270 CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WOODS. 
formation, both by obstructing the wind, which gives to the 
dry snow of the Staub-Lawine , or dust avalanche, its first 
impulse, and by checking the disposition of moist snow to 
gather itself into what is called the Putsch-Lawine , or sliding 
avalanche. Marschand states that, the very first winter after 
the felling of the trees on the higher part of a declivity be¬ 
tween Saanen and Gsteig, where the snow had never been 
known to slide, an avalanche formed itself in the clearing, 
thundered down the mountain, and overthrew and carried with 
it a hitherto unviolated forest to the amount of nearly a million 
cubic feet of timber.* The path once opened down the flanks 
of the mountain, the evil is almost beyond remedy. The snow 
sometimes carries off the earth from the face of the rock, or, if 
the soil is left, fresh slides every winter destroy the young 
plantations, and the restoration of the wood becomes impos¬ 
sible. The track widens with every new avalanche. Dwell¬ 
ings and their occupants are buried in the snow, or swept 
away by the rushing mass, or by the furious blasts it occasions 
through the displacement of the air; roads and bridges are 
destroyed; rivers blocked up, which swell till they overflow 
the valley above, and then, bursting their snowy barrier, flood 
the fields below with all the horrors of a winter inundation.f 
Principal Causes of the Destruction of the Forest. 
The needs of agriculture are the most familiar cause of the 
destruction of the forest in new countries; for not only does 
an increasing population demand additional acres to grow the 
* Entwaldung der Gebirge , p. 41. 
t The importance of the wood in preventing avalanches is well illus¬ 
trated by the fact that, where the forest is wanting, the inhabitants of 
localities exposed to snow slides often supply the place of the trees by 
driving stakes through the snow into the ground, and thus checking its 
propensity to slip. The woods themselves are sometimes thus protected 
against avalanches originating on slopes above them, and as a further 
security, small trees are cut down along the upper line of the forest, and 
laid against the trunks of larger trees, transversely to the path of the 
slide, to serve as a fence or dam to the motion of an incipient avalanche, 
