SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
of the disasters would have followed. Instead, France is spending millions on 
her Reboisement des Montaignes, and in Algiers recourse is being had to the 
planting of Australian eucalypts to restore the forest conditions and stem the 
inyasion of the desert. 
With the knowledge of the true réle of the forest there came the realization 
in many countries that the area of forest still remaining was inadequate for the 
needs of the community. The result was that the cutting laws were made more 
restrictive, and the tending of the woods became an urgent necessity. Colbert’s. 
sae ne Sad fe ee eb... 
VICTORIAN FOREST, NAYOOK DISTRICT, WEST GIPPSLAND. 
ery, “La France perira faute de bois,’ led the way in that country towards the- 
adoption of a sound forest policy, with the result that France did not perish 
through lack of wood, but her forests went far to enable both her own countrymen. 
and the British to defeat the Germans. Sad inroads have been made into the 
forest wealth of France since 1914, and her forest working plans haye been broken. 
Without those forests it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to keep the: 
Allied Armies on the Western Front in the field. Colbert was followed by other 
foresters; and all the nations who were not actually on the threshold ‘of their- 
83 
