HUGE KAURI TREE.

Otaki Mail, 31 March 1923, Page 4

HUGE KAURI TREE.

DISCOVERED NEAR HOKIANGA

One of the largest, if not the largest, trees in the world has been discovered in the bush at Waihou, Hokianga. It is a huge kauri tree, the vast trunk rising to a height ol 70 leet before being broken by the first branch, and measuring 22ft in diameter, and G6ft, or approximately a chain in girth. A well known bush expert es-

timates the tree 10 contain over 195,000 super teet ot umber, sufficient to ' build three double-storied hotels of twenty rooms eacli from floor to ceiling. It is to be hoped that tins remarkable nee will lie zealously guarded from destruction and preserved to show future generations what the lordly kauri at its best was like. From a marketable point of view it would be quite impossible to fall it, much less break ii down, no mill possessing saws big enough to tackle it. The age of the giant ii estimated to be at least 2000 years, and carefully conserved it has another thousand

ars of life before it. The royalty which would be forth

coining from a tree ol such dimensions would be approximately £730. while the present retail [.rice is estimated at over £3OOO. Sir D. E. Hutehen, in his book on the mammoths ol the forest, gives America's greatest tree as one possessing 150,619 board I feet.—Forestry Journal.