BALANCE-SHEET OF A NORMAL KAURI FOREST. 101 
In Europe the forest officers generally express themselves satisfied when 
the gross revenue is about double the expenditure. This is the case 
taking the average of French Government forests. At this rate (half 
the gross revenue) the expenditure on a fully established normal Kauri 
forest might go up to £6 8s. 10d. per acre per year, or three times 
my estimate. Be this as it may, there is always the comforting reflection 
that this would mean permanent settlement at the rate of one man per 
25 acres. Thus, whether I have overestimated or underestimated the 
expense of working a Kauri forest scientifically, the country stands to 
vain either way—viz., in either lowered taxation or increased population. 
Germany on all its forests, Government, private, and forests held on 
three other tenures, spends £8,000,000 yearly. South Africa spends 
£200,000 vearly on its Government forests and plantations, or four 
times the present forest revenue. New Zealand in 1916-17 spent £27,150 
on plantations of promising but necessarily risky exotics, and £653 on 
management expenses of so-called State forests. It will be recalled that 
State forests in New Zealand are areas reserved for destruction by millers, 
not State forests in the usual meaning of the term. 

HicH Net REVENUE. 
£10 16s. per acre per year is a high net revenue from even the most 
productive forest. It will be criticized. The various figures on which it is 
founded have already been discussed. The Kauri ‘‘gum’’ and “ other 
timbers ’’ are uncertain, but do not bulk for much in the estimate; the 
former is probably underestimated. Of the £12 17s. 8d. only £1 I1s. 
is the estimated yield from Kauri ‘‘ gum,’’ firewood, and all minor forest 
produce. No cne yet knows what systematic resin-tapping will produce 
(p. 30). If resin-tapping should be abandoned altogether for Kauri, 
the correction to these figures is but slight and is easily made. It is much 
more likely that Kauri resin-tapping will be conducted successfully, and 
that there will be a substantial addition to these figures in consequence. 
The timber-yield item in the above estimate figures at only 140 c. ft. 
.g. per acre per year, of which 100 is from the Kauri and 40 from 
other timbers. This is a comparatively low figure for such a climate as 
New Zealand, and is certain to rise. Eyropean forest-yields show gradual 
steady rises everywhere. The forests of Prussia, for which there are the 
oldest and most reliable statistics, have increased their timber-yield nine 
times, and their money-yield more than ten times, during sixty or seventy 
years—a man’s lifetime (p. 72). Details are given in the Statistical 
Appendix (Part II). Against 140 c. ft. q.@, assumed here, the coniferous 
forests of mid-Europe show yield-figures going over 200 c. ft.; and in 
the latitudes of the Kauri forests much higher figures are on record. 
As regards the net forest income arrived at, it must be remembered 
that the economical circumstances of New Zealand are exceptional, there 
being no softwood coniferous forest in neighbouring countries to compete 
with New Zealand. Half this figure of £10 16s. has already been realized 
from the best coniferous forest in central Europe over small areas (more 
than half from some suburban forests), when there has been nothing 
approaching a timber scarcity, but where, on the contrary, American 
stumpage-gamblers, with the best parts of the forests of the country in 
their grasp, and seeking only “‘ to cash their stumpage,’’ have been flood- 
ing Europe with low-priced timber; some of this timber, too, worked 
by cheap coloured labour—negroes in the United States; and Hindus, 
Chinese, and Japanese in Canada. 

