438 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 



able circumstances, to save a tree which has formed part of 

 the standing bush, once the surrounding shelter is destroyed ; 

 and, though here and there an individual of a few of the more 

 robust species — as, e.g., the puriri and the karaka, or the totara 

 and the rimu — may with great care be preserved to form a 

 graceful object in the landscape, still, with the removal of 

 the beautiful undergrowth, the whole character of the bush is 

 gone; and, instead of the "forest primaeval," there remains 

 but a poor imitation of a second-class English park. 



It is not to be supposed that our bush can for ever be 

 wrapped up in cotton-wool, so to speak. However we may 

 lament, by far the greatest portion of it is destined to fall 

 under the axe of the timber-man and the settler, though even 

 the settler would find it greatly to his advantage in point of 

 utility as well as of beauty were he less ruthlessly destructive 

 than he generally is. Still, an attempt might be made to do 

 something to preserve at least a few limited areas of the forest 

 in its virgin state. The Mount Egmont reserve, in the Pro- 

 vince of Taranaki, is a case in point. A generous policy has 

 set apart the whole of the wooded slopes of the mountain 

 within a radius of six miles from the summit as a State 

 reserve, and it is hoped that the boundary may be extended 

 to include the adjacent ranges. Similar reservations might 

 easily be made in many of the mountainous districts of both 

 Islands — as, e.g., portions of the Coromandel Peninsula, the 

 Great and Little Barriers, Te Aroha, Waitakerei, the Nelson 

 sounds, the Southern Alps, and many other places where the 

 land, though unfit for economic settlement, is, from a scenic 

 point of view, unsurpassed in any part of the world. But it is 

 not sufficient merely to mark off so many blocks of land on the 

 survey charts. They must be protected, and that without 

 delay, by something more substantial than an announcement 

 in the Government Gazette. 



The system of protection that obviously suggests itself 

 would be at once simple and effective, and, considering the 

 interests at stake, comparatively inexpensive. A broad track 

 along the boundary-line, cleared from all dead timber, and 

 flanked by a substantial fence of barbed wire, would serve all 

 the purposes required, especially if a ranger were appointed, 

 with full powers to shoot down all trespassing animals, and to 

 prosecute any person found lighting fires or otherwise injuring 

 the vegetation. It is to be hoped that this will be done, or it 

 will be found when it is too late for remedy that the brightest 

 flower has been plucked, and the glory has departed from the 

 Garden of the South. 



Postscript. — It will be observed that I have dealt with 

 the question from the aesthetic rather than from the economic 



