AXE AND FIRE-STICK.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 29, 17 July 1902, Page 16

AXE AND FIRE-STICK.

• Wl Ull HE old sa y in^ tnafc ' all work and no P la y makes SeT K~ A P K aa^ W ' no^s S°°d of statesmen and Jq) \ I*» philosophers as well as of human units in less j£(\<--»>^ exalted stations. Two of the greatest philosophers of ancient Greece were once •caught* Vj^fV in the act of making bits of flat shingle % <spp r « g jjj m >or ricochet over gentle heaving T surface of the Gulf of iEgina. And does not Mr. BAiiFOUR find relaxation in golf, and did not the late Mr. Gladstone relieve the brain-strain by wielding his practised axe right sturdily upon the lords of the park or forest in Hawarden ? It is well for the world that philosophers and lawmakers kick off the harness and turn their jaded minds to grass once in a while. But it is also well that the wearied ones should find their periods of relaxation — as did the pair of ancient philosophers and of modern legislators mentioned above— outside the boundary-lines of their customary pursuits and duties. This would, to some extent, save the world from the curse of dilettantism and faddism in philosophy and from tinkering legislation in politics.

For many years past New Zealand legislators have made forest-conservation the subject of this kind of leisure-hour and trivial law-making. It is sheer tinkering, and wholly unworthy of the New Zealand statesmanship which, in its serious and workaday moods, haß found solution for the gravest problems of social and industrial legislation. And in the meantime — as the * Official Year Book ' states — ' our native forests are fast disappearing before the woodman's axe, 1 and ' it is only a question of time when supplies will have to be drawn from artificial forests or from foreign souices.' A few years ago the institution known as Arbor Day was introduced by our Government. It is a tolerably popular festival in the United States and Canada, and has clothed many bald patches of the laud with nature's native tresses of waving trees ; but in Australia and New Zealand it lias not thus far got its feelers around the popular fancy. It is, says the ' Year Book,' ' a matter for regret that New Zealand settlers have not as yet entered into the spirit of the institution, as it was hoped they would.' Here and there throughout the Colony, Arbor Day means sundry knots of school children and small groups of holiday-makers placing at tree-planting, not for commercial purposes, but for shelter or adornment. This mild annual outbreak of dilettante arboriculture is supplemented by more systematic tree-planting, under Government auspices, but on a relatively insignificant scale, about Rotorua, Tapanui, and a few other places. But for the one that is planting oi eugaged in the make-believe tree culture of Arbor-day, there are a hundred at work with axe and fire-stick on every working day of the year, reducing our once magnificent and fast-diminishing forest resources. We are destroying by the square mile. We are planting by the rood. The process has already led to the deforesting of vast areas of the Colony. And it has already made a hole in our timber trade which is being felt, and which promises to be far more keenly realised in the future.

There is a refreshing frankness in the report furnished to the New Zealand Government by Mr Perrin, the scholarly and experienced Conservator of State Forests for Victoria. ' The value of timber from New Zealand forests,'

said he, * which has been used in the building of prosperous provincial cities and in other directions during the past fifty years is not easily estimated. It is qnite safe to say, however, that the kauri timber thus used represents an almost fabulous sum of money. Yet, in spite of expert evidence as to the utilisation of these magnificent resources, m the face of rapid denudation of forest areas near the centres of trade and industry, the probable total extinction of the noble kauri, and the absolute certainty that thousands of acres of forest are practically perishing— since, unlike those of Victoria, New Zealand forests do not readily renew themselves by natural growth— the extraordinary fact remains that in the past forest-conservation has been allowed to retrograde, although disaster must inevitably result from such neglect in the loss of timber supplies. Nature,' continues the same authority, 'invariably avenges reckless disregard of her laws, and if the fire-stick is thoughtlessly used to strip hillsides of their natural protectors, floods and landslips very soon destroy the arable country at their bases. Because, up to date, no very serious disasters of this kind nave overtaken New Zealand farmers, it by no means follows that such will not occur. On the contrary, it may be regarded as certain that, unless the teachings of experience in European forestry lead to the adoption of such scientific means as are there employed, the occurrence of disaster is merely a question of time. Although not due to precisely the same causes, the disastrous floods at Napier, whereby property valued at £100,000 was destroyed, is an illustration of what is likely to occur through deforesting. All experience shows, indeed, that a disregard of the value of trees in the economy of daily life entails serious consequences upon the country interested ; that the wholesale destruction of timber-trees is a national mistake ; and that reparation of damage thus caused involves the outlay of enormous sums of money. 1

The deforesting of a country exposes its surface to the full fury of the action of what Lapparent — the great French authority on the subject, whose work is before vs — calls * the earth's external dynamics.' Chief of these are air and water. The air exercises a powerful effect on precipitation ; and condensation, as is well known, is much greater in a mountainous country like New Zealand than in countries of a lower and more uniform level. The worst effects, and those most difficult to regulate, are those produced by water. Forests ensure the gradual distribution of the rainfall by arresting the speed of the rills which go to form the rivulets, which in turn become torrents and swoop down furiously to swell the flooded river that spreads devastation over the lowlving lands. Besides the rapid descent of storm waters, the deforesting of a country leads to the degratation or grinding away of the surface of the mountains, the impoverishment of the higher lands, the deposit of great quantities of detritus in the valleys, the silting up of the lower reaches of rivers, the occasional drying up of springs at the Bources of streams, and the destruction of much scenic beauty — in addition to the injury done to the economic and domestic requirements of the people. There is one urgent danger in connection with the present system of indiscriminate forestdestruction which is more to be dreaded than the direct loss of the forests themselves. It is the loss of rich agricultural regions of the Colony through devastating floods rushing down from naked mountains, bringing with tfteni vast quantities of sand, gravel, etc., to be spread over the lowlands. The devastation wrought by the northern rivers of New South Wales furnishes examples in point. In an article written by us a few years ago on this subject we gave many striking instances in point from Sicily, Greece, Tunis and other parts of North Africa, and from what we had personally seen in Southern France, certain parts of Italy, and in those beautiful provinces that form the 'Garden of Spain ' Barcelona, Tarragona, Alicante, Murcia, and Valencia. O Christ, it'is a goodly sight to see What heaven hath done for thia delicious land What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree, What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand.

A tour of|inspection by our legislators through those treeless and flood-scourged regions would probably lead to some such system of forest conservation and reforesting as has s ived the commercial timbers of Norway and Sweden from reckless and irresponsible destruction.

Dean Swift was once asked what was the easiest and at the same time the most difficult thing that a man could do. tfolt a door, he replied. The example of Sweden and ? JTX 8 ST 8 thafc fche door ma y *» "■»& closed and barred and bolted forever upon the woful and wasteful destruction ot our forest resources. But our Government— which has shown a pair of clean heels ' to the rest of the world in the courage and success with which it has faced and settled land and labor and poverty problems— act as if it found itself landed right up against an unsurmountable difficulty when it beoomes a question of systematic and effective forest-con-servation. It is certainly not from lack of good example. The matter has been taken up in Scotland, in England; in India, and of late years in the United States. Prance has spent close on £1,000,000 in re-foresting some of the tor-rent-scourged areas in her southern provinces ; her vast pine-forests on the dunes of drifting sand between the rivers tinZ^f the u Giron u de perhaps, the greatest efforts at tree-culture the world has ever seen, and are today a vast source of wealth to the nation ; and her great School of Forestry at Nancy is frequented by students from the British Isles and from other parts of Europe. New Zealand could, perhaps, find no better model than Sweden, with its admirable Forestry Department, its carefully-regu-lated cuttmg-out of timber in 'rotation blocks,' and ita systematic and scientific re-planting. At Orsa, in that far northern kingdom, 'there is,' says an authority before us, quite a little Utopia. The community have sold abouta million s worth of timber in a generation, and have in consequence no taxes to pay.' By judicious planting they hope to realise as much income every thirty years. The railways, telegraphs, telephones, schools, and many other institutions are all free. This prosperous and happy community is an object-lesson as to the value of the timber industry which with us is going to such ill-regulated waste. ' The care of the national forests,' said Mr. Charles W. Eliot in the " Atlantic " some time ago, • is a provision for future generations, for the permanence over vast areas of our country [the United States] of the industries of agriculture and mining, upon which the prosperity of the country alternately depends. A good forest administration would soon support itself, but it should be organised in the interests of the whole country, no matter what it costs.' Similar advice was tendered, with refreshing frankness, to the New Zealand Government a few years ago, by Mr. Perrin, whose words we have already quoted in the course of this article. *In view of the experience elsewhere,' said he, • the question of how best to deal with conservation of forests must be regarded as of momentous importance to the people of New Zealand, since upon the efficiency or otherwise of the work undertaken depends whether they shall gain a substantial revenue from their timber or suffer tremendous national loss,'