“GET BUSY”

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11224, 1 June 1922, Page 4

“GET BUSY”

ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS “TIMBER. WILL NEVER BE CHEAPER THAN NOW.” FORESTRY DIRECTOR'S VIEWS. “Pudding timber will never be cheaper than it is now,” stated the Director of Forestry (Mr L. Mclntosh Ellis), in the course of an interview with .a “Times” representative yesterday. “Now is the time for tlie homebuilder to get busy. With the slackening of demand from Australia, stockr. are piling up at the mills on the West Coast of the South Island. Millions of feet of choice rimu, totara, and beech arc in stock, ready for the market, and prices are down to bedrock. With the advent of spring, however, three choice seasoned stocks will be purchased: and, with resultant quickened demand, pricer; are certain to harden. Forest service is looking forward (he added) to demand for timber products with the coming of spring, and the service is planning on a wide demand from farmers and settlers for forest tree seedlings from the South Inland State nurseries at Tapanui and Hanmer Springs.”

SOUTHLAND VISIT. While in Southland recently, the Director paid a visit to the interesting and modern factory which is being erected in the Longwood State forest for the manufacture of dowels, axe and tool handles, clothea-pegs, and other turnery products from Southland beech. In a very short time, he stated, clothes-pegs of a high quality would he available, not only to supply all New Zealand’s requirements, but also to export to Australia. The raw material used in this factory was the wastage from the mills producing sawn timber products, and it was one step in the right direction of a more economical utilisation of our timber. In this connection, it was interesting to note that in the production of'the Dominion’s annual 1,000,000 tons of sawn timber nearly 8,000,000 tons of wood were wasted.

FORESTRY DEFINED. In view of this great waste, Mr Ellis strongly emphasised the need for forestry; and he quoted from the “Illustrated Canadian Forestry Magazine” the striking definition—“ Forestry is the raising of repeated forest crops from non-agricultural soils, and the proper utilisation of these crops.” “Forestry (he continued) involves the production of wood 1 and the use" of it. The primary purpose of forestry is to make the forest yield supplies to meet the needs of man. The farmer grows corn, the forester grows trees; one is as much a human necessity as the other. One is a crop of months, the other a crop of decades. That’s why everybody can give a pretty good definition for agriculture and a pretty poor one for forestry. Forestry is a science. It is also an art. It involves the problem of water supply where regulation and fresh replenishment is dependent on the forest. ' It involves the vital problem of recreation. The forester of to-day has undergone a marvelous transition from the old lumberjack who used, to embody the popular conception of a forester. THE COST OF NEGLECT.

“The forester has become g. scientific specialist. He is required" to study a complexity of subjects. Some branches of forestry require knowledge of cutting and hauling timber, the sawing and seasoning of lumber; some relate to the adaptability of innumerable kinds of wood to products of manufacture, the chemistry of wood, the production of pulp and paper, the structure of wood; other branches concern the protection of wood and trees from disease, the protection of trees from destructive insects and fire, and the investigation of new uses of wood; tjhe science of growing trees, studying so)ls, topographical and climatical conditions, the reproduction of continuous tree crops; the diversity of the ornamental and recreational problems in city forestry ; lumber salesmanship also has become part of the curriculum of forestry instruction. Forestry has been practised in most foreign countries for more than ICO years, but rarely in New Zealand. The people, however, are beginning to realise the need, because it is being expressed in increased cost of living. Necessity is bringing out forestry, and is teaching the cost that follows the neglect of forestry.”