54 Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society. 
March, 1898. Further extensive reservations were made by Presi- 
dent Cleveland on the very eve of his retirement. 
So far then as these four sources of supply are concerned, an 
early exhaustion of three is to be looked for, and the fourth 
(Germany) in the future will want all its timber for home use. 
What have we then to take their place? Very little abroad. The 
remaining forests of the cold temperate zone are less accessible, 
and can only be worked economically with a considerable rise in 
present prices. | 
In Great Britain, Dr. Nesbit tells us, out of 3,000,000 acres of 
woodlands only 2 per cent., or ninety square miles (about the 
area’ of the Knysna forest region), are the property of the State. 
England pays £17,000,000 yearly for imported wood, of which 
about £14,000,000 is for wood that could be grown equally well in 
the British Isles. 
In the warm temperature zone the forests are chiefly composed 
of hardwoods, which though precious locally and for certain 
uses, are not likely to long affect the general timber supply 
of the world. It is true that there are vast stores of hardwood, 
mostly eucalypt, in Australia, and that some of this, chiefly 
jarrah and karrie, is now coming to South Africa for sleepers and 
wood-paving. The combined karrie and jarrah imports during the 
last four years averaged 63,000 cubic feet yearly, 2.e., only one- 
eightieth of our present total wood imports. Australia itself imports 
pine wood on much the same scale as South Africa. The Colony 
of New South Wales imported for home consumption pine or allied 
soft wood :— 
1895-96 ae sa 25 | SASK oUO 
1896-97 ee de a 318,411 
In the tropics the forests are composed almost entirely of 
hardwoods that can never take the place of pine and deal for 
house-building purposes. Though a tropical pine exists, it is little 
more than a botanical curiosity. Tropical countries will never 
produce pine timber, much less export it. 
We have therefore to look for a rise in the price of imported 
wood; and when the time comes, a rapid enhancement (for reasons 
stated above) of the £250,000 we now pay yearly for imported 
wood. It behoves us therefore to plant largely, and at once, so as 
to reduce as soon as possible this heavy drain on the country—to 
set our house in order against the day when this drain will be still 
further increased. The exact proportion that the wooded area of a 
country should bear to the whole cannot be dogmatically laid down, 
