78 THE SILVICULTURAL SYSTEM. 
THE SILVICULTURAL SYSTEM. 
Speaking broadly, Kauri forests are so valuable that the object 
sought will be to bring them to full development im the shortest tume. 
They will have intensive management and ‘‘working-plans _ similar 
to that sketched below (‘‘ Normal Kauri Forest,’’ p. 83). This inten- 
sive management will be applicable wherever there is a first-grade forest 
with a fairly certain prospect of communication with a sufficient market 
during the next twenty years, or, with some modification in the ‘‘ work- 
ing-plans,’’ during the next hundred years. 
Distant forests, with no definite prospect of good communications, 
must have ‘ working-plans ’’ in which there will be jardinage (“‘ selec- 
tion’) fellings, just to the extent warranted by local circumstances. 
The length of the rotation—whether jardinage and short, or jardinage 
and long (up to forty years as in India); or a ‘‘ rotation of conversion 
(as in South Africa) to the regular “‘ shelter-wood compartment ” system ; 
whether regeneration is to be effected in groups, as in the Rhenish 
Black Forest, or with ‘‘ strip.fellings,’’ as in the Swiss Alps—are tech- 
nical questions which it would be out of place to discuss here. In my 
‘* Notes on the Management of a Normal Kauri Forest ’’ below, I have 
gone into details sufficiently to show the economic position of the culti- 
vated Kauri forests of the future, and how they would compare in 
population and profit with grazing and dairying; for apparently, with- 
out drawing up a balance-sheet, it has been assumed that dairying would 
give higher returns in money and more employment than cultivated 
Kauri forest. To make the following balance statement clear a few pre- 
liminary explanations are necessary. 
JARDINAGE, OR SELECTION FRLLINGS. 
This consists in thinning out the mature trees from time to time 
as they are wanted. It sounds very little, but it means much, in keeping 
the fellings as regular as may be, and preventing the destruction cf 
those parts of the forest that can be most easily reached. The regenera- 
tion may either be left entirely to nature or assisted just as much as the 
forest is worth the expenditure. Thus if a supply of White-pine were 
to be provided for, each old tree would be made to start a group of 
young trees before being removed. White-pine, on account of its light- 
ness and shape of stem, could be easily got out of comparatively in- 
accessible forest. It will be recalled that most of the early working of 
the Kauri forest was in the form of ‘* selection ”’ fellings, by the Maoris, 
for spars and masts: usually, I am informed, these fellings were not 
followed by the destruction of the forest. In the old days there were 
camps of pit-sawyers (white men) dotted along the Wairoa River, the 
Maoris supplying them with Kauri spars and logs picked from the 
adjoining forest. Long spars and masts, 60 ft. and occasionally 80 ft. 
long, were culled from the forest in those days. Some of the heartwood 
cores of these old logs can still be seen to-day: and where the forest has 
been thus thinned but not destroyed it is regenerating itself naturally. 
If every other form of treatment were found to have disadvantages, 
there is always jardinage to fall back upon. It is so like nature that 
it cannot fail. There are several well-authenticated cases of regrowth . 
and remilling the ‘‘ mixed ’’ forest in New Zealand 
. 
