338 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION D. 



The following resolution was also passed : — 

 ■ ' In view of the supreme importance to the community of the 

 proper maintenance of our present forest reserves and of 

 the pressing necessity for their further extension, this 

 Committee recommends the Australian Forest League, 

 now in process of establishment in all the States of the 

 Commonwealth, to the collective and individual interest 

 of members of the Association. 



Repokt. 



I have pleasure in reporting as follows on the work done m 

 acquiring information as regards land erosion by high floods, or 

 ill-effect on the regularity of annual stream-flow in the case of 

 rivers whose head waters have been denuded of forest covering. 



During 1911 the only foreign letters written were to America, 

 as your secretary had previously corresponded with the United 

 States Department of Agriculture on other matters. Replies were 

 at once received, accompanied by useful and voluminous literature 

 bearing on the subject in hand. Opportunity was taken in the 

 same year of making local inquiries bearing on the matter in Vic- 

 toria and New South Wales, as also of searching for instances of 

 damage previously done, or now taking place, by rivers in Tas- 

 mania, which could be traced to denudation. 



In March last year correspondence was undertaken with Euro- 

 pean countries, and letters written to the Departments of Agricul- 

 ture in France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. A letter was also 

 written to Sweden in October, that forest-clad country having 

 been overlooked in the first instance. No replies having been 

 secured from any of the first four countries, letters were written 

 again through the Consuls in September, but answers are not yet 

 to hand. A letter written to the Department of Agriculture in 

 Japan elicited at once a courteous reply, accompanied by much 

 literature concerning the forests and rivers of the country, but 

 which is all in Japanese, except a treatise on forestry translated 

 into English. Correspondence with the Conservator of Forests, 

 South Australia (who is a member of your Committee), and with 

 the Surveyor-General of New Zealand, has afforded much useful 

 information. 



A perusal of the publications secured from America has shown 

 that there is diversity of opinion as to the ill-effects on stream-flow 

 of the denudation of forests. But, notwithstanding the extreme 

 views of Dr. Willis L. Moore, Chief of the United States Weather 

 Bureau, and those of a few experts of more modified belief against 

 such conditions, the weight of opinion is on the other side of the 

 scale. 



