FOKESTS OF FEANCE. 305 



Troy, from wliose valuable pampHet, Etude sur le Beboisement 

 des Montagnes, I take these statistical details, supposes that Mira- 

 beau's statement may have been an extravagant one, but it still 

 remains certain that the waste has been enormous ; for it is known 

 that, in some departments, that of Ari^ge for instance, clearing 

 has gone on during the last half century at the rate of three thou- 

 sand acres a year, and in aU parts of the empire trees have been 

 felled faster than they have grown.* The total ai-ea of France 

 in Mirabeau's time, excluding Savoy, but including Alsace and 

 Lorraine, was about one hundred and thirty-one millions of acres. 

 The extent of forest supposed by Mirabeau would be about thirty- 

 two per cent, of the whole territory. In a country and a climate 

 where the conservative influences of the forest are so necessary 

 as in France, trees must cover a large surface and be grouped in 

 large masses, in order to discharge to the best advantage the vari 

 ous functions assigned to them by nature. The consumption oJ 



* Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of exten 

 sive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact that wolves were abundant, 

 not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are now neither wolves 

 nor woods to shelter them. Arthur Young more than once speaks of the 

 "innumerable multitudes" of these animals which infested France in 1789, 

 and in the course of the winter of the year 5 of the French Kepublic the 

 wolves of all ages killed in France were reported at 1,689. In the year 6 the 

 number killed was 5,351, of which 22 were said to be rabid. The premiums 

 awarded by the Government for the slaughter of wolves during that yeai 

 amounted to 126,000 francs. George Sand states, in the Histoire de ma Vie, 

 that some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased traveUera 

 on horseback in the southern provinces, and literally knocked at the doors of 

 her father-in-law's country seat. Eugenie de Guerin, writing from Eayssac in 

 Languedoc in 1831, speaks of hearing the wolves fighting with dogs in the 

 night vmder her very windows. Lettres, 2d ed., p. 6. But, in 1881, official 

 estimates gave the probable number of wolves in France as 5,000, and the 

 damage done by them was calculated at a few hundred thousand francs. 



There seems to have been a tendency to excessive clearing in Central and 

 Western, earlier than in Southeastern, France. Bernard Palissy, in the Be- 

 cepte Veritable, first printed in 15G3, thus complains : " When I consider the 

 value of the least clump of trees, or even of thorns, I much marvel at the gi-eat 

 ignorance of men, who, as it seemeth, do nowadays study only to break down, 

 fell, and waste the fair forests which their forefathers did guard so choicely. 

 I would think no evil of them for cutting down the woods, did they but re- 

 plant again some part of them ; but they care nought for the time to come, 

 neither reck they of the great damage they do to their children which shall 

 come after them." — (Euvres Completes de Bernaud Palissy, 18-44, p. 88. 



