Victoria allows. On the latter subject our Acclimatization 

 Society has recently published the views, which I entertain in 

 reference to the many various trees, eligible for the geographic 

 latitudes of a colony like ours.* Next I proceed to give, 

 though very briefly, only an outline of the special system of 

 administration, which I would advise to be adopted in the 

 first instance, as well for the supervision, enrichment and utili- 

 sation of our native forests as for creating also new ones. On 

 various occasions I have alluded to such a plan of surveillance 

 before. More recently, though only passingly, in a lecture 

 delivered at this hall, I advocated the formation of local 

 Forest Boards in the different districts of our colonial territory. 

 Various considerations led me to recommend this system. The 

 administration, as an honorary one, would involve no direct 

 expenditure to the State. It would bring to bear in each 

 locality special watchfulness and local talent. In each district 

 could readily be found a few inhabitants, who not only 

 possess some knowledge of tree culture in general, but who 

 also, by their direct interest in the present and future welfare 

 of the locality [Jin which they live, in which they gained ex- 

 periences, in which they hold property, and in which they 

 reared a family, would be induced, as much for the sake of 

 direct and lasting advantages as from patriotic motives, to 

 devote the needful time for serving on a local Forest Board. 

 But there are still other weighty advantages, which claim 

 support for this proposition. Various tracts of the Victorian 

 territory are as might be imagined very unlike in climate 

 and geologic structure. Each locality shows peculiar adapt- 

 abilities for special trees to be selected. One district can 

 afford, by the possession of more extensive primeval forests, 

 to be far more heavily taxed in its timber resources than 

 another; one tract of country can produce remuneratively 

 certain trees, which it would be hopeless to attempt raising in 

 another locality. Some extensive areas have no forests 

 at all, arid in others they have all but succumbed already. 

 Hence each Forest Board can best frame its own bye-laws 

 or local regulations, subject to the approval of ministerial 

 authority; each can best judge of its own particular re- 

 quirements, not only for the present generation, but also 

 of such as will be urgent at a time when the children and 

 grand-children of the earlier colonists will have to form their 



* Appendix to the Annual Keport of the Viet. Acclimat. 800., 1870- 

 1871. 



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