68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The State of New York, in particular, is discussing the question 

 of making a great forest reservation in the Adirondacks, in order to 

 avert floods, droughts, and other calamities which there is reason to 

 fear may follow the alleged rapid destruction of the forests of that 

 region. , 



In the course of this discussion many allusions have been made to 

 the ravages of floods in the south of France, and to the success of 

 efforts to tame those torrents, by reforesting the basins which they 

 drained. A short account of those torrents and their origin, the ruin 

 wrought by them, and the victory which forest science has gained 

 over them, may interest the readers of "The Popular Science 

 Monthly." 



Professor Guyot, whose recent death is such a great loss to science, 

 taught that variety of coast-outline, of elevation, of climate, and nat- 

 ural products, is necessary for the richest development of the individual 

 and of society ; and that in no part of the world were so many of these 

 favoring conditions originally brought together as in the regions bor- 

 dering the Mediterranean, 



The Roman Empire, which, at the time when it was most widely 

 extended, consisted almost entirely of the countries lying around or 

 near this sea, had the best situation of any of the great empires 

 that have arisen. The grouping and arrangement of the land and 

 water masses ; the diversity of elevation and of coast - outline ; the 

 rich and varied scenery ; the wide range of animal, vegetable, and 

 mineral products ; the great number of populous, wealthy, and nobly 

 built cities, with the marvelous Roman roads binding them together, 

 and the majestic Roman law co-ordinating their civic life — all co- 

 operated to make this region the garden of the world. The fact 

 that the most favored part of the earth's surface should have been so 

 nearly ruined, as it has been, by selfish and short-sighted treatment of 

 the forest, its most precious possession, ought to have been a lesson to 

 all future settlers of new territory. That it has not been heeded by 

 the settlers of North America, the increasing frequency and severity 

 of floods and droughts and the swift and menacing approach of tim- 

 ber-famine plainly prove. 



The streams which flow through the valleys that wind back from 

 the sea into the heart of the mountains and hills bordering the Medi- 

 terranean would, in their normal condition, be limpid and perennial. 

 But, owing to this short-sighted cutting of timber from steep hill- 

 sides, and to the equally short-sighted over-pasturing of the cleared 

 spaces afterward with sheep and goats, most of these streams were, in 

 the upper part of their courses, changed into torrents, whose beds in 

 dry weather are cheerless expanses of sand and gravel. 



During heavy rain, or when snow is rapidly melted upon the mount- 

 ains (and this is especially apt to occur when a warm wind, called 

 the Foehn, coming probably fi-om Sahara, and saturating itself with 



