From 1861 to 1870 Norway exported annually, on the average, more than 60,000,000 cubic feet of lumber.--Wulfsberg, Norges Velstandskilder. Christiania, 1872.] and the iron and copper works of Sweden consume charcoal very largely, the forests have not diminished rapidly enough to produce very sensible climatic or even economic evils. At the opposite end of the scale we find Holland, Denmark, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal. In the three first-named countries a cold and humid climate renders the almost constant maintenance of domestic fires a necessity, while in Great Britain especially the demand of the various industries which depend on wood as a material, or on mechanical power derived from heat, are very great. Coal and peat serve as a combustible instead of wood in them all, and England imports an immense quantity of timber from her foreign possessions. Fortunately, the character of soil, surface, and climate renders the forest of less importance as a geographical agent in these northern regions than in Spain and Portugal, where all physical conditions concur to make a large extent of forest an almost indispensable means of industrial progress and social advancement. Rentzsch, in fact, ascribes the political decadence of Spain almost wholly to the destruction of the forest. "Spain," observes he, "seemed destined by her position to hold dominion over the world, and this in fact she once possessed. But she has lost her political ascendancy, because, during the feeble administration of the successors of Philip II., her exhausted treasury could not furnish the means of creating new fleets, the destruction of the woods having raised the price of timber above the means of the state." [Footnote: Der Wald, p. 63. Antonio Ponz (Viage de Espana, i., prologo, p. lxiii.), says: "Nor would this be so great an evil, were not some of them declaimers against TREES, thereby proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the works of God, who gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it."