{y FREFAC2. 



" Torrents have proved destructive on the continent of Europe by washing 

 away fertile soil, by undermining houses and fields, and whole villages and 

 towns, and causing their fall, by burying fields and vineyards and towns m 

 the Mrris thus produced, and swept away, and by producing extensive 

 inundations of lower lying level lands, drowning man and beast, and 

 burying, washing away, or otherwise destroying the labour of years, and I 

 would briefly advert to the remedial measures which have been adopted. 



« One of the means employed to avert destruction when it was threatened, 

 was the erection on the river-bed of protecting walls, and of advanced 

 structures, to determine the current, and of continuous slopes to regulate 

 its rapidity and force, and of combined and modified forms of all of these 

 appliances, which manifested great art and skill, ingenuity, and power. It 

 would be exaggeration to say they proved in every case an utter failure, 

 but this would only be an exaggeration of what was the fact, which was, 

 that in very many cases they failed to avert the evil, and in not a few cases 

 they were carried away before the torrent like chaff before the wind, while 

 the torrent seemed to laugh a loud and hollow laugh at the silliness of 

 man's device. . . 



" To prevent the destruction of land by inundations, the more promising 

 measure of raising embankments based or founded on the dry land was 

 adopted, and the river was thus chained within its bed, with only liberty of 

 action within a limited space beyond. But what did the river do 1 It 

 silted up its 'bed, and thus raised itself, and attempted to overflow the 

 embankment. The danger was perceived in time, and the embankments 

 were raised to a higher elevation. The river quietly repeated the silting 

 up of its bed, which was met by a repeated addition to the embankment. 

 This was done again and again. It was a continuous struggle between 

 dead matter and living mind, carried on for years — for generations, — both 

 refusing to give in. Meanwhile, as in the case of the Kiver Po, not only 

 the embankments, but the silted-up bed of the river was elevated consider- 

 ably above the level of the country lying on one side and on the other, an 

 aqueduct of earth overtopping and threatening with destruction houses and 

 trees, and man and beast alike. Then it- was a desperate and a deadly 

 struggle, which many saw it would have been well it had never been entered 

 on, while others looked on and said. It is evident that that is not the way 

 in which the evil. is to be averted. Meanwhile the struggle was continued, 

 until a breach was at length effected in the embankment, and the river 

 poured forth its torrent, inundating the country far and wide. 



" While this contest was going on, the study of torrents in the Alps 

 revealed the form of the bed of these to be a large somewhat semi-circular 

 funnel-shaped basin, from the rainfall in which the waters were collected, — 

 a channel more or less elongated, along which the waters flowed, — and a 

 fan-shaped bed of deposit corresponding to the delta of a river, the whole 

 being like to a river-bed reduced or contracted in length ; it showed, further, 

 that these torrents were to be met with in all stages of progress, from 

 incipient information, throughout various stages of activity, to final 

 extinction ; it showed that in forest-covered mountain regions there were 

 none ; that in denuded mountain ranges they were numerous, and some- 

 times very destriictive ; that, where they were extinct, the forest had 

 extended itself till it covered the basiu and lined the banks of the channel ; 

 that, where they were in a state of progressive extinction, the forests were 

 progressively extending themselves ; and that this extension of the forest 

 was apparently the cause or occasion of the extinction of the torrent. 



