MCLEAN, J. 
 
 Treatise on the origin of 
 destructive insect plagues. 
 

 GEORGE C. HUSMANN 
 
 COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE 
 DAVIS, CALIFORNIA 
 
6 
 
 ol tYv e tree WERE for the h ea .li n . 
 REVELATION 22. 2. 
 
 * 
 
 Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonce voluntatis. 
 
 TME^TISE 
 
 Dn the Origin of Destructive Insect Flagnss and 
 
 ImprovEments in the Art of their Eradication 
 
 and FrEvention. From a MBtErEological 
 
 and Hygisnic Basis, Revissd and TE- 
 
 writtEn in San Francisco, California; 
 
 U, S, a,, in April; 1LBB3, 
 
 under the auspices of 
 
 rrt ~cir "Tj" 1 "THr^iTCr ~\7t7~ "P^T" HPT" ""PT" A TT* T^ 
 l r~i n j JljLV^J.N . VV _ _TTj_- _dl_. -F3 A_ r<j i 
 
 Attorney-General of the State of California, and author of the famous " Contagious Fruit Trees Ac 1 ," etc 
 
 BY 
 
 MEDICAL ORCHARDIST 
 (For twenty years Senior Inspector of Forests and Agricultural Settlement in Victoria, Australia.) 
 
 Respectfully Dedicated to the Founder of "Arbor Day" 
 
 THE HON. /. STERLING MORTON, 
 
 United States Minister of Agriculture. 
 
 WORDS OF WISDOM: 
 
 " The strong man who, in the confidence of sturdy health, courts the sternest activities of life 
 and rejoices in the hardihood of constant labor, may still have lurking near his vitals unheeded disease 
 that dooms him to sudden collapse." PRESIDENT CLEVELAND, (March 4th, 1893) 
 
 Letters Patent | 
 applied for \ 
 
 AMERICAN ADDRESS, 
 
 Price 25 cents 
 
 CARE 
 
 NCICO, CAL. 
 
 Printed for the Publisher by McCormick J&4p.4ijBkHgfl^nY Street, San Francisco, Cal., June, 1893. 
 
 COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 As " there is no new thing under the sun," and being conscioi 
 of my inability to do otherwise than feebly verify that fact, I ha~\ 
 ventured to adopt the following philosophic lines penned by L,ESS i NG '< 
 a preface to this somewhat necessarily fragmentary treatise : " Hvei 
 man has his own style, as he has his own nose, and it is neither poli 
 nor Christian to rally an honest man about his nose however singul; 
 it may be. How can I help it that my style is not different ? Th; 
 there is no affectation in it I am certain." 
 
 San Francisco, June, 1893. 
 
THE 
 
 ORIGIN OF DESTRUCTIVE INSECT PLAGUES 
 
 AND 
 
 GENERAL ATMOSPHERIC TROUBLES. 
 
 HOW DISCOVERED. 
 
 REMEDY. 
 
 ETC. 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF OBSCURE TRUTHS. 
 
 The African savage when he takes off his fur kaross is familiar with 
 the electric sparks which corn6 from it; but he views them with the eye 
 of an ox, and thinks nothing more about them. The American Indian, 
 in the dry climate of the United States, must constantly have seen these 
 sparks, but never dreamed of making Franklin's experiment by bringing 
 them down from a thunder-storm and showing that they were identical 
 with lightning. The science of electricity and all scientific conceptions 
 arise only when culture develops the human mind and compels it to give 
 a rational account of the world in which man " lives and moves and has 
 his being." One hundred and twenty years before the Christian era, 
 Hero, a renowned mechanician of Alexandria, Egypt, discovered the 
 power of steam when confined in a closed vessel, and he invented the 
 " selopile," a machine whose arms were propelled by the reaction of 
 issuing jets of steam. It was only an ingenious toy, but it contained 
 < the promise and potency" of the remarkable motor which twenty cen- 
 turies later re-invented by Papin and Savery, finally received its finishing 
 touches from the fertile brain and cunning hand of my illustrious coun- 
 tryman and townsman, James Watt, who left the steam engine the prac- 
 tically perfected machine of to-day, for whenever improvements have 
 been made they have been on lines laid down by Watt. In like manner 
 the illimitable store house of nature the fountain of all benificent ideas 
 has been from time to time explored by the agency of simple " ingenious 
 toys," etc. Sir Isaac Newton, for example, when playing as a little boy on 
 the bank of a favorite stream was led to perceive the hitherto unnoticed, 
 though immutable, law of attraction and repulsion by the agency of sun- 
 dry little globules of water gambolling in detached particles as they were 
 propelled from the adjacent bubbling brook; how that globules of equal 
 proportions were repellant to each other, whilst the smaller or more nega- 
 tive were attracted to and absorbed by the larger or more positive. It 
 should be needless in these enlightened times by any special reasonings 
 to affirm that this now universally recognized law intimately applies to 
 the whole of organic nature. Man, for instance, who is but a migratory 
 tree or shrub becomes, from various preventable causes, mentally and 
 physically enfeebled, and is in consequence, as are all manner of plants 
 susceptible to attacks from 
 
"THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 MINUTE FUNGACIOUS ORGANISMS. 
 
 Professor Carl von Nacgeli, in his work on The 
 Organisms in relation to Infectious Diseases ^i 
 declares that the decompositions effected by the mould fung ^m 
 decay or consumption. Under their influence for instance 
 putrify, or wood is converted into mould by a kind of slow combustion of 
 uruanic substances. The decompositions to which the sprouting fi 
 saccharomyces gives rise, are these of fermentation By their age 
 6uar is converted into alcohol and carbonic acid. The infectious princi- 
 ples of septic diseases (that which promotes the putrifaction of orgam 
 bodies) manifest themselves through putridity, originated again by pe 
 culiar luugi, which may be the bearers of a separate putrid matter also. 
 The atmosphere is the medium through the agency of which infectious- 
 germs are most generally disseminated after they have been reduced to a 
 state of minute dust by desecation." Other eminent scientists and nu- 
 merous observing laymen are hourly verifying the above affirmation as. 
 they become more familiar with 
 
 THE CHEMISTRY OF CREATION. 
 
 Prof essor Ellis, F.L.S., in his standard work on the "Chemistry of 
 Creation," (folio 162) states : " Insects, fish, lichens, infusorial animal- 
 cules, volcanic ashes, sand, earth, and many other substances are occa- 
 sionally borne into the air by the action of rapidly revolving currents, 
 and are dropped often at a great distance from the places whence they 
 were snatched." And concerning our long pitiable ignorance regarding the 
 composition and functions of the air we breathe, Professor Ellis declares- 
 (folio 130) " until the middle of the eighteenth century the opinion was 
 very prevalent that the atmosphere formed one of the four elementary 
 bodies; that it was in fact a simple, undecomposable gas. It was re- 
 served for the talented Dr. Priestly to dispel this error. He discovered 
 the existence of a new gas which formed one of the constituents of air. 
 In this gas it was found that combustion took place with extraordinary 
 intensity; even iron wire heated red-hot and plunged into it caught fire 
 and burnt away. Other combustibles gave out showers of the most bril- 
 liant sparks and produced the most intense heat when placed in the jar 
 containing it. A lighted taper having been blown out immediately re- 
 kindled when put into it and blazed with much greater brilliancy than in 
 the air. Another gas was also found to form a component of the air 
 namely, nitrogen. The former being oxygen. The writer proceeds to 
 state that " animals were exhilarated when plunged into oxygen, and 
 they were suffocated in nitrogen. " A never failing spring of oxygen 
 exists," continues Prof. Ellis, '* and its copious streams, by a nice adjust- 
 ment, replace by far the greater part of the loss. In the green grass, in 
 the leaves of unpretending herbs and in those of the clustering woods, 
 we shall find are hid those springs of this precious ingredient, without 
 which desolation and death might at no distant time gradually overwhelm the 
 globe." Prof. Ellis further states (folio 238) that the carbonic acid pois- 
 ons which destroy animal life and provide sustenance for disease germs, 
 are furnished to the air by various processes of combustion, respiration, 
 putrifaction, and from volcanic craters, etc., which constitute the true 
 source of vegetable nutrition. The composition when in a normal con- 
 ilition being, Carbon . . 27:27. Oxygen . . 72.73: " Each 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 5 
 
 Hundred parts of carbonic acid contains by weight 27 J parts of carbon; 
 if, therefore, we could remove the oxygeu (which we have not a little 
 done and still continue to do by our suicidal destruction of " clustering 
 woods" all over the earth) " carbon is left." Yes, carbon, like the poor, 
 "" ye have always with you." 
 
 FOREST INFLUENCE IN GAI/LJLEE. 
 
 " There was a time," declared an able writer in the New York Herald 
 of July 12th, 1891, " when every acre of G-allilee not under pasturage 
 was verdant with the foliage of trees. "When the trees re-appear, as they 
 might in a few years, Gallilee alone would be capable of maintaining an 
 immense population in rich abundance." The above paragraph from an 
 article on the probable return of the still scattered Jews to Palestine 
 speaks volumes. Palestine, like all other parts of this earth, has been 
 transformed into a barren destructive-insect and storm-breeding Sahara 
 since the forest lungs were destroyed, and deny it who may the only 
 possible remedy to restore the earth's atmospheric equilibrium there and 
 -elsewhere is to forthwith replant and properly protect our forests. On 
 this momentous question I must now solicit the readers special attention. 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 The order of creation or evolution upon the globe shows clearly how very 
 closely related every atom in and upon it is to each other. In each phase 
 of being the manifestation of that period that then was was apparently 
 independent of that which was to follow, but when that which was to 
 follow made its appearance it found itself dependent upon everything 
 which had preceded it or by which it was surrounded. Our dependence 
 upon creatures in a lower stage of development admonished us to protect 
 and nourish them in return to "replenish the earth and subdue it." 
 Surely, if words have any meaning at all, we cannot be blind to the ob- 
 vious signification of the replenishing condition. What is replenish but 
 to fill up again? If, according to the commonly received opinion among 
 the churches, Adam and Eve were the first human beings placed upon 
 the earth, it would be the height of absurdity to talk of them replenish- 
 ing the globe by means of their offspring. You cannot fill again that 
 which has never been full, but has always been empty before. If you set 
 a savory dish and a clean plate before a guest you do not say to him, be- 
 fore he has touched the former, " Replenish your plate," but you may do 
 so after he has filled it and eaten its contents. In that case we should 
 be greatly surprised and vexed if, after satisfying his hunger, he should 
 dash the plate to atoms on the floor and fling away the rest of the food 
 out of the dish. Nevertheless, this is what we have all been doing for 
 many centuries past, with respect to the earth, which was confided to our 
 care to keep it and to dress it for each others unstinted happiness. In- 
 stead of replenishing it, instead of cultivating it in such a manner as that 
 its fertility and productiveness should not only undergo no dimunition at 
 our hands, but should go on increasing from age to age, we have defaced, 
 deformed and devasted it. We have not been faithful stewards and hon- 
 est husbandmen, but wasters and spoilers. We have desolated what we 
 should have rendered still more fruitful and beautiful. In the impressive 
 words of the Roman historian, " We have made a solitude and have 
 called it peace." We have created a desert and charged the conse- 
 quences of our own malignity upon God. Instead of causing the wilder- 
 
6 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 ness to blossom as the rose we have saturated the vineyards and orchard a 
 and harvest fields of some of the fairest portions of the globe with the 
 red reign of ferocious warfare. We have felled the venerable forests, in 
 whose green aisles myriads of winged choristers made blithest rnusi 
 from morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve; we have disrobed the 
 mountains of their glorious atmospheric enriching foliage, and have 
 transformed perennial springs into intsrmitteut and terribly destructive 
 torrents; we have exterminated whole species of quadrupeds of birds and 
 fishes; we have introduced the utmost discord, derangement and disorder 
 into the otherwise faultless harmony of nature; and we have torn from 
 the bowels of the earth the precious metals which minister to our cupid- 
 ity, and the minerals with which we decorate our persons in the spirit of 
 the savage still surviving in us, leaving yawning carbon supplying shafts 
 and caverns as pitfalls for all other comers. We have " smitten the earth 
 with a curse/' aud that gentle, patient motlier mourns and suffers by 
 reason of the atrocious cruelty of her offspring, sprung from her womb 
 and nourished every instant of our lives from her bosom, our crimes to- 
 wards her are those of matricides. We never think for a single iustant 
 that if her bounty were suspended if she were to cease to elaborate 
 within her fruitful breasts the sustenance essential to the continuance of 
 our vital functions, the whole of the human race would disappear and 
 our globe would be as sterile as Sahara or the Polar ice, and " unless 
 these days were shortened," some such a calamity would certainly occur, 
 because never before in the history of the human race has the work of 
 devastation proceeded with such frightful velocity and the consequent 
 yearly increase of atmospheric troubles; never before has man been 
 armed with such potent instruments of destruction; never before were 
 these employed simultaneously in the five great divisions of the globe; 
 never before had the restless spirit of " civilized" man and the various 
 appliances by land and sea enabled him to penetrate into the heart of the 
 African, the two American and the Australian continents, and to leave no- 
 island unpolluted by his defiling foot, no race of " savages" untainted by 
 his deadly disorders. All the diseases with which the life upon and 
 through the earth's surface teams, blight and murrain, plague, fire, flood, 
 blizzard, earthquake and famine, all the unnatural disorders, confusion 
 and turbulence of the elements, all the ravages attributable to draught 
 and hurricane; all the contaminations of the atmosphere and the pollu- 
 tion of the streams and water-courses, are the work of the civilized races. 
 We are reaping what we have sown, we are suffering the righteous pen- 
 alties of our own misdeeds in earlier times. When we survey the 
 melancholy ruins of cities that were once vast and populous, rising in 
 dreary masses of shattered and unsightly masonry out of billowy hillocks- 
 of sand, in the midst of arid and sterile plains, and remember that these 
 places were once surrounded by golden corn-fields and leafy groves, and 
 gardens that were bright and fragrant with a tapestry of flowers and 
 choicest of fruits encircled with umbrageous forests in which the deer 
 broused, and choirs of feathered songsters made music by day and night; 
 and that noble rivers, which have entirely disappeared, wound their way 
 in coils of glittering silver through grassy valleys, which afforded pastur- 
 age to countless herds of sheep and cattle, we might well shudder at the 
 thought that the crime of having wrought this cruel transformation is 
 chargeable, not upon a race which has passed away from or out of the 
 globe, but upon ourselves. The generation is unchanged ! The same 
 evil and destructive minds, grown more evil and destructive by reason of 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE^NATIONS." 7 
 
 their maturity, are all here now, and they are repeating to-day in a much 
 more vicious form the very acts of devastation which they performed in 
 other parts one, two, three, four and five thousand years ago, when Jacob 
 gathered his sons together in order that instructed by God he might 
 tell them what should befall them "in the latter days," To what does any 
 sane man imagine the Moat High to refer to but the last incarnations of 
 the twelve who were all gathered around Jesus 1800 years afterwards, and 
 who are all in the flesh at this moment ? For they had been with 'Him 
 " from the beginning" of time, and will be so at the end. 
 
 "THAT WHICH HATH BEEN is NOW." 
 
 Indeed the very identity of human actions in all ages, and in all 
 countries should suffice to convince those who have any understanding 
 that the same spirit of disobedience have been operating throughout. 
 Once we ravaged and desolated a portion only of the surface of the globe; 
 now we ar making haste to ruin the whole. Look at what we have done 
 by the wholesale denudation of forests all over the earth. Some of the 
 great lakes of Europe and Asia are gradually drying up, because the loss 
 by natural evaporation is no longer compensated for by the influx of tribu- 
 tary rivers; the volume of these being sensibly diminished by the destruction 
 of woods in those regions in which they have their source.* Thus, the level 
 of the Caspean Sea, we learn, is 83 feet lower than that of the Sea of Azoff, 
 and the surface of the Lake Aral is fast sinking. Twenty years ago it 
 was shown that very large portions of the Ligurian province of Italy, i. e., 
 the Genoese territory, had been washed away or rendered incapable of 
 cultivation in consequence of the felling of the woods. In Lombardy the 
 demolition of the forests on the Appenines has led to the most disastrous 
 results. The sirrocco now prevails on the right bank of the Po, injuring 
 the harvest, crops and vineyards; while the blasts of wind, which sweep 
 across the country from the south and south-west, now assume the violence 
 of hurricanes, and whole valleys are periodically visited with terrible in- 
 undations. In the district of Mugello all the mulberry trees have been 
 destroyed with the exception of those which were indebted to neighboring 
 buildings for a protection like that formerly afforded by the forests. 
 North of the Alps we find the cultivation of the orange and many other 
 fruits has had to be abandoned in certain situations on account of the late 
 spring frosts, which were unknown until the mountain ranges had been 
 stripped of their timber. Thirty years have sufficed to bring about these 
 climatic disturbances in the French Department of Ardeche, as also in 
 the plains of Alsace, where a much more genial temperature prevailed, as 
 in the United States of America and Australia, before the neighboring 
 forests were cut down. In Sweeden it has been observed that the spring 
 commences a fortnight later in these districts in which the woods had 
 been demolished than it did in the last century. 
 
 France has suffered to an immense extent by the de-foresting process. 
 In one department alone, that of La Brieime, 200,000 acres which were 
 once covered with woods interspersed with pastures are now bare of tim- 
 ber, and have been converted into a dreary and malarious expanse of pools 
 and marshes. The same thing has happened on a larger scale in La 
 Sologne, where as much as 1,000,000 acres of land that were well wooded, 
 well drained, and productive, are now barren and desolate. This deplor- 
 able state of things is explained by a fact familiar to every forester, name- 
 ly, that, trees are instruments of drainage. Their roots often pierce 
 
8 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE WCTS FOR TUB HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 through subsoil almost and in many instances quite 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 down- 
 wards into more porus strata, or is received by subterranean canals or 
 reservoirs. When the forest is felled the roots perish and decay, the 
 orifices opened by them are soon obstructed and the water having satur- 
 ated the vegetable earth-mould stagnates and transforms it into ponds 
 and disease-germ breeding morasses. 
 
 In M. Marchand's excellent work, entitled "Les lorrents des Alpes et le 
 Paturage" is the following passage descriptive of what is now going on 
 in the civilized world: " Unhappily, man, improvident and avaricious, 
 has frequently destroyed tLe forests that he .may thereby get possession 
 of the soil. He has substituted for them pasture grounds, often ill 
 maintained. With the ruin of the soil begins that of the people. The 
 more unhappy they are, the more selfish do they become (and the converse 
 of the proposition holds equally good) and the more they destroy, so that 
 from the time evil begins it cannot but go on increasing." 
 
 BOUSSINGAULT. 
 
 Boussingault speaks of the two lakes near Ubate in New Grenada, which 
 a century ago formed but one. When he visited them he found the waters 
 gradually retiring, and vegetation encroaching on the abandoned bed. 
 The enquiries which he instituted, satisfied him that the circumstances 
 were attributable to the extensive clearings which were going on all around 
 it. In the same valley he ascertained that the length of the lake Fuquene 
 had been reduced in five centuries, from ten leagues to one and a half, 
 and its breadth from three leagues to one. At the former period the 
 neighboring mountains were well wooded, but at the time of his visit they 
 had been almost entirely stripped. 
 
 HUMBOLDT. 
 
 That close observer, Alexander Von Humboldt, noticed the same thing 
 in regard to the Lake of Valencia which had been diminished from year 
 to year because the loss by evaporation is not made good by precipitation. 
 So rapidly had this been proceeding that some people imagined the lake 
 must have a subteranean outlet; but Humboldt clearly perceived and has 
 lucidly explained the cause: " By felling the trees which cover the tops 
 and sides of mountains he observes " men in every climate prepare at 
 oace, two calamities for future generations, want of fuel and scarcity of 
 water. Trees by the nature of their perspiration and the radiation from 
 their leaves in a sky without clouds as in the regions of which he was 
 writing surround themselves with an atmosphere constantly cold and 
 misty. They aft'ect the copiousness of springs, not as was long believed 
 by a peculiar attraction for the vapors diffused through the air, but be- 
 cause by sheltering the soil from the direct action of the sun they diminish 
 the evaporation of water produced by rain. When forests are destroyed 
 as they are everywhere in America by European planters, with imprudent 
 precipitancy, the springs are entirely dried up, or become less abundant. 
 The beds of the rivers remaining dry during a part of the year, are con- 
 verted into torrents wherever great rains fall on the heights. Hence, it 
 results that the clearing of forests, the want of permanent springs and the 
 existence of torrents are three phenomena closely connected together." 
 Humboldt might safely have added another and equally serious phenomena 
 namely, a foul destructive insect pest breeding atmosphere. 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 9 
 
 REBOISEMENT IN FRANCE. 
 
 Dr. Brown's valuable work on " Reboisement in France," which con- 
 tains the essence of many previous books on the same subject, and notably 
 that of M. Surell's " Etude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes" deals ex- 
 clusively with the causes, consequences and correctives of the Alpine tor- 
 rents; proves that man is responsible for them, exhibits their appalling 
 effects, and describes what measures have been or ought to be taken, to 
 check the growth of this terrible evil. Dr. Brown, page 46, alludes to 
 the torrent producing cause as follows: " Seeing then a very remarkable 
 double fact; everywhere where there are recent torrents, there are no more 
 forests; and wherever the soil has been stripped of wood, recent torrents 
 have been formed; so that the same eyes which have seen the forests felled 
 on the slope of a mountain, have there seen incontinently a multitude of 
 torrents. The whole population of this country (the sub-Alpine region) 
 may be summoned to bear testimony to these remarks. There is not a 
 commune where one may not hear from old men, that on such a hillside 
 now naked and devoured by the waters there have been formerly tine 
 forests standing, without a torrent." Nothing can be simpler than the 
 relationship of cause and effect in this case. 
 
 A FEW OF THE FRUITS FROM WHOLESALE FOREST DESTRUCTION. 
 
 A little over two years ago the following appalling particulars appeared 
 under the heading of " The Unfortunate States" in the London Evening 
 Standard, and reappeared in the Melbourne (Australk) Daily Telegraph 
 of September 20th, 1890 : 
 
 " The United States are at present suffering from a varied series of calamities. 
 Daring tbe last few months cyclones have again and again swept over broad acres 
 of the country, and now within the space of four and twenty hours earthquakes, 
 rainstorms and tornadoes have been doing their worst to make many parts of the 
 country, from New York to the Rocky Mountains, less endurable than ever. . 
 
 . The torrents ot rain commenced, no doubt, with the tornadoes, which 
 have, however, been more destructive, while the latter have not, it seems, extend- 
 ed over so wide an extent as u^ual. Tlie most aggravating feature about these 
 great wind-storms is that by no possible contrivance can they be either lessened 
 in violence or their effects diminished by one iota. On the contrary, as time 
 advances and the country gets more thickly settled (on deforested soil] their 
 destructiveness mutt necessarily become greater (the italics are mine). All 
 that science is likely to ascertain regarding their origin, nature and progress, have 
 been already garnered into ample repertories of American ineterology, and 
 though, thanks to the recent researches of Farrell, Davis and Hogan, the theory 
 of the cyclone and tornado is now almost perfect. This perfection affords no hope 
 of the future bringing any relief to the sorely-tried dwellers in the western States. 
 The many peculiarities of the American climate are due to the unique position of 
 the new world, and especially of the United States, in being placed between two 
 oceans, and bounded on the south by a tropical sea like the Gulf of Mexico, and 
 on the north by the eternal ice of the Polar ocean. Its breadth is also productive 
 of inconvenient consequences, thus while the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the Con- 
 tinent are, so far as they can be reached by the moist breezes from either ocean in 
 the enjoyment of a plentiful rainfall, the central region of the prairies is dry and 
 arid for the greater part of the year, extremely cold in winter, and more than 
 usually warm in summer. The latter circumstance, to a large ' extent, accounts 
 for this section of the United States being the scene of the violejit rainstorms and 
 wniilwincls which have of late years attracted more and more attention owing to 
 their frequency and the loss they cause to life and property. Earthquakes, though 
 by no means rare in the Mississippi valley, are neither so numerous or so violent 
 as in California. Whirlwinds are common features of every dry hot region, being 
 
10 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 due to a disturbance in the equilibrium of the atmosphere by the excessive rare- 
 fraction of the air at one particular spot with the sudden inrush from several direc- 
 tions to fill up the vacuity thus caused ; of these the sand-pillars of the Asiatic and 
 African deserts are the most striking concomitants, while at sea the water spouts 
 form the equivalent of the sand pillars which are the materialized bases ot the 
 "afreets" of the Oriental mythology upon the land. 
 
 "The revolving of circular storms variously known as cyclones, tornadoes ^and 
 hurricanes are in some respect different from these. Indeed, though a cycione 
 and a tornado are in ordinary parlance considered synonymous terms, they are 
 metereologically distinguished by various points, special to each of them. _ Thus, 
 though a cyclone is generally understood to be a storm of extraordinary violence, 
 it must be remembered that the gentlest inflow of the air to fill up a vacuum is in 
 kind, if not in degree, identical with the wildest hurricane which levels everything 
 in its tract, but still they differ in some minor characteristics. Thus the great 
 circular storms which destroy such enormous masses of property, and often so 
 many lives, are confined to certain areas, none of which are on the equator as y.t. 
 In America, the Mississippi valley particularly, the broad strip from western 
 Ohio to Colorado is the district which suffers most," (every other State now, 1893,. 
 more or less participates in the climatic disturbances) "and though not confined 
 to any period of the year, the storms are most frequent in April, May, June and 
 July, and on the afternoons of the days rendered memorable by their occurrence. 
 The ordinary whirlwind is to be traced to a thin layer of heat, and therefore at- 
 tenuated air next the ground, which is, however, of top small an extent to pre- 
 cipitate any powerful movement of the atmosphere in its upward whirling. The 
 tornado, which on the other hand, is due (so Farrell, the latest of the tornado in- 
 vestigators, says) to a thick layer of hot, moist air between the earth and the 
 denser upper atmosphere in rising is cooled by expansion, 0nd the invisible vapor 
 with which it is laden condensed, thus liberating a large amount of latent heat."" 
 (Only from deforested and prairie lands). "Tnis latent heat still further rarefies 
 the current of ascending air rushing in on all sides to fill up the vacuum thus cre- 
 ated. In this manner the layer of heated air, owing to its great thickness, causes 
 in its upward movement a correspondingly violent disturbance of the atmospheric 
 equilibrium." (Blind indeed must we be to overlook the fact that a terribly des- 
 tructive " thick layer of hot, moist air between the earth and the denser upper 
 atmosphere," could not exist were the earth's forest lungs thoroughly restored and 
 properly sustained in and around those severely afflicted parts, as the primary hot 
 moist air creating cause would then be greatly diminished besides providing abun- 
 dant leafy absorbing reservoirs to profitably entertain all such vacuum forming 
 air). "But," continues the writer, "whether the storm is the comprehensive 
 cyclone or the narrower but fiercer variety of it, known as the tornado, it is diffi- 
 cult to differentiate between the damage done by the one and that which follows 
 in the train of the other. Little warning is accorded the ill-fated settler of the ap- 
 proach of the winged monster whose appearance drives away every thought save 
 that of flight to some underground cavern" a nice prospect for agriculturists 
 "since few ordinary buildings are strong enough to resist the full impetus of such 
 a wind. Dark and threatening clouds appear in the west, and a lurid or greenish 
 tinge suffuses the sky in the same quarter towards the south, clouds of dust soon 
 follow, concealing the funnel-shaped ckmd in the rear, then, as the tornado nears, 
 an indescribable loud roar is heard. The bellowing of a million of mad bulls and 
 the roar of ten thousand trains have been among the similes suggested, though, 
 perhaps, a continuous roar or rumble of thunder may best describe this dismal 
 forerunner of the storm. But the observer has little time for reverie. In a few 
 moments the funnel-shaped cloud itself follows like a great balloon, sweeping the 
 neck round and round with terrible fury ana destroying everything in its track. 
 In three or four minutes it has passed by, but in that short space of time the 
 staunchest houses of brick and stone have been demolished, and sorrow ard ruin 
 spread all along the path. Indeed, so narrow is this track that in the great tor- 
 nado of last March (1890) the wind in many instances mowed a swath for itself, 
 levelling every building or object in the direct route, but leaving whole or partly 
 uninjured those on either side of the mad rusb. Men, women and children, 
 sheep, cattle, pigs and horses are carried off their feet, and even borue on the 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 11 
 
 wings of the wind for a considerable distance in spite of their lying prone on the 
 ground or clinging to what seemed stationary objects ; railway- trains were over- 
 turned and swept off the line ; steamboats sunk in the rivers, and large wooden 
 structures lifted up bodily and carried off several yards from the place where a 
 minute earlier they appeared as if immovable. Owing to the sudden decrease in 
 the pressure of the outer air, the atmosphere within the walls of the house in the 
 course of the storm, acts against the sides of the structure, so that buildings which 
 might otherwise brave the blast are exploded as if a spark had been applied to a 
 roornfull of gunpowder. Fowls have been known to be stripped of their feathers, 
 little streams emptied of their water, r eavy iron chains blown through the air,, 
 nails driven head-first into planks, stalks of Indian corn shot through a door, large 
 beams tossed with such impetus that they penetrated the earth a foot or more, 
 and in India" (where similar visitations are experienced from a similar cause) "a 
 case is on record in which a bamboo was actually propelled through a mud wall 
 five feet thick with a force equal to that of a cannon discharging a 6 Ib ball." 
 
 ALARMING DISPATCHES TO THE S. F. EXAMINER, 1893. 
 
 ATLANTA, (Ga.), March 4. Georgia was visited by a cyclone last night 
 the reports from which indicate great loss of life and immense destruction of prop- 
 erty. The town of Greenville, having 1,000 inhabitants, was swept out of existence 
 with, however, the loss of but one life. A small town called The Rock, a few 
 miles off, fared worse, as five lives were lost there. Near Barnesville the cyclone 
 dipped to the ground again, and three more people were killed. In East Missis- 
 sippi the storm seemed to have done great damage, completely wiping out the 
 three towns and wounding and killing many people. The cyclone, after sweeping 
 across Mississippi and Alabama, struck Georgia at a point on the Chattahoochee 
 river below Columbus and divided into two sections, one following the course of 
 the Chattahoochee, going north of Atlanta, passing over Rome and on through the 
 Blue Ridge mountains into North Carolina ; the other branch pursued a course 
 across the State south of Macon, passing on north of Augusta and through South 
 Carolina, where it united with the northern section, and passing through Wil- 
 mington, N. C., found its way out into the ocean (to destroy the shipping). 
 
 It was a few minutes after 8 o'clock last night when it struck Greenville. The 
 first building to give way was the Courthouse, which was blown to atoms. In al- 
 most an instant the buildings generally began to grate and fall from their founda- 
 tions. The people, thoroughly affrighted; could do nothing-in the wreck and con- 
 fusion which surrounded them. The night was intensely dark and the weather 
 was bitterly cold. The storm lasted but a few minutes, and when it was over the 
 people found themselves without shelter, and had to go to work to improvise such 
 covering as they could. The fear that a great many had lost their lives added tc- 
 the terror of the occasion. Investigation developed the fact that but one person, 
 a negro, had been killed, though a great many of them were wounded, some of 
 them severely. The Presbyterian church, the postoffice and the college were 
 blown to atoms. The people are in great distress and all are without homes. The 
 town is one mass of ruins, and the damage is beyond description. The next town 
 in the path was Hogansville, where several houses were lifted up and carried two 
 miles where they were dashed to the ground. The Rock, a hamlet of 500 inhabi- 
 tants in Pike county, suffered a loss of five lives. Among those killed was Judge 
 Riviere, a prominent citizen of the county. At a point about ten miles west of 
 Barnesville three deaths resulted, but it is impossible to get their names. In Le 
 Grange four houses were blown down. Mrs. Ross, a lady who lives near Piermort, 
 lost her life, and many others were badly injured, some fatally. The storm's 
 course was down the Atlanta and Florida railway toward Barnesville, and at Pine 
 Mountain, in the neighborhood around Barnesville, the following deaths and casu- 
 alties are reported : Miss Daisy Hawkins and one unknown colored man killed; 
 near Piedmont, two coloied children killed. There are also numerous names be- 
 ing furnished of persons who have been injured. 
 
 From all along the path of the storm come reports of the loss of life, which must 
 run the Hat up to about fifty. The general course of the storm, lay across the 
 country out of the lines of railway travel and witti very little telegraphic communi- 
 
12 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. " 
 
 Cation. It followed the course of what is known as the Harris^ county track. 
 Many of these cyclones have kept as closely within the lines of their predecessors 
 as if their course had been laid out by an engineer. 
 
 The maximum wind velocity in Atlanta to-day was forty-four miles an hour, Ine 
 hardest blow here last night was thirty-six miles an hour. The wind was blowing 
 thirty-six miles an hour at Savannah and twenty-eight an hour at Augusta at 7 
 o'clock this morning. The Weather Bureau synopsis to-day shows that the trough 
 of low barometer pressure, which yesterday morning extended from Texas north- 
 eastward to the New England States, developed into a storm of considerable area 
 and energy, and enlarged toward the Atlantic coast until it covered the entire coun- 
 try east of the Mississippi river, its center being near Wilmington, N. C., with a 
 minimum pressure of 29.30 inches. 
 
 MERIDIAN (Miss.), March 4. The havoc wrought by the cyclone in this section 
 last night is incalculable. The scene at Marion, Miss., is one of awful destruction. 
 The main track of the storm was 300 yards wide, and everything in its path was 
 swept away, the wreckage of houses being scattered for miles along its course. The 
 cyclone struck only the northern portion of the town, which is but sparsely 
 populated. The injured are J. Harrison and wife, George Nailers and Mrs. White. 
 Mrs. Meader and her daughter were killed. Haifa mile of telegraph poles were 
 blown down. Four settlements of neeroes were destroyed, but no one seriously in- 
 jured. The town of Toomsuba was almost completely wrecked and a number of 
 people injured. At Keating a negro settlement was almost completely destroyed. 
 
 SPECIAL DISPATCHES TO THE S. F. CHRONICLE. 
 
 MEMPHIS, (Tenn.), March 23, 1893. The most destructive cyclone in the history 
 of this section swept over Northern Mississippi and Western Tennessee late this 
 afternoon, leaving death and destruction in its wake. K^liey, Miss., a town of 
 about three hundred inhabitants, was wiped off the face of the earth, every build- 
 ing in the place being totally demolished. So far as is known twenty-five people 
 were killed outright and about sixty injured. The cyclone reached Kelley about 
 3:40 o'clock this afternoon, spreading havoc in every direction. Long before the 
 wind struck the town a strange atmospheric condition was noticed. The air grew 
 very dark and then a moaning sound was heard, and finally a greenish colored 
 cloud was seen rapidly approaching from the southwest. 
 
 The path of the storm was about half a mile wide, and everything in its course 
 was picked up like a straw and dashed to pieces. Large houses were crushed like 
 eggshells, while giant forest trees were uprooted and their trunks were picked up 
 by the whirling wind and carried for miles. The public school building was the 
 first to go down before the storrn. The pupils had been dismissed only a few 
 minutes before and most of them had left the building, which fact alone prevented 
 appalling loss of life. Several children were caught in the ruins, however, and 
 crushed to death. 
 
 A row of frame buildings next fell before the cyclone's fury, and with a loud 
 <?rash and a deafening roar they were literally torn to kindling wood and the 
 fragments scattered far and wide. Owing to the darkness it is impossible to learn the 
 full extent of the loss of life and property. Trains from the East reaching this city 
 late in the afternoon and evening brought reports of widespread destruction. The 
 .passengers on a Yazoo and Mississippi Valley train told of the destruction of Tunica, 
 Miss., and, while the reports were slightly exaggerated, yet they were in a large 
 measure confirmed. Tunica suffered greatlv, but the loss so far as is known was 
 confined solely to property. A special from there says the damage to property will 
 run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
 
 About 3:30 p. M. the sky in the southwest began to darken and a low wailing 
 sound announced the storm coming. Within a few minutes the wind came along 
 with terrible velocity and with a swish and whirl that portended danger. The first 
 hard blow gave way to the cyclone and houses were crushed like eggshells. The 
 vicious visitor lingered over and around the town for scarcely two minutes, and yet 
 in that iime it leveled buildings unsparingly, tossing saloon and church alike to the 
 ground. Such an unusual and unexpected visitation stunned people and the noise 
 of tumbling roofs paralyzed their miuds for the moment. 
 
* ' THE LEAVES OF THE TBEE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THB NATIONS." 1 
 
 A partial calm, save for the fall of heavy rain, then came and the people rushed 
 about in great excitement. On one side of the square, where stood a handsome- 
 building occcpied by the Knights of Pythias and Masons, were now only a heap or 
 timber and beams. This was one of the most pretentious buildings in town. The- 
 people on the streets first noticed this wreck, and then they saw that the roof of the 
 courthouse was gone. 
 
 But there was more than this; there were the cries and screams of children. 
 Men rushed to the colored schoolhouse where 150 children had been gathered at 
 their lessons. The building, a two story frame, had been blown down and beneath 
 the ruins was a mass of struggling children. No lives were lost, but there were 
 many maimed and crushed, some with broken arms and some with fractured ribs. 
 The work of relief was at once directed to the schoolhouse, and the children were- 
 extricated from the prison which the timbers formed. The full list of the buildings 
 wrecked cannot be obtained .to- night, but it is known that the Presbyterian and 
 Methodist churches are totally wrecked. In all parts of the town are piles of ruins, 
 and very few houses have escaped without some damage. 
 
 The path of the cyclone appears to have been twenty miles in width, although 
 the serious damages was confined to a much smaller area. The wires are down in 
 all directions. There is no telegraphic communication whatever with Nashville 
 and intervening points, and very little news is obtainable from the places visited by 
 the cyclone. This city barely escaped. A heavy rain fell and a high wind blew at 
 the time the cyclone raged, and it became as dark as night for thirty minutes, but 
 no damage was done. The train from Birmingham, Ala., arrived several hours 
 late and reported much damage between here and Byhalia, thirty miles east. 
 Farmhouses, barns and ginbouses are reported unroofed and blown down all along: 
 the line. The train was delayed by having to stop at frequent intervals to chop 
 away large trees that had been uprooted and blown across the track. Damage is 
 reported at Captville, Tenn., and Olive Branch, Miss., but no particulars are- 
 obtainable. 
 
 MEMPHIS, (Tenn.), March 24, 1893. The damage done by yesterday's cyclone 
 in the Mississippi valley is enormous. While the loss of life is not as great as 
 was at first reported, the damage to property will reach $2,000,000. The telegranh 
 wires are still demoralized and reports are coming in slowly from the storm dis- 
 tricts. It will be several days before the full extent of the disaster will be known. 
 The death list at 10 p. M. foots up twenty-three, while the list of the injured will 
 run up into the hundreds. The names of the dead at Kelly, Miss., so far as known, 
 are: Harriet Smith, Mary Williams, Susan Williams, and two unknown negro 
 women. The dead elsewhere are: Richard Heard and Thomas Heard, Shubuta, 
 Miss.; Eli Prince, Evansville, Miss.; Drury Sumrallsand his family of nine, Shaw's, 
 Miss. The names of the injured at Kelly, so far as known, are as follows: Richard 
 Pine, wife and children, all badly injured by the collapse of their house, one fatally; 
 Jim Payne, so badly wounded about the head and shoulders that he may die; Chris. 
 Burford, internally injured and will probably die; Mrs. Sarah Hart, two ribs broken 
 and internally injured, may die; Marion Mason, cut about the head; Mrs. Mason, 
 badly hurt about the hips; Harriet Branch, internally injured; Gus Bills, right ey& 
 knocked out; Eph. McLaughlin, shoulder broken; F. Wiley McLaughlin, arm 
 dislocated. The injured at other points are: S. K. Davis, Crawfordsyille, Ark.; 
 fourteen negro tenants at Crawfordsville, Ark., more or less seriously injured; John 
 Carroll, Spring Creek, Tenn., struck by flying timber and seriously injured; twenty- 
 one school-children at Tunica, Miss., more or less seriously injured. The majority 
 of those killed and injured are negroes. 
 
 The first heard of the cyclone was in Northern Lousiana and Southern Arkan- 
 sas. II crossed the Mississippi a few miles above Greenville, devastating planta- 
 tions, wrecking farmhouses and uprooting giant forest trees. The path of the storm 
 was about half a mile wide, and nothing was left standing in its track. The farst 
 fatality occured near Shaw's station, Miss., where the house of Drury Sumrall, a 
 prosperous colored farmer, was leveled to the ground, killing the entire family of 
 nine persons. The cyclone passed through the suburbs of Shaw's and demolished 
 several residences and small stores, but no one was killed. The hurricane tnen 
 changed its course slightly and traveled along the right of way of the Yazooand 
 Mississippi Valley Railroad until it entered Cleveland, Miss., where a public school, 
 
14: " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 building and several stores and residences were raised to the ground. No fatalities 
 occurred at Cleveland, but several people were struck by flying timbers and more 
 
 Leaving Cleveland the cyclone passed within a mile of Clarksdale, a town of 2000 
 inhabitants, and next struck Tunica, the county seat of Tunica county. Nearly 
 every building in the place was wrecked. The recently completed courthouse went 
 down before the wind. The colored school building was wrecked and over thirty 
 children were maimed and crippled, some of them being fatally injured. As the 
 cyclone left Tunica it divided, one portion traveling in a northeasterly direction 
 while the other took a northwesterly course and again crossed the Mississippi into 
 Arkansas, where it spread ruin in three counties. The towns of Craw fords ville 
 and Vincent were nearly wiped off the earth. The storm then took a northeasterly 
 course, reaching Kelly, Miss., about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Here the great- 
 st damage was done. Six people were killed outright and scores were injured. 
 Not a building was left standing, the fragments beisg strewn over the country for 
 miles. Physicians from the surrounding towns hurried to the scene and rendered 
 all possible aid to the sufferers. Temporary ho&pitals were fitted up in farm- 
 houses that had escaped the storm, and those who were fortunate enough to get 
 out uninjured did all in their power to help the sufferers. The damage to prop- 
 erty in the vicinity of Kelly will reach $150,000. After leaving Kelly the cyclone 
 passed into Tennessee, the next place visited being Spring Creek, a small town in 
 Madison county, where several people were injured, but no one was killed. No 
 reports of damage have been received beyond Spring Creek, except in a suburb of 
 Nashville,. The patlr of the storm after it left Madison county was through a 
 country remote from telegraph lines, and it will be several days before full details 
 will reach the outside world. 
 
 MOBILLE, (Ala.), March 24. Early this morning a cyclone passed one mile 
 north of Shubuta, Miss., going south west. At Arista John's place a tenement 
 house containing negroes was leveled and two negroes were killed and three were 
 injured. One mile east of there houses were blown down. Ten miles further east 
 three tenement houses were destroyed, but no one was hurt. 
 
 NASHVILLE, (Tenn.), March 24. One of the most terrific wind and rain storms 
 in the history of Nashville swept over this city last night. The greatest force of 
 the storm was felt in the northern part of the city, where several houses were un- 
 roofed. One occupied by W. F. Bradford was completely razed to the ground. 
 Bradford was taken from the luins in a badly bruised condition. McNeil Drum- 
 tight, aged 13, who boarded with Bradford, was taken from the debris in a 
 mangled condition and cannot live. Eugene Drumright, aged 18, a brother of 
 McNeil, was horribly mangled and dead when found. It is feared others were in- 
 jured or killed in, the building. In all fifteen houses were badly damaged or des- 
 troyed and thejpss will foot up in the thousands. 
 
 LOUISVILLE (Ky.), March 24. The heavy storm which passed over a large sec- 
 tion of the South last night did great damage at Bowling Green and the surround- 
 ing country. The roofs of fifteen or twentv houses were blown off, the most 
 serious damage being done to the Louisville and Nashville roundhouses, which 
 were unroofed and the walls leveled with the ground. Falling material did serious 
 damage to engines inside. One colored man was caught in the debris and badly, 
 though not seriously injured. The loss on the building and locomotives is from 
 $75,000' to $100,000. Passengers on the delayed fast express on the Louisville and 
 Nashville from the South stated that all along the road evidence of the storm could 
 be seen. Many farmhouses were roofless, and scores of stables and outhouses 
 were totally demolished. The town of Kowlins was almost destroyed, the post- 
 office building being swept entirely away, while damage to others was very heavy. 
 Every house in Stonford was damaged. " At Murray, Ky., twenty residences and 
 fifty stables ana barns were demolished. Only one person, Miss Aline Stabblefield, 
 was seriously injured. A dozen were slightly hurt. 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS, (Ind.), March 24. A cyclonic storm visited Indiana last night. 
 In this city fifty houses were wrecked in one neighborhood in the northwest por- 
 tion and many families are temporarily homeless. At Tuxedo, a suburb, many 
 houses are wrecked and several small ones were carried away. The Capital City 
 Coffin Works are badly damaged. Advices from all parts of the State indicate 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THB NATIONS." 15 
 
 that much property is damaged and some persons were maimed. At Loogootee 
 the flouring mill, the Catholic church and City Hotel were badly damaged. At 
 Evansville the south wing of the insane asylum was damaged. At McCordsville 
 the house of James McCord was blown down and Mrs. McCord was fatally hurt. 
 At Brazil outbuildings, fences and trees were leveled and coal mines were flooded. 
 At Alexandria residences and business blocks were damaged, and the Lippincott 
 glass factory Was destroyed, John Angle, Jr., being instantly killed. F. McShaf- 
 ery, Peter Hanlan, Ernest Frey, James Branham and others were seriously in- 
 jured. At Vincennes houses, barns, trees and fences were laid low for twelve 
 miles. Several thousand dollars worth of property was destroyed. 
 
 And just for a moment pause to consider the following dreadful sup- 
 plementary pictures clipped from the S. F. Examiner of April 8th, 9th 
 and 10th, 1893: 
 
 A TERRIBLE STORM. 
 
 "DEADWOOD, (S. D.), April 7. A terrible wind and snow storm has been pre- 
 vailing here for the past forty-eight hours. Telegraph and telephone wires have 
 been prostrated, many buildings blown down and others unroofed. Piedmont has 
 been partially destroyed. All the trains have been tied up. The velocity of the 
 wind is seventy-five miles per hour," 
 
 BUFFALO, April 8. One of the worst cyclones that ever swept western New York 
 struck this end of the State yesterday. Reports have been coming in all day of 
 damage done in Chautauqua and Erie' counties. As near as can be gathered the 
 hurricane struck near Springville, in this county, ard then swept down across 
 Chautauqua Lake and into Lake Frie. A dispatch from Springville states that a 
 barn belonging to Vedder Hemstreet was blown down. Mr. Hemstreet and his 
 hired man were in the barn with some cattle when it collapsed. The latter was 
 caught between two cows and escaped unhurt, though the cattle were crushed. 
 Hemstreet was pinned between several timbers and died before he could be ex- 
 tricated. 
 
 At Brocton, the heart of the grape country, tremendous ravages in orchards and 
 vineyards are reported. Trees whre uprooted and buildings leveled. At Westfield 
 trees were uprooted and a water tower and windmill were lifted bodily and moved 
 a couple of yards. The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern tracks between Angola 
 and Farnham were washed out. Fair buildings at Dunkirk were demolished. 
 Many cattle in Sheridan were killed. Churches, printing offices and othar build- 
 ings in Fredonia were stripped of their roofs. At May ville a boathouse was scattered 
 over a farm and Lake Chautauqua was lashed into fury. At the Assembly grounds 
 several handsome trees were shattered and broken and cottages twisted from their 
 foundation. In all these towns narrow escapes from death are reported. 
 
 The residence of George H. Talcott, at Talcottville, Lewis county, was struck by 
 lightning some time during last night and burned to the ground. Talcott and his 
 brother were burned in the house, their charred and blackened corpses being found 
 in the ruins this morning. The damage done to the buildings by the storm cannot 
 be less tht*n $100,000. It is impossible at this writing to estimate the injury to or- 
 chards and vineyards. 
 
 CURSED BY CHOLERA. 
 
 [Special to the EXAMINER.] 
 
 LONDON, April 8.-~If last year's devastations of the scourge were not fresh in the 
 public mind, Europe would be already in a cholera panic. The disease probably 
 exists to-day in a larger number of towns than when the epidemic was at its height 
 in Hamburg last summer. The criminal policy of concealment is again being pur- 
 sued in many places. The most outrageous are in towns on the northern coast of 
 France, where it is known that nearly a hundred deaths have occurred within a 
 fortnight. Russia acknowledges several hundred deaths over her vast extent of ter- 
 ritory, and it can only be guessed how much this is short of the truth. 
 
 Strong appeals in the advertising columns of the St. Petersburg newspapers for 
 the services of doctors in infected districts indicate how great is the emergency. Not 
 
16 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 a single medical or scientific advantage is yet announced as the result of the cholera 
 conference at Dresden. The object there sought has been solely how to mitigate 
 the commercial evils of the epidemic. 
 
 FEARFUL SHIPWRECKS. 
 
 " Over in Hydrographic Officer Burnett's corner of the Merchants' Exchange is a 
 chart that seems to have been drawn by somebody who had a nightmare of mean- 
 dering red streaks, little red and blue dots and crosses, and red and blue representa- 
 tions of the bows of partially submerged vessels. It is a wreck chart showing the 
 vagarious driftings of the derelicts on the North Atlantic during the past five years- 
 ana to the mind of a nautical man is the publication chef d'oeuvre of the office 
 since Commander Glover assumed charge. The best statistics obtainable show an 
 average annual loss of 2,172 vessels and 12,000 lives in the marine commerce of the 
 world, entailing monetary losses amounting to $100,000,000. In the period of five 
 years covered by the chart there were 956 vessels wrecked on the Atlantic coast,, 
 and in the same time 1,096 vessels were abandoned and left to drift about the ocean 
 and menace the safety of navigators whose courses might lay in the way of the drift- 
 ers. Of this thousand and odd eraft there were 625 unknown; 332 have been located 
 once or more, and 139 have been sighted so often as to permit of their drift tracks- 
 being charted.'* 
 
 FIERCE FOREST FIRES. 
 
 [Special to the EXAMINER.] 
 
 CINCINNATI, April 9. Dispatches from Vanceboro, Lewis county, Ky., on the 
 Ohio river, seventv-five miles from Cincinnati, says that fires in the forests in that 
 country broke out several days ago and have spread over the whole country. Last 
 night, from Clarksville, in Lewis county, to Sugar Loaf mountain, the whole country 
 was one vast sea of flames. Fences have been destroyed everywhere, and the houses- 
 of many farmers have been burned. A dispatch from Chillicothe says that exten- 
 sive fires are raging in the hill forests near Bainbridge, Ross county, and are spread- 
 ing in the hills of Pike and Highland counties, near by, doing great damage. 
 
 PORTSMOUTH (O.), April 9. For the past two weeks very strong and dangerous- 
 forest fires have prevailed west of the Scoto river. The hamlets of Union Mills and 
 Friendship were surrounded by fire, but rain saved them. At present the fire i 
 smoldering and another rain will quench it. The loss, it is estimated, will exceed 
 $200,000 in timber, etc., that was burned, not counting a score of farm buildings; 
 swept away. 
 
 I have thus fully quoted a few of many such like newspaper reports 
 relating to awfully disastrous atmospheric troubles which of late years 
 have caused wide-spread ruin through very many portions of this great 
 country and on the sea, the former to show the special necessity which really 
 exists for a whole-hearted restoration and preservation of forests because of 
 "the unique position of the new world" so graphically detailed by the writer, 
 and the others to illustrate the dreadfully savage and increasingly erratic 
 nature of recent storms which compel long-suffering agriculturists and 
 others to burrow through underground caverns so as to escape being 
 swept away and destroyed with their homesteads ! Surely such atmos- 
 pheric conditions are the very reverse of normal ? 
 
 Professor J. E. Buchanan, M. D., of New York, who published a book 
 some years ago pleading for the establishment of ethical and industrial 
 education, and who has further published a manual of psychometry in 
 which he made several predictions, which have been verified, published 
 in the Arena for August, 1890, a most alarming paper, entitled, " The 
 Coming Cataclysm of America and Europe," leading up to terrible 
 devastating torrental storms, earthquakes and almost general barrenness, 
 extending over vast regions, making special mention of American and 
 continental deforestation as a primary cause. 
 
" THE LEA.VES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 17 
 FOREST DESTROYING COMBINES. 
 
 And this is how, for many years, forests have disappeared in addition 
 to the selectors clearings in America. I quote from Harper's Weekly for 
 July 18th, 1891 : 
 
 "The condition of lumber mills and saw mills in Michigan, Wisconsin and Min- 
 nesota, 1890, has been announced. Only planing mills operated by lumber manu- 
 facturers in connection with lumber mills include only those which manufacture 
 sawed lumber as the principle product, the term " saw-mills" meaning all other 
 mills in which logs or bolts form the principle raw-material, and are manufac- 
 tured into any kind of product other than lumber. The valae of forest products, 
 not manufactured at the mill, in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, 1890, ag- 
 gregates $30,426 194; value of mill products $115,699 004; value of re-manufac- 
 tures $21,112.618 making an aggregate value of products in three States of 
 $167,237.816. The capital invested to produce this value was $270,152 012. Men 
 employed in forests, 95,258; women, 99; children, 10; animals, 32,491. In th 
 mills, the product required the labor of 87.939 men, 646 women, and 653 children. 
 The amount represented in operation of machinery and chemical appliances, 
 1890, was $23.559.334; the expenditure of steam and water power was reported as 
 sufficient to lift 3,500,001 tons one foot in one minute; 1,262,151,180 cubic feet of 
 merchantable timber were removed from natural growth; $7,890.254 were in- 
 vested in vessels and other means of transport, and $99,688.256 were expended for 
 wages. The aggregate increase of product since 1880 is reported to be 29.66 per 
 cent, in quantity and 57.92 per cent, in value." 
 
 In the three States named above there are 9- q 3 establishments operating mills, 
 with a capital invested in timbered land of $85,381.446, the area being 6.818,941 
 acres, with an estimated total product of merchantable timber of 43,133,886,209 
 feet (board measure). The estimated value of standing timber owned by these es- 
 tablishments is $135,612,007. White pine is by far the most important product, 
 the total on timber land is estimated to be 47,304, 557,519 feet. 
 
 TIMBER PRODUCTS The aggregate number of establishments engaged in the 
 " timber product" industry in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota is 574, with a 
 capital of $46 765,405. The product of logs for domestic manufacture, 1890, is 
 shown as 1,392.585,874 feet, that of hard wood and other logs for export being 
 33,115,000 feet." 
 
 When we add to the above an estimate of the annual demolition of tim- 
 ber in Oregon and other States all over the Union, as also in Canada, for 
 general and now for paper making purposes, coupled with wholesale for- 
 est fires caused in nearly every instance from criminal carelessness, we 
 should not very much wonder at the dreadful results now upon us. But 
 for the rapidly increasing atmospheric penalties we would as they do in 
 " treeles Spain," continue to annihilate every health inspiring tree for a 
 temporary selfish gain, and then ineffectually strive to extirpate the 
 many consequent destructive insect plagues which, as "nature's scavengers'* 
 are evolved and thrive in the poisonous atmosphere which our troe killing 
 conduct creates. The Italian poet, " Dante" when penning his " Inferno" 
 early in the 14th century, was evidently permitted to forsee the outcome 
 of our heartless ingratitude towards our revengeless tree friends' in these 
 latter days, when lie wrote the following lines: 
 
 DANTE'S INFERNO. 
 
 "E'er Nessus yet had reached the other bank 
 
 We entered on a forest, where no track 
 
 Of steps had worn away, Not verdant there 
 The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light 
 The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform'd 
 And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns 
 
i8 *' THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOB THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 Instead with venom filled. Less sharp than these 
 
 Less intricate the breakes, wherein abide 
 
 Those animals (insect pests') that hate the cultured fields 
 
 On all sides 
 
 I heard sad plainings breathe, and none could see 
 From whom they might have issued. In amaze 
 Fast bound I stood. He, (the inward guide) as it seem'd believed 
 That I had thought so many voices came 
 From some amid those thickets close conceal'd, 
 And thus his speech resumed: " If thou lop off 
 A single twig from one of those ill plants, 
 "The thought thou hast conceived shall vanish quite" 
 
 Thereat a little stretching 'forth my hand, 
 From a great wilding gather'd I a branch, 
 And straight the trunk exclaim'd: " Why pluck'st thou me?" 
 Then as the dark blood trickled down its side, 
 These words it added: "Wherefore tear'st me thus? 
 Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast? 
 Men once were we that now are rooted here, * 
 
 Thy hand might well have spared us, had we been 
 
 The souls of serpents." (* PSALM 139, 15-16) 
 
 FOREST LAND PREFERRED FOR SETTLEMENT. 
 
 As in the United States and Canada so in Australia, forest lands were 
 preferred by selectors for farming on, and after our thirty years of reck- 
 less toil, many millions of acres once clad with stately malaria destroying 
 eucalypti whose gorgeous atmosphere purifying and rain attracting foliage 
 formed a beautiful canopy of variegated colors under and around which,, 
 weeds and insect pests could not exist, now form very many unsightly, be- 
 cause parched weed and insect breeding fields, made hideous alike to the 
 misguided owners and leasees as also to the weary traveller throughout 
 the " settled 5 ' districts, by being compelled to gaze on monotonous forests 
 of weather bleeched dead tree skeletons, left standing as so many reprov- 
 ing spectres on large areas of sun baked agricultural and pastoral lands. 
 
 New South Wales the oldest Australian colony, originally known as- 
 " the Botany Bay convict settlement" has provided ample insect plague 
 breeding fields for the whole group. Ticket of leave convicts and crown 
 pastoralists having added small orchards and vineyards to their respective 
 homestead belongings which in course of time from various avoidable 
 reasons, were permitted to run wild in exhausted soil, thereby furnishing 
 the necessary insect breeding conditions, which eventually charged the 
 passing winds with destructive germs. The following dispatch clipped 
 from the Sydney Daily Telegraph of February 4th last, faintly illustrates 
 some of the results: 
 
 ADELAIDE, Friday. The Crown Lands Department reports that the ravages of 
 the codlin moth, rather than diminishing, are spreading amongst the apple or- 
 chards. Spraying with Paris green has been resorted to, without satisfactory re- 
 salts. There are now more infected orchards than last season, and the damage to 
 fruit has been enormous. There are at present 169 orchards affected in the colony. 
 
 Whilst the forests remained in tact, through neighboring colonies, des- 
 tructive insect raids from said fields were however comparatively harmless. 
 Early in 1870, about eight years subsequent to the first general land 
 selecting scramble for agricultural settlement in the colony of Victoria, I 
 observed myriads of minute little grasshoppers like so many sand ripples, 
 in a remote arid portion of said colony adjacent to the New South Wales 
 
11 THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 19 
 
 border line, slowly but steadily making their way towards the settled 
 districts, and although the leading authorities were duly notified of the in- 
 vasion, little or no heed was taken of the warning the supposition being 
 that they would " perish on their way south." In a very short time they 
 developed into the fledged condition and forth with set about their devasta- 
 ting work in right good earnest as the following report from the Mel- 
 bourne Age of March 23, 1891 will show: 
 
 AN AUSTRALIAN CONFERENCE RE-LOCUST PLAGUES. 
 
 Said report refers to an extraordinary conference of leading vignerons 
 prchardists, agriculturists and shire councillors held in the Koyal Victor- 
 ian Society's rooms, Melbourne, on the 20th of said month, at which I 
 was present. The object of the conference being to, if possible, devise 
 legislative or other means to save the colony from continuous visitations 
 of destructive locust blizzards: "The chairman opened the meeting by 
 reading a " circular suggesting that the conference should be held, signed 
 by Mr. Samuel Trethowan of Nathalia, from which circular the following 
 is an extract. " In view of the deplorable destruction caused througout 
 the colony by the locust plague, I feel impelled to seek your valuable as- 
 sistance in devising means to prevent a repetition of such disastrous in- 
 vasions," (as during Dec. of the previous year). " I have been a settler 
 in the colony for thirty-five years, and never before saw such myriads of 
 locusts as have just passed over the land; devouring every green leaf and 
 shoot. I believe the time to be opportune for the taking of energetic and 
 concerted action to destroy these voracious insects before they turn our 
 homes and holdings into permanent scenes of bare and naked desolation. 
 I have, myself suffered to the extent of losing every leaf, shoot and bud 
 on an orchard and vineyard of one hundred acres in extent, besides the 
 loss of grass and substance for my stock on several thousand acres of land, 
 and also the loss of a considerable portion of my crop of grain as well. By 
 the visitation of this scourge a crushing blow has been dealt to the pros- 
 pects of intense culture in this fertile but insect infested region, and the 
 Government may well be asked to stay any further expenditure on vast 
 irregation schemes until some means are found to repress this terrible 
 
 Eest, for the result of years of patient labor of an industrious settler may 
 e ruthlessly destroyed in a few hours by these destructive insects. I am 
 sure I am within the mark when I estimate the loss to the colony to be 
 several hundreds of thousands of pounds, for, apart from the destruction 
 of gardens, orchards and vineyards, graziers have been compelled to sell 
 their stock at a sacrifice, in consequence of the destruction of everything 
 that could be eaten in the paddocks by these ravenous pests. Practically 
 the whole of the northern part of Victoria is now denuded of every suc- 
 culent blade or shoot and the choicer and more careful the cultivation the 
 greater has been the havoc made. 
 
 " Something must be done or the land will become an uninhabitable 
 wilderness, for the locusts are now breeding, and before the summer is 
 over they will be upon us again in even more overwhelming numbers than 
 those just passed over. The rabbits have been and are a terrible scourge, 
 yet their destructiveness pales into insignificance when compared to the 
 ravages of the vast armies of winged and wingless locusts. 
 
 " The scourge is an Australian and the question of legislation a federal 
 one demanding simultaneous action by the governments of the several 
 colonies in order to be effectual." " The chairman said he agreed with 
 
20 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS/' 
 
 Mr. Trethowan We are threatened with a far greater invasion by the 
 
 locusts, an invasion which, if not checked by some means, would eventu- 
 ally devastate the whole colony." The conference unanimously endorsed 
 the chairman's opinion and appointed a large representative committee to 
 confer with the Hon. the minister of agriculture on the subject. 
 
 The three leading agricultural colonies within one month suffered from 
 the said locust visitation to the extent of about one million eight hundred 
 and fifty thousand pounds (i. e. $9,250,000) as follows New South Wales 
 450,000($2,250,000), Victoria 600,000 ($3,000,000) and South Australia 
 800,000 ($4,000,000). Queensland also suffered much from the invasion. 
 Since then the Chaffey Brothers' magnificent Mildura irrigation colony in 
 Victoria was invaded by dense clouds of locusts and for nearly a whole 
 month seemed as if they meant to permanently locate there and in the 
 immediate neighborhood, in order to dispute the Chaffey Brothers' right 
 to have transformed that once arid barren region into a beautiful fertile 
 garden. 
 
 A FALSE RKPORT. 
 
 Ab mt the time the above locust trouble overspread the Mildura district 
 a very silly theoretical suggestion was made by the chief Entomologist in 
 Victoria to the local government at Albury, N. S. W., namely, to erect 
 screens over trenches in order to stop the plague, coupling the suggestion 
 with an absurd estimate of the cost per mile of such, which, when en- 
 quired into was found to be utterly useless if adopted, besides being greatly 
 underestimated as to cost. On the scheme being ridiculed by an expert 
 through the local press, the Victorian secretary for agriculture ac- 
 knowledged his entomologists error and withdrew the proposition. After 
 the dense clouds of locusts had devoted the greater part of a month gorg- 
 ing themselves with the very choice products in the Mildura estate, they 
 passed on towards the adjacent colony of South Australia, leaving a few 
 hundreds scattered about, dead and dying, from possibly, the eating of 
 tomato plants. About sixty of the dead were found to be fly- blown, which 
 fact was carefully figured up by a humorous newspaper man, who wrote a 
 sensational paragraph concerning "a wonderful locust destroying fly," etc., 
 which paragraph has evidently been seriously considered by the State of 
 California Horticultural Department, as the following from the fertile pen 
 of the State Entomologist published in the S. F. Examiner of Eebruary 
 2nd last, denotes: "An effort has been made among others, to introduce 
 a parasite of the grasshopper which is found in Australia, where it has 
 accomplished very excellent work, this is a fly a species of Tachina, which 
 feeds as voraciously on the grasshopper as the latter does on vegetation, 
 and has contributed very much toward keeping down that pest in 
 Australia ( !) The egg is deposited by the female in the body of the grass- 
 hopper and hatches there. The young grub lives upon the adipose tissue 
 of the victim and avoids the vital part until it is matured, sometimes several 
 of these grubs may be found in the grasshopper. When full grown the 
 grubs eat their way out of their victim, usually at the side where the ab- 
 domen and the matathorax meet. As soon as the grub escapes, the grass- 
 hopper, which has been growing weaker as his parasite has grown in side 
 dies. The grub then buries itself in the earth and undergoes its trans- 
 formation, immerging a perfect insect. Examination proved in one case 
 that sixty or seventy per cent, of the grasshoppers in one part of Australia 
 were parasited by the insects." (Not one of those wonderful flies have 
 been as yet captured). 
 
11 THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 21 
 
 During my observations anent the early invasion of said tiny grass- 
 hoppers, I noticed that their onward progress towards the settled districts 
 was invariably impeded by the existence of any intervening clumps of 
 eycalypti saplings or trees, as also scattered eucalypti leaves'causing the 
 whole mass to make wide detours away from such. I was thereby led to 
 more carefully examine the reasons why this was thus, and ultimately 
 discovered subsequent to having experimently protected my vine- 
 yard and orchard grounds with Eucalypti plants, that the marvelous 
 antiseptic exudations from the foliage absolutely defy the intrusion of 
 locusts or of other insect plagues including the much dreaded phylloxera 
 vastatrix, if vines are reasonably well planted and cared for, it being im- 
 possible for locusts or grasshoppers however numerous and powerful they 
 may be in and around the immediate neighborhood to approach within 
 thirty or forty feet at least, of eucalypti protected grounds and live. This 
 fact I have satisfactorily, though privately, demonstrated for over a 
 decade in Victoria, Australia, and am fully prepared to do so in the 
 United States or elsewhere. 
 
 In my researches into the origin of insect plagues, I have discovered 
 that they are as already stated " nature's scavengers" evolved and sus- 
 tained from the putrid atmosphere which our reckless destruction of the 
 earth's " forest lungs" has created, and that lire eucalypti foliage is un- 
 questionably the finest and most perfect atmosphere purifiying agent on 
 this blight cursed earth. Just think of it, Eucalyptus glolulus leaves 
 are sold by wholesale druggists in Victoria, Australia at one shilling and 
 sixpence per pound, i. e. thirty-six cents, for medicinal purposes, and in 
 California they are, as a rule, ruthlessly chopped down and trodden under 
 foot! 
 
 u. s. CONSUL E. L. BAKER'S REPORT. 
 
 In the United States Consular Eeports for November and December, 
 1882, appears an interesting account from Consul E. L. Baker on the 
 beneficent properties of eucalypti trees in Buenos Ayres, dated August 
 23rd, 1882, from which I have pleasure in quoting as follows : 
 
 THE EUCALYPTI TREE, "Thinking the matter might be of some interest to the 
 people of the United States, I enclose a report setting forth the success which has 
 attended the introduction of the Eucalyptus Globulus in the Argentine Kepublics 
 and somewhat explaining the method of its cultivation here. I have several times 
 in my annual reports referred to the successful introduction of the Eucalyptus 
 Globulus (the blue gum tree) of Australia into the Argentine Republic, and spok- 
 en of the rapiditv some portions of the pampas heretofore destitute of timber are 
 now being dotted with plantations of these magnificent trees ; and from the ease 
 with which they can be grown, and the marvellous rapidity of their growth. I 
 suggested the possibility of their cultivation in the milder parts of the United 
 States. I observe that in a more recent report to the Department (No. 8, page 
 890) accompanied by an article from a French paper, Consul Wilson of Brussels 
 shows the success which has attended their introduction into France, and also sug- 
 gests the acclimation on the treeless regions of our southern territories. From 
 what I have observed during my stay in this country, I am more and more con- 
 vinced that the eucalyptus is a most desirable tree with which to timber our south- 
 western plains and renew our rapidly decreasing forests ; and I believe that a 
 proper trial on a large scale in those portions of our country where the winters are 
 not too severe, would speedily render it such a favorite that its cultivation, not 
 only for ornament, but for timber would become general. 
 
 " VARIOUS SPECIES OF EUCALYPTUS. To avoid disappointment, however, in at- 
 tempting plantations in the United States, it should be borne in mind that there 
 are many species of this tree ; and that not all or even many of them would bear 
 
22 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS/ 
 
 ourclimite except, perhaps, that of our extreme Suithern States, as they require 
 a tropical or sub-tropical temoerature. Others of them, however, are quite hardy 
 ani are capable of bearing very severe cold. With a view of testing their cold 
 bearing qualities Dr. Ernest Aberg, a member of the Academy of Medical Science, 
 and a German scientist who has resided many ye irs in Buenos Avers, has lately 
 devoted a large share of attention to the growing of these trees. He has now at 
 his county-seat, near the town of Ramos Mejia, on the Buenos Ayres and West- 
 ern Railroads, upwards of sixty varieties in more or less successful cultivation. 
 
 " In a recent publication on the subject he says, that while the most of them 
 are too delicate to be grown in the province of Buenos Ayres, except as ornamental 
 trees, requiring special care, a few are not affected by even severe cM and can 
 bear the changes of the most variable climates. Amongst these he specially 
 recommends the following : Eucalyptus alpine, which grows on the highlands 
 and mountains of Victoria at an altitude of 4000 feet above the level of the sea. 
 Eucalyptus amyydalina, a very large tree, measuring generally upwards of 80 
 feet in height by 2 feet in diameter while it is not rare in Australia to see speci- 
 mens 200 feet high and 40 feet in diameter at 4 feet from the ground. The tree 
 seems to do well in Buenos Ayres, growing very rapidly, and producing a mag- 
 nificent hardwood with beautiful veins running through it. Its vulgar name 
 among the colonists is the " narrow-leaved peppermint tree." Eucalyptus cori- 
 (t,ca t a tree which endures the intensest cold, forming in New South Wales and 
 Victoria extensive forests at an altitude of 5000 feet above the sea level. Its com- 
 mon name is the '* mountain white gum tree." Its leaves are large and lustrous. 
 Eucalyptus globulus, this tree is not quite so hardy as 
 
 some of those mentioned above, especially when it is young, but its wonderful 
 qualities have made it naturally a great favorite here, and it is now to be seen 
 growing sometimes on large plantations in all this part of the province of Buenos 
 Ayrep, its very rapid growth in two or three years producing the same effect which 
 other trees would hardly produce in fifteen years. Tnis is the variety of Eucalyp- 
 tus of all others most recommended for acclimation in the United States. Tne 
 Euealyptus globulus grows with a rapidity which is surprising .... as an 
 example of their increase it may be stated that in Hyeres seeds planted in 1857 
 had in 1865 reached the height of 58 feet. In Toulon the plant grows to 24 feet in 
 two years. In 1863, there were trees in Algiers of three years growth which had 
 attained a height of 30 to 35 feet, and generally in that country they grow at the 
 rate of about ten feet each season . 
 
 " MEDICINAL VIRTUES OF THE TREE. I have said this much of the Eucalyptus 
 as a forest or shade tree which has already become a great favorite here, and 
 which, I believe, would be found to give equally satisfactory results in certain 
 parts of the United States. I m iv add that it is considered here to be a very 
 healthful tree. The pungency of its leaves is such that it is never molested by 
 insects, and 1 believe it is the only tree, grown, here ivhich the locusts (the great 
 pest of the Argentine Republic) will not attack. It has the reputation of being 
 an excellent destroyer or absorbent of malaria. It is stated that in Australia 
 there are no marsh fevers where large forests of the Eucalyptus exist 11 (perfectly 
 true) " and I hear they have been planted in the Pontine in trshes near t l :e city of 
 Rome with excellent effects. In regard to its medical virtues. Professor Bently 
 published a pamphlet in London in 1874 in which he fully confirmed all that has 
 been claimed for the tree, calling it "THE FEVER DESTROYING TREE," and citing 
 many instances to prove it. Here in Buenos Ayres they bruise the leaves and 
 bind them to the forehead for nervous headache, and I am told that the leaves are 
 a special abhorrence to such insects as prey upon fruits and fruit trees against 
 whose visitations they furnish protection by being scattered thickly on the 
 ground underneath." 
 
 The above extract which I have copied since my arrival in San Francisco, 
 speaks for itself and, in my opinion, should be read from every church 
 pulpit and school desk in America until the instructive lesson it conveys be 
 deeply burned into every one's mind throughout the land. Consul Baker's 
 admirable report had evidently been overlooked and became in consequence 
 
THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. " 23 
 
 "a dead letter" to those most concerned, viz. vineyardists, orchardists and 
 agriculturists, etc. Shortly after my arrival in San Francisco I learned 
 from D. Heoshaw, Ward Esq., of 308 California Street, general manager 
 of the Natoma (1500 acre) vineyard, that within two months in 1891 the 
 company he represents suffered to the extent of $65,000 from a grasshop- 
 per invasion; we shall therefore be correct in surmising that all other vine- 
 yards and orchards within the infested area, suffered in like manner, there, 
 by possibly aggregating a loss amounting to sundry million dollars 'in this 
 State alone which could have been saved had said report been made known 
 and acted on. 
 
 The testimony of Australia's premier authority Baron Ferdinand von 
 Mueller, K. C. B. M. D., F. ft. S. on the nature and properties of Eu- 
 calypti, as expressed in the following extract from a letter dated 
 December 7th, 1883, is now of special interest : 
 
 " The European and American mails, dear Mr. McLean, kept me incessantly 
 engaged till Tuesday night, and since then I have been harassed with official work* 
 hence I can only now ac a late night hour attend to your inquiries. . . .' 
 What the bottoms of temporarily dry lakes would generate are Bacteria in billions 
 sometimes as the carriers of epidemic diseases. . . If therefore yon r wise 
 suggestion could be adopted to let the water of the Avoca into the Lake Tyrrell 
 (an immense waterless basin in an arid district) not only would ample drinking 
 water be gained but the air be cooled far around and the bacteria be drowned. 
 
 " As regards planting for sanitary purposes, nothing can be more valuable 
 than Eucalyptus, their odorous foliage originate ozone and peroxyde of hydrogen 
 as most powerful destroyers of miasmatta. The little hook transmitted herewith 
 (a treatise on Eucalypti] for your kind acceptance may interest you as bearing on 
 questions in which you have shown such a deep interest." 
 
 "With regardful remembrances, yours 
 
 (signed) FEED. VON MUELLER." 
 
 FURTHER TESTIMONY 
 
 From the Bendigo Advertiser (Australia) of October 23rd, 1890 : 
 
 GUM TREES AND DRAINAGE. " The value of eucalyptus trees for draining 
 wampy land is illustrated by the following paragraph from the 8t. James Gazette: 
 '* For years past the Trefontance Convent at Rome had become positively unin- 
 habitable owing to the malaria which attacked in many instances with fatal re- 
 sults its inmates. Senator Torelli presented a bill in Parliament proposing that 
 the estate annexed to the convent should be planted with eucalyptus as an experi- 
 ment against malaria, The bill was passed, and the Trappist monks planted 
 thousands of eucalyptus plants of all species on the estate. But still the malaria 
 ravaged, and several monks suffered severely. But it was remarked that it was 
 only the monks who had their cells looking on the central cloister who fell victims 
 to the malaria. This suggested the idea of planting four eucalyptus trees at the 
 four corners of the cloister. The plants, sheltered from the winds, soon grew to a 
 great height. The immediate result was the complete draining of the soil in the 
 cloister, and the disappearance of malaria fever from the convent." 
 
 That eucalypti is unquestionably the most powerful antiseptic tree on 
 earth cannot now for a moment be seriously doubted, and when we couple 
 its many additional virtues including its rapid growth, durability and 
 beauty of texture for furniture and general building purposes (as will 
 be amply shown by the New South Wales Government at the Chicago 
 World's Fair) it is, in my opinion, justly destined to play a leading part 
 in forest restoration all over this planet. The almost limitless medicinal 
 properties which permeate its evergreen "odorous foliage" are being 
 
24 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 rapidly demonstrated to the discomfiture of all disease breeding germs. 
 May we not therefore hope that we have found in the leaves of this bene- 
 ficent tree a real panacea " for the healing of the nations," which should 
 be liberally planted under the very best local supervision through and 
 around every populous centre where sound health is desirable ? and in 
 order to encourage their most pleasing growth, an annual prize might be 
 awarded for the best kept plot of trees entrusted to the care of adjacent 
 residents, on a public " arbor day." Such an arrangement would quickly 
 transform all malaria breeding cities of the Chicago type into health- 
 ful retreats. If the streets were ornamented with eucalyptus fosifolia and 
 eucalyptus globulous (or a more hardy sort such as eucalyptus amagdalina) 
 planted alternately, a most pleasing result would follow, as the foxifolia 
 evolves a profusion of beautiful purple flowers. 
 
 The whirlgig of excitements connected with huge business concerns 
 throughout the United States and elsewhere, seems to have deadened every 
 other consideration, and therefore doubtless the scribbler of this treatise 
 will be considered a silly alarmist. There is, however, one thing certain, 
 namely, that ere long the great ones of the earth will be compelled 
 to earnestly turn their attention to the terrible results now 
 hourly increasing from outraged nature which seriously threaten to 
 depopulate the apparently fairest parts of this planet. As shown by 
 Professor Ellis we, for over five thousand seven hundred years, accord- 
 ing to the Mosaic record of time had been ignorantly slaughtering the 
 earth's forest lungs, before Dr. Priestly, in his scientific researches dis- 
 covered in them the hidden atmospheric regulating treasures, yet notwith. 
 standing his and others admonitions; since then we have continued the 
 devilish work in a more vicious manner. Australia cow suffers immensely 
 from consequent droughts, floods, fires and various insect-plagues, caus- 
 ing universal depression amongst pastoralists, miners, agriculturists and 
 artisans, and hence the existing wholesale insolvency through the colonies 
 extending to the leading banking corporations the latest being one of 
 the most gigantic of those institutions, about which the following dispatch 
 from the S. F. Examiner of April 13th, 1893, speaks: 
 
 A BIG BANK FAILURE. 
 
 LONDON, April 12. The English, Scottish and Australian Chartered Bank has 
 failed with liabilities amounting, it is said, to 8,000,000 or $40,000,000. No esti- 
 mate of the assets has yet been made, but they are supposed to be large. The bank 
 was incorporated by royal charter in 1852, and claimed to have a paid up capital 
 of 900,000, and a reserve fund of 310,000. The suspended bank has its main 
 branches at Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne and at various lesser points 
 in the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. It, transacted 
 a banking and exchange business between Great Britain and the Australian 
 colonies, and had large deposits. The failure has added to the anxiety and con- 
 sternation which recent failures of financial institutions, with Australian connec- 
 tions, have caused. The only reason given for the failure is that there has been, 
 for several weeks, a steadily increasing withdrawals of deposits. 
 
 ADDITIONAL, EVIDENCE OF RUINED DEFORESTED SOIL. 
 
 By the 8. F. Chronicle of April 16th, 1893, we learn that the Pacific 
 Mail Steamship China arrived on the preceding day, bringing Hong Kong 
 news to March 18th and Yokohama advices to March 25th, and that the 
 news consists mainly of disasters by land and sea; how that the people 
 are selling their children to get money for wheat, owing to the existence 
 of a widespread famine in Mongolia and in Shansi, declaring that the 
 
" THE LEAVBS OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THB NATIONS." 25 
 
 outlook is even worse than in the memorable year that followed the big 
 overflow of the Yellow river " For 150 miles not so much as a single 
 grain of wheat has been reaped by the inhabitants, so that after they had 
 consumed their reserves nothing more could be done than to lie down 
 and die." Here we have unmistakable evidence of ruined soil in an 
 almost treeless portion of a vast Empire, soil that has been cropped for 
 centuries to feed teeming multitudes minus any recuperating rest, and, 
 as stated by M. Marchand in his work I have already quoted : " With 
 the ruin of the soil begins the ruin of the people. The more unhappy 
 they are, the more selfish do they become." And this is how Marchand's 
 affirmation is borne out in this case. The Chronicle's correspondent 
 makes reference to the miserable appearance of the famine cursed people, 
 as also to the heartless treatment they are being subjected to from their 
 more wealthy brethren in the following manner : 
 
 "They reminded one on looking at them like so many skeletons, with faces 
 as sharp and pointed as the eagle. The rich in the famine districts stayed at 
 home, of course, but they had to economize their scanty stocks of oil and wheat, 
 while those either too old or poor to leave the country were fortunate if they could 
 find herbs and roots of trees and plants to satisfy the cravings of starvation. He 
 must have had a heart of iron not to have wept tears whenever his eyes rested on 
 the hundreds of bodies lying on the roads and by-patns, either in a dying condition 
 or stiff and lifeless. And the bitter cold ! Which of these two cruel enemies took 
 away the most cold or hunger ? The crafty grain dealers of Shansi made enor- 
 mous profits out of the poor sufferers, some of whom, having no money to buy the 
 precious cereals, sold or gave in exchange their children in barter. For instance, 
 a child of 6 was worth many hundred cash, and marriageable girls were bartered 
 in exchange for a camel's load of wheat or 400 catties. 
 
 " A correspondent from North Hhansi says that Dr. Stuart reports that near 
 Ningwu Hsien he met seventeen loads of young women and girls on the way to- 
 ward the south to be sold. Each load had an average of t went v persons, all from 
 one district. The people of the Kueihua Hsien villages say that out of every three 
 persons two will die before the end of the second month of next year. This year 
 the oat and wheat crops were practically a failure, and the millet crop was not 
 more than one-half as largo as usual." 
 
 The Chronicle also alludes to fearfully destructive fires and snow 
 storms in Japan and in Canton causing great loss of life. 200 persons 
 perished in Canton crushed to death by the immense weight of snow 
 falling on their dwellings and in the streets. "Snow was a thing un- 
 heard of in Canton," adds the writer, etc. Surely " grievous times" are 
 now upon us ! 
 
 A DEFORESTATION. LESSON FROM RUSSIA. 
 
 " The first article in the Edinburgh Review for January last is entitled 
 "The Penury of Russia." A more dreary and unrelieved picture of blank 
 desolation has hardly ever been printed." (Review of Reviews, March, '93). 
 
 FORESTS AND EAINFALL. Without entering into details, here is one startling 
 statement made by the reviewer. He says that owing to the destruction of the 
 forests the rivers are drying up, and the eastern part of the country is literally 
 being sanded up : " The ruthless forest destruction which has been going on for 
 a long time has had a eerious effect in reducing the average rainfall. The belts of 
 wood attracted and held the moisture, which was slowly distributed for^the benefit 
 of agriculture; now, in vast regions, as, for instance, on the black soil, there is 
 hardly a tree to be seen, and the consequence is that the underground rivulets 
 which nourished the soil have disappeared. The forests also broke the force of 
 the fierce east desert winds. Now these winds, piercingly cold in winter and 
 
26 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE IVCre FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 ecorchingly hot in summer, burst with full fury on the great plains. In summer 
 their blasts are capable of withering the corn in a few days and with them come 
 sand storms, which turn fertile land into permanent deserts. The unfortunate 
 experience of Central Asia, which once was a garden of fertility and now is a des- 
 ert peopled by nomads only, are repeating themselves. 
 
 DRIFT SAND FROM THE DESERT. "In the province of Astrachan an area of 800 
 square miles is covered by drift sand ; in that of Strawropol whole villages have 
 disappeared, and in 1885 soldiers had to be summoned to clear the sand from the 
 houses. In the produce of Tauris the sand now covers 150,000 des<jaetines 
 (1.00925 hect); the same disastrous effects took place in the north, where, after 
 the destruction of the forests in the provinces of Samara, Woronesh and Tchern- 
 igow, hundreds of S'^nd hills arose, which gradually covered the fertile land. A 
 further consequence is that the rivers become shallower. In winter there is noth- 
 ing to hold the snow, which is blown together into large heaps; these with the 
 thaw dissolve into temporary torrents, washing away acres of tillage, and carrying 
 off all moisture before it has had time to soak into the soil. 
 
 THE DRYING UP OF THE RIVERS. "The river beds cannot contain all this 
 water, and inundations occur ; but when it has swept down there is no further 
 supply. The Woronesh, on which Peter the Great built his first ships, is now a 
 mere rivulet; the Worskla, which fifteen years ago was a beautiful river, sur- 
 rounded by woods and pastures, has absolutely disappeared ; the Oka has become 
 so shallow chat barges coming from Nishegorod were stranded upon its sands. At 
 Dorogobush the Dnjepr can be crossed by carriages; on the Dnjepr the navigation 
 had to be stopped, as its depth was reduced to 2 or 3 feet; 0nd even on the Volga 
 steam navigation is interrupted in many parts, the river not being able to carry 
 away the sandbanks; it is calculated that the volume of its water has decreased by 
 24,000,000 cubic meters. It is evident that even the most costly works for open- 
 ing the channels will be of little avail; the cause lies in the devastation of the for- 
 ests; the law by which the government interdicted the ruthless fall of timber has 
 come too late, and replanting is slow work, although it is the only remedy against 
 the evil." 
 
 The following reliable outline with copies of photos of an American 
 mischief creating Sahara, appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle of 
 April 9, 1893. The writer, a Mr. Frederick I. Monsen, recently returned 
 to San Francisco after a three months exploration tour through " Mojave 
 Desert and Death Valley," about which he now writes: 
 
 "Death Valley is known as the region of lowest depression in the world, besides 
 claiming the flattering appellation of being the hottest place on earth. It is 430 
 feet below the level or the sea. The valley is seventy- five miles long and from eight 
 to fifteen miles wide." (A splendid breeding field for insect plagues and their broad- 
 cast distributing whirlwinds.) On the ea^t the valley is bounded by the Funeral 
 mountains, which attain an elevation of from 6000 to 8000 feet, and on west it is in- 
 closed by the Panarnint rage, which reaches a height of from 8000 to 10.000 feet. 
 "The valley is an independent drainage basin, and the eastern part is filled with 
 a wash of rock and gravel, the result of cloudbursts. Immense fields of borax and 
 soda cover a large section of country in the eastern part of the valley, and salt 
 marshes of the almost pure chloride extend over a vast area of land. From a spring 
 in Furnace creek wash, the entrance to this arid country, the Pacific Coast Borax 
 Company cultivates about thirty acres of land in alfalfa, the only evidence of civili- 
 z.itiqn in the entire district. Were it not for this ranch it would be well nigh im- 
 possible to make the trip across the valley, as by no other means could feed for the 
 horses be obtained. The nearest accessible point to Death Valley is Daggett, a 
 small station on the Atlantic and Pacific Railway. It is 105 miles distance from 
 this point to the valley, and requires a journey of seven days to cover the ground. 
 On the road there aie but three springs, two of which are sixty miles apart. Travel- 
 ers are, therefore, compelled to carry water for themselves and beasts, and when 
 it is added that one has an inordinate thirst on the desert the burden can be con- 
 sidered no light one. A man will drink three gallons of water a day and the 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 27 
 
 animals twice as much as customary. But little good water is found, as most of the 
 water holes or springs are charged with alum, arsenic or borax. On the follow- 
 ing day after my arrival at Daggett, I left, equipped with an outfit consisting 
 of buckboards, mules and a guide. We crossed what is known as the link 
 of the Mojave river and journeyed for five days over a region destitute of 
 vegetation or animal life, with the exception of a growth here and theie of dwarfed 
 cacti. The oppressiveness of this desolation and extreme solitude must be ex- 
 perienced to be understood. Nameless graves of poor unfortunates who attempted 
 to cross the desert during its heated term are the only break in this dreary monot- 
 ony, and every year new mounds of earth, marked only with a stick or a stone, 
 show the spot where some adventurous prospector perished from thirst and the ex- 
 cessive heat and was buried by strangers. 
 
 "Desert travel during the summer months is attended with extreme danger, and 
 can only be accomplished by traveling at night and camping during the heat of the 
 day at some water hole or small oasis. If an accident had occured to our wagon or 
 mules on the desert it would have been a very serious proposition as we were miles 
 from any human habitation and it would have been impossible to have secured 
 other animals or repair a break. On the fifth day out we reached Armargosa, the 
 abandoned borax works of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, and here rested for a 
 few days. It is sixty- two miles from this place to Death Valley and we had to carry 
 water for this entire distance. We occupied two days in this last stretch and we 
 travelled the entire route over a bed of rock and gravel, accumulated by the action 
 of cloudbursts. 
 
 "The entrance to the valley is through a canyon called Furnace-creek wash. We 
 arrived here just before dusk and at an elevation of 5000 feet we obtained the first 
 view of this historical valley. Far toward the west the Paniment mountains stood, 
 forming the wall of that side of the valley. Just behind these western ridges was 
 sinking the ruddy sun, bathing tnis desolate production of God's hand (?) in a purple- 
 tinted light. Moment by moment the shadows crept over this scene of desolation. 
 No sound from the twittering lark or the wild canary forewarned us of the approach- 
 ing night. All was as still as the midnight hour. We prepared our camp, ex- 
 changing hardly a word and glad for the moment when we would become oblivious 
 to these ghostly surroundirgs. The next morning we arrived at the entrance or 
 level of Death Valley and from this point saw for the first time a sand storm. In- 
 cidentally I may remark that these storms during the summer months are very 
 frequent. When we saw it the northern part of the valley was obscured in a brown- 
 ish-colored cloud, which gradually thinned out until it crossed the entire valley. 
 Never at any moment did it entirely obscure the sun, which looked like a mere 
 ghost of itself. The cloud moved with great velocity in our direction and soon ad- 
 vance runners or hot pulls of wind reached us. On arriving at the end of Furnace- 
 creek wash we saw the sand storm in the northern part of the valley. This was 
 shortlj after sunrise. The entire horizon and sky was obscured by the sand and 
 gravel, which were buoyed in an atmosphere oppressively hot and stifling. 
 
 " Soon we were enveloped by a dense cloud of sand, and occasionally as a 
 stronger puff of wind came gravel and even small rocks were hurled into our faces. 
 We covered our heads with blankets, and the mules instinctively turned their tails 
 to the wind. With all these precautions we did not escape, for my guide's face 
 and my own became badly bruised and lacerated. In our exposed position we ex- 
 perienced all the fury of this desert simoon, and as the winds traveled across the 
 alkali sink they increased in heat to such an extent that breathing became a 
 matter of difficulty. This storm lasted two days, and in all this time it was im- 
 possible to move from our position. We had to camp here for that period, being 
 unable to light any fires or prepare meats. Most of this time we were covered 
 with blankets and literally starved. I never want to undergo that ordeal again. 
 This was in the fall. The puffs of wind were so intensely hot and suffocating that 
 they can be likened to blasts from a furnace, and seemed to draw the very breath 
 from our bodies. The storm piled the sand around our wgon and covered every- 
 thing. Occasionally looking down into the valley, we could see a large sand augur 
 or spout waltzing hither and thither over the country, carrying the sand and 
 alkali dust high into the air. Though this storm was exceedingly severe to a nov- 
 ice like myself, it is incomparable to the ones that sweep over this country in mid- 
 
28 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOB THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 die summer. In July or August, with the thermometer registering from 130 to 137 
 degrees in the shade, it would be impossible for any living creature to exist in it 
 even for an hour." 
 
 If "Death valley" was flooded from the sea or elsewhere, and surrounding 
 mountains properly clothed with our evergreen eucalypti, one very great 
 factor for good to thousands of struggling settlers and others far and 
 wide would most assuredly ere long follow, as the billions of disease 
 breeding germs now annually evolved in said valley and widely scattered 
 broadcast over land and sea by whirlwinds, would be drowned and 
 the surrounding air delightfully cooled, besides considerably lessen the 
 existing destructive storm creating cause. Some such extreme measures 
 must shortly be taken to transform American and other deserts from 
 their present dangerous condition, if we really wish to abate the now 
 hourly increasing cyclonic and torrental devastations all over the earth, for 
 notwithstanding our long practical denials that we are our brothers' 
 keepers, the immutable laws of nature which are the laws of Grod 
 teach a very different tale. The question has often been and is now 
 asked: " Why is it that Europe should have been so severely afflicted 
 by the cholera and other disease scourges from Asia ?" And all sorts of 
 surmises have been ventured on regarding the transmitting agency of 
 said scourges just as we now ponder anent the impending cholera epi- 
 demic from Europe to the United States and Australia quite oblivious 
 to the fact that we commenced our forest-lung destroying work in Asia, 
 and that the consequent " oriental afreets" or whirlwind sand-pillars of 
 the desert, have been and now are the real transmitting agents which 
 charge the " ariel reservoirs" with myriads of disease germs "seeking 
 whomsoere they may devour," often flooding ships in mid-ocean. 
 
 IMMENSE VALUE OF THE AMERICAN GRAPE GROWING INDUSTRY. 
 
 (From Harper's Weekly, July 18th, 1891.) 
 
 A special investigation shows that in the several grape growing districts 
 in the United States 401,261 acres were set apart for the industry, 307.575 
 acres in bearing producing 573,139 tons of grapes, and 240,450 tons were 
 used in producing wine, making 24,306,905 gallons, 41,165 tons for raisins, 
 making 1,372,195 boxes of twenty pounds each, and 23,252 tons for dried 
 grapes and purposes other than table fruit. The total value of plant used 
 in the industry, 1889, is given as $155,661, 150; at the time of taking the 
 returns 200,780 persons were employed. 
 
 OTHER FRUITS. 
 
 (From the San Francisco Examiner of March 21th, 1892.) 
 'As the result of a careful compilation of information from the most reliable 
 sources, the growers themselves, the Census office has issued some interesting 
 figures upon the production of oranges, lemons, figs, almonds, cocoanuts and other 
 semi-tropical fruits and nuts in the United States. Numbers of acres of bearing 
 and non-bearing trees arid plants, 271,428.10; number of bearing trees and plants, 
 28,101,036; number of non-bearing trees and plants, 14,205,323; value of product 
 for year 1889, $14,116,226 59; estimated number of acres suitable for planting 
 tropical fruits and nuts, 24,710,879. 
 
 The comparison between California and Florida in relation to fruit trees is in- 
 teresting. In this State there are 78,616.47 acres devoted to bearing and non-bear- 
 ing trees. Florida has 168,754 63. California has 2,652,021 bearing trees or 
 plants, while Florida boasts of 25,317,536. California has 4,247,789 non-bearing 
 
 tt)Aa n*t/-1 T?l^.I^ rt T~ _ ri orvrv *?/ 4 **\ i i* i c\r\ ,>,-, - 
 
THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 29 
 
 LOCUST PLAGUES IN ALGERIA. 
 
 It is said that as a result of early forest destruction Mahomet was 
 inspired to pen the following " fable" : 
 
 t " We are the army of the great God," quoth the locusts. " We produce ninety- 
 nine eggs each. If the hundred were comoleted we should consume the whole 
 earth and all that is in it." 
 
 And it is worthy of remark that the earliest recorded invasion in Europe 
 of these insects, A. D. 591, was from Africa, the northern shores of which 
 has been rendered bare and sterile by centuries of forest destruction. 
 The Scientific American of July 25th, 1891 furnished the following inter- 
 esting particulars regarding recent terrible results in and around Algeria: 
 
 " During the past three or four years the French Government has been making 
 strenuous exertions to beat down the armies of locusts coming from the South on 
 the _ fertile lands of Algeria, and during the present year they are also having a 
 similar fight with these pests on the northern borders of Lunis. The cheap Arab 
 labor obtainable for this purpose has made it possible to employ in the work a 
 veritable army of men, the Government ordering the tribes to form encampments 
 along the line on which it is proposed to fight the oncoming army of locusts and in 
 this way the crops have been protected from the ravages of this plague, although 
 no permanent relief has been, obtained." 
 
 And the following; from " Land and Water" of August 8th, 1891, still 
 further testifies to the fearful scourge in that country : 
 
 " The attention of the Board of Agriculture has been drawn by the Foreign 
 Office toa report from her Majesty's acting charge d' affairs at Tangier, (Algeria) re- 
 specting the severe effects of the visitation of locusts on the crops in Morocco. From 
 this report it appears that the damage done by these insects in the chief grain grow- 
 ing districts has been very considerable, the latter crops having suffered to a very 
 large extent. In the Tangier district and in the northern province the crops have 
 been but little affected owing to the late arrival of the locusts, but the injury be- 
 came more extensive towards the south. Thus at Rabat and Daralbaida half the 
 wheat crop has been destroyed. At Mazigan the maize and pea crops are com- 
 plete failures, while at Mogador there is a general scarcity of grain. Olive and 
 almond trees have suffered extensively in most districts, oil being only sufficient for 
 local consumption. From all parts of the country fruit and vegetables are re- 
 ported to be entirely destroyed. In addition to the loss of tue crops of grain, fruit 
 and vegetables, a serious feature is indicated in the want of pasturage, which has 
 produced a mortality amongst the cattle, and a great fall in their price, owing to 
 the anxiety of the people to sell animals they are unable to feed." 
 
 Whether or not the famous Mahomet " fable" anent the destructive 
 power of locusts has any foundation in fact, the following from the 
 New York Herald of May 18th, 1891, unmistakably denotes their apparent- 
 ly revengeful disposition : 
 
 KILLED BY LOCUSTS. 
 
 " The horrible death that befell a French savant, M. Kunckel Herculass, the 
 president of the Ethnological Society, who was employed on the Government 
 mission investigating the locust plague in this province, has met with a horrible 
 death. While examining a deposit of locust eggs at the village of Sidiral, 
 (Algeria) he was overcome with fatigue and the heat and fell asleep on the ground. 
 While sleeping he was attacked by a swarm of locusts. On awakening he struggled 
 desperately to escape from the living flood. He set fire to the insect laden bushes* 
 near him, but all his efforts proved ineffectual, and when finally the locusts left the 
 spot his corpse was found. His hair, beard and neck had been entirely devoured. 
 M. Herculass was a member of the French Academy and author of several 
 valuable works on insects." (Asmoke stimulates locusts). 
 
30 <f THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOB THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. " 
 
 "On the 13th of May last," wrote a lady contributor to the Contemporary 
 Review for June, 1891: "I was traveling with my husband through Eistern 
 Algeria. At six o'clock on a lovely summer's morning and there, before us in the 
 transparent air, looking like a summer snow storm, we saw approaching a dancing 
 cloud of winged particles. It was the advance guard of the dreaded locust army 
 . . . The whole of this wide expanse including the three departments of Oran , 
 Algiers and Constantine, which composes the colony stretching from Morocco on 
 the west to Tunisia on the east, the city of Algiers standing about halfway between 
 the two boundaries, and the whole coast line being about a thousand kilometres in 
 length is threatened with ruin, ruin compared to which the ravages of the 
 phylloxera are mild. Tne last news that we have from the Western Province wa& 
 that around Flemeen, on the frontier, flights of locusts were alighting uninter- 
 mittently, and that a caravan just arrived there from Morocco, had travelled for 
 thirty days in the midst of locusts, the country being entirely devastated. 1 ' 
 
 SCRIPTURE WARNINGS. 
 
 Surely the warnings given through the prophets Moses and Joel were 
 not meaningless dreams ? Warnings of results that were sure to fallow 
 in the wake of wilful disobedience to nature's teachings results foreseen 
 by Him whose servants said prophets were and who caused them to 
 write as follows: "Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, 
 and shalt gather little in; for the locust shall consume it. Thou shalt 
 plant vineyards and dress them, but thou shalt neither drink of the wine, 
 nor gather the grapes, for the worms shall eat them. Thou shalt have 
 olive trees throughout all thy borders, but thou shalt not annoint thyself 
 with the oil, for thine olive shall cast its fruit. All thy trees and the fruit 
 of thy ground shall the locubts possess." DEUT. 28. And after centuries 
 of forest destruction Jo^l wrote: " Hear this ye old men, and give ear all 
 ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or in the days of 
 your fathers? Tell ye your children of it, and let their children tell their 
 children, and their children another generation. That which the canker 
 worm hath left hath the locusts eaten; and that which the locusts hath left 
 hath the canker worm eaten; and that which the canker worm hath left 
 hath the caterpillar eaten, for a nation (of insect plagues) is come upon 
 our land strong and without number; his (locusts) teeth are the teeth of 
 the lion, and he hath the jaw-teeth of a great lion. He hath laid my vine 
 waste, and barked my fig tree, he hath made it clean bare, the branches 
 thereof are made white. ... Be ashamed all ye husbandmen, howl, O ye 
 vine dressers, for the wheat and for the barley , for the harvest of the field is 
 perished, the vine is withered and the fig tree languisheth; the pome- 
 granite tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of 
 the field are withered; for joy (the Father's guiding love) is withered 
 away from the sons of men. The seeds rot under their clods, the grasses 
 lay desolate, the barns are broken down, for the corn is withered. How 
 the beasts do groan ! the herds of cattle are perplexed because they 
 have no pasture !" 
 
 NKWMAN'S CAUJSTA. 
 
 " The plague of locusts, one of the most awful visitations to which the 
 countries included in the Roman Empire were exposed, extended from the 
 Atlantic to Ethiopia, from Arabia to India, and from the Nile and Ked Sea 
 to Greece and the north of Asia Minor. Instances are recorded in historv 
 of clouds of the devastating insects crossing the Black Sea to Poland, and 
 the Mediterranean to Lombardy. It is as numerous in its species as it is 
 wide in its range of territory. Brood follows brood, with a sort of family 
 
' THE LEA.VBS OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 31 
 
 likeness, yet with distinct attributes, as we read in the prophets of 
 the Old Testament, from whom Bochart tells us it is possible to 
 enumerate as many as ten kinds. Even one flight comprises myriads up- 
 on myriads, passing imagination, to which the drops of rain, or the sands 
 of the sea are the only fit companions; and hence it is almost a proverbial 
 mode of expression in the East (as may be illustrated by the Holy 
 Scriptures), by way of describing a vast invading army, to liken it to the 
 locusts. So dense are they, when upon the wing, that it is no exaggeration 
 to say that they hide the aun, from which circumstances, indeed, their 
 name in Arabic is derived. And so ubiquitous are they when they have 
 alighted on the earth, that they simply cover or clothe its surface. 
 
 " This last characteristic is stated in the sacred account of the plagues 
 of Egypt, where their faculty of devastation is also mentioned. The cor- 
 rupting fly and the bruising and prostrating hail preceded them in the 
 series of visitations, but they came to do the work of ruin thoroughly. 
 For not only the crops and fruits, but the small twigs and the bark of the 
 trees are the victims of their curious and energetic rapacity. Nor do they 
 execute their task in a slovenly way, that, as they have succeeded other 
 plagues, so they may have successors themselves (such as the canker worm, 
 commonly known as the " measuring worm" now so destructive in 
 California.) 
 
 "They take pains to spoil what they leave. Like the harpies, they smear 
 everything that they touch with a miserable slime, which has the effect of 
 a virus in corroding, or as some say, in scorching and burning. And then> 
 perhaps, as if all this were too little, when they can do nothing else, they 
 die, as if out of sheer malevolence to mankind, for the poisonous elements 
 of their nature are then let loose and dispersed abroad, and create a pesti- 
 lence; by which they manage to destroy many more by their death than in 
 their life. (After locust blizzards in Australia great ridges of the dead are 
 generally deposited on the sea shores of South Australia, of inland lakes, 
 and of Hobson's Bay in Victoria, creating a fearful stench). 
 
 "Such are the locusts whose existence the ancient "heretics" brought 
 forward as their primary proof that there was an evil creator, and of whom 
 an Arabian writer shows his national horror, when he says that they have 
 the head of a horse, the eyes of an elephant, the heck of a bull, the horns 
 of a stag, the breast of a lion, the belly of a scorpion, the wings of an 
 eagle, the legs of a camel, the feet of an oatrich and the tail of a serpent." 
 (See "The More Destructive Locusts of America, north of Mexico," by 
 Lawrence Bruner. Issued by Professor Biley, 1893). 
 
 THE VINE AND PHYLLOXERA IN CALIFORNIA. 
 
 That all the American, Australian and other vines are but prolongations 
 of the original Adamic stalk, and therefore subject to kindred ailments from 
 similar environments and general conditions, is well shown by Professor 
 George Husmann of Chiles Valley, Napa County, California, in his earliest 
 work on " Grape Culture and Wine Making in California," published in 
 November of 1883, from which I now quote : 
 
 "It is well known, he wrote, that the earliest beginnings (in California) 
 were made by the Jesuit Fathers of San Gabriel, with what has since become known 
 as the Mission or as it is erroneously called by many, the California grape. It ia 
 no doubt a true vinefera, whether, as some believe, it was grown from the seed or 
 from cuttings imported from Spun, it certainly bears no resemblance to our native 
 wild vine vitis Californica. A few enterprising men saw in its success there the 
 probabilities of a valuable industry. Their experiments were rewarded with 
 abundant crops which even surpassed their expectations, as our " (then)" dry and 
 
32 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 equable summers favoured the development of the grape, and although it was 
 thought in those days imperatively necessary to irrigate the vines, they found that 
 the Mission always ripened its fruit and would produce large crops, under a very 
 simple and convenient system of prunning, and make a fair drinkable wine in most 
 seasons . . . Many progressive men, encouraged by the evident success with 
 the Mission grape, imported cuttings of choice varieties for trial from France, the 
 .Rhine and Spain, often at heavy expense and risk; they were planted in different 
 
 sections, and mostly found to succeed well Farmers./bimd that the Lands 
 
 they had cropped for cereals, until they were exhausted and would not produce 
 grain, would still yield large crops of grapes for which they had a ready market at 
 home. It is certainly not surprising if they became over sanguine until everybody 
 and their neighbor planted grapes. As the Mission was known to be productive 
 and they could sell all they could grow (the communistic organization at the 
 Mission; their planting of carefully selected cuttings and rooted vines in rich virgin 
 soil, and the main object for which they originally laboured being to produce the 
 choicest wines f^r personal use, with their special facilities for enriching their 
 grounds and for systematically prunning the vines after the most approved con- 
 tinental fashion, as also the snug sheltering tree fringes surrounding their establish- 
 ment, were evidently completely overlooked by neighboring vine-planting farmers, 
 and hence doubtless the origin of existing phylloxera trouble). A good many vine- 
 yards of this (mission) variety were again planted together with a large acreage of 
 Zinfandel and Malvasia. The vineyards were to a large extent planted Dy men 
 who had little appreciation of fine quality, but planted grapes simply for the 
 money they could make out of them," . . . (quite regardless of after conse- 
 quences). 
 
 '' Another mistake which many of our planters have made, is the persistence with 
 which they have planted, and are planting even now, the vinifera cuttings and 
 vines, in districts affected and nearly destroyed by the Phylloxera. They ought 
 to profit by the lessons taught in France, and all over Europ3, by the devastated 
 vineyards which have reduced the crop of France to about one-third of what it was 
 formerly, until the greatest grape growing nition on the face of the globe cannot 
 raise sufficient for her own consumption and has to buy from all her neighbors to 
 meet the demand of her customers. The devastations m ide in our own vineyards 
 should have convinced the most skeptical." (Tne italics are mine). 
 
 The alarming official report which was published at the commencement 
 of this year by the California State Boird of Viticulture, concerning the 
 dreadful condition of vineyards through the Napa county where Professor 
 Husmann's vineyard is should favourably commend his, the professor's 
 good judgment, though heretofore despised by local viueyardists, as the 
 following extract from said report will show: " Every vineyard portion of 
 Napa county has been visited and inspected. . . Since my last report, two 
 years ago, vineyards in this county have been greatly lessened in number 
 and in area, in many portions of the county. Commencing ten years ago 
 in the lower end of Napa Valley, and supposed to have been brought from 
 Sonoma Valley, the phylloxera has spread almost the entire length of the 
 valley in the direction of the prevailing wind. Two years ago a few vine- 
 yards in the Napa District and some in the Yountville District were in- 
 fested. Since that time it has spread with great rapidity. In many cases 
 vineyards of considerable extent have, in the meantime, almost or wholly 
 disappeared, This will account for the smaller number of vinyards re- 
 ported this year. 
 
 " No remedy to prevent the spread of the disease has been discovered . . . 
 In almost every vineyard visited, where the phylloxera has made any headway, the 
 vines were allowed to stand without treatment, the disease taking its course. When 
 the vines were dead or nearly so, they were pulled out." During my visit through 
 the Napa Valley in April of 1892 accompanied by Professor Husmann, I was sur- 
 prised to find nearly all the vineyards most unreasonably crowded with vines, in 
 many, they ranged from three to six feet apart. Amongst the few exceptions was 
 
THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 33 
 
 one owned by Judge John A. Stanly, area 125 acres, and as a result he receives 
 most excellent returns. In addition to the commendable manner he has adopted in 
 the planting arrangements, the vineyard is snugly surrounded by fringes of 
 eucalyptus globulus, and in his report to the viticultural commission, from which I 
 now quote, he wrote: "Since I planted my first resistants, within three miles of 
 my vineyard, 500 acres have been planted to vines and eaten up by phylloxera. 
 My vineyard ia flourishing." The Judge assured me that the eucalypti fringes 
 thoroughly protect his vineyard from hoar frosts and severe wind storms. Since 
 the said official report was issued, the phylloxera plague has been discovered in 
 Southern California, and of which the San Francisco Examiner of April 1st, 1893, 
 writes as follows: " The phylloxera, the insect pest which has caused such a great 
 loss in the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma counties and which has destroyed 
 hundreds of thousands of acres of vines in France, has appeared in Southern Cali- 
 fornia in a small vineyard near Santa Ana. Coming; after the immense damage 
 that has been done by the Anaheim disease, (a new scourage) this is most dis- 
 couraging to the vineyardists of this section of the State." 
 
 Professor Husmann's statements regarding the origin and early history 
 of Californian grape culture apart from any other cause in eastern 
 States, furnishes colorable reasons to justify the following opinion pub- 
 lished in a German work on the Phylloxera by Dr. Geo. David: 
 
 "The nature of the (phylloxera) scourge having been determined, speculation 
 became rife as to the cause of its appearance. It was at first thought that the 
 phylloxera was indigenous to Europe, and that certain external influences had 
 brought about its sudden and extraordinary development. This view, however, 
 soon met with contradiction, and it is now proved beyond the possibility of 
 a doubt that the disease was directly imported from America. At Fonelbe, 
 near Tarascon; at Florida, near Bordeaux; at Klosternenberg and Oporto, in fact, 
 in whatever point the disease was first discovered, it is distinctly traceable to the 
 introduction of American plants The phylloxera of Europe and of America is 
 identical; this is proved by the researches of Mr. Kiley, who has published a com- 
 prehensive work upon the subject. In America, to the east of the Rocky Mountains, 
 the phylloxera abounds, and no European vines have there been successfully cul- 
 tivated. In those regions, however, a long struggle with the insect has resulted in 
 the development of varieties which are capable of resisting, to a certain extent, its 
 ravages, but which are in all other respects inferior to European vines. In Europe 
 the case is different; and the vines attacked by an enemy that they had no heredi- 
 tary tendency to resist, have inevitably succumbed." 
 
 FRENCH REPORT ON THB BI-SULPHATE OF CARBON TREATMENT FOR THE 
 Phylloxera vastatrix SCOURGE; translated and re-published by Mr. A. K. 
 Finlay of Glenoriston, Australia, September, 1880, folios 8-9 Said report 
 contains the following concluding remarks: 
 
 "The first applications of bi-sulphide of carbon were made between the 15th of 
 March and 4th of April, 1877. Tne lower part received a repeated treatment at 
 the rate of fifteen drachms per square yard, while in the upper portion twelve 
 drachms per square yard was applied in a single operation. In 1878 a repeated 
 treatment was carried out between the 15th and 30th of May, over the whole vine- 
 yard. On the 15th of July some insects still showed themselves on the lower rows, 
 and an injection of seven drachms per square yard was applied in a single operation. 
 In 1878 a repeated treatment was carried out between the 15th and 30th of May 
 over the whole vineyard. On the 15th of July some insects still showed themselves 
 on the lower rows, and an injection of seven drachms per square yard was given to 
 the three first lines." 
 
 Turning to folio 9 of said translation I find the following interesting 
 paragraph: 
 " In order to understand the wonderful rapidity with which the phylloxera advances, 
 
34: " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS.' 
 
 it H necessary to know something of its character. The insect is akin to the aphis 
 triba, whose fecundity is due to its strange system of generation, which Jias been 
 thus succinctly described: "The congregations of the aphides consist, in spring 
 and summer, of apterous individuals, and of nymphaa with undeveloped wings. 
 All these are females, which give birth to living young, satis accomplement pre- 
 alable. The males are produced towards the end of summer or during the autum- 
 nal season. They fecundate the last broods produced by the /emales first men- 
 tioned, which broods differ from their progenitors in requiring impregnation prior 
 to the continuance of their kind. They lay eggs after the sexual intercourse, and 
 these eggs produce, in spring, the broods above alluded to, which are capable of 
 producing living young without assistance from each other." Article on Entom- 
 ology, in *' Eucyclopaedia Britannica" " Towards the end of summer a winged 
 generation appears, the migration of which form one of the most rapid means of 
 spreading. They are produced upon the decomposition of rootlets which have 
 baen during the summer subjected to attack. Opinions differ as to the sex of these 
 winged insects. M. Balbiani, one of the commissioners appointed by the French 
 Academy of Sciences to investigate the subject, hold them to be females, while Mr. 
 Riley asserts that they are both male and female. This seems, however, a matter 
 of small importance, since there can be no question that they propagate the 
 plague" (?) (This is a popular delusion as they are simply an amnitised form of 
 nature's scavengeis evolved from their torpid condition by the agency of our soil, 
 empoverishing greed for personal gain). The males having served their purpose of 
 fecundating, die; and the females, having laid the impregnated, or as they are 
 called, " winter eggs," enter upon a state of hyber nation, to recommence their work 
 of generation in the spring. The winter egg, likewise, in the spring fulfils its 
 functions and produces the nymph which brings forth living young, as already 
 described. It is considered that eight generations of these nymphs are produced 
 during the season, before the appearance of the veritable female; and it has been 
 calculated that the progeny of a single insect may reach, in a year, the number of 
 5,904.000,000. These figures are held to be too small by some statisticians, but they 
 may be very liberally reduced, and still show the overwhelming forces which the 
 enemy can bring into the field. Before such numbers, the most careful organized 
 system of defence must receive many a rude shock. 
 
 " The full grown phylloxera is B- small almond-shaped insect, about 150th of an 
 iaoh long and 130th of an inch broad; it is armed with a powerful proboscis, or 
 sucking tube, with which it pierces the roots of the vine. Although it may be said 
 generally, that the phylloxera is a root-attaching insect, it is also occasionally found 
 in galls upon leaves, more especially in the case of American varieties; and it has 
 been proved by experiments that, while differing slightly in appearance, the root 
 and gall insects are virtually identical, and that each is capable of taking the place 
 of the other. The winged insect already alluded to is the shape in which the 
 phylloxera is most to be dreaded. The wings are comparatively large, and the in- 
 sect, being light, (resembling fine thistle-down) it is carried great distances by the 
 wind, passing easily over rivers, forests, and long intervening spaces which are not 
 planted with vines. That this forms the principal means of migration is proved by 
 the spread of the pest being generally in the direction of prevailing winds. The 
 phylloxera has, however, other means of locomotion, and, in favorable localities, 
 marches with great rapidity. There is no sort of soil, with the exception of sand, 
 which has yet been found to hinder its progress; but level, open country, more 
 especially when it is of a nature which cracks with drought is the most favorable 
 to its advance. Atmospheric conditions have their influence and very wet sea- 
 sons have always shown a diminution of the scourage. Still no permanent 
 remedy can be looked for even from the most continuous rains." 
 
 THE PHYLLOXERA IN AUSTRALIA. 
 
 The first report of the presence of phylloxera in Australia came from the Gee- 
 long district, in 1878, "(where as in California " farmers found that the lands 
 they had cropped for cereals until they were exhausted, and would not produce 
 grain would still yield large crops of grapes. " ) " According to the Government in- 
 specters, Messrs. Wallis and Hopton, thirteen vineyards were found to be infected 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 35, 
 
 with the disease, and were uprooted and destroyed. The infection, in some cases, 
 had evidently been of long standing, and the vineyards throughout the district 
 generally presented a most delapidated appearance. Unfortunately, the inspectors 
 were appointed too late for any beneficial measures to be taken, for the flight of the 
 winged insects was already nearly ended. The inspectors therefore confined their 
 report to certain observations and recommendations. They expressed their opinion, 
 aggreeing with experience elsewhere, that the disease was not due to poverty or 
 neglect (! !) bat that it had bsen imported into the Geelong district, and spread 
 either through the agency of the winged female, or the distribution of rooted vines 
 or vine catlings. They ascer tained that the flight of the winged insects commences 
 
 about the end of December, and continued till the first week in February an 
 
 observation which is of value in considering the work of eradication. The inspect- 
 ors concluded their report by recommending the adoption of prohibiting measures 
 in regard to the importation of rooted vines and vine-cuttings and the uprooting of 
 all uncultivated vine-yards, at the expense of the proprietors. 
 
 " Daring December, 1879, by direction of the chief Secretary, some experiments 
 with bi-sulphide of Carbon were made. The more immediate object of the work 
 was to test, as nearly as circumstances would admit, the effioacy of bi-sulphide to 
 stay the spread of phylloxera, when used in the manner patented by Mr, Rohart, 
 of Paris. The Rohart method, in brief, is to bury, at convenient distances and 
 depths, around the roots of the diseased vines, cubes of porous wood previously im- 
 pregnated with bi-sulphide of Carbon, and coated with a varnish the composi'tion 
 and manner of application of which is a secret reserved by the patentee. The 
 experiments were devised and conducted by Mr. Manly Hopwood, Chemist and 
 Analyst to the Department of Agriculture. At the time they were carried out the 
 country was very dry and the season much advanced, circumstances which militated 
 greatly against the success of the trials. In lieu of the patent cubes of M. Rohart, 
 Mr. Hopwood used small chip boxes, filled with dry sand, and cubes of " Infusorial" 
 earth, baked to expel moisture. Both these substitutes were charged with bi- 
 sulphide of carbon at the moment of use, and buried around the vines in holes 
 made with an iron bar to the depth of from ten to twelve inches. By experiment 
 in the laboratory it had been found that the evolution of bi-sulphide of carbon 
 vapor from baked infusorial earth is comparatively slow and even. 
 
 "Mr. Hop wood's experiments yielded results agreeing in the main with those 
 obtained in Europe, and led him to the conclusion that the employment of the 
 Rohart remedy early in the season would probably be efficacious in destroying the 
 underground phylloxera. But since the system is only applicable before the in- 
 sects have reached the surface in the winged state, he points out the great im- 
 portance of determining the proper time for the application, and rightly insists up- 
 on the necessity of early treatment. It is to be regretted that the experiments 
 made by Government do not appear to have stimulated private enterprise in the 
 same direction; for, so far as can be ascertained, no further trials of insecticides 
 have been made in the infected districts." (The real cause remained untouched.) 
 
 Notwithstanding the Victorian Inspectors having agreed to believe that 
 the phylloxera "disease" in and around Geelong was not due to poverty 
 and neglect" the actual facts of the case told a very different tale, as it was 
 well known to many local residents that a similar process of vineyard 
 forming obtained in Geelong to what happened as stated by Prof. George 
 Hussniann, in California. To my personal knowledge the Geelong vine- 
 yard plots and much of the vineyard soil in other parts of Victoria, 
 Australia would only yield rank weeds such as thistles and sorrel from a 
 similar soil impoverishing cause when planted with vines. 
 
 PROFESSOR F. W. MORSE 
 
 In a work entitled " Observations on the Life, History and Habits of 
 the Phylloxera in California," made from 1881 to 1886 by Prof. F. W. 
 Morse, assistant in the United States General Agricultural Laboratory, 
 that dreadful insect's mode of attack is described as follows: 
 
36 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 "There is one point worthy of note as throwing some light upon the resisting 
 power of vines; it is the manner of the insects attack. In the common vinefera 
 even, they show preference for particular spots on the roots, selecting those places 
 where the bark is softest, usually near a crack. From this they extend upward and 
 downward along the line where the tissue is continuous from that spot; and scarce- 
 ly ever do we find them working at right angles from this line. When the sap be- 
 gins to ooze out and rotting sets in, they precede it closely, always leaving a number 
 of insects to continue the destruction until the spot becomes completely rotted and 
 gives out no more sap. Large numbers of insects will often be found feeding upon 
 such spots, apparently reluctant to leave them -as long as any sustenance can be 
 derived therefrom. So closely is this mode of working followed, that in many old 
 Mission vines they will be found only on a single spot, while the remainder of the 
 root is free from them. A root covered with a fuzzy bark is noticeably objectionable 
 to them, a harder one with cracked or loosened bark is preferred." (Precisely the 
 mode of attack in Australia). "Upon a thorough resistant (?) stalk the insects act 
 cjuite differently. They are usually scattered about apparently at a loss to know 
 just where to begin operations. Their first piercings are made, and instead of a 
 deep rotting which completely kills the bark to the woody tissue, a slight thin black- 
 ening of the bark takes place, which does not extend further, and if made on the 
 firmer rootlets, will often peel of, leaving the root perfectly smooth. (Decom- 
 position of vines must precede an effective attack of insects.) 
 
 CONCERNING KNOWN REMEDIES. 
 
 " I abstain purposely from description of any chemical remedies, because 
 I believe them too costly and at the same time not effectual enough. They 
 give us no guarantee even if they could be so thoroughly applied as to exterminate 
 all the insects of permanent security; as they may at any time be again transmitted 
 to the same vineyard, making continued applications necessary, generally with 
 great danger to the vines. Only in cases when it is desirable to save a valuable 
 piece of vineyard of a choice variety, it may be advisable to use Dr. Baner's mer- 
 curial remedy, which, so far, is the most promising, least dangerous (?) and cheap- 
 est of all that have been tried. Insecticides, of whatever kind and description, are 
 too costly in their application, and have to be renewed too often to ever become 
 practicably applicable here or even in Europe. The lowest cost of their appli- 
 cation, of which I have seen an estimate, is about thirty dollars per acre, more than 
 the general annual cost of cultivation, and this is only a temporary remedy which 
 must be renewed every year to be of any use at all. Besides great care must be 
 exercised in their application, for an overdose will kill or fatally icjure the vines. 
 The pest is liable to appear at any time, and thus it needs constant doctoring " (as 
 do the human plant)" with costly remedies to keep the patient even in a state be- 
 tween life and death." 
 
 Professor Husmann in his subsequent work on " Grape Culture 
 and Wine Making in California," published on October 20th, 1887, 
 referring to the Phylloxera and the much relied on " resistant" savs 
 (folio 83): 
 
 " First of all it is necessary to dispel the illusion entertained by some that re- 
 sistant vines are such as are not attacked by the Phylloxera. So far as our know- 
 ledge extends at this time, the insect will feed on any and all of the members of 
 the true vine tribe (vitis proper) when occasion offers; but it is evident that some 
 are better adapted to the taste^ or nature of the phylloxera than others, and are 
 therefore more numerously infested when planted in the same ground with 
 others; just as cattle will pasture on the sweet grasses in preference to the sour 
 ones. The European vine (vinefera) appears on the whole to be the one most 
 uniformly adapted to the insects taste in all its varieties, and is always attacked in 
 preference. It evidently offers the best conditions to the life and multiplication of 
 the pest. It is not, then, a proof of non-resistance when a vine is found to be 
 more or less infested ; for, as far as we know, there are no true vines of which the 
 phylloxera will not attack the roots when presented to them. ..'... 
 
THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 37 
 
 But every vine, like other plants, is subject to certain conditions of soil, climate 
 and atmosphere for its welfare. Any vine or any other plant may be planted 
 where from unfavorable conditions it will not flourish, and where a slight addition 
 to the adverse influences may cause it to either die or maintain only a feeble 
 
 existence The resistant vines are no exception to this general rule. 
 
 They have been planted and expected to yield satisfactory results, where vines 
 have been fruited for twenty or thirty years without the use of a particle of man- 
 ure, and where, as a result, the old vines as well as the new "resistant" ones 
 have died from sheer inanition. They have been planted where no vine ever 
 should be. (And hence the existing phylloxera trouble). 
 
 THE PHYL.LOXERA QUESTION. 
 
 " That this is a serious one, likely to effect our industry in all its branches, will 
 hardly be denied by anyone. If we look at the devastated vineyards in Europe, 
 if we consider the ruin it has brought to thousands of formerly happy and con- 
 tented homes in France, how its ravages have decimated this leading industry, HO 
 that now they do not produce wine enough for their own consumption, but buy 
 where they formerly almost supplied the world ; how its ravages are already felt 
 in Algiers, in Austria, and wherever vines are grown we will hardly question 
 that it is the great disaster threatening everywhere, including this continent. 
 Indeed, we have evidence sufficient of its destructiveness in this State, it will make 
 itself seen and felt, and no mechanical or chemical means have as yet been found 
 that are of real practical value. All the insecticides that have so far been tried 
 have proved too costly and impractical in their application." 
 
 COMPARATIVE RESULTS. 
 
 Since the issue of Prof. Husmann's first work from which I have also 
 quoted, adverse climatic conditions have been steadily increasing through- 
 out America from the cause already stated. In proof of which , extracts 
 from the respective works in parallel positions, with regard to California 
 somewhat testifies : 
 
 "American drape Growing and Wine 
 making," November 9th, 1883. 
 
 " A visit to this shore in the summer 
 of 1881 convinced me that this was the 
 true home of the grape, and that Cali- 
 fornia with her sunny and dry summers 
 and her mild winters, was destined to be 
 the wine land of the world; that prom- 
 ised land where everyone could sit under 
 his own vine and fig tree. Disease of 
 the vine are here comparatively un- 
 known, the rainless summers, when no 
 showers are expected from May until 
 September, allow nearly all the crop to 
 ripen every year. . . . These favor- 
 able climaltic conditions simplify the cul- 
 ture and training of the vine, the gath- 
 ering of the fruit, and the operations in 
 wine making. ... In this climate 
 it becomes possible that one man can 
 own and superintend hundreds of acres 
 of vineyard." \ 
 
 Now, in 1893, Calif ornian vineyards are rapidly becoming hopelessly 
 diseased. 
 
 '* American Grape Growing and Wine 
 Making," November 20th, 1887. 
 
 Apologizing for the delay in the issu- 
 ing of his new work, Prof. Husmann 
 wrote : "I hoped to complete it before 
 the vintage so that it could be of some 
 use perhaps during its progress. But 
 unavoidable delays have drawn it out to 
 the end of the vintage of this truly ab- 
 normal year, abnormal in its late and 
 destrucrive frosts, its hot winds during 
 summer causing a great deal of coulure, 
 and its unusally hot weather during the 
 vintage, It has been one of the most 
 difficult seasons to handle a vineyard 
 and wine cellar which will ever occur 
 here I trust, and has taught us many 
 and severe lessons." 
 
38 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 VINE TROUBLES IN FRANCE. 
 
 (From the San Francisco Chronicle of December lth } 1892.) 
 
 PARIS, November 15. The annual vintage, one of the greatest fetes known in 
 French rural districts, is ended ; the grapas are gathered, and the vignerons, their 
 work finished, have filled their glasses and sung, for the last time until another 
 autumn, the old refrain : 
 
 Bon Francais, quand je vois mou verre 
 Plein deuce vin couleur de feu, 
 Je songe en remerciant Dieu 
 Qu'ils n'en ont pas en Angleterre ! 
 
 "All the slopes in the south, the center, the east, and the west, all those in the 
 Burgundy and in the Gueyenne, in the Champagne and in the Gascogny, in the 
 Lorraine and in the Languedoc; all those plains of Anjou and Touraine, as well as 
 the mountains of Auvergne and of Dauphiny, have been heard from, and we 
 know now of the quantity and quality of this year's wine harvest. 
 
 "For a quarter of a century the phylloxera has been among French vines. The 
 Gard, the Herault and the valley of the Rhone were the regions in which that 
 destructive insect was first found, and then came the turn of the Bordelais and 
 the Charente. The plantations in the center of France and those in Burgundy 
 were not touched but in the afflicted districts milldew, odium, and other evils also 
 fell on the great fields. The average produce of wine fell from thirty-five and 
 forty hectoliters per hectare to twelve and fourteen only, and in four or five years 
 land had lost $200,000,000 of its value. 
 
 "France is not the largest wine producer in the world, however. There are 
 21,215,125 acres of vineyards in Europe, and all the rest of the earth shows less 
 than 1,000,000 acres Italy figures at the top with 8,010,000 acres planted in 
 grapes, France comes next with 5,832,000 acres, and Spain is third with 3,745,000 
 acres. Last year Italy produced 806,000,000 gallons of wine, Spain 702,000,000 
 gallons, Austria-Hungary 235,000,000 gallons, Germany 63,800,000 gallons; 
 Switzerland 25,800,000 gallons, and over 70,000,000 gallons were produced in 
 Algeria. 
 
 " Phylloxera in Champagne ! You can perhaps imagine the excitement there 
 was all over this country, and the excitement was not lessened the past summer 
 when it was discovered that other vineyards had been attacked. Champagne 
 making is the fortune of that part of France, and it is an enormous fortune. In 
 plentiful years the production of white champagne wine is not less than 80,000,000 
 bottles. But the vineyards of Champagne are more vigorous and healthy than all 
 others, hence they were able to resist the phylloxera. Still tons of sulphide of 
 carbon have been used up there, and the vines that were infected with the disease 
 were cut away and burned and the soil was poisoned 
 
 "There is not much possibility that the prize of $60,000 offered by the State to the 
 discoverer of an efficacious means of destroying phylloxera will ever be awarded." 
 
 Just as certain as the suicidal practice of depleting the human body 
 by indiscriminate blood-letting to cure disease had to give way to a more 
 rational mode of treatment, so also must the prevailing theories of vine 
 cure succumb to the light of wisdom and common sense. 
 
 The phylloxera made its appearance in the south of France about the 
 year 1863 and destroyed a great many vineyards before its presence was 
 discovered. One of the first victim's whoe-e vineyard was destroyed and 
 rooted up in 1867, replanted another part of his estate the following winter. 
 He divided the ground to be planted in three different parts of equal size, 
 and as much as possible, containing the same nature of soil. Each plot was 
 planted with the same kind of vine, and received the same treatment even 
 after, with the only difference that each lot of vines was planted on a dif- 
 ferent scale. One was planted 4x4, or four feet every way, the other 
 6x6, or six feet every way, the last one planted 10 x 10, or ten feet 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 39 
 
 every way. The whole vineyard was treated alike for thirteen years after- 
 wards, well worked and heavily manured periodically. In 1880, a com- 
 mission from the French Vinegrowers Association was sent to that district 
 to inspect the vineyards in connection with the phylloxera. The trans- 
 lation of the report relative to the above mentioned vineyard runs as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 " When we arrived at the estate of Mr. X, in the Department du Gard, and had 
 been introduced by Mr. B, Mr. X received us in a most kindly manner, showed us 
 all round the vineyard, kindly supplying us with any information we required. 
 This vineyard, which is divided into three equal parts, has been planted about 
 thirteen years, after having been destroyed by phylloxera in 1867. Each part was 
 planted on a different scale. One was planted 4x4, another 6x6, and the third 
 10 x 10. Each of them has been well worked, well and regularly manured every 
 three years ever since they have been planted. The vines in the first part planted 
 4x4, are nearly all dead, except a few around the rows along the roads-, those in 
 the second, planted 6x6 are still all alive, but look very sickly, and Mr. X told us 
 that the grapes he had gathered from them for the last few years did not pay his ex- 
 penses, and if it had not been for the hope he still had of curing them he should 
 have rooted them up long ago. The vines in the space, planted 10 x 10 were grow- 
 ing luxuriantly, and were bending under the weight of their fruit. With the help of 
 Mr. X, we dug up, ourselves, vines roots in several places in the three different 
 parts of the vineyard and we found that they were pretty well all alike, covered 
 with insects. But roots from the wide plantation did not seem to be affected by their 
 presence, while the roots from the two other parts were all more or less advanced 
 in decomposition." (Where, when and how to plant the vine, by I. Couslandt, 
 Australia, 1883, folios 13 and 14.) 
 
 It should here be noticed that though the above vineyard soil was over- 
 run with phylloxera evolved from the closely planted vines, they were 
 utterly powerless to penetrate those planted 10 x 10. 
 
 ATMOSPHERIC GERMS. 
 
 The following extract from a seriously interesting lecture delivered at 
 the Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, on the evening of Friday, 
 February 24th, 1893, by Dr. W. F. Cheney, faintly illustrates some of 
 the " blessings" we eojoy from our chronic contempt for the earth's 
 forest-lungs in and around centers of population : 
 
 " The lecture proved quite instructive and was listened to attentively by a large 
 and appreciative audience." The lecturer said : " To prove the presence in the 
 air of living forms this simple test will suffice : Take a little glassful of bullion 
 broth, filtered to remove all bits of beef fibre. Such a liquid is clear as crystal 
 and shows under the microscope not a sign of life, no matter how closely < 
 ined. Let this stand for a few days in a warm place and then examine it again. 
 The fluid is no longer clear, but turbid, and a drop placed beneath the microscope 
 will be found crowded with living things that jostle one another and hasten to and 
 fro across the scene like busy human beings in a city street. We scott perchance, 
 at miracles. Yet here is surely one. What magic art has wrought this change ? 
 Whence have come these innumerable specks of life? This was an unsolved 
 problem long after the microscope had revealed their existence. Men coulc 
 doubt their eyes the living things were present in the fluid beyond question, but 
 what had been their origin ? 
 
 (Wholesale forest destruction and heartless selfishness in many such 
 like forms as the following extract from the 8. F. Examiner of April 26th, 
 1893 denotes : "The Grand Jury will perform an important public i 
 vice if it sets to the bottom of the frauds in sewer and street paving con- 
 tracts of the last few years. The city and the property owners have been 
 
40 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOE THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 badly swindled by conscienceless contractors. Contracts have been vio- 
 lated, specifications ignored, and money collected for work that has not 
 been done. The sewer commission has found numerous instances in 
 which every rule of good work has been violated. Rotten brick has been 
 used, mortar has been made of mud, and the trenches have been dug so 
 that the sewer in the center of a block has been higher than at either 
 end. This is something worse than swindling. It is a crime that in- 
 eludes the deliberate poisoning of the people who live along the line of 
 the rotten work. This form of rascality is deserving of severer punish, 
 ment than falls to the lot of the common thief or pickpocket. If the 
 man who breaks into a house to steal a loaf of bread gets a dozen years 
 in prison, the rascal who cheats the citizens and the city by laying a rot- 
 ten sewer deserves a lifetime behind the walls of Folsom.") 
 
 " It was discovered that the generation of these swarms can be prevented in a 
 very simple way. That if the bullion is kept for some time at boiling temperature 
 and then sealed at once to prevent the access of air, it will remain clear for days, 
 tor weeks, for indefinite periods, and show no trace of living forms on microscopi- 
 cal examination. The sole difference in the treatment of the fluid in the two cases 
 has been the exclusion of air. And so men came to look in the air for the source 
 of the changes so long misunderstood. Then slowly, step by step, came the name 
 cocci, from the Greek word meaning a berry or pill. Others look like short rods, 
 and hence get the name bacteria, from the Greek word meaning a rod. Still 
 others of a similar shape, hut a little longer, are called bacilli, from the Latin 
 word meaning a staff. And, lastly, there are forms called spirilli, because they 
 look like long, twisted spirals. Though science gives these distinctive names to 
 different forms, yet popular usage designates all germs as bacteria, regardless of 
 their shape. In size, though all are visible to the naked eye, there is nevertheless 
 great variation among them. Some of the cocci are but 1-20,000 of an inch in 
 diameter, so that 20,000 of them together in a heap would occupy only one cubic 
 inch of space. Some of the spirilli, on the other hand, attain a length of 1-300 
 of an inch, but with germs as with men, the stature of the individual bears no 
 relation to its influence or to its possibilities. 
 
 " In structure all these living germs are bnt simple vegetable cells. Imagine a 
 minute speck of matter of jelly-like consistency, the surface a little more firm and 
 dense than the center. Such is the living cell, the last step in the subdivision of 
 all living structures. The anatomist, with his knife, can dissect the animal body 
 and reveal the different tissues of what it is composed the muscles, the bones, the 
 arteries and the nerves and the connecting strands that binds the partis together. 
 But with his microscope he goes on far beyond that point and learns that each 
 muscle, bone and nerve is itself made up of multitudes of individual cells, diff- 
 ering vastly in shape and size according to the tissue in which they are found, but 
 all essentially the same in structure. So the botanist can take apart the plant and 
 show its various tissues, but each of those tissues, beneath the microscope, becomes 
 at last a mass of tiny cells. Beyond this point, either in animal or vegetable 
 tissue, no eye has ever seen, and these cells become knowledge that in the atmos- 
 phere everywhere float seeds or germs of life, constantly on the alert for a con- 
 genial spot where they may alight and make their home. With this discovery the 
 old doctrine of spontaneous generation had at last to be discarded. It was" not 
 given up without a struggle and many a wordy battle, but to-day there are few in- 
 deed who believe in it. 
 
 ^ "Not content with finding that the earth contains such germs, science has de- 
 vised ways for estimating their number ; has made out their structure; has learned 
 how they reproduce their kind, and has become familiar with the habits of in- 
 dividual varieties. An ingenious French scientist, after painstaking experiments, 
 has calculated that in the ordinary atmosphere of a large city there are 2,000 
 germs to every cubic yard ; in the air of a room or house in winter, kept closed to 
 exclude the cold, he estimates that there are 45,000 germs to every cubic yard, 
 and in the wards of a long-used hospital he found 90,000 germs in the same air 
 space. 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. ' 41 
 
 11 The same French scientist found that in summer, whether in city or country 
 the air contains three or four times more germs than in winter ; that the air at 
 elevations is always less densely populated by them than that near the surface of 
 the earth, and that the air on sea or on mountain heights is almost entirely free 
 from them. It is generally to be regretted that this scientist did not extend his 
 investigations to the atmosphere of one of our Mission-street horse-cars, habitually 
 crowded with passengers and with every door and window tightly closed. The 
 man who does examine one of these tor germs will, no doubt, find " there's mil- 
 lions in it !" 
 
 "The dwellers of the air vary greatly in size. Some appear under the microscope 
 as minute, rounded dots. These have been, therefore, the points of beginning for 
 all living things. From such an assumed origin comes every plant, every animal 
 and every human creature, by multiplication and differentiation, by growth and 
 development. The difference between a bacterium and a man is that the bacteri- 
 um never gets beyond the starting-point. It begins and ends its existence as a 
 single cell. Such as it is in structure all living creatures once were, and the mys- 
 tery of its origin and creation is as great as that of man. The humble coccus, 
 standing on the very threshold of that domain where living things abound, pre 
 sents a problem as profound as that of the genesis of a human soul. It possesses 
 life, and that possession in spite of its simple form makes the coccus an object of 
 absorbing interest and of deepest awe. 
 
 "One of the most familiar manifestations ot the presence in air of unseen germs is 
 the formation of mold, such as is frequently seen on bread, fruit or cheese. To the 
 naked eye this is only an ugly scum or fuzz that can be easily scraped away from 
 the surface and causes no perceptible changes in the parts beneath. Under the 
 microscope this would become a luxuriant field of green as beautiful as tbe expanse 
 of waving grain that clothes the plains in spring-time. Air always contains these 
 mold germs, but they do not take root and grow on the surface where they chance 
 to light, else mold would be the rule instead of an occasional occurrence. These in- 
 finitisimal seeds must be well watered or they die. This we express when we say 
 that mold forms only in places that are moist or damp. The mold germ that thrives 
 on bread is not the one that finds nourishment in the juice of fruits, nor the one 
 that lives by preference in the barnyard. 
 
 "Some years ago, during excavations in the buried city of Pompeii there were 
 found several jars of preserved figs, hermetically sealed, which had been prepared 
 by some good housewife of that ill-fated city, eighteen hundred years before When 
 these jars were opened the figs proved to be as fresh and delicious as if put away 
 only the summer previous. It is said that that discovery taught the present century 
 the art of preserving fruit. This art, so familiar to every household, depends mere- 
 ly on the exclusion of the germs of fermentation. There are other kinds of germs 
 whose importance is very great, for they find their residence, not in the dead, bir, 
 in living tissues, and thus become a menace to the health and even the life of man. 
 Does all air contain disease germs, and is there any way to prevent their presence 
 there ? These are questions of vital importance to the human race. Fortunate y 
 for man, such germs are not always hovering about him. Air is seldom entirely 
 free from microscopic forms of life, but the majority of such is perfectly harmless to 
 man (?) It is only exceptionally that air contains those varieties that cause disease. 
 There are two sources for their occurrence in the air of any particular locality: 
 
 "First: They come from decomposing material; for while some disease germs will 
 not, so far as known, multiply outside of the body of infected animals or human 
 lungs, there are others that do multiply abundantly under favorable conditions as 
 to food and temperature. This is the case with germs of typhoid fever, diphtheria, 
 slanders, cholera and erysipelas. All of these thrive in filth of any sort. be 
 fecond source of disease germs in the air of a locality is the presence of cases of 
 disease. From a human bodv in which these parasites are living some are con 
 stantly escaping. Deprive disease germs of the inefficient sewers which are to them 
 as the promised land, flowing with milk and honey and build more > harbors ^ of 
 refuge, equipped with the means to put the enemy to route-then and not till then 
 will the city become a safe place for residence when epidemics threaten. (S. F. 
 Bulletin, February 25, 1893.) 
 
42 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 THE MEDITERRANEAN FLOUR-MOTH. 
 (from the San Francisco Morning Call, Dec. 8, 1892.) 
 
 "The terrible ephestia kuhniella (Zeller) is spreading millions of darkening wings, 
 and coming as the locusts came by the Mle. They started from Eastern Europe 
 several years ago, and, advancing like the cholera, and by si.nilar means, have now 
 reached the Pacific Coast. They are stopping whirring flouring- mills, and are in 
 our daily bread, our morning gems, pancakes and mush and our evening pies and 
 sweet cakes. There is no joke about it. The Mediterranean flour moth is really 
 <^oing those things. It has just gained a fair foothold here, and, as it rapidly spreads, 
 it is proving a very expensive, annoying and disagreeable insect pest. The annoy- 
 ance promises to increase rapidly, and a determined warfare will soon be waged 
 against it generally throughout the State. The flour-moth bad not been heard of 
 here until two or three years rgo when it appeared in a few mills in this city, and 
 it has been but a few months since it began to attract general attention among the 
 millers, as it gradually spread from mill to mill, but it has already cost them 
 thousands of dollars, and they have just become thoroughly wakened to an alarmed 
 inquiry about the pest and how to fight it. It seems strange that a noiseless little 
 moth less than an inch long and so light it cannot withstand a breath should stop 
 * the steam driven shafts of a great flouring- mill from turning, but it does. It does 
 more than that, too. It ruins fresh flour and meal by the barrel, and it makes the 
 housewife turn up her nose in disgust while she is getting breakfast and then go 
 back to the groceryman with a complaint. It makes the groceryman complain to 
 the miller, and along the line from the miller to the breakfast table there is turn- 
 ing up of noses, a loss of good flour and oatmeal and buckwheat and a general 
 wondering what is the matter. People may now understand it all and lay the blame 
 on Providence or foreign immigration. (Yes, "lay the blame on Providence," as 
 we have always done, to, if possible, shirk our own responsibilities.) 
 It seemed odd that an insect at this late age of the world should discover for the first 
 time that flour was good eating and that flourmills made good homes after letting 
 flourmills alone for ages, but Professor Johnson Could not explain this late pro- 
 gressive move of the flour- moth." 
 
 A WAIL FROM MALTA. 
 
 A highly interesting letter from the pen of Mr. John H. Cook, of 
 St. Julian, Malta, dated September 22nd, 1892, referring to "The re- 
 markable falling off in the quantity and quality of the fruit" in that part 
 of the world, appeared in the printed Reports of the Consuls of the Uni- 
 ted States, No. 149, February, 1893, (folios 261-263). Mr. Cook declares, 
 and evidently U. S. Consul Worthington affirms: 
 
 " That unless some energetic measures be adopted to counteract the influences of 
 the causes that are at work, within a comparatively brief period of time many fruits, 
 such as the orange and mandarine, for the growth of which the Maltese Islands 
 have so long been famous, will be either exterminated or will be cultivated only as 
 curiosities. It is, I believe, a well known fact that the orange, mandarine, lemon, 
 fig, nectarine, olive, apricot, apple, pear, grape in fact all fruit and most kinds 
 of vegetables grown in these islands are at present affected with a variety of dis- 
 eases that not only attack the fruit, but also devitalize the tree to such an extent 
 as to jeopardise its very existence. The Malta orange is at the present time affec- 
 ted with four different kinds of diseases. . . . Another foe, which is 
 of an even more deadly character, is the beetle cerambyx, which, while in the 
 caterpillar stage, bores its way into the heart of the trunk of the nespola and the 
 apple trees, and causes them to rapidly decay. But it is not the fruit gardens 
 alone that have been invaded by insect pests." The pea crop of last year was seri- 
 ously diminished by the attacks of a worm called the " cadell," and of an aphis 
 called the " blanqueta." . . . The wheat, tae sulla, the cotton the staple 
 productions of the Malta soil all have insect foes in numbers that are out of all 
 proportion to the area of the districts in which the crops are grown. To what are 
 we to attribute this invasion of insect pests?" 
 
*' THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 43 
 
 (Comparatively tiny deforested and therefore "devitalized" Malta 
 standing about midway between the mighty African Sahara desert, and de- 
 forested Europe and Turkey, may be likened umo a much enfeebled 
 man who, from force of circumstances is compelled to reside continuous- 
 ly within an imperceptibly diseased atmosphere generated from pestifer- 
 ous environments, and whose nickering vitality has been sustained to its 
 utmost limit by means of artificial stimulants and legislative enactments. 
 It should now be evident from a careful perusal of this paper that the 
 sensible suggestion herein quoted from the New York Herald concerning 
 the reclaimation of Gallilee by the restoration of her forest-lunga and, 
 let me add, her refreshing inland lakes, coupled with a genuine desire 
 for our neighbor's welfare, equally applies to the earth as a whole, and 
 especially to Malta. Then, and not till then, will disease insect laden 
 whirlwinds cease to scatter their retributive hosts over the earth's sur- 
 face, as also will the reign of death-dealing cyclones, torrental floods, 
 protracted droughts, blizzards and general pestilence be dethroned. 
 Just think of the Mediterranean flour-moth pest now in California !) 
 
 Though having selected such reports of destructive cyclones as apeared 
 to furnish ample evidence in support of my contention re the costly fruits 
 from wholesale forest destruction, I must quote a little further from an 
 article which appeared in the S. F. Chronicle of April 21st, 1893, under the 
 heading: " Fatal work of a Southern Cyclone," which as said article states 
 " scattered desolation through two counties of southern Mississippi: " 
 
 " Meridian (Mies.), April 20 Clarke and Jasper counties of this State suffered 
 from a cyclone last night at 7 o'clock, more destructive to human life and more 
 serious in its damage to property than the one three weeks ago. It followed almost 
 the track of its predecessor. Over forty people were killed and nearly two hundred 
 were more or less injured. These figures may be increased when all the stricken 
 districts are heard from. The destruction of property will amount to hundreds of 
 thousands. Entire neighborhoods have been literally swept off the face of the earth. 
 
 " The cyclones path was through a vast pine forest, broken here and there by 
 farms Huge trees were uprooted and carried for long distances. Near the town 
 of Pachuta lived the family of William Parton, consisting of himself, his wife and 
 three children. Their bodies, except that of the youngest child were picked up 
 over a mile away, mangled and entirely nude. Their, brains had been dashed out. 
 The voungest child had a marvelous escape. It was found half a mile from its home 
 early this morning, uninjured and crying piteously for its mother. 
 
 "William Fisher, his mother, his wife and their five children were blown away, 
 and search parties have been out all day, but none of the bodies has been recovered. 
 A child of Sim McGowan was found dead on a tree top a mile from its home. . . 
 Every messenger from the remote districts brings a tale of suffering and death. The 
 wind is still high to-day, and as each cloud ha 8 appeared the people have huddled 
 
 t0? < Th^ c^cTone'came 'from the southwest and traveled in a straight line until it 
 reached Quitman. There its course ^^J^ 
 direction for three miles it took another turn eastward." 
 
 Th1%?SW ^sue) had also the following dispatches:- 
 "MILWAUKEE April 20 Twenty-one men drowned, one vessel ashore and the 
 life sav cfew 'covered with dory are among the results of last night s terrible 
 
 ^SSTiSf 5S2*!E^MM SftSS * * 
 
 State bm that tmouut of snow fell last night and to day. In some parts of Mm- 
 
44 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS.' 5 
 
 nesota, the average being over a foot, heavy rain preceded the snow . . falling 
 steadily this afternoon, up to which time fifteen inches had fallen." 
 
 SOME CAPITALISTIC AND HYGIENIC CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 Apart from the terribly fierce results to local human life and property 
 from deforestation throughout the once extensive hog and potato raising, 
 Mississippi Valley, the whole populace of America are now being made to 
 roughly share in the trouble from lack of those necessary food supplies. 
 I am assured that until a few years ago Mississippi Valley hog farmers 
 derived handsome returns by disposing of their live hogs at from four 
 cents to five cents per pound in large flocks, and that now, because of the 
 intense cold, cyclones, torrental floods and otherwise general unreliability 
 of the seasons, the rearing of hogs and root crops have become almost im- 
 possible, and in consequence pork cuiers have to pay from seven cents to 
 eight cents per pound for the shortage supplies they can procure. I am 
 also assured that from said cause and a recently developed swine disease 
 known as " the hog cholera pest" the output from Chicago, Milwaukee 
 and elsewhere is now annually reduced by millions of carcases. Some 
 philosophers may suppose that this is but a trifling matter scarcely worth 
 noticing, but many others will doubtless be disposed to think otherwise, 
 and especially on reflecting over the fact that sixty-three millions of 
 American people who have been educated to the almost daily consumption 
 of pork in some form, besides many millions elsewhere who look to the 
 United States for their pork supplies, have now to pay at least twenty-five 
 per cent more than heretofore for that commodity and in all probability 
 for a much less nutricious article containing possibly, more or less disease 
 germs. On the new disease known as " hog cholera" the New York Home- 
 stead of April 20th, 1893, writes as follows: 
 
 " There is no reliable remedy. Prevention is the one course to be pursued . . . 
 In buying fresh hogs avoid all public stock yards, and railroad cars or other public 
 conveyances. Buy from country herds where you know there has been no sickness" 
 (a now very difficult task) 
 
 And concerning the terrible disease so common to hog flesh, namely 
 " trichinae" the S. F. Examiner of March 22nd, 1893, writes: 
 
 " There are at the German Hospital in this city, three patients whose complaint 
 is unique in the experience of most of the local medical practitioners. They are 
 William Hunmsand John and Walter Nagel, St. Helena farmers, who were brought 
 from their Napa home to the hospital on Fourteenth and Noe streets, about a week 
 ago. The three Germans are afflicted with trichiniasi?, and it commences to look 
 as though the trouble would cost Walter Nagel his life. . . Hunius and the 
 Nagles owe their affliction to pork infested with trichinae. A. few days before they 
 were brought to the hospital they ate some sausages containing raw pork, and a 
 microscopical examination of sections of the hog from which the pork was taken has 
 shown conclusively that the animal contained myriads of trichinae." 
 
 Concerning the potato failure the S. F. Evening Post of April 28th makes 
 the following comments: 
 
 '.' From present appearances there will be a potato famine in California this year, 
 or, in any event, high prices will rule, even if a full supply is obtained from outside 
 quarters. Stocks are lighter than they have been before for many years, and the 
 advance in value has brought in shipments from the E-ist as far back as Wisconsin. 
 There are few dealers here who can recall another instance of the kind, although 
 for years past Utah and Nevada have been drawn upon to help out at times. 
 
 The shipment referred to came to hand Wednesday from Waupacca, and as high 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 45 
 
 as $2.10 was paid for choice lots. They were all of the Burbank variety. Another 
 carload is expected to arrive and a higher rate is bid for them. From all accounts 
 this will be a very bad year for California potatoes, and the crop will amount to little 
 over one-half of that which is usually raised. The prolonged rains interfered with 
 the planting and did not benefit the crop put in early in the year." 
 
 The same issue of the Post contains the following doleful dispatch: 
 
 POOR CROP OUTLOOK. 
 
 "ST. PAUL, April 27. The farmers of Minnesota and the Dakotag are pretty 
 nearly discouraged over the outlook for crops. Not an acre of grain has been sown 
 in North Dakota, nor at any point in Minnesota north of St. Cloud, and there is no 
 prospect that any will be sown in the next ten days. It began snowing Wednesday 
 and an average of eighteen inches fell in twenty- four hours. Since that date it has 
 rained almost continuously and yesterday morning it again began snowing and the 
 fall was steady all day all the way west from St. Paul to Dickinson, N. D. In 
 northern Minnesota, around Crookston, Fisher and many other Red river points, 
 thousands of acres have been converted into lakes by overflowing streams, and all 
 talk of putting in a crop is out of the question." 
 
 CALIFORNIA'S DEFORESTING CONTRIBUTION. 
 
 The S. F. Chronicle of April 23rd, 1893, amongst its Columbian Ex- 
 position articles was the following: 
 
 " The lumber industry is one of the oldest and most important branches of trade 
 in California, and antidates the admission of the State into the Union. The manu- 
 facture of lumber in California can be traced back as far as 1838. . . The ex- 
 ports of lumber from San Francisco by sea (alone) to all countries dating from 1870 
 have been as follows: 
 
 TEAKS FEET VALUE 
 
 1070 ... .13,679,652 $245,216 
 
 187l" ..17,590,854 312,570 
 
 1872" . 16,517,171 309,325 
 
 1873" ..17,415,287 350,024 
 
 1874" . 9,036,799 176,956 
 
 1875" '.".'.' 10,024,189 202,912 
 
 1876' .10,781,220 199,894 
 
 1877" ..13,874,327 267,333 
 
 1878" ..14,596,422 289,374 
 
 1879'....: 16,501,075 316,485 
 
 1880 14,370,796 307,006 
 
 1881 18,269,157 393,283 
 
 iiil : : :::SM:::H:: : ::i::^|g 
 
 1884 20,231,584 489,642 
 
 1885 ....19,266,070 413 ' 93 j? 
 
 1886.': 15,352,649 294,403 
 
 1887 15,911,000 428,008 
 
 1888 22,535,740 597,230 
 
 1889 18,877,570 457,214 
 
 1890 19,169,980 448,074 
 
 1891 19,931,521 470,345 
 
 1892 21,332,560 495,572 
 
 When we couple to the above the many millions of feet that have been 
 used during the said periods in and around California for mining ; opera- 
 tions, building and repairing, domestic consumption, w harfs, jettie ^ rail- 
 way sleepers a g ndothe?woodworks, foresees far* ^^**$* 
 
 bridges, etc., minus any commentate replenishing of fi 
 
 we should not now be surprised with existing results to climate, etc. 
 
46 
 
 DANGEROUS EXPERIMENTS. 
 
 (From the Toronto Weekly Globe of March llth, 1891.) 
 
 " Imagine an application of poison spray to a dying man to restore him to 
 a state of primal health I" 
 
 OUR FRUIT TREE ENEMIES. 
 
 [By B. G.I 
 (Ancona, March 5th, 1891.) 
 
 "Perhaps I may be allowed to say for the immediate information of some who 
 have come to look upon spraying as an essentially fundamental principle of fruit- 
 growing that in reality it is not so. If this was admitted then what would become 
 of an industry of such immense growing importance to the great interests of this 
 great country. Why, it would simply become extinct, and that in less time than it 
 would take to grow the trees. If men were convinced that they would be compelled 
 to supply a continued spray of liquid poison to the whole mass of their fruit trees, 
 or to any considerable part of them, before they could be sure that anything could 
 be gathered from them for their own or others' use, what would they do ? Would 
 they plant fruit trees at all ? Not under ordinary circumstances. 
 
 " Just think for a moment what this thing in its minutia means. It means in 
 the first place that every fruitgrower, before he can ever indulge in the fond hope 
 to see beautiful bright red apples or rich, luscious golden plums on those trees, must 
 keep on hand a heavy stock of poisons in the form of London purple or Paris green, 
 articles that should never be seen or thought of in connection with an orchard or a 
 fruit garden, much less to be used in them. It means further, that a heavy and 
 expensive paraphernalia, consisting of implements and machinery of various forms 
 and designs be kept always on hand for the manufacture, preservation and appli- 
 cation of this essential liquid poison many timea during the season to each and 
 several of those trees. It means, still further, the possession and use of the con- 
 stant, watchful, scientific eye; the eye, indeed, of the practised expert and the close 
 observer of phenomena to discern just the exact time when to apply those poisons, 
 some for insects and some for fungus, so as to be most effectual and to be ever ready 
 just at the proper moment to apply them. It means, finally, an immense amount 
 of valuable time and of persevering attention and industry, a large outlay of ex- 
 penses and a display of talent and business tact in this particular line of work that 
 are granted to the favored few. 
 
 " But it means, again, far more than all this and something that involves in its 
 conception an immense amount of valuable as well as of invaluable life to the in- 
 sect and animal. We all know full well, and some of us to our sorrow, how very 
 dangerous these deadly poisons are, not only to handle, but to anything with which 
 they may come in contact. In spraying trees either for fungus or insects it must 
 be done in early summer time when the most plentiful of insects of all classes, both 
 friendly and unfriendly, are on the move in beautiful activity. To hastily conclude 
 that the whole brood of them are necessarily enemies and ought to be poisoned (in- 
 cluding bees) is rash, false and ruinous in the extreme to the best interests of this 
 country and its own population; and so, if we go at this business on a systematic 
 scale we shall find it out to our deepest chagrin and regret. It will be quite safe to 
 say that many of our most valued friends, as well as our most virulent enemies, will 
 be thus destroyed by coming in contact with poisoned fruit trees at this early period 
 of the year. (This equally applies to any fumigating process). 
 
 " But again, a liberal application of these deadly ingredients to our fruit trees 
 during the early summer means leaving much of their force and deadly power over 
 and about the fiuits themselves, some of which sticking undiasolved and visible 
 about the cavity, and some considerable of it adhering to the calix of the eye. These 
 doctored fruits coming into the hands of young eager, incautious children, and 
 animals, are quickly devoured holos-bolos and without a thought of danger until a 
 pain seizes them in the stomach and bowels, and the foundation of deadly disease is 
 firmly laid in the system, but the secret potent cause is never once suspected. Who 
 would like willingly and knowingly to supply an article like this so dire in its effect 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 47 
 
 to the young and rising generation, the hope and confidence of this country? Spray- 
 ing fruit trees in orchards and gardens means danger of a probable contact with 
 other plants and fruits in the near neighborhood, greatly endangering their use, 
 bnt the most common form of danger is to the domestic cow or the sheep that is 
 allowed to graze upon the tender grass or herb found growing in those gardens or 
 orchards. This grass is as surely and certainly doctored as these trees themselves 
 are, and the danger of using it is as virulent and deathly. In the face of all these 
 considerations, considerations of immense importance and frought with serious con- 
 sequences to us, we must certainly conclude that to rely upon the constant use of 
 tnese deadly poisons for our fruit delicacies is not, to say the least, a safe thing to 
 do. 
 
 "Let us now for a moment consider the case as "it stands in respect to fungus" 
 (results from atmospheric putridity). " What is fungus? Well, it is in the first 
 place, a sure and certain indication of disease and impaired vitality, or bad 
 health, if you please. It is further an indication, and infallible sign of improper 
 treatment and bad management on the part of the orchardist, or of wet worn-out 
 or unsuitable soils and locations. But it may most likely of all be a sure and cer- 
 tain indication of an absolute worn-out or exhausted variety. This being the case, 
 what is the most obvious and reasonable thing to be done ? Run to the poison bar- 
 rel ? Not by any means for relief will not certainly be found in this line. Imagine 
 an application of poison spray to a dying man to restore him to a state of primal 
 health! A far more rational procedure would be to call in the physician, seriously 
 consider the whole matter and carefully learn how the case stands." 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The law of attraction briefly referred to at the commencement of this 
 treatise, is unceasing in its operations through the whole realm of nature 
 and especially so with regard to the formation of aireal reservoirs i. e. rain 
 storin^ clouds, by evaporation at the tropics and elsewhere by the sun's 
 agency, as also in the equitable distribution of their migratory contents 
 over the earth's surface as beneficent fertilizing aids to mankind, by the 
 attractive power of living forests, and, had we lived for each other's un- 
 stinted happiness as was decreed by the Allwise Creator, instead of for 
 self as we determined on, the existing meteorologic troubles would be un- 
 known clouds would then have moved over the earth's surface in detached 
 rhymic order yielding up their refreshing treasures at the attractive invita- 
 tions of venerated forests to enrich the many intervening plains, which 
 plains by such means would in return have yielded abundance of every 
 necessary provender for man and beast whilst the forests could readily be 
 made to abound with the choicest of fruits and fragrant flowers. Now, the 
 whole atmospheric machinery is " out of joint" and hence our increasing 
 troubles. The sun still faithfully performs its moisture attracting 
 functions, but not so the once numerous forests as they are now nearly a 
 exterminated; leaving the naked earth to generate cyclone and disease 
 formm* air, whilst the over-loaded clouds reel hither and thither in an 
 erratic B manner-frequently uniting over a more attractive region of the 
 earth, there meteorologically impelled to shower down their contents ,m 
 devastating avalanches, leaving other parts to suffer ^^^ 
 droughts and consequent famines, etc., as the following illustrates. 
 
48 
 
 RUINOUS CONTRASTS. 
 
 From the San Francisco Chronicle, MELBOURNE, (Australia), Argus, Jan. 
 
 April 30, 1893. 7, 1893." The weather is very dry and 
 
 THE MISSISSIPPI BISING.-LANDS COVERED P r f ent Outl 9 k for the C . min g Vintage is 
 
 ON THE MISSOURI AND ILLINOIS SIDES. not * P ro 18in S as Previous years, black 
 
 /TUX -i m, spot and odium have made their appeai- 
 
 ALTON (111.), April 29.-The danger a ^ ce in the vine yards." (a six months 
 
 line for the stage of water has been tl r0 uaht) 
 passed, and those who have interests at 
 
 stake are watching the water creep up to S. F. Chronicle, April 30, 1893. 
 and over their possessions. Missouri 
 
 points are flooded Unless a fall soon ^4 NAMA ' .^P nl ??--The government 
 
 sets in great damage will follow. continues with unabated effort to combat 
 
 QUINCY, (111.), April 29.-The most the terrible famine that for sometime 
 
 serious hailstorm known for years struck ha f. been raging throughout the Oauca 
 
 Quincy and this vicinity and did much valle / and the J 10 , 1 1 " 8 , ot whlc ^ wer e re- 
 
 damage to fruit and other trees. Win- cently augmented by the eruption of the 
 
 dows and conservatories were smashed Sotora volcano and the consequent dam- 
 
 all over town. The river is rising rapid in ? U P of the Principal rivers of the 
 
 ly and a repetition of last year's flood is dlstnct - 
 
 feared. ODESSA, April 29. The abnormal 
 
 HAIL STORM IN ILLINOIS. weather continues. The winter wheat 
 
 ALTON, (111.), April 29. During last crop in the southern provinces has been 
 
 night this vicinity was visited by a hail- almost destroyed by the cold. Food prices 
 
 storm the like of which was never equaled are rising and famine threatens. The 
 
 around here. All vegetation was literally Government will probably be compelled 
 
 torn to pieces. The Missouri, Kansas and to revive the embargo on grain. 
 
 Eastern tracks were greatly damaged. BERLIN, April 29.-Farmers are wail- 
 
 The loss will foot up in the thousands. ing over the f ack of rain . The COU ntry 
 
 From the San Francisco Examiner, is baked and unless a change occurs soon 
 
 April 30, 1893. crops will be damaged and we shall have 
 
 [Special to the EXAMINER.] a vegetable famine. The seeds now sown 
 
 DALLAS, (Tex.), April 29. It was are . bu 1 rne( L u P-, ,S? er lndas . tr ; les are 
 
 learned from passengers on the east- fenously affected The proprietor of a 
 
 bound train this evening of the des- lar e dye works says the air is so dry he 
 
 tructionby a cyclone of Cisco, in this cannot gel colors to toke. For the same 
 
 State, during last night. There are not reason , J r ^ n , J ? lvet A ct ?- r jf 
 
 more than twenty-five or thirty houses ar ? un( * Chefield find the greatest diffi- 
 
 left standing, and up to the time the train 5 ultv , m cutting silks, which become 
 
 passed, about 2 o'clock this afternoon, brittle, owing to the absence of moisture. 
 
 30 > 1893 
 twelve more persons missing. [Special to the EXAMINER.] 
 
 APPEALS FOR AID. LONDON, April 29. The extraordinary 
 
 Ihe following telegram was also weather continues to be the one vital sub- 
 received by Mayor Levy from Cisco: ject of conversation. For fifty-seven days 
 
 "Cisco has been destroyed by the most now there has been no appreciable rain- 
 destructive cyclone that ever visited fall in and about London. Farmers are 
 Texas. More than four-fifths of the complaining that a few more days of 
 people are without shelter. There were drought means ruin for them. All over 
 many killed and wounded. Help is the continent, from Italy nortnward, the 
 needed to bury the dead, take care of the same cry is going up from vineyard and 
 wounded and relieve those who lost every- orchard and farm. The only people not 
 thing." complaining are some of the large dry 
 
 After the cyclone passed much of the goods houses. They say the pleasant 
 wreckage was burned, having caught fire weather has felmost doubled their eales 
 from overturned stoves. It is therefore and that the season has been the most 
 probable that most of the missing, about a profitable known in a score of years, but 
 score, have been burned to death or their the price of vegetables all over Europe 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THB NATIONS." 49 
 
 dead bodies cremated. Many streets are keeps going up. This heat fe just what 
 
 impassable on foot Physicians estimate the cholera microbe wants, and gradually 
 
 that no ess than 200 are injured, of whom the line of plague is advancing on the 
 
 J JS nnn e Ano The P ro P ert y loss Wl11 ex ' great cities. The cholera is practically 
 
 !t>4UUO,000. epidemic in Normandy. 
 
 REMEDY. 
 
 An early whole-hearted international combine to restore and righteous- 
 ly protect the planet's forests, and thereby reinspire the long estranged 
 harmony of nature to unite in perpetually singing through her manifold 
 works: " Glory to God on high and peace on earth to men of good 
 will. 
 
 PERSONAL. 
 
 FROM THE HON. MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE, NEW SOUTH WALES, 
 
 AUSTRALIA. 
 
 SYDNEY, Castlereigh Street, January 22nd, 1892. 
 MR. JAS. MCLEAN: 
 
 Dear Sir I am glad to hear that you intend proceeding to the United 
 States on an important mission. The vast experience which you possess regarding 
 our various resources of wealth, combined with your knowledge of the population, 
 will materially assist you on your tour, and if you are encouraged by a reciprocity 
 of feeling, your trip may be profitably utilized and prove a valuable factor in the 
 progress of the colonies. I trust that you shall have an enjoyable and successful 
 voyage, and that you may ere long be again amongst us, manifesting your general 
 interest in the cause of settlement. Yours faithfully. 
 
 JAMES N. BRUNKER. 
 
 (From the San Francisco Examiner, April 10, 1892 ) 
 
 "Under the heading of " Australian Parasites" we noticed on the 3d ultimo, 
 the arrival in San Francisco of Inspector James McLean from Australia, by the 
 steamship Mariposa, on his way to Washington, D. C., in order to place a valu- 
 able insect pest eradicating discovery before our agricultural authorities. This 
 discovery Mr. McLean by great research made whilst employed as a forest and 
 settlement inspecting officer, which position he held for many years under an 
 Australian Government. It is now our pleasant duty to further notice that Mr. 
 McLean did not confine his researches to the domain of fruit-destroying insect 
 pests entirely, but to the tracing of cause and effect with regard to the laws of 
 health and disease in the "human plant" as well, and especially relating to the 
 terrible death-dealing disease known as phthisis or consumption. Mr. McLean, 
 who studied medicine in Scotland during his early years, was busily experimenting 
 with a preparation from his insect-destroying specific on sundry consumptives, with 
 marvelous results, in Australia, contemporaneously with Dr. Koch of Berlin. 
 
 " On interviewing Mr. McLean at his hotel, he readily plunged into the whole 
 question relating to health and disease in plant and man with an earnestness char- 
 acteristic of a genuine, experienced Scotchman. 
 
 " Why do you so pointedly couple plants and men together with reference to 
 health and disease ?" said the reporter. 
 
 "Simply because the one law governs the welfare of both, and man is but a 
 migratory plant, subject to decay, disease and death, from precisely similar condi- 
 tions, the only apparent difference being in the methods by which plants and men 
 are nourished from the soil and atmosphere. Humanity, in Scripture, is con- 
 stantly compared with a plant or tree, and we know that He who speaks through 
 the Scriptures is the Creator of both, and knows far better than human wisdom can 
 
50 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 comprehend the aptitude of the comparison. More than this, it cannot be too 
 often said that the tree has been placed before us in all it stages of construction 
 throughout countless centuries for no other purpose than to serve as a model and 
 symbol of the human tree. At the time when the embryo tree, or germ, first be- 
 comes visible with the aid of a powerful microscope, it appears as a little bag sur- 
 rounded by the far larger bulu: of starch or gluten, which is to form its food in its 
 earlier stages, and which we call the seed. The seed is in fact a bag of food which 
 is to form the sustenance of the baby tree in its center that embryo tree appear- 
 ing as yet merely in the form of a soft egg-like bag or vegetable cell. This cell is 
 the progenitor of the tree, which is composed of innumerable cells of similar ap- 
 pearance built upon and joined to one another like stones in the wall of a house. 
 The first cell, the "Adam and Eve in one flesh," of the vegetable world forms 
 within itself two other cells, dividing itself into chambers by a partition, and each 
 of these chambers has the same power of reproduction as the first parent, out of 
 whose substance they are made. Then this first generation of two beings begin 
 each to subdivide into a second generation of three or four baby cells, which form 
 partitions and stand upon one another in close bond as a second course of living 
 stones. These each bring forth their vegetable children, which take their ap- 
 pointed places, each by subdivision, in the living structure. The third genera- 
 tion, the third course in the building of the vegetable house, is filling up the little 
 trunk and root of the young tender tree, as yet almost shapeless to the human eye 
 in its simplicity. But successive generations of these progressive subdivisions and 
 their growth into their appointed size and station gradually reveal the shape and 
 character of that race of vegetable cells which is the progeny of the first parent, 
 and which forma the growing tree. 
 
 "The blind man in the parable whom Jesus is represented to have restored to 
 spiritual sight could see ' men as trees walking.' The anatomist well knows that 
 the circulatory system of veins and arteries is like a tree, whose sap is blood, branch- 
 ing from the heart to the lungs and skin, and rooted in the stomach and intestines. 
 The skeleton is like a tree, of which the spinal cord is the trunk, the ribs and arms 
 and head being branches, and the legs the roots. The human muscles are as fibers 
 of the tree, which, as in the plant, brace it, and bend it to the required directions. 
 The windpipe is the trunk of the tree, whose sap and nourishment are air, whose 
 root is in the nostrils, and whose branches are the bronchial tubes, terminating in 
 that network of ever-moving twigs and leaves called lungs, and bringing the air of 
 heaven to nourish *nd purify the leaves and twigs of the venous tree, which is in- 
 terlaced with it. Tbe skin is the mutual leaf surface of another pair of conjoined 
 trees, arterial and venous, each based in different portions of the heart; and the leaf 
 surface of the outer skin exposes the sap of these two trees to the necessary action 
 of the atmosphere. The nervous system is like an inverted tree whose root is in the 
 brain, whose trunk is in the spinal cord, and which ramifies into every portion of 
 the human body, terminating outwardly in myriads of fine nerve twigs in the out- 
 spread foliage of the skin. It will thus be seen that the outward skin represents the 
 aborescence and foliage of the osseous, arterial, venous, and nervous trees which 
 make up the greater portion of the human frame in fact, man is a compound tree, 
 exposing foliage at every part to the action of the air and light and warmeth. And 
 the lungs also are like foliage of a more delicate kind, to expose the interior rami- 
 fications of the arterial and venous trees to the action of the ever- flowing, ever- 
 ebbing air. In the leaves of plants are innumerable little pores or mouths which 
 perspire the surplus moisture of the sap or plant blood, which exhale oxygen and 
 inhale carbonic acid gas from the air. In the foliage of the human skin are simi- 
 lar pores or mouths which perspire the surplus moisture of the human blood and 
 respire the gases of the air in much the same manner as the leaves of plants. And 
 as the leaves of plants fulfill their term of office and then die and fall upon the 
 earth, so fall the leaves or scales of the human skin foliage when their work is done. 
 And as the next crop of leaves comes upon the plant to take up the busy work in 
 the ensuing season, so comes the young growth of skin leaves upon the human tree 
 to fulfill their necessary functions. 
 
 " Who can look upon these things," continued Mr. McLean, "although not one- 
 hundredth part of the parallel between men and trees has yet been drawn, and 
 fail to to understand what trees composed the Garden of Eden, among which God 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 51 
 
 walked, and what trees are referred to in Ezekiel, where it is said that no tree in 
 the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty, so that all the trees of Eden 
 that were in the garden of God envied him? And how is it possible to imagine 
 that the tree of evil fruit, which Christ said must be cut down, and the sycamine 
 tree, which was to be planted in the sea, and the fig tree, which withered away 
 were other than human beings? 
 
 " Trees feed upon the crude earth through their buried roots, and mankind from 
 refined earth in various forms suitably prepared through nature's wonderful labora- 
 tory, and hence their equal liability to disease and death from certain impoverish- 
 ing causes, atmospherically and otherwise; for, as nature abhors a vacuum, she 
 also detests corruption, and in order to hasten the transformation of decaying mat- 
 ter into living tissue, we carry myriads of dormant microbes within us, patiently 
 waiting the necessary conditions to commence their scavenging operations. In 
 like manner are all our fruit plants infested with affi nitized insect germs, and were 
 we not stone blind we would long ago have realized the fact also that our suicidal 
 greed for personal gain has brought about the existing terrible results from which 
 vignerons, fruit growers and agriculturalists generally suffer. Impoverished soil 
 and atmosphere all over the earth have furnished the necessary animating con- 
 ditions for the parasitical hosts who are now in numerous forms busily at work in 
 orchard, vineyard, vegetable, grain, and grazing plots, as well as within very large 
 numbers of human plants, and which can only be successfully combated through 
 the agency of an effective disease-germ-destroying specific and improved environ- 
 ments." 
 
 FROM THE HON. J. STERLING MORTON, U. S. MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 Department of Agriculture, Office of the Secretary. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. f April 25th, 1893. 
 JAMES MCLEAN, M. D., 
 
 Dear Sir Your letter of the 15th instant, with accompanying inclosures, 
 is received and I have given to them such consideration as the pressure of admin- 
 istrative duties would allow. 
 
 The importance of the subject matter of your letter the relation of forests 
 to health, to metereological conditions, and to the industrial interests of the world, 
 cannot be over-estimated. We are but beginning to understand and appreciate 
 the influence of the forests not only upon physical conditions, but upon the whole 
 round of human life, including its esthetic and moral aspects. Therefore I hail 
 with hearty welcome every one who has any understanding of the subject and is 
 moved to use his knowledge for the public good. If your proposed remedy for 
 the ravages of noxious insects shall prove practically effective you will have your 
 reward in the grateful thanks of multitudes. 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 J. STERLING MORTON, 
 
 Secretary. 
 
 Justification for an appeal to every nation on the momentous question 
 of Forestry : 
 
 " Civilization has progressed to the point that makes the great nations of the 
 world amenable to reason." SENATOR STANFORD. (S. F. Examiner, May 3, '93). 
 
52 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 Of Insect Pest Eradication Discovery. 
 
 The object of my invention is to provide simple, cheap and effective 
 means for the total and permanent extirpation of all insect and parasitical 
 pests injurious or fatal to vegetable growth wherever such have made their 
 appearance, and the prevention thereof in localities where they are still 
 unknown. Especially have my efforts been directed in devising the same, 
 to finding a specific for the extermination of the phylloxera vastatrix. (The 
 grape-vine phylloxera or vine pest) and a practical way of preventing its 
 reappearance once it has been rooted out. 
 
 I attain this object first by creating a parasitic repellant atmosphere 
 through the agency of Eucalyptus fringes and belts bounding and inter- 
 secting generally all cultivation paddocks, as also orchards, vineyards, 
 olive-yards, hop fields, flower and vegetable gardens, and nursery grounds. 
 But while things are being shaped to bring about atmospherical conditions 
 that will completely and permanently bar out all forms of insects inimical 
 to cultivated parts, I have to and do provide a treatment for vegitable pro- 
 ductions that have already been attacked, which will stamp out any disease 
 they may be subjected to and relieve their weakness. This treatment con- 
 sists in the scientific application of the invigorating force and curative 
 properties of electricity, coupled in some instances with the use of a cer- 
 tain chemical compound adapted to rid. the growing wood or vegetable 
 matter of its parasitic enemies and favour the benign influence of the 
 electrical power. ' 
 
 That gardens, vineyards, orcbards, grain fields, etc., can be thoroughly 
 protected from the disastrous inroads of grass-hoppers, locusts, the codlin- 
 moth, the phylloxera, and every other form of insect pest by the agency of 
 fringes and intersecting belts of Eucalyptus globulus and otner more hardy 
 sorts of eucalypti properly laid out, and can be cleansed and fertilized by 
 the judicious use of electricity, with or without the aid of an emulsion, 
 such as I will herein describe hag been demonstrated to my entire satis- 
 faction after years of patient research and carefully conducted experiments. 
 There is produced as a result of the pungent emanations arising from 
 eucalypti surroundings a strong antiseptic atmosphere within which no in- 
 sect plague can or will exist whilst honey making bees thrive amazingly, 
 yielding an abundant supply of rich medicated honey. Such fringes and 
 belts are also believed to be the best possible substitute that can be pro- 
 vided for the natural barriers formerly afforded by forests, the indiscrim- 
 inate destruction of which, in connection with impoverished soil, is, in my 
 opinion, the real cause of destructive insect invasions and growth. They 
 also form beneficent shelter from the spread of hoar-frost and severe wind 
 storms, in addition to providing most desirable quarters for insectivorous 
 birds, and affording several other advantages of an economical and health 
 promoting nature. As to the effects producible by electricity in its various 
 states and rates of motion, I have come to the conclusion that an electrical 
 current conveyed by such simple means as are hereafter described may be 
 advantageously utilized as a fertilizer and insect destroyer. By acting on 
 the soil and the water thereby. raising their temperature a little higher than 
 that of the surrounding air will change their abnormal condition and en- 
 rich the earth's productiveness, impart new life and vigor to the growing 
 plant and annihilate every form of parasite thereon. No one need hesi- 
 tate in drawing upon the illimitable supply of this real vitiliziug and purify- 
 
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" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS. 1 ' 63 
 
 ing force, as practical tests will always show the wonderful fertilizing 
 power of electricity through impoverished soil, and its fatal effects on 
 parasitical pests*' nature's scavengers" including the phylloxera " (in 
 as effective a manner as Professors Mengarini, Bernardi, Martinotti De 
 Meritens, Riviere and Tolomei's electric methods to destrov undesirable 
 fermenting germs in wine. The latter professor experimented, during 
 91, on the action of an induction current on the fermentation of the 
 must, and came to the following conclusion: 
 
 1. The development of Saccharomyees ellipsoideus (peculiar insect pests) is 
 largely prevented by the action of the electric current, and when the latter is strong 
 enough to produce light in a dark room its development is stopped. 
 
 2. The liquid that has undergone the action of the electric current keeps well 
 without developing any fermentation, just as if it had been boiled for some time. 
 
 3. The ferment (i. e. the bacteria) is destroyed by a strong electric current." 
 Professor E. W. Hilgard, California University.) 
 
 " Batteries for instance, may be safely and effectively used to cleanse 
 and vitilize all vineyards irrespective of extent or position. Similar treat- 
 ment is applicable to orchards, and, with some modifications to cultivated 
 lands in general. But the electrical action has to be helped sometimes by 
 the employment of an emulsion aforesaid. What this emulsion consists 
 of and how it is aoplied, when and how to treat the diseased, weak or 
 poorly-fed vegetable productions electrically, and in which way to set out 
 and grow the fringes and belts of eucalypti, I shall now proceed to des- 
 cribe in detail, reference being had to the accompanying drawing aud to 
 the letters and figures thereon, which form part of this specification. 
 
 Figure 1 of said drawing is a broken plan of a vineyard surrounded and 
 divided by fringes and belts of eucalypti, showing what I consider a suit- 
 able way of carrying out my invention. 
 
 Figure 2 is a broken sectional elevation giving a practical illustration of 
 the manner of conveying an electric current to a row of vines or other 
 plants. 
 
 Fig 3 is a top view showing how the wires from battery may be con- 
 nected with and disconnected from the vines or other plants undergoing 
 treatment. 
 
 Figure 4 is a detailed view of insultating tubes which may be used where 
 the electric wires rest against vines or other plants that no longer need to 
 be electrified. 
 
 Figure 5 is a diagramatic view of the electric supply fluid conveying 
 wires, and plants in the circuit, showing how several rows of vines or other 
 plants may be treated with electricity from one and the same source. 
 
 A represents vines, which by preference, are set out ten feet distant 
 from one another, in parallel rows about the same distance apart. B and 
 G respectively designate rows of eucalyptus trees disposed in fringes and 
 belts round and through the vineyard, the trees in each fringe and belt 
 ranging from three to eight feet and upwards apart, as determined by cir- 
 cumstances. Each row of eucalypti is about twelve feet distant every- 
 where from the nearest row of vines, and a distance of about one hundred 
 aud sixty feet intervenes between each belt, as also between the end fringes 
 and the 'nearest belts. The number of intersecting belta G is, of couse, 
 determined by the size of the vineyard, which, as the lines G. 'G. 2 in- 
 dicate, can be of any length. In laying out the fringes and belts, the plants 
 Eucalypti rootiugs are set in properly prepared trenches at least four 
 feet deep and if possible filled in round plants with a mixture of sand and 
 earth. When planting, the roots should be given a longitudinal and down. 
 
14 
 
 ward set so that they may not run inwardly to interfere with the growth 
 of the vines or other produce being raised in the plots surrounded by the 
 eucalypti. During the first year or two the young eucalypti plants should 
 be protected from extreme heat and cold by the agency of light rough 
 sapling frames over which any cheap, coarse calico fabric may be secured. 
 They should also be occasionally examined and certain caterpillars, which 
 frequently lodge under carefully folded leaves, picked off and destroyed. 
 Liquid manure applied round their butts will lead to a vigorous growth. 
 As the plants mature all necessity for special attention decreases, but the 
 shading bark should be carefully removed and the trees lopped at an al- 
 titude of sixty or eighty feet. Then the work of protection is completed. 
 And it may be added that the vineyardist who will carefully follow the 
 foregoing instructions and raise fringes and belts of eucalypti trees a'.ound 
 and through his property, as directed, need not long fear the ravages of 
 phylloxera or other voracious pests, as within a short time his estate will 
 become for quite thirty feet round and beyond its boundaries absolutely 
 exempt from such insects as may have previously infested it including 
 locust invasions, and the more reckless who will occasionally venture with- 
 in the invisible boundary line extending over the tree tops will drop dead 
 before reaching the coveted plants. 
 
 It will be understood that the spaces intervening between the fringes 
 and belts of eucalypti and the vines may be utilized for raising beet roots, 
 tomatoes, and other vegetables, which will grow luxuriantly on at least 
 eight feet of said space, so there is no occasion to fear any waste of ground 
 resulting from the adoption of the plan and mode of culture now proposed. 
 It will be seen also that what has been said regarding the protection of 
 vineyards, applies with equal force to orchards and other cultivated lands, 
 with only such changes as difference of culture will naturally suggest. 
 
 Having shown how cultivated grounds may be rendered free from insect 
 pests and afterwards permanently kept exempt from such by growing 
 round and across them eucalypti fringes and belts that will act like so 
 many walls and partitions to repel and prevent the attacks of all parasiti- 
 cal pests, there remains to be explained how infected plants may be rid of 
 the disease affecting them, how others may be preserved in a healthy con- 
 dition until such time as the protecting fringes and belts shall have come 
 to maturity, and how the weak ones may at any time be reanimated and 
 strengthened. As already pointed out, the purifying, preservatory, vital- 
 izing and invigorating agent relied on to do this is electricity, with or with- 
 out the aid of a chemical emulsion. 
 
 As to the apparatus required for conveying an electric current to the plants 
 and charging them with electricity, none, it is thought, will answer the 
 purpose better than the simple appliance illustrated in the accompanying 
 drawing and which merely consists of one or more batteries D with cop- 
 per wires E E\ attached, respectively, to their positive and negative poles. 
 By preference, the wire E leading from the battery or batteries is insulated 
 by means of an india rubber tube F and passed through the crotch of the 
 vines or other plants to be electrified or suspended therefrom, at about 
 one foot from the ground. Thence it descends through the ground, E 
 about the top of the roots where it is attached to the bare return wire E, 1 
 which is connected by loops or short lengths, as at A t with the trunks of 
 the various plants. The upper wire may be arranged and connected with 
 the plants in the same manner as the lower one, if desired. Both wires 
 may also be connected by separate wires running along the stem of any 
 Tine or other plant, to intensify the action of the electric current, when- 
 
1 ' THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE SiTIOSS. " 55 
 
 ever it is deemed advisible. Infected and other vines as also fruit tree 
 may thus be vitalized, and insect pests-including the pbvlioxe a des- 
 troyed by a current of electricity derived from any suitable battery 
 dynamo, or storage supply. If all the vines in a row are to follow the 
 *?!&*i *H el ' tnc ^_s may be run and attached thereto in tl 
 
 h i, ' If some of e e- are 
 
 in a healthy state, they may be left out of the circuit and the current 
 diverted to the weaker or more sickly ones, as represented at Figure 3. 
 In such case the connecting loop or length of wire is dispensed with or 
 removed and the main wire passing by the healthy vines may be com- 
 pletely insulated therefrom by means of an extra over-lapping tube or 
 rubber sleeve .F covering the part where the connecting loop or length is 
 usually attached, Such an arrangement is shown at Figure 4. Figure 5 
 shows another arrangement whereby several tiers or rows of vines may be 
 charged with electricity from a single battery or series of batteries. In 
 the latter figure all the electric wires start from the positive pole of the 
 battery and return after winding round the vines in the circuit to a root G 
 connected with the negative pole. This is thought to be a most economical 
 as well as effective way to apply the electric current. 
 
 While infected vines and "fruit trees are purified, vitalized and 
 strengthened by the application of electricity, they will be found to be 
 still more benefited and more completely cured if treated at the same time 
 with an emulsion composed of potash, flower of sulphur and water in the 
 following proportionspotash 2 Ibs.; flower of sulpus 3 Iba.; water 5 gal- 
 lons. The potaeh is disolved with a little linseed oil; the sulphur antf. 
 water are boiled twenty minutes in a covered boiler; then all the in- 
 gredients are mixed and stirred together. The boiler must be kept well 
 covered and wood only used to stir the compound. 
 
 When this emulsion is used in the treatment of vines, the earth around 
 the butts should be well puddled with it to beneath the upper roots and 
 all infected leaves sprayed therewith. 
 
 To cleanse blight diseased orchards, the following directions should be 
 followed: 
 
 1. Carefully clear away the earth from round the buts of infected trees 
 for a distance of about one foot from the ground surface down to the top 
 of the upper roots, and with a soft brush liberally paint round the buts 
 from the roots to about fifteen inches above the ground with the emulsion, 
 also moistening the top roots and round the bottom of the opening with the 
 mixture. 
 
 2. Leave the cleared out parts open, and with a suitable hose or hand 
 watering-can satuiate the ground with water round the opening for a 
 distance of about eighteen inches, avoiding the opening. 
 
 3. Should the upper parts of the trees be blighted or otherwise affected, 
 spray such with the emulsion. One application will suffice, but may be 
 repeated, as the emulsion has a specially nourishing effect on vegetation. 
 
 4. On day following examine the moistened parts round the openings 
 for dead or dying insects. Repaint the buts and root tops. Also moisten 
 the bottom of openings, then fill in openings with roughly powdered char- 
 coal, over which place a liberal supply of eucalyptus leaves held in position 
 by rough little sapling triangle frames or by short cuttings of saplings. 
 
 During a locust invasion, vines, olives and fruit trees may be thorough- 
 ly protected until the said fringes and belts of eucalypti mature, by spray- 
 ing them with the above described emulsion, aided by the eucalypti leaves 
 round the buts. 
 
5G " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6r6 FOK THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 
 
 Having described rny invention, what I claim as new, and desire to se- 
 cure by letters patent is: 
 
 1. The herein described method of driving and keeping destructive in- 
 sects away from cultivated ground, which consists in surrounding and 
 dividing said ground with or by means of fringes and intersecting belts of 
 eucalypti, substantially as set forth. 
 
 2. The herein described method of freeing cultivated ground from in- 
 sect pests, which consists in planting eucalypti round and through said 
 ground, and charging the vegetable productions therein with electricity, 
 substantially as set forth. 
 
 3. The herein described method of ridding cultivated ground of insect 
 plagues, which consists in providing fringes and intersecting belts of 
 eucalypti around and across said ground, and treating the vegetable pro- 
 ductions therein electrically with the aid of an emulsion, substantially as 
 net forth. 
 
 4. The herein described method of planting fringes and belts of 
 eucalypti round and through cultivated ground, giving the roots of each 
 plant a longitudinal and downward set, substantially as set forth. 
 
 5. The herein described method of cleansing, vitalizing and strength- 
 ening vegetable productions, which consists in the application of electricity 
 to growing wood or vegetable matter, substantially as set forth. 
 
 6. The herein described method of treating plants electrically, which 
 consists in the use of any suitable means of conveying a current therefrom 
 along, around, or through said plants, substantially as set forth. 
 
 7. The herein described method of purifying and fertilizing cultivated 
 ground and the vegetable products therein, which consists in surrounding 
 and intersecting the same with eucalypti fringes and belts, substantially 
 as described, and conveying an electric current thereto by means of wires 
 connected with any suitable electric source, aided by an emulsion com- 
 posed of potash, flower of sulphur and water prepared and applied sub- 
 stantially in the manner and proportions herein set forth. 
 
 The various detailed methods in the above specification are so closely 
 interwoven with each other for the eradication and prevention of destructive 
 insect plagues as to necessitate their united adoption, in order to ensure the 
 desired results. The electric appliance bei ng to cleanse insect infested roots 
 and to vitalize the surrounding soil, whilst the Eucalypti fringes, etc. re- 
 pel periodical visitations of grasshoppers, locusts and other destructive 
 insects, as also fungi creating malaria, besides providing exceptional ever- 
 green shelter from wind storms, hoar frosts and pleasurable protection to 
 insectivorous birds. The emulsion, etc., to be used when required until 
 the Eucalypti trees mature. The particulars regarding the trenching and 
 arranging of Eucalypti plant-roots to be simply considered as a detail to 
 ensure said roots from straying in quest of more congenial soil. I 
 therefore for the above reasons and those stated throughout this treatise 
 respectfully submit that the plan as a whole is worthy of serious con- 
 sideration, as by its general adoption a more than gradual restoration of 
 local forest-lungs an 1 consequent climatic benefits within the boundaries 
 of all fruit and grain growing centres would be assured, whilst the har- 
 nessing of reinvigorated water falls and of the ocean beach eurf now 
 seriously contemplated would furnish an abundance of the electric 
 motive and fertilizing fluid at a nominal cost to rural districts. 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 67 
 
 FOREST ANNIHILATION IN CALIFORNIA, A STUDY. 
 
 ( From the 8. F. Morning Call, May 28tfi, 1893.) 
 
 "The forests of California are among the wonders of the world, and the lumber in- 
 dustries they give rise to are among the most important on the coast. The chief 
 growth is the redwood, which yields so enormously that the State Board of Forestry 
 estimates that redwood forests comprise half the timber in California, and this 
 though the redwood is confined to the coast, while the area of timber lands in the 
 interior is many times more than that on the coast. Other trees used in the lumber 
 trade are sugar pines, often found 8 feet in diameter and of immense height with- 
 out flaw; willow, cotton wood, sycamore, oaks of all kinds (including cheetnut oak, 
 whose bark tans the famed California sole leather), laurel or bay wood. Redwood 
 burl is an excrescence growing on the sides of the tree, which makes elegant 
 veneering. 
 
 "In the United States there are 466,000,000 acres of timber land exclusive of 
 Alaska. Of these 53,000,000 are divided among the Pacific States. These do not 
 include unmerchantable timber. California has a forest area of more than 18,- 
 000,000 acres. Some idea of the volume of the lumber industry may be gathered 
 from a brief presentation of figures regarding it taken from a single representative 
 county Humboldt. Of 938,000 acres in Humboldt County classified as timber 
 lands about 538,000 were originally covered with redwood forest, leaving about 
 400,000 acres of other timber divided about equally among pine, spruce, fir and 
 cedar lands, and lands covered principally with madrone and laurel and tanbark, 
 and white, black and live oaks. Of the redwood lands some 39,500 acres have now 
 been cut and sawed into about 4,000,000,000 feet of timber, leaving 498,500 acres 
 standing, which at the conservative estimate of 100,000 feet per acre will produce 
 49,850,000,000 feet of lumber. The present rate of cutting is about 200,000,000 
 feet of lumber per year. 
 
 "From the port of Eureka the lumber fleet, together with the passenger steamers, 
 took away during 1891, 152,517, 613 feet of lumber, which includes shakes, shingles, 
 pickets, etc., valued at $2,897,834. Of this amount 9,998,663 went to foreign 
 ports, as follows : 
 
 To Honolulu ............................................ 3,937,193 
 
 To Sydney ............... ..................... ......... 3,796,644 
 
 To Guaymas, Mexico .............................. ..... 450>l 5i 
 
 To LaPaz, Lower California ............. ................ ooaoS 
 
 To Valparaiso ......................................... 332,336 
 
 ToCallao .............................................. 284,007 
 
 To Victoria, B. C ...................................... 182,679 
 
 To Central America ................................ ~ *; J'5H 
 
 To Tahiti .............................................. 208 > 951 
 
 "Fresno is another large lumber center, as is Mendocino, and altogether it has 
 been estimated that the annual production of lumber in the State is not less than 
 300000000 feet. Dr. Kellogg, in his "Forest Trees of California, says that 
 " probably from a fair estimate of the redwood along our coast it would not com- 
 prise more than 3000 square miles of forest land." 
 
 -The amount of timber now standing has been variously estimated^ ating all 
 wav from 25 000,000,000 to 100,000,000,000 feet board measure. While in sc 
 rectionsUie iand'will not yield more than from 10,000 to 15,000 feet per acre there 
 are others which will yield from 250,000 to 500,000 feet, so it will be see* L how Dif- 
 ficult it is to figure the total closely. As previously indicated the redwood belt is 
 located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and between it and the mterio] o. f the 
 State lies the Coast Range. For this reason the railroad touches it ; at on y ^one or 
 two points, and almost the entire product is transported by wa n t f ft r - pd ^e1Sn ber- 
 eailing vessels are used for this purpose, and the capital employed i ^e lumber 
 carrying trade is a very important factor in the commercial interest ^of 'our bL 
 
 " There are about forty mills engaged in cutting redwood, the largest having a 
 
58 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS/ 
 
 capacity of 75,000 to 80,000 per day. Perhaps the average capacity of them all 
 would be about 50,000 feet per day. (To multiply 50,000 by 40 totals 2,000,000 
 feet per day, and by 300 working days in the year, make six hundred millions of feet 
 per annum, for forty years at least forming a grandtotal of 24,000,000,000 feet of 
 redwood alone, exclusive of pine, spruce, fir, oak and cedar removed by lumber- 
 men and forest fires, etc., minus any replenishing effort!) There was manu- 
 factured and shipped from the redwood mills in Mendocino and Humboldt counties 
 during the year 1891 about 230,000,000 feet. Of this about 12,000,000 went to 
 foreign countries, while the balance, 218,000,000 was consumed in the Pacific 
 
 States or shipped to interior States. 
 
 "The State Board of Forestry says: "The water flowing in California rivers is 
 more precious than the gold lying hidden in their sands. So long as the forests 
 cover the mountain sides the streams will flow with some evenness throughout the 
 year; but when the forests disappear the rivers will become rushing torrents in the 
 spring and dry arroyos all the rest of the year. The forests of the Sierra Nevada 
 are the natural reservoirs for irrigation of the San Joaquin valley. Hitherto the 
 mountains have been left to the sheep-herder and the millman, who have wrought 
 destruction unheeded and unchecked. Sheep-raising and timber-cutting are legiti- 
 mate pursuits and entitled to fair treatment, but as conducted in California for 
 many years they have not been conducive to the general welfare. The millman 
 has slashed the forests recklessly, wasting more than he used and not confining his 
 operations to his own property. The sheep-herder, caring only for pasturage, has 
 set fire to the brush annually, burning off the young growth and killing the large 
 trees. The seedlings and shoots that escaped the forest fires were destroyed by the 
 sheep. And so not only has the mature forest been greatly injured but the total 
 extinction of the forest growth made inevitable unless the work of devastation be 
 stopped." 
 
 A TARDY YET OPPERTUNE PROTEST. 
 
 (San Francisco Examiner May ZSth, 1893.) 
 
 [Special to the EXAMINER.] 
 
 WASHINGTON, May 27. Commissioner Lamoreux of the General Land Office to- 
 day rendered one of the most important decisions that has come from the Land 
 Office in many years, when he decided the famous Kedwood land case in the Hum- 
 boldt district, California. By his decision over 148,000 acres of valuable timber is 
 decided to be the property of the Government on account of the fraudulent entries 
 made by persons who were trying to get this timber from the Government. The 
 probabilities are that the parties who have been defeated in this case will imme- 
 diately appeal it to the Secretary of the Interior, but now that there is a Democrat 
 in that office he will probably not allow the country to be robbed by speculations, 
 and the decision of the Commissioner will doubtless be affirmed. It is also probable 
 that in the near future this entire tract, with, perhaps, additional lands adjoining, 
 will be set apart as a forest reservation to prevent its dispoilation to reserve it for 
 future use. Assistant Commissioner Bowers of the General Land Office has been 
 all through that country and he recognizes the importance of forest preservation, 
 and when the Commissioner's decision was brought to his attention to-day he at 
 once saw the importance of having the President issue a proclamation reserving 
 this land from further encroachments and depredations. The redwood land case 
 has created a great deal of interest in the West, and the decision of the Commis- 
 sioner will no doubt be gratifying to all persons who sought the preservation of 
 these lands." 
 
 In the May number of this year's Plant Life, a San Francisco monthly 
 journal devoted to the advancement of " horticulture, viticulture and 
 floral vegetation," appeared an interesting article under the heading of 
 " Need of a Higher Education," from which I quote the following : 
 
 "Plant diseases are not only alarmingly increasing in general, but the affec- 
 tions are becoming more serious in their characters. With these facts promin- 
 
" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 59 
 
 ently presenting themselves, it should be inferred that there must be a radical 
 deficiency in the knowledge we possess governing the hygiene of vegetation, or 
 how, otherwise, can the increase and deadliness in diseases be accounted for ? 
 There is no disguising the fact that the disease of the dropping of fruit from trees, 
 even after a well-advanced stage of growth, is becoming alarmingly prevalent and 
 increasing the area of country affected, The diseases of blight and scabs are in- 
 vading regions where it was thought they could not exist, and evidently these 
 parasites adapt tnemselves to climate and vegetation readily, while countless 
 tribes of insects are fastening upon every variety of plant life. A general re- 
 view of the horticultural field will show that notwithstanding the care which has 
 been bestowed by government and state, to prevent the spread of the pestilential 
 characters, the result has been the development of new and more dangerous ene- 
 mies, without a corresponding diminution in the number of the former." 
 
 The real cause should now be apparent to every observing forester. 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 The artist inadvertently omitted showing the indicating letters on the annexed 
 reduced plan, which will however be sufficiently understood by reference to the res- 
 pective figures thereon. The large outer and centre rings of Fig. 1 indicate eucalypti 
 plants, and the double transverse lines denote an extension of vineyard or orchard to 
 any required limit within a suitable distance from boundaries and from each inter- 
 secting belt. The arrows of Fig. 2 indicate how the electric current travels from the 
 positive to the negative poles of battery. See plan on page 52 of original experi- 
 mental grounds and specification on pages 55 to 58. 
 
 The word "raised" on top line of page 14 should read " razed." 
 
 The words "wher uprooted" in 24th line from bottom of page 15 should read 
 
 41 were uprooted." 
 On the third last line of paragraph under the heading " Fearful Shipwrecks," 
 
 should read " odd craft." 
 The concluding portion of fifth line on page 28 should read " two very great 
 
 factors." 
 
 Certain words on page 29, last line, should read " his hair, beard and necktie." 
 The word at end of the 18th line from top, on page 43, should read " appeared." 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE, 
 
 PKEFACE ................................................................ 2 
 
 The Evolution of Obscure Truths .......................................... S 
 
 Minute Fungacious Organisms ............................................. 4 
 
 The Chemistry of Creation ................................................ 4 
 
 Forest Influence in Gallilee ..................................... . ......... 5 
 
 The Order of Creation .................................................... 5 
 
 " That which hath been is now" .......................................... 8 
 
 Boussingault and Humboldt ............................................... 7 
 
 Reboisement in France ................................................... 9 
 
 A Few of the Fruits from Wholesale Forest Destruction ...................... 9 
 
 Alarming Dispatches (8. F. Examiner) ...................................... 11 
 
 Special Dispatches (S. F. Cnronicle) ........................................ 12 
 
 A Terrible Storm ........................................................ 15 
 
 Cursed by Cholera ...................................................... 
 
 Fearful Shipwrecks ....................................................... 
 
 Fierce Forest Fires ....................................................... J6 
 
 Forest Destroying Combines. ... ____ ...................................... *' 
 
 Dante's Inferno .................. .................. ..................... 
 
 Forest Lands Preferred for Settlement ...................................... "[ 
 
 An Australian Conference re Locust Plagues ................................. 2Q 
 
 A False Report ............................... : ' ' : . ................... 91 
 
 U. S. Consul E. L. Baker's Report Concerning Eucalypti .......... i 
 
 Further Testimony ...................... .......... .......... 04 
 
 A Big Bank Failure from Atmospheric Troubles .......................... 
 
 Additional Evidence of Ruined Deforested Soil ........................ 
 
 A Deforestation Lesson from Russia .............................. 26 
 
 Death Valley ........................ '":" '1"..'". ..................... 
 
 Immense Value of the American Grape Growing Industry ............... 
 
 Other Fruits .................................................... 29 
 
 Locust Plagues in Algeria .................................... 29 
 
 Killed by Locusts .................................... : 30 
 
 Scripture Warnings .................................. 30 
 
 Newman's Callista ......................... _ ....... : ........... 
 
 The Vine and Phylloxera in California (Prof. Husmann) ............ 
 
 French Report on the Bi-sulphate of Carbon Treatment for Phylloxera ........ 
 
 The Phylloxera in Australia .................... ............. 35 
 
 Professor F. W. Morse ............... ........ ................ 36 
 
 Concerning Known (Phylloxera) Remedies ............. g7 
 
 The Phylloxera Question ........... . ................. " j 37 
 
 Comparative Results ............. ...................... 3 8 
 
 Vine Troubles in France ........................... '".".'.'. 39 
 
 Atmospheric Germs ...... . . . . . ........................ 42 
 
 The Mediterranean Flour-Moth ................... ' 42 
 
 CapZS'aud Hygienic Consequents of' Aimospneric-Troub.es:: 
 
 Poor Crop Outlook ..... ''-'.;'.: .................... 45 
 
 California's Deforesting Contribution ................ 46 
 
 Dangerous Experiments ..................... '.'.....,......... 47 
 
 Conclusion ...................................... ' ........ 48 
 
 Ruinous Contrasts .......................... ' ........... 49 
 
 Remedy ............................ ............... .'.'.' ........... 49 
 
 Important and Addendum, - Plant Life, Etc ...... \\\'\\\\\\\.\...\ ......... 60 
 
 Eratta ................ ..... .............. * ...... 
 
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 DEC? REC'D 
 
 
 LIBRARY, COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE, DAVIS 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 5m-2, '42 (9630s) 
 
McLean, J. 
 
 Treatise on the ori 
 gin of destructive in 
 sect plagues. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS