ANYONE who has traveled through the comparatively treeless countries around the Mediterranean, such as Spain, Sicily, Greece, northern Africa, and large portions of Italy, must fervently pray that our own country may be preserved from so dismal a fate, says President Charles W. Eliot. It is not the loss of the forests only that is to be dreaded, but the loss of agricultural regions now fertile and populous, which may be desolated by the floods that rush down from the bare hills and mountains, bringing with them vast quantities of sand and gravel to be spread over the lowlands.

Traveling a few years ago through Tunisie, I came suddenly upon a fine Roman bridge of stone over a wide, bare, dry river bed. It stood some thirty feet above the bed of the river and had once served the needs of a prosperous population. Marveling at the height of the bridge above the ground, I asked the French station master if the river ever rose to the arches which carried the roadway of the bridge. His answer testified to the flooding capacity of the river and to the strength of the bridge. He said: "I have been here four years, and three times I have seen the river running over the parapets of that bridge. That country was once one of the richest granaries of the Roman empire. It now yields a scanty support for a sparse and semi-barbarous population." The whole region round-about is treeless. The care of the national forests is a provision for future generations, for the permanence over vast areas of our country of the great industries of agriculture and mining upon which the prosperity of the country ultimately depends. A good forest administration would soon support itself.—From January Atlantic.