BRITISH FORESTRY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 250, 22 October 1928, Page 5

BRITISH FORESTRY.

ONE SET OF NAMES AND TERMS

FOR THE WHOLE EMPIRE.

LONG CONFERENCE ENDS

Necessarily nearly all the work of the Empire Forestry Conference has been of a technical character; the recommendations of the delegates, from all over the Empire, will bear fruit in the years to come, and throughout the Empire forestry will be as homogenous as the wonderfully efficient service they have in India, for instance.

One subject, however, in which the public is directly concerned has been thoroughly discussed at the sittings, and at the final sitting held this morning at the University College buildings an important resolution was passed. This is the subject of nomenclature. At first sight it does not seem to concern the public very much, but, as Lord Clinton, the president of the conference, points out, it closely affects business. At the present there are dozens of names by which the same wood is known in different parts of the world. Moreover, in New Zealand the so-called birches (which are really beeches) are known by quite different names in the North and the South Islands. The conference passed a resolution affirming the desirability of adopting the same name throughout the Empire for the one species. For instance, as Lord Clinton mentions, a man ordering red cedar may get a very different species of tree from that which he thought he was ordering. That mistake arises owing to the loose use of the name "red cedar" for trees of entirely different characteristics. If the same set of names were in use all over the Empire it would do away with much confusion and would also be a greater safeguard for the public when ordering timber.

Then, again, the conference this morning passed a somewhat similar resolution, urging the use of the same set of terms in all forestry plans, no matter in what part of the Empire. At present different terms are iised for similar operations, and this leads to much unnecessary confusion when comparing forestry work in different parts of the Empire. When the recommendation of the confeience is carried out forestry workers throughout the Empire will be using the same terms, and so will have a clearer knowledge of what each country is doing.

A number of the delegates will leave Auckland this evening for Wellington en route for their homes via Sydney, and others will wait for the Vancouver boat, which sails next Wednesday.