DEPARTMENTS OF THE LOIRE AND OF HAUTE LOIRE. 283 



" See, gentlemeu, the effects of reboisement ; but these are not all. These 

 trees, these turfs, which absorb, which retain the water in the storms, which 

 prevent inundations and hinder the formation of torrents, these trees, these 

 turfs, in the time of drought keep the springs from dryiag up. How many 

 thousands of cattle have perished in the droughts which have fallen upon 

 Lozfere in 1864 and 1865 ? The more water, the more herbage ! 



" The farmers were ruined before because it did not raiu, as to-day they 

 are ruined because it has rained too much ! And why ? Because they 

 have eradicated the woods and the turf which were their providence. They 

 have killed — allow me the common expression — they have killed the goose 

 which laid the golden eggs. It is true that, as some consolation, they say 

 to themselves that they have cultivated a little wheat and a little rye on 

 these precipitous slopes ; but there they will soon find only misery, when 

 the snows and new storms shall have carried away the little vegetable soil 

 that remains." 



Within three years after these appeals and statements had been made, 

 the work of reboisement, as we have seen, was in full operation. , 



Sect. VIII. — Departments of the Loire and of Haute Loire. 



The Ardfeche has been shown to be a torrential river. The Loire pre- 

 sents to some extent the torrential character. The high mountains from 

 which both it and the Allier descend — the sources of the Loire from an 

 elevation of 1481 metres, those of the Allier 1501 metres, arresting in its 

 passage the pluvial current from the west and from the north-west — receive 

 very considerable rains, the produce of melted snows. The thaw, it has 

 been remarked by M. de Coulaine, inginieur en chef, is sometimes brought, 

 about at Mende by a wind from the north-east ; but this, it is stated by M. 

 C6zaune, is originally a current of the west wind, which, caught in the 

 valley of the Allier, having ascended it and passed the mountain, re- 

 descends into the valley of the Lozfere, with a direction almost the reverse of 

 that which it took from its point of departure ; and thus is solved the 

 apparent paradox ; and the seeming exception, according to the popular 

 misapplication of the expression, proves the rule. 



The granitic slopes of the mountain are of course impermeable to water, 

 and they are steep. Above Koanne, where the Loire becomes navigable for 

 barks, the basin extends over an area of 6400 kilometres, about the same 

 area as those of the Eure and the Somme ; but the Loire experiences 

 floods of 7290 cubic mfetres per second, which is a hundred times the 

 magnitude of the greatest floods experienced by these rivers — a difference 

 attributable to the greater abundance of rain, the more favourable ramifi- 

 cations of the thalwegs, the steepness of the slopes, and the absence of 

 permeable soil. 



By C6zanne has been brought forward the question,- — Would the complete 

 boisement of the basin of the Loire change the state of things in respect of _ 

 floods ? And he says, — " It is impossible, without having made a thorough 

 and careful study of local circumstances, to answer the question, as some 

 extravagant and enthusiastic advocates of forests desire to do ; but what 

 may be affirmed is, that in the Loire bringing down a very considerable 

 quantity of sand, we have evidence that the higher-lying portion of the 

 basin is subjected to an energetic action, whereby ground is out up and 



