68 OUTLINES OF FORESTRY. 



ard, the penalty of death was once adjudged on any man 

 found guilty of having made an attempt on the life of one of 

 the trees which shielded the habitations. Added to this, a 

 sort of mystic curse was thought to hang over this impious 

 action, and it was told with horror how drops of blood flowed 

 when the smallest branch was broken off. It was true enough 

 that the destruction of each tree might perhaps be expatiated 

 by the death of a man." 



" The village and the great establishment of the baths at 

 Bareges, in the Pyrenees, used to be menaced every year by 

 avalanches rushing down from an elevation of four thousand 

 feet, at an angle of thirty-five degrees. The inhabitants, 

 therefore, were in the habit of leaving vacant spaces between 

 the two quarters of the Bareges, so as to allow a free passage 

 to the descending masses. Lately, however, they have en- 

 deavored to do away with the avalanches by means somewhat 

 similar to those employed by the Swiss mountaineers. They 

 have thrown up banks from ten to twelve feet broad on the 

 sides of the ravines, and have furnished these banks with an 

 edging of cast-iron piles. Basket-work, and, here and there, 

 walls of masonry, protect the young growing trees, which are 

 gradually improving under the protection of these defensive 

 works. In the mean time, until the real trees are strong 

 enough to arrest the course of the snow, the artificial trees 

 have well fulfilled the end they were destined for. In 1860, 

 the year the defensive works were finished, the only avalanche 

 which slid into the ravine did not exceed four hundred cubic 

 yards in bulk ; while the masses which used to fall down upon 

 the Bardges sometimes attained to more than ninety thousand 

 yards in volume." 



