DESTRUCTION OF TIMBER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3, 3 January 1914, Page 4

DESTRUCTION OF TIMBER.

Sir Jlider Haggard’s remarks at the Authors’ Club, in London, on the lamentable destruction of native timber in Xew Zealand came as an ofttold tale, yet it is only by constant iteration that those in authoriy can be awakened to a sense of their duty in this respect. The enterprising settlor, who is one of the greatest destroying agents, often cannot help himself, as he must get Ids bush section down in grass. But (says the Lyttelton Times) there is one point in Sir Bider Haggard’s speech that is worth the attention of the farmer in bush country. He said that he had seen places, especially in Xew Zealand, where no benefit could come from the felling and burning of the! native trees and still there the timber was being “burned, destroyed,!

wasted.” This is very true of many places in the North island, and particularly in the North Taranaki and Southern King Country districts, and at the back of Poverty Bay. Steep hill-tops in tlie papa country of Taranaki are often seen stripped of hush and reduced to hare wastes of slipping, sliding rock, where no grass can grow. The natural tree-covering pinned down the incoherent soil on these I jsharp ridges, hut once it was removed

by axe and fire the ruin began. The lesson, a very obvious one, is that it is wise to leave the bush standing on precipitous hill-tops, just as it pays in the long run to conserve a little bank-protecting fringe of trees and undergrowth along the , sides of streams.