RECAPITULATION. 187 
they carry a fivefold risk (p. 155), and they have not been formed 
on definite schemes drawn up beforehand. Thus about £1,300,000 
has been sunk in the Rotorua group of plantations. These may 
be the best group of timber plantations in the Southern Hemisphere. 
They are full of interest, a splendid object-lesson; but a Government 
has to deal with cold facts. When there are first-rate native forests 
nearer to the railway, some actually on the railway (see Plate XIX), and 
when these can be worked into cultivated forests at a profit, or 
at worst a fraction of the cost of timber plantations, the question will 
arise, why were the Rotorua plantations, costing £1,300,000, not made 
where there are no native forests, and near markets, as at Auckland or 
Wellington, &e.? There is low-priced bush land and still unalienated 
land near both of these cities, where £258,640 (two-thirds of £387,960, 
the cash cost of the plantations) spent on roads and forest development, 
as in Europe, would have worked wonders, and given the country both 
valuable and well-placed forest estates. The present plantations, with 
timber maturing in about forty years, are estimated to furnish about 
the ,45 part of the timber required then. 
On an area basis the Government timber plantations represent <1, 
part of the normal forest area of New Zealand, taking that at 25 per 
cent. of the total area, the proportion in the most advanced countries 
of central Europe. 
Thus, after sinking £2,000,000 in risky plantations of exotic trees, 
New Zealand has perhaps met about the <4, part of its forest require- 
ments, whether those requirements be reckoned by area or by bulk of 
timber ! 
The one plantation of native trees, 400 acres of Totara at Puhipuhi, 
was unsuccessful, and there are three reasons which might account for 
the failure. But it is doubtful if the native trees can ever be profitably 
planted in full plantations with the present cost of labour in New Zea- 
land. It is this that makes the present-day forest position so critical. 
Unless there be an early change the fine native forests of New Zealand 
will be irretrievably lost, and the chance of paying the cost of the war 
with State forests similar to those of other countries will be gone for ever. 
A serious social mistake has been made over the plantations. On 
the European plan of forestry plus farming, they should have provided 
settlement on the land and perpetual work for half the year to the 
extent of 500 settlers now and 1,000 in perpetuity hereafter. Instead 
of which they have been formed on the plan—if I may dare to mention 
it again—that forestry consists in cutting down one tree and planting 
another. The plantations have been formed with prison labour and 
casual labour, and the future left to take care of itself. Now seems 
the time to rectify with from 500 to 1,000 soldier settlers, geveng fo 
each a house and small farm on rental and perpetual Government work 
guaranteed for half the year. 
To plant the normal (25 per cent.) timber area of New Zealand at 
£50 per acre would cost 16,000,000 acres x £50 — £800,000,000. 
Forsst ALIENATION witHOUT DEMARCATION 
This is too important a subject to attempt to recapitulate. It is 
treated briefly in the preceding pages, and I beg that whoever reads this 
will turn to them. Forest alienation without forest demarcation (p. 1, 
** Australian Forestry’’) is the root of all that New Zealand has lost 
over forestry in the past and of all that it will haye to pay in the future, 
