STATE OP MAURITIUS. 125 



summits and slopes of the mountains should be abandoned to forests 

 and jungle, and so cut them down, upon which the water supply 

 began to fail. Reflection soon taught the authorities the cause of 

 this failure ; upon which the hills were again planted with trees, and 

 the rivers and streams resumed their former dimensions. 



Mr Marsh writes : — " The Island of Mauritius lying in the Indian 

 Ocean in about 20° N. L., is less than forty miles long by about 

 thirty in breadth. Its surface is very irregular, and though it con- 

 sists, to a considerable extent, of a plateau from 1200 to 1500 feet 

 high, there are three mountain peaks ranging from 2300 to 2700 

 feet in height. Hence, though the general climatic influences are 

 everywhere substantially the same, there is room for a great variety 

 of exposures and of other purely local conditions. It is said that 

 the difference of temperature between the highest and lowest stations 

 does not exceed eight degrees F, while, according to observations at 

 thirty five stations, the rainfall in 1872 varied from thirty-three 

 inches at Gros Cailloux to one hundred and forty six inches at Cluny. 

 Nature, September 24, 1874. This enormous difference in measure- 

 ment is too great to be explained by possible errors of observation or 

 other accidental circumstances, and we must suppose there are, in 

 difi'erent parts of this small island, great differences in the actual 

 precipitation, but still much of this variation must be due to causes 

 whose range of influence is extremely limited." 



Mr Meldrum, Director of the Mauritius Observatory, read a paper 

 before the Scottish Meteorological Society in July, 1866. In this he 

 stated that for some years before there had been severe droughts in 

 the island, and recently there had been severe outbreaks of fever, 

 which had carried off one-tenth of the population. A careful analysis 

 of meteorological observations that had been made showed that from 

 1861 to 1866 there had been a great diminution in the rainfall. So 

 far as could be discovered, the rainfall was less than during any 

 similar period since the island was discovered. This could only be 

 explained by the cutting down of large forests in the interior, no less 

 than 70,000 acres having been denuded of trees during the ten years 

 from 1852 to 1862. Mr Meldrum concluded by saying that the 

 calamities which had so seriously affected the people of the Mauritius 

 seemed to be self-inflicted ; and that the proper remedy was to 

 restore the forests of which the once salubrious and beautiful island 

 had been deprived. And in a communication published in the 

 Journal of the English Meteorological Society for that year there is 

 given additional information on the subject. In this he states, 



