EVILS FOLLOWING DESTKXJCTION OF FORESTS. 73 



would have been different is altogether inadmissable, for 

 their conclusions are the entirely natural consequence of 

 the phenomena which would have been produced in the 

 order which we have established, and which appear to us . 

 to be indisputable. 



' The most disastrous inundations are those which pro- 

 ceed from, the sudden melting of snow, in consequence of 

 the volume and the instantaneous character of the flood 

 which may be thus produced. Without wishing to attri- 

 bute to this cause alone the cataclysm of 1875, which was 

 beyond doubt produced by the coincidence of most formid- 

 able meteorological phenomena, we consider that this 

 must have exercised a very decided influence on the 

 deplorable result. The danger arising from this complica- 

 tion was so great that General de Nansouty, whose 

 devotedness everybody in the Pyrenees acknowledges and 

 admires,* observing the mass of snow which fell on the 

 21st June, its slight consistency, the elevation of tempera- 

 ture, and the direction of the storm- clouds, understood at 

 once the imminence of a sudden and fearful irruption of 

 water into the valley of the Adour. . His assistant, by 

 heroic devotion, braved the tempest, descended to Campan, 

 and giving timely notice to the Mayor and inhabitants, 

 was enabled to save or spare the valley a portion of the 

 disaster with which it was threatened. 



' No doubt, then, this sudden melting of the snow was 

 one of the determining causes of the catastrophe of 1875. 

 Now forests exercise a direct influence on the melting of 

 snow ; they retard it. Who has not observed that snow 

 remains under forest masses many da,ys after the bare 

 slopes surrounding them have been completely divested ? 

 By protecting the soil against the heat of the sun's rays, 



* Genef al de Nansouty was Director of the Observatory of La Plantade, established 

 on the pealc of the Midi de Bigorre. He was enabled to announce fifteen hours in 

 advance the terrible inundation which was about to ravage the basins of the Garonne 

 and the Adour.— Notes accompanying the Report of M. Alicot on the draft of a Law- 

 relative to the Beboisement of the Mountains, passed in 1377 by the Chamber of 

 Deputies. 



