TREE PLANTING.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 11247, 15 January 1912, Page 5

TREE PLANTING.

A VALUABLE ASSET

"What promises to be a most valuable asset eventually is the timber which is being planted by prisoners in the Hot' Lakes district," said a wellknown Wairarapa man to a Daily Times reporter on Saturday. •'Treeplanting i.s being carried out on a most extensive scale. Prisoners are to be seen about the temporary cam]) above the hills dressed in moleskins and looking almost like sheep. The seedlings are grov. n by Maori labour at Rotorua, and a number of Maori girls are employed packing young trees in boxes and sending them to the camp. Driving from Rotorua along the Taupo-road a wonderful scene is presented to the traveller. For a distance of about fifteen miles the hills on the left of the road—formerly growing low fern aud miserable ■scrub-are vow completely covered with young trees, looking, when the leaves are off, almost like fields of grain. A great many of the trees are up to a height of 7ft or Bft and seem to grow vigorously. "At intervals a break i.s made between the plantations, a strip that » looks like a roadway being ploughed up, while on the edges of the road dividing it from the forest is a fringe of mici'acarpa trees, the object being, if a fire occurs, to prevent it spreading. Many miles of country are now covered with forests of these young trees, and the barren aspect of the place has been totally altered. Whero neither grass nor root crops aro reported to grow tree-planting succeeds wonderfully, tho sub-soil being vastly superior to the pumice on top.