The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 1893.

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 94, 28 January 1893, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 1893.

Cork Trees i -♦ A writer in an Otago paper urges j people in this colony who own land to go in for growing cork oak. Seeing that in twenty years, more or less, the use of bottles will be totally abolished in New Zealand, the cultivation of cork trees can only be condemned as a work of supererogation. Still, as the bark might be grown for exportation to "other lands," we publish an extract from the letter : — "That the cork oak would flourish in almost any part of New Zealand is certain, and there are few trees in the colony which have made such great progress as specimens of cork oak which have been planted. It must be borne in mind that it ia an evergreen, and would make very superior ornamental shelter — better, in fact, than almost any tree that has been imported. If forests were planted by societies and individuals they would become a source of wealth both to the country and to the individual who had planted them. After it hae been sown or planted there is no further trouble or expense attached to it till such times as its valuable bark is matured. It flourishes in the most sterile or stoney ground, and would prove a remunerative inyestment for those who possess ground that is absolutely unfit for otber purposes. Presuming the same quantity of cork tree acorns had been sown in Otago in 1859 and 1860 as bluegum seed, sutneent cork, or corkwood as it is commercially called, would have been stripped ere this from the trees to supply a number of cork-cuttiug factories in New Zealand, giving employment to hundreds of men, women and boys making corks not only for our own use, but also for export. Proprietors of property who are not over forty years of age would in all probably live to reap the benefit of having planted a few acres, and for the timely expenditure of a few pounds they would get a return of many hundred-fold. Others oyer that age might get some return for their outlay in the shape of a few crops of corkwood, and leave a most valuable legacy to their descendants for five or six generations, as the trees live 200 years or more without any expenditure in the shape of cultivation or caretaking."