48 FOEEST CULTUBE AND 



strata the mineral elements of vegetable nutrition to 

 the surface ; how they create and maintain the sources 

 for the gentle flow of watercourses for motive power, 

 aqueducts, irrigation, water - traffic and navigation ; 

 how they mitigate or prevent malarious influences — 

 of all this we become cognizant by daily experiences 

 almost everywhere around us. We have to look, 

 therefore, far beyond a mere temporary wood supply, 

 when we wish to estimate the blessings of forest vege- 

 tation rightly ; and our mind has to grasp the com- 

 plex causes and sequences originating with and de- 

 pending on the forests, before their value as a total 

 can be understood. 



" Here, in the sultriest seaBon, let us rest : 



Fresh is the green beneath those aged trees ; 

 Here air of gentlest wing will fan our hreast — 

 From heaven itself we may inhale the breeze." 



Byboh. 



Let us then take timely warning ; let us remember 

 that denuded earth parts with its warmth by radiation, 

 and is intensely heated by insulation ; that thus in 

 woodless countrifes the extremes of climate are brought 

 about in rendering the Winter-cold far more intense 

 and boisterous, and the Summer-heat far more burning 

 and oppressive. Let us remember why the absence 

 or destruction of forests involves periodic floods and 

 droughts, with all the great disasters inseparable 

 therefrom. Let us bear in mind that even in bur 

 praised Australia many a pastoral tenant saw his herds 

 and flocks perish, and even the very kangaroos off his 

 run ; how he looked hopefully for months and months 

 at every promising cloud which drew up on the hori- 

 zon, only to dissolve rainless in the dry desert air ; 

 whereas, when the squatter's ruin was completed, 



