NATIVE BUSH

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 72, 18 December 1920, Page 7

NATIVE BUSH

CHIEF JUSTICE'S WARNING. ' During his summing-up in a Supremo Court action at Hamilton recently in which'. th« destruction of a ° f ' Native bush. was tha subject of dispute, the Chief Justice, Sir Robert Stout, 6aid that the evidence regarding the rice in the value of timber ought to be a lesson to them. Over 35 yeare ago ,he .hail made a speech warning people the indiscriminate destruction -of busa and the need for providing for the iuture by : planting. Rahikatca was then considered- of' little value, it was not required for butter-boxes and similar purposes, and was sold for 3s. 6d. or toper 100 ft. ■ To-day, as had been, stated in Court, it was. selling, in Auckland (it 30s. The product of the four trees inentioned in tlio case before the Court would now realise "over,-« 400, wluch showed them the value of the timber. And millions of "feet of • it. were being wasted. ' The country was burning down the bush :>nd making no provision for the future. There had been no care at all ill dealing with the matter, with the result that • timber'-was now being imported' from "Australia. One man.Jiad said that ' th« bush-^vas'an enemy to ; civilisation; uf rid of it anyhow," and that seemed to bo the attitude of many people. Kalukatea had been needlessly, roclclcssly burned and destroyed, fanners thinking that if they could replace it by grass they would be doing a fine thing. An acre of kahikatqa would be worth thousands ot pounds—considerably more than an acre / of grass. It should- bo a lesson to them all His Honour went on to refer to the value of bush as a sliqlter. In the South Island particularly, through lack of .bush.shelter, stock suffered considerably in the winter, and also required moro food. Ho knew a farm where the value of bush shelter was strikingly exemplified in the value of the stock a.-> compared with.that 011 adjoining properties rhere there was no shelter. One writer had,said: "Jf J'ou have a third of your land in. timber it will pay you handsomely," and he was inclined to agree with him. It was time something was done to stop the reckless destruction of their beautiful and 1 valuable Native bush.