ON THE TIMBER SUPPLY OF AUSTRALIA. 115 



claim districts. Certainly, New Zealand, with a climate more 

 congenial to tree-growing, because of its greater humidity, has 

 acted far more liberally in offering a bonus twice as large, and 

 relatively perhaps three or four times as large. At all events it is 

 clear that the preservation and planting of forests is too important 

 to be left under the Crown Lands Department, with a bare chance 

 of being once attended to at the right time, and at another forgotten 

 or neglected, with no trained staff, or employing men who take no 

 special delight in their duties, or executed by men who put in a 

 tender for it. If such plantation is successful, it would be a sur- 

 prise to me. Compare with this the care which is taken by the 

 foresters in Germany, of which Dr Brandis, the Inspector-General 

 of Forests in India, says the following: "The steepest and most 

 rocky sides of the hills are covered with forests which have been, 

 so to speak, created by the ingenuity and labours of the Forest 

 Department. In many such places, where even the few handfuls 

 of soil placed round the young tree have had to be carried some 

 distance, it is not contended that the first plantations will yield a 

 direct pecuniary profit, but the improvement in climate by the 

 retention of the moisture, and reclamation of large tracts formerly 

 barren and unproductive, is taken into account, besides which the 

 droppings of leaves and needles from the trees will ere long create 

 a soil and vegetation, and ensure the success of plantations in 

 future years, and consequent surplus." And in another place : 

 " Nothing that I can say or write can convey too high an idea of 

 the attainments and thorough knowledge of then work possessed 

 by German forest-officers of all grades. A very little time served 

 to convince me that the practice of the German foresters was as 

 good, if not better, than then theory, and that they were, in fact, 

 perfect masters of then duties in all their details." And again : 

 " Where are we to look for a model or precedent on which to 

 work 1 and the reply appears ready — To Germany, where forestry 

 has been carried on for hundreds of years. Not the mere planting 

 of a few hundred acres here, or reserving a few thousand acres 

 there, but a general system of forest management, commencing by 

 a careful survey, stock-taking, careful experiments in the rate of 

 growth, the best soil for each description of tree — in fact, in every 

 branch of the subject, and resulting in hundreds of thousands of 

 acres mapped, divided into periods and blocks, and worked to the 

 best advantage, both with regard to present and future, and the 

 annual yield of which now and for many years to come is known 



