s, then most frequent, may destroy the promise of the wood
over a vast area.

The want of forests in South Africa is one of the greatest misfortunes
of the country, for it makes timber costly; it helps to reduce the
rainfall, and it aggravates the tendency of the rain, when it comes, to
run off rapidly in a sudden freshet. Forests have a powerful influence
upon climate in holding moisture,[5] and not only moisture, but soil
also. In South Africa the violent rain-storms sweep away the surface of
the ground, and prevent the deposition of vegetable mould. Nothing
retains that mould or the soil formed by decomposed rock as well as a
covering of wood and the herbage which the neighbourhood of
comparatively moist woodlands helps to support. It is much to be desired
that in all parts of the country where trees will grow trees should be
planted, and that those which remain should be protected. Unfortunately,
most of the South African trees grow slowly, so where planting has been
attempted it is chiefly foreign sorts that are tried. Among these the
first place belongs to the Australian gums, because they shoot up faster
than any others. One finds them now everywhere, mostly in rows or groups
round a house or a hamlet, but sometimes also in regular plantations.
They have become a conspicuous feature in the landscape of the veldt
plateau, especially in those places where there was no wood, or the
little that existed has been destroyed. Kimberley, for instance, and
Pretoria are beginning to be embowered in groves of eucalyptus; Buluwayo
is following suit; and all over Matabililand and Mashonaland one
discovers in the distance the site of a farm-steading or a store by the
waving tops of the gum-trees. If this goes on these Australian
immigrants will sensibly affect the aspect of the country, just as
already they have affected that of the Riviera in south-eastern France,
of the Campagna of Rome, of the rolling tops of the Nilghiri Hills in
Southern India, from which, unhappily, the far more beautiful ancient
groves ("sholas") have now almost disappeared. Besides those gums,
another Australasian tree, the thin-foliaged and unlovely, but
quick-growing "beefwood," has been largely planted at Kimberley and some
other places. The stone-pine of Southern Europe, the cluster-pine
(_Pinus Pinaster_), and the Aleppo or Jerusalem pine (_Pinus
Halepensis_), have all been introduced and seem to do well. The
Australian wattles have been found very