Lourenço Baeta Neves

“ Being requested by his excellency Governor Norris, of Montana to work in Brazil, as a vice-president and corresponding secretary of the Congress I feel exceedingly honored in giving my very best service to my brothers of North America, assuring them that they can count upon my great admiration for your country, where I am living for one year with my family always in close touch with the American family and people. Allow me to say, ladies and gentlemen, that keeping the same love for my native land, in my heart, will have for ever a warm room for the American people. ”

“ The trees are great regulators of many conditions of life, principally facilitating the atmospheric precipitation and their profit. The aqueous vapors penetrating the cool atmosphere of the forest at the contact of the foliage of the trees, condense resolving into rain or dew; and the water that falls on the soil, protected against evaporation by the shade, having its surface-flow impeded and its absorption facilitated by the roots, penetrates in greatest quantity into the land, guaranteeing the permanency and abundance of the source that it forms. ”

“ This axiom, in my humble opinion, translates better the decline and disappearance of some nations that figured in antiquity than any explanation given by the modern philosophy for the fact; and forethought advises to profit by the practical lesson contained within it, preserving our natural resources in order not to sacrifice to a temporary greatness the best means of preserving life, which means are represented by the forest. ”

“ It is necessary to use intelligently so important elements of life, without so barbarous destructions, because so far as the present scientific knowledge is concerned, there is no doubt, at all, that from the lack of the forest will come the greatest modifications in the meteorological conditions of the earth, and you know, the meteorological conditions—the weather—has [4] the most positive influence on our life. ”

“ The effects of forests do not appear in confined zones. [6] Their influence is not bounded by a certain region, and the calamity coming from their devastation passes over the individual property affecting the public welfare. This is an incontestible truth that science demonstrates and facts corroborate. Therefore there is no reason why protection of forest must be concerned to a certain extension, not affecting the private lands. ”

“ The individual right ought not to affect the high interests of the Union which ought to save its own future, guaranteeing by the preservation of the natural resources of the country, the general well-being of the present and future generations. ”

“ If there is yet controversy which is progressively disappearing with more serious study about some forests’ influences, there is not, all over the earth, any one who can scientifically contest this truth that history and geography, the facts of the past and the observation of the present so clearly confirm. The Nile, which comes from the heart of Africa, born among the virgin forests where fire and men never have penetrated, keeps today, in an average, the same flow that it had when it fertilized Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs. ”

“ The forests, the best protectors of our life, are going fast, and from the modification that their disappearance is bringing to the climate and to the natural conditions all over the earth, will come serious troubles to the solution of the sanitary problems in the future. ”

“ The importance of forests as protectors of mankind is an incontrovertible fact, and there is no spirit, less observing as it may be, that has not noticed, even slightly, some influence of the trees in benefitting life. ”

“ The old proverb—‘Man is the son of his environments’—is a translation of a truth scientifically demonstrated, proving the weather’s influence. It is true that it means the law of adaptation, but the environments of man depend entirely upon the meteorological conditions. ”

“ The rainfall without the protecting vegetation rapidly flows on the surface soil forming the run-off, which takes from the earth the fertilizing humus, excavating the mountain and producing the destructive overflow in the valley. ”

“ The argument against such laws has no reason for being, because the owner of the land is only a steward of the soil that was entrusted to him by the past generations; he is the depository of lands as he is a depository of capital, and thus, as it has a social origin, territorial property must have a social application, in attending to collective interest ”

“ Life progressively is becoming very difficult to be preserved in good conditions because of the incessant exhaustion of elements that are favorable to it on the surface of the earth, where a continuous transformation is observed all over. ”

“ I stand for the forest, for the preservation of forests as a measure of public safety. My paper is in part an extract of a report that I sent to Brazil to be read this week at the request of the 4th International American Medical Congress, held now at Rio De Janeiro “on the most efficacious means of preventing and lessening the effects of periodical droughts.” ”

“ In the countries where ice and snow do not appear the regimen of the water courses in a great measure depends upon the vegetation that covers the head of the streams; and such an influence is as great as the porosity of the soil is small in the generative basin of the sources. ”

“ On account of a rapid progress we must not sacrifice the forests as it has been done in many new countries.
Any progress detrimental to the vital forces of nature, is [5] negative, ephemeral; if one generation profits by it, the following one fatally will suffer its consequences. ”

“ This proposition, ladies and gentlemen, will do some good for our forests when thoroughly accepted in the countries where the question of right of property has been an obstacle to the protection laws for saving the trees on the private lands. ”

“ I think that in general the forests would be preserved if the people knew how to use them systematically if efficient means of preservation of timber could be obtained, in order to use the softer and light wood as good material, avoiding, as said by the illustrious engineer, Joaquim Julio Proenca, the [9] devastation of the virgin forests for hardwoods to be employed in construction of certain importance, principally railroads ”

“ The Federal Government in accordance with the states must help the development of the instruction on forestry, establishing special forestry gardens, however small, connected with botanical branch in the engineering courses, for better knowledge and trial of species of rapid growth, suitable for construction and railroad ties ”

“ You will find on the last proceedings of the dry farming Congress at Cheyenne, a paper of mine on the combination of irrigation and dry fanning processes, which combination I think will give the best results in rendering more fit to sustain life a region subject to drought. To the medical Congress, I suggested that a branch of the dry farming of America should be established in Brazil according to the wishes of its indefatigable secretary my good friend Mr. ”