PASSING OF KAURI.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2768, 28 August 1931, Page 5

PASSING OF KAURI.

REPLACED BY SOFTWOODS. NEW ZEALAND ENTERPRISE. The kauri, native of New Zealand, by its sheer magnificence, its • great height and size, and distinguished by dignified peculiarities that make it an object of special .interest, is marked out as a true monarch a'mong trees. In New Zealand it is certainly the “king of all trees.” At one time, huge kauri forests covered the northern part of the Dominion, but the white man—blind and ruthless destroyer of Nature’s resource's and of his own future welfare—settled all that; and to-day only a meagre few thousand acres remain to draw attention to - the passing of this aristocrat of the timber kingdom (says the “Timber Growers’' Quarterly Review”). Its peculiar smooth, symmetrical trunk, disappearing almost straight down into the earth, looking as though a.root systemlike that of ordinary trees were beneath its dignity, its bunchy crown of branches, and-its dominance of all the other flora of the forest, make it one of the" most interesting of trees. But while man destroys and wastes his natural inheritage, he also learns; and so in New Zealand,.as a living monument to his enterprise, probably the finest artificial softwood stands in. the world are growing up to replace the now almost disappeared kauri.