RAMBLES ROUND DUNEDIN. 2OQ 



that it could never be alienated from its main purpose, 

 viz., that of catching water for the town supply. But 

 year by year the bush disappears, the forest-clad areas 

 are a steadily diminishing quantity, and the surface 

 becoming bare. Water is not caught and held by the 

 bush, and allowed to percolate slowly out of it, to any- 

 thing like the extent which was formerly the case. Heavy 

 rain falls on the hard dry surface and rushes off it, so that 

 the value of the whole as a catchment area has been 

 seriously impaired by the mere fact of clearing the surface. 

 But this is only one bad feature of the case. Settlement 

 has been allowed to take place all over it. Mr Ross's own 

 house formerly stood on the banks of the stream at a 

 considerable height above the reservoir, and although it 

 was abandoned, other houses were allowed to spring up 

 lower down and on other arms of the stream, and for 

 years their drainage has either flowed directly or indirectly 

 into the town water supply. The other day the corporation 

 authorities took action against one of the residents for 

 allowing the drainage of his pigsty to run into the stream, 

 and the public awoke to the fact as if it were something 

 new, when in reality it has been going on for a score of 

 years. 



Now the first cost of this water supply to the city was 

 over 140,000, on which the ratepayers have paid interest 

 ever since, and have got a property that is daily losing its 

 value. But it would not be a difficult matter to arrest the 

 destruction of this valuable asset. In my opinion it would 

 pay the city well to buy out every owner in the whole area 

 the land is not in the Taieri Plain and to plant it once 

 more with the native bush and let it run wild. We should 

 soon once more have a clean water supply and much more 

 of it, and the community would be benefited in every way. 



The next stream up the Leith is Nichol's Creek, which 

 drains the north-eastern slopes of Flagstaff Hill and part 

 of Swampy Hill. What is one to say of it? "A thing of 

 beauty," says Keats, "is a joy for ever" ; pity, then, that 

 it cannot always remain a thing of beauty. When first 

 I wandered up the bed of this streamlet it was a typical 

 o 



