AN ENCOURAGING EXAMPLE IN TREE PLANTING.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2041, 6 August 1885, Page 4

AN ENCOURAGING EXAMPLE IN TREE PLANTING.

What may be accomplished (siys the An^tialtuian) by a single community in the way of tree planting, and of transfoiming the physical aspects of a par ticular locality in an and district, has been renmkanly exemplified at Jamestown, in South Australia. Five yeais ago the corporation commenced the plantation of a pieviously ti.-cless region with timbct. Up to that date the place must have been as undesirable a town to li\o in as could be found in the bare filains upon which it had been estab ishod. In summer there was nothing to mitigate the blinding ulare of the sun, or the intolerable ladiation of the heat from the fissured surface of the haul baked earth. The hot winds swept across a wide expanse of the scorching countiy, bringing with them clouds of allpenctrating dust. In the winter there were no natural means of breaking the force or diminishing the inclemency of the gales which came how ling down from the north. But the corporation has ohanged all that. "It has planted o\er t0,500 trees of various kiinls, and the once glaring and dusty streets are protected, shady, and ornamented with •everal beautiful varieties of gums, now in flower, and standing 25ft to 30ft high— and this after having been twice lopped during the K\e years since they were first planted. But gums are not the only trees, for they are relieved by hundieds of pines, catalpas, tamanx, ficus, willows, cypress, olive (doing •plendidly), Acacia lophautha, and a lot of others." Private enterprise has supplemented municipal effort, and lome of the leading people of Jamestown have planted trees in such numbers on their own properties that at the present time, " the town appears, from the distan* heights, to be buried within a forest." Not only so, but the once bare ranges in the vicinity of the place have been clothed with young forests for a distance of eight miles; and the experience of other countries justifies us in hoping that, as soon as these have attained a certain •tnge of growth, they will exercise a marked and beneficial influence on the climate and rainfall of the district. About 70,000 trees have been obtained from the Forest Boaid of South Australia, and the 30 acres planted by the Corporation of Jamestown do not cost it more than €70 per annum to maintain in good order. Probably the time v ill come when, by a judicious system of yearly felling and replanting, the timber in the reserves and parks may become a •ource ot revenue. In the meanwhile, what aie the results of this admirable proceeding ? According to a seven-years' resident in the town, the character of the place has entirely changed. It has ceased to be "a mudhole in winter, and a dustheap in summer ;" and there is a marked decline in the prevalence of ophthalmia and sand blight, both of which had not unnaturally become endemic. It has also been found practicable to introduce modes of culture which were pieviously out of the question Sheltered and screened by the rapidly growing belts of indigenous timber which have been planted in the distnct, orui.irds luve b.-en formed, vineyards and gardens laid out, and flint tree? aie tin i\ lng in localities were all former attempts to establish them resulted in faduie, because, as our informaiit writes, " the cutting winds of -tmtitner and winter, sweeping over the nnaheltercd and treeless pl.uns, would not allow of the trees growing "