1885.J TREE-GROWING AND FORESTRY. 453 



unemployed labour. Again, could not the thinnings of Scotch fir, 

 every five years, supply propwood for our mines ? Then there was 

 match-making, not the match-making at which ladies were said to 

 to be so particularly skilful — (laughter) — but the making of the 

 lucifer match. Matches were now everywhere the concomitants of 

 civilization, and men would do without many things before they 

 would do without matches ; hence, everywhere, at home, and in all 

 our colonies, matches were a most important and essential item of 

 our trade ; and yet, notwithstanding all our facilities for growing 

 the alder tree, and other wood suitable for the manufacture of 

 matches, we imported from Sweden and other northern countries 

 most of the matches we used. The lecturer gave an interesting 

 description of how in those countries match-wood was split up by 

 machinery, and then rapidly cut off into their requisite lengths. 

 Match-boxes were also manufactured there, and it was not at all 

 unusual in Sweden to meet with whole trains freighted with 

 matches going down to their seaports for shipment abroad. 

 Many of these found their way to England, and were then ex- 

 ported to our dependencies abroad. Why could not this important 

 manufacture be more localized in England ? We could grow wood 

 suitable for the purpose on our waste land in this country, more 

 especially in lakeland, and our boys, etc., would supply much of 

 the light labour they required ; we might thus manufacture matches 

 for our own use as well as for exportation. In advising them to 

 grow trees suitable for this purpose, and also for the other purposes 

 he had mentioned, he tliought lie was advising them to do that 

 which would eventually secure advantages and employment to those 

 around them ; and though tlie whitening hair of himself and others 

 among them might serve to remind them that they could not hope 

 to live on to that time when they should see the trees that they 

 were planting arrive at maturity, yet they could still plant for the 

 benefit of a succeeding generation ; and as their fathers had planted 

 for them, so they might plant for their children, and live in the 

 hope and expectation that their labours had not been in vain. 



Mr. Eobinson, in reply to a question, said he thought the extent 

 of the present larch disease had been unduly magnified in some 

 quarters. He believed that it was in a great measure confined to 

 the western side of the island, including the lake country and this 

 neighbourhood, and he tliought it was very greatly owing to bad 

 and diseased seed and plants. If larch-growers would take greater 

 care in selecting their seed and plants, he thought the disease might 

 be made to disappear. 



A hearty vote of thanks was unanimously accorded to the 

 lecturer. 



