THE WASTE OF TIMBER.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 298, 16 October 1873, Page 8

THE WASTE OF TIMBER.

Though the Act for the encouragement of planting is good in its way, we should have been better pleased if it had gone further, and instead of merely encouraging planting by bonuses of grants of land, to have compelled owners of timbered country to plant where they cut down. With the.present enormous rate of consumption of timber our. forests will be utterly denuded in a few years time, and some already have been swept off the face of the country. Twelve years since the banks of the Opihi, bordering the Temuka township, were clothed with a broadish belt of timber, consisting for the most part of black and white pine, whilst near the river and overhanging the stream were to be found clumps of the ever-green nihaus and ribbon-wood. This bush was not only a pretty relief to our hideous plains, but was a special mark for the mariner, old charts making particular mention of the clump of bush to the northward of Timaru. Now, and in fact for years past, half a dozen dead pines alone mark the site of the ancient bit of forest. What has occurred on fi small Bcale at Arowhenua, has occurred over extensive areas in other parts of Canterbury and in the neighboring provinces. As rapidly as steam mills can out. or axemen fell the trees, we are using up most valuable property, and one not to be replaced in a day, The Planting Act may do something to stay the evil, but we fear that restitution of our timber trees will be but little helped on by that statute. It is only comparatively of late years that the value of planting and the evil of deforesting have been generally acknowledged. But the knowledge once established soon spread to the utmost bounds. From Egypt .flbd Japan, and distant India, from America and the Continent of Europe does the cry come of save your timber trees or plant. And whilst invoking the aid of the law both in the way of encouraging planting and preventing the deforesting of land, we cannot do better than draw attention to the manner in which nations the most diverse view this matter and legislate upou it. In Japan a law exists that whoever cuts down a tree is obliged to plant another. In Biscay every proprietor plants two for every one which he cuts down. In America an important law on the same subject passed Congress 11th March t 1873. It was enacted that any one who plants forty acres of timber, the trees eight feet apart, and keeps them in a healthy growing condition for five years, shall receive the fee simple for the quarter section of 160 acres (quarter of a 610 acre block), but only one quarter in each section is to be so appropriated ; and every settler under the Homestead Act who ha"s planted with trees and " kept m good and thrifty condition" one acre in sixteen of the holding is to bave his grant at the end of the third year instead of waiting for five. Would that this province did something in the direction of planting. A few thousand pounds could not be better expended than in planting the borders of our highways and sundry reservations on the naked and droughty plains. — " Timaru Herald."