bush worth saving, but its incompar- 
able beauty, it would, as Mr. Donne has 
38 
elsewhere written, “be a crimeagainst the | 
uation” to cut it down without very solid 
material reasons. But when its destruc- 
tion is often not only profitless, but ter- 
ribly and disastrously injurious to the 
highest interests of the country, we may 
well wonder at the careless self-com- 
placency with which we have come to 
tolerate these ruthless raids upon our 
native timber. 
NEW ZEALAND’S TIMBER 
PROSPECTS. 
This statement of the case might be 
prolonged almost indefinitely by the 
accumulation of further evidence. 
But I must be content with 
what has been already written, as 
to the direct losses and injuries sustain- 
ed by this country through deforesta- 
tion. And if these are not arguments of 
sufficient force to compel public atten- 
tion and to induce Government to take 
in hand the conservative, the pro- 
tective, and the reconstructive work of 
Forestry, I may appeal once more to the 
fact that has so far done more than 
anything else to arouse public interest 
in this momentous question—the immin- 
ent and almost inevitable timber famine. 
I am aware that I am now retraversing 
ground that T have already to some ex- 
tent covered, but to apply the moral of 
the general argument to the Special case 
of New Zealand it is necessary to in- 
dulge in a certain amount of recapitu- 
lation. And T am encouraged in this 
course by recent experiences that have 
taught me the difficulty of convincing 
even people who might be expected to 
realise the. facts of the case, that the 
world’s timber supply or even our own 
stock of indigenous timber js nearing 
the point of exhaustion. The published 
reports of the evidence taken by the 
Timber Commission which lately clos- 
ed its investigations here, reveal the 
interesting fact that a large number of 
people personally interested in the tim- 
ber trade, are entirely ignorant of the 
narrow limits of our own timber  fe- 
sources, and have the vaguest possible 
idea of the state of things that prevails 
in the timber trade elsewhere. Those 
optimistic people who talk wildly about 
inexhaustible supplies of timber in this 
country, may be invited to consider the 
statistics published by the Lands De- 
partment ur to reflect upon the 
evidence submitted by Mr H. 
P. Kavanagh to the ‘Timber Com- 
mission. According to this gentle. 
man, who, as chief timber expert for 
Auckland district, may be fairly pre- 
sumed to know what he is talking about, 
our stock of kauri will be exhausted in 
six or seven years’ time, and our other 
timber in between 20 and 25 years. This 
I take to be as near a final and con- 
clusive statement on the subject as we 
can hope to get; and even a professional 
optimist must admit that it is not a 
particularly pleasing outlook. But this 
is not the worst of it. When Mr. 
Milroy, secretary of the Kauri Timber 
Company, giving evidence before the 
Timber Commission, was asked what was 
going to happen after our own stock of 
timber gave out, he replied cheerfully 
enough that “in 30 years’ time, assuming 
that our milling timber supplies were 
exhausted, he did not think it would 
be against the best interests of the Do- 
minion to depend on ‘timbers imported 
from abroad.” But the cardinal point of 
the whole situation is the painful but 
indisputable truth that long before Thirty 
years have expired New Zealand will 
find herself unable to draw upon other 
countries to supply her needs for the 
sufficient reason that they will require 
all, and more than all, their own timber 
for themselves. 
THE WORLD’S OUTLOOK. 
For, I repeat it most emphatically, 
the timber famine which thas already be- 
gun to make itself felt in New Zealand is 
only one phase of a great change which 
is rapidly sweeping over the face of the 
world at large. In every land to which 
commerce has access to-day, the demand 
