104 AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 
Adoption of the annual plan would encourage officers to systematise their 
data on resources and methods and conditions of utilisation. In course of time 
and by normal growth, the annual plan would emerge as the true final 
Australian working plan. But there must be evolution, not revolution. 
Limitation of the cut of each forest on the basis of the sustained yield 
must be an important objective. of management. Its adoption generally, 
however, hinges upon a general accessibility. 
It should most certainly be applied in the case of accessible reserves 
where excess operations can be diverted reasonably to other areas, such as 
lands in process of clearing for settlement. There is no dearth of such lands 
in Australia and their resources should be fully utilised, in any case. 
In the absence of increment and assessment data, an approximation of 
the sustained yield, based on a rough stocktaking and a tentative rotation, 
should be adopted. 
Sound silvicultural practice is the prime need of the moment. Operations 
must be conducted so as to give the maximum opportunity for natural 
regeneration. 
Silvicultural systems are linked very closely with the timber policy, whose 
first principles should be the safeguarding of the interests of the future forest, 
and those also of the present industry. Silviculturally speaking, exploitation 
is, after all, only a means to an end—the end of regeneration and the produc- 
tion of the normal forest. 
Clear cutting, with reservation of seed trees, singly or in groups or blocks, 
is the silvicultural system adopted almost exclusively at present in the United 
States of America. It is a method for over-mature, even-aged forests under 
an extensive form of management, and is almost obsolete in Europe. 
The forests of Australia are not usually even-aged. For the most part 
they consist of a scattered overwood of over-mature and deteriorating trees, 
with an irregular mixed underwood of many species, many of them mere forest 
weeds. White ants or borers infest the former; bush fires have ravaged the 
latter. 
Removal of the overwood is indicated, but it must be regulated so as to 
safeguard the underwood, and make for reproduction to the normal extent and 
composition. Exploitation must be conservative, and defective and useless 
trees inust be eliminated from the stand. Disposal of the débris and brush 
may be desirable in some instances as a regenerative measure. 
But red cedar for fencing, and rosewood for pig troughs! Thus it was 
in the beginning, and thus it continues, if in diminuendo, to this day. Rioting 
among a virgin plenty (for the handful pioneering population of Australia) the 
Australian licensed timber-getter has followed the policy of the small boy let 
loose in the orchard; he has confined his attention to the pick of the timber 
stand, and has left behind him a trail of wasted wealth to be offered up as a 
burnt sacrifice in the bush fires of the coming summer. Of the trees he 
actually fells for mill logs, he takes two-thirds; of the precious ironbark for 
sleepers he leaves two-thirds. The important cypress pine resources of the 
West fare no better, despite local shortage, while the valuable but limited hoop 
pine scrubs of Queensland are being wastefully culled in order to satisfy the 
fastidious taste of the day for clear lumber unspecked by a single knot. 
The timber-getter transfers responsibility to the miller who refuses to 
accept any but selected logs. The miller in turn blames both the general 
consumer who will not have anything to do with second-class timber, the 
architect who declines to depart from the traditional specification on which 
he has been reared, and Government departments which insist on the finest 
quality of wood for every purpose. — 
