"LOOK AFTER YOUR TREES,"

Otago Witness, Issue 1058, 9 March 1872, Page 4

"LOOK AFTER YOUR TREES,"

(Pall Mall Gazette.)

The famine in Persia — a calamity which threatens to extinguish the whole nation —is attributed by the Nation to the absence of timber. The great States which once filled the valley of the Euphrates have ceased to exist, and extinction is & fate which has for centuries beera threatening some modern States. Spain), for- instance. Man has stripped the wail of trees ; the absence of trees has broixg&itr droughts ; droughts have slowly diminishedl the productive powers of the ground, anoT finally destroyed them, the population in the meantime dwindling in numbers and vitality. Spain had forty millions of people in the time of the Romans, and flowed with milk and honey ; it is now an arid region, only half of it is under cultivation, with only sixteen millions of inhabitants, and if modern science had not come to its aid would probably go the way of Babylon. Persia was one of the moat powerful Slates of antiquity, and even in the fourteenth century was able to support the army of Tamerlane, who marched without commissariat or baggage during a bloody contest. It is now almost a wilderness, with a population of two millions — about half of them nomads — which is rapidly perishing from famine brought on by three years' drought.. Theworst of it is that, owing to the absenceof either common roads or railroads, it. seems to be impossible for the charity of w the rest of the world to reach the suffereia, so that there is really a strong prospect of the depopulation of the country. The moral of this horrible story is — look after your trees, The Nation hopes that before long some organised attempt will be made in America to deal with this momentous question of forest preservation, which is daily becoming more pressing. Zoroaster, the great Persian legislator, was wiser than he knew when he put planting a tree among the most meritorious of acts. st