TIMBER IN TASMANIA. 31 



on the other, were the principal causes of this deplorable 

 destruction of such valuable property. 



As for bushfires, I believe you have laws regulating 

 the lighting of fires in the bush ; but making laws is one 

 thing, and seeing that they are enforced (a very neces- 

 sary adjunct) is another. Are these laws enforced by 

 proper and continual supervision ? To speak from my 

 own experience, I should say not. Everywhere I found 

 abundant evidence of the recklessness with which fires 

 were lighted, and the carelessness with which they were 

 left burning afterwards, when a strong breeze might 

 raise a conflagration in which lives and property would 

 be imperilled. I believe in such cases Government has 

 to compensate the sufferers. Would not prevention in 

 this, as in so many other instances, be the better alterna- 

 tive, and money spent in supervision, save money spent in 

 compensation, besides preserving valuable timber from 

 destruction ? This is, I think, a matter which should 

 engage the serious attention of those in power, and any 

 really practical move in this direction should have the 

 approval of the inhabitants of this country. Personally, 

 I feel convinced that eight out of ten bushfires are the 

 result of culpable negligence or gross carelessness and 

 ignorance in the use of fire for clearing purposes. 



As for the terrible and disastrous waste caused by 

 indiscriminate hacking, hewing, and even malicious van- 

 dalism, along with ringbarking, there ought to be some 

 immediate and drastic measures taken to prevent this 

 national loss to property. I may safely say that I have 

 seen thousands of trees ringbarked and destroyed by 

 ignorant men upon ground upon which nothing else could 

 possibly grow, and who had thus destroyed the only 

 valuable asset upon their land. Had these men been 

 properly instructed in the first elements of forestry, they 

 ■could not possibly have failed to see the folly of spend- 

 ing their labour, time, and money in annihilating the 

 only good thing their soil could produce ; or had there 

 been anyone to call their attention to the suicidal 

 irrationality of such a procedure, the waste and destruc- 

 tion might have been stopped in time, and the owners 

 would have seen that it was their interest to preserve 

 rather than to destroy. 



