510 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Junz, 1900 
In New Zealand a State Forest Bill has been passed, which provides not 
only for the preservation of existing trees from destruction, but requires the 
planting of others in place of those removed in course of trade. In South 
Australia a movement of this kind was begun by the late Mr. Ednie Brown, 
Conservator of Forests, but since his departure the reserves apportioned out 
have been greatly neglected, and are now partly destroyed. 
The subject of forest conservation is one which comes home to Queensland, 
and at no time has this been so palpable than at present, when a State Forest 
Bill is an actual necessity. If the indiscriminate cutting of timber and 
slaughter of young trees is permitted to continue as heretofore, the supply of 
timber for railway lines, bridge buildings, culverts, &c., will be both small and 
dear, since, instead of being easily procured along the surveyed railway route, it 
will have to be purchased, or else drawn from long distances at great cost. 
It may not be out of place to/mention that the passing of an enactment of 
this sort by the first Parliament served to keep in check many bushmen and 
splitters who had hitherto cut down the bunya-trees in the scrub called by their 
name. These trees—the Australian breadfruit—are now tabooed ; and the 
aborigines, to whom they are a grant from the Crown, guard them zealously, 
and prevent depredations which would otherwise take place. 
[This matter of forest conservation, we are glad to say, has now been taken 
in hand by the Government, and, as a preliminary, an Inspector of Forests has 
been appointed.—Ed. Q.4.J.] 
WATER-LOVING TREES. 
Ir is unanimously agreed that the Moreton Bay fig-trees form a fine shade, and 
in the adjacent colonies they are now in great request for planting as ornaments 
in some of the leading thoroughfares of country towns. In America, most 
towns and cities are beautified by similar arborescent treasures, which form a 
grateful shade from summer heat. Apropos of the Moreton Bay fig, it is stated 
that these trees will extend their roots for a long way in the direction of water, 
which they absorb largely ; and an instance is on record of the roots of one 
travelling several yards into a well which had been unused for some time. 
When the owner went to draw water from it he found it so choked with roots 
that they were obliged to be cut away ere the bucket could be lowered to 
procure the fluid below them If these trees were planted on marshy and 
swampy spots, they would soon absorb the moisture and render them perfectly 
sanitary. 
THE AFFORESTATION OF NATAL. 
Mr. G. H. Davres, Forest Ranger, Qudeni, writes as follows in the Agricultural 
Journal, Natal:—In the Journal of the 19th January there appeared extracts 
from a paper read by Mr. D. E. Hutchins before the Society of Arts, London. 
The subject, “ National Forestry,” implied a State undertaking upon a large 
scale rather than that combined action on the part of landowners always kept in 
view in the papers dealing with forestry in the Journal, and which is necessarily 
the only course open to us in Natal. It is as well, however, to keep in mind 
the reasons why State forestry is superior to private efforts to plant woods and 
to maintain them afterwards. The State, duly empowered in a colony which has 
alienated most of its soil, can afforest areas large enough to be of climatic 
importance to the country generally ; and the State can protect the forests with 
the arm of the law. It has, however, been pointed out by Mr. Hutchins that it 
is in the finance of the matter that the State chiefly scores, and in this Natal has 
an immense advantage over Britain. If the following suggestions are anything 
to the point, land which is represented by so great a portion of the capita 
required for the afforestation of the old country need not cost the colony # 
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