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GENERAL SUGGESTIONS. 
SECTION IV. 
CULTIVATION OF THE EUCALYPTS 
FOR TIMBER PRODUCTION. 
SELECTION AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE 
PLANTING GROUND. 
Areas where there is hard-pan or extended impervious rock must be avoided 
in planting ti ees of almost every kind. Loose boulders or broken rock mixed with 
the soil and subsoil will be no serious detriment, provided the tree roots can freely 
make theii way outward and downward to firm holding and permanent moisture. 
Some of the timber-yielding eucalypts grow slowly, and rarely exceed small to 
medium heights and diameters. These can flourish on soils and subsoils that a 
faimei might legard as poor and dry. Amongst them are species that produce 
lieai twood of great density and durability. Generally their period for reaching a 
good pole timber size is long. It may be as much as sixty or seventy years. The 
very rapid growers that can give us poles for carrying wires and large logs for the 
sawmill in thirty years are necessarily more exacting. They demand deeper 
roothold and a more abundant supply of moisture. Preference in New Zealand 
is likely to be given mainly to the best of the species that grow rapidly to large 
dimensions. 
The question of selecting an acre or two for eucalypts on an ordinary farm 
will be simple. The farmer will place his block or belt where it will serve as a wind¬ 
break and be generally most convenient. If he has an unploughable gully, he may 
find that the best and most economical situation for his plantation. 
It is when the planting has to be done on a more extended scale in hilly and 
steep country that the problem becomes difficult. We may then have widely 
different qualities and conditions of soil in close contiguity. With varying altitudes 
and a deeply uneven surface of the land, we may also expect to find a great 
diversity of winter temperatures. Hollows and pockets that are warmed by the 
sun’s rays in the day time will be filled by heavier and colder air at night, while 
the warmer and lighter air will be forced up to the intermediate levels. Life may 
be abundantly possible to tender species in the favoured localities, and quite 
impossible to them only a few hundred yards away. 
No large square block of such country could be all profitably planted with the 
same kind of tree. The first thing to be done in such case is to make a soil survey 
and to lay down a working plan. Latitude and local climatic conditions must be 
closely noted as well as the soil. Winter temperatures must be either definitely 
ascertained or very carefully estimated all over the block. Prevailing winds must 
also be duly observed and indicated. In the resultant plan, valleys and flats and 
TJ 
