PART IV. 



PAST, PRESENT, AND PROSPECTIVE ASPECTS OF THE 'WOKK. 



Having passed in review the evils which were devastating valuable land, 

 by torrents washing away mountain sides and depositing the detritus in 

 the valleys and on the plain ; the remedial measures which have been at 

 different times proposed ; the legislative measures by which reboisement and 

 gazonnement have been enforced and regulated ; the practical measures 

 which have been adopted ; and the change which has thus been effected, 

 both on the face of nature and in local popular opinion ; we are prepared, 

 with advantage, to cast a glance over the whole field, that we may see 

 what has been, what is, and what is to be. 



In the Introduction, I have stated some facts in regard to the ravages 

 which were committed by torrents some forty years ago. But, to a fuU 

 realization of the state of the case, it is necessary that something should be 

 known of the previous history of Alpine torrents, and scarcely less 

 necessary, with a view to preventing misapprehension, that something 

 should be known of the vast extent to which the mountains ravaged by 

 torrents, and now subject to reboisemetd, were and are covered with 

 primitive forests ; and while this may be necessary to prevent misappre- 

 hension, it may at the same time bring into view what evils have resulted 

 from what are at most but partial clearings. 



Chap. I. — Past History of Alpine Torrents. 



Washington Irvine represents Knickerbocker, in his History of New 

 York, as deeming it proper to give the history of New York from the very 

 founding of the city, and, to enable him to do this satisfactorily, to cite 

 and demolish or sustain the various schemes of cosmogony which learned 

 men had proposed to enable them to account for the creation and existence 

 of the world. I do not propose to myself to go so far back as this ; but I 

 know that the expositions of the physical geography of France, and of what 

 are generally reckoned geological phenomena, by C&anne, and by Costa, 

 and by others, are not out of place in their treatises in this department of 

 hydrology, and by referring to these I may enable many who never saw, 

 and are never likely to see, the works of reboisement and gazonnement of 

 which I write, to form a more correct idea of what is being done, and has 

 been done and accomplished by the works referred to. 



The views of Lab^che, cited by Surell, have been given in full, in so far 

 as they related to pre-adamic torrents and their effects ; and the geological 

 doctrines of MM. C6zanne and Costa de Bastelica, in regard to pre-adamic 

 torrent action, have also been given. 



According to the views advanced by Cezanne, extensive districts of 

 France owe their existing surface, composition, structure, and contour, to 



