CHAPTER II. 



REBOISEMENT. 



BESIDES endeavours to secure the conservation of existing 

 forests, woods are being extensively planted with a view 

 to restoring the forestal condition of lands which have 

 had their forests more or less extensively impoverished or 

 destroyed. Sometimes this is done as a profitable culture ; 

 but more frequently, and much more extensively, is it done 

 with a view to securing again some of the advantages 

 which have been lost through the destruction of forests, 

 or to secure for lands devoid of these, advantages similiar 

 to those enjoyed, or which have been enjoyed, in proximity 

 to forests of greater or less extent. 



Details of measures adopted to secure exemption from 

 devastating torrents and inundations, and from devastating 

 drifting sands, have been given in volumes referred to in 

 preceding chapters. 



Of these operations the arresting of sand-drifts may 

 seem to be the most important where these are the 

 scourge of the district. Where floods and inundations 

 are the scourge, the sufferers may feel that the prevention 

 of such calamities is what is of most importance to them. 

 But the effect of forests on the humidity of soil and 

 climate is of importance to a much more extensive and more 

 widely diffused population. And the creation of forests 

 with a view to secure this may, where either of the other 

 evils referred to prevails, have the effect of, at the same 

 time, counteracting that. 



In preceding pages there have been adduced several 

 statements in regard to Algeria. That land supplies 

 illustrations of the good which may be affected in various 

 ways by the extensive plantation of woods. 



