B. TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS AND METEOROLOGY. 99 



without warning, many people being drowned in the flood 

 or crushed by falling buildings, and scarcely any property 

 being saved. Another suburb shared a similar fate, but the 

 inhabitants were fortunately able to escape with their lives. 

 All along the course of the main river and its tributaries 

 towns and villages were destroyed, some with hardly a ves- 

 tige remaining, and the dead were numbered by thousands. 



These destructive outbreaks have of late become period- 

 ical at Toulouse, but none have ever left such desolation be- 

 hind as this one. Now for the moral of this pitiable story, 

 and for the sake of which we have reproduced it. One cause 

 of this terrible calamity, it is very generally conceded, is to 

 be sought for in the wholesale destruction of the forests of 

 the surrounding country, which has been going on for years. 

 Our contemporary Iron puts the case concisely in the fol- 

 lowing terms : 



The cause of this calamity is, no doubt, the three weeks' 

 previous heavy and continuous rains, which fell over the 

 whole range of the Pyrenees; the drainage of this rainfall 

 having been accelerated by the stripping of the mountains 

 and upland tracts of their natural clothing. We have on 

 several occasions pointed out the way in which this excess- 

 ive and unwise destruction of natural wood, among other 

 and serious climatic evils, aggravates the effects of the rains 

 which usually fall at the equinoctial periods, but are not 

 confined to them. In the present case it appears that there 

 has been a widespread destruction of timber in the district 

 during the century, and thus the exceptional downfall, neither 

 intercepted by the loosened earth and undergrowth, nor ab- 

 sorbed by vegetation, scarcely penetrates beneath the sur- 

 face, but runs off as it falls, spreading desolation now, and 

 occasioning drought later in the year. The latest estimate 

 of the loss by these floods is 2000 lives in Toulouse alone, 

 and about $75,000,000 worth of property. Twenty thou- 

 sand persons likewise are estimated to have been rendered 

 homeless and destitute, besides being deprived of the means 

 of earning: their bread. 



CHANGES IN THE LEVEL OF THE WATERS OF LAKE GENEVA. 



Professor Plantamour, of Geneva, has subjected to exam- 

 ination the observations made since 1838 on the heights of 



