BACK TO THE ROCKS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 132, 2 December 1930, Page 3

BACK TO THE ROCKS

AND TO PLATO

THE WAY OF ALL' FLESH i

Iv countries with a central -wooded mountain range, surrounded by wides far-spreading lower country, there is some chance that the soil washed awayj from the mountains (through deforesta* tion and denudation) may come to rest! somewhere on the plains. In which! case, it may become silt in the wrong, place, but it will not necessarily be lost* But where the mountains. abut on a' coastline surrounded with rapidly deep" ening water, the tendency is foJr l)~uge> flooded rivers to wash soiL to sea. Thus insular New Zealand, by deforestation} of poor, steep country, not only export^ a few bales of wool snatched preeari-* ously from slipping slope's fpi" a few] brief grassable seasons; she also ex* ports the soil itself. The substance] goes to sea. Nothing comes back-; Beading the story of vanishing- trees,; landslips, and uncovered rocks, Captain' E. V. Sanderson writes, in a Bulletin of; the JN re>v Zealand Native Birds' Protect tion Society, that "in a country "lika New Zealand, where by far the larger proportion of our land is hill and moiin« tain country, we are working back to? the original rocks and at the same timeJ are forming other lands under the sea.'* But he observes that Plato warned AU tica against the same practices about] 400 B.C. Using Toynbee's translation,; ho thus pictures the Attica of Plato anil since: Contemporary Attica may accurately} be described as a mere relic of tha original country, as 1 shall proceed to.' explain. In configuration Attica con« sists. entirely of a Jong peninisula protruding from the mass of the continent into the sea, and the surrounding marine basin is known to shelve steeplyj round the whole coastline. In consequence of the successive violent deluge.* which have occurred within the past 0000 years, there has been a constant movement of soil away from the high; altitudes; and owing to the shelving relief of the coast this soil, instead of; laying down, alluvium, as it does else* where, to any appreciable extent, haS been perpetually deposited in the deeps sea round the periphery of the country^ or, in other words, lost; so that Attici has undergone the process observable in small islands, and what remains o£, her substance is like the skeleton of a? body emaciated by disease as compared;' with her original relief. All the rieh^ soft soil has moulted away, leaving ai country of skin and bones. At tha period, however, with which we ara_ dealing, when Attica was still intact^ what are now her mountains were loftjj soil-clad hills; her so-called 'shingle! plains of the present day were full off] rich soil; and her mountains wergheavily afforested —a fact of WhieTi' there are still visible traces. There are mountains in Attica ■which,1 can now keep nothing but bees, bufc, which were clothed not so very long ago with fine trees producing timbeq suitable for roofing the largest buildings; and roofs hewn from this timber are still in existence. There were also) many lofty cultivated trees, while thai country produced boundless pasture fog cattle. The annual supply of rainfall] was not lost as it is at present through; being allowed to flow over the denuded: surface into the sea,: but was received; by the country, in all its abundance^ into her bosom, where she- stored it in! her impervious potter's earth and sof' was able to discharged the drainage of! the heights into the hollows in the fornt of springs and rivers with an abundant volume and a Avide territorial distribu* tion. The springs that survive to thai present day on the sites of extinct! water supplies are evidence for thaj! correctness of my present hypothesis.