150 tEGISLATlON ON TORRENTS. 



works to reconstitute masses of woods should be rendered obligatory, and, 

 if need be, be executed at the expense of the State. 



" Imperial decrees, issued after the observance of forms of procedure 

 which shall give satisfactory guarantees to all interests, should specify the 

 boundaries of these lands. The Council of State would then have to 

 ascertain whether within these exceptional boundaries ex-propriation for the 

 sake of public, utility could not be applied to lands belonging to private 

 proprietors, and whether the temporary occupation of lands belonging to 

 communes ought not to take place conformably to the principles laid down 

 by the law of 1857, relative to the plantation of the communes of the 

 Qironde and of the Landes. 



" But the provisions of this part of the projet de led should be applied 

 with such reserve as not to lead to hasty changes in the general habits of 

 the population of the mountains. It should be applied, in the first instance, 

 to places in regard to which it is already seen and acknowledged that the 

 replanting of them with trees would be a benefit. If in certain communes 

 it be the case that the population are without cause disturbed by every 

 attempt at replanting, considering this as a hindrance to the enjoyment of 

 the right of pasturage, there are, on the other hand, others struck by the 

 imminence of the dangers by which they are threatened, or pressed by the 

 scarcity of wood in regions in which the snow lies on the ground eight or 

 ten months of the year ; and, considering the replanting of woods as a 

 measure of protection and safety, they urgently solicit it, as is notably the 

 case in the departments of the Haute-Loire and of Puy-de-Dome. In 

 certain mountain countries, then, the co-operation of the population is now 

 certain to be given to works of replanting. This co-operation guarantees 

 success in it, and the importance of thei results to be obtained will little by 

 little enlighten the communes which are less favourably disposed towards 

 the advantages of the measures prescribed by the Government. 



" The Administration, however, should not forget that pasturage is one 

 of the necessary conditions of life to the dwellers on the mountains. The 

 interest of the shepherd population ought then to be treated with the 

 greatest care. But this same interest is closely allied to that of the opera- 

 tions of replanting, for the abuse of depasturing is not less hurtful to the 

 conservation of the pasturages than it is to the conservation of the forests. 

 In the day when the forests shall disappear from the mountains it may be 

 predicted with some measure of certainty that the day is not distant when 

 the pasturages shall disappear in the train of the forests. 



" In the department of the Basses-Alpes, for instance, where the abuse of 

 the pasturage, and the incursion of stranger flocks, known by the name of 

 transkumant flocks, have [occasioned disastrous consequences, the pasturage 

 resources have rapidly diminished with the destruction of woods on the 

 declivities, and the latest statistics have attested the impoverishment of the 

 land and the emigration of the population. A.11 the prefects of this depart- 

 ment for forty years past have reported the progressively increasing serious- 

 ness of the state of things there. Besides, do not the forests themselves 

 supply in the mountains what is required in pasturage % If, during a period 

 of some years, the shepherd . would respect the forest sowings, the planta- 

 tions, and the young fellings, till the wood has become capable of self-defence, 

 the animals might then enter it, and there find abundant nourishment. 

 And does not the pasturage present more valuable resources in the forests 

 of the mountain than it does on the denuded slopes, where vegetation tends 

 to disappeax and to give place to a sterile soil! 



