70 MODERN FOREST ECONOMY. 



suffering in a severe cold the penalty of an imprudengb 

 fancy for a walk in a forest on the day following a storm. 

 And as for foresters, the repeated rheumatisms to which, 

 alas ! they are doomed, do not they present every day, 

 even to the most saeptical, a demonstration cruelly 

 eloquent ? 



' Under the influence of atmospheric agents this enor- 

 mous mass of vegetable detritus is decomposed rapidly to 

 form a bed of detritus and humus* which attains some- 

 times an enormous thickness under the mantle of dead 

 leaves ; and it may be imagined that the soil of forests 

 must be infinitely richer in this vegetable constituent 

 than is all other agricultural soil by reason of the quantity 

 of the vegetable matter with which it is strewn, and which 

 rots there, being so considerable. Now it results from 

 researches by Schuebler, reported and prosecuted by 

 Boussingalt, to determine the physical properties of 

 different kinds of earth, that humus is the substance 

 which, of all others, manifests the greatest avidity for 

 moisture. It is by no trifling difference that humus dis- 

 tinguishes itself in this respect from the other earths which 

 were made the subject of experiment. For its absorbent 

 power is about eight times that of sand, from two to six 

 times that of different kinds of calcareous earths, and 

 from two and a half to five times that of the different 

 argilaceous earths.t It may be imagined, then, what an 

 important part in regard to inundations must be played 

 by soil possessing so developed a hydroscopic property. It 

 never happens that in any storm, whatever may be its 

 intensity, the layer of humus imbibes the water to such 

 an extent as to be completely saturated, or that the 

 rainfall forms currents on the surface of a well- wooded 

 soil. One may say then that a forest may easily drink in 

 the whole of the water produced by a most violent 



* The earth in the upper portion of the vegetable soil proceeds from the more or less 

 advanced decomposition of the organic detritus of plants. The humus constitutes the 

 more soluble and assimilable portion of this vegetable soil. 



t Boussingalt, Economic Rurale consider^ dans ses Rapports avec la Chimie, la 

 Phisique, et la Mettorologie. 2 Edit. T. i. p. 600, &c. 



