TASMANIAN FORESTRY. 585 
up for its timber and afterwards abandoned when this is 
worked out. If, in the meantime, no steps are taken to 
effect the regeneration of the area devastated, it will in a 
few years become utterly unfit for the support of anything 
but useless scrub. 
Upon all Government land appropriate to be set apart for 
permanent forest reserves, but which is being denuded of 
its timber for sawmill purposes, some steps should be taken 
to ensure reproduction; otherwise, as soon as any portion 
of the soil becomes unduly exposed to the action of the sun 
and wind, deterioration sets in, and the process of restora- 
tion is yearly rendered more difficult of accomplishment. 
Natural seeding, and the springing up of suckers, will 
often do much in the way of regeneration; but too fre- 
quently useless shrubs and rank weeds spring up, which, 
although affording protection to the ground, nevertheless 
would be better replaced by prospective timber-trees. 
Much good might be accomplished by the systematic 
seeding of the patches of land left clear upon the removal 
of timber to the mills, especially if the leaves and branches 
of the fallen logs could be promptly burnt out of the way 
in a manner to be considered further on in my observations 
upon forest fires. After disposing of the rubbish from the 
areas vacant of timber, the cleared patches of ground might 
be surface-chipped with an appropriate implement, and then 
sown down with the seed of trees suitable for the soil and 
situation. 
Taking into consideration the great lability of all Tas 
manian bush country to suffer from fires, patches or belts of 
European hardwood trees would doubtless prove valuable 
interspersed amongst the more inflammable kind, as a 
means for checking the progress of any fire which might 
be started. Conifers could be more easily sown, and would 
establish themselves in the circumstances I have men- 
tioned; but they are even more lable to destruction by 
fire than the native trees. The larch, however, might be 
used, as being, from the nature of its foliage, less 
inflammable than other trees of the coniferous order. 
An experiment upon the lines indicated in some typical 
locality would cost little, and its success or otherwise could 
be speedily demonstrated, and practical evidence obtained 
as a guide to further operations on a larger scale. 
The system of forest management alluded to in the fore- 
going is called the ‘method of selection,’ and is the one 
necessarily practised at the outset in countries which are 
being freshly opened up, and consists for the most part in 
