The Globe. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1879.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1552, 8 February 1879, Page 2

The Globe. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1879.

Attention has lately been drawn to the increasing difficulty of obtaining timber for building, railway and other purposes. Merchants, engineers, contractors, and all who are interested in the timber trade are occasionally put to considerable inconvenience when large works or orders have to bo executed. Notwithstanding that the prevailing slackness of business has caused the demand of late to be smaller than it would bo wore times more flourishing, it is by no moans easy to obtain suitable timber in sufficient quantities There has boon a considerable falling oTf in the supply even during the last two or three years. The railway department for instance has lately, wo believe, called for tenders for 40,000 sleepers, and cannot readily find them, oven in Auckland. Along the east coast of this island it is now indeed almost impossible to obtain really good timber in large quantities. There are absolutely only one or two mills in the Peninsula that are turning out any adequate amount of a

faiviy good article. It used to bo possible to buy manuka timber in largo quantities in that, district, but now the supply is fast falling oil, and what totaraand black pine can be obtained from the mills above alluded to must satisfy wholesale purchasers. T 1 en again there wore those who at one time thought that the Oxford District would be capable of furnishing us with all that was needful for many j -ars to come. But (ho result has proved that those who believed in the Oxford bush were far out in their calculations. The supply from that quarter has been found to bo decidedly limited. Small orders for black birch can still bo executed, but for works on a largo scale wo can no longer look to the Oxford district for assistance. To speak broadly, the side of this island east of the dividing range has, as far as concerns Canterbury and most parts of Otago, become practically devoid of any largo forests. Our timber must henceforth come from the North island, from the West Coast of this island, or from Australia. As for Australia, it is not a satisfactory thought that we, who live in a country blessed with such magnificent forest trees, suitable for almost any imaginablo purpose, should bo. oven occasionally, compelled to send there for the timber wo need. And yet such a course has often to bo pursued. For example blue-gum sleepers are; wo believe, being obtained from Tasmania fertile Asburton Forks Railway, and numerous other instances might be quoted. But, perhaps, if we look into the question, the disappearance of our timber resources on this coast ought not to be so much wondered at. Unless carefully managed and properly looked after there is nothing that vanishes so rapidly from the face of a country as its trees. The amounts requisite for railway, building, and other purposes are always, as population increases, enormous, and, in making any forecast, the quantity to bo required is almost invariably underestimated. Fine trees take up a great deal of room, and an acre of laud is soon denuded. A few years back 50,000 acres of woodland a year were required for railway purposes in the State of New York alone, and 10,000 acres of forest wore, in 1871, stripped of their timber to supply with fuel the single city of Chicago. Again, fires are an active agent of destruction, and it must be borne in mind that the less a forest is looked after the more easy it is to sot it on fire. The State forests in Germany, which are carefully tended, are far less subject to conflagrations than those in the same country which are untouched by the hand of man. To return to Canterbury, the fact is that we shall have for the future to look almost entirely out of the province for our supplies. Oxford, Waimato, and Banks’ Peninsula have hitherto been “ familiar in our mouths as household words ” when treating of the timber question. But in those latter days we can no longer rely on those familiar localities. It is not therefore only for the purpose of obtaining superior coal but of obtaining an adequate supply of timber that it is most necessary that the Amberley-Brunnerton railway should bo hurried on. The timber supply on the West Coast is of course enormous —wo would have said inexhaustible, were it not that experience teaches us that supplies, however extensive, are never inexhaustible when a considerable population exists to draw from them. But at all events the West Coast will supply what is needed for many years to come, and the sooner we are able to tap that supply the better. It was satisfactory to hoar from Mr Macaudrew that tenders wore about to be called for the extension of the Northern line —so far so good—but it will bo well for us never to rest satisfied until timber and coal trucks are running from the forests and mines of the West Coast into the Christchurch yards.

We will do no more than touch on the question of the planting and conservation of forests by the State, as it does not lie within the proper scope of this article. Sir Julius Vogel, when introducing his Forests Bill in 1874, made out a very strong case for the measure, a case that was not shaken by certain minor objection urged by Mr. Sheehan and others. Sir Julius, treating the subject generally, pointed out that it was quite a fallacy to suppose that the timber supply of the world was inexhaustible. He instanced the United States whore in a comparatively small number of years, the total timbered area decreased from 25 per cent, to 15 per cent, of the total area of the country, and ho urged that it would bo both politic and economical for the State to appropriate large tracts of forest lands. He showed that the State forests in Germany yielded a large income—for instance, those in Bavaria alone brought in an annual profit of no less than £785,000 per annum, and, sanguine as usual, ho anticipated that, were State forests formed, the profits accruing therefrom would, if properly managed, go far towards paying off the debt incurred in the carrying out of our public works policy. With regard to the climatic question it is not probable that any denudation that can now take place on this side of the ranges will have much influence on the general climate of the province. Nor, indeed, looking in another direction is it likely that wo shall, for many years to come, see much climatic alteration effected by reason of the plantations springing up everywhere, comparatively numerous though they are. In many countries the case would be different. In Cairo, for instance, a very limited amount of planting has effected a sensible change in atmospheric conditions, and on parts of the Suez Canal, from the same cause, rain has of late fallen whore it was never known to fall before within the memory of man. But the physical features of Canterbury are very largo; there are extensive plains and lofty mountains, and it is proportionately difficult for man to bring his influence to bear. Even if the whole of the plains was planted as is the neighborhood of Christchurch, wo very much doubt if much sensible change would bo the result. The Southern Alps would still drain the north-westerly winds of their moisture, and the most we could hope would bo that their temperature would be moderated by passing over the cooler surface of a timbered country, instead of over the heated plains. And, as regards the south-westerly and easterly winds, late experience has not led to the belief that the climate in Christchurch is growing more moist, notwithstanding tkat wo are planted in almost to a fault.