The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1884.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4147, 6 November 1884, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1884.

The deplorable waste of timber continues in the . Seventy-mile Bush, andthemonarche'of tho forest are still being destroyed for tho sake of destruction. : It is about six years ago since we first drew attention to the wicked waste that-is ■ enforced by our land regulations in -tho occupation of forest sections by deferred payment settlers. .■ Theso , . reguiatiohs'enibrace-the compulsory destrnc-* tiori of bo much bush for so many years,,and this .wanton",waste is considered an-;"jim-provement,'' 'without which the forfeiture of the land is the penalty. To those who have tho slightest idea of the value of our natural forests, or" to those who can estimate; the amount of, labor expended in clearing the bushj and tho returns'tobo obtained when the operation is completed, the folty of making destruction compulsory is only too apparent. Undor the system enforced tho wide breaches in the forest, that hnvo been mado only top : effectually during the.last few years, give an earnest; of what is ftst xpproaching.'" The buyer fox cash'knowstho k-alue'of his purchase and; is left untrammelled by tho law ; he turns Ms; timber into' noney, and makes his pron.tj' not out of the lenuded land, but from.the bountiful hardest that Nature has planted for his benefit.", rhe poor man, on the. other hand, is riot penriitted by thelaw-to wait for his market,, ie must clear ; ao many acres, every yearj arid he trees which would make him a rich man f-left standing till they are wanted for the ise of thcbuildeiyhavo, to be ruthlessly cut lowri-to encumber- the land with their fal-' , en trunks. A more melancholy sight is to ie seen nowhere than, in, the pupation of; iTew-Zealand forrsts,. Except in patches' !nd around "VVcpdville, tho, soil iri; the iaventy-mile Bush, goodj;; at forgewOpd and. towards • prmondvillo it i very poor,:yet at these iwOf settlements i to be found;a large population. Close by, lie-school-house at the latter'places two ears ag-o stood a cavrmiH, and the forest'

came down.to theroad: : The whole of that side of the road has been cleared of timber since then, the forest has been pushed buck, arid the sawmill has disappeared. .This has been "rapid enough denudation ta. satisfy the most- exacting in favor of bare/- earth and charred logs, and we maintain any compulsory clearing - clauses in settlement under the-deferred-payment system the bush would disappear quite soon enough. We all know that the compulsory- clauses were inserted in order to ensure the bona fide and profitable occupation of the bush. But if the framers of the law had been wiser in their generation they would have known that the most profitable occupation of bush land is that which utilises the timber without destroying the forest. . When the Hawke's Bay railway was first proposed it was anticipated that when the line " tapped the inexhaustible riches of the Seventy-mile Bueh" an enormous timber trade, rivalling : that of Auckland, wotiia spring- tp. This hope has not been realised. Tho railway has enabled us to supply our own wants; wearo no longer dependent on the Auckland mills, and that is as much as we can say for our timber trade. On the other hand we can set down the fact that we have destroyed enough timber to have enriched the whole of the province, and this wanton waste has been perpetrated for the sake of growing a few thousand acres of sickly grass, from the grazing of which some hundreds of families derive a poor and precarious living. Where the bush has been and is being put to beneficial uses the settlers arc in comfortable well-to-do circumstances; whore the bush has been destroyed for the sake of merely clearing it off the face of the earth the settlers are as poor as they well can be. Wo need not particulariso tho localities in which this great difference in the condition of tho people may bo aeen; a ride through the Seventy-mile bush will assure any one that our remarks are not exaggerated.