EFFECT OF SETTLEMENT UPON INDIGENOUS VEGETATION. DAN 
remedy as yet taken only by a few, whose number however is 
quickly increasing. On most runs, even if fully stocked, there is 
a superabundance of feed of all kinds in a good season, and the 
stock do not diminish it greatly. Hundreds of thousands of acres 
of good pasture are allowed to stand uneaten in a drooping season, 
till it dries up and is either set fire to accidentally or purposely ; 
or till it blows away in dry straw. Butif taken at the right 
stage enormous masses of hay could be made with the expenditure 
of a little trouble and less money. A mowing machine and a 
horse rake would be the means of conserving enough fodder in a 
good season to tide many an owner over a drought. And still 
better while the fodder was young and green, it could be made 
into juicy silage, far more fattening and palatable to stock than 
even bush hay. These methods of conservation would still leave 
the plants alive and with a chance to survive the drought when 
it came. 
But as things are at present, our forage plants (and they are 
our most valuable plants, since our chief wealth lies in our sheep 
and cattle) are likely, if not to become extinct, at least to get 
scarcer and scarcer every year. All practical and experienced men 
are agreed that during the past twenty years the plains have 
diminished in stock bearing capability twenty or thirty per cent., 
and that the diminution continues year by year. 
The above remarks apply more particularly to the plains, where 
the pressure of dry seasons is felt more severely than in either the 
coast district or the table-lands. But even in these districts many 
fodder plants are becoming rarer, and numerous settlers have 
felt the necessity of laying down. artificial pastures with foreign 
grasses to make up for the diminished grazing capabilities of their 
holdings. 
Another remedy has been suggested, 7.e., the conservation of 
rainfall with a view to irrigation. Where irrigation has been 
experimented with on the plains, the combination of heat and 
moisture has caused a phenomenal growth in herbage. 
