FOREST DESTRUCTION IN NEW SOUTH WALES. 63 



there differed from that at Glengarry, and the increased volume 

 of water in the ground caused by ring-barking evidently found its 

 way to the main river channel through the lines of stratification, 

 or through underground sand or gravel beds. Where this does 

 not occur, and where the country is mountainous or undulating, 

 the result of destroying the eucalyptus forests in New South Wales 

 is I think invariably to produce an increased flow of water in the 

 water-courses, and to cause springs of water to appear where 

 before there were none. 



With reference to the theory that growing forests attract the 

 clouds, and so cause rain to fail in their immediate neighbourhood 

 when without their presence it would not have fallen, I will not 

 say much. Our present knowledge of the causes, apart from 

 prevailing winds which determine the rainfall of any particular 

 place from year to year, and make one year differ from another 

 year, and one series of years differ from another series of years, 

 is vague and indefinite in the extreme. We know that winds 

 coming from certain directions generally but not invariably cause 

 rain to fall or are accompanied by a fall of rain, and that winds 

 from other directions are generally accompanied by dry weather, 

 and we can make some sort of a guess why this should be so, but 

 why the wind should blow more constantly from one direction 

 one year, and from a different direction another year, we are 

 unable to tell. No one, I am sure, will contend that the direction, 

 force, and quantity of wind from year to year, can possibly be 

 determined by forest growth or forest destruction at any particular 

 place. The changes are far too rapid to be accounted for in this 

 way, and the extent of sea and land over which a steady wind, 

 lasting even for a week, will have travelled is so great that it 

 cannot be accounted for by the local conditions of any one country 

 or even of any one continent. If this be so, when we assert that 

 by cutting down a few trees we are reducing the rainfall, or that 

 by planting a few trees we are increasing the rainfall, are we not 

 acting in much the same way as the fly which perched on the 

 waggon wheel and exclaimed in exultation, "See what a dust I 

 am making." 



The rainfall records kept at Paris, and covering about two 

 centuries, show no decline in the rainfall of that place, though 

 the changes which man is capable of producing have been there 

 very great within the time covered by the record. Some 

 records in the Eastern States of America cover more than a 

 century, and show no sign of any decline in the average rainfall, 

 although in those States during the time over which the record 

 extends, the amount of forest destruction going on has been 

 greater than in any other part of the World. These records, like 

 all others that have been kept for a sufficiently long period, vary 



