PASSING VIEWS OF FORESTRY IN BRITISH SOUTH 



AFRICA 



By H. R. MacMillanI 



South Africa, of all British dominions, and one might say, of all 

 English-speaking coimtries, lost least time after the first important 

 settlement, in considering forestry. The Dutch, who were the 

 pioneers over large areas, seem always to have desired to see trees 

 about them. The towns and cities of South Africa, ranging from 

 Cape Town and its oak avenues over 200 years old to the newest 

 crossroads in the veld are clothed with trees in a way that puts to 

 nude disgrace the unblushing blocks on the plains of Canada and 

 the United States. Many of the older South African towns have 

 parks containing an astonishing range of exotic forest species and 

 others have established municipal forest plantations. These 

 parks, arboreta and plantations, even if of no great commercial 

 value, have been of certain assistance during the development of 

 the present progress of forestry in South Africa both by convinc- 

 ing the public of the results possible from forest plantations and 

 by serving as experimental grounds from which foresters may draw 

 valuable deductions regarding the use of various exotic species. 



The lesson of the annual timber imports which is kept well be- 

 fore the South African public has induced strong and widespread 

 support for planting trees. The owners of gold, coal and diamond 

 mines, who pay high prices for props, the fruit industry, always 

 in the market for large quantities of cheap box material, the 

 railroads forced to pay about $1.75 each for imported sleepers, 

 the farmers and urban population paying $40 to $50 per thousand 

 feet at the chief centers for common Itimber, all support the Gov- 

 ernment in its forest planting policy. The annual timber impor- 

 tations of South Africa reached, in 1914, over $3,500,000, an aver- 

 age of $3.50 per capita for the white population. The difficulty 

 of the Forest Department has not been so much to secure funds for 

 the carrying out of necessary work as to accomplish the rate of 

 progress demanded by the public without committing errors either 

 in planting or administration of remaining indigenous forest, such 

 as might later lead to hasty condemnation of forest work. 



The forester in South Africa must break virgin ground to an 



^ Lately Chief, Forest Branch, British Columbia. 



605 



