NATURE-AND MAN

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19883, 12 May 1936, Page 10

NATURE-AN D MAN

THIS YEAR'S TREE DAY

MEMORIAL TO SIR FRANCIS BELL. (By “Leo. Fanning") When the hands of the clock sprang back the face of winter peered over the sky line at fall of next day. “Nearly dark at 5 o‘clock," People said in many parts of New Zealand. 50 plenty of folk began to think of the kinds of coal and wood which. in their belief, would help to fill the long nights with cosiness. March of the seasons! Decline and fall of the sun's empire! .\ sinking of sap for a rising in the spring. then a glow of daffodils, and then summer, roses, Christmas and next Easter—and another year ticked mi" for all of us. Now that the young of the plant world are beginning to drowse through the winter in many nurseries, naturelovers should turn their thoughts to Tree Day, which promises to have the best celebration since it was pro. jected long ago. “Come one, come all" is practically the call of the Hon. W. E. Parry, Minister of Internal Affairs in an exhortation to the public to have Tree Years instead of ’ Tree Days. This means that the Minister has invited the people to set the pace for him. Will they not respond? Will they not encourage him to step out? Yes. A Better Memorial. No doubt a public monument in stone will be set up somewhere in honour of a great worker for New Zealand, Sir Francis Bell. But a better memorial will be in the planting of trees, which were ever dear to his heart. The enduring love of. Sir Charles Bell for his country won him firm friendships among political op< ponents. Whatever difierences they could have had with him in matters of incidence of taxation and other questions of the political burly-burly. they were with him all the way in his active zeal for the saving of necessary forests. Words worthy of that national fervour have been written by another distinguished nature-lover, James Cowan. “The late Sir Francis Dillon Bell,” he states, “deserves to be held in honoured remembrance for :his long and persistent advocacy of lthe permanent preservation of New lZealand's indigenous forest. All his life he was a lover of the bush and a keen observer of its life, and he acutely realised all that the forests meant to the country. He was the first and only Commissioner of State Forests to make an earnest eflort to reserve from destruction large areas of native bush. When he began the administration of the Department there was an area of about a million acres reserved as State forests; when he relinquished the position he had increased the area to eight million acres. He also framed a. policy for the reduction of the export timber, realising that the country could not afford to deplete its resources in such a traffic. His wise view was that the mills should only be allowed to out what was necessary for the people of New Zealand. In this policy he was supported by Sir Joseph Ward; both were then members of the National Government.”

Well, New Zealanders, should not Sir Francis Bell be honoured everywhere in the Dominion during thi. year’s Tree Day?