STATE FORESTS REPEAL BILL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4868, 28 October 1876, Page 2

STATE FORESTS REPEAL BILL.

, TO THE EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. *; SIR,—In many country districts, and in the minds of numbers of people whose intellect allowed them to look a. little beyond the pre-, sent time, the’announcement that-the above! Bill was carried in the House caused astonish-; inent and disappointment. . ■ j That a Bill such as the State Forests Act,; fraught with so much good to future genera-; tions, should be summarily cast aside with. Bo; little consideration, argues one of two things,; viz., either that : the desire for retrenchment: is so great that any new department, however: good and useful, should have no chance of being, organised, or that the question of state forestry and its bearing on the future of the colonyihad; not received that careful thought and attention on the part of Opposition members which its importance demands. There are some men; whose statesmanship does not go beyond the particular session in which they are engaged ; but there are also others who, like Sir Julius Vogel, can see far beyond the present, and who will 'not sacrifice the future interests of the colony to present expediency. When the Public Works and Immigration policy was first inaugurated it ! was, like the State Forests Bill, characterised as “ wild and inapplicable but posterity, when it speaks of the man who founded it ahd.carried it through/ will pay due justice to his sagacity and foresight. Sir Julius Vogel,. when he introduced the State Forests Act, knew perfectly well what he was about, and I amongst others am sorry to see the good he intended to do the colony negatived by the repeal of the Act. I could write pages upon the value of the forestry even to a new country like New Zealand; but the following extract from the “Christian Union " so thoroughly explains it that I have enclosed it in preference to my own remarks upon the matter :- “ Careful consideration of a few-well-known general principles of . forest, culture will show : that in the very! nature of the case it cannot be otherwise*, than that it has, and ever must have, a' tremendous bearing on the subjeet of' public ' health. The health not only of man; ■ but of the brute creation, is serio.usly damaged by the frequent, sudden, and jgreat changes in the climatic conditions always, and necessarily incident to regions injuriously stripped of trees. Plant life suffers with them also, and to such an extent that the zones,of our most valuable fruits and cereals have movedihsomelongitudes from one to three degrees of latitude to southward. We put a single forest leaf under the microscope and dissect and examine it with scientific accuracy and thoroughness, and we find in many of the common species tens of thousands of pores entering* into its structure. Some trees requiring the piquancy of less than a twentieth of an acre bear on their twigs and branches four dr five" acres of this marvellous leaf surface. A shelter belt of a few thousand acres of such trees standing to the windward of a city, or between it and some source of miasma, presents millions of acres of Nature's apparatus for absorbing excess of moisture, and exhaling if at times when the opposite conditions prevail ; It is an aparatus well adapted to contending with malaria, which plants the seeds of disease and death broadcast and by the wholesale—an apparatus which lays a potent though gentle hand on the “ chill wind of the sea;”, tempering both it and the fiery blasts which are its allies in scourging poor mortals with the most destructive extremes of temperature. Extensive, elaborate, and scientific.obseiwations and experiments of students of forestry in France, Germany, Italy,* and everywhere in Europe, have demonstrated , that judicious > arboriculture is among the most practical' and powerful agencies to grapple with those fertile causes of disease, the irregularities of temperature and moisture, and! “thepestilence that walketh iu darkness.” Nothing in vegetable physiology is better established than that its chief source of food, inhaled from the air, L the carbonic acid gas so deleterious to , animal life, and that , in return a vast volume of vitalising oxygen is exhaled by the foliage for the sustenance of animal'life, ■; Hence it is certain that in suitable proportions* and position trees afford beneficent protection from our unseen enemies in the air. By their; active mechanical action in checking the rush of the air currents, it is also evident that trees must be powerful aids in the prevention-of the evils resulting from the auddeu movements of great bodies of cold air from.thesnorthor warm. air.

from the south. To cheek them is provisionally to guarantee relief from those convulsive changes of temperature which are so fruitful a 'source of the lung and bronchial difficulties so.prevalent among the inhabitants of our northern and middle States. These changes' not only increase the number and malignity of - attacks, of diseases long known to medical - men,fbut more than ought else, produce new ones.’ / They are among the chief procuring causes; too, of new as well as old and comparatively well-understood diseases of horses, cattle, and sheep. The narrowing of the .winter wheat belt and of the fruit zone, so as to reduce their areas by millions of acres, is , still . another of these irregularities where the wild winds hold high carnival over regions denuded of forests. The heating and soothing influence of tlw aroma of the conifer® upon those afflicted with consumptive, catarrhal, asthmatic, and throat difficulties is another very important count in the. case at issue.' The census map shows with admirable distinctness the regions where Buoh diseases are especially prevalent (see part 3, Waller’s Statistical Atlas) ; and it is startling and * significant to find New England, once so grandly rich and beautiful in her robes of evergreen, the' most terribly scourged in these respects of any portion of our country, and probably of the world—not that this is wholly due to the destruction of forests, but the increase in these diseases is out of proportion to the increase of population-”—I am, &C., - Histoeicjs.