72 LITERATUHB ON TOEBENTS, 



hardly broken by even the hum of an insect, prevails. But if a storm bursts 

 forth, masses of water suddenly shoot from the mountain heights into the 

 shattered gulfs, waste without irrigating, deluge without refreshing the soU 

 they overflow in their swift descent, and leave it even more seared than it 

 was from want of moisture, Man at last retires from the fearful desert, and 

 I have, the present season, found not a living soul in districts where I 

 remember to have enjoyed hospitality thirty years ago." 



And in another connection it is said by Mr Marsh, — " It deserves to be 

 specially noticed that the district here referred to, though now among the 

 most hopelessly waste in France, was very productive even down to so late a 

 period as the commencement of the French Revolution. Arthur Young, 

 writing in 1789, says, — ' About Barcelonette, and in the highest parts of the 

 mountains, the hiU-pastures feed a million of sheep, besides large herds of 

 other cattle ;' and he adds, — ' With such a soil 'and in such a climate, we 

 are not to suppose a country barren because it is mountainous. The 

 valleys I have visited are, in general, beautiful.' He ascribes the 

 same character to the provinces of Dauphiny, Provence, and Auvergne, 

 and, though he visited, with the eye of an attentive and practised observer, 

 many of the scenes since blasted with the wild desolation described by 

 Blanqui, the Durance and a part of the course of the Loire are the only 

 streams he mentions as inflicting serious injury by their floods. The 

 ravages of the torrents had, indeed, as we have seen, conunenced earlier in 

 some other localities, but we are authorized to infer that they were, in 

 Yoxmg's time, too hmited in range, and relatively too insignificant to require 

 notice in a general view of the provinces where they have now ruined so 

 large a proportion of the soU." 



But the voice of warning fell on deaf ears. It was like a voice crying in 

 the wilderness — not the voice spoken of by the Hebrew seer, powerful as 

 was that which had said, — " Let there be light," and which like it brought 

 about its own accomplishment — but a voice crying in the wilderness, as 

 that expression is generally understood. 



Immdations in 1840, and others occurring in 1846, caused some attention 

 to be given to the subject, and measures were about to be adopted, with a 

 view to prevent the continued occurrence of such catastrophes, when the 

 Revolution of 1848 took place, and forests were sacrificed right and left to 

 provide funds required to meet the national expenditure of the day. But 

 on the establishment of the empire the subject again commanded attention. 

 And within the last twenty years several works, in this department of the 

 literature of forest science, have followed each other in quick succession. 



" In 1853, ten years after the date of Blanqui's memoir," says Marsh, 

 " M. de Bonville, prefect of the Lower Alps, addressed to the Government 

 a report in which the following passages occur : — 



" ' It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept ofi" by the 

 increasing violence of that curse in the mountains, the torrents, is daily 

 diminishing with fearful rapidity. All our Alps are wholly, or in large pro- 

 portion, bared of wood. Their soil, scorched by the sun of Provence, cut 

 up by the hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface the grass 

 they require for their sustenance, gnaw and scratch the ground in search of 

 roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed and carried off by 

 melting snows and summer storms. 



" ' I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty yeai-s they 



