226 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1-Mar., 1898. 
There are many woods in our scrubs of which, owing to popular ignorance 
of their value, no use is made, with the exception of crow’s ash, yellow-wood 
(of two kinds), silky oak, cedar, beech, and pine, with a little brigalow and 
rosewood. No note is taken of the great mass of scrub timbers, many of 
which are of great height and girth, as, for instance, the hickory, tulip-wood, 
bean-tree, scrub ironwood, and many others, which, some day, will represent 
capital. Not many persons unconnected with the timber trade know even 
of the existence of a timber called “ penda.” This is an intensely hard wood, 
which is found in many Southern districts, and has been found suitable for 
wooden tramrails and for other purposes requiring great hardness and 
durability. 
In former days it was customary to save the largest yellow-wood trees, 
when clearing the scrub for farming purposes, but it was found that, when 
once the sheltering scrub was destroyed, the single trees left standing died off 
in time, and, as there was practically no market for this timber, it disappeared 
with the rest of the assets. 
Mr. F. H. Newell, Chief Hydrographer to the United States Geological 
Survey, remarks: ‘The first necessity of the pioneer in the West is water ; 
next to this, grazing for his animals, and then wood for fuel and for purposes 
of construction. As settlement progresses, the demand for wood increases— 
more houses must be built, more fences erected, more fuel consumed, and, as 
mines are discovered and worked, wood in great quantities is called for. The 
demand is ever growing, and many industries are dependent for success on 
the ability to obtain timber or firewood at low prices. With the great dis- 
tances between centres of population and the expense of transportation in 
our sparsely settled West, the utilisation of many resources is closely con- 
nected with the ability to get the necessary wood near by, and, with the rela- 
tively small areas of forest, it becomes important to perpetuate the wooded areas 
so as to provide for the needs of the near future.” 
As owners of the forests, the people of Queensland should, from motives of 
prudence, see that these resources are not wasted, and still more, as owners of 
those tracts of land, dependent for utilisation in greater or Jess degree on the 
forests, should ever make the most strenuous exertions to indefinitely preserve 
the latter. 
We must grant that whilst a farmer requires no incentive to keep his 
land in a state of fertility, beyond the certainty that if he does not do so by 
manuring, draining, fallowing, &c., he will end by owning an impoverished soil 
which will not yield him the means of gaining a livelihood, he requires a very 
great incentive to induce him to keep up the supply of. timber in forests in 
which he only has a passing interest. He takes out what timber he requires 
for his building and fencing, and then, regardless of posterity, either destroys 
the remainder, or at least makes no effort to perpetuate the supply by planting 
or by nurturing the natural growth. Most people are ready to make an 
outery against the destruction of our forests, but, again, these same people 
gladly shift the burden of doing so on to other people’s shoulders. In this 
colony it has been clearly shown how the business should be carried out—viz., 
by protecting the naturally growing young trees in forest and scrub lands, 
which have been carefully examined and classified by competent’ men. ‘The 
work would necessitate some considerable expenditure; but would that expen- 
- diture not be recouped again and again by providing constant supplies of 
timber, for which otherwise we shall have to pay heavily to import from other 
countries? But can even this last resource be confidently reckoned on? Take 
Mexico as an example. The effects of forest destruction in Mexico are pain- 
fully apparent. As with us, the forests have been destroyed for the purpose 
of cultivation on the hillsides, and the results are, as I pointed out before, 
that the soil of thousands of acres of such land is carried down by floods into 
the plains, which are in their turn destroyed for cultivation, purposes by being 
