232 FORESTRY IN SWITZERLAND. 



land. The oldest of these, the Schweizerische Forstverein, has been in ex- 

 istence since 1842, and has since 1850 published a periodical known as the 

 Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Forstwesen. 



THE PROTECTION OF RIVER BANKS AND STEEP DECLIVITIES. 



I forward a translated resume of a very practical essay entitled, ^^ Die Sich- 

 erstellung unserer Fhissufer und Rutschhalden" recently published at Berne, 

 by Herr Robert Lauterburg, a Swiss civil engineer. 



"It is well known to every one," says the author, in introducing his sub- 

 ject, "what great inroads upon river banks and what heavy land-slides may 

 be and already have been caused not only by running water, but often, as 

 well, by apparently harmless rills and mountain springs. The amount of 

 damage which these have already caused for our beloved fatherland certainly 

 exceeds hundreds of millions of francs. Much has, of course, been done in 

 the past to gain the upperhand of this evil ; and while our engineering and 

 forestry authorities have addressed themselves with all activity and intelligence 

 to the task of checking the spread of this devastation, still it does not lie within 

 their province (even were such a thing possible) to institute search in every 

 direction and upon every piece of private property within the limits of which 

 indications of dangers of this character are apparent, frequently long before 

 they break out ; or lawfully to compel the owners of the same to look after 

 their own interests, even in cases where the public welfare appears to be endan- 

 gered. But it is in precisely those cases where an authoritative system of 

 protection can and should have unfettered operations that a government finds 

 it is an impossibility, without the co-operation and vigilance of those imme- 

 diately threatened, to trace up all the lurking sources of danger, or, even when 

 the work of averting them is already in progress, to instruct at the same time 

 and at the subsequent cost of the government itself those intrusted with it upon 

 matters which the ordinary laws of engineering prescribe." 



Therefore, Herr Lauterburg goes on to say, he publishes this essay with 

 a view to instructing the public in general, as well as those charged with the 

 putting down of protective constructions along the banks of river and streams, 

 upon a subject which up to the present time has been far too widely over- 

 looked, viz. : the cultivation, or recultivation, of threatened banks, and of 

 declivities liable to land-slides, by setting out those kinds of trees and bushes 

 which possess the qualities of strength, depth of root, and rapidity of growth. 

 This method he proposes not only as a preventive, but, if adopted in season, 

 as a means of arresting destruction already begun, as is shown by many suc- 

 cessful efforts of late years. If all the trials made in this direction have not 

 succeeded, it is because they have encountered unforeseen circumstances, ren- 

 dering all human force and intelligence futile. Who, for instance, could have 

 foreseen twenty years ago that a rainfall would, since then, have increased in 

 the proportion of from three to five, and that, in many localities, the impru- 

 dent cutting away of forests in the mountains would, notwithstanding so many 

 warnings, have been on the increase, instead of decreasing? While in some 



