PREFACE. 



In a treatise on the Hydrology of South Africa I have given 

 details of destructive effects of torrential floods at the Cape of 

 Good Hope and Natal, and referred to the measures adopted in 

 France to prevent the occurrence of similar disastrous floods 

 there. The attention of the Legislative Assembly at the Cape of 

 Good Hope was, last year, called by one "of the members of the 

 Assembly to the importance of planting trees on unproductive 

 Crown lands. On learning that this had been done I addressed 

 to the editor of the Cape Argus a communication, of which the 

 following is a copy: — 



My last communication shows, I coQsider, no lack of interest on my part in 

 whatever may tend to secure the couservation aad improved management of the 

 forests of the Colony ; but important as I consider the fact that attention is being 

 given by the Legidature to a suggestion by the Conservator of forests at the 

 Zitzikamma, having this for its object, I attach still more importance to the faet 

 that attention is being called in the Legislative Assembly to the question of the 

 expediency of planting Crown lands with trees. 



In several other countries the same work has been begun ; and the evils against 

 one or more of which they are seeking in these countries to protect themselves by 

 planting trees by the million, are all of them already to be met with at the Cape, 

 and many of them are to be met with there at the same time and in the same 

 place, all mustering in full force, while elsewhere in many cases it is only the 

 anticipation and dread of some one or other of them, or the partial prevalence of 

 them, which has prompted to the precautionary measure. At the Cape, through- 

 out extensive districts, we meet with want of fuel, multitudes being driven to the 

 use of mist in cooking food, and multitudes more numerous being unable to obtain 

 even this ; winds powerful, if not terrific, sweep over the land, with hail and 

 tempest ; droughts, long-continued droughts, alternate with deluges of rain and' 

 thunderstorms ; heat by day in some districts is succeeded not unf requently by frosty 

 nights ; locusts and voetgangers remind one of what is written of Judea, " That 

 which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten, and that which the locust 

 hath left hath the cankerworm eaten, and that which the cankerworm hath left 

 hath the caterpillar eaten ;" and then, when it is least expected — the sky 

 unclouded, the sun or the moon shining in its brightness, — down comes a river, 

 carrying all before its wave. 



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