Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/722

Rh E U B O P E receives special attention in Turkey, Greece, Russia, Germany, France, and Switzerland. Hemp and -flax have a very wide distribution, the former furnishing a valuable export to Archangel in the north and to Italy in the south. Among all European countries Russia is the greatest producer: during their church fasts her vast popu lation make an enormous consumption of hemp oil. Hop- growing is hardly known in the south, but forms an important industry in England, Austria, Germany, and Belgium. The plant grows wild in Norway as far north as 64 12. Among the exotics exclusively cultivated in the south are the sugar-cane, the cotton-plant, and rice, The first, which is found in Spain and Sicily, is of little practical moment ; the second holds a secondary position in Turkey and Greece ; and the third is pretty extensively grown in special districts of Italy, more particularly in the valley of the Po. Of the vast number of fruit trees which flourish in different parts of the continent only a few can be mentioned. Their produce furnishes articles of export to Austria-Hungary, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. In Sardinia the acorn of the Quercus Ballota is still used as food, and in Italy, France, and Austria the chestnut is of very common consumption. In the Mediterranean region the prevailing forms which the Germans conveniently sum together in the expression Siid- friichte, or southern fruits are the orange, the citron, the almond, the pomegranate, the fig, and the carob-tree. The importance of these fruits to Italy and Spain is too well known to require more than passing mention. Sicily, which was one of the great granaries of the Roman empire, is now almost a continuous orchard. In recent years a new kind of pistachio the cacahuetes, or mani has been culti vated in Spain, and its fruit extensively exported. The palm trees have a very limited range: the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) ripens only in southern Spain with careful culture; the dwarf palm (Chamcerops hwnilis) forms thickets along the Spanish coast and in Sicily, and appears less frequently in southern Italy and Greece. Such are the main economic plants of Europe; but the list might be indefinitely extended if we were to include all the plants which enter into the flora cibaria of the various regions from the caper-bush of the south to the Poly- gonum viviparum and Oxyria reniformis consumed by the Laplanders in the north. 1 When the Aryan peoples began their immigration r &amp;lt; into Europe a large part of the surface must have been covered with primeval forest ; for even after long centuries of human occupation the Roman conquerors found vast regions where the axe had made no lasting impression. The account given by Julius Caesar of the Sylva Hercynia is well known : it extended, he tells us, for sixty days journey from Helvetia eastward, and it probably included what are now called the Srhwarzwald, the Odenwald, the Spessart, the Rhb n, the Thiiringerwald, the Harz, the Fichtelgebirge, the Erzgebirge, and the Riesengebirge. Since then the progress of population has subjected many thousands of square miles to the plough, and in some parts of the continent it is only where the ground is too sterile or too steep that the trees have been allowed to retain possession. The consumption of timber lias of necessity been enormous, more especially on account of the climatic condition of the continent and the maritime activity of a large part of its inhabitants. To the dweller in the warmer regions of the earth the chief value of a tree is not unfre- quently its shade ; by the European its worth is as often estimated by the quantity of heat it will yield on his hearth. Several countries, where the destruction has been most reck less, have been obliged to take systematic measures to con trol the exploitation and secure the replantation of ex hausted areas. 2 To this they have been constrained not only by lack of timber and fuel, but also by the prejudicial effects exerted on the climate and the irrigation of the country by the denudation of the high grounds. But even now, on the whole, Europe is well wooded, and two or three countries find an extensive source of wealth in the export of timber and other forest productions, such as turpentine, tar, charcoal, bark, bast, and potash. According to the calculations of A. Bernhardt, 3 the following table gives an approximate view of the forest areas in the several countries : Total Area. Forest Area. Population. Proportion pi r Head of Total Area. Proportion per Head of I- orest Area. Hectares. Acres. Hectares. Acres. Hectares. Acres. Hectares. Acres. Greece 5,010,000 52,747,460 29,407,546 49,983,160 9,277,610 62,254,000 54,102,769 4,140,412 52,789,874 2,945,539 3,545,313 31,566,392 546,657,704 44,150,700 31, 659,500 3,815,658 12,380,411 130,346,358 72,670,163 123,515,386 22,926,273 153,838,349 133,695,516 10,231,537 130,451,169 7,278,839 8,760,964 78,004,973 1,350,867,718 109,102,560 78,235,056 9,429,025 701,500 12,660,000 4,220,773 10,186,045 463,880 18,343,810 13,924,529 724,572 8,353,238 313,096 248,172 1,262,656 169,500,000 12,812,800 19,185,657 228,939 1,733,504 31,284,632 10,430,120 25,171,143 1,146,312 45,330,122 34,409,460 1,790,518 20,642,020 773,704 613,267 3,120,199 418,858,230 31,662,222 47,410,444 565,740 1,350,000 (1863) 18,000,000 26,300,000 15,673,536 (1860) 4,188,410 (1864) 35,672,073 (1868) 40,089,170 (1867) 2,670,000 (1866) 36,000,000 (1871) 4,829,320 (1866) 3,852,028 (1869) 35,500,000 (1871) 69,000,000 (1871) 4,158,000 (1869) 1,701,478 (1865) 1,783,565 (1870) 3-7 2-9 1-18 3-18 2-21 1-70 1-30 1-55 1-44 0-60 0-92 1-07 7-92 10-5 18-6 2-15 9-1 7-1 2-9 7-85 5-46 4-90 3-21 3-83 3-55 1-48 2-29 2-64 19-5 25-9 45-9 5-31 0-52 0-70 0-17 0-65 O ll 0-514 0-35 0-27 0-23 0-065 0-06 0-04 2-45 3-08 11-2 0-12 1-28 1-72 0-42 1-60 0-27 1-27 0-86 0-66 0-56 0-16 0-14 O ll 6-05 7-61 27-6 0-29 Turkey. . Italy... o .Spain Portugal... Austria-Hungary ... Germany. . . . Switzerland France Belgium Netherlands Great Britain Russia Sweden Norway Denmark The average proportion for all Europe being rather more thin 25 per cent., four countries rise considerably higher iu the scale: viz., Norway G6, Russia 31, Austria-Hungary 29-5, and Sweden 29 02 ; and the others rank as follows : Germany 25-7, Turkey 24 (?), Spain 20-38, Switzerland 17-5, France 15-8, Italy 14-39, Greece 14, Belgium 10-6, Netherlands 7, Denmark 6, Portugal 5, and Great Britain 4. Other statisticians rate the proportion for the continent at nearly a third, and arrange the states in a somewhat different order. The Scandinavian countries have a large timber trade. In Sweden and Norway the most usual trees are coniferous ; but in the former a certain number of birches, alders, and ash-trees are intermingled, and towards the south the oak and the beech occur. This last is the characteristic tree of Denmark ; though some other species, which were common 1 For a popular account of the European floras see Henfi-py s Vegetation of Europe, 1852 ; for fuller details the works of Griseliach, Parlatore, Ledebour, and Boissier ; and for a table of the arctic limits of a large variety of plants Schiibeler s Pflanzenv. elt Noru-etjens. 2 J. C. Brown, Reboisement in France, 1876. 3 See Zeitschrift fiir Forst- und Jagdwesen, Berlin, 1872.