Forests  are  promoters  of  general  moisture  by  maintaining  the  constancy
of  streams,  which,  in  their  passage  to  the  sea,  serve  as  canals  of  irrigation
not  only  to  the  lands  lying  along  their  courses,  but  by  supplying  the  at-
mosphere with  moisture,  increase  the  precipitation  of  dews  for  some  dis-
tance upon  the  hills.
The  usefulness  of  woods  in  storing  up  waters  having  been  demonstrated,
I  see  no  objection  to  considering  them  the  sources  of  springs ;  for  there  is
not  a  cotton-field  negro  at  the  South,  whether  he  has  occupied  a  seat  in  the
Legislature  or  not,  who  does  not  know  that  springs  are  ruined  by  clearing
away  contiguous  forests.  Springs  are  the  sources  of  brooks ;  brooks  of
creeks ;  creeks  of  rivers.  The  clearing  away  of  forests,  then,  must  afiiect
in  the  most  direct  way  the  supply  of  these  exceedingly  numerous  canals,
which  so  much  mitigate  the  severity  of  drought,  as  is  amply  shown  by  the
heavy  fogs  and  immense  deposits  of  dews  that  are  so  often  seen  along  their
courses,  as  well  as  by  the  more  luxuriant  appearance  of  crops  and  general
vegetation.
If  authorities  wereoieeded  here,  I  could  adduce  more  than  could  be  given
to  prove  any  other  proposition  in  this  article  ;  but  as  I  have  in  my  mind's
eye  a  small  creek  near  me,  upon  which  I  have  hunted  and  fished  for  twenty
years,  and  have  noted  the  diminution  of  its  waters  as  the  forests  were  felled
around  its  sources,  and  have,  with  others,  remarked  the  reestablishing  of
its  volume  since  these  lands  were  restocked  with  pines  and  old  field  plums,
I  shall  not  now  draw  upon  foreign  countries,  but  dismiss  the  subject  with
this  single  plantation  illustration.
Increase  in  the  Altitude  of  Freshets.
