Cape National Forests. 65 
the last two years we have paid an average of £269,349 for wood 
imported into Cape Colony. Nearly the whole of this wood will be 
produced at a fraction of this figure in Cape Colony itself when the 
national forests have reached the modest figure of about 50,000 acres, 
or 78 square miles only (assuming an average acre-increment of 
100 cubic feet for pine plantations). The average value of the 
imported wood, nearly all sawn pine, is about 1s. per cubic foot. 
On good arable ground in the south-western districts sawn pine- 
wood can be produced, as we have seen, at from 4d. to 6d. the cubic 
foot. This is from mm sztw sowings. But even where transplants 
have to be used and young trees planted, the cost under favourable 
circumstances is not much more. In the larger forest nurseries, 
notably at Fort Cunynghame, near King William’s Town, young 
forest trees are now produced ready for transplanting at a cost - 
of only 74d. per 100. 
Taking Germany as our model, with one-fourth of its area forest 
worth at the present day £100,000,000, it is certain that we have 
but to follow in the footsteps of Germany to cover our National 
Debt by means of a national asset—the State forests. As compared 
with Germany, we have a climate that is not always favourable to 
the tree growth, but this may be said to be more than compensated 
for by the rapid growth of trees in the favourable districts. 
Most important of all, when we have got our forests we must learn 
how to keep them. For the last fifteen years the Forest Department 
has laboured at building up the Forest Reserves, and this work of 
forming the national forests has been highly supported by Parlia- 
ment. The last Estimates voted for the Forest Department totalled 
£60,135. In the settled parts of the country all that remains of 
the indigenous forest has been brought under systematic manage- 
ment, and plantations of the more valuable exotic timbers are going 
forward at the rate of about 54 million trees yearly on 1,800 acres. 
Three and a half million trees on 1,049 acres are the figures for the 
Western Conservancy for 1897. But there is a danger, more especially 
in a British community, where the sentiment in favour of national 
forests is not so strong as on the Continent of Europe, that, yielding to 
temporary pressure, slices of the national forests may be alienated. 
Lately it has been ascertained that there is a flaw in the Forests 
Act, and that such alienations are possible. In Australia it has 
been found advisable to remove the railways from political control. 
Forests, far more than railways, demand a settled policy and fixed 
governance. After all railways can be made, bought, and sold like 
any other commodity. Not so forests. Their restoration may be a 
work of several generations, and involve an expenditure out of all 
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