374 INFLUENCE OF FORESTS: SWITZERLAND. 



Security to ilie climate— pleasant aspect of the country. 



1. Avalanches have become more freqnent since the clearing off of forests, and they 

 now occur in localities where they formerly seldom happened. They endanger the 

 safety of houses and roads, and do great injury to real estate. Replanting along their 

 course is difficult or quite impossible, and the productive power of the soil is greatly 

 reduced or wholly ruiued throughout the track they have made in jiassing, or where 

 they have left their debris of rocks. Clearings in the upper regions of the forests in- 

 crease these disasters, and favor the formation of avalanches in places where the tim- 

 ber is not allowed to remain. When they begin to form at great elevations they are 

 not checked until they have acquired a great impulsive force, and when this is 

 obtained a forest, however vigorous, affords no obstruction. 



2. The fall of rocks and stones, which is alike dangerous and injurious to the soil, 

 may not be materially increased by cleariugs, but becomes more injurious because the 

 debris which had formerly been stopped by the woods rolls farther down until it 

 comes to rest upon valuable land, and sometimes threatens houses and roads. 



'.i. Aqufcous precipitations, if not diminished in amouut, become at least more irreg- 

 Tilar. The rain, instead of falling gently, soaking gently into the soil, and imparting 

 fertility, will oft-ner come in storms because we have too much reduced the amouut 

 of forests, which serve as a conductor of electricity and form a quite regular reservoir 

 of moisture, beside checking the surface-currents of the air and warm and drying 

 winds. The general fertility of the alpine region has been reduced by these various 

 causes. Bushes have taken the place of pastures, and changes in the manner of using 

 the alpages [vacant lands of the Alps] have extended their limit farther down. We 

 cannot furnish upon these points numerical statements, but the complaints raised in all 

 parts, and the opinion of intelligent inhabitants upon the Alps, give to this observation 

 a degree of complete certainty. If any one has still any doubts upon this point, a sin- 

 gle fact may convince them. Many pastures are now insufficient to feed the cattle 

 that are turued upon them through the field season, although fewer head are kept, and 

 the pastured area is constantly increased at the expense of the forests, so that these 

 pastures are gradually approaching the valleys. It is pretended that this fact is 

 illusory, and reference is made to the fine meadows and pastures of the canton of 

 Appenzall. We may, on tlie other hand, point to the torn and impoverished moun- 

 tains of Tessin, and to the decayed pasturage of the central Alps, and should remark 

 that the pastures of Appenzall do not belong to the Alpine region, and that they have 

 a good location. 



4. It is impossible to suppose, in the absence of all proofs in this regard, that the 

 climate should become worse from external physical causes, independent of man, and 

 to which he could oppose no resistance. The diminution of several glaciers, of which 

 the increase or decrease corresponds with cold or warm years, speaks rather against 

 this hypothesis than in its favor. The fertility of the alpages has diminished ; their 

 upper limit has been lowered; the forests have ditappeared in the upper regions; the 

 climatic conditions have become less favorable to vegetation ; the devastations caused 

 by the waters, and by avalanches and falling rocks, have become more freqnent and 

 considerable, as have also the sliding of soil upon the slopes, and the accumulation of 

 debris in the valleys. Such is the long list of calamities due to man's Belfishness and 

 his contempt of the laws of nature in working the forests in a heedless manner, and de- 

 stroying them with criminal improvidence. The chastisement for this wo already 

 feel, and it will be more severely felt in the future. 



5. Many countries have lost by the clearing oft" of their forests those traits which 

 made them places of resort on account of their beauty. The traveler who has been de- 

 lighted with the view of the beautiful green foliage of the spring or summer, or with the 

 varied tints of autumn, will ofteu observe now, in these same places, only arid slopes, 

 torn and furrowed with ravines, or thinly covered here and there with scattered tufts 

 of herbage, which scarcely feed the cattle that are pastured upon them, or overrun 

 with brambles, broom, and rhododendrons. He will see only stinted briers or worth- 

 less myrtles, growing among tho bleached trunks which bear witness to the splendor 

 of a former vegetation, in the places where he expected to meet magnificent forests of 

 dr and the somber shades of evergreens. Instead of the massive woods which adorned 

 the crests and brows of tho mountains, within the limits of tree-vef,etation, he will 

 often see only meager pastures or naked rocks ; and in the valleys lie will find great 

 masses of materials rolled from above, instead of the meadows which formerly adorned 

 them. Such are the contrasts that sadden the traveler and cause a painful impres- 

 sion, even in the inhabitants who have become accustomed little by little tO" these 

 melancholy changes. 



6. The forests of a part of the country that we occupy, and especially in Tessiu, a 

 region so rich by nature, are going on to total ruin, if we do not prevent it by an im- 

 provement in their management, and fix a limit in working at the amount they are 

 able to yield. It will happen here as it has already in the Karst, in Illyria, formerly 

 so well timbered, or in the regions in Asia Minor and Greece, in a part of Italy, and 



