162 NATIVE FOREST AND PLANTATIONS OF INTRODUCED TREES. 
Mr. J. H. Davison, of St. Leonards (Canterbury), has plantations 
of Insignis-pine as good as any in New Zealand. They were quoted by 
Mr. A. H. Cockayne in his article on Insignis-pine planting in the New 
Zealand Agricultural Journal for 1913. Mr. Davison cut his plantations 
in the most profitable manner, and put the timber on to the good Canter- 
bury market. But he assured me lately that successful as his Insignis- 
pine plantations had been, they had not paid the rental value of the 
land they occupied ! 
There are localities, such as certain drift sands and perhaps also 
pumice land, which are of Jow farming-value, where Insignis-pine plant- 
ing will give a good return; but, except for timber of poor quality cut 
very young, careful calculation is necessary to determine the exact profits 
of Insignis-pine planting. Speaking generally, one may say with confi- 
dence that an ordinary Kauri forest to-day on its regular poor soil is 
worth more financially, after cutting out all the mature timber, than 
an Insignis-pine plantation on soil of average farming-value. A Kauri 
forest with a good gradation of ages in the timber is really worth £10 
net per acre per year (or £250 per acre capital value) at present timber- 
prices, as soon as a foresfer’s axe goes into it. Puhipuhi, from all 
accounts, had such a gradation of ages. Waipoua and Wara have not, 
their timber being mostly old. But with many wild forests the trained 
forester is able to work out a gradation of age-classes at an early date— 
that is the business of the aménagiste or ‘‘ working-plans ”’ officer. 
Better grades of Insignis-pine as grown by foresters will produce 
better prices, but it is clear from the above that Insignis-pine planting 
may easily turn out less profitable than the interplanting of Kauri. 
Rain fall.—In New Zealand Insignis-pine is more of a climatic exotic 
than at the Cape of Good Hope, and though it grows so well and so strong 
in small plantations in New Zealand, there would be some risk in planting 
it pure in extensive forests with the summer rainfall of New Zealand. It 
is a tree of a dry summer climate, and in a wet summer climate may 
carry a fungus risk analogous to Larch in England. Jn dts native home 
the average rainfall is 17 in., mitigated by abundant sea-fogs (Sudworth, 
‘Trees of the Pacific Slope’’), so that the risk of fungoid trouble in 
planting it in a rainfall of 70 in. is manifest. Yet it is in this rainfall 
where some of the best-grown trees in New Zealand are at present to be 
found (the Waimamaku tree, as above, at twenty-five years is 3 ft. 
diameter by 90 ft. high); though without doubt by far the greater number 
of the well-grown Insignis-pines are in half this rainfall, as those at 
Christchurch, Nelson, Napier, and the Wanganui coast lands. 
Pisease.—In Australia the usefulness of Insignis-pine decreases just 
in proportion to the increase of summer rainfall. In Natal, with purely 
summer rains, its timber turned out so poorly and it was so liable to 
disease that its planting was tabooed twenty-five years ago, In its native 
climate of winter rains near Cape Town it grows vigorously, but insect 
and fungoid disease have even there interfered with its planting on a 
large scale. Here there is a 40 in. entirely-winter rainfall. In South 
Australia, where it had been planted pure over extensive areas (in a 
summer climate too wet for outdoor grapes), a fungoid disease, Diplodia 
sp., threatens it seriously (‘‘ Australian Forestry,”’ p. 257); but in the 
usual dry summer climate of South Australia it holds the record for all 
Australasian forest planting. The best planted trees in Australasia are 
those at Whyte Park. 
