NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL VEGETATION.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 47, 28 January 1843, Page 187

NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL VEGETATION.

The repeated complaints we hear of the nonproductiveness of the soil of New South Wales, owing to the periodical dryness of the atmosphere, induces us to offer a few general remarks on the subject. It is a well-ascertained fact, that the moisture required to sustain the fertility of a virgin soil is just three times more than the humidity required to fertilize artificial earths. This is attributable to distinct causes. Artificial soils are so composed as to be sufficiently retentive of moisture, or loose and friable, to admit the exhalation of the sub-soil to support through the summer months the vegetation on the surface, while special care is taken to select the herbnge best suited to their composition. If the farmer finds he has a superabundance of moisture, he drains his land ; but if his land be much exposed to the sun, and is naturally of a dry and unfriable disposition, he selects those herbs that draw 'least moisture from the soil, while they yield a continuous supply, because in smaller quantities, of the juices of the earth, to the animals that feed upon them. The great natural defect in the climate of a county is the want, or superabundance, of moisture ; and although the latter may be said to be the fault of our own climate, still we have to guard against the periodical devegitating influence of the sun, and little short of complete success has attended out efforts in our grass-farming, since, the introduction of artificial grasses. These grasses possess a variety of constitution, which renders them admirably adapted to the two great extremes of climatic evils we have named, and therefore must be still better suited to climates wherein we find any physical modifications of those evils. For example, our dwarf grasses, such as we find on our commons and sheep walks, require a very shallow surface soil and very little moisture for their sustenance,, while from their natural thickness, and proximity to the earth, they protect it from the scorching influence of the sun. But how different is it with the plains of Australia, and the prairies of North and South America, where we find the luxuriant fertility of the soil and fertilizing climate exhausting their energies, regardless of the wants of man : who, amidst their combined productiveness, sees no hopes of his wants being supplied except by the exercise of his industry, skill, and experience. The wild grasses of Australia may be said to yield nothing, when we are told that it takes four acres of land to feed one sheep, which we can readily believe to be the case. But how is it? These natural grasses are of such gigantic growth as to leave no doubt as to the prodigious fertility of the soil beneath, and the vast fertilizing influence of the climate. The answer is, the natural herbage being of such gigantic growth, must, of necessity, drain the surface-soil of its moisture, in order to meet the scorching influence of the sun ; and when the surface-soil ceases to yield its support, the sun extracts the juice of the herbage ; and before the moisture of the sub-soil can send forth its refreshing exhalation, vitality on the surface has ceased to exist, and the shepherd and his flock are left to perish in a parching atmosphere amidst the want caused by the premature decay of the most luxuriant vegetation. But how different would it be if in these fertile regions these extravagances of nature were checked by the removal of their indigenous productions, and the introduction of the artificial vegetable family, which requires little of nature, while it yields abundantly to the artificial wants of man. We cannot hope to carry our flocks and* herds into and over the wilderness of the southern hemisphere, unless we carry with us the food suited to their nature. We know that this food is not the wild, coarse, dry grasses of Australia, which are similar to the prairie grass of America, on which the buffalo and wild hoxse cannot exist except for a short season of the year ; and yet the prairies of America appear to the inexperienced observer to be endless pastures, well adapted to feed all kinds of stock, and many ore surprised to see them still unoccupied by the shepherd and hisilock. This is a fact easily explained. The sheep, and indeed the ox, would not find one mouthful of grass suited to its taste in a space of ten acres, and so it is in Australia. The native grasses are rank and sour when the earth is -moist ; and dry, harsh, and worthless when the soil is dry ; and, were it not that the climate is so congenial to the growth of wool, sheep would be valueless in Australia as they are in America. Finally, we have only to observe that the present m 0,3 of sheep-farming in Ne\. South Wales must sooner or later be abandoned ; but the idea of one sheep requiring four acres of land to feed it, is a paradoxical absurdity, which will continue in the minds of our Polynesian colonists until they find that, by the cultivation of proper pasturage for their flocks, they can feed four sheep on one acre, instead of allowing four acres to one sheep. — Emigration Gazette. Association of Ideas. — Many children imputing the pain they endured at school to their books they were corrected for, so join those ideas, together that a book becomes their aversion, and they are never reconciled to the study and use of them all their lives after; and thus. reading becomes a torment to them, which otherwise possibly they might have made the great pleasure of their lives. — Locke. A Convenient Candlestick. — While Lady Edgeworth was living at Lissard, she was, on some sudden alarm, obliged to go at night to a garret at the top of the house, for some gunpowder, which was kept there in a barrel. She was followed up stairs by an ignorant servant girl, 'who - carried a bit of candle without a candlestick between her fingers. When Lady Edgeworth had taken what gunpowder she wanted, bad locked the door and was half way down stairs again, she observed that the girl had not her caudle, and asked what she had done with it; the girl recollected and answered, that she had left it " ttUek in the barrel of black tatt.".: Lady Edgeworth bid her stand still, and instantly returnedby herself to the room' where thCgnbpQwder was? found the candle aa the girl had described — put her hand carefully underneath it — carried it safely oat, and when she got to £h«.bottom of the stairs, dropped on her knees, and thanked God for "their deliverance.— Mtmoin of Mr. BOfubrtfu B* -, Himself. -'