in Provence and the Ccvennes, 335 



modification of that last described. Under it the shrubs 

 are cut down, ai)d either laid on the ground before the 

 fire is lighted, or taken out and burnt separately. This 

 system is sometimes practised when the shrubs, being very 

 tall, would cause the flames to mount high up the stems of 

 the older trees. It has some advantages over the ordinary 

 method of ijetits feux^ but costs about four times as much. 

 Where precautions of the nature above indicated are 

 not taken, or when they prove ineffectual, serious disasters 

 occasionally ensue, areas of 25,000 acres of forest being 

 sometimes consumed by a single conflagration. A portion 

 of the forest we passed through was burnt in 1862, and 

 totally destroyed. 



After having spent several hours in studying the many 

 interesting questions to which our attention had been 

 directed in this forest, we drove to CoUobrieres, where 

 we were to pass the night. While waiting for dinner, 

 we went out to visit a cork factory in the village. The 

 sheets of cork are boiled in order to make them soft and 

 pliable, and they are then piled up under heavy weights 

 to flatten them out. After this they are cut into strips, 

 and these are again divided into a number of short lengths, 

 so as to form little cubes, each of which is destined to be 

 turned by a lathe into a bottle cork, the diameter of which 

 depends on the thickness of the sheet of cork. It is sur- 

 prising to see how easily the wet cork cuts, but of course 

 the knives are kept very sharp. 



Before leaving CoUobrieres next morning we visited a 

 factory in which the roots of arborescent heather {Erica 

 arborea) are prepared for conversion into tobacco pipes, 

 an industry which follows the practice of grubbing up the 

 heather roots in the cork oak forests. This shrub has an 

 underground stem, which, when the part above ground 

 is burnt down, lives and gives vigorous coppice shoots, 

 these being in their turn burnt down, and after a number 

 of years the stem attains very large dimensions, much in 

 the same manner as is the case with the sal [Shorea rohustd) 

 in Northern India. The underground stems or stumps 

 when dug out are, as a rule, converted into charcoal ; but 

 a small proportion of them, ordinarily some 4 or 5 per 

 cent., which have sufficiently compact fibre, are selected 



