158 NATIVE FOREST AND PLANTATIONS OF INTRODUCED TREES. 
In New Zealand, where the forests produce softwoods (nine-tenths of 
the timber used in the world being softwood), the popular sentiment is in 
favour of destroying the forests and replacing them by plantations, an 
exception to this being the views put forward from time to time by a 
few far-seeing patriotic men, and a sprinkling of beauty enthusiasts, 
naturalists, and botanists. Valuable though their advocacy has been in 
saving really large areas of forest, they have not viewed the subject from 
its economical side. Probably, on the whole, the most useful advocacy 
of a better forest policy has come from a few timber-merchants and 
millers, alarmed at the approaching extinction of their industry. It 
was the millers and hardwood dealers of New South Wales that at last 
brought about the adoption of a national forest policy in that State 
(“Australian Forestry,’ p. 303), As is pointed out when speaking 
of White-pine, if every dairy-farmer would join the Forest League there 
would soon be no more talk about getting supplies of butter-box timber 
from Siberia. And if every miller and bushman would do the same 
there would be no fear of the extinction of their great industry. 
GROWTH OF NATIVE AND INTRODUCED TREES. 
The growth of Kauri and some other New Zealand trees is discussed at 
pp. 10 to 16, and of White-pine later; it only remains to add here 
that (in the open) some of the introduced trees grow much faster than the 
native trees, and faster generally in forest plantations. The growth of 
Insignis-pine, Macrocarpa Cypress, and a few others is at first quite 
remarkable, and offers to New Zealand a unique chance of repairing, as 
far as may be in plantations, the thriftless destruction of the native 
forest. Other introduced trees grow faster at first and slower afterwards 
than the native trees; that seems to be the case (taking the two most 
valuable, native and introduced trees) with Californian Redwood and 
New Zealand Kauri. At other times the New Zealand trees and intyo- 
duced trees grow side by side at the same rate, as New Zealand Beech and 
European Beech, New Zealand Puriri and European Oak. 
In the municipal planting at Khandallah in 1918 European Birch 
(Betula) planted alongside New Zealand Birch or Beech (Fagus, various 
species) grew up to 4 ft. in a year, while the New Zealand trees scarcely 
grew 4in. But what is the sequel? Birch in this climate in F rance 18 
a bors blancs. Its function in nature ig to shoot up rapidly and 
then give way to the great timber-trees, The visitor seeing the happen- 
ings of to-day says New Zealand trees are too slow to plant! That may 
or may not be so. What is certain is that nature may plant all that is 
required if only given half a chance. . 
At New Plymouth Botanical Gardens, where is the best example of the 
growth of introduced and New Zealand trees side by side, the verdict 
is that there is little to choose between the two, apart from two or three 
very quick-growing exotics. The trees are grown not under entirely 
forest conditions, but more so than those in the Auckland Domain. The 
arboreta required to put the matter to a complete test do not exist in 
New Zealand. I have collected all the readily available data from planted 
trees of known age and yearly rings of growth, and these will be pub- 
lished, Details of comparative growth of Kauri and European forest- 
trees, and of young trees of the chief timbers in New Zealand and 
Europe, are given at pp. 10 to 19. And it is there shown that, taking 
