THE FORESTS OF NEW ZEALAND. 121 



Honeysuckle (Knightia excelsa) is a very common timber of 

 quite unique marking and figure, but in the absence of a Forestry 

 Department or the forestry of other countries, it was simpler to 

 burn it and work only the timber with established markets. 

 Thus it has never been exported, and is quite unknown on the 

 European market. 



There is a large class of so-called secondary timbers in New 

 Zealand forests which have never been utilised. Yellow pine 

 (a species of Dacridium allied to rimu) is intrinsically the most 

 valuable timber in the country. It has been carefully worked 

 in the south, but in the north used only for firewood because 

 there it came into competition with other timber more profitable 

 to work ! In a new country, without the capital and scientific 

 knowledge of older countries, there must inevitably be some loss 

 in developing national resources. But when an active and 

 enterprising people, good at farming, good at mining, and at 

 all the average Englishman knew sixty years ago, but without a 

 suspicion that such a science as forestry existed — when such a 

 people takes charge of the finest forest in the Southern Hemi- 

 sphere, the loss in developing it may easily run into quite 

 incalculable millions. The forest has been destroyed without 

 demarcation or any attempt to discriminate between land best 

 suited for farming and land best suited for forestry. Present 

 prices, that is pre-war prices for timber, show that a normal 

 kauri forest, taking ordinary timber-yield figures, will return 

 about jQio net per acre per year. 



In 1886, the forest area of New Zealand was estimated, by 

 T. Kirk, at twenty-one million acres. By 1909 it was estimated 

 that this area had become reduced to about seventeen million 

 acres. This estimate was founded on a special inquiry and saw- 

 mill census instituted by the Lands Department, Forestry in New 

 Zealand, by W. Kensington, 1909. This official report, and 

 that for 1907, embody nearly all that has been published regard- 

 ing the forests and timber of New Zealand. The papers are 

 well illustrated by photos and maps, and repay careful perusal. 



The New Zealand forests, even in their present reduced and 

 neglected condition, are worth more than all the known mineral 

 wealth of New Zealand, and they still offer more employment 

 than any other industry. Compared to sheep-farming, the New 

 Zealand forest, if worked as are forests in Europe, would afford 

 about ten times the employment, and the timber market for 



