^0 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



from periodical thinnings was estimated at ^635,000 annually, until the end 

 of the twenty-first year, when the colony would be in possession of 300 

 square miles of forest. 



These estimates may possibly be a little overdrawn, but the scheme 

 appears well worthy of consideration, and it is to be borne in mind that in 

 no case is natural forest or " bush " so valuable, commercially speaking, as 

 planted forest, and no one can deny the fact that tree-planting, on an 

 extensive scale, would be a very necessary proceeding in all the Australasian 

 colonies wherever the natural forests have been largely destroyed, to say 

 nothing of the undoubted beneficial influence it would exert upon the 

 climate and rainfall. 



Humboldt thought that dense woods gave out what he called a "frigoric," 

 or cooUng radiation, which condensed the vaporous clouds, so that there 

 should naturally be frequent and abundant rains in their vicinity ; and, on 

 the other hand, he thought that the warm radiations which take place from 

 level, sandy, and treeless plains, would produce little if any rainfall, and all 

 our experience tends to show that these views are correet. 



The foregoing examples have been selected from a mass of facts illus- 

 trative of the dependence, to a large extent, of the rainfall of a country upon 

 the preservation or renewal of its forests, whether on mountain-ranges or 

 on table-lands, or on less elevated tracts of country. And although the 

 meteorological action of forests is but imperfectly understood at present, 

 yet the data hitherto collected are quite sufiicient to point to the conclusion 

 that trees, being natural conductors of electricity, as has been proved by the 

 experiments of M. Grandeau, Professor of the ^' Ecole Forestriere," in France, 

 serve as intermediaries for the exchange of the electricities with which the 

 earth and the atmosphere are respectively charged. 



It has also been said that the earthquakes which are common in Spain 

 and Portugal, would be less frequent and less violent if the elevated regions 

 of those countries were clothed with forests, so as to secure regular and 

 harmless conduction of the electric fluid from the aerial to the terrestrial 

 reservoir, and vice versa. However this may be, one thing is very certain, 

 which is that hailstorms, which are believed to be produced by a certain 

 specific electric action, become more frequent and destructive in districts 

 which possess no forests ; and on this point Signer Calvi, in his "Hints on 

 the Importance and Cultivation of Forests," states that: — "When the chains 

 of the Alps and the Apennines had not yet been stripped of their magnificent 

 crown of woods, the May hail, which now desolates the fertile plains of 

 Lombardy, was much less frequent ; but, since the prostration of the forest, 

 these tempests are laying waste even the mountain soils, whose older 

 inhabitants scarcely knew the plague." 



