INFLUENCE OF THE FOREST ON FLOODS. 231 
nary observers. The growth of a forest, including the formation 
of a thick stratum of vegetable mould beneath it, is the work of 
a generation, its destruction may be accomplished in a day ; and 
hence, while the results of the one process may, for a consider- 
able time, be doubtful if not imperceptible, those of the other 
are immediate and readily appreciable. Fortunately, the plan- 
tation of a wood produces other beneficial consequences which 
are both sooner realized and more easily estimated; and though 
he who drops the seed is sowing for a future generation as well 
as for his own, the planter of a grove may hope himself to reap 
a fair return for his expenditure and his labor. 
Influence of the Forest on Inundations and Torrents. 
Inasmuch as it is not yet proved that the forests augment or 
diminish the precipitation in the regions they principally cover, 
we cannot positively affirm that their presence or absence in- 
creases or lessens the total volume of the water annually de- 
livered by great rivers or by mountain torrents. It is never- 
theless certain that they exercise an action on the discharge of 
the water of rain and snow into the valleys, ravines, and other 
depressions of the surface, where it is gathered into brooks and 
finally larger currents, and consequently influence the char- 
acter of floods, both in rivers and in torrents. or this reason, 
river inundations and the devastations of torrents, and the 
geographical effects resulting from them, so far as they are 
occasioned or modified by the action of forests or of the destruc- 
tion of the woods, may properly be discussed in this chapter, 
though they might seem otherwise to belong more appropri- 
ately to another division of this work. 
Besides the climatic question, which I have already suffici- 
ently discussed, and the obvious inconveniences of a scanty 
supply of charcoal, of fuel, and of timber for architectural and 
naval construction and for the thousand other uses to which 
wood is applied in rural and domestic economy, and in the 
various industrial processes of civilized life, the attention of 
