i8 *' THE LEAVES OF THE TREE Were FOB THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 



Instead with venom filled. Less sharp than these 



Less intricate the breakes, wherein abide 



Those animals (insect pests') that hate the cultured fields 



On all sides 



I heard sad plainings breathe, and none could see 

 From whom they might have issued. In amaze 

 Fast bound I stood. He, (the inward guide) as it seem'd believed 

 That I had thought so many voices came 

 From some amid those thickets close conceal'd, 

 And thus his speech resumed: " If thou lop off 

 A single twig from one of those ill plants, 

 "The thought thou hast conceived shall vanish quite" 



Thereat a little stretching 'forth my hand, 

 From a great wilding gather'd I a branch, 

 And straight the trunk exclaim'd: " Why pluck'st thou me?" 

 Then as the dark blood trickled down its side, 

 These words it added: "Wherefore tear'st me thus? 

 Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast? 

 Men once were we that now are rooted here, * 



Thy hand might well have spared us, had we been 



The souls of serpents." (* PSALM 139, 15-16) 



FOREST LAND PREFERRED FOR SETTLEMENT. 



As in the United States and Canada so in Australia, forest lands were 

 preferred by selectors for farming on, and after our thirty years of reck- 

 less toil, many millions of acres once clad with stately malaria destroying 

 eucalypti whose gorgeous atmosphere purifying and rain attracting foliage 

 formed a beautiful canopy of variegated colors under and around which,, 

 weeds and insect pests could not exist, now form very many unsightly, be- 

 cause parched weed and insect breeding fields, made hideous alike to the 

 misguided owners and leasees as also to the weary traveller throughout 

 the " settled 5 ' districts, by being compelled to gaze on monotonous forests 

 of weather bleeched dead tree skeletons, left standing as so many reprov- 

 ing spectres on large areas of sun baked agricultural and pastoral lands. 



New South Wales the oldest Australian colony, originally known as- 

 " the Botany Bay convict settlement" has provided ample insect plague 

 breeding fields for the whole group. Ticket of leave convicts and crown 

 pastoralists having added small orchards and vineyards to their respective 

 homestead belongings which in course of time from various avoidable 

 reasons, were permitted to run wild in exhausted soil, thereby furnishing 

 the necessary insect breeding conditions, which eventually charged the 

 passing winds with destructive germs. The following dispatch clipped 

 from the Sydney Daily Telegraph of February 4th last, faintly illustrates 

 some of the results: 



ADELAIDE, Friday. The Crown Lands Department reports that the ravages of 

 the codlin moth, rather than diminishing, are spreading amongst the apple or- 

 chards. Spraying with Paris green has been resorted to, without satisfactory re- 

 salts. There are now more infected orchards than last season, and the damage to 

 fruit has been enormous. There are at present 169 orchards affected in the colony. 



Whilst the forests remained in tact, through neighboring colonies, des- 

 tructive insect raids from said fields were however comparatively harmless. 

 Early in 1870, about eight years subsequent to the first general land 

 selecting scramble for agricultural settlement in the colony of Victoria, I 

 observed myriads of minute little grasshoppers like so many sand ripples, 

 in a remote arid portion of said colony adjacent to the New South Wales 



