ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, NOVEMBER 6, 1872. '5 



yet unborn, and fewer still, perhaps, realise the extent of their, so to 

 speak, national responsibilities to maintain the forests which they 

 possess. 



It is but three months ago that the newspapers recorded the 

 facts of high floods in England, France, and Italy, accompanied 

 with most serious damage in various places. That these floods, 

 primarily due to excessive rainfall, are aggravated by the more 

 general drainage which the improved agriculture of the present day 

 has introduced, there is no doubt, but it is equally certain that the 

 denudation of the mountain tops has greatly contributed to this 

 result, and with the removal of their verdant clothing, we have to 

 regret not only the washing away of soil from the slopes once 

 covered with forest, but to mourn over homesteads and villages once 

 smiling and now abandoned, and vast areas of richly cultivated land 

 overwhelmed and made barren by the detritus of mountain torrents 

 in their now aggravated impetuosity. It is the destruction of forests 

 which has led to this desolation. 



How vast is the influence of the forests of a country ! They affect 

 the humidity of the air and earth ; they influence the temperature ; 

 they afford important shelter from the east winds, the mistral and 

 the sirocco ; they create springs, and they tend to control the flow of 

 rivers. The teaching of "savans" (Humboldt, Herschel, and 

 Arago), the records of travels (Marsh, Pallas, and Sandys), the 

 sufferings of nations (Italy, Spain, and Greece), have sadly demon- 

 strated these facts, even in very recent times. 



In what way forests arrest the progress of nights of locusts in the 

 East, of coffee-borers and other noxious insects, has now, by careful 

 investigation, been placed beyond doubt ; and it is believed by many 

 that they set a limit to malarious vapour, and also to rust spores 

 which infect cereal crops. The productiveness of grain fields is in- 

 creased by establishing plantations, the health of the cattle is im- 

 proved, the evil of drifting sand is checked, as for example by 

 planting the Pinus maritima on the dunes of France ; thus in many 

 ways the material prosperity of a country is bound up with the 

 maintenance of a due proportion of woodland suitably distributed. 



During the first stage of colonisation in most countries, as for 

 instance Australia, India, and America, and while settlers are thinly 

 scattered, demands on the wood supply are usually so limited as not to 

 cause undue destruction of indigenous forest, nor to occasion alarm for 

 future requirements. But immigration goes on, agricultural industry 

 is extended, railways are formed, all these causing encroachments on 



