"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. Their soil, scorched by the sun of Provence, cut up by the hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface the grass they require for their sustenance, scratch the ground in search of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed and carried off by melting snows and summer storms. "I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty years they have been too often depicted to require to be further discussed, but it is important to show that their ravages are daily extending the range of devastation. The bed of the Durance, which now in some places exceeds 2,000 metres [about 6,600 feet, or a mile and a quarter] in width, and, at ordinary times, has a current of water less than 10 metres [about 33 feet] wide, shows something of the extent of the damage.[220] Where, ten years ago, there were still woods and cultivated grounds to be seen, there is now but a vast torrent: there is not one of our mountains which has not at least one torrent, and new ones are daily forming. "An indirect proof of the diminution of the soil is to be found in the depopulation of the country. In 1852, I reported to the General Council that, according to the census of that year, the population of the department of the Lower Alps had fallen off no less than 5,000 souls in the five years between 1846 and 1851. "Unless prompt and energetic measures are taken, it is easy to fix the epoch when the French Alps will be but a desert. The interval between 1851 and 1856 will show a further decrease of population. In 1862, the ministry will announce a continued and progressive reduction in the number of acres devoted to agriculture; every year will aggravate the evil, and, in a half century, France will count more ruins, and a department the less." Time has verified the predictions of De Bonville. The later census returns show a progressive diminution in the population of the departments of the Lower Alps, the Isere, the Drome, Ariege, the Upper and the Lower Pyrenees, the Lozere, the Ardennes, the Doubs, the Vosges, and, in short, in all the provinces formerly remarkable for their forests. This diminution is not to be ascribed to a passion for foreign emigration, as in Ireland, and in parts of Germany and of Italy; it is simply a transfer of population from one part of the empire to another, from soils which human folly has rendered uninhabitable, by ruthlessly depriving them of their natural advantages and securities, to provinces where the face of the earth was so formed by nature as to need no such safeguards, and where, consequently, she preserves her outlines in spite of the wasteful improvidence of man.[221]