184 Transactions, — Miscellaneous. 
be between 1,000 or 1,200 feet, which is sufficiently near to support my 
theory. I do not attach any scientific importance to what I have described, 
though, there being reasons for every function of nature, itis both interesting 
and our duty in the cause of science to seek for and obtain an explanation 
of those reasons, ee 
While considering the magnitude of the floods in these mountainous 
districts, I should like to draw attention to a fact that I have no doubt is 
well known to most of you, namely, the beneficial effects that these lakes 
exert in restraining the rush of heavy floods. They act as reservoirs, in 
which are stored up the enormous bodies of water pouring off the 
precipitous slopes of the mountains, gradually allowing it to find its way to 
the sea in restrained quantities. They also do good service in arresting 
the shingle and débris washed off the hills, and carried into the torrents by 
glaciers and land-slips. ` 
Taking the case of the Molyneux, or, as it is generally termed, the 
 Clutha, it requires no great stretch of imagination to picture to oneself what 
the aspect of the lower valleys would have become were it not for the 
influence exerted over the floods by Lakes Wakatipu, Hawea, and Wanaka. 
These valleys would, in all probability, have been deserts of shingle and 
sand where not water. 
The Rivers Rangitata, Rakaia, and Waimakariri, in Canterbury, have 
few lakes on their tributaries—the former and the latter none of importance 
whatever. The nature of their beds is well known, and requires no 
description by me. They are a continual source of anxiety to the settlers 
in their proximity, as the flood-channels alter their course during each 
successive flood, inundating and destroying the land near them, and costing 
large sums of money annually in endeavours to restrain and control them. 
There are many other smaller rivers in both islands having somewhat 
ihe same characteristics, and which almost annually do great harm 
both by flo and encroaching on the cultivated land near the banks; 
consequently the question of how they should be treated, in order to 
regulate and control them, becomes more and more serious, as it is, I 
believe, an established fact that the high floods are becoming still higher, 
as well as oftener repeated. 
We need not go far to seek for an explanation. The rapid destruction of 
timber and brushwood along the banks will give rise to encroachment, as on 
the Hutt River. The extensive bush fires on the ranges, and even the 
felling of timber for use, allows the heavy rains to flow more quickly off the 
surface into the streams, as, consequent upon the destruction of | larger 
trees, the smaller ones perish. As a bush country becomes settled nd the 
timber r Send, so will the floods become more violent in their nature; and, 
