Forest Trees

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H. T. Williams, 1871 - Forests and forestry - 247 pages
 

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Page 188 - ... other respect peculiar. The wood of the American Larch is superior to any species of Pine or Spruce , and unites all the properties which distinguish the European species , being exceedingly strong and singularly durable.
Page 11 - Vast forests have disappeared from mountain spurs and ridges ; the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the trees by the decay of leaves and fallen trunks ; the soil of the alpine pastures, which skirted and indented the woods, and the mould of the upland fields, are washed away ; meadows once fertilized by irrigation are waste and unproductive, because the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the ancient canals are broken, or the springs that fed them dried up...
Page 193 - ... props. For the latter purpose, it is found the most durable of all kinds of wood : the vine props made of it are never taken up ; they remain fixed for an indefinite succession of years, and see crop after crop of vines spring up, bear their fruit, and perish at their feet, without showing any symptoms of decay. In most cases, the proprietors of the vineyards are perfectly ignorant of the epoch when these props were first placed there : they received them in their present state from their fathers,...
Page 192 - To prove the value of the Larch as a timber tree, several experiments were made in the river Thames. Posts of equal thickness and strength, some of Larch and others of oak, were driven down facing the river wall, where they were alternately covered with water by the effect of the tide, and then left dry by its fall.
Page 54 - MICHAUX says he found the large buckeye, or pavia lutea, in its greatest profusion and expansion in the mountains of the Carolinas and Georgia. He first met with it on the Allegheny mountains in Virginia, near latitude 39°. It there towers tc the height of sixty or seventy feet, with a diameter of three or four feet, and is considered as a certain proof of the richness of the land. '' The wood," he says, •' from its softness and want of durability, can subserve no useful purpose.
Page 12 - ... the little water that finds its way into their old channels is evaporated by the droughts of summer, or absorbed by the parched earth before it reaches the lowlands ; the beds of the brooks have widened into broad expanses of pebbles and gravel, over which, though in the hot season passed...
Page 141 - Bibeirao da Issara is a range of hills, called the Serra da Sussuarana, which are not very high, but covered with masses of loose rocks and stones, with a thick growth of catinga. The country onward to the Giboya, a little stream flowing southward into the Pardo, is covered...
Page 15 - It offered nothing to the eye but a monotonous repetition of white wavy mountains perfectly destitute of vegetation. In times of violent storms of wind, the surface of these downs was entirely changed ; what were hills of sand often becoming valleys, and the contrary.
Page 10 - THERE is good reason to believe that the surface of the habitable earth, in all the climates and regions which have been the abodes of dense and civilized populations, was, with few exceptions, already covered with a forest growth when it first became the home of man.
Page 11 - ... the provinces most celebrated for the profusion and variety of their spontaneous and their cultivated products, and for the wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants — is either deserted by civilized man and surrendered to hopeless desolation...

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