116 MODERN FOREST ECONOMY. 



broad -leaved shrubs further up. To-day [1874] the tor- 

 rent of Laboret no longer exists. It has given place to a 

 stream flowing over a succession of descents with a slope 

 of some millimetres, carrying off no material, and showing, 

 even after a storm, orjy clear water. 



' The effect produced in the country by the happy 

 results obtained in the case of the Laboret has contributed 

 powerfully to modify public opinion in regard to reboise- 

 ment/ 



M. Delafont, Inspector des Eaux et Forets, in a Memoire sur 

 I'etat des Forets dans les Hautes-Alpes, writes in reference to 

 the evil : ' The sad results which I have pointed out are 

 everywhere deplored. All who are not blinded by ignor- 

 ance, or whose heart has not been dried up by selfishness, 

 give expression to the thought that it is high time to 

 arrest the ever-increasing progress of so fearful a devasta- 

 tion. They groan under the numberless evils caused by 

 the e?0-boisement of the mountains, which seem to call upon 

 us to come forward to save our forest riches. These reflec- 

 tions, these prayers, I have myself heard many a time 

 uttered with an energy inspired by a profound conviction 

 of a great evil, and of the imperious necessity which 

 there is to suspend that course of procedure. Let us 

 listen to the cries of distress of a population alarmed 

 about their future ! ' 



And Surell writes : ' One thing which it is impossible 

 to dispute, and is beyond all equivocation, is the influence 

 which forests exercise on the conservation of even the soil 

 of the mountains ; and to him who would pretend to deny 

 this, we have only to point to our Alps, which give so 

 powerful and deplorable proof of its being the case, a 

 proof evident, I shall not say to every intelligent being, 

 but to every eye. 



1 How comes it about that a truth so simple and one of 

 so great interest to many has not from the first been so 

 strongly established as to be understood and accepted by 



