KAURI GROWTH. 13 
Coming south in Europe to the latitude and temperatures of the 
Waipoua Forest, Cluster-pine, the chief forest-tree of Portugal, shows a 
normal of 14°} rings per inch of radius. Cluster-pine grows so quickly 
in Portugal and France that it will pay, on poor soil, “to plant it and 
erow pit-props for England. ‘This is one of the biggest forest industries 
in the world, England paying £3,500,000 yearly for these pit-props. 
This figure is equal to the value of the whole export to England from the 
neglected wild forests of Canada; while, curiously, the same figure repre- 
sents the penalty Australia is paying yearly for its backward forestry. 
Thus we see that Mr. Cheeseman’s figure gives Kauri nearly double 
the growth in thickness of the average forest-trees of south England and 
central Europe, and a diameter-growth 41 per cent. more rapid than 
the great pit-timber tree of south EKurope (Pius pinaster). 
The Podocarpus timbers of South Africa (three species) seem to grow 
at much the same rate as the Podocarpus timbers of New Zealand— 
Totara, White-pine, Black-pine, and Miro, 
Average figures for Stinkwood (Ocotea 6ullata) and White-pear 
(Apodytes dimidiata), two important hardwoods in the forest of South 
Africa, like the mixed forest of New Zealand, are 15 rings per 1 in., 
or 1 ft. diameter in ninety years. Curiously, I obtained the same average 
growth-figure from measurements taken at random on forty logs as they 
came to the Government sawmill in the largest pine-forest of Cypress. 
These logs were Aleppo-pine, which forms nearly all the timber forest 
of Cypress. (‘* Cypress Forestry,”’ p. 49.) This 15 rings per inch may 
be compared with Cheeseman’s 9°7. 
HEIGHT-GROWTH OF KAURI, 
Here one cannot do much with counting the rings, though it would 
be possible to get some suggestive and possibly useful figures by taking 
the difference in the numbers of rings on basal and crown sections. 
At this moment there is a lot of useful material for such a study in 
an old Kauri-working outside Trounson’s Park near Kaihu. I spent 
one day there counting rings, but I had other engagements pre- 
venting a further stay. There must be the same opportunity in many 
other old Kauri workings where the trunk has been rolled away and 
the crown section left in place opposite the stump section. The difference 
between the number of rings on each section is the age up to the time 
when the tree reached the height of the top section above the ground, 
which height can be measured now on the ground, provided, of course, 
that the crown showing the top section has not been moved. Ordinarily 
it lies where it fell. No one wants to move it. 
It is unfortunate that as vet the height-crowth generally of New 
Zealand timber-trees in their forest surroundings can only be judged: 
there have been no foresters to measure them in New Zealand. As 
far as I have been able to judge the height-growth of the native forest- 
trees, they are decitledly faster than Huropean forest-trees; while Kauri 
averages somewhat faster than Cluster-pine in Portugal, which, as seen, 
crows fast enough for Portuguese farmers to plant at a profit for mining- 
timber to send to England. I gave various figures of Kauri growth in 
my Forest League address printed in the Journal of Agriculture for Octo- 
ber and November, 1916. It will be enough to note here that Kauri, in 
a collection of native planted trees, is usually one of the fastest growers, 
and usually has the best shape. The conditions must be altovether 
