THE FORESTS OF AUSTRALIA. 35 



parts of eucalypt trees is forbidden by law, so as to try to keep 

 out the natural enemies that prey on them in Australia, 



It is pleasant to note that among the various Australian States 

 Victoria is easily first in forestry. I will go further, and say 

 that in the sad history of forestry in Australia, Victoria has now 

 definitely turned the black page, and placed its forests on the 

 same footing as South Africa. 



It is true that South Australia was the first in the field with 

 scientific forestry in Australia, and that excellent work has been 

 done, and is being done, in South Australia, but drought and 

 want of funds have there placed limitations which happily do 

 not exist in Victoria. 



Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania have, com- 

 paratively speaking, done as yet little to damage their splendid 

 forest inheritance seriously. Queensland forestry should have a 

 great future. It alone, among the Australian States, has a 

 professionally-trained chief forest officer, and a good supply of 

 softwood in its forests. Western Australia and Tasmania, 

 through the want of forest demarcation 50 or 100 years ago, 

 have got the existing forests into the wrong place (they are too 

 inaccessible), but that can, to an extent, be remedied by planting 

 the softwood forests of the future in the right place. This should 

 be adjoining the towns, railways, or waterways, for the transport 

 of farm produce costs less than timber and forest produce, 

 while the cultivated forest, as an organic whole, produces yearly 

 crops. 



Of New South Wales forestry it is difficult to speak dispassion- 

 ately, for there has been such an appalling destruction of forest, 

 and purposeless waste of valuable timber under the plea of 

 settlement. New South Wales is the oldest State, and it is 

 to-day at the bottom of all the Australian States in forestry. It 

 is situated in the centre of the habitat of the eucalypts, and has 

 inherited the cream of the hardwood forests of Australia. But 

 the best of these are gone, have passed away in smoke, under 

 the name of " settlement," and no practical beginning has yet 

 been made with the essentials of modern forestry — demarcation, 

 planting, and the protection of the forests against fire and cattle, 

 the A B C of modern forestry. The forests are under a dual 

 system of management which precludes any attempt to evolve 

 order out of chaos. A State cannot squander its natural 

 resources, as New South Wales has done, without falling in the 



