THE FORESTS OF NEW ZEALAND 9 1 



Thus the New Zealand coal-fields have produced up to date a 

 total of ;j^22, 610,067 worth of coke and coal. With a propor- 

 tionate attention to forestry, with no appreciable loss to other 

 industries, nothing more, in fact, than a very little poor grazing 

 (of which much has already gone back to scrub, gorse, and 

 other noxious weeds), the forest industry could have produced 

 this total value of, say, ^23,000,000 in two years, if only the 

 home- market, the larger part of the Australian, and a small 

 portion of the two other timber markets in the Southern 

 Hemisphere had been filled. Ordinary attention to forestry 

 thirty years ago would have enabled New Zealand to do this 

 in part now, and later altogether. I estimate the European and 

 Southern Hemisphere timber markets open to New Zealand as 

 worth now ^14,000,000 yearly; and these markets are more 

 likely to improve than fall off, because all statistics show that 

 with civilisation and industrial progress, although wood is 

 replaced for many uses, the net result is a greater demand for 

 wood. 



" In the kauri tree New Zealand has probably the most 

 valuable timber tree in the world. Its timber is unsurpassed by 

 any other in the chief timber markets of the world. It grows 

 nearly twice as fast as European timber trees, and where it is 

 now deficient in the forest it can be interplanted to a full stock 

 at about the cost of grassing. My investigations have shown 

 that it is seemingly the largest timber-yielding tree in the world, 

 taking the recorded dimensions of the historical trees in the 

 Tutamoe forest. It is not quite so thick or so high as some 

 other giant trees, but it cubes larger than they do, on account 

 of the small amount of taper in the trunk. The Tutamoe forest 

 is not far from Waipoa forest, and can be saved for the country 

 if demarcation is taken in hand at once. Living would be 

 appreciably cheaper with abundant timber and firewood at 

 people's doors. There is a firewood famine at present in New 

 Zealand — firewood near most of the industrial centres being as 

 dear as good sawable timber in Europe — while a timber famine 

 is rapidly approaching. New Zealand at present is being 

 stinted and starved in two of the prime necessaries of 

 civilisation — timber and firewood. The present use of timber 

 in New Zealand has become restricted to an average of only 

 25 cubic feet per capita, while the United States had a yearly 

 consumption of 160 cubic feet timber and 96 cubic feet firewood. 



