1 Aprin, 1902.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 277 
Forestry. 
INTERIOR LAND CHANGEs. 
Those of our readers who dwell in the neighbourhood of sand-dunes and 
inland sand-drifts will doubtless have been impressed with the illustrations and 
article we presented in our February issue, describing the progress of some of 
the coastal sand dunes of Southern Queensland. We have been unable to 
obtain photographs of the sand-drifts in our Western country, but, by the 
courtesy of the Hon. the Secretary for Mines and Agriculture of New 
South Wales, we are enabled to reproduce some graphic illustrations of the 
Interior Land Changes in New South Wales due to drifting sand, which will 
serve to give some idea of what is happening in parts of Western Queensland, 
We also print the very readable article on the subject by Mr. C. A. Benbow, 
which appeared, together with the illustrations, in the October issue of the Vew 
South Wales Agricultural Guzette (Vol. XIL. Part 10,1901). Mr. Benbow 
writes :— 
The purpose of this paper will be better served if descriptions are given 
of what has taken place in other regions of the world, and then compare with 
what appears to be happening in our own portion ofAustralia, and before 
our eyes, and illustrated by photographs herewith. 
In Africa, cities and towns to the west of the River Nile, flourishing in. 
the times of the Pharaohs, and even of the Ptolemies, have been buried by 
sand-drifts, and more modern ones as well, leaving the summits of minarets 
and mosques above the surface, having buried the fertile lands from which the 
inhabitants obtained the means of ‘ail and sustenance. 
Various writers have spoken of the wealth buried under the sands of the 
Great Sahara Desert, supposed to have been a lake or inland sea, and the 
flooding from the Mediterranean has been suggested as practicable by reason 
of its being below the waters of that sea. ‘I'he desert was formerly remote 
from Egypt, the oases or habitable spots still appearing in it being the remains 
of the soil formerly extending the whole way to the Nile, which the sands, 
transported hither by the westerly winds, have overwhelmed and thus doomed. 
to sterility, a land which was once remarkable for its fruitfulness. The 
desert has invaded Egypt, and the moderns are at this date digging out 
the sands and exposing her buried cities, and reclaiming their archeological 
treasures. Illustrations of these works are appearing in the Scientific American 
of present and recent dates, more especially of the Mesopotamian deserts, as 
instanced by the ruins of Nippur, from which has been recently obtained a library 
of 3,000 most valuable records. In the heart of the Syrian desert are the relics 
of the mysterious cities of antiquity—the Tadmor in the wilderness of a remote 
time, the Palmyra of a more modern time (named from the masses of palms which 
grew in such abundance as to stamp the name upon the place). This city 
defied the power of Rome for, I think, eight years, which fact could only have 
been the result of wealth and power in men and food supplies, for it is spoken 
of as being a granary. It is now represented by a few marble columns amidst 
a plain of yellow sand, these only visible now because they were built, like all 
_the ancient temples, upon a hill or eminence. Once rich and blooming 
territories, celebrated by the Persian poets as Paradisiacal—the theatre of 
heroic deeds, the seat of political power and intellectual culture, the site of 
cities which in size and splendour were second to none in Asia—have been 
visited by the movable sand, leaving but few evidences of former grandeur and 
fertility apparent. Even rivers have been choked and their courses turned 
(Dr. Milner, /p. 229). ron 
These are in brief given as evidence of what has taken place in the ~ 
northern hemisphere of the earth and of what is still going on, for these forces 
are operating now. 
