754: president's address. 



of pecuniary interest, and the commercial man will ascertain the 

 value of a timber for his own purposes if he be given an oppor- 

 tunity. For all commercial purposes there must be (1) a 

 sufficiency of the article ; (2) continuity of suppty. How can a 

 man be assured of this except by a botanical survey 1 He sees a 

 piece of timber and says — "This will do admirably for a certain 

 purpose," or "If I had a large supply of this timber, I could 

 utilise it at once." These statements have been made to me 

 hundreds of times by Australians, and by visitors anxious to do 

 business with us, but they have often been stopped at the 

 threshold by my inability to answer the pertinent questions to 

 which I have referred. I therefore would put the botanical 

 survey (or whatever name one may choose to call it) amongst 

 the very first of the duties to be undertaken by a Forest Depart- 

 ment. Examination of our timbers can go steadily on even 

 before a survey is made, but such examination must be fitful and 

 incomplete until it receives the stimulus of the attention of users 

 of timber and other commercial men actuated by self-interest. 

 It is not for me who have, perhaps, been longer engaged in 

 critical investigations concerning the identification, properties, 

 and uses of our timbers than any other public servant in New 

 South Wales, to depreciate scientific research, but I have 

 experience of the many limitations of the scientific and techno- 

 logical investigator. 



This country requires conser-vation of forests rather than 

 plantations. It should be ascertained in what forest reserves 

 young trees can be economically conserved, and reserves open to 

 the timber-getter should be carefully cut over and then closed, if 

 necessary, for a term of years. In European countries conserva- 

 tion, as opposed to planting, is more activel}^ carried on than is 

 usually supposed. 



Intimately associated with the question of conservation is the 

 necessity for the imposition of judicious limitations upon the 

 ringbarker, — he who performs the operation recklessly, and in a 

 wholesale manner, solely in the pastoral interest. 



