212 EFFECTS OF FOEEST VEGETATION ON CLIMATE. 



the trampling of flocks and herds. Having noticed that many of 

 our streams and rivers rise in swamps that lie in hollows of our 

 hard, fissured, and dry rock formations, I ventured, in my Eeport 

 to the Government, in October, 1851, to suggest that " it would 

 be worth the attention of the Legislature, how best to preserve 

 the integrity of the swamps," " satisfied that the greatest injury 

 that could be inflicted upon the pastoral and other rural occupa- 

 tions of the colonists would be the introduction of the sj^stem of 

 swamp drainage." 



Perchance some may tliink it to be a stepping out of mj- 

 proper province to repeat that warning, and may remind me of 

 the old saying, " JVe sutor ultra crepidamy But something is 

 required to be done at once if our waters are to be conserved 

 for times yet future, when manufacturing industries will 

 extend. Not only ought the present destruction of timber 

 that goes on in various parts of the country to be checked 

 and regulated by law, but provision should be made for the re- 

 planting of many a naked tract of former forest vegetation. I 

 might appeal to the Surveyor General on this subject, as he well 

 knows that in some of our auriferous areas the whole of the timber 

 has been ruthlessly cleared away. Similar practices have been 

 employed by diggers in Victoria, and large areas have been 

 completely denuded without any replanting, much (as I believe) 

 to the vexation of that eminent botanist and public friend of the 

 sister Colony, Baron von Mueller, whose labours in botanical 

 science have earned him a name . surrounded with enduring- 

 respect. 



The views expressed by that learned and ever-active philoso- 

 pher, in one of his elaborate treatises on Australian vegetation, 

 fully bear out the testimony offered by so many other indepen- 

 dent authorities as to the effects of " lofty and wooded ranges 

 originating springs and rivulets for the formation of larger 

 rivers." JSTor is his language too enthusiastic when he says : — 

 " On this I wisli to dwell — that in Australian vegetation we pro- 

 bably possess the means of obliterating the rainless zones of the 

 globe ; to spread at last woods over our deserts, and thereby to 

 mitigate the distressing drought, and to annihilate perhaps even 

 that occasionally excessive dry heat evolved by the sun's rays 

 from the naked ground throughout extensive regions of -the 

 interior ***** Even the rugged escarpments of the 

 desolate ranges of Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco might become 

 wooded ; even the Sahara itself might have the extent of its 

 oases vastly augmented ; fertility might again be restored to the 

 Holy Land, and rain to the Asiatic plateau or the desert of Ata- 

 cama, or timber and fuel be furnished to ISTatal and La Plata. 

 An experiment instituted on a bare ridge near our metropolis 

 {i.e, Melbourne) demonstrates what may be done." The Baron 



