202 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 
present lent. I do not pretend that we are going to clothe barren hill sides 
and desert plains with trees in a year, or even several years, or that the 
indigenous forests are at once to pay off your colonial debt, but I do say 
and think that, with proper management, we should be able to plant 
wherever necessary, secure a permanent and improved supply of timber 
for the use of individuals and public departments, and retain an intact and 
gradually improving forest property, whose capital value may represent 
your national debt, and the income derived from which ought to go far to meet 
the interest thereon. I think I am justified by what I have seen in con- 
sidering that this may be done, but it can only be done by the public and 
its representatives in the House regarding the question of forest conserva- 
tion as a national or colonial one, and not from a merely local point of 
view. Whatever is done must, of necessity, be done in the interests of the 
colony at large, that is to say, of the public, and the only reason for State 
or Government interference and direct action is that damage to forests 
cannot be repaired in a day, nor can they, if once destroyed, be replaced in 
a year like a crop of wheat. Even a generation is, as a rule, too short to 
grow good timber, and you will, I am sure, admit that of all people 
colonists are the least likely to look beyond the present time or generation. 
The Secretary of State for India, writing in 1863, makes the following 
remarks bearing upon this point :—‘‘To forests, from their nature, the 
usual maxim of political economy which leaves such undertakings to 
private enterprise cannot be applied. Their vast extent, the long time that 
a tree takes to reach maturity, and the consequence that few persons live 
long enough to obtain any, and more especially the highest, returns from 
expenditure even once in the course of their lives, are proofs of the necessity 
that forest management should be conducted on permanent principles, and 
not be left to the negligence, avarice, or caprice of individuals, and there- 
fore point to the State as the proper administrator, bound to take care that 
in supplying the wants of the present generation, there is no reckless waste, 
no needless forestalling of the supply of future generations. This is matter 
of experience, notin India only, but in all other countries of the world.” I 
have, you will kindly bear in mind, nothing to do with colonial politics— 
abolition, separation, or federation. The views and principles of the 
present, past, and future Governments of the colony have no legitimate 
bearing on my duty, which is at present to submit a report on my inspec- 
tion of the New Zealand forests, with proposals for their management and 
conservation, Those proposals, so far as I have given them shape in my 
own mind, will consist in—1. The absolute reservation of a comparatively 
small proportion of the unalienated forest area. 2. The gradual disposal 
of the timber and forest products on the remainder of the waste forest lands 
