VI. 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE BUSH. 
HAVE dwelt on the German for- 
Y estry system in some detail, partly 
\ because of the 
of the subject. but chiefly because 
i wish to emphasise the amount of 
care and trouble and expense that the 
most business-like and economical State 
in the world thinks it necessary to 
take about the conservation of its for- 
ests and the replenishing of its tim- 
ber supply. And what I have to say 
next bears directly upon this aspect of 
the question. Knowing that the Ger- 
mans pride themselves on making a 
commercial success of their public 
works, we might justifiably assume that 
an enterprise carried out on such a 
scale as to employ about a million 
workers directly, and three times that 
number indirectly, must be a_ highly 
profitable investment. And, as a mat- 
ter of fact, it is so. Various estimates 
represent the total net return to the 
German Treasury trom the State for- 
ests throughout the Empire at from 
£18.000,000 to £20,000,000 a _ year. 
These are impressive figures, but the 
facts have been on record for many 
years, for even New Zealanders to re- 
fleet upon. So far back as 1879, M. 
Lecoy, in a paper on “The Forest 
Question in New Zealand,” contributed 
to the N.Z. Institute Transactions, point- 
ed out that Prussia. expending £1.100,000 
a year on her six million acres of State 
forests, drew from them between 1860 
and 1870 an annual revenue of 
£2,100.000. During the same period, 
Bavaria, on an outlay of less than 
£500,000, drew a forest revenue of 
£1,261.000; and France, on an annual 
expenditure of £70,000, drew an income 
of £1,400,000, or twenty times her out- 
lay, from her State forests. And these 
general interest 
high average returns have been main- 
tained, and have even gone on increas- 
ing down to the present day. Thus the 
little State of Wurtemburg, from one 
forest of 20,000 acres, averages an an- 
nual yield of £2 per acre, Considering 
that the forests of Germany managed 
on scientific lines yield on the average 
46 cubic feet of wood per acre, as 
against about twelve cubic feet obtain- 
able from the average American forest 
there must be a wide margin for profit 
in a forestry system when properly con- 
ducted. As a matter of fact, the net 
surplus from the State forests of Ger- 
many range from about 6/- per acre in 
Prussia to over 22/- per acre in Saxony. 
The forestry record of this last-named 
State is in many respects so interest- 
ing that I am tempted to quote in 
some detail the remarks made by that 
eminent authority, Professor Schlich, 
in an article dealing with the British 
forestry problem. There are reliable 
statistical data for the State forests of 
Saxony since 1817. Between 1817 and 
1893 their area increased by about 17 
per cent. In 1817 the yield in wood per 
acre was 61 cubic feet; in 1893 it had 
risen to 92 cubic feet, an increace of 
about 50 per cent. Within the half- 
century, from 1844 to 1893, the aver- 
age stock of wood standing on each 
acre had increased from 2,173 cubic 
feet to 2,658 cubic feet, that is to say 
by about 25 per cent. This means that 
the forests, in spite of the greatly in- 
creased annual yield, are now much 
more valuable than they were fifty 
years ago. As to the pecuniary Tre- 
turn, the records are even more in- 
structive. From 1817 to 1826 the aver- 
age net revenue from the Saxony State 
Forests was 4/- per acre; from 1854 to 
