478 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Derc., 1897. 
Forestry. 
FOREST CONSERVANCY. 
No. 1. 
By A. J. BOYD. 
THe apathy with which the bulk of our fellow-colonists, who are not imme- 
diately interested in the timber trade, view the question of a future supply of 
one of the most important of our natural products, is as surprising as it is 
culpable. The reason for this carelessness lies in the fact—first, that the 
generality of people are ignorant of the value of our forests from a climato- 
logical point of view ; secondly, from a hazy idea that our supplies of timber 
suitable for building purposes, for railway sleepers, for wood-paving, for 
piles, &c , &c., are jromhanetible Having had much practical experience of 
timber-getting many years ago, I am in a position to prove, not only that theso 
supplies are not inexhaustible, but that many districts have become absolutely 
denuded of all timber suitable for the above purposes, and that in some instances 
even timber for firewood is no longer obtainable. 
Whilst most countries under European rule are expending vast sums of 
money in not only preserving existing forests, but also in reafforesting large 
areas already denuded of timber; whilst in the United States some millions 
of acres are reserved as State forests, we in Queensland seem bent upon 
getting rid of these valuable assets as quickly as we possibly can, never stopping 
to think of the future or of the trouble which must inevitably follow such a 
mistaken policy, and all the while Nature herself is trying to teach us the 
lesson that forests are an absolute necessity for our well-being. A constant 
warfare is going on between man and Nature in trying, the one to subjugate 
the forest, the other to assert the imperious necessity for their continuance. 
If man were to desist from the struggle, the forest would predominate almost 
all over the world. We can well imagine the forests of the prehistoric world, 
before man became a denizen of its densely timbered solitudes. 
Palwobotanists have given us a very fair idea of the trees of our earth in 
primeval times. The whole face of the dry or swampy land was occupied b 
enormous trees, which have only diminutive representatives at the present day. 
Lycopods, which now only grow to the height of at most 8 feet, then attained 
an altitude of from 80 to 100 feet. For countless ages these dense forests 
grew and flourished, and then were overwhelmed by some convulsion of Nature, 
to be buried beneath hundreds of feet of rock until once more brought to the 
surface in the shape of coal, whilst fresh forests grew above them to be 
submerged in their turn. Still, Nature kept on the struggle, and proved 
victorious. We may see the same strugele going on to-day under our own 
eyes. If we fell a dense scrub and burn off every stick of timber and 
take out every stump, and then leave it to itself, what do we observe ? 
That in a couple of years a new scrub clothes the denuded patch with 
a dense growth of generally dissimilar timber, which obliterates all traces of 
man’s handiwork. But in a densely peopled country, man is generally the 
conqueror, and that to his own detriment. He has employed his art to turn 
vast stores of timber—the growth of ages—to manufacturing uses. Had he 
stopped here, all would have been well. Forests are made for man’s use ; they 
are intended to be cut down as required. But in his insatiable greed and want 
of foresight, he has destroyed the timber on large areas of once fertile country, 
