190 EFFECTS OF F0BE3T TE&ETATIO>' 0>' CLI:m:A.TE. 



Hcikea stricta also supplies a small quantity of water in the 

 same way. [See Apioendix Ko. 3.] 



I confess, however, I cannot understand statements made to 

 me by more than one observer, that ring-barking trees is a 

 greater source of water than allowing them to live. One friend 

 has informed me that " within the last fifteen years about two- 

 fifths of the timber in the watershed of the Hunter has been 

 destroyed by sapping or ring-barking, and that the number of 

 cattle and sheep is three tim^es as great as it was fifteen years 

 ago, and that the chief result which has followed sapping, in every 

 place and luitnout exception, so far as his observations have gone, 

 has been that the creeks which were formerly dry watercourses, 

 only containing water for a few days after heavy rain, have be- 

 come permanent streams and, even in last year's very dry weather, 

 showed no signs of failing. This result was quite unlooked for 

 by those who sapped the land. There are, he says, on his own 

 run two creeks flowing from opposite sides of the same range. 

 One which flows west used to have water except in very dry seasons, 

 and was taken up by selectors twelve years since. The other 

 flowing east had no water, and so was not taken by selectors 

 but was purchased by me, and all the timber in its watershed 

 sapped. There is a strong stream of water running in it now. 

 and has been for the last five years ; whilst last summer the 

 selectors on the other creek were verv short of water, and are 

 now sapping the timber so as to cause a flow of it." 



It seems to m.e perfectly clear that there may be other physi- 

 cal causes than the one suggested by my friend for the local 

 alteration in the water supply. Admitting with him, as I do, 

 that the forests at the head of the drainage, on the main 

 ranges, have not been touched, and that the average rainfall has 

 not been diminished ; perhaps, in the increase of cattle and 

 sheep spoken of, trampling down the soil may have occasioned 

 more water than of old to run off" to the creeks instead of sink- 

 ing into the soil. The solution suggested appears to me very 

 much akin to the old logic respecting Tenterden steeple and the 

 Goodwin 8ands, the former of which was facetiously held to be 

 the cause of the latter. 



The mass of evidence supplied in the present paper from all 

 parts of the world must, I humbly conceive, overbear any 

 inference from unexamined actual phenomena brought against 

 that evidence ; but it would be unwise to test the supposition by 

 clearing away every stick of wood from the ground with A'andalic 

 extermination, which would be the only wise course if cutting 

 down trees or killing them off" whilst standing can really change 

 dry gullies into living streams. 



It is not to be doubted that judicious clearing is a benefit, and 

 it may be admitted that grass does not always prosper in imme- 



