88 I'ROTECTION AGAINST INUNDATIONS. 



Terrible floods occurred in Switzerland in 1868, and in 

 Hungary in the valley of the Eiver Theiss, in March, 1879. 

 In September, 1882, damage estimated at d£l,000,000 was 

 caused by floods* in Carintliia and the Tyrol, and there 

 were serious floods in the Rhine valley in 1882, and in the 

 regions of the Elbe and Oder in 1888. The great floods in 

 Silesia and Brandenburg in the suminier of 1897, caused the 

 promulgation of the law (1898 — 99) for protection of the 

 tributaries of the left bank of the Elbe, in Silesia. Extensive 

 floods occurred in the Thames and Severn valleys, and other 

 districts in the South of England, in November, 1894. 



Serious floods* occur in Northern India nearly every year 

 between July and September, after the commencement of the 

 summer monsoon, and owing to the great damage thus caused 

 to irrigation canals fed by the Ganges and Jumna rivers, the 

 forests on the southern slopes of the Siwalik Hills are now 

 managed as protection forests. The Indian forest oflicialst 

 have for years recommended the adoption of similar measures 

 to the lower hills between the Jumna and Sutlej rivers, as 

 the first burst of the monsoon on the annually grazed and 

 burned sandy hills above the Hoshiarpur district causes most 

 disastrous inundations every year, besides bringing down 

 quantities of sand, gravel, and boulders which have encroached 

 considerably on the agricultural land below the hills, so that 

 by 1891, lands belonging to 914 villages were affected, and 

 30,000 acres of richly fertile and long cultivated land laid 

 waste, besides immense damage being done annually to rail- 

 way and road embankments, etc. The hills were formerly 

 covered with forest growth, but during the last forty years, 

 flocks of goats and herds of buffaloes belonging to about 

 eighty hamlets of squatters have been allowed to browse 

 down and destroy the forest growth which formerly fixed 

 the soil on the hills, and would spring up again were the 

 annual grazing and burning of the undergrowth restricted. 

 A law, termed the Siicalik Act, was passed by the Punjab 

 Legislative Assembly in 1900, which permits the Local 



* vide " Indian Forester," vol. xii., p. i\^. 



t Ibid., vol. v., p. 3. Hadeu-Powell's Ileport. Moir's Keport, vol. x., p. 271 ; 

 \'o\. xiii., p. r)2.") ; vol. xvii.. p. 21(! 



