" by felling trees and clearing away the inflammable matter in the path of the fire. Sometimes a whole neighborhood will struggle for days together without respite as only the desperate can. Many of these fires, it is said, are due to the wilful mischief of boys and others. Hundreds of acres are destroyed every year. Along the Camden and Atlantic almost every tract of woodland has been burned over once or more.
The effect of the decrease of the rainfall in South Jersey is already serious. The water-supply in Vineland, Hammonton and other places is constantly lowering: all the wells except those that were dug very deep at first have had to be lowered at least two feet.
The most practical step at present toward arresting the destruction of woodlands is no doubt the organization of forest-protecting and planting societies like those in Germany, which have now so far secured the aid of the legislative power that no landowner can cut down one of his own forest trees without the consent of the authorities. This seems like tyranny, but it is really that wisdom which recognizes the good of the whole community as paramount to any private consideration.
M. H.
THE SAFFAH COBBLESTONES.
Le Devoir gives some interesting information about the wonderful stones of Saffah, now on exhibition in the Asia Minor department of the Museum of the Louvre. This department has lately been reopened to the public, after being closed six months for internal improvements. Visitors pass before the cases containing these ordinary-looking cobblestones, and wonder why they should be there instead of in the street, where they seem to belong. But these ordinary-looking stones are, in the eyes of scholars, among the most precious objects of history: they are covered with writings in some unknown, and even unheard-of, tongue. Some of the writing is fine, some coarse: sometimes the lines are straight, from right to left, and sometimes they wind about, like the trail of a serpent, in every direction. Saffah is a desert plain in Syria extending east from the lakes of Damascus, and a part of it is covered with these curious stones. Antiquaries like Renan, Ganneau, De Vogué, Waddington and Pierret are sorely puzzled over the writing on them, for the character resembles none that has yet been deciphered. They will not, however, abandon the task, for antiquaries are Patience personified; and we shall one day know the history, language, manners and customs of a race whose very existence up to the present time has not even been suspected.
M. H.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] The published statistics of the Russian press are manifestly untrustworthy; but the post-office returns of St. Petersburg show that 82,000 copies of daily and 40,000 of weekly papers, with 50,000 copies of monthly periodicals, are yearly sent to the provinces. The largest circulation (26,000) belongs to M. Katkoff's Moscow Gazette (Moskovskiya Vedomosti). Besides the native journals, 17 German papers, 5 French, 4 Polish, 2 Tartar and 1 Hebrew are published in Russia. Of English papers, the Manchester Guardian, thanks to the number of Lancashire workmen in the interior, has the widest circulation: the Times comes second, the Illustrated London News third.