COLONIAL TIMBER SUPPLY.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1788, 13 November 1879, Page 2

COLONIAL TIMBER SUPPLY.

We learn from the “ Echo ’’ that a report, originally called for by Lord Carnarvon when Secretary of State for the Colonies, relative to the colonial timber supply, has been lately issued. From it we gather interesting information as to the exports of timber and the climatic value of the trees. In many of the colonies so prodigal has been the destruction of timber that the authorities have bvn compelled to adopt measures of restriction. This has been the case notably in Natal (where the depredations of the natives have been considerable), in Victoria and Western Australis, Queensland (where an annual license fee has been. impcßsd on wood-cutters), and in Ceylon. The climate of Jamaica ia said to have become drier of late years in that portion of the island where the greatest clearances have been made; while in St. Helena, where young plantations occupy old clearances, the island suffers less from drought than immediately after the colonisation of the island and the wholesale felling of the trees. Of superior timber, British Honduras makes a large export to England of mahogany, equal on the average to about eleven million feet per annum. Canada is the largest exporting colony of ordinary timbers, the annual average, according to this report, being no less than five million pounds sterling ; and within the past few months, and since the issue of this report, this staple of theDominion, which was at a low ebb, haa increased very considerably, and shown more vitality than any other Canadian article ol commerce.