Reboisement in France: Or, Records of the Replanting of the Alps, the Cevennes, and the Pyrenees with Trees, EtcH. S. King&Company, 1876 - 351 pages |
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Reboisement in France: Or, Records of the Replanting of the Alps John Croumbie Brown No preview available - 2019 |
Common terms and phrases
28th July according agents Aleppo pine appear Ardèche banks Baréges barrages basin bassin de réception boisement Briançon Carpentras carried cause Cauterets Cézanne communes Conseil considerable Corsican pine covered Dauphiny declivities decree déjection deposit destruction district Drôme Durance earth effect embankments Embrun employed evil execution expense extent extinction feet flood flow Forest Administration formation francs give given glacier gorge ground Haute-Loire Hautes Alpes hectares herbage High Alps inhabitants inundations Isère kilogrammes lands law of 28th less Lozère mass measures ment mètres mountains necessary nurseries operations pasturage périmètre phenomena plants ponts et chaussées prefect present private proprietors produced public utility Puy-de-Dôme Pyrenees quantity ravages ravines reboisement and gazonnement reforesting regard régime replanting river road rocks Sainte-Marthe says seeds seen slopes snow soil sowing stones storms of rain stream subventions summit Surell surface thalweg tion torrents trees valley vegetation water-courses whole woods
Popular passages
Page i - That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.
Page 71 - Vast deposits of flinty pebbles, many feet in thickness, which have rolled down and spread far over the plain, surround large trees, bury even their tops, and rise above them, leaving to the husbandman no longer a ray of hope. One can imagine no sadder spectacle than the deep fissures in the flanks of the mountains, which seem to have burst forth in eruption to cover the plains with their ruins. These gorges, under the influence of the sun which cracks and shivers to fragments the very rocks, and...
Page 72 - France, one can form no conception of those parched mountain gorges where not even a bush can be found to shelter a bird, where, at most, the wanderer sees in summer here and there a withered lavender, where all the springs are dried up, and where a dead silence, hardly broken by the hum.
Page 134 - The structures they destroy are replaced by better and more secure erections, and if they sweep off a crop of corn, they not unfrequently leave behind them, as they subside, a fertilizing deposit which enriches the exhausted field for a succession of seasons. If, then, the too rapid flow of the surface-waters occasioned no other evil than to produce, once in ten years upon the average, an inundation which should destroy the harvest of the low grounds along the rivers, the damage would be too inconsiderable,...
Page 72 - It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept off by the increasing violence of that curse of the mountains, the torrents, is daily diminishing with fearful rapidity. All our Alps are wholly, or in large proportion, bared of wood.
Page 72 - ... district here referred to, though now among the most hopelessly waste in France, was very productive even down to so late a period as the commencement of the French Revolution. Arthur Young, writing in 1789, says : " About Barcelonette and in the highest parts of the mountains, the hill pastures feed a million of sheep, besides large herds of other cattle...
Page 71 - Such is their aspect in dry weather. But no tongue can give an adequate description of their devastations in one of those sudden floods which resemble, in almost none of their phenomena, the action of ordinary river-water. They are now no longer overflowing brooks, but real seas, tumbling down in cataracts, and rolling before them blocks of stone, which are hurled forward by the shock of the waves like balls shot out by the explosion of gunpowder. Sometimes ridges of pebbles are driven down when...
Page 135 - But the historical evidence is conclusive as to the destructive changes occasioned by the agency of man upon the flanks of the Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and other mountain ranges in Central and Southern Europe, and the progress of physical deterioration has been so rapid that, in some localities, a single generation has witnessed the beginning and the end of the melancholy revolution.
Page 247 - ... every part of the gulf, for a distance of two miles ; and a very heavy one began on the mountain top, immediately above the house, and descended in a direct line towards it ; the sweeping torrent, a river from the clouds, and a river full of trees, earth, stones and rocks, rushed to the house and marvellously divided within six feet of it, and just behind it, and passed on either side, sweeping away the stable and horses, and completely encircling the dwelling, but leaving it untouched. At this...