214 
EFFECTS OF DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST. 
tlie following seasons, keeps the forest ground, where the sur^ 
face is level or bnt moderately inclined, in a state of saturation 
through almost the whole year. The rivers fed by springs and 
shaded by woods are comparatively uniform in volume, in 
temperature, and in chemical composition. Their banks are 
little abraded, nor are their courses much obstructed by fallen 
timber, or by earth and gravel washed down from the high¬ 
lands. Their channels are subject only to slow and gradual 
changes, and they carry down to the lakes and the sea no 
accumulation of sand or silt to till up their outlets, and, by 
raising their beds, to force them to spread over the low 
grounds near their mouth.* 
In this state of things, destructive tendencies of all sorts 
are arrested or compensated, and tree, bird, beast, and fish, 
alike, find a constant uniformity of condition most favorable to 
the regular and harmonious coexistence of them all. 
General Consequences of the Destruction of the Forest. 
With the disappearance of the forest, all is changed. At 
one season, the earth parts with its warmth by radiation to an 
open sky—receives, at another, an immoderate heat from the 
unobstructed rays of the sun. Hence the climate becomes 
excessive, and the soil is alternately parched by the fervors of 
* Dumont, following Dausse, gives an interesting extract from the 
Misopogon of the Emperor Julian, showing that, in the fourth century, the 
Seine—the level of which now varies to the extent of thirty feet between 
extreme high and extreme low water mark—was almost wholly exempt 
from inundations, and flowed with a uniform current through the whole 
year. “Ego olim eram in hibernis apud caram Lutetiam, [sic] enim Galli 
Parisiorum oppidum appellant, quce insula est non magna, in fluvio sita, qui 
earn omni ex parte cingit. Pontes sublieii utrinque ad earn ferunt, raroque 
fluvius minuitur ac crescit; sed qualis sestate, talis esse solet hyeme .”—Des 
Travaux Publics dans leur Rapports avec VAgriculture, p. 361, note. 
As Julian was six years in Gaul, and his principal residence was at 
Paris, his testimony as to the habitual condition of the Seine, at a period 
when the provinces where its sources originate were well wooded, is very 
valuable. 
