THE PUHIPUHI KAURI FOREST. 59 
in the forest. We are always getting back to the point that the native 
forest should be conserved, as South Africa has for long conserved its 
similar forest. 
Not much importance can be attached to the failure of the Totara 
and other planting at Puhipuhi. The attempt shows a praiseworthy - 
endeavour to repair in a slight degree the great public loss in the 
burning of the forest, for which only the faulty national forest 
policy of the country was to blame. Though the New Zealand trees 
are more hardy than the South African, and Totara especially has 
often been planted successfully in the open in New Zealand, that 
is usually as a garden-tree under cultivation, or otherwise under con- 
ditions that approximate to its natural forest surroundings. The 
planted Totara trees at Puhipuhi were in an exposed situation; they 
were on a poor soil degraded by frequent burning, and leaching out 
under a heavy rainfall. Nor were the young trees mulched, which would 
have been the first condition of successful growth among the rank weeds 
that followed in the wake of the burnt forest. To destroy forest and 
attempt to replant it as was done at Puhipuhi brings at once two heavy 
burdens on the shoulders of the destroyer: (1) Loss of the forest soil. 
the product perhaps of centuries; (2) the interest charge which has to 
be debited against all forest plantations. 
The yearly plantation reports (Lands Department) make pathetic 
reading. They leave the impression that outraged nature had deter- 
mined that after one of its grandest works had been wantonly destroyed. 
finicking attempts at planting exotics were to be denied even a sem- 
blance of success! Only open-root transplants (the mossing is reported 
to have been harmful rather than otherwise) were used, and many of 
the exotics were so unfitted to the climate that they could not be expected 
to succeed—Douglas-fir, Fucalyptus cladocalyz, and Euc. redunca, for 
instance. The same report (1906-7) mentions a rainfall of 921in., and 
adds naively, **‘ Fuc. crebra is also making slow growth.”* Hue. crehbra 
is a dry-country tree growing naturally in a rainfall of 151n. to 20in.. 
and poorly in heavier rainfalls. It has long been under cultivation in 
South Africa. 
It is stated that the responsible forest officer at that time did not 
know one Eucalypt from another. He certainly. in his writings, has 
confounded varieties and species, and recommends the planting of worth- 
less kinds of Eucalypts. There was no Rev. Simmonds (officially) in those 
davs ! 
In bush planting three things may be necessary (the first a sine qua 
non where there is a dense undergrowth): (1) Cut and mulch; (2) pot 
or pan transplants; (3) the long-handled swing hoe. The Puhipuhi 
planting has not had these, with the exception of partial mulching, and 
that has not been thick enough to kill the fern. The impression I gather 
is that skilled foresters would have succeeded with the planting, though 
the work might have been costly and risky. The prospects of the plant- 
ing now going forward are discussed later under ** Plantations.”’ Ex- 
perience has been gained. and with certain changes the present work 
should be brought to a successful conclusion and the planting extended 
to meet railway-sleeper requirements. 
The lesson told by the Puhipuhi Forest is that it would have been 
a matter of everyday forestry to have worked and preserved the Puhi- 
puhi Forest, instead of working and destroying it. Its destruction, as 
the event has shown, was a national loss that cannot be replaced, though 
over £12,000 has been spent in the nominal attempt to do so. 
