JEIEBOISEMENT. 117 



all ? Is it not now high time that public opinion should 

 take it up anew ? The question is one deserving of some 

 trouble being taken with it, for on the solution of it 

 depends the future life or death of many departments of 

 the land/ And again, ' I do not wish to have any barren 

 compromise made. I wish to let it be seen that it would 

 be better far to fight the torrents than to construct again 

 at great expense masses of masonry and earthwork, which 

 would always, do what you may, be costly palliatives, 

 better adapted for concealing the plague than for extir- 

 pating it. Why then should not man call in the aid of 

 these living forces, the power and efficiency of which have 

 been so clearly revealed to him ? Why not command 

 these forces to do anew, and this time by man's orders, 

 what they have already done in old times in so many 

 extinct torrents, and that only by the orders of Nature ? ' 



In a report to the National Assembly, made on Novem- 

 ber 25, 1872, by M. le Vicomte de Bonald, it is stated : 



' MM. Surell et Cesanne in their valuable Etude sur les 

 Torrents des Hautes Alpes, have succeeded in demonstrating 

 beyond question the truth of the following aphorisms : 



'That the existence of a forest on the ground hinders 

 the formation of torrents ; 



'That the destruction of the forest delivers up the 

 ground to the ravages of torrents ; 



'That the development of forests brings about the 

 extinction of torrents ; 



'And that the felling of the forest revives again the 

 extinct torrents/ 



' So fully are these facts regarded as established in 

 Switzerland,' says a writer on forest management in the 

 Edinburgh Review of October 1875, 'that at the Social 

 Science Congress at Berne, in 1865, the question was 

 raised as to the means of establishing a common legislation 

 between countries watered by the same rivers, in order to 

 protect their respective interests by the maintenance of 



