NATIVE FOREST AND PLANTATIONS OF INTRODUCED TREES. 161 
Yield Curves show clearly that Silver-fir is above all other European 
timber-trees in the final volume of timber per acre, But no native shade- 
bearer of the New Zealand forest has a much slower growth at first. For 
the first few years the seedlings are so minute that it requires a practised 
eye to find them. I shall give the subsequent growth figures elsewhere, 
but it may be noted that there is Silyer-fir forest yielding up to £5 
net per acre per year in the French Jura Mountains. 
RISK IN PLANTING INSIGNIS-PINE AND OTHER EXOTIC TREES. 
Considering the fivefold risk in planting exotic trees in New Zealand 
it is the Insignis or Monterey pine that first commands attention. 
The Insignis-pine grows phenomenally fast in Australasia, South 
Africa, South Europe, California, and South America; and its timber, 
under reasonable forest conditions, is a useful indoors household deal, 
taking an antiseptic so readily that it can be easily employed out-of-doors 
as well. So far as the limited arboriculture of New Zealand extends at 
present, Insignis-pine has shown itself to be the best general-purpose 
planting timber in the country. The prejudice which exists against it 
in New Zealand is mostly due to its being badly grown and to its being 
compared with better timbers from the native forest. It grows so 
vigorously and, when closely planted, with so clean a bole that it not 
only resists fire itself when the thicket stage is past, but can be planted 
as fire-resistant for other less vigorous-growing trees. It should have 
been the first tree to plant in the Government timber plantations, though 
it was actually one of the last. 
Acrim,—Mr. 8. 1. Clarke, builder, of Ponsonby, Auckland, anu a mem- 
ber of both the Timber and Forest Commissions, in his paper ‘‘ Forestry,’’ 
printed in the Farmers’ Union Advocate of the 10th March, 1917, states 
that various Insignis-pine plantations in New Zealand have yielded 
100,000 sup. ft. per acre, in nearly every case being cut under forty-five 
years of age. If one takes 1 cub. ft. = 6 sup. ft. of sawn timber, 100,000 
sup. ft. = 16,666 cub. ft. This figure divided by, say, 40, as the figure 
of mean age, will give a mean yearly timber-growth figure (acrim) of 
417 cub. ft. Similar maximum acrims from small areas on good soil 
have been reported from South Africa. 
Price.—Insignis-pine sells on a royalty of from 2s, to 5s, the 100 sup. ft. 
of mill-output to travelling sawmills in Canterbury and Waikato. Kauri 
timber is worth two or three times Insignis-pine timber, and Kauri 
has a world-wide market. Where native timber is obtainable Insignis 
fetches very little, so that the Insignis-pine market is restricted. Thus, 
although Insignis may have three times the timber-growth of Kauri and 
mature sufficiently for its purpose in one-fifth of the time, it may easily 
give a less valuable return in timber, 
Exaggerated statements of the yield of Insignis-pine have been pub- 
lished. In New Zealand, in Australia, and in South Africa the general 
figures for the best plantations sold at war prices have approximated to 
£400 net at the end of forty years, or £300 net profit at the end of thirty 
years. On this a yield of £10 per acre per year has been claimed. This 
is a hasty and wrong conclusion. One has only to turn to a forest 
rental table to see that £400 net profit at the end of forty years 18 
equivalent (omitting fractions) to a yield of £4 per acre per year, not 
£10, 
§—Forestry. 
