512 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Junx, 1900. 
supply of well-grown timber—not to be obtained from the despoiled wild bush 
—this revenue must become a large one, and it is not too much to say that 
the share in a forest of an estate will form an important part of the owners 
income. Exotics will doubtless be much planted, but it is to be hoped that our 
fine native conifer, the yellowwood, will be given, what it has never yet had, 
a fair trial. Occasionally well-grown specimens of this tree are met with im 
wild bush, showing by their straight, well-shaped stems, what could be done 
by proper use of the marking-hammer to give the right amount of air and 
light that happy accident has given in their case. If, under such a forest 
law as is here proposed, the Government gave facilities to the conservators for 
taking plants from the Crown forests, the latter would become nurseries for 
the afforestation of the colony. In the Crown forests open to wood-cutters, 
foresters competent to select trees for felling must perforce be employed, and 
they might well also plant out seedlings for sativa The Crown forests can. 
supply, without injury, an unlimited number of plants. 
Should a forest law of the kind suggested be promulgated, it would 
necessarily come very slowly into operation at the first. A pioneer district oF 
two would make a start, and the test thus applied might reveal weak points to 
be corrected; but, as a formerly treeless district began to be clothed with 
young woods, the mere addition in beauty would inspire emulation. The value 
of land would rise in a forest district almost from the start, and increase with 
the age and area of the forest. Before the first decade was reached the pole 
thinnings would have commenced a revenue—without counting the wattles sold 
before this to the natives. The young trees or large pole-stage would more 
than repay the total cost of planting, and the timber itself would be clear profit. 
The problem presented by afforestation differs from that presented by wild 
bush, in that everything can be planned with certainty—the roads, approaches, 
working spaces, may be laid down while the land is bare—and the trees 
can be set out at equal intervals so as to ensure from the first the best return. 
Forest land—that is neither arable nor good pasture—usually runs together 
along the ridges of hills, and thus, as contiguous districts gave in their adhesion 
to the scheme, unbroken forests would extend for miles over the now dreary 
barren undulations of the colony. Villages and town corporations might find 
the absolute protection given by a forest law desirable in the case of the water- 
sheds of their supplying streams, and for plantations upon areas that should 
never be alienated. The Government itself would find its hand strengthened 
sufficiently for the improvement and reopening of the larger of the natural 
forests, now under the management of police—who are only competent to close 
them altogether. Natal, now a raw conglomeration of naked ridges, wit 
torrents for streams, and shrubby ravines for forests, would gradually become 
a clothed country watered by gently flowing brooks, showing everywhere the 
beauty now hidden in remote dells, arable where now is but pasture, and pastor. 
where now moisture will not stay long enough to maintain good grass ; while, 
in addition, she would possess, in countless acres of timber, a source of wealt: 
that must always grow in value because fresh uses are ever being found for 1. 
In conclusion, a forest law can empower the whole community, through its - 
Government, to guarantee the permanence of afforestation work by decreeing 
that no forest placed under that law shall ever be abandoned; and by taking 
out of the hands of those temporarily interested the power to destroy the forest 
for a temporary increase of revenue. The details of such legis ation—the 
proce limitations of central and local authority—might well be discussed in #6 
ress as soon as landowners and others form an opinion favourable to the 
rinciple of a forest law. Before such an opinion cau become general the idea 
itself must be published; hence the suggestion of it in this paper. The work 
before us is immense, and progress with it must be all the slower as time wil 
have to take the place oP money in the poorer districts—that is, the ann 
acreage afforested will be, in many places, small. The sooner, therefore, tha 
machinery to do the work is put in motion the better. 
