49 ON THE CONSERVATION OF FORESTS IN NEW ZEALAND. 
firewood or fencing; and he would apparently act quite legally—quite 
within the terms of his licence—were he to damage, to any unlimited 
extent, the forest over which he has thus acquired a wood-cutting 
right. Practically, however, the settler cuts what he chooses: in some 
cases he pays no fee, takes out no licence, but helps himself to what 
timber he requires, whether for building, fencing, or firewood. Others 
are not honourable or conscientious enough to pay the higher fee when 
the lower one enables them—there being no Government inspector, of 
any grade, to prevent them—to cut for fencing as well as firewood. 
Comparatively few indeed were those who paid the proper fee, and 
acted honourably in accordance with the spirit as well as letter of their 
licence. The only practical safeguard against indiscriminate destruc- 
tion of the bush-reserves lay in their small number, isolated character, 
and distance necessarily from the residences of many of the settlers. 
Where no roads exist, and draying over hills and through swamps is 
a matter both of serious difficuity and expense, there is little danger of 
a settler’s cupidity or thoughtlessness leading him to cut more timber 
than he absolutely requires; though this affords no restraint upon his 
cutting timber to which he has no right, legal or moral. | 
the condition of forests in New Zealand illustrates certain 
serious errors of omission in its Government, that of some of the neigh- 
bouring Australian colonies illustrates Government errors of commis- 
sion. The Rev. Dr. Lang, of Sydney, speaking of the Red Cedar of 
New South Wales and Queensland, a valuable timber, the finer quali- 
ties of which are equal in beauty to Mahogany, remarks, * On most of 
the rivers that fall into Moreton Bay, the Cedar has been long since 
cut away; for a provident Government, utterly at a loss to devise em- 
ployment for the convicts during the continuance of the penal settle- 
ment, employed them in cutting down the valuable timber in all the 
easily accessible localities in the bay, to the serious disadvantage and 
loss of the inhabitants now ; and large quantities of that timber were 
actually piled and Jeff to rof on the beach at Dunwich, Stradbroke 
Island, after all the labour that had been thrown away in pro- 
curing it.” 
2. Deliberate Destruction of Forests by the Natives in connection with 
their Superstitions—A notable instance of this is given by the Hon. 
J. Coutts Crawford, sometime Provincial Geologist of Wellington, in 
one of his Survey Reports, within the last five years. He describes 
