94 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



" In dry weather these mountain gorges and foothills, once 

 covered with woods and pastures, are bare wastes of rocks and 

 pebbles, where not even a bush can be found 'to shelter a bird, 

 where all the springs are dried up, and where a dead silence, un- 

 broken even by the hum of an insect, prevails ; but when a storm 

 bursts forth, masses of water suddenly shoot from the mountain 

 heights into the shattered gulfs, waste without iriigating, deluge 

 without refreshing the soil they overflow in their swift descent, and 

 leave it even more seared than it was from lack of moisture." 



The provinces in which such scenes were depicted — Dauphiny, 

 Provence and Avignon — had been among the fairest in France, 

 but the paradise was rapidly becoming a desert. In 1842 the de- 

 partment of the Lower Alps had 245,000 acres of cultivated soil ; 

 in 1852 it had 184,000 ; 61,000 acres, one-fourth of its arable 

 area, had been washed away or rendered worthless. The popula- 

 tion was steadily decreasing at the rate of one thousand a year in 

 this one small department. Southern France became sadly famous 

 for great floods and consequent ruin. Streams less than one hun- 

 dred miles in length often suddenly swelled to more than the 

 volume of the Nile, while rivers like the Loire and the Rhone 

 threatened the utter devastation of their wide and fertile valleys. 

 In 1856 the flood of the Loire covered 1,000,000 acres, that of the 

 Rhone was equally destructive, and the total damage was incalcu- 

 lable. These great disasters roused the French government to 

 systematic and extensive effort. Laws were passed in 1860 for 

 the re-foresting of the mountains, applying to private as well as 

 to state property. Thousands of acres were annually planted in 

 the departments above referred to ; and in 1875, when Southern 

 France suffered greatly from floods, the river Durand, formerly 

 the most dangerous in France — a river which as early as 1789 

 had ruined 130,000 acres of the finest land in the province — gave 

 little trouble ; and it is around the headwaters of this river that 

 the chief plantations have been made. So much was gained in 

 fifteen years. 



The experience of France is peculiarly instructive, because 

 here the results of excessive clearings have been most recent, and 

 most carefully observed ; and, on the other hand, the possibility 



