THE FOREST IN ITALY. 
219 
small demands on the woods for fuel. Besides these circum¬ 
stances, it must be remembered that the sciences of observa¬ 
tion did not become knowledges of practical application till 
after the mischief was already mainly done and even forgotten 
in Alpine Italy, though its evils were just beginning to be 
sensibly felt in France when the claims of natural philosophy 
as a liberal study were first acknowledged in modern Europe. 
The former political condition of the Italian Peninsula would 
have effectually prevented the adoption of a general system of 
forest economy, however clearly the importance of a wise ad¬ 
ministration of this great public interest might have been 
understood. The woods which controlled and regulated the 
flow of the river sources were very often in one jurisdiction, 
the plains to be irrigated, or to be inundated by floods and 
desolated by torrents, in another. Concert of action on such a 
subject between a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties was 
obviously impossible, and nothing but the union of all the 
Italian states under a single government can render practi¬ 
cable the establishment of such arrangements for the conserva¬ 
tion and restoration of the forests and the regulation of the 
flow of the waters as are necessary for the full development of 
the yet unexhausted resources of that fairest of lands, and 
even for the permanent maintenance of the present condition 
of its physical geography. 
The denudation of the Central and Southern Apennines 
and of the Italian declivity of the Western Alps began at a 
period of unknown antiquity, but it does not seem to have 
been carried to a very dangerous length until the foreign con- 
to the present day in the Mediterranean, and an American or an English¬ 
man looks with astonishment at the huge beams and thick planks so often 
employed in the construction of very small vessels navigating that sea. 
According to Hummel, the desolation of the Karst, the high plateau lying 
north of Trieste, now one of the most parched and barren districts in 
Europe, is owing to the felling of its woods to build the navies of Venice. 
“ Where the miserable peasant of the Karst now sees nothing but bare 
rock swept and scoured by the raging Bora, the fury of this wind was 
once subdued by mighty firs, which Venice recklessly cut down to build 
her fleets .”—Physische Oeographie , p. 82. 
