24 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 
Arr. IL—Jnfluence of Forests on Climate and Rainfall. By Frepericx B. 
Prprercorne, Civil Engineer. 
[Read before the Hawke’s Bay Philosophical Institute, 14th July, 1879.] 
No fact is better authenticated than that of the beneficial influence exerted 
by the presence of forests on the climate and rainfall of a country, and, on 
the other hand, of the injurious effects on both that is brought about by 
the destruction of forests, or by their absence. 
In this way their destruction has often become a real calamity to a 
country, and has proved to be one of those errors which nothing can excuse, 
and which nothing but a resort to years of tree-planting, in order to replace 
the forests destroyed, can remedy. That this is not an exaggerated view to 
take of the subject, is shown when we know the evil effects produced in 
many countries by the denudation of their forests —one striking instance of 
which is to be found in Spain, the central regions of which, comprising the 
Castiles, part of Leon, Estremadura, and La Mancha, possess at present an 
execrable climate, although, in the times of the Roman oceupation of Spain, 
these distriets were noted for the fertility of their soil and for the amenity 
of their climate, so that the words, ** Nihil otiosum, nihil sterile in Hispania,” 
passed into a proverb. But, at present, as we are told by Sir A. Ford, 
“ The denuded table-lands are exposed to the fierce suns of the summer and 
to the fiercer snows and winds of winter, while the bulk of the peninsula 
offers a pieture of neglect and desolation, moral and physieal, which it is 
painful to contemplate. Extensive steppes and plains are burnt up by the 
sun in summer, and swept by the iey winds in winter, while rain is so rare 
in the table-lands that the annual fall does not exceed nine inches, and 
there are districts upon which no shower descends for eight or nine months 
together. The face of the earth is tanned tawny, and baked into a veritable 
* Terra-cotta,’ and everything seems dead and burnt, as on a funeral pile.” 
And yet, under the dominion of the Moors, the country blossomed like 
a rose, while now Spain is one of the droughtiest and poorest countries in 
Europe, and the ignorance and prejudiees of the peasantry have completed 
the devastation of her forests which her Catholic monarchs commenced. 
Fortunately, however, for Spain, she now possesses some enlightened men 
who, having been able to trace the causes of the evil up to their true source, 
are setting to work to remedy it, and are impressing upon the Spanish 
Government the imperative necessity of replanting the mountain ranges as 
the only efficient method of combatting the drought and its attendant dis- 
asters. They show clearly that the demolition of the forests has operated 
most disastrously both upon the soil and climate; that springs and streams 
have dried up; that rain has ceased to fall at one period of the year when 
it is most wanted, and descends with great violence at other times. This 
