64 LITBRATUSE ON TORRENTS. 



flhig possibility are too numerous, too palpable, for this. Everybody admits 

 that the Alps were wooded long ago ; and this is itself a proof that woods 

 may yet be made to reappear there. The first forests which nature cast on 

 these mountains had to clothe a soil more naked, more sterile, more irregular, 

 than the actual soil of the present. And if vegetation has already triumphed 

 a first time in this struggle against destructive agents, why should she 

 succumb to-day ? It will be said that she was assisted by time ! It is so. 

 But to-day she will be assisted by man, and that assistance, in my opinion, 

 avails more than that of some four centuries. There are here and there, in 

 the bed of the Durance, conquests over the waters made by the efibrt of 

 nature alone ; but long ages have scarcely sufiS.ced to ensure vegetation there, 

 and some portions of it remain eternally sterile. When man undertakes 

 like conquests he finishes them in three years ; three years suffice for him 

 to make fields to flourish on the very place where the waters rolled pebbles 

 and barrens sands. This miracle is renewed every day, and under the eye 

 of all. Is not this a more marvellous triumph than it would be that man 

 should succeed in reforesting lands which, for the most part, have been 

 covered with forests before. 



" If I wished to criticise the work of M. Dugied," says he, " I would not 

 bring against him such objections. But whilst entirely approving the basis 

 and the end of the project, I would condemn some few details of execution. 

 M. Dugied has comprised, under the designation of torrents, the Durance, the 

 Verdon, the Cleone, which are rambling rivers, and on which the reboisement 

 of the mountains could only have a detournie, and secondary influence in 

 affecting the water-course. And in making the embankment of those 

 water-courses a corollary of the plantation of forests, he has coupled 

 together two distinct operations. From this it follows that his project is in 

 some respects too ample and exaggerated, and at the same time in some 

 measure defective. And this impression of vagueness is deepened when it 

 is seen that M. Dugied does not attach to forests any action on the torrents 

 other and beyond that effected by a climatal change. As this influence is 

 rather uncertain, and very difficult to be cleerly demonstrated, one cannot 

 understand how the author came to build on it such great expectations, 

 and that he should make of reboisement a preliminary operation, without 

 which the embankment of rivers would not be undertaken with success. 



" But there is a point in which his project seems to me defective in its very 

 foundation — it is this, he makes the execution of it to rest entirely on the 

 gooodwill of the proprietors. If the enterprise be really a thing of public 

 utility, as the author says it is — if it truly have the degree of importance 

 and necessity which he attributes to it — how does he come to leave it at the 

 mercy of the first peasant — stupid or stubborn — who will refuse to take 

 part in it 1 It showed little knowledge of the spirit of the inhabitants of 

 the country, to believe that a premium will suffice in every case to overcome 

 the natural apathy, and above all, the obstinacy of such, if once they 

 stubbornly determine not to give in to the undertaking. Now, this will 

 certainly occur oftener than once, if it do not become even generally the 

 case. The twenty francs of premium per hectare, which M. Dugied tenders 

 to them, would not always appear to them a sufficient indemnity to com- 

 pensate the trouble which the sowings might entail, and the loss of their 

 pastures, of which M. Dugied says nothing, and of the numerous interferences 

 which will follow from the operation. These works, besides, will not 

 succeed but through the expenditure of sustained and iatelligeut exertions 



