50 



h, Victoria ;i new l/md Act was passed in 1S.S4, which provides, amongst 

 Others, !r the folio win-' matters : 



! i Tin- I,. rmal ion of State forests. 

 cJ) The formation of timber reserves. 



Tli- management of l>oth. 



I Th. management and disposal of timber and other forest produce on the 

 mi;i ,1 ( Y(i\vn lands not included in the State forests and timber reserves. 



1'nder this Act the State forests can only be alienated with the consent of 

 the t }overnor-in-< 'onneil. The timber reserves shall not be alienated in the first 

 instance, but as the several parts become denuded of timber, they may be added 

 i.i the pastoral <>r agricultural lands in other words, thrown open to selection. 

 The timber reserves are, therefore, only temporary reserves. 



'I he forests generally are worked under the license system, regulated by 

 rules made under the Act. There are licenses for felling, splitting, clearing under- 

 growth, the erection of saw-mills, grazing, removal of wattle bark, etc. For each 

 til' these, licenses certain fees are paid. Penalties are provided for breaches of the 

 law, or any regulations issued under it. 



The question is whether, and in how far, effect has been given to the policy 

 which is indicated in the Act. Mr. Vincent, an expert and a trained forest officer 

 of known ability, who served in the Indian Forest Departments since 1873, gives 

 the following description of forest management in a report to the Governor of 

 the colony, as existing in 1887. 



The area of State forests and timber reserves then stood as follows : 



State forests 664,710 acres, 



Timber reserves 690,732 " 



Total 1 ,35 5,442 acres. 



Ktjual to 2,118 square miles, or about 2 per cent, of' the area of the colony. 



Mr. Vincent visited a number of the State forests, timber reserves, and other 

 forest lands, and he draws a rather gloomy picture of their condition. 



This is what he says, for instance, about the Wombat and Bullarook forest 

 ;area, 105,000 acres): "This is said to have been originally a magnificent forest, 

 chiefly of messmate or stringy bark, the timber being of the very best class- 

 enormous quantities have been sent away to Melbourne, Sandhurst, and Ballarat 

 there were thirty-six saw-mills at work in 1884 the splitters have cut more 

 timber than even the saw-millers the good timber is now almost all worked out, 

 except in certain localities in the southern half of the forest. In the portion 

 which I visited there are only seeond-class trees, with a certain number of bigger 

 ones, which have been left for some fault. There has been little or no repro- 

 duction, the whole of the young trees have been burnt, and there are no middle- 

 aged ones coming on to yield timber some twenty or forty years hence. 



' The useless waste and destruction that have been going on in this forest 

 for the past thirty years defy all description. The saw-mill fellers and the 

 -plitters have been allowed to go in and cut when and what they chose. Gener- 

 ally the fellers took one log out of each tree, leaving the rest, which, although not 

 quite so good as the butt-end log, still consisted of first-class timber. The splitters, 

 as often as not, left trees to rot where they had fallen, without even taking out 

 one log, on finding that the wood did not split well. Even if they did split, at 



