APPENDIX. 227 



and Clarence Elvers, where dense scrubs containing very large 

 trees occur. In those localities it is almost continually raining. 

 About three years ago I made a survey of one of the heads of the 

 Clarence River and the watershed between that river and the 

 Macleay, and was five v/eeks in the scrub region. During the 

 whole of that time, although the inhabitants there told me the 

 weather was no wetter than usual, there were only four days in 

 in which we were not drenched to the skin. That the weather 

 was in its ordinarj^ state was proved by the colour of the water 

 in the streams, which, although copious, was not turbid, as it 

 would have been if they had been in fresh. But in the more 

 open country, twenty or thirty miles inland from those localities, 

 the rainfall is not nearly one-half. This must be owing to the 

 dense vegetation a great deal more than to the fact that the 

 steep and high escarpment forming the edge of the table-land 

 catches the rain-clouds : for when on the top of Point Look-out 

 (5,100 feet high, by aneroid) the sun was shining on us, whilst 

 we could distinctly see the rain pouring in torrents several 

 hundred feet below, and though the place on which the rain was 

 falling was not half-a-mile away, it was more than twenty miniites 

 before it reached the peak. It travelled upwards, and it was 

 quite as interesting to watch its approach as it was unpleasant 

 when it arrived."- 



(No. 8.) — Forest Protection in the Sandwich Islands. 



To complete the evidence from all parts of the globe, tlie fol- 

 lowing extract from the Hawaiian Gazette published at Honolulu, 

 13 Sept., 1876, is appended : — 



" A Bill has *passed the Assembly which at first sight may be 

 thought to be a step in the direction of forest preservation and 

 increase; — a measure for want of which the Islands have been 

 suffering for many years, and will, we fear, continue to suffer as 

 long as the present indifference on this subject continues. 



" What is wanted here is a system of forest culture and con- 

 servation similar to those which various European nations have 

 found themselves forced to adopt or, forfeit their national 

 existence. We must adopt a system whose corner-stone is the 

 axiom, 'The greatest good to the greatest number.' If history, 

 and experience, and science have thoroughly demonstrated any 

 one thing in the world of material things, it is that forests are as 

 necessary to the life of a land as lungs are to the life of the 

 animal. When a land is shorn of its forests, its green fields 

 become barren wastes, its rivers become dry in summer, and 

 raging, destructive torrents in winter. Its inhabitants diminish 

 in numbers, and it finally becomes a desert, fit only for the abode 

 of owls and bats. 



