PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 



31 



Another practical lesson in the economy of the forest may be 

 learnt from American experience. President Roosevelt said : 

 " Those of us who have lived on the Great Plains, who are 

 acquainted with the conditions in parts of Oklahoma, Nebraska, 

 Kansas, and the Dakotas, know that wood forms an immensely 

 portentous element in helping the farmer on those plains to battle 

 against his worst enemy — wind. The use of forests as wind- 

 breaks out on these plains, where the tree does not grow unless 

 man helps it, is of enormous importance." We have evidence of 

 this truth in our own Blue Mountains, where the cutting down 

 of the trees and the uncontrolled bush fires are not only making 

 the water supply for the local towns precarious, but allow the 

 strong westerlies to sweep away the soil and expose the bare 

 rock. The Blue Mountains will never be an agricultural paradise, 

 but must depend on those who visit them for the sake of health 

 and recreation. Here a timely planting of trees around the 

 water-courses is probably the only means of preserving the 

 beauty and the utility of these charming health resorts. 



The use of wood is rapidly increasing all over the world, and 

 timber is steadily growing in value. That means the rapidly 

 increasing commercial value of our forests. Wood is consumed 

 locally in a thousand ways, for fuel and fencing, for the con- 

 struction of all buildings, for railway sleepers and telegraph 

 poles, for the mines, for street paving, for the making of barrels 

 and boxes and cases used in the transport of every kind of 

 merchandise. The greater our population, the more extensive 

 our mining and manufacturing enterprises, the more timber we 

 shall need. What a complete disorganisation of commerce would 

 be brought about by a Wood Famine ! The oldest necessities of 

 mankind were food, water and wood, and these will be prime 

 necessities to the end of time. It is everybody's interest to see 

 that we secure betimes an ample local supply for local needs, and 

 & supply for export on what must be ever more remunerative 

 terms. The Government then, acting on behalf of the whole 

 community, must see to it that our forests are not skinned and 

 destroyed, but that they be maintained in full efficiency and widely 



