The Earth As Modified By Human Action Part 12

Drainage by Roots of Trees.

Becquerel notices a special function of the forest to which I have already alluded, but to which sufficient importance has not, until very recently, been generally ascribed. I refer to the mechanical action of the roots as conductors of the superfluous humidity of the superficial earth to lower strata. The roots of trees often penetrate through subsoil almost impervious to water, and in such cases the moisture, which would otherwise remain above the subsoil and convert the surface-earth into a bog, follows the roots downwards and escapes into more porous strata or is received by subterranean ca.n.a.ls or reservoirs.

[Footnote: "The roots of vegetables," says d'Hericourt, "perform the office of draining in a manner a.n.a.logous to that artificially practised in parts of Holland and the British islands. This method consists in driving deeply down into the soil several hundred stakes to the acre; the water filters down along the stakes, and in some cases as favorable results have been obtained by this means as by horizontal drains."-Annales Forestieres, 1837, p. 312.] When the forest is felled, the roots perish and decay, the orifices opened by them are soon obstructed, and the water, after having saturated the vegetable earth, stagnates on the surface and transforms it into ponds and mora.s.ses. Thus in La Brenne, a tract of 200,000 acres resting on an impermeable subsoil of argillaceous earth, which ten centuries ago was covered with forests interspersed with fertile and salubrious meadows and pastures, has been converted, by the destruction of the woods, into a vast expanse of pestilential pools and marshes. In Sologne the same cause has withdrawn from cultivation and human inhabitation not less than 1,100,000 acres of ground once well wooded, well drained, and productive.

It is an important observation that the desiccating action of trees, by way of drainage or external conduction by the roots, is greater in the artificial than in the natural wood, and hence that the surface of the ground in the former is not characterized by that approach to a state of saturation which it so generally manifests in the latter. In the spontaneous wood, the leaves, fruits, bark, branches, and dead trunks, by their decayed material and by the conversion of rock into loose earth through the solvent power of the gases they develop in decomposition, cover the ground with an easily penetrable stratum of mixed vegetable and mineral matter extremely favorable to the growth of trees, and at the same time too retentive of moisture to part with it readily to the capillary attraction of the roots.

The trees, finding abundant nutriment near the surface, and so sheltered against the action of the wind by each other as not to need the support of deep and firmly fixed stays, send their roots but a moderate distance downwards, and indeed often spread them out like a horizontal network almost on the surface of the ground. In the artificial wood, on the contrary, the s.p.a.ces between the trees are greater; they are obliged to send their roots deeper both for mechanical support and in search of nutriment, and they consequently serve much more effectually as conduits for perpendicular drainage.

It is only under special circ.u.mstances, however, that this function of the forest is so essential a conservative agent as in the two cases just cited. In a champaign region insufficiently provided with natural channels for the discharge of the waters, and with a subsoil which, though penetrable by the roots of trees, is otherwise impervious to water, it is of cardinal importance; but though trees everywhere tend to carry off the moisture of the superficial strata by this mode of conduction, yet the precise condition of soil which I have described is not of sufficiently frequent occurrence to have drawn much attention to this office of the wood. In fact, in most soils, there are counteracting influences which neutralize, more or less effectually, the desiccative action of roots, and in general it is as true as it was in Seneca's time, that "the shadiest grounds are the moistest." [Footnote: Seneca, Questiones Naturales, iii. 11, 2.]

It is always observed in the American States, that clearing the ground not only causes running springs to disappear, but dries up the stagnant pools and the spongy soils of the low grounds. The first roads in those States ran along the ridges, when practicable, because there only was the earth dry enough to allow of their construction, and, for the same reason, the cabins of the first settlers were perched upon the hills. As the forests have been from time to time removed, and the face of the earth laid open to the air and sun, the moisture has been evaporated, and the removal of the highways and of human habitations from the bleak hills to the sheltered valleys, is one of the most agreeable among the many improvements which later generations have witnessed in the interior of the Northern States. [Footnote: The Tuscan poet Ginati, who hod certainly had little opportunity of observing primitive conditions of nature and of man, was aware that such must have been the course of things in new countries. "You know," says he in a letter to a friend, "that the hills were first occupied by man, because stagnant waters, and afterwards continual wars, excluded men from the plains. But when tranquillity was established and means provided for the discharge of the waters, the low grounds were soon covered with human habitations."-- Letters, Firenze, 1864, p. 98.]

Recent observers in France affirm that evergreen trees exercise a special desiccating action on the soil, and cases are cited where large tracts of land lately planted with pines have been almost completely drained of moisture by some unknown action of the trees. It is argued that the alleged drainage is not due to the conducting power of the roots, inasmuch as the roots of the pine do not descend lower than those of the oak and other deciduous trees which produce no such effect, and it is suggested that the foliage of the pine continues to exhale through the winter a sufficient quant.i.ty of moisture to account for the drying up of the soil. This explanation is improbable, and I know nothing in American experience of the forest which accords with the alleged facts.

It is true that the pines, the firs, the hemlock, and all the spike-leaved evergreens prefer a dry soil, but it has not been observed that such soils become less dry after the felling of their trees. The cedars and other trees of allied families grow naturally in moist ground, and the white cedar of the Northern States, Thuya occidentalis, is chiefly found in swamps. The roots of this tree do not penetrate deeply into the earth, but are spread out near the surface, and of course do not carry off the waters of the swamp by perpendicular conduction. On the contrary, by their shade, the trees prevent the evaporation of the superficial water; but when the cedars are felled, the swamp--which sometimes rather resembles a pool filled with aquatic trees than a grove upon solid ground--often dries up so completely as to be fit for cultivation without any other artificial drainage than, in the ordinary course of cultivation, is given to other new soils.

[Footnote: A special dessicative influence has long been ascribed to the maritime pine, which has been extensively planted on the dunes and sand-plains of western France, and it is well established that, under certain conditions, all trees, whether evergreen or deciduous, exercise this function, but there is no convincing proof that in the cases now referred to there is any difference in the mode of action of the two cla.s.ses of trees. An article by D'Arbois de Jubainville in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for April, 1869, ascribing the same action to the Pinus sylvestris, has excited much attention in Europe, and the facts stated by this writer const.i.tute the strongest evidence known to me in support of the alleged influence of evergreen trees, as distinguished from the draining by downward conduction, which is a function exercised by all trees, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, in proportion to their penetration of a bibulous subsoil by tap or other descending roots. The question has been ably discussed by Beraud in the Revue des Deux Mondes for April, 1870, the result being that the drying of the soil by pines is due simply to conduction by the roots, whatever may be the foliage of the tree. See post: Influence of the Forest on Flow of Springs. It is however certain, I believe, that evergreens exhale more moisture in winter than leafless deciduous trees, and consequently some weight is to be ascribed to this element.]

The Forest in Winter.

The influence of the woods on the flow of springs, and consequently on the supply for the larger water-courses, naturally connects itself with the general question of the action of the forest on the humidity of the ground. But the special condition of the woodlands, as affected by snow and frost in the winter of excessive climates, like that of the United States, has not been so much studied as it deserves; and as it has a most important bearing on the superficial hydrology of the earth, I shall make some observations upon it before I proceed to the direct discussion of the influence of the forest on the flow of springs.

To estimate rightly the importance of the forest in our climate as a natural apparatus for acc.u.mulating the water that falls upon the surface and transmitting it to the subjacent strata, we must compare the condition and properties of its soil with those of cleared and cultivated earth, and examine the consequently different action of these soils at different seasons of the year. The disparity between them is greatest in climates where, as in the Northern American States and in the extreme North of Europe, the open ground freezes and remains impervious to water during a considerable part of the winter; though, even in climates where the earth does not freeze at all, the woods have still an important influence of the same character. The difference is yet greater in countries which have regular wet and dry seasons, rain being very frequent in the former period, while, in the latter, it scarcely occurs at all. These countries lie chiefly in or near the tropics, but they are not wanting in higher lat.i.tudes; for a large part of Asiatic and even of European Turkey is almost wholly deprived of summer rains. In the princ.i.p.al regions occupied by European cultivation, and where alone the questions discussed in this volume are recognized as having, at present, any practical importance, more or less rain falls at all seasons, and it is to these regions that, on this point as well as others, I chiefly confine my attention.

Importance of Snow.

Recent observations in Switzerland give a new importance to the hygrometrical functions of snow, and of course to the forest as its acc.u.mulator and protector. I refer to statements of the condensation of atmospheric vapor by the snows and glaciers of the Rhone basin, where it is estimated to be nearly equal to the entire precipitation of the valley. Whenever the humidity of the atmosphere in contact with snow is above the point of saturation at the temperature to which the air is cooled by such contact, the superfluous moisture is absorbed by the snow or condensed and frozen upon its surface, and of course adds so much to the winter supply of water received from the snow by the ground. This quant.i.ty, in all probability, much exceeds the loss by evaporation, for during the period when the ground is covered with snow, the proportion of clear dry weather favorable to evaporation is less than that of humid days with an atmosphere in a condition to yield up its moisture to any bibulous substance cold enough to condense it. [Footnote: The hard snow-crust, which in the early spring is a source of such keen enjoyment to the children and youth of the North--and to many older persons in whom the love of nature has kept awake a relish for the simple pleasures of rural life--is doubtless due to the congelation of the vapor condensed by the snow rather than to the thawing and freezing of the superficial stratum; for when the surface is melted by the sun, the water is taken up by the absorbent ma.s.s beneath before the temperature falls low enough to freeze it.]

In our Northern States, irregular as is the climate, the first autumnal snows pretty constantly fall before the ground is frozen at all, or when the frost extends at most to the depth of only a few inches. [Footnote: The hard autumnal frosts are usually preceded by heavy rains which thoroughly moisten the soil, and it is a common saying in the North that "the ground will not freeze till the swamps are full."] In the woods, especially those situated upon the elevated ridges which supply the natural irrigation of the soil and feed the perennial fountains and streams, the ground remains covered with snow during the winter; for the trees protect the snow from blowing from the general surface into the depressions, and new accessions are received before the covering deposited by the first fall is melted. Snow is of a color unfavorable for radiation, but, even when it is of considerable thickness, it is not wholly impervious to the rays of the sun, and for this reason, as well as from the warmth of lower strata, the frozen crust of the soil, if one has been formed, is soon thawed, and does not again fall below the freezing-point during the winter. [Footnote: Dr. Williams, of Vermont, made some observations on the comparative temperature of the soil in open and in wooded ground In the years 1789 and 1791, but they generally belonged to the warmer months, and I do not know that any extensive series of comparisons between the temperature of the ground in the woods and in the fields has been attempted in America. Dr. Williams's thermometer was sunk to the depth of ten inches, and gave the following results:

---- Temperature Temperature Time. of ground in of ground in Difference.

pasture. woods. ---- May 23...................... 52 46 6 " 28...................... 57 48 9

June 15...................... 64 51 13 " 27...................... 62 51 11 July 16...................... 62 51 11 " 30...................... 65 1/2 55 1/2 10 Aug. 15...................... 68 58 10 " 31...................... 59 1/2 55 4 1/2 Sept.15...................... 59 1/2 55 4 1/2 Oct. 1...................... 59 1/2 55 4 1/2 " 15...................... 49 49 0 Nov. 1...................... 43 43 0 " 16...................... 43 1/2 43 1/2 0

On the 14th of January, 1791, in a winter remarkable for its extreme severity, he found the ground, on a plain open field where the snow had been blown away, frozen to the depth of three feet and five inches; in the woods where the snow was three feet deep, and where the soil had frozen to the depth of six inches before the snow fell, the thermometer, at six inches below the surface of the ground, stood at 39 degrees. In consequence of the covering of the snow, therefore, the previously frozen ground had been thawed and raised to seven degrees above the freezing-point.--William's Vermont, i., p. 74.

Boussingault's observations are important. Employing three thermometers, one with the bulb an inch below the surface of powdery snow; one on the surface of the ground beneath the snow, then four inches deep; and one in the open air, forty feet above the ground, on the north side of a building, he found, at 5 P.M., the FIRST thermometer at -1.5 degrees Centigrade, the second at 0 degrees, and the THIRD at + 2.5 degrees; at 7 A.M. the next morning, the first stood at -12 degrees, the second at -3.5 degrees and the third at -3 degrees; at 5.30 the same evening No. 1 stood at -1.4 degrees, No. 2 at 0 degrees, and No. 3 at + 3 degrees. Other experiments were tried, and though the temperature was affected by the radiation, which varied with the hour of the day and the state of the sky, the upper surface of the snow was uniformly colder than the lower, or than the open air.

According to the Report of the Department of Agriculture for May and June, 1872, Mr. C. G. Prindle, of Vermont, in the preceding winter, found, for four successive days, the temperature immediately above the snow at 13 degrees below zero; beneath the snow, which was but four inches deep, at 19 degrees above zero; and under a drift two feet deep, at 27 degrees above.

On the borders and in the glades of the American forest, violets and other small plants begin to vegetate as soon as the snow has thawed the soil around their roots, and they are not unfrequently found in full flower under two or three feet of snow.--American Naturalist, May, 1869, pp. 155, 156.

In very cold weather, when the ground is covered with light snow, flocks of the grouse of the Eastern States often plunge into the snow about sunset, and pa.s.s the night in this warm shelter. If the weather moderates before morning, a frozen crust is sometimes formed on the surface too strong to be broken by the birds, which consequently perish.] The snow in contact with the earth now begins to melt, with greater or less rapidity, according to the relative temperature of the earth and the air, while the water resulting from its dissolution is imbibed by the vegetable mould, and carried off by infiltration so fast that both the snow and the layers of leaves in contact with it often seem comparatively dry, when, in fact, the under-surface of the former is in a state of perpetual thaw. No doubt a certain proportion of the snow is given off to the atmosphere by direct evaporation, but in the woods, the protection against the sun by even leafless trees prevents much loss in this way, and besides, the snow receives much moisture from the air by absorption and condensation. Very little water runs off in the winter by superficial water-courses, except in rare cases of sudden thaw, and there can be no question that much the greater part of the snow deposited in the forest is slowly melted and absorbed by the earth.

The immense importance of the forest, as a reservoir of this stock of moisture, becomes apparent, when we consider that a large proportion of the summer rain either flows into the valleys and the rivers, because it falls faster than the ground can imbibe it; or, if absorbed by the warm superficial strata, is evaporated from them without sinking deep enough to reach wells and springs, which, of course, depend much on winter rains and snows for their entire supply. This observation, though specially true of cleared and cultivated grounds, is not wholly inapplicable to the forest, particularly when, as is too often the case in Europe, the underwood and the decaying leaves are removed.

The quant.i.ty of snow that falls in extensive forests, far from the open country, has seldom been ascertained by direct observation, because there are few meteorological stations in or near the forest. According to Thompson, [Footnote: Thompson's Vermont, Appendix, p. 8.] the proportion of water which falls in snow in the Northern States does not exceed one-fifth of the total precipitation, but the moisture derived from it is doubtless considerably increased by the atmospheric vapor absorbed by it, or condensed and frozen on its surface. I think I can say from experience--and I am confirmed in this opinion by the testimony of competent observers whose attention has been directed specially to the point--that though much snow is intercepted by the trees, and the quant.i.ty on the ground in the woods is consequently less than in open land in the first part of the winter, yet most of what reaches the ground at that season remains under the protection of the wood until melted, and as it occasionally receives new supplies the depth of snow in the forest in the latter half of winter is considerably greater than in the cleared fields. Careful measurements in a snowy region in New England, in the month of February, gave a mean of 38 inches in the open ground and 44 inches in the woods. [Footnote: As the loss of snow by evaporation has been probably exaggerated by popular opinion, an observation or two on the subject may not be amiss in this place. It is true that in the open grounds, in clear weather and with a dry atmosphere, snow and ice are evaporated with great rapidity even when the thermometer is much below the freezing-point; and Darwin informs us that the snow on the summit of Aconcagua, 23,000 feet high, and of course in a temperature of perpetual frost, is sometimes carried off by evaporation. The surface of the snow in our woods, however, does not indicate much loss in this way. Very small deposits of snow-flakes remain unevaporated in the forest, for many days after snow which fell at the same time in the cleared field has disappeared without either a thaw to melt it or a wind powerful enough to drift it away. Even when bared of their leaven, the trees of a wood obstruct, in an important degree, both the direct action of the sun's rays on the snow and the movement of drying and thawing winds.

Dr. Piper (Trees of America, p. 48) records the following observations: "A body of snow, one foot in depth and sixteen feet square, was protected from the wind by a tight board fence about five feet high, while another body of snow, much more sheltered from the sun than the first, six feet in depth, and about sixteen feet square, was fully exposed to the wind. When the thaw came on, which lasted about a fortnight, the larger body of snow was entirely dissolved in less than a week, while the smaller body was not wholly gone at the end of the second week. "Equal quant.i.ties of snow were placed in vessels of the samekind and capacity, the temperature of the air being seventy degrees.

In the one case, a constant current of air was kept pa.s.sing over the open vessel, while the other was protected by a cover. The snow in the first was dissolved in sixteen minutes, while the latter had a small unthawed proportion remaining at the end of eighty-five minutes." The snow in the woods is protected in the same way, though not literally to the same extent, as by the fence in one of these cases and the cover in the other.]

The general effect of the forest in cold climates is to a.s.similate the winter state of the ground to that of wooded regions under softer skies; and it is a circ.u.mstance well worth noting, that in Southern Europe, where Nature has denied to the earth a warm winter-garment of flocculent snow, she has, by one of those compensations in which her empire is so rich, clothed the hillsides with umbrella and other pines, ilexes, cork-oaks, bays and other trees of persistent foliage, whose evergreen leaves afford to the soil a protection a.n.a.logous to that which it derives from snow in more northern climates.

The water imbibed by the soil in winter sinks until it meets a more or less impermeable or a saturated stratum, and then, by unseen conduits, slowly finds its way to the channels springs, or oozes out of the ground in drops which unite in rills, and so all is conveyed to the larger streams, and by them finally to the sea. The water, in percolating through the vegetable and mineral layers, acquires their temperature, and is chemically affected by their action, but it carries very little matter in mechanical suspension.

The process I have described is a slow one, and the supply of moisture derived from the snow, augmented by the rains of the following seasons, keeps the forest-ground, where the surface is level or but moderately inclined, in a state of approximate saturation throughout almost the whole year. [Footnote: The statements I have made, here and elsewhere, respecting the humidity of the soil in natural forests, have been, I understand, denied by Mr. T. Meehan, a distinguished American naturalist, in a paper which I have not seen He is quoted as maintaining, among other highly questionable propositions that no ground is "so dry in its subsoil as that which sustains a forest on its surface." In open, artificially planted woods, with a smooth and regular surface, and especially in forests where the fallen leaves and branches are annually burnt or carried off, both the superficial and the subjacent strata may under certain circ.u.mstances, become dry, but this rarely, if ever, happens in a wood of spontaneous growth, undeprived of the protection afforded by its own droppings, and of the natural accidents of surface which tend to the retention of water. See, on this point, a very able article by Mr. Henry Stewart, in the New York Tribune of November 23, 1873.] It may be proper to observe here that in Italy, and in many parts of Spain and France, the Alps, the Apennines, and the Pyrenees, not to speak of less important mountains, perform the functions which provident nature has in other regions a.s.signed to the forest, that is, they act as reservoirs wherein is acc.u.mulated in winter a supply of moisture to nourish the parched plains during the droughts of summer. Hence, however enormous may be the evils which have accrued to the above-mentioned countries from the destruction of the woods, the absolute desolation which would otherwise have smitten them through the folly of man, has been partially prevented by those natural dispositions, by means of which there are stored up in the glaciers, in the snow-fields, and in the basins of mountains and valleys, vast deposits of condensed moisture which are afterwards distributed in a liquid form during the season in which the atmosphere furnishes a slender supply of the beneficent fluid so indispensable to vegetable and animal life. [Footnote: The acc.u.mulation of snow and ice upon the Alps and other mountains--which often fills up valleys to the height of hundreds of feet--is due not only to the fall or congealed and crystallized vapor in the form of snow, to the condensation of atmospheric vapor on the surface of snow-fields and glaciers, and to a temperature which prevents the rapid melting of snow, but also to the well-known fact that, at least up to the height of 10,000 feet, rain and snow are more abundant on the mountains than at lower levels.

But another reason may be suggested for the increase of atmospheric humidity, and consequently of the precipitation of aqueous vapor on mountain chains. In discussing the influence of mountains on precipitation, meteorologists have generally treated the popular belief, that mountains "attract" to them clouds floating within a certain distance from them, as an ignorant prejudice, and they ascribe the appearance of clouds about high peaks solely to the condensation of the humidity of the air carried by atmospheric currents up the slopes of the mountain to a colder temperature. But if mountains do not really draw clouds and invisible vapors to them, they are an exception to the universal law of attraction. The attraction of the small Mount Shehallien was found sufficient to deflect from the perpendicular, by a measurable quant.i.ty, a plummet weighing but a few ounces. Why, then, should not greater ma.s.ses attract to them volumes of vapor weighing many tons, and floating freely in the atmosphere within moderate distances of the mountains ]

Summer Rains, Importance of.

Babinet quotes a French proverb: "Summer rain wets nothing," and explains it by saying that at that season the rainwater is "almost entirely carried off by evaporation." "The rains of summer," he adds, "however abundant they may be, do not penetrate the soil beyond the depth of six or eight inches. In summer the evaporating power of the heat is five or six times greater than in winter, and this force is exerted by an atmosphere capable of containing five or six times as much vapor as in winter." "A stratum of snow which prevents evaporation [from the ground], causes almost all the water that composes it to filter into the earth, and forms a provision for fountains, wells, and streams which could not be furnished by any quant.i.ty whatever of summer rain. This latter, useful to vegetation like the dew, neither penetrates the soil nor acc.u.mulates a store to supply the springs and to be given out again into the open air." [Footnote: Etudes et Lectures, vol. vi., p. 118. The experiments or Johnstrup in the vicinity of Copenhagen, where the mean annual precipitation is 23 1/2 inches, and where the evaporation must be less than in the warmer and drier atmosphere of France, form the most careful series of observations on this subject which I have met with.

Johnstrup found that at the depth at a metre and a half (50 inches) the effects of rain and evaporation were almost imperceptible, and became completely so at a depth of from two to three metres (6 1/2 to 10 feet).

During the summer half of the year the evaporation rather exceeded the rainfall; during the winter half the entire precipitation was absorbed by the soil and transmitted to lower strata by infiltration. The stratum between one metre and a half (50 inches) and three metres (10 feet) from the surface was then permanently in the condition of a saturated sponge, neither receiving nor losing humidity during the summer half of the year, but receiving from superior, and giving off to lower, strata an equal amount of moisture during the winter half.--Johnstrup, Om Fugtighedens Bezagelse i den naturlige Jordbund. Kjobenhavn, 1866.]

This conclusion, however applicable to the climate and to the soil of France, is too broadly stated to be received as a general truth; and in countries like the United States, where rain is comparatively rare during the winter and abundant during the summer half of the year, common observation shows that the quant.i.ty of water furnished by deep wells and by natural springs depends almost as much upon the rains of summer as upon those of the rest of the year, and consequently that a large portion of the rain of that season must find its way into strata too deep for the water to be wasted by evaporation.

[Footnote: According to observations at one hundred military stations in the United States, the precipitation ranges from three and a quarter inches at Fort Yuma in California to about seventy-two inches at Fort Pike, Louisiana, the mean for the entire territory, not including Alaska, being thirty-six inches. In the different sections of the Union it is as follows:

North-eastern States.................. 41 inches, New York.............................. 36 "

Middle States......................... 40 1/2 "

Ohio.................................. 40 "

Southern States....................... 51 "

S. W. States and Indian Territories... 39 1/2 "

Western States and Territories........ 30 "

Texas and New Mexico.................. 24 1/2 "

California............................ 18 1/2 "

Oregon and Washington Territory....... 50 "

The mountainous regions, it appears, do not recieve the greatest amount of precipitation. The avenge downfall of the Southern States bordering on the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico exceeds the mean of the whole United States, being no less than fifty-one inches, while on the Pacific coast it ranges from fifty to fifty-six inches.

As a general rule, it may be stated that at the stations on or near the sea-coast the precipitation is greatest in the spring months, though there are several exceptions to this remark, and at a large majority of the stations the downfall is considerably greater in the summer months than at any other season.]

Dalton's experiments in the years 1796, 1797, and 1798 appeared to show that the mean absorption of the downfall by the earth in those years was twenty-nine per cent.

d.i.c.kinson, employing the same apparatus for eight years, found the absorption to vary widely in different years, the mean being forty-seven per cent.

Charnock's experiments in two years show an absorption of from seventeen to twenty-seven per cent.] Besides, even admitting that the water from summer rains is so completely evaporated as to contribute nothing directly to the supply of springs, it at least tends indirectly to maintain their flow, because it saturates in part the atmosphere, and at the same time it prevents the heat of the sun from drying the earth to still greater depths, and bringing within the reach of evaporation the moisture of strata which ordinarily do not feel the effects of solar irradiation.

Influence of the Forest on the Flow of Springs.

It is an almost universal and, I believe, well-founded opinion, that the protection afforded by the forest against the escape of moisture from its soil by superficial flow and evaporation insures the permanence and regularity of natural springs, not only within the limits of the wood, but at some distance beyond its borders, and thus contributes to the supply of an element essential to both vegetable and animal life. As the forests are destroyed, the springs which flowed from the woods, and, consequently, the greater water-courses fed by them, diminish both in number and in volume. This fact is so familiar throughout the American States and the British Provinces, that there are few old residents of the interior of those districts who are not able to testify to its truth as a matter of personal observation. My own recollection suggests to me many instances of this sort, and I remember one case where a small mountain spring, which disappeared soon after the clearing of the ground where it rose, was recovered about twenty years ago, by simply allowing the bushes and young trees to grow up on a rocky knoll, not more than half an acre in extent, immediately above the spring. The ground was hardly shaded before the water reappeared, and it has ever since continued to flow without interruption. The hills in the Atlantic States formerly abounded in springs and brooks, but in many parts of these States which were cleared a generation or two ago, the hill-pastures now suffer severely from drought, and in dry seasons furnish to cattle neither gra.s.s nor water.

Almost every treatise on the economy of the forest adduces facts in support of the doctrine that the clearing of the woods tends to diminish the flow of springs and the humidity of the soil, and it might seem unnecessary to bring forward further evidence on this point. [Footnote: "Why go so far for the proof of a phenomenon that is repeated every day under our own eyes, and of which every Parisian may convince himself, without venturing beyond the Bois de Boulogne or the forest of Meudon Let him, after a few rainy days, pa.s.s alone the Chevreuse road, which is bordered on the right by the wood, on the left by cultivated fields. The fall of water and the continuance of the rain have been the same on both sides; but the ditch on the side of the forest will remain filled with water proceeding from the infiltration through the wooded soil, long after the other, contiguous to the open ground, has performed its office of drainage and become dry. The ditch on the left will have discharged in a few hours a quant.i.ty of water, which the ditch on the right requires several days to receive and carry down to the valley."--Clave, Etudes, etc., pp. 53, 54.] But the subject is of too much practical importance and of too great philosophical interest to be summarily disposed of; and it ought to be noticed that there is at least one case--that of some loose sandy soils which, as observed by Valles, [Footnote: Valles, Etudes sur les Inondations, p. 472.] when bared of wood very rapidly absorb and transmit to lower strata the water they receive from the atmosphere--where the removal of the forest may increase the flow of springs at levels below it, by exposing to the rain and melted snow a surface more bibulous, and at the same time less retentive, than its original covering. Under such circ.u.mstances, the water of precipitation, which had formerly been absorbed by the vegetable mould and retained until it was evaporated, might descend through porous earth until it meets an impermeable stratum, and then be conducted along it, until, finally, at the outcropping of this stratum, it bursts from a hillside as a running spring. But such instances are doubtless too rare to form a frequent or an important exception to the general law, because it is very seldom the case that such a soil as has just been supposed is covered by a layer of vegetable earth thick enough to retain, until it is evaporated, all the rain that falls upon it, without imparting any water to the strata below it.