52 



In Ceylon the planting of tea and coffee a few years since became an object of active 

 and to some extent speculative enterprise, the soil and climate being alike adapted to 

 both and with more profit to any other vegetable products previously grown. This led to 

 the extensive cutting off of forests, to such extent that there was reason to fear that dis- 

 tricts hastily cleared under these inducements might be so changed that there could not 

 be a few years' cultivation. Dr. J. D. Hooker, of the Royal Kew Gardens, to whom 

 reports had been sent, in a letter dated May 27, 1873, to the Earl of Kimberley, calling 

 special attention to the consequences likely to follow this improvidence, says : — 



" It is principally on climatic considerations that the cutting down of forests seems 

 to require Government supervision. There is good reason to think that in tropical coun- 

 tries the removal of wood operates effectively in reducing the rainfall. There can at any 

 rate be no doubt that the presence of forests plays a most important part in storing the 

 rainfall and yielding up gradually to the streams a continuous supply of water, a thing, I 

 need hardly say, in a hot country, of primary importance. Moreover, the rain is retained 

 by forests on the surface of the ground ; it gradually permeates to the subsoil, and so 

 feeds the underground water-bearing strata upon which springs and wells must eventually 

 depend. If the forest is indiscriminately removed the rain runs off as fast as it falls, and 

 washes away the superficial and fertile soil with it. 



" The mischief already done in Mauritius and various West India islands is so widely 

 spread (being in some, indeed, irreparable), and the feeling of the colonists against any 

 interference on the part of the Government is apt to be so determined that I venture to 

 press upon your lordship my own opinion as to the urgency of active steps being taken in 

 the case of an island so beautiful and at present so fertUe as Ceylon. I have lately received 

 an account of the deterioration of the climate of some of the leeward islands, which affords 

 a melancholy confirmation of what I have urged above. 



" The contrast between neighbouring islands similarly situated is most striking. The 

 sad change which has befallen the smaller ones is without any doubt to be ascribed to 

 human agency alone. !^t is recorded of these that in former times they were clothed with 

 dense forests, and their older inhabitants remembered when the rains were abundant and 

 the hiUs and all uncultivated places were shaded by extensive groves. The removal of the 

 trees was certainly the cause of the present evil. The opening of the soil to the vertical 

 sun rapidly dries up the moisture and prevents the rain from sinking to the roots of the 

 plants. The rainy seasons in these climates are not continuous, cloudy days, but succes- 

 sions of sudden showers, with the sun shining hot in the intervals. Without shadfr upon 

 the surface, the water is rapidly exhaled, and springs and streams diminish. 



" It is not, however, simply to the restriction of the removal of existing forests that I 

 would venture to direct your lordship's attention, but also to the object, no less important, 

 of making new plantations of forest trees useful for timber and in the arts. Such planta- 

 tions would serve the double object of retaining the desired humidity and of yielding a 

 revenue to the island." 



The Khanate of Bucharia presents a striking example of the consequences brought 

 upon a country by clearings. Within a period of thirty years this was one of the most 

 fertile regions of Central Asia, a country which when well wooded and watered was a 

 terrestrial paradise. But within the last twenty-five years a mania of clearing has seized 

 upon the inhabitants, and all the great forests have been cut away, while the little that 

 remained was ravaged by fire during a civil war. The consequences were not long in 

 following, and have transformed this country into a kind of arid desert. The water- 

 courses are dried up and the irrigating canals empty. The moving sands of the desert 

 being no longer restrained by barriers of forest are every day gaining upon the land, and 

 •will finish by transforming into a desert as desolate as the solitudes that separate it from 

 Khiva. 



