a. As Inorganic Matter

Influence of Forests on the Humidity of the Air and the Earth.

The most important influence of the forest on climate is, no doubt, that which it exercises on the humidity of the air and the earth, and this climatic action it exerts partly as dead, partly as living matter. By its interposition as a curtain between the sky and the ground, it intercepts a large proportion of the dew and the lighter showers, which would otherwise moisten the surface of the soil, and restores it to the atmosphere by evaporation; while in heavier rains, the large drops which fall upon the leaves and branches are broken into smaller ones, and consequently strike the ground with less mechanical force, or are perhaps even dispersed into vapor without reaching it. As a screen, it prevents the access of the sun's rays to the earth, and, of course, an elevation of temperature which would occasion a great increase of evaporation. As a mechanical obstruction, it impedes the passage of air currents over the ground, which, as is well known, is one of the most efficient agents in promoting evaporation and the refrigeration resulting from it. In the forest, the air is almost quiescent, and moves only as local changes of temperature affect the specific gravity of its particles. Hence there is often a dead calm in the woods when a furious blast is raging in the open country at a few yards' distance. The denser the forest—as for example, where it consists of spike-leaved trees, or is thickly intermixed with them—the more obvious is its effect, and no one can have passed from the field to the wood in cold, windy weather, without having remarked it.

The vegetable mould, resulting from the decomposition of leaves and of wood, carpets the ground with a spongy covering which obstructs the evaporation from the mineral earth below, drinks up the rains and melting snows that would otherwise flow rapidly over the surface and perhaps be conveyed to the distant sea, and then slowly gives out, by evaporation, infiltration, and percolation, the moisture thus imbibed. The roots, too, penetrate far below the superficial soil, conduct the water along their surface to the lower depths to which they reach, and thus serve to drain the superior strata and remove the moisture out of the reach of evaporation.