47-4 Proceedings. 



Asia Minor, of Nortliern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe where 

 the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the fiice of the earth 

 to a desohition almost as complete as that of the moon. The destructive 

 changes occasioned by the agency of man upon the flanks of the Alps, the 

 Apennines, the Pyrenees, and other mountain regions in Central and Southern 

 Europe, and the progress of physical deterioration, have become so rapid that 

 in some localities a single generation has witnessed the beginning and the end 

 of the melancholy revolution." 



I know no sight more sad than to witness the destruction by fire of forests 

 on the hill-sides — those mournful streaks sweeping along the more accessible 

 sides of the ranges, with blackened trunks like Banquo's ghosts here and there 

 in the midst — without parallel the most melancholy spectacle of wasteful 

 destruction. I have doubts of the probability of much immediate good being 

 efiected in the way of planting in the permanent settled districts of the Colony. 

 But there can be no doubt of our power to stay the destruction of forests on 

 the ranges and on other lands not well adapted for agriculture. Here we 

 have unquestionable means not only of staying wanton destruction, but of 

 securing the successional growth of trees to make good the full grown timber 

 when removed. To plant land with valuable timber is a slow process — to 

 preserve what we have is surely our duty. It is on the ranges and highly 

 broken ground that the timber is most effective in ameliorating a climate and 

 of feeding the streams from which the plains may be irrigated. 



The most interesting of our papers is that by Dr. Hector on the huge 

 Fossil Reptilian Remains lately discovered in the South Island. That 

 memoir has a value for all time. As a contribution to the knowledge of those 

 enormous reptiles it will certainly engage the careful study of scientific men 

 both in Europe and North America. Contemporaneous with these discoveries 

 we find, from the report of Cope, that similar skeletons of these monsters of 

 the ancient seas are being found in the cretaceous strata of the Kansas, in 

 North America. 



" If the explorer of these plains " (on whose level surface, denuded of soil, 

 may be found huge oyster shells not less than two feet across, some opened, 

 like remnants of a half-finished meal of some titanic race, who had been 

 fiightened from the board never to return) " searches the ravine he will," 

 says Cope, " come upon the fragment of a tooth or jaw, and will generally 

 find a line of such pieces leading to an elevated position on the bank, where 

 lies the skeleton of some monster of the ancient sea. He may find the 

 vertebral column running far into the limestone that locks him in his last 

 piison ; or a paddle extended on the slope as though entreating aid ; or a 

 pair of jaws lined with horrid teeth, which grin despair on enemies they are 

 helpless to resist ; or he may find a conic mound on whose apex glisten in 



