DISCUSSIOK. 233 



side of tlie ledger must be filled in (till the data have been 

 produced) by experiences — and in such case the experience 

 of the whole world, I may say, is no mean representative. This, 

 therefore, represents what I have to say against the injudicious 

 destruction of forest vegetation. And if it be not enough to 

 satisfy commercial interests, it ought at least to satisfy common 

 sense and unbiased judgment. " The facetiae as to creating 

 water" are founded on what I would not like to call ignorance of 

 physics, but certainly on a want of recollection. What is rain — 

 what is snow — what is hail — what is fog — what, dew ? All are 

 but variousforms of precipitated or condensed vapour ; nor can that 

 vapour become or be created rain till the vapour has been sub- 

 jected to some process, visible or invisible, by which the atmo- 

 sphere which holds the vapour has by some agency been forced to 

 part with it. If forests act as an agency of the kind, he who 

 plants trees or preserves trees, capable of performing any portion 

 of this agency, is a creator of water ; and however ridiculous it 

 it may seem to a sceptical opponent, reason will teach us that if 

 the statements I have quoted are reliable, " forest vegetation" is 

 an agency in " creating water." I have quoted the case of 

 Ascension Island in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as 

 other oceanic islands, in order to show how, even in the midst of 

 the ocean itself, rain ceased when vegetation was destroyed, or 

 passed suspended as vapour over the speck of land, and that it 

 again resumed its fall when re-plantation had taken place, and 

 singularly enough some of the chief plants introduced to effect this 

 return to former deposition of moisture were our Australian wat- 

 tles. In this instance, at least, trees were condensers of vapour on 

 a mere speck of land surrounded by the ocean waters, whicli 

 refused to contribute to a naked surface. Similar instances occur 

 even on the edge of or within a desert, and the report of Yice- 

 Consul Dupuis to the British Crovernment on the condition of 

 the desert country in the neighbourhood of Tunis may be referred 

 to in confirmation. We are told what Elihu Burritt says of the 

 loss of £8,000 by allowing one hedge oak tree to stand (when 

 perhaps according to some, it ought to have been ring-barked or 

 better cut down). But does any one in his senses believe that 

 that tree did not spread moisture around it, keep vegetation 

 greener in the vicinity, suck up nutriment, or supply it to deep 

 strata, and shed its leaves to nourish the soil? It may haA'"ebeen 

 three centuries before the farmer took up his land, and if he pre- 

 ferred the handful of grass that could grow where it stood, he 

 might, in all probability, have found space enough elsewhere in 

 some unoccupied patch of ground on his farm for a similar quan- 

 tity. If an oak by its roots carries down moisture to deep 

 oracles in the underlying strata, and so adds to springs ; or, if 

 even a gum-tree, whose roots run along just below the surface, do 



