170 NATIVE FOREST AND PLANTATIONS OF INTRODUCED TREES, 
ILLUSTRATION OF THE POSITION. 
An illustration is perhaps the readiest way of showing the contrast 
between natural forests and forest plantations in New Zealand. To cut 
the natural forests down, instead of turning them into the ordinary 
cultivated forests of other countries, resembles the action of a man of 
eccentric habits who, inheriting a substantial family mansion of much 
beauty and greater value, but wanting some modern improvements, be- 
comes tired of his noble inheritance and burns it down—to replace it, at 
ruinous cost, by a structure that cannot at best be more than a cabin 
compared to the mansion he has recklessly destroyed. 
If a forest-concession hunter or other adventurer were to propose to 
civilized Governments nowadays that their native forests should be cut 
down and replaced at enormous cost by plantations of untried exotics, 
such an adventurer would be classed along with the flat-earth people or 
other monomaniacs ! 
After three years in New Zealand I may claim to speak with a slender 
but sufficient knowledge of the forests. My previous life has been spent 
in acquiring a practical knowledge of some forests in Europe, Asia, and 
Africa, with a book knowledge of American forests. My opinion is that, 
on the whole, New Zealand forests may be classed as above the average 
of forests elsewhere. The Kauri, ‘as seen, is unique in the world as a 
timber-producing tree. 
I have not attempted in the above pages to conceal the defects of New 
Zealand forests. I freely admit that they would have a considerably 
increased value in the cultivated form. That happens elsewhere. Con- 
sider what scientific forestry has done for the wild forests of Europe, from 
Spain to Russia. Let it be always remembered that in Prussia, where 
careful statistics have been kept, it is on record that in a man’s lifetime 
of seventy-four years the timber-yield has been increased nine times, 
and the net money yield more than ten times (vide Statistical Ap- 
pendix, Part II). The State forests of Saxony have increased in net 
vield per year sixfold in ninety-six years—from 4s. per acre to £1 4s. 
My natural bent is towards exotics. I have spent the best years of 
my life planting them in South Africa. The all-too-generous eulogy of 
the Canadian forester, R. H. MacMillan, is proof of this (‘‘ Forestry 
Quart., Dec., 1916). And in discussions with foresters I have cham- 
pioned times out of number the introduction of ‘* better trees of other 
gountries.’” But I cannot now resist the conclusion that to go on de- 
stroying the forests of New Zealand, because in their present form 
they are not. the best in all particulars, would be like flooding or setting 
fire to the coal-mines because they are not the best in the world! There 
is this difference between the forests and the mines: As soon as the forests 
are worked by foresters they start improving; as soon as the mines are 
worked they start depreciating, and too often in Australasia they are 
finished at about the time that national forests would be coming into their 
full yield—a yield which goes on increasing with the wealth and popula- 
tion of the country. 
Present Pusiic Forest AREA or New Zeanann 104 Minions. 
The present total area of forest in New Zealand not Maori or other- 
wise privately owned, according to the latest official returns, is 104 million 
acres, and of this only a small fraction (under 14 millions) is as yet 
under nominally protective forestry. According to European standards,. 
