SEAWARD BUSH.

Southern Cross, Volume 10, Issue 16, 19 July 1902, Page 12

SEAWARD BUSH.

In the North Island we have remarkable illustrations of the enormous loss which a policy which does not loot to the conservation of our forests will land the colony in ; and members representing North Island constituencies, I think, might take an objectlesson if they would come down to Southland, to some of the timber

forests there, and see the result of a proper system of conservation of

forests. Ido not mean by a proper system of the conservation of forests a system that prevents the forest being cut down at all, bat I mean a system that will insure, if it is possible to do so, that a railway will precede the settler info the densest , parts of the forest. In connection with the Seaward Bush, sawmills came into that forest, I suppose, as far back as 1860 or 1862, and right down to the present time the tapping of that timber has been continuous

and immense ; and yet I do not suppose, if honourable members were to search the bush from one end to the other, they would find, in a bush twenty miles long by six miles broad, one hundred acres that has been burned and grassed before the merchantable timber was cut out by the sawmills. The result shows the

value of putting in a line of railway through the bush ; and from the first day the line was opened it has, I say —subject to sot being able to quote the exact figures—continuously paid interest on the cost of construction. Jfc was not the case of having to settle

the farmers ou the land, and afterwards to get them in a year or two to cultivate land so as to make it pay the railway ; but literally from the first day the line was opened, continuously from day to day, there lias been a payable traffic in timber; and I look forward with no hesitation to to the time when, the timber being cat out, the settlement now taking place along the line of railway will practically employ and keep that line open.—Mr McNab.