223 
lishinent of weeds and the difficulty, with our scarcity of labour, of giving the small trees 
careful attention when they most want it, they often have to struggle for existence 
immediately they are planted out. Weeds contest with the young plant for such plant- 
food as there is, and there is the additional drawback that they may smother or deform 
the young tree in its most impressionable stage. 
V. Animals. 
(a) Grazing. 
(6) Native animals. 
(c) Birds. 
(d) Insects. 
(a) Grazing. Grazing in forests has been already referred to as a serious matter 
from the point of view of fungus-infection. 
9 
Speaking broadly, we may say that the grazing interest is antagonistic to the 
forest interest. Goats should never be tolerated in a forest under any circumstances, 
as they absolutely destroy the young growth as far as they are able. Sheep, cattle,, 
and horses do harm in varying degrees, not only by eating out the tree seedlings, but 
by trampling and hardening the soil, and also by forming tracks which are accentuated 
by the rain, and form fissures and landslips. Cattle do least harm, as they usually 
confine their attention to the grass ; calves are more frisky, and do harm by running 
and jumping about, and also by gnawing young trees to a much greater extent than 
they do when they get more staid in their habits. Horses do much harm to a forest. 
On the other hand, animals eat much grass and inflammable weedy plants and rubbish ; 
thus they reduce the risk of fire in the forest, and the pasturage of such has a greater 
or less value. 
From special areas where there is, for example, a growth of many young seedlings, 
stock should be rigorously excluded ; but as regards forests in general, it is idle to propose 
to exclude them altogether. The proper forest policy should be to regulate the grazing. 
A proper code of forest grazing regulations will, in the course of time, be promulgated 
by the Forest Department. 
It is quite a mistake to suppose that the running of sheep, cattle, and other 
grazing animals in forest lands is peculiar to Australia. In Europe, in spite of the forest 
regulations and forest practice which has grown up for centuries, much harm is done 
by grazing animals in many of the forests. The whole subject is gone into very exhaus- 
tively in a very readable chapter* of Schlich's work. The whole matter has to be 
arranged with a view of balancing the conflicting interests that is to say, to conserve 
those of the trees, and at the same time to obtain a maximum revenue from the grass 
and other forage plants. 
* Chap. ii.. Vol. V; see also Kibbentrop's " Forestry in British India," p. 160. 
