140 



sidered politic to do something to aid them in their industry, as some set-oft 

 against the inconvenience to which individual communities are sometimes put 

 by these operations. 



Scope and progress of the entire work. The total surface to be treated as 

 a work of public utility in the Alps, Pyrenees, and Cevennes, is estimated to 

 amount to 1,035 square miles, in addition to about 1,900 linear miles of torrent 

 beds. Up to the end of 1885, 152 square miles of this surface and 373 miles of 

 torrent beds had been completed, the expenditures having amounted to 819,320, 

 and the rates having varied from 3 2s. 6d. per acre, and from 2s. to 7s. 6d. per 

 linear yard of torrent bed. There remain to be treated, therefore, about 883 

 square miles of surface, and 1,500 miles of torrent beds. In addition to the 

 above, the State has paid 138,000, or hall the cost of treating 212 square miles, 

 as "permissive works," under the old law, and 12,000 toward pastoral improve- 

 ments. 



DRAINING AND PLANTING OF SWAMPS AND WASTE LANDS. 



Measures of the nature above described for the consolidation and protection 

 of mountain slopes are undertaken in the interest of the population generally, 

 In the case of sterile unproductive wastes or swamps, not requiring to be dealt 

 with on these grounds, the government has thought it better, as a general rule, 

 to leave each proprietor free to do what he considers most to his own advantage, 

 confining it to the exemption from taxes for thirty years of all lands planted up. 

 But the State has the right to force the communes to drain their swamps and 

 wastes, with a view to rendering them suitable either for cultivation or for the 

 growth of trees ; and when this is done advances of funds may be made under 

 certain conditions, one of which is that the commune has the right to surrender 

 to the State in satisfaction of all claims, a portion of the area not exceeding one- 

 half. 



THE DUNES OF THE WEST COAST. 



The winds that blow continually from the ocean on to the west coast, carry 

 with them enormous quantities of sand, which, advancing steadily over the 

 country at the rate of some fourteen feet per annum, in the form of moving 

 hills called dunes, bury under them the fields and villages they reach. It has- 

 been calculated that nearly ninety cubic yards of sand per yard of coast line are 

 thus annually transported inland. Works to arrest the destructive effects of this 

 invasion of sand have been in progress since 1789 ; they were originally carried 

 out under the Department of Public Works, but since 1862 they have been placed 

 under the forest department. The total area of the dunes is said to be 224,154 

 acres, a part of which belongs to the State, and a part to private owners, while a 

 much smaller portion is communal property. 



In exposed situations the protective works consist of a wooden palisade, 

 erected at a short distance above high-water mark, and destined to promote the 

 formation of an artificial dune, with a view to prevent fresh arrivals of sand from 

 being blown over the country. Under its shelter, seeds of various kinds, princi- 

 pally those of the maritime pine (Pinus maritima), broom, gorse, and gourbet 

 (Arunde arenaria), are sown ; and the seeds being covered with brush- wood to- 

 prevent the sand in which they are sown from moving , and the sowing is thus, 

 continued inland, in successive belts, until a crop of trees is raised on the entire 

 area. In less exposed situations a wattled fence is substituted for the wooden, 

 palisades. In the Departments of Gironde and Landes, forests of the maritime 

 pine have been most successfully raised in this manner, the trees being tapped for 



