Was it not a landscape fresh from Nature's brush divinely transmogrified by one bold smudge of yellow-green haze? Or was the effect partly due to the dust raised by the golden fringe of the blue mantle which the sun trailed over the glowing hills? I know naught of the chemistry of colours, nor why this yellow-green medium should so clarify and etherealise the atmosphere. But was ever clear sunset half so affecting? This tinted, luminous cloud had bewitched the commonplace, converting familiar surroundings into fairyland itself. If all the world's a stage, this truly was one of the rarest transformation scenes.
What was about to happen? Surely this mysterious colouring portended some astounding phenomena? Again, nothing did happen, save a stilly night and grey.
VEGETATION AND MOISTURE
It seems fitting and quite safe to point a moral, by allusion to certain conditions prevalent during 1907. Between January 1st and June 30th 80.80 inches of rain were registered. July, August, September, and October provided only 1.74 inches, which quantity bespeaks quite a phenomenal draught. The catchment area of the creek which discharges into Brammo Bay is less than forty acres, and for the most part consists of exceedingly steep declivities. The head of the creek is seven hundred feet above sea level, and its total length less than three-quarters of a mile. Yet, notwithstanding the circumscribed extent of the catchment, the steep, in places almost precipitous, descents, and that for months the rain was insufficient to cause a surface flow, the creek which had cut a gully or canyon forty feet deep across the plateau, never ceased running, the turbulence of the wet season having merely subsided into a tinkling trickle. During the dry period the atmosphere was the reverse of humid; but the almost impenetrable shield of vegetation—the beauty and glory of the Island—discounted loss by evaporation. One can well imagine that in the absence of this gracious protection the creek would cease to flow a week or so after the cessation of rain.
The marked but consistent decrease of water in the creek by day and its rise during the night having excited interest, a series of measurements was taken, the result being somewhat astonishing. One day's readings will suffice, for scarcely any variation from them was recorded for weeks, concurrent meteorological conditions undergoing no sudden or decided change while the experiment was in progress:
Sunday, November 10, 1907.
Inches. 6.30 a.m. 10 1/4 9 " 10 Noon (high tide) 6 5/8 3 p.m. 3 5.30 p.m. 1 1/2 6.10 " (sundown) 1 1/2 7.10 " 3 7/8 9 " 10 1/8
At 7 a.m. on the 11th and 12th the water stood at 10 1/4 inches and I assume that to have been the constant level throughout the night.
The conclusion I draw (rightly or wrongly) from the fact emphasised by these figures is that the mass of vegetation exercises a direct and immediate effect upon the flow of water by gravitation from the catchment. A continual and increasing demand for refreshment existing during the day, the root spongioles are in active operation intercepting the moisture in its descent and absorbing it, while with the lessening of the temperature on the going down of the sun reaction begins, the stomata of the leaves exercise their functions, and by the absorption of gas react on the root films, which for the time relax their duty of arresting the passage of minute particles of water, with a very definite result on the nocturnal flow.