202 EFFECTS OF FOEEST VEGETATION OK CLIMATE. 



destruction of timber for fuel without making provision for a 

 fresh growth." 



He cites also " the British Colonies of Barbados Q), Jamaica Q), 

 Penang ('"), and the Mauritius Q [see for the latter the note 

 below*] where the felling of forests has been attended by a diminu- 

 tion of rain." The Punjaub, the Dekkan, Steppes of Tartary, 

 Algeria, Texas, New Mexico, testify the same fact in all 

 parts of the earth, that " trees are the true rain-makers." " But," 

 he says, " we must not stop here, the evil is of such magnitude, 

 and likely to bear so abundant a harvest of misery in the future, 

 that the authority of law, wherever practicable, should be invoked, 

 in order to institute preventive measures. 



" Not only should fuel be economized, but the real interests of 

 the British Colonies, for many long years to come, would most 

 certainly be consulted by the passage of stringent enactments 

 which should, in the first place, forbid, at any season and under 

 any circumstances whatever, the firing of grass on field or moun- 

 tain. Those Colonial Acts on this subject are not sufficiently 

 stringent to be of much service." 



In conclusion of his paper, Mr. "Wilson points out the neces- 

 sity of re-planting, and introduces among the trees recommended 

 for planting along the courses of rivers by the late Dr. Harvey, 

 Professor of Botany at Dublin (whom I remember to have seen 

 in this Colony on a visit), some of the dwarfer and more leafy 

 Ei{.Gahj]}ti ; and suggests the formation in ravines of artificial 

 reservoirs and damming of watercourses as in Australia, recom- 

 mended by Mr. Prancis Galton. To this I would ofi'er the 

 further suggestion of planting near such reservoirs, as it is now 

 discovered that such reservoirs as the Yan Yean for instance, if 

 repeated, would collect all the drainage of a country only to 

 expose their surfaces to greater evaporation than the water was 

 subject to in its natural channels. 



Speculation has recently turned its conjectures as to the 

 possibility of creating a new inland sea in Northern Africa. 

 In an abstract of a report relating to it, written in August last, 



(1) Phil. Trans, ii. 294. (2) Journal of Indian Arcliipelago. (.3) Thorn- 

 ton's History of India. (4) Baude's Algeria. 78-81. 



*■ The following is a rejjort from the Mauritius corresjDondent of the 

 Sydney Herald, published in the Echo of 25th July, 1876 : — 



" The Legislative Council has had its usual number of sittings during the 

 month. At one of the last of these the subject of re-wooding the island by 

 the purchase by Government of land and planting of forest trees was again 

 brought on the tapis. 



Our forests have been ruthlessly destroyed, in some cases with the object 

 of planting sugar-canes, and in others with the mere view of selling firewood, 

 and now the result is apparent in continual droughts, and in the disappear- 

 ance of the streams which vsere formerly abundant in every part of the 

 island." 



