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FOREST DESTRUCTION IN NEW SOUTH WALES AND 

 ITS EFFECTS ON THE FLOW OF WATER IN WATER- 

 COURSES AND ON THE RAINFALL. 

 By W. E. Abbott, Wingen. 



[Read before the Royal Society of N.S.W., June 6, 1888.'] 



In July, 1880, an essay which I wrote on "Ring-barking and its 

 Effects," was read before this Society, and will be found in the 

 Journal for that year. My object now is to lay before the 

 members of the Royal Society, and place on record for future use, 

 the results of observations and experiments which I have made 

 on the same land, and on land adjoining that of which I then 

 wrote. In my former essay I showed what had been the effect 

 during a period of ten years of destroying the natural forest 

 growth on some land of my own in the watershed of the Upper 

 Hunter River, and what had been the general effect of ring-barking 

 in that part of New South Wales for a period of about twenty 

 years. The land of which I wrote is situated about twelve miles 

 south-east of Murrurundi, on the Page River, a small tributary 

 of the Hunter, has been in the possession of my family for more 

 than forty years, and has been under my personal observation 

 since I was old enough to observe anything. Writing in 1880, 

 I showed that from 1847 to 1870 all the small creeks— and they 

 are very numerous on this estate — had been dry water-courses 

 never containing any water except for a short time after rain had 

 fallen, and never running permanently throughout the summer 

 no matter how favourable the season might be. In 1869, ; 70, 

 and '71, a considerable portion of the land was ring-barked for 

 the purpose of sweetening and improving the grass, but without 

 any idea of what the effect might be on the flow of water in the 

 creeks or water-courses or on the rainfall. At that time, as now, 

 many of the wise men of New South Wales told us that the effect 

 of destroying the forest growth would be to dry up the springs 

 and rivers, and reduce the rainfall of the country. We were 

 told that this had been the invariable result of forest destruction 

 in Europe and in America, and must be the inevitable effect of 

 such action here. We were urged to conserve the forests already 

 in existence, and plant the great western plains of New South 

 Wales with trees for the purpose of increasing the annual rainfall 

 and the natural water supply. A late President of this Society 



