NOTES ON CONTINENTAL FORESTRY IN 1905. 165 
great national work, then at length seen to be necessary, of 
planting waste lands in mountainous tracts. On the contrary, 
between 1814 and 1847 over 700,000 acres of State Forests were 
sold for sums amounting to 49,520,000. Before this, however, 
a terrible inundation of the Rhone had caused sixty-three consez/s 
généraux to insist upon the necessity of doing something to 
replant the clearances made in the mountain tracts, but it was 
only in 1860 that the Bills successively introduced finally became 
law, and £400,000 a year were granted for ten years to begin 
work experimentally. The close connection between woods and 
water-supply has since then impressed itself more and more 
deeply, year by year, on the mind of the French people, and in 
the Eleventh Congress of the Society of Navigation of the Loire, 
held at Nantes in October 1904, it was acclaimed that “all those 
occupied in river navigation now admit as truth the saying—‘ 7f 
you want water, create woods.” In the Pyrennean districts the 
mountaineers have shown a good deal of stubborn resistance to 
improvements by planting, but this is now yielding under the 
influence of the Association pour l Aménagement des Montagnes, 
and many communes have already voluntarily taken steps to 
commence work. 
The plan adopted in 1860 was as follows:—In each district 
where such works were decreed to be necessary, the private land- 
owners could retain their land by carrying out the prescribed 
works at their own expense, assisted by State contributions; but 
otherwise the land was expropriated, although the old proprietor 
had the right to resume possession within five years, either by 
refunding the actual cost of the work (capital plus interest) or by 
giving up one-half of the area; while, as regarded land belong- 
ing to communes and corporations, the State could occupy it 
without expropriation, carry out the necessary work, and retain 
possession of it until all the advances were completely repaid ; 
the commune had, however, the right to exercise pasturage on 
the planted areas as soon as the plantations were old enough to 
permit of this, and could claim entire exemption from any pay- 
ment on giving up one-half of the land, and preserving its right 
to the other half. This raised a great outcry about oppression 
of the pastural industry, and it was urged that turfing would be 
quicker and cheaper than planting, and equally effective; but 
after a new law to this effect was brought into force in 1864, a 
return had to be made to planting in 1870. After fourteen years 
