Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/733

Rh practical enough to consider that a careful culture might now cover the mountains again with the same wealth. Perhaps, already, in fifty years, America will have reached the same stage; a few monsters of the forest will be admired, and it will hardly appear credible that the ancestors in their greed and ignorance burned down these priceless treasures for an ephemeral gain, and even where not the slightest gain could be obtained by the wanton destruction. The United States possess still the finest forests of the globe, but in the land of haste, hurry, and greed, anything which can not be turned into money at short notice is destroyed. A little more forethought might benefit not only the future but also the present generations. The climate of Japan is not quite so fine as that of the Western United States, but similar results will follow similar causes. Where the land, freed from forests, is used for agricultural purposes, this forest destruction has a fair excuse; but, where enormous tracts of land are denuded for stock-raising, the very means will defeat the end: stock can not be raised without water, and water will not grow; and, with the disappearance of moisture and forests, hard, tough, varieties of grass will alone cover the mountain-slopes. Japan is the land of inundations, and the effects of forests upon moisture are here most strikingly illustrated. Every thundershower sends its whole quantity of water without delay to the rivers and the sea, and within a few hours a mountain-valley has seen a dry channel, a raging torrent, and a little brook occupying the same bed; thousands of acres of good land along these numerous mountain-streams can not be cultivated, because the forests are lacking which would retain the moisture and allow it only gradually to seek the river and ocean. We can not realize enough the consequences of forest destruction. But even arbor-days are only a small remedy; the state alone can own large tracts of successfully cultivated forest-land."

Cultivation of Liquorice.—The State Department has published a collection of consular reports on "The Liquorice-Plant and its Cultivation in Various Countries." In England the plant is cultivated in a sandy, loamy soil, the chief requisite of which is that it should be deep enough to allow the roots to get a good length. A manuring is given the ground at planting, and the crop is gathered in three years and a half afterward. The plants do better, after the first season, in a hot, dry summer. They are not harmed by frost, or afflicted by any worm or parasite. The soil between the rows may be cultivated in other plants during the first two years. The grower plants a fresh crop in the spring of each year, and in the fall of the same year harvests the one of three years and a half's growth. In harvesting, a deep trench is dug, to expose the roots without injuring them, and the whole plant is carefully taken out. Liquorice grows wild in Spain, but requires eight years to reach maturity. Where it has once taken root, it is almost impossible to eradicate it. It exhibits many varieties, in the color of the bark, the proportions of saccharine elements and starch, and woodiness. The ground is pulled at intervals of three, four, or five years, according to circumstances, by digging trenches and pulling all visible stalks as long as possible, until they break. The plant is also found and gathered in Asiatic Turkey, Greece, Italy, Sicily, etc.

Condition of the Oceanic Abysses.—Mr. John Murray, director of the Challenger publications, presents, as a summary of results, that in the abysmal regions which cover one half of the earth's surface, and which are undulating plains from two to five miles beneath the surface of the sea, we have a very uniform set of conditions. The temperature is near the freezing-point of fresh water, and its range does not exceed seven degrees, and is constant all the year round in any locality. Sunlight and plant-life are absent, and, although animals belonging to all the large types are present, there is no great variety of form or abundance of individuals; change of any kind is exceedingly slow. In the more elevated portions of the regions the deposits consist principally of dead shells and skeletons of surface animals; in the more depressed ones, of a red clay mixed with volcanic fragmental matter, the remains of pelagic vertebrates, cosmic dust, and manganese-iron