SAND-DRIFT PROBLEM OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 99 
trolled destruction of trees may be attended with most 
disastrous consequences to any country, and in a further 
paper ‘* Mitigation of Floods in the Hunter River,’ I have 
endeavoured also to arrive at the first principles which 
result in mighty consequences. 
As regards the sad state of our Western lands, which 
has inflicted untold misery on domestic animals and on 
lion-hearted humanity, am I not justified when I say that 
enquiries into the subject are usually too much taken up 
with a sad catalogue of privations and catastrophes, and 
that too little attention is given to directing the rays of 
Science upon the ultimate causes of the existing state 
of things? Are we not in the position of an anxious 
physician who is trying to cope with an obscure disease ; 
he must apply his remedies more or less empirically. But 
now-a-days medical men are trying to get at the origin of 
disease, at the pathogenic organism that causes it, at the 
conditions which promote its growth or retard its develop- 
ment, and treatment and preventive steps are based upon 
knowledge as far removed from empiricism as possible. 
As regards the bacillus of the drifting sands of the 
interior, Heaven preserve me from the presumption that 
I have discovered it, or that I am able to suggest a wholly 
satisfactory remedy, but if the scientific men of this State 
will give attention to the subject, and systematically make 
observations and collect data, I do not doubt that the drift- 
ing sands of New South Wales will be kept under control. 
2. Area of sand-drift country.—The sand-drift country 
extends in its greatest intensity from our western boundary 
to the Darling. To a lesser degree it includes most of the 
Cretaceous and Cainozoic territory of our geological maps. 
Reference may be made to the botanical map of New South 
+ This Journal, xxxvi., p. 107. 
