12 FOREST CULTURE AND 
strata the mineral elements.of vegetable nutrition to 
the surface ; how they create and maintain the sources 
for the gentle flow of watercourses for motive power, 
aqueducts, irrigation, water - traffic and navigation ; 
how they mitigate or prevent malarious influences — 
of all this we become cognizant by daily experiences 
almost everywhere around us. We have to look, 
therefore, far beyond a mere temporary wood supply, 
when we wish to estimate the blessings of forest vege- 
tation rightly ; and our mind has to grasp the com- 
plex causes and sequences originating with and de- 
pending on the forests, before their value as a total 
can be understood. 
“« Here, in the sultriest season, let us rest : 
Fresh is the green beneath those aged trees ; 
Here air of gentlest wing will fan our breast— 
From heaven itself we may inhale the breeze,”’ 
Byron. 
Let us then take timely warning ; let us remember 
that denuded earth parts with its warmth by radiation, 
and is intensely heated by insulation ; that thus in 
woodless countries the extremes of climate are brought 
about in rendering the Winter-cold far more intense 
and boisterous, and the Summer-heat far more burning 
and oppressive. Let us remember why the absence 
or destruction of forests involves periodic floods and 
droughts, with all the great disasters inseparable 
therefrom. Let us bear in mind that even in our 
praised Australia many a pastoral tenant saw his herds 
and flocks perish, and even the very kangaroos off his 
run; how he looked hopefully for months and months 
at every promising cloud which drew up on the hori- 
zon, only to dissolve rainless in the dry desert air ; 
whereas, when the squatter’s ruin was completed, 
