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This paper looks at changing spatial patterns of social contact in Southern Ardèche over the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, in the general context of severe rural depopulation. This is attempted by using the distances between the places of residence of marriage partners at the time of marriage. Data is analysed by means of simple regression techniques for a sample of seventy communes. The data are obtained from the Actes de Mariage of the Registres d'Etat Civil, and the communes are divided into four regional groups. It is shown that mobility for marriage was confined to very short distances in the nineteenth century but that there are significant differences between the different areas. The last century has seen a complete rupture of the social system : contact with long-distance centres has increased markedly, and this seems to have been accompanied by stability or contraction in the local field of movement for marriage.

Separated from the rest of the country by the slopes of the Boutières and badly connected to the Rhône valley, the little town of Le Cheylard (4 500 inhabitants) has nevertheless succeeded in becoming a well known center of industrial activities one does not expect to find in the same place such as : textile industries, jewellery and bottling machines making. Yet, all these efforts have not been enough to acheive neither the restarting of a dying agriculture nor the revival of the upper valley of the Dorne which seems to the bound to lose its population. As of Le Cheylard it is however a small industrial town the clerical workers of which remains inadequate in number and quality. Will the growth of tourism create a new an more propitious situation ?

The predominance of underground water in Vercors has long been a well-known phenomenon, but a general survey of its relations with the peripheric rivers has never been made up to now. Yet it is possible to notice a predominance of meridian relations some of which, as the Aven des Fauries — Jallifier springs relation, are quite remarkable for their development.