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INTRODUCTION TO COURSE OF FORESTRY LECTURES, iG 
under which we live, do not render it as necessary as it 1s in many 
other countries, that large areas should receive the protection 
against the effects of violent and continuous falls of rain, which 
is so well afforded by a crop of trees and shrubs. 
It is true that a part of Scotland has recently suffered severely 
from floods ; a large number of bridges have been broken down, 
railway embankments and roads have been damaged, large stretches 
of agricultural land have been denuded of soil, and potatoe 
and turnip crops have been washed away; felled timber has also 
been swept off, and along the courses of all the rivers from Perth- 
shire to Ross-shire more or less damage has been done. The 
country between Edinburgh and Hawick, and especially about 
Galashiels, suffered severely last autumn, as we all know. ‘These 
floods constitute a serious calamity; but I am not at present 
prepared to offer an opinion on the difficult problem whether it 
would pay to regulate them by means of planting up the hill- 
sides, or by constructing engineering works, I believe that 
calamities of this nature are, fortunately, of comparatively rare 
occurrence. Such matters are always difficult to deal with 
otherwise than by State intervention, because it often happens 
that the seat of the evil lies within the property of one set of 
proprietors, while its effects are felt most severely on the 
property of others. 
The effects of the Scottish floods, however, bear no comparison 
with those produced by denudation in some other parts of the 
world, where the rain is heavier, the sun hotter, and the rock and 
soil are less consistent than with us. 
Whilst employed by the Secretary of State for India at the 
French Forest School at Nancy, I visited the southern French 
Alps, which have been subjected to excessive grazing, and from 
many parts of which not only the trees and shrubs, but even 
the very grass has disappeared. The surface is therefore no 
longer bound together by roots ; and when the heavy semi-tropical 
rain falls directly upon it, the soil, and subsequently the loose 
rock, slip down into the valley below. The water charged with 
these substances runs off with great rapidity, and suddenly fills 
the torrent beds. These latter soon become deepened by the 
“scour,” when their sides, deprived of support, fall in; and the 
effect of this action, going on throughout the whole system of 
watercourses which traverse the mountain sides, is that, over 
enormous areas, the upper strata of the soil, with its fields, houses, 
