220 ANNUAL REPORT 



The result of this deforestation in a climatic direction has been 

 highly disastrous. The same region which had been famous for its 

 mild and temperate climate has become changeable and unreliable; 

 landslides and avalanches have come and gone, mountain creeks have 

 become dry, and the whole face of the country has been changed 

 from a rich, fruitful and salubrious climate to one arid, sterile plain, 

 interspersed with stony and parched hillsides, populated by meagre 

 sheep and goats and their equally meagre owners. 



The work of reclaiming these forest areas is performed under the 

 supervision and the direct advice and control of forest oflBcers, who 

 are paid by the government. 



In southeastern France, where the gradual destruction of forests 

 has been pursued for centuries past, the soil of thousands of acres of 

 high pasture land has been washed away by violent vernal and au- 

 tumnal rains, and sudden floods and violent winds which have pre- 

 vailed have destroyed large areas of forests. The consequence has 

 been highly disastrous in all that mountainous region. The barren 

 hills have been seamed by rugged chasms and gullies, and the fertile 

 valleys below have been devastated with floods of a turbulent and de- 

 structive nature. 



To resist this process of destruction the French government began 

 some seventy years ago a sj'stem of forest supervision, followed later 

 by the replanting of trees, and under the system employing a large 

 corps of officers and men. Up to 1879 about 250,000 acres of prac- 

 tically waste land had been reclaimed at an annual expense to the state 

 for a period of nineteen years of about $500,000. 



In Germany the destruction of forests has been very notable. It is 

 stated that "many countries which flourished in former times have, by 

 devastation or extermination of their forests, fallen into pauperism 

 and cultured decrepitude." Neheuagen, from the destruction of for- 

 ests in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, became a desert. 

 Moveable sand now covers vast fertile tracts in adjacent districts. 

 Villages, where the farming population lived in prosperity, have dis- 

 appeared or fallen into ruins. 



In northern Hanover there are deserts subject to violent hurricanes, 

 which with other causes prove an obstruction to all efforts to prepare 

 the land for cultivation or to renew foresting. 



In other localities equally appalling results are observed from the 

 despoiling process. 



