Note 350 — Chapter IV

The original forests in which the basin of the Ardèche was rich have been rapidly disappearing, for many years, and the terrific violence of the inundations which are now laying it waste is ascribed, by the ablest investigators, to that cause. In an article inserted in the Annales Forestières for 1843, quoted by Hohenstein, Der Wald, p. 177, it is said that about one third of the area of the department had already become absolutely barren, in consequence of clearing, and that the destruction of the woods was still going on with great rapidity. New torrents were constantly forming, and they were estimated to have covered more than 70,000 acres of good land, or one eighth of the surface of the department, with sand and gravel.