128 NEW ZEALAND OPINION ON NATURAL REGENERATION. 
timber-trees, but not so much light as would admit a profuse growth of 
bois blancs. Where there is a dense growth of ground herbage the 
forester will try to get rid of that as best may be with cattle, fire, or 
paid labour. Failing these he will interplant. 
Pines at Hanmer.—Mr. W. G. Morrison, of the Hanmer plantations, 
in a paper read at the Science Congress at Christchurch, February, 1919, 
described the natural regeneration of Insignis-pine and Cluster-pine ag 
being ‘already in the third generation. Insignis-pine about forty years 
old shows seedlings estimated at some 1,000 per acre stretching some 
200 yards to windward of the parent trees. Cluster-pine shows a more 
abundant natural regeneration. Seedlings can be traced for a distance 
of two miles from the parent tree, ‘‘ over country heavily grazed and 
infested with rabbits and hares.’’ Larch also shows an appreciable 
natural regeneration, together with English Oak and Birch (Betula alba), 
Natural Regeneration on Paper.—Those who would like to see natural 
regeneration on paper should turn to the photos at page 301 of vol. 1 of 
Schlich’s Manual of Forestry, and to page 87 of the 1913 Forest Com- 
mission Report of New Zealand: the first natural regeneration produced 
under a forester’s shelter-wood, the second by chance. The first, it is 
stated, shows up to 1,000 seedlings per square yard, and represents 
Beech in Europe. The natural regeneration in the Beech forests of New 
Zealand is similar (see Kirk’s dictum, page 125, For. Flo.), and Beech 
represents the largest area, though at present the least valuable, of the 
forests left to the Dominion. 
Literary persons and others, without an acquaintance with practical 
forestry, have thought to justify*the present reckless destruction of de- 
marcatable forest by saying that the natural regeneration of New Zea- 
land forests was insufficient. It is not they who are in a position to 
say what natural regeneration is sufficient, or what would be the cost 
of improving it. But let that pass. It is evident that the weakness or 
strength of natural regeneration has had nothing to do with moulding 
the forest policy of New Zealand; because that policy is just as relentless 
and ruinous in the Beech forests, where natural regeneration is admittedly 
good, as in the Kauri and Totara forests, where it is thought by some 
to be insufficient. : . 
