POSITION AND PROSPEOTS OP THE ENTERPRISE. 323 



And with loving fervour he pleads with eloquence the cause of the Hi^% 

 lander as the cause of the community, showing that if one m'emher sufiers 

 the whole body suffers with it. The results' have justified his anticipations. 



" Lo ! former Bcenes, predicted once, 

 Conspicuous rise to view ; 

 And future scenes, predicted now, 

 Shall be accomplish'd too." 



Everywhere, so far as it is known to me, the results obtained have been 

 such as to warrant the victors to prepare even now to raise the shout of 

 triumph. Meanwhile they are labouring to complete and to perfect their 

 work ; but, looking on the future in the light of the present, they foresee 

 what is coming, and rejoice in all the confidence of hope. 



M. Cdzanne, in concluding his sequel to the treatise of SureHf^writes :— 

 " In fine, an epoch of reparation begins, and, thanks to the labours of the 

 eminent authors whose names have been presented to us in the preceding 

 pages, the coming generation may hope to see the definitive decline of the 

 torrential era." 



And writing of the present, after describing the formation of lines of 

 plantations on the terrace-like banks of herges vives, or herges vivants, and 

 speaking of the astonishment of visitors on seeing, pointing heavenward, 

 the verdant shoots of the elm, the maple, and the acacia, growing on the 

 dry schists, and of the walnut and the oak on the dry and solid buttresses, 

 while the alder, the poplar, the ash, the osier, and the white willow of the 

 Alps grow on the more moist depths of the ravines, he goes on to say : " These 

 works, so ingenious in their very simplicity, form a network of horizontal 

 lines, like to the alleys of a garden. The green edgings and linings develope 

 themselves amongs the innumerable sinuosities of the Combes, embracing, 

 from the rocky bed of the torrents to the very summit of the mountain 

 crests, those ravines which were but lately inaccessible, and presented an 

 aspect full of horror. 



" One on seeing what has been done understands immediately how such a 

 combination should be effectual ; every liquid molecule, so to speak, is 

 seized individually, the thin sheet of water flowing downwards is retarded 

 in its course by a thousand thirsty little plants, by the lines of cultivated 

 herbage, and by the hedges of shrubs and trees ; it is compelled to tarry 

 for a little on each terrace to slake the thirst of the ground, and when it 

 reaches the lower end of a furrow it spreads itself out on the flattened bed 

 there prepared for it, stopped at every barrage, it loses its vital force on every 

 hand, and finally, from resting-place to resting-place, and from descent to 

 descent, it arrives, after a thousand retardations, and still limpid, in the 

 channel which conveys it on to the river." 



" 'The violence of torrents is occasioned by the combination of an infinitude 

 of elements infinitely minute, and the system of extinction consists in ex- 

 tinguishing each of these elements without neglecting one ; it is an accumu- 

 lation of infinitesimal littles. The secondary ravines are blocked, the 

 minute ramifications are intercepted, the lesser flanks are filled up ; and, 

 finally, there are spread over the surface of the soil, in order completely to 

 diffuse them, the innumerable threadlets, divided and subdivided, like the 

 fibres of a root, which are manifestly the root of the evil.' 



" These are the statements of Surell. But there is one of the precepts of 

 the master which it is right it should be known has not been carried out, 

 and the visitor who sees so many precautions taken against drought, who 



