The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-12-31
FRANcE TEACHES US.
How Great Forests were Destroyed
 There.

How Great Foresfs Were nestrOyed
 There.
 France presents a very interesting study for America: for she is endeaVor- ing to recover from something tne same sort of debauch on resources as that which has given us the na-
 Tn The trouble with her rivers is that and Provence into the Dediterranean are torrents because she has cut awfy her forests and has allowed the ram and snowfall on her mountains 70 sweep down the valleys, eroding tre- mendous bed destroying fertile lands, even overwhelming villages and pu- ing the streets sometimes six feet deep in sand and powders.
 She has let the Rhone and the Dur ance sweep the best lands of savoy and Provence into the MetiteTraneah and ruin their own channels, and sne has let the shepheards of Pyrenees seuFn and destroy their forests and reduce their lands to ruin If she was to have water transportation at all in such state of affairs 1t must be by canals; for no rivers in such wild condition could be trained with out a. slow and costly course of reforestization such as we in America are facing.
 Dates Back to Louis ANA
 The trouble in France began with 1OulS AN1. u1utI HAOS6 0ht&BACt 1AS the forest restrictions grew so oppres- sive that the common people cultivat- ed q terrffffc hatred of them. When the revolution came one of the first acts of the assembly was to wipe out the ediet of fe07 under which, since the thirteenth century had marked France as Che foremost forest land m Europe, and to declare that private forests were no longer subject tofstate Jurisdiction.
 From the Channel to the Mediterra- mean the freed people madly vented their hatred on the trees, and singly and in armed bands went about not only burning and hewffig down private and domain forests. but even destroy ing the trees in the streets and parks of the cities.
 The revolutionary government and the first republic did nothing to check this. Bonaparte organized forests force, tried to put check on destrnc- ton and produce some order. However. immediately upon his fall 1t became possible for private owners to get per- mission to cut of their forests; under the restoration and later under Napo- leon III. this became even easier and whoever owned a forest was quick to turn it into gold in order that if the land were eonfiscated in the changing or BoFeThHeHts SoihSssAANb "S1- S saved.
 Savoy Literally Denuded.
 As a result millions of acres were cut. Savoy was literally denuded. and 1t has required under the third republic continual efforts from the government from individuals, and from many soci- ties interested in reforestization to bring about something like a begin hing of restoration. Altogether more a Hox rnNfnFm ed to forests during the past fifty years and the work Is now progressing rap idly. The central plateau of France, between the Loire and the Cher, has also been partly covered again, and in Savoy every effort is being bent to reforest the slopes of the Northern and Maritime Alps.
 But the restraining effect on the rivers, except in the earlier forester rivers. except in the earlier forested much felt The Rhone, steadted by the reservoir of Lac Leman, 500 n re- ceives the Isere, which sweepa down from barren hillsides heavy with roll- ing gravel and drifting sand. Villages on 1t which once drew their support from steady glacial flow, now are de- luged' with floods and then left dry.
 Rhone and Duranee JoAn.
 Further down the Rhone receives the Durance, which has torn terrible sashes in the landscape of Provence, Provence itself is forest barren, and more than anything else resembles the edge of an African desert, hot. uH- shaded and eaten by it's rain and rivers into fantastic disorder.
 It is in the fastness of the Pyrenees of the Maritime Alps and of Savoy that France is doing now her hardest and most costly, and by all odds her cleverest work of river control. Up the steep valleys of the mountains she is building dams, one above another: low stone structures designed not to hold up and reserve great bodies of water, but to hold back the moving bed of the stream. to lessen. the speed of the current mo- mentarily, and to retain in the noun tain region the gravel and sand When this Is done and beginning made in covering. the Hhone will become susceptible of eanalization: but at present 1t bears such mass of stolen land that it has extended its delta four miles since the revolutions