ON THE DECADENCE OF AUSTRALIAN FORESTS. 15 
ON THE DECADENCE OF AUSTRALIAN 
FORESTS ; 
BY 
A. NORTON, M.L.A. 
(Read on 8th Fanuary, 1886.) 
THE forests of Australia are, after many years of ill- 
treatment, beginning to be regarded as sources of wealth, 
for an important fact has forced itself into notice: The 
supply of timber is not inexhaustible, nor, according to the 
rate at which the most useful kinds of trees are being 
felled, will they be sufficient for the demand that is likely 
to be made upon them during the next fifty years. Not 
only have unserviceable classes of trees been intentionally 
destroyed, but thousands of acres upon which were many 
of the most valuable eucalypts have been ring-barked, and 
scarcely a living specimen can be seen in some places. 
This is the deliberate work of men who persuade themselves 
that they are vastly improving the country. It is because 
this artificial mode of destroying has been so extravagantly 
carried out that the natural decay of indigenous forests 
becomes more important in its results and more interesting 
as a study. I have seen some thousands of acres, chiefly 
in the New England district of New South Wales, where a 
plague seems to have carried death through the forest ; and 
although there are other districts where the same thing has 
occurred, I shall confine my remarks to the localities with 
which I am personally familiar. 
In 1857 I ceased to reside in that part of the country. 
There had been an unusually heavy fall of snow in the 
beginning of September, and when I left, a fortnight after- 
wards, it was difficult in places to get through the heaps of 
branches that lay thick upon the roads, and even at that 
time large patches of snow were still lying in the shady 
places. It was not till I had wandered through many of the 
dry western districts of New South Wales and the warmer 
