CENSUS OF FOREST TREES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18159, 2 February 1921, Page 9

CENSUS OF FOREST TREES

AMERICAN VISITOR'S MISSION

(Fbou Oxm Own Cobbespondbnt.)

AUCKLAND, January 51. A visitor to New Zealand, who arrived at Auckland by the Tofua, is Mr Ernest H. Wilson, assistant director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. Mr Wilson, who is on a world-wide mission lo." his university, has come to New Zealand to study the forest trees of the dominion. His work is purely . scientific. He is not concerned with forest conservation or afforestation, though naturally he is deeply interested in both. His work deals with trees as trees. His Explanation was that realising that the forests of many parts of the world were rapidly disappearing, the university authorities, were desirous of haying all the scientific data required for the work of the school collected and collated before it was too late. He was, in fact, engaged upon a census of the trees of the world. His work had already taken him to China, Japan, arid Siberia, while he had pursued his investigations over a portion of Australia. He intended, returning to complete his work alter he had been, through New Zealand, afterwards going to India, South Africa, and other parts of the East. He intended to travel through the dominion from north to south, making his researches as he went. One of the first things Mr Wilson wishes _to see is the kauri of New Zealand in its native state. It was, he remarked, ■ the most famous tree in the southern hemisphere, and the slaughter of it in the reckless fashion that bad obtained in this country was nothing short of deplorable. • Understanding that the dominion was just now awakening to the serious consequences which might follow from the indiscriminate destruction of bush, ho remarked that the Anglo-Saxon always appeared to be the most destructive of all races so far as forests were concerned. If he wished to establish a cabbage patch and a piece of forest occurred on the spot upon which his choice fell, the forest went, no matter how beautiful it might be or how serious the possible consequences of its disappearance. New Zealand was, like Japan, m need of forest conservation. It wa» a long, narrow country with a definite backbone running down the centre, largely volcanic in origin. If the uplands wore stripped bare of forest growth the whole country would bo sliding into the Pacific before the people realised what was . happening. The destructive tendency of the race had been well exemplified in the United States. He was afraid to estimate how many square miles of forest had been swept away, and now they found it necessary to go to Canada asking for wood pulp for the manufacture of paper. Coupled with Ms investigations in regard to native trees, and in the efforts to be made, for the preservation of indigenous forest! Mr Wilson intends to investigate the growth of exotics in the dominion. He was interested to observe the extent to which thE ninus insignia flourished in Australia, and to hear that it was an equally sturdy grower in New Zealand. It was, he said, a native of California, growing as a native of the Pacific Slope, but was not regarded tis being of much moment or interest there. Ho had been interested to observe tho freedom of its growth in Australia, and the manner in which attention was turning to it tiers. «