REBOISEMENT IN FRANCE. 



INTRODUCTION. 



One of the striking features of the scenery of extensive districts in the 

 High Alps is that presented by numerous ravines, of greater or less depth 

 aijid extent, furrowing the mountains, created by mountain floods. These 

 a^e the Torrents of the High Alps. In the creation of these much valuable 

 lajnd, and in some cases houses and fields, have been undermined, precipi- 

 tated into the water-course, and washed away ; and land not less valuable 

 Ijks been devastated by being covered with the detritus. The most 

 efficacious means of preventing the formation of torrential floods have been 

 found to be what are designated reboisement and gazonnement, — the former 

 bemg the replanting with woods lands in the districts formerly covered with 

 forests which have been denuded of these, the latter the creating of a dense 

 turf of lierbage and bush upon adjacent ground. 



Evils similar in kind but differing in degi-ee are not unknown in several 

 newly-settled lands. The success with which these remedial operations 

 have been carried out in France may commend them as appropria'te 

 appliances to remedy these evils ; and the magnitude of the evil which is 

 being combated and remedied in France may be considered as calculated to 

 speak encouragement to those who are called to meet only ksser forms of 

 the evil. Under this impression I would here cite details which have been 

 given of the form and magnitude which the evil had assumed, and in which 

 it has been attacked with success. 



The first I shall cite relates to the D6voluy. Of this valley Surell 

 writes, — " The D6voluy forms to the west of the department of the High 

 Alps an elongated valley, divided into two parts by a little col and circum- 

 scribed by elevated mountain chains. It is entered by five passages, which 

 are gorges or cols which the horrors of the locality make impracticable for 

 passage during a part of the winter. The mountains are bare, — eaten up 

 by the flocks and by the sun ; they are without shade and without verdure. 

 The bases of the mountains are almost deserts, having been ruined by the 

 deposit of material dejected from ravines. The aspect of this miserable 

 country is oppressive to the soul : one would say of it, It is smitten with 

 death. The pale and uniform colour of the soil, the silence which weighs 

 on the fields, the hideojis spectacle of these mountains flayed by the waters 



