488 INUNDATIONS AND TORRENTS. 
has been called “ Platonic war”—if judiciously expended in a 
combination of both methods of improvement, would secure, to 
almost every country that man has exhausted, an amelioration 
of climate, a renovated fertility of soil, and a general physical 
improvement, which might almost be characterized as a new 
creation. 
Inundations and Torrents. 
In pointing out in a former chapter the evils which have re- 
sulted from the too extensive destruction of the forests, I dwelt 
at some length on the increased violence of river inundations, 
and especially on the devastations of torrents, in countries im- 
providently deprived of their woods, and I spoke of the replant- 
ing of the forests as probably the most effectual method of 
preventing the frequent recurrence of disastrous floods. There 
are many regions where, from the loss of the superficial soil, 
from financial considerations, and from other special causes, the 
general restoration of the woods is not, under present cireum- 
stances, either possible or desirable. In all inhabited countries, 
the necessities of agriculture and other considerations of human 
convenience will always require the occupation of much the 
largest proportion of the surface for purposes inconsistent with 
the growth of extensive forests. Even where large plantations 
are possible and in actual process of execution, many years must 
elapse before the action of the destructive causes in question 
can be arrested or perhaps even sensibly mitigated by their in- 
fluence ; and besides, floods will always occur in years of exces- 
sive precipitation, whether the surface of the soil be generally 
cleared or generally wooded.* 
* All the arrangements of rural husbandry, and we might say of civilized 
occupancy of the earth, are such as necessarily to increase the danger and the 
range of floods by promoting the rapid discharge of the waters of precipitation. 
Superficial, if not subterranean, drainage is a necessary condition of all agri- 
culture. There is no field which has not some artificial disposition for this 
purpose, and even the furrows of ploughed land, if the surface is inclined, 
and especially when it is frozen, serve rather to carry off than to retain 
