APPENDIX 323 



Balfour delivered an address on forests, in which are these words: 

 ' That the possibility of forest exhaustion is no chimera should be 

 evident to anyone conversant with current timber literature.' 

 The address shows that in the Baltic States, whence most of our 

 timber supply comes, the virgin forests are practically exhausted, 

 and both Sweden and Norway have begun importing from 

 America. ' But it is not only in Northern Europe that there are 

 signs of the giving out of timber forests'; Canada will soon be 

 scarcely able to supply the American demand, and the United 

 States Official Department of Forestry report for 1892 stated that 

 'the end of the whole supply of both Canada and the United 

 States is now plainly in view.' This was ten years ago, and A commence- 

 since then things have got worse. There has, however, been a colonies, 

 start made in some British colonies. In Cape Colony a Forest 

 Department has been established. Forest organization was started 

 in Natal, but allowed to collapse, so that three-quarters of its fine 

 indigenous forests are destroyed. The kauri forests of New 

 Zealand, uniquely magnificent, have been wantonly devastated, 

 and the splendid jarra forests of Australia* are being rapidly 

 used up in the paving of London streets, to make the fortunes of 

 men who never planted a tree. 



The able paper on National Forestry by D. E. Hutchins, the National 

 enthusiastic Conservator of forests of Cape Town, read before the mended.^'^'^°"^' 

 Society of Arts in November, 1899, sets before the public some 

 curious facts. The timber which Britain buys every year from 

 abroad, to the value of ^^20, 750, 000, could be grown in England 

 on land which now produces almost nothing, bare bleak moor and 

 mountain, where the soil is getting more and more washed away for 

 lack of shelter. The interest of the National Debt is 25 miUions, Profitable in- 

 which could be paid out of the profits of the forests if they existed ^^^'™^"^- 

 to the extent of one-tenth of the surface. Germany has one acre 

 of forest to every three. England has now only one in every 

 twenty-five, and that one acre only third class, badly managed 

 plantation. The plantations of England can scarcely count as 

 forests, as they are not managed on any plan, and are liable to be 

 worked out of capital, or cut down at the caprice or necessity of 



* A Forest Department has been lately started in New South Wales and 

 Victoria, also in South Australia and Tasmania, which it is hoped may save 

 these forests from complete destruction. 



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