36 THE FORESTS OF FRANCE. 



The English forester, in going over the woods and wood- 

 lands, and forest-like clumps of trees placed under his 

 charge, and selecting one and another to be felled, whether 

 it be because it has begun to decay, or because it will 

 supply wood which for some purpose or another he 

 requires, or because the plot or belt requires thinning, and 

 he desires that in the doing of this certain trees should be 

 removed and others allowed to stand, follows this method 

 of exploitation; and this method of procedure may appear 

 to be a most natural one to follow ; but it has been found 

 to be, when followed long in the exploitation of forests, 

 gradually but surely destructive of these. 



In a volume on the Hydrology of South Africa,* [pp. 

 172-175], I have given details of what I witnessed there 

 of such effects, not in one forest alone, but in many widely 

 dispersed over the colony, supplying illustrations of the 

 first, the second, and the final stage of the devastation 

 thus occasioned. I have witnessed, and heard from others 

 engaged in the work, of like results upon a far more 

 extensive scale, in the apparently interminable forests of 

 Northern Russia. 



Like results are said to have been seen in Australia and 

 New Zealand ; and like results in France at the time now 

 referred to were traced or attributed to the same or like 

 procedure methought I heard again just now the wail : 

 France perira faute de bois ! and like destruction of woods 

 has followed it over extensive regions in Central Europe. 



* Hydrology of South Africa ; or, details of the former Hydrographic condition of 

 the Cape of Good Hope, and of causes of its present aridity, with suggestions of appro- 

 priate remedies for this aridity ; a work in which the desiccation of South Africa, from 

 pre-Adamic times to the present day, is traced by indications supplied by geological 

 formations, by the physical geography or general contour of the country, and by arbor- 

 escent productions in the interior, with results confirmatory of the opinion that the 

 appropriate remedies are irrigation, arboriculture, and an improved forest economy; or 

 the erection of dams to prevent the escape of a portion of the rainfall to the sea, the 

 abandonment or restriction of the burning of the herbage and bush in connection with 

 pastoral and agricultural operations, the conservation and extension of existing 

 forests, and the adoption of measures similar to the reboisement and gazonnement 

 carried out in France, with a view to prevent the formation of torrents and the destruc- 

 tion of property occasioned by them. London : C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1875. 



