\0 INTBODUCTJON. 



pa^tur&>grpvmdB. The number of sheep which was 53,000 twenty years 

 ago are now only 36,000. One commune, Saint Etieime, which supported 

 25,000 sheep fifteen years ago, supports no more than 11,000 now. Thus 

 thp inhabitants, who sacrifice all their soil for the flocks, will not even leave 

 this last inheritance to their descendants. 



" Thus may one see clearly whither tends this fatal chain of causes and 

 effects, which commences with the destruction of the forests and ends in 

 suifering and misery for the population, condemning man also to share the 

 ruin of the soil which he devastated. 



" All these facts have been lately recounted by M. Morgue, the present 

 Prefect of the High Alps, in a memoir which treats specially of this 

 unlm,ppy valley. ' The histoiy of D6voluy,' says he, in closing his memoir, 

 ' will be that of the High Alps before five centuries have passed if the 

 indifference of the Legislature go on, if the recklessness of the Administration 

 continue, and if nothing occur to arrest the cupidity of the communes.' We 

 may place side by side with these words those of a former Prefect of the 

 Low Alps, M. Dugied, in a memoir on the subject. ' Such,' says he, ' are 

 the causes of the sad condition of the department. One may affirm viitk 

 certainty that, if a remedy he not speedily applied, ere long the population in 

 the upper portion will go on diminishing, and that with a rapidity which can 

 only be accounted for by that which went on before. I do not know if I 

 deceive myself, but I believe it is possible to remedy the evil ; and- 1 believe, 

 moreover, that it is high time to set about this. Wait a quarter of a 

 century and perhaps it will be too late, because the best grounds which 

 exist on the mountains furrowed by the storms may then have been carried 

 away by the floods.' " 



In accordance with the forebodings of Sm-ell were the following forebod- 

 ings of M. Jonsse de Fontanito, Inspector of Forests, embodied in a memoir, 

 Sur la degradation desforUs dans les arrondisements d'jEmbrun et de Briani^on, 

 " From all that has been said the conclusion may be drawn that the 

 department of the High Alps is the one, in all France, in which the 

 cultivators of the land are most menaced in their fortunes, and that they 

 will be compelled, and that sooner than they dream of, to abandon the 

 places which were inhabited by their forefathers ; and this solely in con- 

 sequence of the destruction of the soil, which, after having supported so 

 many generations, is giving place, little by little, to sterile rocks. 



" It is the destruction of forests which will be the principal cause of the 

 calamity. The torrents, becoming more and more devastators of the 

 country, in consequence of the destruction of these, will bury under their 

 deposits extensive grounds which will be lost for ever to agriculture. The 

 hills, denuded of their vegetable soils, will no longer admit of the infiltra- 

 tion of water. Then sources of streams and rivulets will be exhausted, 

 and the drought of the summers not being moderated by their irrigation, 

 all vegetation will be destroyed. 



. " The destructive elements thus give birth one to another, and it is only 

 necessary to notice what is going on to-day to foretell what will infallibly 

 come to pass some ages hence — when the forests shall at last have entirely 

 disappeared — fuel and water, the two first necessaries of life, will then fail 

 from these desolated countries. 



"The cupidity of the inhabitants, and the tenacity with which they hold 

 to old usages, admit of no hope that any moral eouviotion in regard to their 

 future will so impress them as to lead them to submit willingly to a tem- 



