FORESTRY NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 October 1921, Page 8

FORESTRY NOTES.

COMMENT ON RECENT LECTURE, (From O.nr Inglewood Correspondent) The reports that have lately been published in the Daily News of addresses on tree-planting, by Mr. E. Maxwell at Bell Block and Mr. Page, of the Forestry Department, at New Plymouth and Kaponga, have roused a good deal of interest amongst settlers around here, and some interesting comments upon them are to be heard occasionally. One settler in discussing them, more particularly Mr. Page’s Kaponga address, reported in the News of the 18th inst., said that while they contained a deal of information, they possessed some points he could not entirely agree with. To start with, Mr. I age was reported to have said at Kaponga that forestry was qnH<> distinct from arboriculture. He < d not eee that. If the greater contains the less, as he had been taught was the case, a knowledge of forestry implied a knowledge of arboriculture. A man might be an arboriculturist without being a forester, but, he held, to be a forester yet not an arboriculturist was impossible. The lecturer also was reported to have said that the native forest of New Zealand was the most beautiful in the world, as well as the richest in valuable timbers, but lie was not reported to have said one word throughout the address about re-establishing this most beautiful and valuable forest where it had been destroyed, nor about the best ; steps to take to conserve it where it Istill survives; that possibly would be beyond the ecope asked for by the ovdience. Then with regard to the kinds of trees recommended for planting, he said that both Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Page laid great stress on the value of varieties of the pine family and their kindred, while they seemed to make th-* eucalyptus tribe the backbone, as it were, of any scheme they advocated, but had said never a word about that worldfamed tree so valued by our forefathers of Agincourt days, the good old English yew. Neither had they mentioned any of the deciduous trees of the old country, many of which had been proved, as had also the yew, to be really good doers in New Zealand. While on this subject, he said he wondered if either of the gentlemen men tioned had read R. L. Stevenson's “Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes,” and, if so, whether it had occurred to either of them that the planting of such chestnut forests, as are therein so graphically described, would be a right step in the direction of national economies. Another point he raised was as follows: —It was well-know’ll that throughout the Dominfon, and particularly in the neighborhood of Mt. EgmorA, with the climate ami soil very closely resembling the climate and soil of Japan, many kind* of Japanese trees had been found to flourish remarkably, notably the red cedar (cryptomaria elyans), a forest of which is described by Rudyard Kipling, in his work "From Sea to Sea," he thought. Two varieties of Japan ese walnuts (juglans seboldii and J.S. cordifornlks) had been very successfully grown in this district by Mr. John Wheeler, formerly of Durham Road, who Lad also, he believed, grown the Japanese chestnut which bore quite equal fruit to that produced by the European or Spanish chestnut. Tii r ._- • were all quick-growing, very hardy and produced their fruit (walnuts and chest-| nuts) very much earlier in their growth I than their European kindred. Mr. Page, while speaking on forestry as distinct from arboriculture, had talked about the trees to plant and how to plant them, but in his conception of the term forestry would include also the provision of some sort of undergrowth not alluded to by Mr. Page, though a most valuable item, in the woodlands of England at any rate, where hazel, filbert and Kentish cot nuts abounded, as well as ash poles and wild cherry, and produced a growth of useful material which, he said, he had known to be sold after a seven to nine years’ growth for £24 per acre, the purchaser to cut only the undergrowth, not to touch any trees or saplings; all cute to be made from the root upward, and everything to be cleaned up and removed by a fixed date in the early spring or even before. Finding that this settler's conversation seemed to attract attention and to interest quite a number of hearers your own prevailed upon him to let such views be published. More he said on the social and national side of this subject, but this will have to do for the present. If readers of the News are interested possibly our loquacious friend may give out some more of his ideas on his favorite topic at a later date.