180 EFFECT-? OF FOEEST VEGETATION ON' CLTMATZ. 



Tlie.-se latter will only be incidentally alluded to in tlie following 

 remarks. 



It may, perhaps, bare never been serionsly contemplated by 

 nnme^us persons who liave traversed this territory, that the 

 progress of clearing land in such a forest region as JN'ew South 

 Wales must have various effects on Climate and Sanitary con- 

 ditions, and that civilization has destructive as well as conserva- 

 tive tendencies. 



I would not dwell on the influence upon scenery of improperly 

 conducted clearings. A consideration of that kind can hardly 

 enter into the mind of a person who can deliberately leave acres 

 of unfelled timber, bare of foliage, barkless, and broken by the 

 winds, such as might be enumerated by the score in some of the 

 once most beautiful tracts in the counties of Cumberland and 

 Camden ; nor is it necessary to point out the array of giants of 

 the forest that stud the summit of the Dividing Eange at the 

 back of Heidelberg, in Victoria, or examples of landscape scenei'y 

 partly ruined by the ravages of insects. It may be true that the 

 custom of ring-harJcing trees is productive, for a time, of some 

 extra growth of grass ; but to say nothing of the deprivation of 

 shade to flocks and herds, or of waste of timber, as in the cedar 

 districts of our eastern coast rivers by the ruthless and wilful 

 wielders of the axe, who leave upon the ground to decay in 

 ignominy some of the finest and most noble of our trees, I can- 

 not help expressing great surprise that gentlemen who in general 

 character and condition of life are far above the hungry and 

 uneducated selector or wood-splitter can allow ring-barking in 

 places where grass can never grow, and where nature embellished 

 the rocks with woods. Such I have seen to be the case in many 

 a spot far away from those before alluded to. It is a question- 

 able j^olicy that some of such clearings should have been per- 

 mitted, and till the " woods and forests " have been taken under 

 the protection of Government, many a district of rich timber 

 will continue to be foolishly destroyed, and many a scene of 

 sylvan beauty will be desecrated. A remark of this kind may 

 perhaps be laughed at by some as not worthy of thought ; but I 

 can afford to put up with such a reception, in the consciousness 

 that ridicule would be undeserved. The late Bishop of Australia 

 once said to me, as we ti^avelled together through a region of 

 naked, ring-barked trunks of trees, that he wished some thousands 

 a year could be put upon the Estimates in order to clear them 

 from the land, and in that wish I doubt not many besides the 

 Bishop have concurred. [See Appendix, No, 1.] 



I pass on to something of, perchance, greater importance than 

 one of mere artistic or aesthetic taste. Yet, before so doing, 

 I would call to the remembrance of the Director of the Botani- 

 cal Gardens the sentiments expressed by him and his companions, 



