SE BOirVIIXE AlTD BELeBASD. 73 



have been too often depicted to require to be farther disciigsed, but it is 

 important to show that their ravages are daily . extending the range of 

 devastation. The bed of the Durance, which now in some jdaees exceeds 

 a mile and a quarter in width, and, at ordinary times, has a current of 

 water less than eleven yards wide, shows something of the extent of the 

 damage. Where, ten years ago, there were still woods and cultivated 

 grounds to be seen, there is now but a vast torrent; there is not one 

 of our mountains which has not at least one torrent, and new ones are 

 daily forming. 



" ' An indirect proof of the diminution of the soil is to be found in the 

 depopulation of the country. In 1852 I reported to the General Council 

 that, according to the census of that year, the population of the department 

 of the Lower Alps had fallen off no less than 5000 sonls in the five years 

 between 1846 and 1851. 



" ' Unless prompt and energetic measures are taken, it is easy to fix the 

 epoch when the French Alps will be but a desert. The interval between 

 1851 and 1856 will show a farther decrease of population. In 1862 the 

 ministry will announce a continued and progressive reduction in the number 

 of acres devoted to agriculture ; every year will aggravate the evil, and in 

 half a century France will count more ruins, and a department the less.' 



" Time has verified the predictions of De BonviUe. The later census 

 returns show a progresssive diminution in the population of the departments 

 of the Lower Alps, the Isfere, Drome, Ari^e, the Upper and the Lower 

 Pyrenees, Lozfere, the Ardennes, Doubs, the Vosges, and, in short, in all the 

 provinces formerly remarkable for their forests. This diminution is not to 

 be ascribed to a passion for foreign emigration, as in Ireland, and in parts 

 of Germany and of Italy ; it is simply a transfer of population from one part 

 of the empire to another, — ^from soils which human folly has rendered unin- 

 habitable, by rathlessly depriring them of their nataral advantages and 

 securities, to provinces where the &ce of the earth was so formed by nature 

 as to need no such safeguards, and where, consequently, she preserves her 

 outlines in spite of the wasteftd improvidence of man." 



Mr Marsh adds in a foot note, — "Between 1851 and 1856 the population 

 of Languedoc and Provence had increased by 101,000 souls. The augmenta- 

 tion, however, was wholly in the provinces of the plains, where all the 

 principal cities are found. In these provinces the increase was 204,000, while 

 in the movmtain provinces there was a diminution of 103,000. The reduction 

 of the area of arable land is perhaps even more striking. In 1842 the 

 department of the Lower Alps possessed 99,000 hectares, or nearly 245,000 

 acres, of cultivated soU. In 1852 it had but 74,000 hectares. In other 

 words, in ten years 25,000 hectares, or 61,000 acres, had been washed 

 away, or rendered worthless for cultivation, by torrents and the abuses 

 of pasturage. — CiAvi, Mvdes, pp. 66, 67." 



In the Annales de$ Fonts et CJumssees for 1854 is a paper by M. Belgrand, 

 entitled De Vlnflwemx des Forets sur V4ccndment des eaux pluviales, cited by 

 Mr Marsh as containing notices of remarkable floods occurring in different 

 rivers in France. The Loire, above Eouen, has a basin of 2417 square 

 miles, and in some of its inundations it has delivered 9500 cubic yards per 

 second, which is 400 times its low-water discharge. And he gives a list of 

 eight floods of the Seine, occurring within the last two centimes, in which 

 it has delivered 3000 cubic yards per second, or 30 tim^ its low-water 



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