1919 .] 
University and Scientific News. 
223 
Auckland Institute. 
Annual Meeting, 24th February. 
The annual report of the Institute and Museum, which was read and 
adopted, indicates that an unusually large programme of popular lectures 
was given during 1918, and that a few scientific papers also were read. 
During the year many additions to the Museum collections were received, 
including some particularly fine specimens of Maori carving. The report 
stresses the drawbacks and deficiencies of the present Museum building, 
and foreshadows the removal of the collections to a new building to be 
erected in the Domain, where a site of nearly three acres on Observatory 
Hill has been provided. 
Owing to delay in its preparation, the report of the general meeting, or 
“ science congress,” of the New Zealand Institute, held in Christchurch in 
February, cannot appear in this issue as promised. We hope to publish it, 
together with some of the shorter papers read at the meeting, in the July 
number. 
REVIEWS AND ABSTRACTS. 
Waipoua Kauri Forest, its Demarcation and Management, by D. E. 
Hutchins. Lands and Survey Department, New Zealand. 63 pp., 
illustrations and map. 1918. 
This pamphlet, written by one of the most eminent extra-tropical 
forestry experts of the world, is not, as its title might suggest, purely a 
technical paper. Forest work, like gardening, permits ample time for 
reflection on many things, and the forester carries an atmosphere of the 
open air into his writings, which lack the precision and formality of most 
technical literature. Thus we learn that Mr. Hutchins has been with 
elephants most of his life, and has shot three ; that, with no bad wild 
animals, the scrub lands of New Zealand should be a donkey’s paradise ; 
and that the milk of buffaloes is rich in butter-fat, but the butter is 
colourless. These matters, however, have really an intimate connection 
with New Zealand forestry, for the choice of a good log-hauling animal 
is a matter of great importance, and the palm goes to the buffalo. 44 For 
hauling heavy timber and subsisting on coarse herbage and marsh-grass 
they are unsurpassed.” 
The actual demarcation of the Waipoua State Kauri Forest was 
carried out by Mr. Hutchins in 1916, but publication was delayed until 
recommendations on the subsequent management of the forest were pre¬ 
pared. Demarcation marks the first step in systematic forestry, and 
is defined as the forest survey of the country by forest experts, and the 
picking-out from the general forest area of those parts which are best 
fitted to be kept in perpetuity as the national forest estates of the country. 
The procedure was to include areas on poor soil where the forest was good 
or was capable of restoration at a reasonable expenditure. As most of 
the forest on good soil had long since been destroyed, existing boundaries 
had to be accepted, with certain modifications where forest-destruction 
had spread too far up the mountain-side. As now demarcated, the Waipoua 
Forest is eleven miles long from east to west, and nearly nine miles broad 
from north to south, and includes 29,830 acres, of which 28,880 are 
occupied by the main block of forest. Unfortunately, demarcation has 
