1884.] AUSTRALIAN FOREST ADMimSTRATIOX. 207 



revenue is natural, while the organized forest is only in course of 



lonnatiou. and it inculcates that the forest is being worked up towards 

 a much higher state of productiveness. 



During the year 1882 rain fell in Wirrabara Forest on 92 days, 

 and reached a total of 230 inches. This is an increase of 3'5 inches 

 on 1881. In England the average rainfall of the last ten years was 

 about 26 inches, distributed over about 175 days in each year. The 

 quantity of rain falling in Wirrabara seems, then, to be by no means 

 insufficient, and not unfavourable to sylvan growth. During 1882 

 tv.'o thousand three hundred ton? of water must have fallen on each 

 acre of Wirrabara Forest. The difficulty probably is to save enough 

 of this moisture to last over the four dry months from December to 

 March : in February no rain at all felL With tliis object it is probably 

 desirable to maintain close leafage and continuous shade over the 

 forest soil from as early a period as possible. It does not, however, 

 seem to be absolutely necessary in making new plantations of the 

 Gums to plant them so close together as three or four feet apart, 

 because they grow so rapidly that they soon join their leaves over the 

 interspaces ; and, the Gums being rather costly plants, they have to 

 be distributed over the enclosure with the utmost frugality. Many 

 of the Eucalyptus, or Gum plants, have to be raised in the nursery 

 in bamboo tubes, and transplanted, still with the bamboos, into the 

 forest enclosure. Experiments have, however, been steadily advanced, 

 with the object of trying to dispense sometimes with this expensive 

 expedient. Some kinds of Gums seem to be less delicate and fas- 

 tidious, and these have been successfully transplanted opeii root, that is, 

 without any adventitious protection for their roots. The Conservator 

 has also had important experiments carried out, as yet on a moderate 

 scale, in cheaper methods of cultivation ; and he has already been 

 encouraged by favourable results from broadcast sowing with bush 

 harrowing. This method, if it can continue to be successfully 

 pursued, might permit of the enclosures being more thickly covered 

 with the young Gums — a result which seems to have been accomplished 

 by broadcast sowing in the Bundaleer Forest, where it would be still 

 more needful than in Wirrabara. liain fell in Bundaleer on 57 days, 

 reaching a total for the year of only 17 inches ; and during the 

 summer months of January, February, and March there wa? no rain 



at all. 



During the year, out of the 48,000 acres of Wirrabara Forest, about 

 3,000, situated in two blocks, were thoroughly gone over, and the 

 natural saplings on them were thinned and pruned. This work was 

 done between the middle of January and the first week in April, 

 and some 50,000 fine healthy saplings were attended to. At this 

 rate the whole forest will be traversed with thinning and pruning 



