INUNDATIONS IN PBANOE. 349 



now it is considered doubtful whether, what many considered the most obvious 

 expedient — ^the excavation of an overspill canal, specially designed to carry 

 off surplus waters — would be either sufficient or possible. 



" The arrival of the flood," says a writer in the Spectator, " is so rapid, 

 the mass of water so vast, the formation of a lake in the low-lands between 

 the slopes and the bed of the river so instantaneous, that any canal it 

 might be possible to cut might, on the recurrence of the fatality, so to 

 speak, be drowned under the advancing wave, as the Garronne was itself. It 

 is thought that by greatly deepening the channel of the Garonne beyond the 

 confluence of the mountain streams aid might be afforded ; but that decree, 

 though most beneficial against an ordinary rise in the waters, would be 

 worthless against a flood of this kind ; while a dike, even if it could be con- 

 structed, would not be a safe reliance. A dike against ever-present water 

 may be a perfect defence ; but a dike against a flood which comes in its 

 highest fury only once a century, and in a dangerous form only once in 

 twenty years, is pretty certain to be neglected. If the boats of a ship were 

 always required, they would always be ready ; but being wanted only in 

 extremity, even the fear of death, of ruin, and of lost reputation, does not 

 suffice to compell ship-captains to keep them in order. Planting the slopes 

 makes the channel deeper, and the rains more regular ; but the expedient 

 is a slow one, and requires determined attention, which even governments 

 in the end become unwilling to pay." 



It may seem to have been so in France, but I believe it has been so more 

 in appearance than in reality. 



The law of 1860 was enacted for 10 years. This period expired in 1870. 

 It was impossible to review it then, and the works of rehoisement and 

 gazohnement, previously maintained by extraordinary budgets, then fell upon 

 the ordinary budget ; and for 1 871 there was granted a credit for 3,500,000 

 francs, of which 1,500,000 francs were for hoisement and gazonnement ; and 

 the draft budget for 1872 reduced the 3,500,000 given under this head to 

 1,563,000 and the 1,500,000 allotted for gazonnement and rehoisement to 

 763,000. 



Such, writes M. Cezanne, is the sad consequence of war ! France is 

 reduced to augment the military expenses, which are ruinious, and to 

 diminish the outlay on public works which are productive ! 



The war is now, it is true, a thing of the past ; but the effects of the war 

 remain. There is still a war expenditure deemed necessary, and so neces- 

 sary that it is treated as a first claim upon the country, to which all 

 improvements must, excepting in so far as they are imperatively called for, 

 be deferred. And, as a consequence, we find not a million a year spent, as 

 before the war, on the work of rehoisement. 



But I am not aware of any one connected with the Administration, the 

 Government, or the Legislature, having lost faith in rehoisement &n&. gazonne- 

 ment as a means of counteracting the evil, though they have had to limit 

 operations in consequence of the demand made on them for money to meet 

 what were considered more urgent claims. And as the inundations of 1855 

 led to practical effort being given to the suggestions of Fabre and Surell, I 

 anticipate that the inundation of 1875 will, in the light of the results 

 obtained, lead directly or indirectly to the operation being resumed and 

 prosecuted as it was during the first decade of the work. 



" In ordinary times," says the writer in the Spectator, " the snow on the 

 heights of the Pyrenees melts gradually, and trickles down in hundreds of 



