essential to a country's well-being as forests. A country may possess rich de- 

 posits of valuable metals and ores, but, when once these deposits have been ex- 

 hausted, they can never be replaced. With forests the case is quite different. 

 Provided they are not wantonly destroyed or recklessly used, the forests will con- 

 tinue to yield an annual crop of timber for all time and so remain forever a 

 source of wealth to the community possessing' them. There is no material more 

 useful to man than timber, none that is more intimately connected with his well- 

 being. Without it life would be shorn of most of its joys and comforts; without 

 it man would never have emerged from barbarism; fire as a means of preparing" 

 food and providing warmth would have been unknown, and travelling that in- 

 cluded the crossing of the Avide rivers or of seas would have been impossible, and 

 man must for ever have remained a cave dweller. 



But raw timber is by no means the only valuable product of the forest. There 

 are quite a number of others, some obtainable direct and others after the raw 

 material has been the object of certain processes. Timber itself may be converted 

 into other substances. Under the process known as "destructive distillation" from 

 wood there may be obtained pyroligneous acid, charcoal, gas and tar, and from 

 these again, by further processes, wood alcohol (valuable as a fuel and for many 

 other purposes) and quite a number of chemicals, all of them of commercial im- 

 portance. The barks of certain of our trees are used by tanners for converting 1 

 skins into leather, and the marri (redgum) yields in large quantities a kino or 

 resin which is also of service in tanning. Again, from the leaves of almost every 

 tree in our forests an oil may be obtained. Some trees yield very little oil, others 

 a quantity large enough to form the basis of an industry. Eucalyptus oil, which 

 everyone knows, is distilled from the leaves of a member of the eucalypt family, 

 but this particular tree is not found m Western Australia. Then, again, the 

 forests provide us with several gums and resins of value in certain trades — manna 

 gum and blackboy gum are instances. For many years a great part of the paper 

 used throughout the world has been made from wood. Hitherto the woods princi- 

 pally used for papermaking are the various softwoods found in Northern Europe, 

 Canada and the United States. But the forests from which these woods have 

 been drawn are daily becoming smaller, and it has been found necessary to dis- 

 cover whether hardwoods such as the eucalypts could not be used for the pur- 

 pose. Experiments have been made and are still being made in Perth and else- 

 where in Australia, and the results indicate that certain kinds of paper may be 

 made from these trees. It will be seen, therefore, that, besides timber, forests 

 yield many other substances of use and value to man. Writing of the significance 

 of trees to mankind, an American author says, "Before the earth could be peopled 

 it was set thick with trees. Trees are the arms of Mother Earth, lifted up in 

 worship to the Maker; where they are beauty dAvells: where they are not the land 

 is ugly, though it is rich, for its richness is but grassy flatness and its gaudy 

 raiment is but cheap imitation of forest finery." 



