﻿Darnell. — On a Stone Epoch at the Cape of Good Hope. 157 



If tlie banks and gravel beds of the Waimea, for instance, were well 

 planted with willows, and the neighbouring low grounds planted with rows of 

 trees and shnibs at right angles to the flow of the water, but little damage 

 could be done by floods, and the trees on the banks would materially assist the 

 deposit of silt during floods, thus raising and fertilising the low ground. In 

 the open country, where timber is very scarce, such as in Canterbury and 

 Otago, the planting could be made to serve a double purpose, for, if properly 

 managed, twenty years after planting a great deal of wood might be cut 

 without in the least endangering the efficacy of the trees as a protection from 

 floods. There are many difficulties in the way of preserving the timber and 

 instituting a general system of planting such as I have suggested ; there would 

 also be a difficulty about keeping cattle from destroying the trees,* but these 

 matters are questions which could be readily settled by the inhabitants of the 

 districts likely to be damaged, as soon as the magnitude of the evils, which are 

 certain to follow the clearing of the mountain sides and destruction of river 

 ba,nks, was clearly appreciated. No one who travels much in the Middle 

 Island of New Zealand can fail to be struck by the amount of ground occupied 

 by the river beds, nor fail to observe the rapid increase in size of most of the 

 streams on the banks of which clearing is going on, and it is with the view of 

 directing attention to this important subject that I have ventured to write this 

 paper. 



It may be urged that but little loss has been sufiered yet, and that it will 

 be time enough to go into the question when it assumes a more serious aspect ; 

 but, in answer to this, it must be remembered that preventive measures can 

 hardly be taken too soon ; and further, when the destruction has once com- 

 menced on a large scale, nothing but time and a very great expenditure can 

 possibly remedy the evU. 



Art. XYII. — Notes on the Remaivis of a Stone Epoch at the Cape of Good 

 Hope. By B. H. Darnell. 



[Read hefore the Wellington Philosophical Society, 25th November, 1871.] 



Having seen the sand- worn stones in the museums of Nelson and "Wellington, 

 so strongly resembling those which are undoubtedly the work of human hands, 

 and which Mr. Mantell, half jestingly, half seriously, has assumed to have been 

 placed where they were found by the prudent foresight of ancient Maoris, in 

 order that the abrading action of drift-sand might utilize them for posterity ; 



* The Acacia dealhata is recommended by Mr. Ludlam, of Wellington, as a good tree 

 for such purposes, and not so liable to be destroyed by cattle as the willow. 



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