BANKS PENINSULA

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23088, 2 August 1940, Page 12

BANKS PENINSULA

ro rHfc Konoa oi i'hf. Sir, From your report of the Duvauchelle’s conference it would appear that the pasture people are not champions 'of afforestation, a treatise on occksfcot being esteemed more than a 60ft power pole. Mr Masefield did indeed advocate pine planting—rather a poor tribute to the fitness of the peninsula .or the far more valuable cucclypts. Perhaps the best step, now would be a request from some of the counci's for a report on the-peninsula from the State Forest Service, and there is no sense in further delay in imging the Cawihron Institute to liberate at Charteris Bay the mymarid parasite of the gum weevil. I owe thanks to Mr Warren Fisher, whose pilgrimages on the peninsula are classical, for writing me stating that the big logs in Mr Goss’s sawmill -would be from the Hon. Ernest Gray’s es atc and not from the Hon. Mr Stafford’s. As a matter of fact, when writing. I was inclined to the former name. I advocated planting on the very deteriorated lands in the first place, but would ask attention to the Yale Forest principle that the best lands should be used for trees provided proper silvicultural methods were carried out, the probable yields being enormous. Mr R. M. Laing, M.A., the chief botanist of the peninsula, has written point’rig cut -hat the nor’-west wind mainly contro’led the division into tussock, low bush, with good forest in the damper valleys. The nor’-west might probab’y still affect afforestation.— Yours, etc., JAS. R. WILKINSON. Rangiora., August 1,»1940.