274 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ocr., 1902. 
FOREST CONSERVANCY. 
Every State in the Australian Commonwealth is slowly awaking to the 
importance of the duty of working the forests of the continent so that its 
enormous timber wealth may not only return better revenues to the public 
exchequer in our own time, but may be handed on as a rich legacy to posterity. 
The following paper by Mr. Philip Mac Mahon, Director of the Govern- 
ment Botanic Gardens, will be read with interest. 
Mr.Mac Mahon also occupies the position of lecturer on forestry to the 
Queensland Agricultural College, and reports of his lectures on this important 
subject will appear in the Jowrnal in due course. 
A Pres ror Common Sense Forest ManaGEMENT. 
[By Pure Mac Manon, Director Government Botanic Gardens, Brisbane.] 
The cause of forest conservancy, like many another good cause, has suffered 
no less from the injudicious advocacy of its friends than from the opposition and con- 
tempt of its enemies. 
Very often those who saw, or thought they saw, in our rapidly diminishing forests 
a grave national danger, none the less alarming because insidious, cried shame on the 
hardy and industrious pioneer and his aiders and abettors, denounced the enterprising 
squatter and selector, and shriekingly demanded all sorts of unworkable restrictions 
for the preservation of the tree-growth of the country. 
They took up, in too many instances, the position of that farmer who was 
so enamoured with his beautiful crop of wheat that he refused to allow it to be reaped 
till the winds and rains had destroyed it. 
These advocates of forest conservancy naturally fail to secure the sympathy and 
practical co-operation of those who usually hold the reins of power, men who from the 
yery nature of their training are accustomed to look at matters of this kind from 
all four sides, and whose interest it is to ignore the wailings of Tom, if the restrictions 
he demands appear inimical to the welfare of his two neighbours, Dick and Harry. 
The evils of injudicious ringbarking, often on land unsuitable for grazing, 
indiscriminate felling of immature timber, wasteful methods of lumbering, utter 
absence of any really comprehensive grasp of the principles of systematic sylvi- 
culture, the ludicrous disproportion between the paltry State revenues derived from 
the forests and the, in some instances, comparatively huge expense of collecting these 
revenues and administering an unscientific, vacillating, and useless forest policy, 
furnish the friends of forest conservancy with texts upon which the changes can be 
rung for ever, and upon which any man of intelligence, with a taste for such research, 
can write a small library. : 
George R. Marsh, in his learned work, “Man and Nature,” published in 1864, 
states the evidence and conclusions from this point of view in 200 pages of lucid expo- 
sition and reasoning, which will repay the closest study. 
On the other hand, the opponents of forest conservancy point to the paramount 
needs of settlement, the necessity for a cheap and abundant supply of firewood and 
timber for construction purposes, the claims of the wage-earners employed in the 
business of lumbering, and the expense involved in forest control. They deny that 
there is likely to be any appreciable diminution in the timber supply, that forests 
exercise the influence over climate that is claimed for them, and that they act as 
regulators of local climatic conditions, mitigating the effects of floods and droughts. 
But these latter contentions are made in a somewhat half-hearted manner, and in 
answer to what they allege to be the extravagant claims of the advocates for a stringent 
system of conservancy. 
Huxley, in one of his very happiest phrases, has defined science to be trained 
common sense, and the trained forester attaches due weight to each of the above 
arguments, and if he has had experience in countries where forestry is a money- 
making business, and not a money-squandering theory, he cannot for the life of him 
see why the forests cannot be perpetuated as vast sources of perennial timber supply 
of increasing value, giving every year a new employment to the wage-earning classes, 
increased incomes to the sawmillers and timber merchants, a larger revenue to the 
State, and contributing to the general prosperity. : 
The problem before the Forest Conservator in Australia is not an easy one, but 
it is not by any means impossible of solution. A careful perusal of the “ Indian 
Forest Act,” as modified up to 1890, “ The Indian Forest Department Code,” with its 
appendices, and Baden-Powell’s “ Forest Law,” will show the enormous difficulties 
arising from immemorial rights and easements, local customs, climatic influences, 
a 
