950 TORRENTS IN FRANCE. 
The ground upon the steep mountains being once bared of 
trees, and the underwood killed by the grazing of horned eat- 
tle, sheep, and goats, every depression becomes a water-cowrse. 
“Every storm,” says Surell, page 153, “ gives rise to a new 
torrent.* Examples of such are shown, which, though not yet 
three years old, have laid waste the finest fields of their valleys, 
and whole villages have narrowly escaped being swept into 
ravines formed in the course of a few hours. Sometimes the 
flood pours in a sheet over the surface, without ravine or even 
bed, and ruins extensive grounds, which are abandoned for- 
ever.” 
I cannot follow Surell in his description and classification of 
torrents, and I must refer the reader to his instructive work 
for a full exposition of the theory of the subject. In order, 
however, to show what a concentration of destructive energies 
may be effected by felling the woods that clothe and support 
the sides of mountain abysses, I cite his description of a valley 
descending from the Col Isoard, which he calls “a complete 
type of a basin of reception,” that is, a gorge which serves as a 
common point of accumulation and discharge for the waters 
of several lateral torrents. “The aspect of the monstrous chan- 
nel,” says he, “is frightful. Within a distance of less than 
two English miles, more than sixty torrents hurl into the depths 
of the gorge the débris torn from its two flanks. The smallest 
of these secondary torrents, if transferred to a fertile valley, 
would be enough to ruin it.” 
The eminent political economist Blanqui, in a memoir read 
before the Academy of Moral and Political Science on the 25th 
of November, 1843, thus expresses himself: “Important as 
are the causes of impoverishment already described, they are 
not to be compared to the consequences which have followed 
* No attentive observer can frequent the southern flank of the Piedmon- 
tese Alps or the French province of Dauphiny, for half a dozen years, with- 
out witnessing with his own eyes the formation and increase of new torrents. 
I can bear personal testimony to the conversion of more than one grassy slope 
into the bed of a furious torrent by baring the hills above of their woods. 
