86 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION C. 



Bastard grows even larger. It will reach ,80 to 120 feet in height 

 and a diameter of 9 feet, with a clear trunk of 40 to 80 feet ; 

 but more usually the diameter does not exceed 3 to 4 feet. 



Yellowwood timber is rather harder and heavier than Pine, 

 but is much stronger and greatly superior in appearance, and is 

 comparatively free of the heavy knots found in most imported 

 wood. Apart from that it is excellent for beams, rafters, tiooring, 

 and ceiling. The beams, floors, ceilings, and doors of many of the 

 old homesteads at the Cape are of Yelloww^ood. Yellowwood 

 creosotes well, and it has been largely used on the South African 

 Railways for sleepers, close on 3,000,000 having been supplied 

 from Knysna during the past 30 years. Generally speaking, the 

 other kinds of timber are only suitable for special purposes, such 

 as furniture-making and wagon-building. Some, such as Stink- 

 wood, White Els, Red Els. and Beukenhout, are of great beauty. 

 Stinkwood is well-known throughout the country as a furniture 

 wood, and it is also valued for wagon construction. Though it 

 has been used for planks and beams it is too valuable and scarce 

 for such work. It is fortunately one of the quicker-growing 

 species, and the re-growth in the Knysna forests is good. Sound 

 trees are, however, rare. It will grow 3 to 5 feet in diameter, 

 and 60 to 90 feet high. Assegai, White Pear, and Ironwood are 

 greatly sought after by wheelwrights, and of late years Iron- 

 wood has found a ready market on the Rand for stamp blocks. 



Sneezewood is very hard, heavy, strong and durable. It is 

 much appreciated by engineers for bridge-building, but large- 

 sized timber is now scarce. It grows 50 feet in height and 2 in 

 diameter. It is chiefly used as a fence pole, and the tree is split 

 or sawn up into suitable dimensions for the purpose. 



But all these trees have limited use compared with Yellow- 

 wood, and, as I said before, that is the only kind which can be 

 used in place of imported deals. In most of the forests in 

 which it occurs Yellowwood preponderates, and is readily pur- 

 chased where facilities for cutting and marketing exist. .\t 

 Knysna during 1916-1917 52 per cent, by volume and 30 per cent. 

 of the total output of 336.000 cubic feet was Yellowwood, and 

 during the same period, when the total output of all the Govern- 

 ment indigenous forests was approximately one and a half 

 million cubic feet, over 600,000 cubic feet was Yellowwood. In 

 the Eastern Province, the Transkei. and Natal 40 to 75 per cent. 

 of the exploitable unworked forest is of this species. 



As the result of the roughest of calculations — data on which 

 to base a reliable estimate being absent — I should say that 

 possibly all the forests of the Union — demarcated and undemar- 

 cated and private — together contain about 75,000,000 cubic feet 

 of Yellowwood of exploitable size, or ju.st about five times as 

 much as the annual importation of softwood in 1913. The esti- 

 mate, I believe, to be a liberal one, but it serves to show how 

 restricted the timber resources of the Union are. Under present 

 conditions it would not be a ct>mmercial proposition to place one- 

 third of that timber on the markets of the Union, even if from a 

 sylvicultural point of view it were permissible ; for many of the 



