EROSION AND AFFORESTATION ROYAL COMMISSION REPORT. 1 93 



Several other species are on trial, and a few may prove useful, 

 but more experiments must be made before they can be brought 

 into general use. 



Amongst broad-leaved species, oak and ash are the two 

 most important timbers. Ash timber is already getting scarce, 

 and when the hickory and ash supplies from America fail, as 

 they are likely to do soon, home-grown ash timber will again be 

 more in demand. There will always be a market for good oak 

 timber. Beech must always be grown to a certain extent where 

 oak and ash are produced, and a better quality of beech than is 

 usually grown at present could no doubt be sold at a profit. 



The present woodland areas, however, if fully stocked, would 

 no doubt supply the greater part of the hardwood timber needed, 

 and there is probably less need and certainly less room for extend- 

 ing the area of hardwoods than that of first-class coniferous 

 timber trees. 



The growing of crops of pit timber on short rotations does 

 not present an attractive field, with railway rates at their present 

 figure. The imports of small mining timber, supplied and used 

 in the round, do not show any signs of falling off in quantity. 

 The only observable variation is that prices, still low, are rather 

 stiffer than formerly. Small pit timber is a class of material 

 which can always be readily put on the market by the 

 Scandinavian peasant-owner, and there is far more likelihood 

 that future markets will become over-stocked with it than with well- 

 grown matured timber. Except in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of mines it does not seem desirable, therefore, to specially 

 devote land to the growth of crops of pit timber, and with rather 

 denser stocking at the outset, sufficient supplies of pit timber 

 could probably be had from thinnings in the high-forest to be 

 grown to the age of 80 or 90 years. 



The case would be different with timber for pulp, because 

 wherever the material could be grown in sufficient quantity, pulp 

 mills could be set up; but here again thinnings, and the lighter 

 material from the final cuttings of the mature crops, would 

 supply large quantities of pulp-wood, just as is the case at present 

 in forest districts on the Continent of Europe and in America. 



If the production of high-class timber, which will probably 

 be scarcest in the future, is made the ultimate goal, supplies 

 of wood-pulp material and mining timber, from thinnings, etc., 

 will fall in as a natural consequence. 



