Man and Nature Part 9

Boussingault further maintains that the lakes of Switzerland have sustained a depression of level since the too prevalent destruction of the woods, and arrives at the general conclusion, that, "in countries where great clearings have been made, there has most probably been a diminution in the living waters which flow upon the surface of the ground." This conclusion he further supports by two examples: one, where a fine spring, at the foot of a wooded mountain in the Island of Ascension, dried up when the mountain was cleared, but reappeared when the wood was replanted; the other at Marmato, in the province of Popayan, where the streams employed to drive machinery were much diminished in volume, within two years after the clearing of the heights from which they derived their supplies. This latter is an interesting case, because, although the rain gauges, established as soon as the decrease of water began to excite alarm, showed a greater fall of rain for the second year of observation than the first, yet there was no appreciable increase in the flow of the mill streams. From these cases, the distinguished physicist infers that very restricted local clearings may diminish and even suppress springs and brooks, without any reduction in the total quant.i.ty of rain.

It will have been noticed that these observations, with the exception of the last two cases, do not bear directly upon the question of the diminution of springs by clearings, but they logically infer it from the subsidence of the natural reservoirs which springs once filled. There is, however, no want of positive evidence on this subject.

Marschand cites the following instances: "Before the felling of the woods, within the last few years, in the valley of the Soulce, the Combe-es-Mounin and the Little Valley, the Sorne furnished a regular and sufficient supply of water for the iron works of Unterwyl, which was almost unaffected by drought or by heavy rains. The Sorne has now become a torrent, every shower occasions a flood, and after a few days of fine weather, the current falls so low that it has been necessary to change the water wheels, because those of the old construction are no longer able to drive the machinery, and at last to introduce a steam engine to prevent the stoppage of the works for want of water.

"When the factory of St. Ursanne was established, the river that furnished its power was abundant, long known and tried, and had, from time immemorial, sufficed for the machinery of a previous factory.

Afterward, the woods near its sources were cut. The supply of water fell off in consequence, the factory wanted water for half the year, and was at last obliged to stop altogether.

"The spring of Combefoulat, in the commune of Seleate, was well known as one of the best in the country; it was remarkably abundant and sufficient, in spite of the severest droughts, to supply all the fountains of the town; but, as soon as considerable forests were felled in Combe-de-pre Martin and in the valley of Combefoulat, the famous spring which lies below these woods has become a mere thread of water, and disappears altogether in times of drought.

"The spring of Varieux, which formerly supplied the castle of Pruntrut, lost more than half its water after the clearing of Varieux and Rongeoles. These woods have been replanted, the young trees are growing well, and with the woods, the waters of the spring are increasing.

"The Dog Spring between Pruntrut and Bressancourt has entirely vanished since the surrounding forests grounds were brought under cultivation.

"The Wolf Spring, in the commune of Soubey, furnishes a remarkable example of the influence of the woods upon fountains. A few years ago this spring did not exist. At the place where it now rises, a small thread of water was observed after very long rains, but the stream disappeared with the rain. The spot is in the middle of a very steep pasture inclining to the south. Eighty years ago, the owner of the land, perceiving that young firs were shooting up in the upper part of it, determined to let them grow, and they soon formed a flourishing grove.

As soon as they were well grown, a fine spring appeared in place of the occasional rill, and furnished abundant water in the longest droughts.

For forty or fifty years, this spring was considered the best in the Clos du Doubs. A few years since, the grove was felled, and the ground turned again to a pasture. The spring disappeared with the wood, and is now as dry as it was ninety years ago."[197]

"The influence of the forest on springs," says Hummel, "is strikingly shown by an instance at Heilbronn. The woods on the hills surrounding the town are cut in regular succession every twentieth year. As the annual cuttings approach a certain point, the springs yield less water, some of them none at all; but as the young growth shoots up, they now more and more freely, and at length bubble up again in all their original abundance."[198]

Piper states the following case: "Within about half a mile of my residence there is a pond upon which mills have been standing for a long time, dating back, I believe, to the first settlement of the town. These have been kept in constant operation until within some twenty or thirty years, when the supply of water began to fail. The pond owes its existence to a stream which has its source in the hills which stretch some miles to the south. Within the time mentioned, these hills, which were clothed with a dense forest, have been almost entirely stripped of trees; and to the wonder and loss of the mill owners, the water in the pond has failed, except in the season of freshets; and, what was never heard of before, the stream itself has been entirely dry. Within the last ten years a new growth of wood has sprung up on most of the land formerly occupied by the old forest; and now the water runs through the year, notwithstanding the great droughts of the last few years, going back from 1856."

Dr. Piper quotes from a letter of William C. Bryant the following remarks: "It is a common observation that our summers are become drier, and our streams smaller. Take the Cuyahoga as an ill.u.s.tration. Fifty years ago large barges loaded with goods went up and down that river, and one of the vessels engaged in the battle of Lake Erie, in which the gallant Perry was victorious, was built at Old Portage, six miles north of Albion, and floated down to the lake. Now, in an ordinary stage of the water, a canoe or skiff can hardly pa.s.s down the stream. Many a boat of fifty tons burden has been built and loaded in the Tuscarawas, at New Portage, and sailed to New Orleans without breaking bulk. Now, the river hardly affords a supply of water at New Portage for the ca.n.a.l. The same may be said of other streams--they are drying up. And from the same cause--the destruction of our forests--our summers are growing drier, and our winters colder."[199]

No observer has more carefully studied the influence of the forest upon the flow of the waters, or reasoned more ably on the ascertained phenomena than Cantegril. The facts presented in the following case, communicated by him to the _Ami des Sciences_ for December, 1859, are as nearly conclusive as any single instance well can be:

"In the territory of the commune of Labruguiere, there is a forest of 1,834 hectares [4,530 acres], known by the name of the Forest of Montaut, and belonging to that commune. It extends along the northern slope of the Black Mountains. The soil is granitic, the maximum alt.i.tude 1,243 metres [4,140 feet], and the inclination ranges between 15 and 60 to 100.

"A small current of water, the brook of Caunan, takes its rise in this forest, and receives the waters of two thirds of its surface. At the lower extremity of the wood and on the stream are several fulleries, each requiring a force of eight horse-power to drive the water wheels which work the stampers. The commune of Labruguiere had been for a long time famous for its opposition to forest laws. Trespa.s.ses and abuses of the right of pasturage had converted the wood into an immense waste, so that this vast property now scarcely sufficed to pay the expense of protecting it, and to furnish the inhabitants with a meagre supply of fuel. While the forest was thus ruined, and the soil thus bared, the water, after every abundant rain, made an eruption into the valley, brought down a great quant.i.ty of pebbles which still clog the current of the Caunan. The violence of the floods was sometimes such that they were obliged to stop the machinery for some time. During the summer another inconvenience was felt. If the dry weather continued a little longer than usual, the delivery of water became insignificant. Each fullery could for the most part only employ a single set of stampers, and it was not unusual to see the work entirely suspended.

"After 1840, the munic.i.p.al authority succeeded in enlightening the population as to their true interests. Protected by a more watchful supervision, aided by well-managed replantation, the forest has continued to improve to the present day. In proportion to the restoration of the forest, the condition of the manufactories has become less and less precarious, and the action of the water is completely modified. For example, there are, no longer, sudden and violent floods which make it necessary to stop the machinery. There is no increase in the delivery until six or eight hours after the beginning of the rain; the floods follow a regular progression till they reach their maximum, and decrease in the same manner. Finally, the fulleries are no longer forced to suspend work in summer; the water is always sufficiently abundant to allow the employment of two sets of stampers at least, and often even of three.

"This example is remarkable in this respect, that, all other circ.u.mstances having remained the same, the changes in the action of the stream can be attributed only to the restoration of the forest--changes which may be thus summed up: diminution of flood water during rains--increase of delivery at other seasons."

_The Forest in Winter._

To estimate rightly the importance of the forest as a natural apparatus for acc.u.mulating the water that falls upon the surface and transmitting it to the subjacent strata, we must compare the condition and properties of its soil with those of cleared and cultivated earth, and examine the consequently different action of these soils at different seasons of the year. The disparity between them is greatest in climates where, as in the Northern American States and in the North of Europe, the open ground freezes and remains impervious to water during a considerable part of the winter; though, even in climates where the earth does not freeze at all, the woods have still an important influence of the same character.

The difference is yet greater in countries which have regular wet and dry seasons, rain being very frequent in the former period, while, in the latter, it scarcely occurs at all. These countries lie chiefly in or near the tropics, but they are not wanting in higher lat.i.tudes; for a large part of Asiatic and even of European Turkey is almost wholly deprived of summer rains. In the princ.i.p.al regions occupied by European cultivation, and where alone the questions discussed in this volume are recognized as having, at present, any practical importance, rain falls at all seasons, and it is to these regions that, on this point as well as others, I chiefly confine my attention.

The influence of the forest upon the waters of the earth has been more studied in France than in any other part of the civilized world, because that country has, in recent times, suffered most severely from the destruction of the woods. But in the southern provinces of that empire, where the evils resulting from this cause are most sensibly felt, the winters are not attended with much frost, while, in Northern Europe, where the winters are rigorous enough to freeze the ground to the depth of some inches, or even feet, a humid atmosphere and frequent summer rains prevent the drying up of the springs observed in southern lat.i.tudes when the woods are gone. For these reasons, the specific character of the forest, as a winter reservoir of moisture in countries with a cold and dry atmosphere, has not attracted so much attention in France and Northern Europe as it deserves in the United States, where an excessive climate renders that function of the woods more important.

In New England, irregular as the climate is, the first autumnal snows usually fall before the ground is frozen at all, or when the frost extends at most to the depth of only a few inches. In the woods, especially those situated upon the elevated ridges which supply the natural irrigation of the soil and feed the perennial fountains and streams, the ground remains covered with snow during the winter; for the trees protect the snow from blowing from the general surface into the depressions, and new accessions are received before the covering deposited by the first fall is melted. Snow is of a color unfavorable for radiation, but, even when it is of considerable thickness, it is not wholly impervious to the rays of the sun, and for this reason, as well as from the warmth of lower strata, the frozen crust, if one has been formed, is soon thawed, and does not again fall below the freezing point during the winter.

The snow in contact with the earth now begins to melt, with greater or less rapidity, according to the relative temperature of the earth and the air, while the water resulting from its dissolution is imbibed by the vegetable mould, and carried off by infiltration so fast that both the snow and the layers of leaves in contact with it often seem comparatively dry, when, in fact, the under surface of the former is in a state of perpetual thaw. No doubt a certain proportion of the snow is returned to the atmosphere by direct evaporation, but in the woods it is partially protected from the action of the sun, and as very little water runs off in the winter by superficial watercourses, except in rare cases of sudden thaw, there can be no question that much the greater part of the snow deposited in the forest is slowly melted and absorbed by the earth.

The quant.i.ty of snow that falls in extensive forests, far from the open country, has seldom been ascertained by direct observation, because there are few meteorological stations in such situations. In the Northeastern border States of the American Union, the ground in the deep woods is covered with snow four or five months, and the proportion of water which falls in snow does not exceed one fifth of the total precipitation for the year.[200] Although, in the open grounds, snow and ice are evaporated with great rapidity in clear weather, even when the thermometer stands far below the freezing point, the surface of the snow in the woods does not indicate much loss in this way. Very small deposits of snowflakes remain unevaporated in the forest, for many days after snow let fall at the same time in the cleared field has disappeared without either a thaw to melt it or a wind powerful enough to drift it away. Even when bared of their leaves, the trees of a wood obstruct, in an important degree, both the direct action of the sun's rays on the snow, and the movement of drying and thawing winds.

Dr. Piper records the following observations: "A body of snow, one foot in depth, and sixteen feet square, was protected from the wind by a tight board fence about five feet high, while another body of snow, much more sheltered from the sun than the first, six feet in depth, and about sixteen feet square, was fully exposed to the wind. When the thaw came on, which lasted about a fortnight, the larger body of snow was entirely dissolved in less than a week, while the smaller body was not wholly gone at the end of the second week.

"Equal quant.i.ties of snow were placed in vessels of the same kind and capacity, the temperature of the air being seventy degrees. In the one case, a constant current of air was kept pa.s.sing over the open vessel, while the other was protected by a cover. The snow in the first was dissolved in sixteen minutes, while the latter had a small unthawed proportion remaining at the end of eighty-five minutes."[201]

The snow in the woods is protected in the same way, though not literally to the same extent as by the fence in one of these cases and the cover in the other. Little of the winter precipitation, therefore, is lost by evaporation, and as it slowly melts at bottom it is absorbed by the earth, and but a very small quant.i.ty of water runs off from the surface.

The immense importance of the forest, as a reservoir of this stock of moisture, becomes apparent, when we consider that a large proportion of the summer rain either flows into the valleys and the rivers, because it falls faster than the ground can imbibe it; or, if absorbed by the warm superficial strata, is evaporated from them without sinking deep enough to reach wells and springs, which, of course, depend very much on winter rains and snows for their entire supply. This observation, though specially true of cleared and cultivated grounds, is not wholly inapplicable to the forest, particularly when, as is too often the case in Europe, the underwood and the decaying leaves are removed.

The general effect of the forest in cold climates is to a.s.similate the winter state of the ground to that of wooded regions under softer skies; and it is a circ.u.mstance well worth noting, that in Southern Europe, where nature has denied to the earth a warm winter-garment of flocculent snow, she has, by one of those compensations in which her empire is so rich, clothed the hillsides with umbrella pines, ilexes, cork oaks, and other trees of persistent foliage, whose evergreen leaves afford to the soil a protection a.n.a.logous to that which it derives from snow in more northern climates.

The water imbibed by the soil in winter sinks until it meets a more or less impermeable, or a saturated stratum, and then, by unseen conduits, slowly finds its way to the channels of springs, or oozes out of the ground in drops which unite in rills, and so all is conveyed to the larger streams, and by them finally to the sea. The water, in percolating through the vegetable and mineral layers, acquires their temperature, and is chemically affected by their action, but it carries very little matter in mechanical suspension.

The process I have described is a slow one, and the supply of moisture derived from the snow, augmented by the rains of the following seasons, keeps the forest ground, where the surface is level or but moderately inclined, in a state of saturation through almost the whole year. The rivers fed by springs and shaded by woods are comparatively uniform in volume, in temperature, and in chemical composition. Their banks are little abraded, nor are their courses much obstructed by fallen timber, or by earth and gravel washed down from the highlands. Their channels are subject only to slow and gradual changes, and they carry down to the lakes and the sea no acc.u.mulation of sand or silt to fill up their outlets, and, by raising their beds, to force them to spread over the low grounds near their mouth.[202]

In this state of things, destructive tendencies of all sorts are arrested or compensated, and tree, bird, beast, and fish, alike, find a constant uniformity of condition most favorable to the regular and harmonious coexistence of them all.

_General Consequences of the Destruction of the Forest._

With the disappearance of the forest, all is changed. At one season, the earth parts with its warmth by radiation to an open sky--receives, at another, an immoderate heat from the un.o.bstructed rays of the sun. Hence the climate becomes excessive, and the soil is alternately parched by the fervors of summer, and seared by the rigors of winter. Bleak winds sweep unresisted over its surface, drift away the snow that sheltered it from the frost, and dry up its scanty moisture. The precipitation becomes as regular as the temperature; the melting snows and vernal rains, no longer absorbed by a loose and bibulous vegetable mould, rush over the frozen surface, and pour down the valleys seaward, instead of filling a retentive bed of absorbent earth, and storing up a supply of moisture to feed perennial springs. The soil is bared of its covering of leaves, broken and loosened by the plough, deprived of the fibrous rootlets which held it together, dried and pulverized by sun and wind, and at last exhausted by new combinations. The face of the earth is no longer a sponge, but a dust heap, and the floods which the waters of the sky pour over it hurry swiftly along its slopes, carrying in suspension vast quant.i.ties of earthy particles which increase the abrading power and mechanical force of the current, and, augmented by the sand and gravel of falling banks, fill the beds of the streams, divert them into new channels and obstruct their outlets. The rivulets, wanting their former regularity of supply and deprived of the protecting shade of the woods, are heated, evaporated, and thus reduced in their summer currents, but swollen to raging torrents in autumn and in spring. From these causes, there is a constant degradation of the uplands, and a consequent elevation of the beds of watercourses and of lakes by the deposition of the mineral and vegetable matter carried down by the waters. The channels of great rivers become unnavigable, their estuaries are choked up, and harbors which once sheltered large navies are shoaled by dangerous sandbars. The earth, stripped of its vegetable glebe, grows less and less productive, and, consequently, less able to protect itself by weaving a new network of roots to bind its particles together, a new carpeting of turf to shield it from wind and sun and scouring rain.

Gradually it becomes altogether barren. The washing of the soil from the mountains leaves bare ridges of sterile rock, and the rich organic mould which covered them, now swept down into the dank low grounds, promotes a luxuriance of aquatic vegetation that breeds fever, and more insidious forms of mortal disease, by its decay, and thus the earth is rendered no longer fit for the habitation of man.[203]

To the general truth of this sad picture there are many exceptions, even in countries of excessive climates. Some of these are due to favorable conditions of surface, of geological structure, and of the distribution of rain; in many others, the evil consequences of man's improvidence have not yet been experienced, only because a sufficient time has not elapsed, since the felling of the forest, to allow them to develop themselves. But the vengeance of nature for the violation of her harmonies, though slow, is sure, and the gradual deterioration of soil and climate in such exceptional regions is as certain to result from the destruction of the woods as is any natural effect to follow its cause.

In the vast farrago of crudities which the elder Pliny's ambition of encyclopaedic attainment and his ready credulity have gathered together, we meet some judicious observations. Among these we must reckon the remark with which he accompanies his extraordinary statement respecting the prevention of springs by the growth of forest trees, though, as is usual with him, his philosophy is wrong. "Destructive torrents are generally formed when hills are stripped of the trees which formerly confined and absorbed the rains." The absorption here referred to is not that of the soil, but of the roots, which, Pliny supposed, drank up the water to feed the growth of the trees.

Although this particular evil effect of too extensive clearing was so early noticed, the lesson seems to have been soon forgotten. The legislation of the Middle Ages in Europe is full of absurd provisions concerning the forests, which sovereigns sometimes destroyed because they furnished a retreat for rebels and robbers, sometimes protected because they were necessary to breed stags and boars for the chase, and sometimes spared with the more enlightened view of securing a supply of timber and of fuel to future generations.[204] It was reserved to later ages to appreciate their geographical importance, and it is only in very recent times, only in a few European countries, that the too general felling of the woods has been recognized as the most destructive among the many causes of the physical deterioration of the earth.

_Condition of the Forest, and its Literature in different Countries._

The literature of the forest, which in England and America has not yet become sufficiently extensive to be known as a special branch of authorship, counts its thousands of volumes in Germany, Italy, and France. It is in the latter country, perhaps, that the relations of the woods to the regular drainage of the soil, and especially to the permanence of the natural configuration of terrestrial surface, have been most thoroughly investigated. On the other hand, the purely economical aspects of sylviculture have been most satisfactorily expounded, and that art has been most philosophically discussed, and most skilfully and successfully practised, in Germany.

The eminence of Italian theoretical hydrographers and the great ability of Italian hydraulic engineers are well known, but the specific geographical importance of the woods has not been so clearly recognized in Italy as in the states bordering it on the north and west. It is true that the face of nature has been as completely revolutionized by man, and that the action of torrents has created as wide and as hopeless devastation in that country as in France; but in the French Empire the desolation produced by clearing the forests is more recent,[205] has been more suddenly effected, and, therefore, excites a livelier and more general interest than in Italy, where public opinion does not so readily connect the effect with its true cause. Italy, too, from ancient habit, employs little wood in architectural construction; for generations she has maintained no military or commercial marine large enough to require exhaustive quant.i.ties of timber,[206] and the mildness of her climate makes small demands on the woods for fuel. Besides these circ.u.mstances, it must be remembered that the sciences of observation did not become knowledges of practical application till after the mischief was already mainly done and even forgotten in Alpine Italy, while 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 administration 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 mult.i.tude of jealous petty sovereignties was obviously impossible, and nothing but the union of all the Italian states under a single government can render practicable the establishment of such arrangements for the conservation 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 conquests and extended commerce of Rome created a greatly increased demand for wood for the construction of ships and for military material. The Eastern Alps, the Western Apennines, and the Maritime Alps retained their forests much later; but even here the want of wood, and the injury to the plains and the navigation of the rivers by sediment brought down by the torrents, led to some legislation for the protection of the forests, by the Republic of Venice in the fifteenth century, by that of Genoa as early at least as the seventeenth; and Marschand states that the latter Government pa.s.sed laws requiring the proprietors of mountain lands to replant the woods. These, however, do not seem to have been effectually enforced. It is very common in Italy to ascribe to the French occupation under the first Empire all the improvements, and all the abuses of recent times, according to the political sympathies of the individual; and the French are often said to have prostrated every forest which has disappeared within a century.[207] But, however this may be, no energetic system of repression or restoration was adopted by any of the Italian states after the downfall of the Empire, and the taxes on forest property in some of them were so burdensome that rural munic.i.p.alities sometimes proposed to cede their common woods to the Government, without any other compensation than the remission of the taxes imposed on forest lands.[208] Under such circ.u.mstances, woodlands would soon become disafforested, and where facilities of transportation and a good demand for timber have increased the inducements to fell it, as upon the borders of the Mediterranean, the destruction of the forest and all the evils which attend it have gone on at a seriously alarming rate. It has even been calculated that four tenths of the area of the Ligurian provinces have been washed away or rendered incapable of cultivation by the felling of the woods.[209]

The damp and cold climate of England requires the maintenance of household fires through a large part of the year. Contrivances for economizing fuel were of later introduction in that country than on the Continent. The soil, like the sky, was, in general, charged with humidity; its natural condition was unfavorable for common roads, and the transportation of so heavy a material as coal, by land, from the remote counties where alone it was mined in the Middle Ages, was costly and difficult. For all these reasons, the consumption of wood was large, and apprehensions of the exhaustion of the forests were excited at an early period. Legislation there, as elsewhere, proved ineffectual to protect them, and many authors of the sixteenth century express fears of serious evils from the wasteful economy of the people in this respect.

Harrison, in his curious chapter "Of Woods and Marishes" in Holinshed's compilation, complains of the rapid decrease of the forests, and adds: "Howbeit thus much I dare affirme, that if woods go so fast to decaie in the next hundred yeere of Grace, as they haue doone and are like to doo in this, * * * it is to be feared that the fennie bote, broome, turfe, gall, heath, firze, brakes, whinnes, ling, dies, ha.s.sacks, flags, straw, sedge, reed, rush, and also _seacole_, will be good merchandize euen in the citie of London, whereunto some of them euen now haue gotten readie pa.s.sage, and taken vp their innes in the greatest merchants'

parlours. * * * I would wish that I might liue no longer than to see foure things in this land reformed, that is: the want of discipline in the church: the couetous dealing of most of our merchants in the preferment of the commodities of other countries, and hinderance of their owne: the holding of faires and markets vpon the sundaie to be abolished and referred to the wednesdaies: and that euerie man, in whatsoeuer part of the champaine soile enioieth fortie acres of land, and vpwards, after that rate, either by free deed, copie hold, or fee farme, might plant one acre of wood, or sowe the same with oke mast, hasell, beech, and sufficient prouision be made that it may be cherished and kept. But I feare me that I should then liue too long, and so long, that I should either be wearie of the world, or the world of me."[210]

Evelyn's "Silva," the first edition of which appeared in 1664, rendered an extremely important service to the cause of the woods, and there is no doubt that the ornamental plantations in which England far surpa.s.ses all other countries, are, in some measure, the fruit of Evelyn's enthusiasm. In England, however, arboriculture, the planting and nursing of single trees, has, until recently, been better understood than sylviculture, the sowing and training of the forest. But this latter branch of rural improvement is now pursued on a very considerable scale, though, so far as I know, not by the National Government.

_The Influence of the Forest on Inundations._

Besides the climatic question, which I have already sufficiently discussed, and the obvious inconveniences of a scanty supply of charcoal, of fuel, and of timber for architectural and naval construction and for the thousand other uses to which wood is applied in rural and domestic economy, and in the various industrial processes of civilized life, the attention of French foresters and public economists has been specially drawn to three points, namely: the influence of the forests on the permanence and regular flow of springs or natural fountains; on inundations by the overflow of rivers; and on the abrasion of soil and the transportation of earth, gravel, pebbles, and even of considerable ma.s.ses of rock, from higher to lower levels, by torrents.

There are, however, connected with this general subject, several other topics of minor or strictly local interest, or of more uncertain character, which I shall have occasion more fully to speak of hereafter.

The first of these three princ.i.p.al subjects--the influence of the woods on springs and other living waters--has been already considered; and if the facts stated in that discussion are well established, and the conclusions I have drawn from them are logically sound, it would seem to follow, as a necessary corollary, that the action of the forest is as important in diminishing the frequency and violence of river floods, as in securing the permanence and equability of natural fountains; for any cause which promotes the absorption and acc.u.mulation of the water of precipitation by the superficial strata of the soil, to be slowly given out by infiltration and percolation, must, by preventing the rapid flow of surface water into the natural channels of drainage, tend to check the sudden rise of rivers, and, consequently, the overflow of their banks, which const.i.tutes what is called inundation. The mechanical resistance, too, offered by the trunks of trees and of undergrowth to the flow of water over the surface, tends sensibly to r.e.t.a.r.d the rapidity of its descent down declivities, and to divert and divide streams which may have already acc.u.mulated from smaller threads of water.[211]