58 OUTLINES OF FORESTRY. 



" It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept 

 off by the increasing violence of that curse of the mountains, 

 the torrents, is daily diminishing with fearful rapidity. All 

 our Alps are wholly, or in large proportion, bared of wood. 

 Their soil, scorched by the sun of Provence, cut up by the 

 hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface the grass 

 they require for their sustenance, gnaw and scratch the ground 

 in search of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed 

 and carried off by melting snows and summer storms. 



" I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty 

 years they have been too often depicted to require to be further 

 discussed, but it is important to show that their ravages are 

 daily extending the range of devastation. The bed of the 

 Durance, which now in some places exceeds a mile and a 

 quarter in width, and, at ordinary times, has a current of 

 water less than eleven yards wide, shows something of the 

 extent of the damage. Where, ten years ago, there were 

 still woods and cultivated grounds to be seen, there is now 

 but a vast torrent ; there is not one of our mountains which 

 has not at least one torrent, and new ones are daily forming." 



The power of a glacier with, its fragments of 

 rocks to erode the valleys through which it passes 

 is thus referred to by Le Conte, in his " Elements 

 of Geology," * on page 51. 



* Eeprinted, by permission, from the " Elements of Ge- 

 ology," by Joseph Le Conte, Professor of Geology and Natural 

 History in the University of California. New York : D. 

 Appleton & Co., 551 Broadway, 1878. Pp. 588. 



