The Earth As Modified By Human Action Part 18

Woodland in European Countries.

In 1862, Rentzsch calculated the proportions of woodland in different European countries as follows: [Footnote: Der Wald, pp. 123, 124.]

Norway.................................. 66 per cent.

Sweden.................................. 60 "

Russia.................................. 30.00 "

Germany................................. 26.58 "

Belgium................................. 18.52 "

France.................................. 16.79 "

Switzerland............................. 15 "

Sardinia................................. 12.29 Neapolitan States........................ 9.43 "

Holland.................................. 7.10 "

Spain.................................... 5.52 "

Denmark.................................. 5.50 "

Great Britain............................ 5 "

Portugal................................. 4.40 "

The large proportion of woodland in Norway and Sweden is in a great measure to be ascribed to the mountainous character of the surface, which renders the construction of roads difficult and expensive, and hence the forests are comparatively inaccessible, and transportation is too costly to tempt the inhabitants to sacrifice their woods for the sake of supplying distant markets.

The industries which employ wood as a material have only lately been much developed in these countries, and though the climate requires the consumption of much wood as a fuel, the population is not numerous enough to create, for this purpose, a demand exceeding the annually produced supply, or to need any great extension of cleared ground for agricultural purposes. Besides this, in many places peat is generally employed as domestic fuel. Hence, though Norway has long exported a considerable quant.i.ty of lumber, [Footnote: Railway-ties, or, as they are called in England, sleepers, are largely exported from Norway to India, and sold at Calcutta at a lower price than timber of equal quality can be obtained from the native woods.--Reports on Forest Conservancy, vol. i., pt. ii., p. 1533.

From 1861 to 1870 Norway exported annually, on the average, more than 60,000,000 cubic feet of lumber.--Wulfsberg, Norges Velstandskilder.

Christiania, 1872.] and the iron and copper works of Sweden consume charcoal very largely, the forests have not diminished rapidly enough to produce very sensible climatic or even economic evils.

At the opposite end of the scale we find Holland, Denmark, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal. In the three first-named countries a cold and humid climate renders the almost constant maintenance of domestic fires a necessity, while in Great Britain especially the demand of the various industries which depend on wood as a material, or on mechanical power derived from heat, are very great. Coal and peat serve as a combustible instead of wood in them all, and England imports an immense quant.i.ty of timber from her foreign possessions. Fortunately, the character of soil, surface, and climate renders the forest of less importance as a geographical agent in these northern regions than in Spain and Portugal, where all physical conditions concur to make a large extent of forest an almost indispensable means of industrial progress and social advancement.

Rentzsch, in fact, ascribes the political decadence of Spain almost wholly to the destruction of the forest. "Spain," observes he, "seemed destined by her position to hold dominion over the world, and this in fact she once possessed. But she has lost her political ascendancy, because, during the feeble administration of the successors of Philip II., her exhausted treasury could not furnish the means of creating new fleets, the destruction of the woods having raised the price of timber above the means of the state." [Footnote: Der Wald, p. 63. Antonio Ponz (Viage de Espana, i., prologo, p. lxiii.), says: "Nor would this be so great an evil, were not some of them declaimers against TREES, thereby proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the works of G.o.d, who gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it."

I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their woods, but the Spaniard's proverbial "hatred of a tree" is of long standing.

Herrera combats this foolish prejudice; and Ponz, in the prologue to the ninth volume of his journey, says that many carried it so far as wantonly to destroy the shade and ornamental trees planted by the munic.i.p.al authorities. "Trees," they contended, and still believe, "breed birds, and birds eat up the grain." Our author argues against the supposition of the "breeding of birds by trees," which, he says, is as absurd as to believe that an elm-tree can yield pears; and he charitably suggests that the expression is, perhaps, a maniere de dire, a popular phrase, signifying simply that trees harbor birds.] On the other hand, the same writer argues that the wealth and prosperity of modern England are in great part due to the supply of lumber, as well as of other material for ship-building, which she imports from her colonies and other countries with which she maintains commercial relations.

Forests of Great Britain.

The proportion of forest is very small in Great Britain, where, as I have said, on the one hand, a prodigious industrial activity requires a vast supply of ligneous material, but where, on the other, the abundance of coal, which furnishes a sufficiency of fuel, the facility of importation of timber from abroad, and the conditions of climate and surface combine to reduce the necessary quant.i.ty of woodland to its lowest expression.

With the exception of Russia, Denmark, and parts of Germany, no European countries can so well dispense with the forests, in their capacity of conservative influences, as England and Ireland. Their insular position and lat.i.tude secure an abundance of atmospheric moisture; the general inclination of surface is not such as to expose it to special injury from torrents, and it is probable that the most important climatic action exercised by the forest in these portions of the British empire, is in its character of a mechanical screen against the effects of wind.

The due proportion of woodland in England and Ireland is, therefore, a question not of geographical, but almost purely of economical, expediency, to be decided by the comparative direct pecuniary return from forest-growth, pasturage, and ploughland.

Contrivances for economizing fuel came later into use in the British Islands than on the Continent. Before the introduction of a system of drainage, the soil, like the sky, was, in general, charged with humidity; its natural condition was unfavorable for the construction and maintenance of substantial common roads, and the transportation of so heavy a material as coal, by land, from the remote counties where alone it was mined in the Middle Ages, was costly and difficult. For all these reasons, the consumption of wood was large, and apprehensions of the exhaustion of the forests were excited at an early period. Legislation there, as elsewhere, proved ineffectual to protect them, and many authors of the sixteenth century express fears of serious evils from the wasteful economy of the people in this respect. Harrison, in his curious chapter "Of Woods and Marishes" in Holinshed's compilation, complains of the rapid decrease of the forests, and adds: "Howbeit thus much I dare affirme, that if woods go so fast to decaie in the next hundred yeere of Grace, as they haue doone and are like to doo in this, . . . it is to be feared that the fennie bote, broome, turfe, gall, heath, firze, brakes, whinnes, ling, dies, ha.s.sacks, flags, straw, sedge, reed, rush, and also seacole, will be good merchandize euen in the citie of London, whereunto some of them euen now haue gotten readie pa.s.sage, and taken up their innes in the greatest merchants' parlours . . . . I would wish that I might liue no longer than to see foure things in this land reformed, that is: the want of discipline in the church: the couetous dealing of most of our merchants in the preferment of the commodities of other countries, and hinderance of their owne: the holding of faires and markets vpon the sundaie to be abolished and referred to the wednesdaies: and that euerie man, in whatsoeuer part of the champaine soile enioieth fortie acres of land, and vpwards, after that rate, either by free deed, copie hold, or fee farme, might plant one acre of wood, or sowe the same with oke mast, hasell, beech, and sufficient prouision be made that it may be cherished and kept. But I feare me that I should then liue too long, and so long, that I should either be wearie of the world, or the world of me." [Footnote: Holinshed, reprint of 1807, i., pp. 357, 358. It is evident from this pa.s.sage, and from another on page 397 of the same volume, that, though seacoal was largely exported to the Continent, it had not yet come into general use in England. It is a question of much interest, when mineral coal was first employed in England for fuel. I can find no evidence that it was used as a combustible until more than a century after the Norman conquest. It has been said that it was known to the Anglo-Saxon population, but I am acquainted with no pa.s.sage in the literature of that people which proves this. The dictionaries explain the Anglo-Saxon word grofa by sea-coal. I have met with this word in no Anglo-Saxon work, except in the Chronicle, A.D. 852, from a ma.n.u.script certainly not older than the 12th century, and in two citations from Anglo-Saxon charters, one published by Kemble in Codex Diplomaticus, the other by Thorpe in Diplomatarium Anglic.u.m, in all which pa.s.sages it more probably means peat than mineral coal.

According to Way, Promptorium Parrulorum, p. 506, note, the Catholicon Anglicanum has "A turfe grafte, turbarium." Grafte is here evidently the same word as the A.-S. grafa, and the Danish Torvegraf, a turf-pit, confirms this opinion. Coal is not mentioned in King Alfred's Bede, in Neckam, in Glanville or in Robert of Gloucester, though the two latter writers speak of the allied mineral, jet, and are very full in their enumeration of the mineral productions of the island. In a Latin poem ascribed to Giraldus Cambrensis, who died after the year 1220, but found also in the manuesripts of Walter Mapes (see Camden Society edition, pp.

131 and 350), and introduced into Higden's Polychronicon (London, 1865, pp. 398, 399), carbo sub terra cortice, which can mean nothing but pit-coal, is enumerated among the natural commodities of England. Some of the translations of the 13th and 14th century render carbo by cool or col, some by gold, and some omit this line, as well as others unintelligible to the translators. Hence, although Giraldus was acquainted with coal, it certainly was not generally known to English writers until at least a century after the time of that author.

The earliest mediaeval notice of mineral coal I have met with is in a pa.s.sage cited by Ducange from a doc.u.ment of the year 1198, and it is an etymological observation of some interest, that carbones ferrei, as sea-coal is called in the doc.u.ment, are said by Ducange to have been known in France by the popular name of hulla, a word evidently identical with the modern French houille and the Cornish Huel, which in the form wheal is an element in the name of many mining localities.

England was anciently remarkable for its forests, but Caesar says it wanted the f.a.gus and the abies. There can be no doubt that f.a.gus means the beech, which, as the remains in the Danish peat-mosses show, is a tree of late introduction into Denmark, where it succeeded the fir, a tree not now native to that country. The succession of forest crops seems to have been the same in England; for Harrison, p. 359, speaks of the "great store of firre" found lying "at their whole lengths" in the "fens and marises" of Lancashire and other counties, where not even bushes grew in his time. We cannot be sure what species of evergreen Caesar intended by abies. The popular designations of spike-leaved trees are always more vague and uncertain in their application than those of broad-leaved trees. PINUS, PINE, has been very loosely employed even in botanical nomenclature, and KIEFER, FICHTE, and TANNE are often confounded in German.--Rossma.s.sler, Der Wald, pp. 256, 289, 324. A similar confusion in the names of this family of trees exists in India.

Dr. Cleghorn, Inspector-General of the Indian Forests, informs us in his official Circular No. 2, that the name of deodar is applied in some provinces to a cypress, in some to a cedar, and in others to a juniper.

If it were certain that the abies of Caesar was the fir formerly and still found in peat-mosses, and that he was right in denying the existence of the beech in England in his time, the observation would be very important, because it would fix a date at which the fir had become extinct, and the beech had not yet appeared in the island.

The English oak, though strong and durable, was not considered generally suitable for finer work in the sixteenth century. There were, however, exceptions. "Of all in Ess.e.x," observes Harrison, Holinshed, i., p.

357, "that growing in Bardfield parke is the finest for ioiners craft; for oftentimes haue I seene of their workes made of that oke so fine and faire, as most of the wainescot that is brought hither out of Danske [Danzig]; for our wainescot is not made in England. Yet diuerse haue a.s.saied to deale with our okes to that end, but not with so good successe as they haue hoped, bicause the ab or iuice will not so soone be removed and cleane drawne out, which some attribute to want of time in the salt water." This pa.s.sage is also of interest as showing that soaking in salt-water, as a mode of seasoning, was practised in Harrison's time.

But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and otherwise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced at least three centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the Liber Albus mention is made of "squared oak timber," brought in from the country by carts, and of course of domestic growth, as free of city duty or octroi, and of "planks of oak" coming in in the same way as paying one plank a cart-load. But in the chapter on the "Customs of Billyngesgate," pp. 208, 209, relating to goods imported from foreign countries, an import duty of one halfpenny is imposed on every hundred of boards called "weynscotte"--a term formerly applied only to oak--and of one penny on every hundred of boards called "Rygholt." The editor explains "Rygholt" as "wood of Riga." This was doubtless pine or fir.

The year in which these provisions were made does not appear, but they belong to the reign of Henry III.]

Evelyn's "Silva," the first edition of which appeared in 1664, rendered an extremely important service to the cause of the woods, and there is no doubt that the ornamental plantations in which England far surpa.s.ses all other countries, are, in some measure, the fruit of Evelyn's enthusiasm. In England, however, arboriculture, the planting and nursing of single trees, has, until comparatively recent times, been better understood than sylviculture, the sowing and training of the forest. But this latter branch of rural improvement now receives great attention from private individuals, though, so far as I know, not from the National Government, except in the East Indian provinces, where the forestal department has a.s.sumed great importance. [Footnote: The improvidence of the population under the native and early foreign governments has produced great devastations in the forests of the British East Indian provinces, and the demands of the railways for fuel and timber have greatly augmented the consumption of lumber, and of course contributed to the destruction of the woods. The forests of British India are now, and for several years have been, under the control of an efficient governmental organization, with great advantage both to the government and to the general private interests of the people.

The official Reports on Forest Conservancy from May, 1862, to August, 1871, in 4 vols. folio, contain much statistical and practical information on all subjects connected with the administration of the forest.]

In fact, England is, I believe, the only European country where private enterprise has pursued sylviculture on a really great scale, though admirable examples have been set in many others. In England the law of primogeniture, and other inst.i.tutions and national customs which tend to keep large estates long undivided and in the same line of inheritance, the wealth of the landholders, the special adaptation of the climate to the growth of forest-trees, and the difficulty of finding safe and profitable investments of capital, combine to afford encouragements for the plantation of forests, which scarcely exist elsewhere in the same degree.

In Scotland, where the country is for the most part broken and mountainous, the general destruction of the forests has been attended with very serious evils, and it is in Scotland that many of the most extensive British forest plantations have now been formed. But although the inclination of surface in Scotland is rapid, the geological const.i.tution of the soil is not of a character to promote such destructive degradation by running water as in Southern France, and it has not to contend with the parching droughts by which the devastations of the torrents are rendered more injurious in those provinces.

It is difficult to understand how either law or public opinion, in a country occupied by a dense and intelligent population, and, comparatively speaking, with an infertile soil, can tolerate the continued withdrawal of a great portion of the territory from the cultivation of trees and from other kinds of rural economy, merely to allow wealthy individuals to amuse themselves with field-sports. In Scotland, 2,000,000 acres, as well suited to the growth of forests and for pasture as is the soil generally, are withheld from agriculture, that they may be given up to herds of deer protected by the game laws. A single n.o.bleman, for example, thus appropriates for his own pleasures not less than 100,000 acres. [Footnote: Robertson, Our Deer Forests.

London, 1867.] In this way one-tenth of all the land of Scotland is rendered valueless in an economical point of view--for the returns from the sale of the venison and other game scarcely suffice to pay the game-keepers and other incidental expenses--and in these so-called FORESTS there grows neither building timber nor fire-wood worth the cutting, as the animals destroy the young shoots.

Forests of France.

The preservation of the woods was one of the wise measures recommended to France by Sully, in the time of Henry IV., but the advice was little heeded, and the destruction of the forests went on with such alarming rapidity, that, two generations later, Colbert uttered the prediction: "France will perish for want of wood." Still, the extent of wooded soil was very great, and the evils attending its diminution were not so sensibly felt, that either the government or public opinion saw the necessity of authoritative interference, and in 1750 Mirabeau estimated the remaining forests of the kingdom at seventeen millions of hectares [42,000,000 acres]. In 1860 they were reduced to eight millions [19,769,000 acres], or at the rate of 82,000 hectares [202,600 acres]

per year. Troy, from whose valuable pamphlet, Etude sur le Rebois.e.m.e.nt des Montagnes, I take these statistical details, supposes that Mirabeau's statement may have been an extravagant one, but it still remains certain that the waste has been enormous; for it is known that, in some departments, that of Ariege, for instance, clearing has gone on during the last half-century at the rate of three thousand acres a year, and in all parts of the empire trees have been felled faster than they have grown. [Footnote: Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of extensive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact that wolves were abundant, not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are now neither wolves nor woods to shelter them.

Arthur Young more than once speaks of the "innumerable mult.i.tudes" of these animals which infested France in 1789, and George Sand states, in the Histoire de ma Vie, that some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased travellers on horseback in the southern provinces, and literally knocked at the doors of her father-in-law's country seat.

Eugenie de Guerin, writing from Rayssac in Languedoc in 1831 speaks of hearing the wolves fighting with dogs in the night under her very windows. Lettres, 2d ed., p. 6.

There seems to have been a tendency to excessive clearing in Central and Western, earlier than in South-eastern, France. Bernard Palissy, in the Recepte Veritable, first printed in 1563, thus complains: "When I consider the value of the least clump of trees, or even of thorns, I much marvel at the great ignorance of men, who, as it seemeth, do nowadays study only to break down, fell, and waste the fair forests which their forefathers did guard so choicely. I would think no evil of them for cutting down the woods, did they but replant again some part of them; but they care nought for the time to come, neither reck they of the great damage they do to their children which shall come after them."--Oeuvres Completes de Bernard Pallisy, 1844, p. 88.] The total area of France in Mirabeau's time, excluding Savoy, but including Alsace and Lorraine, was about one hundred and thirty-one millions of acres.

The extent of forest supposed by Mirabeau would be about thirty-two per cent. of the whole territory. In a country and a climate where the conservative influences of the forest are so necessary as in France, trees must cover a large surface and be grouped in large ma.s.ses, in order to discharge to the best advantage the various functions a.s.signed to them by nature. The consumption of wood is rapidly increasing in that empire, and a large part of its territory is mountainous, sterile, and otherwise such in character or situation that it can be more profitably devoted to the growth of wood than to any agricultural use. Hence it is evident that the proportion of forest in 1750, taking even Mirabeau's large estimate, was not very much too great for permanent maintenance, though doubtless the distribution was so unequal that it would have been sound policy to fell the woods and clear land in some provinces, while large forests should have been planted in others. [Footnote: The view I have taken of this point is confirmed by the careful investigation of Rentzsch, who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire surface at twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes that near the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent.

See Rentzsch's very valuable prize essay, Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der Volkswirthschaft. cap. viii.

The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the German States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any growth but that of wood, because the form and geological character of her mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and beause at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited both by extreme droughts and by deluging rains.] During the period in question France neither exported manufactured wood or rough timber, nor derived important collateral advantages of any sort from the destruction of her forests. She is consequently impoverished and crippled to the extent of the difference between what she actually possesses of wooded surface and what she ought to have retained. [Footnote: In 1863, France imported lumber to the value of twenty-five and a half millions of dollars, and exported to the amount of six and a half millions of dollars. The annual consumption of France was estimated in 1866 at 212,000,000 cubic feet for building and manufacturing, and 1,588,300,000 for firewood and charcoal. The annual product of the forest-soil of France does not exceed 70,000,000 cubic feet of wood fit for industrial use, and 1,300,000,000 cubic feet consumed as fuel. This estimate does not include the product of scattered trees on private grounds, but the consumption is estimated to exceed the production of the forests by the amount of about twenty millions of dollars. It is worth noticing that the timber for building and manufacturing produced in France comes almost wholly from the forests of the state or of the communes.--Jules Clave, in Revue des Deux Mondes for March 1, 1866, p. 207.]

The force of the various considerations which have been suggested in regard to the importance of the forest has been generally felt in France, and the subject has been amply debated special treatises, in scientific journals, and by the public press, as well as in the legislative body of that country. Perhaps no one point has been more prominent in the discussions than the influence of the forest in equalizing and regulating the flow of the water of precipitation.

Opinion is still somewhat divided on this subject, but the value of the woods as a safeguard against the ravages of torrents is universally acknowledged, and it is hardly disputed that the rise of river-floods is, even if as great, at least less sudden in streams having their sources in well-wooded territory.

Upon the whole, the conservative action of the woods in regard to torrents and to inundations has ben generally recognized by the public of France as a matter of prime importance, and the Government of the empire has made this principle the basis of a special system of legislation for the protection of existing forests, and for the formation of new. The clearing of woodland, and the organization and functions of a police for its protection, are regulated by a law bearing date June 18th, 1859, and provision was made for promoting the restoration of private woods by a statute adopted on the 28th of July, 1860. The former of these laws pa.s.sed the legislative body by a vote of 246 against 4, the latter with but a single negative voice. The influence of the Government, in a country where the throne is as potent as in France, would account for a large majority, but when it is considered that both laws, the former especially, interfere very materially with the rights of private domain, the almost entire unanimity with which they were adopted is proof of a very general popular conviction, that the protection and extension of the forests is a measure more likely than any other to arrest the devastations of the torrents and check the violence, if not to prevent the recurrence, of destructive river inundations. The law of July 28th, 1860, appropriated 10,000,000 francs, to be expended, at the rate of 1,000,000 francs per year, in executing or aiding the replanting of woods. It is computed that this appropriation--which, considering the vast importance of the subject, does not seem extravagant for a nation rich enough to be able to expend annually six hundred times that sum in the maintenance of its military establishments in times of peace--will secure the creation of new forest to the extent of about 200,000 acres, or one fourteenth part of the soil, where the restoration of the woods is thought feasible, and, at the same time, specially important as a security against the evils ascribed, in a great measure, to its destruction. [Footnote: In 1848 the Government of the so-called French Republic sold to the Bank of France 187,000 acres of public forests, and notwithstanding the zeal with which the Imperial Government had pressed the protective Iegislation of 1860, it introduced, into the Legislative a.s.sembly in 1865 a bill for the sale, and consequently destruction, of the forests of the state to the amount of one hundred million francs. The question was much debated in the a.s.sembly, and public opinion manifested itself so energetically against the measure that the ministry felt itself compelled to withdraw it. See the discussions in D'Alienation des Forets de l'Etat. Paris, 1865. The late Imperial Government sold about 170,000 acres of woodland between 1852 and 1866, both inclusive. The other Governments, since the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814, alienated more than 700,000 acres of the public forests, exclusive of sales between 1836 and 1857, which are not reported.--Annuaire des Eaux et Forets, 1872, p. 9.]

In 1865 the Legislative a.s.sembly pa.s.sed a bill amendatory of the law of 1860, providing, among other things, for securing the soil in exposed localities by grading, and by promoting the growth of gra.s.s and the formation of greensward over the surface. This has proved a most beneficial measure, and its adoption under corresponding conditions in the United States is most highly to be recommended. The leading features of the system are:

1. Marking out and securing from pasturage and all other encroachments a zone along the banks and around the head of ravines.

2. Turfing this zone, which in France accomplishes itself, if not spontaneously, at least with little aid from art.

3. Consolidation of the scarps of the ravines by grading and wattling and establishing barriers, sometimes of solid masonry, but generally of fascines or any other simple materials at hand, across the bed of the stream.

4. Cutting banquettes or narrow terraces along the scarps, and planting rows of small deciduous trees and arborescent shrubs upon them, alternating with belts of gra.s.s obtained by turfing with sods or sowing gra.s.s-seeds. Planting the banquettes and slopes with bushes, and sowing any other vegetables with tenacious roots, is also earnestly recommended. [Footnote: See a description of similar processes recommended and adopted by Mengotti, in his Idraulica, vol. ii., chap.

xvii.]

Remedies against Torrents.