II. Beneficial Effects of Forests, and Danger of their Indiscriminate Clearing.

Forests have not only the beneficial effect of affording a produce of high importance, as well as climatic and financial advantages, they also afford a protective influence to lands situated on hill-sides and at the base of hills and mountains. At the time of the melting of snow or of heavy rains, they are an obstacle to the sudden irruption of immense volumes of water into valleys, by breaking and page 7 dispersing the torrent, so allowing the water to come down by degrees, and not with the destructive force of one single and unopposed mass.

Events which have taken place in France demonstrate the importance of such natural protection against floods, and the danger arising from its neglect or destruction.

When the French nation began to suffer from the disastrous effects arising from the destruction of some of their State Forests in the mountainous districts, they seat their foresters to Germany to study the forest law and institutions of that country; and the reports of those agents have been the basis on which rested the radical reforms then introduced in the French Forest Law and its administration. It was in the year 1827 that the new French Forest Law was established, when the Legislature, compelled by circumstances, and acting for public good and security, found it necessary to infringe on the secular principles and rights of private property. Not only the clearing of forests belonging to the State was prohibited, but likewise private property of the same nature was included in the prohibition, and further was made subject to certain rules of conservancy under the control of the State Forest Department.

However, too late the French legislators set to work in order to prevent the recurrence of inundations, which have been increasing in magnitude since 1827.

Some thirty years ago, the inundations from the Loire river extended the disaster a distance of more than 400 miles from the locality whence it originated—that is to say, page 8 from the denuded hills and mountains. All along the river fertile valleys were ruined by the flood-waters.

More recently, in 1875, in another part of France, the inundations from the Garonne river caused a loss of life to the extent of 4,000 persons, and the destruction of property has been calculated to amount to £4,000,000.

Do not such facts sufficiently prove the danger of indiscriminate clearing of forests in mountainous and hilly countries,—and do they not call for the serious attention of the colonists ?