FARMERS & AFFORESTATION

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2498, 26 June 1915, Page 15

FARMERS & AFFORESTATION

Afforestation is an urgent need which Departmental experts and leading New Zealand settlers havo stressed for years. Our supply of Native timbers has been rapidly disappearing since tho early days' of the country's colonisation, and stfon will have vanished altogether. The replacement of the native growth is to a very great extent a matter for the individual landholder. One may talk abou.t the possibilities of the State i growing largo quantities of valuable timber on waste areas, but, fortunately for New Zealand, we have millions of acres of land which, far from being waste, is hiibly profit-yielding—for instaaco, tha thousands of rich stock and dairy farms. Even if the State planted all our so-called waste lands, these private farms would still remain untouched. For the sake of the individual ocoupier, and of the whole community, experts in forestry have frequently urged that farmers should do something to replace the native timber which has fallen before tho axe of the inexorable pioneer. Tho advice of these experts is that farmers should grow trees which will be useful as timber and as shelter, and that a certain number of trees should be planted every year, so that the farm will never be without useful timber, nor the stock without shelter from the cold and wet in winter and the sun in summer. Among the bigger trees which grow particularly well in New Zealand is the pinus insignus. It is a great breakwind, and is very useful for fencing and 6uch like purposes. An enthusiast on the subject of afforestation, Mr. B. H. Just, of the Botanical Nurseries, Palmerston North, has been endeavouring to induce farmers and settlers to take up the planting of pinus insignis. In his nursery, Mr. Just has abou.t 20,000,000 plants of these trees, and he is willing to send them to any part of New Zealand at tho almost nominal'price of 3s. 6d. per hundred. Bluegums, also, make useful timber, and these .plants may be obtained from Mr. Just at the rate of 6s. per hundred. Shrubbery and all other nursery plants are,on sale.