2 THE FORESTS OF FRANCE. 



at, and for some time subsequent to, the great migrations 

 of the Aryan race, the different streams of which traversed 

 and peopled Europe? What, again, was it in the times 

 when Gaul, then populous, overflowed upon Italy, with 

 Bellorese and Brennus, and hurled its adventurous bands 

 as far as Greece and Asia Minor? Was it three-fourths ? 

 was it nine-tenths ? This will never be known ! ' 



But again he writes in the same connection : — 



' If we would represent to ourselves Gaul as she was in 

 the days of Csesar, we must picture it as covered with 

 sombre forests, broken here and there by cultivated clear- 

 ings, such as still are seen in some parts of Russia and of 

 America. But thereafter the slopes of Provence and of 

 Roussillon were denuded of wood, and stood bare as did 

 Greece, in regard to which Plato, so early as 400 years 

 before the coming of Christ, deplored the destruction of 

 the forest shades of an earlier day. Between the terri- 

 tories of two tribes of Gauls the forest would stretch 

 itself as a natural frontier, which the progress of cultures, 

 of carpentry, of smith work, and of shipbuilding, such as it 

 was, would slowly cut away. But the forest vegetation, 

 still all-powerful, would reign in the mountain regions, 

 would control the terrestrial streams, and would with 

 energy repair such losses, which would be but rare, as the 

 tempest or fire might occasion. 



'From the campaigns of Caesar dates the commence- 

 ment of war formally waged against the forests, a war of 

 twenty centuries, which has failed, as we may see, to 

 exhaust itself by a complete extirpation of these forests. 



' The commentaries of Csesar show us the forests beino- 

 burned sometimes by the Gauls to arrest the pursuit of 

 them by the Romans, sometimes by the Romans to force 

 the retreat of Vercing^torix. 



' Colonisation followed conquest, and devastation ex- 

 tended the traces of the war ; but at that time deboisement 

 or the destruction of forests was, if we may say so, 

 legitimate ; it extended the domain of civilisation at the 

 expense of the forests which still preponderated. 



