1919.] 
New Zealand Institute Science Congress. 
339 
been supposed to be beyond law and order. It shows that the poets have 
not been working unguided, if blindly ; that their appeal to our hearts is 
borne on the beat of a music that is innate in every one of us—and hence 
the power of the appeal. The laws followed by the poe^s are so simple, 
so self-revealing, that they are learned unconsciously ; their foundations 
are laid in earliest childhood ; and because they are learned so easily and 
so early we have assumed that nothing has been learned—that there was 
nothing to learn. Again, the analysis will be of use to the poets them¬ 
selves ; not to teach them their art—nothing can do that but the writings 
of their predecessors ; nor to explain it : who desires an explanation of 
beauty and pleasure ? But it will supply them with material. The work 
of a hundred of our best poets has been examined in detail, and examples 
have been selected from over three hundred poets. Some five thousand 
of the more commonly used forms have been ranged in order and a note 
made of the poets by whom each of the forms has been used. Some 
surprise is occasioned, not by the number of forms used, but by the number 
that has hardly been used at all. Here the poets will find their material ; 
and I feel confident that the making-known of this classification will result 
in a springburst of apparently new forms. 
The foregoing paper is a short precis of a completed detailed analysis 
and classification of the whole body of British verse. 
Afforestation in New Zealand, by W. H. Skinner. 
Press Notice ( Lyttelton Times). 
Mr. W. H. Skinner, Commissioner of Crown Lands for Canterbury, in a paper on 
afforestation in New Zealand, read before the General Section, claimed advantages 
for foreign trees over native trees for quick returns of milling-timber. There was a 
general belief throughout New Zealand, he said, that the planting of certain native 
trees, especially totara and puriri, would be commercially profitable. That idea was 
altogether erroneous. A full-grown totara might be five hundred years old or more. 
Even English oak, which was considered too slow for forestry purposes, would grow 
twice as fast as puriri when both were under the same conditions. The Royal 
Commission on Forestry, appointed in 1913, recommended the following for extensive 
plantation: Pinus radiata (better known as Pinus insicjnis), Pinus Laricio (or Corsican 
pine), Pinus pondr.ro sa (or heavy pine), Pinus Douglasii (or Oregon pine), different 
varieties of poplar, and Australian gums that had been proved to be best suited 
to particular districts. 
Dr. Cockayne said that Mr. Skinner’s paper was one of the most important that 
had been read before the Congress. He briefly traversed Mr. Hutchins’s policy, with 
which he did not agree. 
Professor H. B. Kirk said that he would have liked to see a clear line of demar¬ 
cation made for the layman between the afforestation of denuded areas and those 
partially denuded. The truth about the slow growth of New Zealand trees was apt 
to be exaggerated. Some species—totara, for example—were extremely slow-growing 
in their early years, but later grew rapidly. This being the case, it was folly to destroy 
young trees because they were not timber to-day. 
Some Proposals with regard to Natural Afforestation in a New Zealand 
Mountain Area, by W. G. Morrison. 
Introduction. 
Up to the present time, in New Zealand, that planting of trees on a 
large scale which may be termed “ afforestation ” has been confined to an 
altitude of considerably less than 2,500 ft., with the exception of certain 
parts of the Maniototo Plain and a few high points of other State planta¬ 
tions. Further, no attempt has been made to establish forest according to 
the methods of nature—that is, by natural invasion of large areas by means 
of small groups of trees, or even from isolated individuals. 
