184 RECAPITULATION. 
past could only be definitely broken with. Properly handled the soft- 
wood forests of New Zealand should be the country’s premier natural 
asset. Actually the Southern Hemisphere with its huge areas of endless 
pastoral plains wants softwood forests much more than grass! And in 
the near future it will pay a higher price for forest products than for 
pastoral products. 
Unhappily in New Zealand shortsighted and nearsighted views have 
prevailed. Up to this war England had managed fairly without the State 
forests of other civilized countries—not caring overmuch for keeping 
the people on the land, and placing commerce before home production, 
England is a grass country ; why not make New Zealand a grass country ! 
The forests are not of a type familiar to Europeans, therefore call them 
‘bush’? and valueless. [or sixty years the popular Press repeated the 
dictum of the ‘‘man in the street ’’ of every country—that the trees of 
the forest grew too slowly for him or any one else. It is now eighty-four 
years since Charles Darwin said Kauri was the most valuable production 
of the North Island, but it is only six years since Cheeseman’s investi- 
gations went to prove this. New Zealand forest has been systematically 
underrated, though 15,000 superficial feet mill-output has been accepted 
as the average stand of the millable forest of New Zealand for forty 
years. Campbell-Walker quotes this figure, and gives the mill-outputs 
from which he drew his conclusions. The Lands Department publi- 
cations frequently refer to the same figure. It was verified recently 
(Forestry Annual Report, Lands Dept., 1915-16). Now, this figure 
(15,000 sup. ft. per acre) is twice the average timber ‘“ stand,”’ 
taken over the better parts, of the great Appalachian forest tract, for 
which under the ‘‘ Weeks ’’ Act the Americans have paid 2} millions as a 
matter of forest redemption. Again, 15,000 sup. ft. as a ‘‘ stand ’”’ of 
timber is two and a half times the average ‘‘ stand ’’ estimated for the 
virgin forests of the Continent of North America, and three times the 
estimated average timber ‘‘ stand ’’ of the present forests, whether public 
or private. One can even carry the comparison into the cultivated forests 
of Europe! 15,000 sup. ft. from a New Zealand mill (some 3,000 ¢. ft. 
in the forest) is the equivalent of the normal timber ‘‘ stand’’ of the 
common Pine of Europe—viz., Scotch-pine—in medium-quality forest at 
age 58! 
In its own class the New Zealand forest stands supreme. The timber 
** stand ’’ is better than that in the virgin forest of South Africa, better 
than that in the same forest on the highlands of British East Africa, 
and much better than that on the Nilgiri Mountains of India. Im all 
these countries the New Zealand class of forest is being preserved by the 
Governments concerned. 
Returned Soldiers.—The repatriation of returned soldiers is men- 
tioned here (p. 108); their military organization on the European model 
and the inclusion of ‘‘returned soldiers of the Empire’’ are discussed 
later under ‘‘ Forest Policy.’’ An invitation to British soldiers for 
employment in forest-development and forest-settlement would furnish a 
peculiarly good stock of immigrants, since they would all be men passed 
medically. The official statement recently issued by the New Zealand 
Lands Department shows that in addition to land obtained bv the sub- 
division of existing estates 323,343 acres of Crown land have been set 
apart for returned soldiers. Since the war began 554,534 acres of Native 
land have been purchased, and 700,000 are under negotiation—much of 
‘this land in the great virgin forests of the Urewera country, stated 
