THE TIMBER CONFERENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 7821, 28 July 1896, Page 2

THE TIMBER CONFERENCE.

It would bs interesting to know wnat good the promoters of the so-called " Timber Conference" think has resulted from their meetings at Wellington, The i-ost solid fact in connection with the business appears to be that the delegates who attended were very modest or wofully ignorant. It is not for us to say which alternative should be adopted. We content ourselves with questioning* whether the State has zot the worth of its money, and in assuming that two or three more such Conferences Wcnld leave the country in such a profound condition of •' don't know " that even Mr Freyborg might begin to wonder ■' where 'c are." One question the Conference might have tackled was that of the bent time to fell timber, To settle that wottld be of practical importance, and benefit tne colony generally a3 well as those who are directly concerned in chopping down our forests and converting them into boards. Take 33 an instance the lasting qualities of white pins. Why do they vary so much ? Is it not because much timber is felled at the wrong season ? We know of a building, twenty-nine years old, in which a white pine flooring 13 as sound as the day it was laid. Close to it is another building m which white pine flooring laid thirteen years ago is rotten. It is generally held that white pine grown in swamps soon decays, and that It lasts well if grown on the hills. The fcwc examples we speak of might illustrate that but for oae thing, vhirh is that the timber which is sound after twentynine yesrs was grown in a swamp in what used to ho called the " Big Bush," while the v?ime' pine that was decayed after being sawn thirteen years was" grown on hilly country near Kopua, But the timber from the Big Bush was felled in the winter, when the sap was down. We do not know when the other was felled, but if in the spring or summer it would furnish a striking argument in favor of the theory that all timbers intended to last should be felled in the winter. This is a question that those interested in the timber trade might well study. It is no use this colony trying to build up !an export trade in timber if the j material sent away becomes worthless lin a few years.