6 A MILLION OF POPULATION, 
family, would mean with the resulting sawnill employment a population 
of some 500,000 souls, Working half on small farms and half in the 
forest, as in Europe, the population supported would be some 1,000,000. 
The country would be opened up with roads and parcelled out into farnis 
and demarcated forest, the latter enclosing small valley farms suitable 
to la petite culture (home farming) scattered throughout the demarcated 
forest areas. 
I here take a general average of 200 acres of forest to support a 
family. But if we take European figures the employment in valuable 
forest, such as Kauri forest, would be at the rate of one family per 
75 acres. Probably about 200 acres per family may be taken as a 
general average of employment when once New Zealand forests were got 
mnto order as cultivated forests. Further, with the powerful sun of New 
Zealand latitudes, the ample rainfall, and generally rich soil, together 
with the unique timber market of the Southern Hemisphere, both forest 
production and population may be expected to eventually rise higher 
than in Europe. It seems quite reasonable to expect that with its normal 
area of 16,000,000 acres of national forest there will eventually be a 
permanent forest population in New Zealand of between 1,000,000 and 
2,000,000 souls. The small English war-insurance forestry scheme of 
2,000,000 acres only (with 1,770,000 as a war precaution) is calculated 
to permanently settle on the land 25,000 families—say, 125,000 souls— 
or in the proportion of one man per 71 acres. 

THE ORIGINAL KAURI FOREST. 
The parliamentary return of 1873 puts the total area of forest in 
the Auckland Province in 1830 at 4.000,000 acres. This, however, re- 
ferred to forest that happened at that time to carry millable timber It 
was only timber that counted in those days. 
If one takes the area of New Zealand between latitude 35° and 
latitude 37° 30°, and deducts a little less than one-third for mountainous 
eround above 1,500 ft. elevation, where Kauri is absent or rare, and 
for areas where from fire, swamp land, or other causes the forest was 
either absent or was without Kauri, the resulting area is about four 
million acres. It seems probable that there was between three million 
and four million acres of Kauri forest confronting the Englishman when 
he entered into possession of New Zealand. The Maoris, says Mr. Elsdon 
Best, destroyed little forest. They had no game to drive or hunt in the 
open grass lands, like the Tasmanian “‘ blacks’’; and the forest, except 
in a few dry parts of New Zealand, is not easily burnt, except when being 
worked, ; 4 
Ninety-two years ago Earle, the artist, traversed the Kauri forests 
four times from coast to coast. He describes the fine character of the 
forest in these words; ‘‘ We travelled through a wood so thick that the 
light of Heaven could not penetrate the trees that composed it. They 
were so large and so close together that in many places we had some diffi- 
culty to squeeze ourselves through them. '. Not a gleam of sky was 
to be seen: all was a mass of gigantic trees, straight and lofty, their 
wide-spreading branches mingling overhead, and producing throughout 
the forest an endless darkness and unbroken gloom.’’ (A. Earle, ‘* Nine 
Months in New Zealand,.’’ 1827.) | eo 
Eight years afterwards, in 1835, the great Darwin visited the Kauri 
forest near the Bay of Islands. He did not fail to notice the peculiarity 
