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much, better for ourselves than we do, and that our labour payments 

 abroad might be materially reduced. It is admitted that well- grown 

 home timber is, of its kind, equal to, if not superior in quality to that 

 which is imported ; it is surely, then, legitimate to expect that a 

 large supply of well-grown timber would enable us to hold the market 

 to a much larger extent than is presently the case, and that we might 

 be very much less dependent than we are upon the surplus timber of 

 other nations. 



9. The importance of this to the country is increased by the con- 

 sideration of the continued appreciation of timber. There is abundant 

 evidence forthcoming to indicate that the present rate of timber con- 

 sumption of the world is in excess of the present reproduction in the 

 forests of the great timber supplying countries, and with the persist- 

 ence of existing conditions we would appear to be within measurable 

 distance of timber famine. Experience, too, teaches that we may 

 expect not a diminution but rather an increase in consumption. No 

 doubt as civilization advances, the discoveries of science will as they 

 have done in the past, enable us to substitute in many ways for the 

 naturally produced wood, other substances prepared by manufacture ; 

 but this saving in some directions has been, and will probably continue 

 to be, counterbalanced by greater utilisation in others — witness, for 

 example, the enormous development within recent years of the wood- 

 pulp industry abroad, and consider the prospect opened up by the 

 manufacture of wood silk which is now being begun in Britain. 



10. That the possibility of forest exhaustion is no chimera should be 

 evident to any one conversant with current timber literature. Taking 

 North Europe, for instance : — In Norway, " raw timber is yearly be- 

 coming more expensive and more difficult to obtain." To Sweden, 

 M pitch pine long beams are taken froni America, suitable ones of suf- 

 ficient size and quality being unobtainable now in Sweden." In Scandina- 

 via, the virgin forests, "excepting such as are specially reserved by the 

 Government in the districts where mills are situated, are almost ex- 

 hausted." In Eussia, the Eiga " supply of oak is exhausted." These 

 sentences, culled within the past few weeks foom trade journals, show 

 that this is a more pertinent question than some would suppose. In 

 Sweden, which, it is remarkable, is actually importing logs froni 

 America, the situation is regarded as so serious that proposals 

 are on foot for the imposition of a tax upon exported timber for 

 the purpose of raising a fund for replanting denuded areas. But 

 it is not only in North European countries that there are signs of the 

 giving out of timber forests. As they fail the demand upon Canadian 

 and American stocks increases, and when we look at these Canada 

 ,c shows signs of beginning to find it hard to continue her voluminous 

 exports to Europe, and at the same time send sufficient supplies to the 

 United States." But the most striking evidence is that furnished by 

 the chief of the United States department of forestry, in his official re- 

 port for the year 1892, in which he says : "While there are still enor- 

 mous quantities of virgin timber standing, the supply is not inexhaus- 

 tible. Even were we to assume on every acre a stand of 10,000 feet 

 B.M. of saw timber— a most extravagant average — we would, with our 

 present consumption, have hardly one hundred years of supply in sight, 



