WORLD'S TIMBER RESOURCES 177 



the engineers and forest officers who were en- 

 trusted with the work. In this case widespread 

 damage had been caused by the inhabitants 

 themselves. When, during the revolutionary 

 period, the laws against emigrant landowners, 

 and the numerous confiscations which followed, 

 caused the breaking up of extensive private 

 estates all over France, a general change in 

 tenure, by the creation of a very large class of 

 peasant proprietors, was the result. Naturally 

 these small owners sought to utilize every rood 

 in their holdings for tillage and pasture, and 

 when, as was especially the case in the Alps 

 and Cevennes, their allotmen|;s were in forest 

 regions, they soon sold or burnt ' the timber, 

 while their flocks destroyed the shrubs and 

 undergrowth. Disaster quickly followed. Im- 

 mense tracts of hill slope and upland became 

 arid and desolate wastes. Under the sweep of 

 heavy rains the soil was first washed down to 

 the plains and valleys, and then the loose stones, 

 and pebbles, until nothing remained but stretches 

 of naked rock scarred with deep chasms and 

 fissures, down which torrents of storm water 

 poured, flooding the lower country and carrying 

 down masses of debris to be deposited on the 

 fertile valleys and flats along the courses of the 

 streams. At last the general government was 

 forced to adopt remedial measures, and at an 



