1847.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECrS JOURNAL. 



71 



ON THE DESTRUCTION OF MOUNTAINOUS FORESTS 

 AS THE CAUSE OF LATE INUNDATIONS. 

 ' The dreadful disasters which have, of late, visited several of the 

 French Departments, have induced the secretary of state for public 

 works to order the subject to be investigated by competent persons; 

 and we derive the following particulars from the reports of Messrs. 

 Blanqui, Maunier and Rubichon : — 



la several parts of the Departments d'Isere, des Hautes et Basses 

 Alpes, and du Var, especially in the mountainous regions, the destruc- 

 tion of forests has not only caused the disappearance of vegetable 

 fuel, but even springs aud courses have vanished, and the soil has been 

 carried off by the force of torrents. About Grenoble, this inconve- 

 nience has reached so far, that the peasants are obliged to bake their 

 bread on the excrements of cattle, &c. The abuse of out-wooding, 

 tillage, and pastures, deprive the soil of mountain-slopes of all cohe- 

 sion, and no resistance whatever is offered to counteract the action of 

 floods or heavy rains. The rapid slope of mountainous terrains in- 

 creases this evil, and the loose and detached soil rolls, in the form of 

 a torrent of black lava, into the valleys, where it spreads over plains 

 which are either already cultivated or at least fertile. Oftentimes, a 

 whole mass of earth is thus detached from a mountain, which thereby 

 becomes visibly indented. Nothing can equal the scene of such ter- 

 rible irruptions. Immense beds and layers of pebbles and debris, to 

 the depth of many yards, cover the plains, and neutralise and destroy 

 for ever the fertility. Trees and other vegetation vanish under the 

 pressure of these debris; and the beds of rivers and streams, gradu- 

 ally heightened, reach at last the piers of the bridges, which are 

 carried away. 



Such are the effects of out-wooding a terrain. And as the forests 

 consist, in the above-mentioned parts of France, merely of under- 

 wood, and are generally composed of fir (coniferous) trees, 

 which do not grow again from their roots when once cut, the evil will 

 become irrecoverable if no remedy be devised for it. In several 

 localities, not a tree has been left; and as the peasants, therefore, 

 have recourse even to the shrubs and brambles, M. Blanqui thinks 

 that, fifty years hence, France and Piedmont will be separated from 

 each other by a desert, as in the case of Egypt and Syria ! 



The diminution of springs and sources is seriously felt in the De- 

 partments of the Basses Alpes and du Var, in some of whose ravines 

 and slopes all vegetation has also vanished. If a gale floods such 

 localities, torrents sweep these desolated places, which neither culti- 

 vate nor fertilise them. As popul.itiun increases and accumulates in 

 other places, even the steep slopes of mountains are put under tillage, 

 which still more augments the existing evil. The measures which 

 have been hitherto resorted to, to bar these inundations, are — says 

 M. Blanqui — both inefficient and unsystematic. The owners of the 

 lands on the banks of rivers and torrents quarrel and litigate, instead 

 of combining against the common enemy. Nothing can be more 

 strange than the aspect of these isolated, ill-concerted works — here 

 and there an embankment, a wall of piled-up stones, a coffer-dam of 

 wood, or some patches of masonry. M. Blanqui thinks that none but 

 government, aided by the combined efforts of accurate surveys and 

 scientific systematic construction, can properly stay these yearly- 

 increasing devastations: as, both for the re -plantation of out-wooded 

 terrains and the embankment of the rivers, the skill and capital 

 available by private persons, will ever be insufficient. 



In the Pyrenees, also, the out-wooding of terrains, inundations, and 

 scarcity of crops, have gone hand in hand. The area of forests which 

 belonged lo the crown, at the end of the sixteenth century, was equal 

 to 250,000 hectares, which, in 100 years, was reduced one-half; and, 

 at the end of the last century, amounted merely to 40,000 hectares. 

 The out-wooding of private forests bus been on as great a scale as 

 those belonging to the crown. Thus, the outskirts of the Pyrenees, 

 which once yielded a superior kind of timber for naval and stiuctur.il 

 purposes, are now scarcely sufficient to supply to the inhabitants the 

 necessary quantity of fuel. Tillage has also been carried out to a 

 senseless degree ; and after the slopes have been put under cultiva- 



tion, even the very crags of the mountains are taken possession of; — 

 and here also, every inundation, however slight, sweeps all traces of 

 vegetation and soil into the bed of the Garonne, and the Mediterra- 

 nean. 



We broach this subject the more eagerly, as ample allusion has 

 been made thereto in the " Atti dei Scienziati d'ltalia," Florence, 

 1844, 4to. — whence it appears that the same causes, and the same 

 punyness and insufficiency of remedies, exist in nearly all the moun- 

 tainous parts of the Italian peninsula. 



ON THE PHYSICAL IMPROVEMENT (ATHLETISING) OF 



ARTISTS. 



" Mens insana — sini corpora sano." 



History ought to be, and can be, the teacher of every one — not 

 merely the warrior and statesman, but of every one; for history does 

 not comprise merely the fates of such men, but of all men. We do 

 not think that our "young architects" (artists) have ever directed 

 their thoughts to tliose unobtrusive, but unrepudiable lessons and 

 hints, which history has so extensively placed before them. Let us 

 not speak of Greece and Rome — where it is known that even Plato 

 danced at some public festive games; but come point blank to those 

 prototypes of modern art. Where was Raffaelle born — how did he 

 pass his earlier years ? Why, bis cradle stood on one of the most 

 commanding situations of the Appennines, and in youth he became 

 a wanderer to and fro Urbino, and to and fro a host of monasteries 

 and castles — where he saw nature, men, and manners. But we 

 will at once transgress to the putting down an axiom : " that 

 there never was a great man, whose bodily and physical powers were 

 not adequate to the part he had to perform." Sir Christopher Wren, 

 who would have been considered nearly worthy of apotheose in for- 

 mer times, attained the age of ninety-two; — no bad proof, indeed, 

 that he must have been a man of pith, stamina, muscle, and nerve. 

 And again, to transgress from artists to all kinds of men,— Sir John 

 Herschel and James Watt both attained the age of eighty-four ; the 

 former a wanderer as well — and a soldier to boot. Most of this class 

 of people, when young, had neither carriages nor railways at their 

 command ; and wherever they wanted to go, they had to go per pedes 

 Apostolonim. Take, therefore, the journeys of Raffaelle amidst the 

 hills and dales, the forests and bushes, and the freshness and the sun 

 of the Appennines, and that of many — nearly all — of our young men 

 now. Born in Chancery-lane, or the Bull Ring at Birmingham — with 

 a view on some ricketty, lumbery, smoked, brick casement. When 

 children, walking down this street and another; and when young men, 

 loitering from a musly, dark, cheerless office in Fleet-street, to the 

 coffee or eating house ; and so on. The greatest feat they may sub- 

 sequently perform, is to go on business to Manchester or Liverpool — 

 stowed in the wooden case of a railway carriage. 



" Their is a life for you — 

 This is what you call life 1" 



makes Goethe exclaim Faust under nearly similar circumstances. 



And then, the working man's sanatory association exclaim, " Why 

 is there so much disease amongst us ?" JVe know it — they do not. 

 Young people's physical powers, if not (we would say terribly) used, 

 will be terribly abused : thence our present pigmy generation — de- 

 plorable in all and every respect. But to revert to the artist. 

 Training and knowledge are as one thing — they produce the prosy 

 man of business. So far so good : such men must also exist. But, if 

 the aspirations of the nation have to be raised above that, we cannot 

 accomplish it but in the manner in which it has been before accom- 

 plished, cannot but be so accomplished, and has been so accomplished 

 in Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, Italy, Flanders. It is mere 

 chimera to think that the miud can soar above, while the body is 

 dwindling — crumbling down to the very soil, into the embraces of 

 which it is hastening headlong. The thing cannot be done ; we ara 



