70 LITERATUEE ON TORBENTS. 



lated to southern regions, where there are nothing but torrents during the 

 spring and autumn, imperceptible threads of water in the midst of an ocean 

 of sand during the summer, and never smooth unmanageable riTers, The 

 business is now to restore the soil of France to the primitive forests. 



Amongst the deforestings effected within the last fifty years there is much 

 which wiU be permanently profitable to the country. Deforesting is a conquest 

 of man over nature ; woods ought to disappear from the plains, and there to 

 give place to cultivation. But^ unhappily, we do not find in the valley 

 alone ground furrowed by the plough, or lands furnishing pasturage and 

 grass ; they have plucked up the trees of sterile cantons, where wood alone 

 should grow ; they have imprudently given up to the axe the sides and the 

 summits of our mountains ; then the regime of the profitless pastures, 

 freed from all surveillance, together with a vicious administration of public 

 and private forests, have hindered the reproduction of wood after the felling ; 

 and the carelessness of the agents of the State in the communes have shut 

 their eyes to the most destructive abuses. To-day the communes and the 

 State possess thousands — millions of hectares of nominal forests, where 

 there is just as much vegetation as there is in the steppes of Tartary, or in 

 the desert of Sahara. The sowing ordered by the laws, or by the regulations, 

 have been rendered illusory through the amount of the grants which were 

 allotted to them, and a mockery through the bad faith which has too often 

 presided over their execution. We are assured that oftener than once, and 

 that I may say at a time not very remote from the present, the lessees of the 

 fellings of the woods have sown sand instead of seed. About twenty years 

 ago the evil came to a head ; then the Administration established the Forest 

 School at Nancy, which furnished workmen capable and active, and men of 

 integrity. In 1837 the minister of finances proposed to stimulate the zeal 

 of subaltern agents by an improved treatment, which placed them above 

 misery, and protected them from temptation. All these improvements of 

 the officials are doubtless to be commended, but they will be productive of 

 little effect so long as there is not inserted in the budget a chapter in 

 support of replanting. With a million devoted every year to sow and plant 

 well-selected kinds of trees on the plots occupied by the forests, which would 

 appear always to rebel against cultivation, the State would create in 

 twenty or thirty years an immense capital, spread over the vast brows 

 of the Pyrenees, of the Alps, and of the Vosges ; as well as on the shores 

 of the lands where they have applied, only on a Lilliputian scale, the 

 ingenious and economic process of the savant Bremontier. In time of peace 

 this would be an inexhaustable provision for twenty branches of industry, 

 and notably for that in iron, which will never be wrought cheaply in France 

 until wood shall be more abundant. In time of war this would be a 

 resource of more ready avail than that of new taxes." 



In the Memoires de I'Academie des Sciences Morales et PoUtiques for 1843 

 there appeared a Memoire sur les Popidations des ffautes Alpes, by M. 

 Blanqui, an eminent political economist, from which the following passao-e 

 is cited and translated by the Hon. George P. Marsh, in his valuable work 

 entitled TJie Earth as Modified hy Human Action : — " I do not exao-o-erate " 

 says Blanqui. " When I shall have finished my description and designated 

 localities by their names, there will rise, I am sure, more than one voice 

 from the spots themselves, to attest the rigorous exactness of this picture of 

 their wretchedness. I have never seen its equal even hi the Kabyle villages 



