90 LITERATURE ON TORRENTS. 



erect similar ones in other valleys — amongst others, in those of Saas and 

 of the Massa." 



These extracts, from the report of M. Culmann, will suffice to show how 

 interesting this report is for engineers who have to do with torrents. 



As yet comparatively little had been done to carry out rehoisement and 

 gazonnement in France. M. Culmann visited the High Alps, having had his 

 attention directed to several of the works published in regard to the torrents 

 of that region, and the remedies proposed by Fabre and Surell, and advo- 

 cated by others. And he thus reports on what he saw, — " Our expectations 

 were disappointed. One torrent alone had been subdued, and that not one 

 of the most formidable of them ; it was not in the basin of the Durance, so 

 cut up with ravines, but in the comparatively peaceful one of the Is6re. In 

 what is, properly speaking, the domain of the torrents, they have made 

 an experiment in reboisement by a plantation of pines, of some thirty or forty 

 acres in extent, in the bassin de reception of the formidable torrent of Chorges. 



" These, and some few others, on the smaller mountain banks, are the 

 only practical results which all the studies of the engineers have produced 

 since the close of the last century. . . In no country is the Administra- 

 tion des Fonts el GTiaussies so centralized and so well organized as in France ; 

 but in whatever direction we look we are saddened by the painful impression 

 that a state of things far superior, previously existing, has been brought to 

 nought. It may be asked, perhaps — Why then devote so much time to it 1 

 And what has the condition of a foreign land to do with Switzerland ? 



" We were convinced that our general description of torrents could not be 

 closed more advantageously than in showing how a country has, little by 

 little, been brought to a state of ruins, when its population did nothing to 

 maintain it — did nothing but consume the products of the soil, and sought 

 not by any natural or artificial process to repair their losses, or to preserve 

 its power of production. 



" Let this state of things be considered by us while it is not yet too late ; 

 and let no one reply, — We shall never sink so low as that ; if the country be 

 more and more neglected — if its condition be allowed to go on becoming 

 worse for an indefinite length of time — it will end, as will also its population, 

 in differing so little from what we have just described that their conditions 

 will be identical." 



M. C&anne remarks on this, — "It is humiliating to meet with such a testi- 

 mony in an official document, published in two languages, by a foreign Govern- 

 ment, and spread over the whole of Europe. It is a canton of our own 

 France which has thus been pointed out to all as an example of the evils 

 to which inertness of administration may lead. It is in vain that eloquent 

 appeals have been made since the commencement of the century ; nothing 

 has been done, and the ruins of the valley of the Blouse, in Devoluy, 

 described by Surell, are still there to supply a subject for heart-rending' 

 pictures." 



If these severe observations be now no longer true — if anythino' has been 

 done— thanks to the law of 28th July 1860 on the rehoisement of "the moun- 

 tains, and above all to that of the 8th June 1864 on gazonnement. The last 

 I may state, was passed in the year following the completion of M. Culmann's 

 tours of inspection; and translations of the text of both laws, with documents 

 connected with them, will be given in a subsequent Part of this compilation. 



I found in a paper which appeared in Revue des Eaux et Forets, for 



