42 Anniversary Address. 



store it for use. Tet very few do this, confining themselves to 

 periodical interludes of alternate complainings of droughts and 

 deluges, and doing nothing whatever to help themselves. 



Similarly, with an utter regardlessness to the "laws of nature" 

 of which we hear so much, men go with their flocks and herds to 

 dwell in places, from which, as a rule, they are sure to be swept 

 away by such floods as those which have of late desolated many 

 parts along our river beds, balancing in their minds, or not as the 

 case may be, that what they lose in one way is gained in another 

 though not always by the sufi"erers. 



The main body of a great flood destroys much of the property 

 that is on its immediate border ; but tlie hacTcioaters of the same 

 flood spread over the more distant flats a rich manure brought 

 down from the hills as a compensation for its ravages elsewhere. 

 The ancient inhabitants of such places as the Pomptine marshes 

 in Italy built their dwellings out of the reach of miasma, though 

 once, before the sea invaded them, they were fertile tracts and 

 thickly inhabited. And to this day the people who farm the 

 Campagna only visit it for the sake of needful husdandry, return- 

 ing from its pestilential atmosphere to the higher lands. Not 

 one of these, I verily believe, would have had the folly to dwell 

 ^n a Biver bed liable to a repetition of floods week after week ; 

 though it must be admitted that the older settlers, continue to 

 occupy the sites of towns, that were exposed, but at long intervals 

 (many centuries), to the ashes and lava streams of Yesuvius, as 

 the remains still testify. 



Certainly, after the disasters of Gundagai in 1851, and of the 

 Hunter and Hawkesbury in 1870, it would be a merciful inter- 

 ference of Government to prevent any fresh formation of town- 

 ships in such perilous places as many that could be named ; for 

 instance, on the Shoalhaven Eiver many houses have been erected 

 on a sandy deposit, itself produced by floods, and forming the 

 actual bank of the river. 



No doubt, it is a noble act to assist nature by engineering 

 skill to carry off" the torrents that have had their original 

 channels distui'bed and blocked up by careless occupiers of the 

 soil, and it is generous and praiseworthy to relieve distresses that 



