1 Mar. 1898.) QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 297 
buried under masses of rock and gravel. Every year the roads and railways 
are damaged to an enormous extent, but the indolent Mexican will not rouse 
himself to the exertion necessary to prevent this annual destruction of public 
and private property. 
How is it that men cannot take a lesson taught over two hundred years 
ago by William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania? He was far-seeing 
enough to issue an order.that, of every six acres held by a farmer, one should 
be retained in its virgin condition of forest, and anyone setting the woods on 
fire was severely punished. 
It is, 1 consider, a duty owed by every citizen to the State, to use his 
utmost endeavours to prevent the extinction of our forests, and to support 
all legislation having that end in view. It must be remembered that the 
welfare of the colony and the happiness of its people depends largely upon 
this question. We have at present barely 500,000 people here; and when we 
Jook round and see what havoc has already been wrought by a mere handful 
of these as workers, we may well pause to consider what effect will be produced 
when the population reaches, as it will ere long, to 1,000,000 or more. We 
are woodpaving our streets ; we are building railways and railway carriages and 
trucks, and are constantly renewing railway sleepers, bridges, &e. ; buildings 
are daily increasing ; the demands for firewood are insatiable—whence is all 
the requisite timber to come when we have exhausted our supplies? If it 
cannot be got from other countries, then it means that the actual existence of 
the colony is threatened. It may be said that America and Canada can supply | 
our wants. 1 have already shown that, unless great care is exercised, those 
countries will have difficulty in supplying their own requirements. 
The opinion of the president of the Arizona Lumber Company at Vlagstaff, 
conyeyed to the governor of the territory in 1893, is in accord with what I 
have written. He also showed that in Arizona the sawmills cut 24,000,000 
feet annually, and only 6 to 7 per cent. of the logs coming ‘to the mills 
yield first-class material. : 
In 1885.a member of the American Congress said : “ With the forests 
all dead and gone, man will not long survive on the American continent.” 
When such fears are expressed in a country where some of the States are 
so sparsely peopled that, as in Nevada, there is only one person to two and 
a-half square miles, in Idaho one, and in Montana and Wyoming less than 
one inhabitant per square mile, we in Queensland may well begin to look ahead. 
We reckon barely one person per square mile as yet, but our forests are mere 
woods compared to those of America and Canada, and, unless we begin at once 
to preserve them, the day is not far distant when those who to-day are living 
will learn to rue their culpable supineness. 
