148 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



mouth several miles into the sea, by the earth, stones, and 

 ruins that have been carried along ; it has made a wall on 

 each side, so that now there are miles and miles of its course 

 where its bed is literally higher than the neighboring grounds. 

 Sometimes this wall gives way, and the farms on one side 

 or the other, or both, are overwhelmed. It was only last 

 year that one of these terrible accidents occurred on the river, 

 and ten thousand people were made beggars. Their little 

 farms, which they had been cultivating by the side of the 

 Po, were overwhelmed by the overflowing of the river, and 

 will never be cultivated again. In France, I saw what was 

 being done, more satisfactorily than anywhere else. The 

 great rivers of France have been acting in the same way. 

 None of them are so large, or so long, at least not so long 

 from the mountains, and therefore, the overflows have not 

 been so terrible ; but thousands of acres, in the south-east of 

 France, have been carried away, year after year, by the 

 causes I have pointed out. Sometimes a whole village will 

 be carried away at once ; the soil, and everything that kept 

 the earth in its place, carried away by a great deluge. Thou- 

 sands of acres are sometimes swept away at once. Agents 

 of the government are taking the most efficacious measui-es to 

 remedy this evil ; and so important do they consider it in all 

 the countries of Europe, that there are forest schools now, 

 which I visited in Italy, France and Germany, where young 

 men are educated, after the}'" have been through the other 

 schools, to take care of the forests, for the forests, in every 

 countr}' of Europe, are a national concern. It is not done in 

 Great Britain, because every gentleman is a lover of trees, 

 and takes the best measures possible to keep them in good 

 condition, and, if ^Dossible, to make them better. Go through 

 all the countries of Europe, and you will find that the greatest 

 pains are taken to remedy the evil that has already been 

 done, and to prevent its recurrence in other cases. Now, I 

 say, gentlemen, every one of you can do something to prevent 

 this evil. You can do something to have the hills in your 

 neighborhood planted to the summit with trees. That will 

 remedy it entirely. You all know, undoubtedly, what has 

 been done in that direction by one of your neighbors over 

 here in By field. I went to see him a few weeks ago. He 



