THE NORMAL KAURI FOREST. 87 
As indicated at p. 84, the stocking here provided for leaves a wide 
margin for casualties and thinnings—indeed, more than the whole stand 
estimated for at the end of the rotation, These thinnings will be in 
the last quarter of the rotation, at a time when they will be remunerative. 
Damace to Natrurat RecGENeRATION In Loaearna. 
It will, I know, be objected that the extraction of these trees at a mid- 
rotation time would do much mischief to a young half-grown forest, but 
that 1s more a popular than a forester’s objection. These Kauri reserved 
trees would not be old Kauris, with their huge crowns, smashing flat 
everything in their fall over a wide area, and with logs having much 
the form of an exaggerated garden-roller, requiring to be jacked out 
along the line of least resistance and crushing everything in their course. 
They would be well-matured Kauri ‘‘ rickers,’’? such as are removed in 
ordinary forestry-thinning operations the world through. It is easy to 
fell such trees just where their fall will do little damage and to haul 
them out afterwards, each log over the same ‘‘ slip-path,’’ with only 
narrow lanes in the forest, which in a few years will be entirely over- 
grown, and often with the best timber-trees. 
Even hauling logs over natural regeneration does less damage than 
appears. Nearly all forest seedlings, though crushed and broken, will 
shoot up again, provided the damage be not too long continued. In 
the Swiss Sihlwald forest, ‘“‘ the model forest of Europe” as it has 
been called, they make plantations under Beech forest and in three or 
four years remove the old Beech. The official allowance for damage 
done in removing the old Beech is 1 per cent. (‘‘ Journal of a Forest 
Tour,’’ p. 90.) 
In all the old fuel copses of Europe that have been cut over every 
ten or twenty years for a century or two the trees shoot again freely. 
Men, horses, and wagons pass everywhere as they want to. Provided the 
trampling is not repeated the trees shoot up again freely. 
The steep mountain grounds of New .Zealand lend themselves to 
economical timber-transport by cableway. It is reported (Lands Depart- 
ment, 1916-17) that a Lidgerwood cableway has already been installed 
by the Marlborough Timber Company of Southland. This would obviate 
all injury to young trees on the ground. 
Lastly, one must remember the unique chance for economical inter- 
planting offered by hauling-roads and slip-paths. My feeling is that 
as soon as New Zealand forests come under systematic working the ery 
will be for more and still more of such fine planting-tracks | 
Katurri THINNINGS. 
The thinnings in a mixed Kauri forest would bear mostly on the 
secondary species. Excepting quite the later thinnings of Kauri, the 
others (for impregnated half-round sleepers and fencing-posts) might not 
do much more than pay costs. 
It has to be remembered that in this improved forest—of Kauri, of 
secondary species, and of underwood—the first change to notice will be 
the suppression of the underwood. The forest will become a ‘“ clean 
bush ’’ such as it is to-day (alas for the traveller!) only in places where 
there are patches of pure forest of Tawa or Taraire and more rarely 
of Kauri, for that has a covert inferior to Tawa and Taraire. In 
many places the suppression of the troublesome underwood may allow 
the tall forest to grow to a hundred years with but little thinning. 
