Reboisement in France: Or, Records of the Replanting of the Alps, the Cevennes, and the Pyrenees with Trees, Herbage, and Bush, with a View to Arresting and Preventing the Destructive Consequences and Effects of TorrentsC. K. Paul & Company, 1880 - 351 pages |
Other editions - View all
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 cited Conseil considerable Corsican pine covered Dauphiny declivities decree déjection deposit destruction devastations district Drôme Durance earth effects embankments Embrun employed evil execution expense extent extinction feet flood flow Forest Administration formation francs give given glacier gorge ground Hautes Alpes hectares herbage High Alps inhabitants inundations Isère law of 28th less Lozère maritime pine 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 295 - Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed; in breeze or gale or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime, — The image of Eternity, the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
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 - 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 244 - The ascent, for the distance of about two miles, is through a thick forest of hemlock, hackmetack, spruce, and other evergreen trees. Higher up, the mountain is encompassed with a zone, about half a mile in width, covered with small stunted trees, chiefly hemlock and spruce. Above the upper edge of this zone, which is about half a mile from the top, trees and shrubs disappear. The summit is composed chiefly of bare rocks, partly in large masses, and partly broken into small pieces; and it has less...
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 245 - ... 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...
Page 71 - 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 even the hum of an insect, prevails.
Page 268 - Such was the state of things at the close of the fifteenth century. The statistics of the seventeenth show that while there had been an increase of prosperity and population in Lower Provence, as well as in the correspondingly situated parts of the other two provinces I have mentioned, there was an alarming decrease both in the wealth and in the population of Upper Provence and Dauphiny, although, by the clearing of the forests, a great extent of plough-land and pasturage had been added to the soil...
Page 72 - About Barcelonette and in the highest parts of the mountains, the hill-pastures feed a million of sheep, besides large herds of other cattle ;' and he adds : ' With such a soil and in such a climate, we are not to suppose a country barren because it is mountainous. The valleys I have visited are, in general, beautiful.