14 



in any part of the Central Division, it does not occur there is no heat in it, and half the quantity of No. 5 

 in other parts of Papua; otherwise these patches have 

 little interest economically, except for the supply of 



timber to the plantations for building and other pur- 

 poses. 



Forests of the Northern Division. 



Between the sea coast on the east, the Kumusi River 

 on the north and west, and Mount Lammgton and the 

 Ifydrographer's Range on the south, lies a large area 

 of alluvial land. It is intersected by several rivers 

 and numerous creeks, and near the sea coast many low- 

 lying areas occur, which, if within reach of the tidal 



waters, carry mangrove associations, and, if more in- 

 land, carry the usual fresh water swamp flora. The soil 

 is a deep rich sandy loam of great depth, and is very 



satisfactory agricultural land. Prom sea level it rises t,ie var -ius species that make up these formations to see 

 very gently to between 600 and 800 feet at its inland if an Y have a l° n o enough fibre for the manufacture ol 

 boundary. It is well drained or easily drainable. The suc ^ * ow 8 Tac ^ e material as news print. Many of them 

 rainfall is very satisfactory — an average of 113 inches g row so ^ ast tllal poles 25 feet long and 4-5 inches in 



diameter could be supplied in six years. Here are the 



nann's (1) of some of the commonest of these weed trees 



(okamu or koiawo) will go a great deal further. All 

 i he rafters of houses are made of " lightwood," and 

 most of the joists, but the native likes to see some 

 stronger poles for his floor supports. The rafters are 

 soon honeycomb <d with the galleries of the carpenter 

 bee, who rivals the great mason wasps as an inde- 

 fatigable" worker. For all these uses the weed trees 

 serve excellently, for the shoulder pole has only to last 

 its journey; the canoe decking is always being renewed, 

 and lighiness is a much more important factor than 

 durability here; the native fire is either a quick-cooking 

 one or a- smouldering mosquito smudge; while the 



ratters always outlast the under posts of his home. iSo 

 these regrowth forests must* not be written down as 

 worthless. It will be interesting to test the wood ot 



a year— and the climate, from the point of view of 

 equable temperatures and absence of desiccating winds, 

 is all that could be desired for the growth°of tall 

 timber trees in rain forest formation. 



At one time the whole of this area was covered with 

 such a forest, but to-day there are but a few islands left 

 in a sea of grass lands. The little patches of virgin 

 forest give cue some idea of the magnificence of the 

 original stand everywhere. From what AVhitford, (1) 

 Brown/ 2 ) afcd Matthews have written on the subject 



and some shrubs and climbers that come up with 

 them : — 



of the Philippine 



eroca 



the Buna plain 



No. 104 Gibore 



1 Go ( )se . . 



166a Gega 



167 Ongesa 



168 Gurega 



169 Oiela 

 171 Penbagi 



* 177 Kureri 



• • 



Tree . . Macaranga riparia. 



Shrubby Tree Saurauja schumanniana. 



Tree . . Macaranga sp. 



►Shrubby Tree Qeunsia farinosa. 



Tree .. Pipurus incamis. 



Tree •• .. Alphitonia moluccana, 



Shrubby Tree Cltrodtnaron tracyanum. 



Climber .. Rnbus moluacanus. 



« « 



179 Tutura Tatars (limber 

 1S2 Ombara .. Tree 



( leniat is P t c ker i n g ii. 



Kleinhovia hospita. 



forests must have approached nearer to that type than 



to the forest of the western side of Papua, which pro- I ]1 addition there are several species of the genus Ficus 



bably approach more closely to the Queensland type of This regrowth forest of weed trees is the natural sue- 



forest. While Papua never boasted the assortment of 



dii>fero:arps that the Philippines possess, one tree of 



this family is so common as to vie with Pometia pinnata 



for supremacy in numbers, while in cubic contents to 

 the acre it easily stands first. 



It is inevitable that so rich an agricultural area in 

 •the tropics should be converted from forest into grass 

 lands by the natives. These have but one system of 

 agriculture, which is by no means restricted to Papua, 

 but prevails right throughout the tropics wherever the 

 native has not yet learned the use of the plough to 

 cultivate his land to a depth. His system is to cut 

 down the timber, and burn it, and on the land thus 

 cleared his wife plants his crops of taro, sweet potatoes, 

 and yams, with here and there a paper mulberry to 

 yield the family a wardrobe; a few bananas and some 

 pawpaws complete the picture. When he has reaped 

 his tuber crop, he will replant the area, and this he 



cession to the destroyed forest, and its life is compara- 

 tively short, its place being taken by a number of more 

 permanent species which gradually make themselves 

 conspicuous. They are probably there all the time, 

 but are lost in a thicket of Alphitonia and other weed 

 trees. Of these the Evodias, certain figs, terminaiia, 

 and the long follicled Alstonia are well to the fore 

 These overtop the weed trees, rob them of light, and 

 kill them. Beyond that, the sylviculture of the forest 

 is difficult to follow, but eventually it returns to mixed 

 rain forest, probably not with the same association of 

 trees, possibly with some pure stands of heavily seeding 

 varieties, and without several of the light seeding 

 species, or those whose seed is neither borne by the 

 wind nor carried by animals. Thus nature, in perhaps 

 two or three centuries, re-establishes the forest con- 



ditions which the native has destroyed in a year. That 

 nature does not achieve this object in all cases, how- 



may repeat four times, by which time he finds the soil ever, is shown by the grass lands of the Buna plains, 

 no longer yields the same return. His lightly-scratched Here the native has beaten nature, and at the same 



time beaten himself. 



Going back to our native who has made gardens all 



garden is exhausted. He must now find new ground for 



his farming operations, and so he lets his first garden 



go fallow, and picks out another patch of forest not "over the virgin forest in his locality : B- this time seven 



to ten years have elapsed, and on his first garden is a 

 fine stand of weed trees. So back he goes to where he 

 first grew his crops, and he cuts down the weeds, and 



burns them. 



If he finds — as he generally does 



s 



peci 



mens of either No. 36 (kauouia, as the Buna people call 

 okaka), Terminal! a catappoides or Term in alia 



that bears a better eating 



He does the same for 



olari. 



nut. 



its cousin, 

 he reserves them. 



the bread fruit trees he finds 



'5 



too far away, and this he treats like the first. So. 



little by little, patch by patch, he turns the forest 



into food crops. The land left fallow does not become 



grass land at once, nor does it grow a crop of rain forest 



trees Just as in Australia, an abandoned vegetable 



bed grows, first of all, a crop of weeds, so the fallow 



garden land of the Buna plains, and for that matter 



all other alluvial lands, grows a crop of weed trees. 



Like your southern garden weed, they are all strong 



liirht-demanders, they grow extraordinarily quicklv and 



thickly, covering up the land in a very short time with 



an almost impenetrable thicket of saplings. The natives 



call hese light woods ; they use lengths of them as through the fire. Quite a number survive. The second 



shoulder poles, under which the cheerful Orokaivas sing rota tion our native does not get quite what he got from 



his first crop off the virgin forest, but it is as good or 

 betier than the second; but he finds he cannot get the 

 same number of crops from the soil this time. The 

 weed trees have siiven him something but not all that 



eabluige 



tree (Qnetum gnerwm). 



and crenda, the 



I 



ii 



all these 



cases he piles the brushwood away from their 

 trunks, so as to give them a better chance of coming 



their way along the trail, bearing a two men's load 

 The decking of eances is made of it, and it supplies the 

 bulk of the domestic fuel used. If yen are baking 

 bread, it is advisable not to use this weed timber, for 



(1) Whitford. H. X. : Forest types uul Products. 



U) Brown, W. K., and Matthews, L>. N. : Philippine dipt rocarp forest*. 



(1) The local names ore those commonly used in Buna district ; the language 

 i- a slightly corrupted Iliuandcli. * k 



