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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 16, 1902)
-P ' ttO * - " " ' ' ' " : * . "llV-r'V i * ii - r " ' * - - - - - T. MWM Ai4MiUbMHMMMyHN0UMUWKdiWW4tfriMHMKEMiB9 - ---j- * ' ' " - ' ' - > * - - - - - - " * - - ! | - = W- i j nVl" o- w"vi-- * J r Conservative * ifi TREES AND CLIMATE. The Fort Worth Ecgister of January 4th contains an interview with The Conservative's good friend , John P. Brown , of which wo take pleasure in reproducing a part below : Mr. Brown has just completed an in spection of the Panhandle country at the instance of the Fort Worth and Denver railroad , and it is possible as a result of his examination of the laud that that road will fall in line with several other railroads which already have adopted the plan , and go in ex tensively for tree planting. Mr. Brown has made a life study of forestry , climate and kindred topics. The first result of his studies , and he supports his conclusions with evi dence that is most convincing , is that forests bring rain. Speaking of this particular plan , Mr. Brown said : "During the summer mouths the winds in Texas are principally from the south or southeast. They travel for hundreds of miles across hot prai ries and plains , becominc warmer and warmer until by the time they get up to Kansas and Missouri and even in Oklahoma and Indian Territory they are so hot that they wither vegetation. They become in fact , siroccos , just like those of the Mediterranean. "Now , if there were stretches of timber at intervals , the winds would be tempered long before they reached the north , and , of course would , as a matter of fact , never get hot enough to do damage even in Texas. In the first place these timber belts would cause rain. The winds , striking a belt of timber , would bo lifted and cooled , and when they came down again in stead of withering plant life , would create a climate just right for the growth of food stxiffs. "Tree planting has been tried at many places in the west , and where it lias failed , the failure , I have found on investigation , to be due to the use of the wrong species of trees. Farm ers in the panhandle , for instance , might find the cottouwood growing along the streams and think that that was the species with which to conduct tneir experiments. The cottonwood will grow along the margins of streams , but when you take it away from the water its life is doubtful. Trees with soft , large roots are the kind that must be used. Catalpa and many other kinds of trees will do. The railroads are planting catalpa be cause the wood from this tree makes fine railroad ties. But there are many kinds of fruit and nut trees that would grow in the Panhandle. "A great work is before the Ameri can people in replacing the forests ruthlessly wiped out in the last huri- dred years. There has been a greater destruction of forests in the Occident in thelast century than there was in the Orient during the thirty centuries preceding , and yet , laboring only with their axes on the mountains of Canaan , the Sidonians in six centuries , during which their fame as timber dealers continued , robbed the land of the forests that made it fertile. When the forests were gone , the famines came. The land became arid. "Wo may readily trace the gradual change which took place in climatic conditions as the forests wore removed from the mountain slopes all along the Mediterranean coast , as well as the Libanus and Taurus mountains , re sulting in agricultural disturbances , drouths , 'famines , pestilence and ulti mately in total barrenness from cessa tion of rainfall ; then the dispersion of the people became a necessity. As the lands increased in aridity the soil refused its harvest ; Judea and Israel were diminished in numbers , impaired in spirit and easily subdued by one after another of the nations which had long desired this historic land. "The Sidonians furnished the lum ber from which King Solomon built his temple which he called 'The house of the forest of Lebanon' because it was constructed chiefly of cedar from the mountains of the Lebanon. The Sidoniaus built Solomon's navy. " Dean Stanley says : 'For miles and miles in Palestine there is no ap pearance of present life or habitation except the occasional goat herd. The brooks of the land are mostly now wadys or dry beds where once flowed considerable streams. ' ' ' Yet look what it once was. Solo mon employed 158,000 laborers for twenty years building his various re ligious and state buildings. All this time he kept a standing army of half a million men. Forty thousand stalls of horses wore provided for his chari ots , together with 12,000 men. All nations from Mediterranean to Eu phrates acknowledged his sovereignty. "To support a population so dense required an exceptionally fertile soil , intense cultivation with a regular and abundant rainfall. The land , cultiva ted as in gardens , produced wheat , barley and all manner of fruits ; the hill-sides were terraced and planted with grapes , pomegranates"olives and figs , horticulture being one of the arts which was thoroughly understood and practiced by the children of Israel. "The abundant agricultural resour ces of the kingdom may be bettor real ized as wo read that 820 , OOO'bushels of grain were annually sent to pay the Sidonians , who were making lumber for the Israelites , while a million gallons each of wine and oil were also sent for the same purpose , year by yearfor twenty years. The Ohio Valley. * "Now let * us jump some centuries n \t and show that the same thing that happened to Palestine is happening to the United States only much more rapidly , because our forest fires and great mills make away with lum ber much more swiftly than did the axes of the Sidonians. Let us tnkp the hills of the Ohio valley. My homo is up there. Those hills within the memory of thousands of citizens were heavily timbered , affording protection and fertility to numerous lower fields. They were rich with the mould of a thousand years' accumulation and for a time were extremely fertile ; wheat , corn , potatoes , timothy hay and other farm crops were grown upon their rich , fresh soils for years. ' ' What cargoes of farm produce did these hills and slopes supply , as year after year many' flatboats tied up at the various landings to bear away to southern plantations ? How are they now ? Rocks of loose limestone thick ly cover many of the hillside fields , while others , embedded in the hard stiff clay , torment the husbandman who must plow their surface. ' ' How long will America continue to feed the world from her now inex haustible granaries , after the forests are destroyed and climatic changes such as have. devastated the lauds of the Orient shall have completed their work in the Occident ? "The world has had distinguished philosophers whoso names will be chronicled with high honor so long as history and civilization exist , who adopted theories and evolved hypoth eses , based upon the knowledge pos sessed during their ago of the world , which in the light of later discoveries have proven false , and in many cases ridiculous. Notably before the laws of gravitation were known' , and while the earth was yet flat , and rested up on impossible animals. Yet they wore quite as firm in their belief as some of our philosophers , who , because they cannot understand , assert that forests have no effect upon climate , that forests cannot attract clouds be cause leaves expire moisture. Yet that is just what forest masses do , concentrate moisture already in the atmosphere and cause its precipitation upon the earth. "An illustration of forest influence upon cloud distribution is found in the Danish Island of St. Croix , one of the lesser Antilles , which group of islands form a regular crescent from Porto Rico southward to Venezuela , and all are wooded except St. Oroix , from which the forests have been removed. This island lies twenty miles south of St. Thomas , and without the regular crescent of the group. The clouds fol low the trend of the forest covered islands and rains are frequent , but St. ( Jroix suffers severely from drouth , as the clouds are attracted from it