The summer has been more severe on the Continent than
even in England. In France, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria, the floods have done serious damage, in the latter country sweeping away whole villages, and threatening the very existence of three large towns, Prague, Linz, and Pressburg. The Danube, compressed at points by huge dykes, rises like any mountain torrent, and the public fortune seems inadequate to provide canals to carry away the overflow. Three arches of the bridge over the Moldau in Prague, which has stood for five centuries, have been swept away, and by the latest telegrams, the city itself was in danger of being drowned. The floods benefit only one class, the adepts in forestry, who, in the Agricultural Congress now sitting in Vienna, loudly protest that they are aggravated, if not caused, by the denudation of the zountry, and demand the reafforesting of the hilly districts, a far-sighted policy from which the Treasuries shrink, and which displeases the peasantry. The State will one day be compelled to take measures in this direction, even in Ireland. The one draw- back, we are told, to the operation of the Ashbourne and other Purchase Acts is, that the tenantry, once become propri4kors, make it their first business to cut down every tree.
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