36 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



comity of nations. When the truth gets out New South Wales 

 will not be able to borrow in the world's money market on the 

 same terms as Victoria. Forests are a valuable national asset. 

 Germany gets a gross revenue of ^15,000,000 a year from its 

 forests ; England is paying to-day ^30,000,000 yearly for timber 

 from abroad that might be grown two or three times over on its 

 waste and poorer lands if they were under forest. New South 

 Wales has what is pleasantly termed "an accumulated forest 

 surplus of half a million " ! That ;^5oo,ooo, wrung from the 

 wreck of its forests, is going to cost New South Wales more 

 than any money borrowed by any State in modern times. This 

 I told the Minister in charge of forests in Sydney. 



Doubtless there has been much weak sentiment over the 

 destruction of forests in Australia. The greater part of the 

 forest that has been destroyed had to go. It was required for 

 settlement, and never had much value as forest. The mistake 

 lay in the indiscriminate destruction of the forest. " Demarcate ! 

 demarcate ! " said every scientifically-trained forester who has 

 visited Australia during the last fifty years. But that has never 

 been done, except in South Australia and recently in Victoria. 



Before I came to Victoria I had heard of the destruction of 

 forests that has taken place ; the biggest trees in the world 

 destroyed before any exact record of their size had been left to 

 science, and only a remnant remaining where once the fine 

 Otway forest existed. It was a keen pleasure to find on my 

 arrival in Victoria that it had definitely turned this dark page in 

 its history. Its remaining forests have been demarcated for the 

 last five years. It has four million acres of State forest definitely 

 set aside as national property, which is amply sufficient for all 

 its needs, if only the forest were better placed and had more 

 softwood. Victoria has a good Forest Act, and a live working 

 Forest Department. An area of some 50,000 acres is fire-pro- 

 tected, and the area is being extended. Some remarkably 

 economical planting of softwood is being done on French 

 Island, and the State premier, in his forest pronouncement of 

 nth November last, said that from ^6000 to ^10,000 yearly 

 would be spent in future on planting, at ^^3 per acre. The 

 planting of softwood is actually being vigorously pushed 

 forward, and every effort is being made to extend the consider- 

 able area of forest which is already protected from fire and 

 unrestricted grazing. 



