A WONDER TREE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 52, Issue 206, 13 June 1932, Page 8

A WONDER TREE

NEW ZEALAND TOTARA. AUSTRALIAN'S PRAISE. One of the wonder timber trees of the world is the New Zealand totara, a forest giant that, like Topsy, "simply growed" and flourished in that interesting, and wholly desirable, section of the Southern Pacific, says an Australian writer. It has been cultivated in other climates, but nowhere thrives as in the soil and surroundings of its native element, mostly in the volcanic lands of the North Island. There is nothing in timber trees that surpasses it, either for indoor or outdoor wear, in any other part of the universe for resistance, once cut and seasoned, against the relentless hand of time. The totara has been classed as a hardwood, probably because of its amazing durability. Actually it is a soft wood, a salmon pink when freshly hewn, and as easily - worked as cedar. The fine old pine usually makes an upward growth, exhibiting a rough-bark-ed barrel, strips from which the ancient Maori was accustomed to use, when a raupo swamp was unavailable, for the general architecture of the domestic whare. The tree yields annually a prolific crop of sweet berries, delectable alike to the bird life of the Dominion, as well as to small boys. They are garnered at the season when boys and birds rejoice in a bush feast—theirs for the taking. Guardian of a God. When the Maoris first settled in New Zealand they quickly recognised the quality of the totara. Early legends of the race recount that the tree was promptly declared a "sacred child of the forest, the guardian of which was the mythical god Tane, to whom incantations must bo made before a tree was slain." The belief was, according to an authority, that "if a tree was felled recklessly, and without the necessary incantations, it was resurrected again and again by forest fairies and the birds and other creatures of the gods, until the spirit of the forest had been appeased." These beliefs are embodied m old chants still to be heard in many of the Maori villages at the opening and naming of ' newly-erected buildings and effigies of Maori gods. They were regarded as tapu until the ritual had been recited to free them from the enchantment of Tane, and the loss to the woods from which the sacred timber came. The Maori used the totara extensively in the early days. He carved from the massive trunks with the primitive tools at his disposal great war and fishing canoes, and craft for transport, wood for the internal decoration of the "whare-puni" (meeting house), and his strange gods. Forests Sadly Depleted. The totara forests, although sadly depleted, have not wholly disappeared. There remain remnants in the prolific north, and the Dominion Government is making an earnest effort to reafforest the area which has in the past been sadly decimated by settlers who, under-estimating its future value, recklessly burned off thousands of acres, or converted the fine timber into fencing posts, railway sleepers, wharf piles, building material, or anything else which would remove the wood from their holdings. To-day they have awakened to the fact that the totara was _ one of nature's goldmines. Its durability may be instanced from the fact that when a few years ago wharf piles were dredged at Wellington from a wharf constructed in,the early days of the city's history, the piles were found to have withstood the ravages of the ages and the tosedo and were almost as sound as the day they were put down. The rivers, too, after floods yield a harvest of logs sunk when the totara was prolific, and unless the beach-side resident gets there first in search of firewood, yield sound totara which the mills speedily, convert into a marketable commodity, such as only New Zealand knows. i