there fifty years ago; whilst the damage 
resulting to the agricultural districts be- 
low from the drying up of springs and 
streams, the torrents caused by heavy 
rains, and the melting of the snows and 
their effect on the river banks and 
channels followed by long droughts in 
summer is simply incalculable, and such 
as cannot be repaired, even at a large 
expenditure within two generations.” 
This was written over thirty years ago, 
but it is as true to-day as it was then, 
and the moral to be drawn from it ap- 
plies not more directly to France than 
to any other country in which the same 
conditions and causes are already de- 
veloping the same inevitable series of 
consequences. 
COSTLY REMEDIES. 
That the injury thus sustained is real 
and serious is sufficiently established by 
the strenuous efforts made in various 
countries to cope with the evil of deforest- 
ation. The harm done by the reckless de- 
struction of forests has been manifested 
perhaps more clearly in France than 
elsewhere, and the French Government 
has made the most vigorous exertions 
to remedy the evils produced by the neg- 
lect of centuries. The system known as 
“reboissement”’ will eventually result in 
re-clothing with forest all the denuded 
mountain ranges in the south-eastern dis- 
tricts and departments of France. Com- 
mencing with the most important points 
—the sources, head waters and upper 
reaches of streams, and the gullies ex- 
tending up to the lofty ridges where 
water is precipitated from the clouds or 
accumulated from the melting snows— 
systematic re-planting has been carried 
on for a considerable number of years, 
with results that at least justify the 
Government in prosecuting the work on a 
constantly expanding scale. Many years 
ago Surell, in his work on Alpine moun- 
tain streams, described the condition of 
the deforested regions of Southern 
France, Italy and Switzerland as almost 
hopeless. “The country is becoming de- 
populated day by day. Ruined in their 
cultivation of the ground, the inhabit- 
ants emigrate to a great distance from 
their desolated lands, and contrary to 
the usual practice of mountaineers, many 
of them never return. There may be 
seen on all hands cabins deserted or in 
ruins, and already in some localities 
there are more fields than labourers, 
The precarious state of these fields dis- 
courages the population left. They aban- 
don the plough, and invest all their re- 
sources in flocks. But these flocks expe- 
dite the ruin of the country, which 
would be destroyed by them alone, Every 
year their number diminishes in conse- 
quence of want of pasture grounds. Thus 
the inhabitants who sacrifice all their 
soil for their flocks, will not leave even 
this inheritance to their descendants.” 
It is. clear that where this goes 
on unehecked it means the _  abso- 
lute and irretrievable ruin of a 
region so affected; and the magnitude 
of these disasters indicates also that no- 
thing but a very heavy annual expendi- 
ture, continued over a long series of 
years—perhaps for a century or more— 
will even stay the process of destruction, 
to say nothing of repairing the losses 
and restoring the land to anything like 
its original fertility. Such a prospect 
might well discourage the wealthiest and 
most enterprising of States if their ef- 
forts were not stimulated by another 
motive that appeals to them perhaps 
quite as effectually as the instinct of 
self-preservation. roused by the losses and 
injuries that I have attempted to de- 
scribe. J] refer to the growing scarcity 
of timber resulting from the ceaseless 
destruction of the world’s invaluable 
stock of forest trees. 
