Note 1643 — Chapter IV · STUDIES OF THE FARMER.

Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 3. 7. In all countries, small and great, the progress of civilisation has been inimical to forests. Thus in the little island of Stromboli, containing about a thousand inhabitants, attempts were made towards the end of the eighteenth century to enlarge the cultivable ground by clearing away the woods. Spallanzani, Travels in the Two Sicilies, vol. iv. p. 126, seq. The difficulty of extirpating trees is illustrated by Theophrastus who relates that, in a spot near Pheneon in Arcadia, a well-wooded tract was overflowed by the water and the trees destroyed. Next year, when the flood had subsided and the mud dried, each kind of tree appeared in the situation which it had formerly occupied. The willow, the elm, the pine, and the fir, growing in its own place, doubtless from the roots of the former trees. Hist. Plant. iii. 1. 2. Again: the Nessos, in the territory of the Abderites, constantly changed its bed, and in the old channels trees sprung up so rapidly that, in three years, they were so many strips of forest. Id. iii. 1. 5.