68 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Jan., 1899. 
humidity,’ &c., but there have been men, profoundly learned in some 
“sciences,” who were quite ignorant in respect to others, who have presumed 
to make the assertion just quoted. 
History records hundreds of cases where the destruction of forests 
resulted most disastrously upon the climate of the denuded countries, and in 
some cases the re-afforestation of those places—always effected under almost 
insuperable difficulties—brought about the former prosperous conditions. In 
the Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, vol. vii. p. 28 (January, 
1896), is given a statement of the condition of the provinces of Tartary in 
1826, the most noted being that of Soyd, as described by Malte Brun, in 
writing of the Khanate of Bucharia, or Bokhara. ‘For eight days (says Iban 
Hanhob) we may travel in the country of Soyd, and not be out of one delicious 
garden. On every side villages, rich cornfields, fruitful orchards, interspersed 
by rivulets, reservoirs, and canals,” and so on. About 1876 another writer 
said: “‘The Khanate of Bucharia presents a striking example of the con- 
sequences brought by clearing. Within a period of thirty years this was one 
of the most fertile regions of Central Asia, a country which, when well watered, 
was a terrestrial paradise; but within the last twenty-five years a mania of 
clearing has seized the inhabitants, and all the great forests have been cut 
away, and the little that remained was ravaged by fire during the civil war. 
The consequence was not long in following, and has transformed the country 
into a kind of arid desert. The watercourses have dried up, and irrigating 
channels are empty. The moving sands of the desert, being no longer 
restrained by barriers of forest, are every day gaining upon the land, and will 
finish by transforming it into a desert as desolate as the solitudes that divide 
it from Khiva. 
The “roof of the world”—the Himalayas—on one side is almost a desert 
now, but was once very populous, until the forests were destroyed. The other 
side of the same mountains is heavily timbered, has a large number of big 
rivers, and maintains an immense population. ‘The now arid plains of 
Australind (South Asia) were once heavily timbered, but the trees were 
destroyed, and desolation followed. Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, France, 
England, South Africa, India, all have suffered from destruction of forests— 
England less than the others, owing to her position, but where forests now 
exist they are near the coast, and not inland. On the Continent, owing to 
forest destruction, several streams that were once navigable by ships will now 
hardly float a rowing boat, In America enormous areas have been denuded by 
axe and fire, and the destruction is proceeding so rapidly that the Government 
is becoming alarmed, and is making efforts to stop the destruction and to 
re-establish the forests. So far, however, there are a thousand acres denuded 
for every acre replanted. The Russian steppes, now so cold in winter and so 
fiercely hot in summer that existence there is almost impossible in parts, were 
once heavily timbered and maintained a teeming and prosperous population. 
General Dibitsch Balhanasky was responsible for this woeful work. When 
Ali Pasha burned the forests of Peloponnesus, he brought famine and desolation 
upon an earthly paradise. Cases illustrating the same effects are recorded 
concerning the islands of Ascension and Mauritius, the Azores, Denmark, 
Sweden, &c. 
On the other hand, where aridity once prevailed, by the planting of 
extensive areas with trees rain and fertility have been brought about on the 
Delta of the Nile. Within our own times there used to be only an average of 
six rainy days in the year. The Khedive caused millions of eucalypts to be 
planted during the past forty years, and now the average of rainy days has 
been increased to forty per annum. Napoleon ILI. caused millions of trees to 
be planted in France, with surprisingly beneficial effects, and in Algiers he had 
thousands of acres covered with trees, thereby doubling the number of rainy 
days. 
