46 



if the Native Trust can agree to an arrangement of this kind, the Government would 

 obtain a block of forest sufficiently large to warrant the workiu^ of timber on a large 

 scale and the construction of roads for its removal. This would give employment to the 

 Natives and prove of benefit to the district generally. 



When the forests have been demarkated, the next step is to secure their effectual 

 protection. Many causes of destruction have to be guarded against ; chiefly fires, cattle, 

 depredations, and abusive cuttings. 



PROTECTION FROM FIRE. 



Forest fires seldom originate inside a forest. In the majority of cases they are due 

 to grass burning outside. When the grass is rank and dry and the wind violent, the 

 fire is driven into the trees near the edge and the forest may become ignited. In other 

 cases, the forest is burnt purposely by Natives, in order to drive out game or to clear 

 -land for cultivation, Those fires that originate inside a forest are also usually kindled by 

 Natives, either wantonly, as by hunting parties, or to clear glades where cultivation may 

 be carried without the help of fencing, or to fell trees for firewood. A favourite Native 

 method of felling trees consists in kindling a fire round the roots, which is allowed 

 to smoulder till the tree comes down. However, fires lighted within a forest are seldom 

 so dangerous as those lighted outside, owing to the greater calmness of the air inside, and 

 to the want of grass sufficiently rank to burn in a blaze reaching the crowns of high trees. 



It is only during the winter months that grass fires spread to the forests. When the 

 wind is favourable and the ground moist, as it generally is towards the end of summer, 

 the grass may be burnt with impunity if proper precautions are taken. 



In order to minimise the destruction of forests by fires, a protective belt should be 

 burnt round each forest, in April or May, as soon as the grass becomes readily inflam- 

 mable. Native cultivation should be absolutely prohibited, and Native hunting parties 

 should not be allowed in demarkated forests. Where the forests are worked, no tree 

 should be allowed to be felled within forty yards of the edge, so as to prevent the 

 formation of gaps, and avoid accumulations of dry crowns and rubbish which would 

 form vulnerable points along the edge, through which the fires might enter the forest and 

 reach worked portions full of dry wood, with disastrous consequences. A clean boundary 

 is characteristic of an evergreen forest, and in Natal there is a sharp transition from the 

 grass land to the forest. It is important that this boundary should be preserved unbroken. 

 If it is broken, the brushwood and dry trees of the burnt portions burn more fiercely the 

 next season, and scorch another broader belt ; and so on, till the forest edge is driven to 

 shady kloofs and steep south slopes, naturally too damp to allow of the spread of fire. 

 Fires have in this manner caused a large diminution of the forests of South Africa. 

 The disastrous conflagration which extended, in 1869, from George to Humansdorp at 

 the Cape, or that which destroyed, a few months back, the once magnificent Katberg 



