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there fifty years ago; whilst the damage
resulting to the agricultural districts be-
low from the drying up of springs and
streams, the torrents cause 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 thrity 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 establsihed by
the strenuous efforts made in various
countries to cope with the evil of deforest-
ation. The harm doen 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 evenutally result in
re-clothing with forest all the denuded
mountian ranges in the south-eastern dis-
tricts and departments of France. Com-
mending 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 lmost
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
reuins, and already in some localities
there are more fields then 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 destried 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 unchecked 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 insinct of
self-preservation roused by the losses and
injuries that I have attempted to de-
scribe. I refer to the growning scarcity
of timber relstuing from the ceaseless
destruction of the world's invaluable
stock of forest trees.