STOCKING AND SCOUR 201 



were calmed and tranquillised by resistance of stems, leaves, and 

 blades which caught the alluvium, raised higher the banks, and 

 further stimulated the rank jungle on either side of the waterway. 

 The river in its lower reaches ran then like a canal, curving but 

 little, and passing slow and deep between dense containing walls of 

 luxuriant almost tropical vegetation. These conditions have been 

 revolutionised by stocking and scour. Stock have destroyed the 

 growth of the old banks : the accumulated silt of centuries, no 

 longer bound by matted root - growth and protected from violent 

 currents, has been carried oceanwards wholesale in the enormously 

 larger floods of modern times. With edges stripped of their plexus 

 of roots, with current no longer confined, the Waikoau changes its 

 course in every flood ; a score of wasteful channels trickle over a 

 wide, stony, shallow bed. Nowhere now in the mile and a half 

 between wool-shed and sea could wool be taken by boat or barge for 

 fifty yards. 



The cumulative effect of the work of sheep is in truth nowhere 

 more apparent than on the alluvial lands of the river-mouths. They 

 suffer a twofold deterioration positive and negative ; firstly, deposi- 

 tion of grosser grit and coarser sand stuff in former times trapped 

 by the riverside vegetation of the upper reaches now destroyed by 

 fires and stock ; secondly, loss of the finest forest mould held in sus- 

 pension during flood. It is no longer allowed to settle in comparative 

 calm amongst rank vegetation standing knee- or neck-deep in flood 

 water. It is wasted now carried direct to the ocean. In addition 

 to cessation of income from the interior, there is an extravagant 

 expenditure of capital banked, of alluvium deposited in former 

 centuries. Nor does the harm done by scour cease even then ; cross- 

 winds blowing on the wider river-mouth raise wavelets of considerable 

 size, whose lapping still further devours the banks. 



Whatever may be the fate of large alluvial areas, smaller valleys 

 run serious risks from breaching of ancient banks and from super- 

 position of valueless sand, grit, and rubble. 



We have now to consider, not indeed a minor, but a much less 

 conspicuous aspect of stocking and scour. It is the permanent 

 hardening of the crust of the ground and its effects on grasses. The 

 surface, no longer subject to any natural process of mulching, has 

 become less friable, the pounding and stamping of stock has affected 



