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upon climate, or to tlie certain injury which must be inflicted upon posterity. 

 The native grasses are temporarily utilized for feeding sheep and cattle, but 

 little attention is paid to their feeding values or to the probability of bringing 

 them, either alone or mixed with exotic grasses, into that condition of culti- 

 vation in which they may become permanently valuable oi- be made to yield 

 the largest return. 



In these islands we have ah-eady seen this course taken, and those who 

 look beyond the present, cannot but be struck with the immense direct injury 

 which has already resulted from the indiscriminate and reckless destruction of 

 the forest and of many other of the natural productions. As a pregnant 

 example, bearing upon this point, I may take the instance of the Tliormhmi 

 tenax, which, for nearly thirty years, has been destroyed to a greater or less 

 extent in every part of the country. I have seen thousands of acres of this 

 plant, of a growth which would yield nearly a ton and a half of pure fibre per 

 acre under any fair system of manufacture, burnt recklessly for the purpose of 

 substituting grass ; and I have seen the land upon which the flax plant bad 

 stood in its greatest luxuriance, so injured by the fire which was used for 

 clearing it, as to be unfit for the production of any other crop except at an 

 outlay for which no adequate compensation could be obtained. 



Our lai'ge rivers, which most colonists remember as inflicting, in former 

 days, but little injury to the valleys and plains through which they flow, have 

 now in most instances become raging torrents, against whose injurious efiects 

 we are called upon to guard by expensive and difiicult engineering works. 

 We may trace the course of this change to precisely the same violation of 

 natural laws which has brought about similar results in other countries. 

 There, as here, when the forest has been destroyed, the moisture long stored 

 up in its moiild is evaporated, and returns in deluges of rain, which wash 

 away the dried soil into which the accumulated mass of mould has been 

 converted. The water-courses become choked and encumbered with the debrif , 

 and the country which had pi-eviously presented an appearance of rich 

 vegetation is converted into bald hills and dessicated plains, liable to be still 

 further damaged by the ravages of the intersecting streams. There can be no 

 doubt that this process is now going on in many parts of these islands, and we 

 have seen, during the last two or three sessions of the Legislature, measures 

 introduced for the purpose of checking the growing mischief. 



We are told by a distinguished author, " that there are parts of Asia 

 Minor, of I^orthei'n Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the 

 operation of causes set in action by man (causes pi-ecisely similar in character 

 to those which have been recklessly set in action in this colony), has bi'ought 

 the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon ; 

 and within that brief space of time which we call 'the historical epoch,' they 

 are known to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and 



