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To the accomplishment of this objective the Service has diligently applied itself during the past six years. Concrete advances are recorded, for the cut-hack-burn system of settlement and reckless forest exploitation have given way to reproductive use ; a definite policy of action ; and a Dominionwide practical and monetary interest on the part of individuals, communities, capitalists, and proprietary companies. " National forestry or perpetuation of forests by use " actuates official co-ordinate effort in four main divisions. They are — A. Management of State Forests (indigenous Trees). Their protection against fire and trespass. The marketing of ripe lumber crops, and the application of applied silviculture to continuous production. B. State Forestation. The business of establishing, managing, and harvesting State manraised forests. C. Forest Research. Embracing experimental silviculture of the native and naturalized forests. The development of new uses and methods of application. D. Forest Extension. Stimulation of appreciation of forest-values and the knowledge of what constitutes the right use of forest land through the Press, through avenues of education opened by primary-school instruction, through concrete example, and demonstration of methods and values to planters and users. Action in public relations by co-operation, lectures, expert examinations, and through the Service publications. These four natural groupings of effort are closely interwoven in application, but wherewithal clear in definition, and might be compared to the four quarters of a wheel —all rolling as one, but each contributing in turn to the movement and progress of the whole. Collective and individual interest in the profitable business of forestry and woodland conservation has markedly advanced throughout the Dominion, and to-day can be measured as an active economic force. The urge for progress unquestionably has come from the growing knowledge of the integral economic value of our forests, and to a realization that the remaining Dominion forests comprise only non-agricultural lands, and to the instinctive but latent sentimental love for trees that exists in all human beings. State Forestation. Real headway was made during the year, and the Service can again record another peak year in achievement and operation. The programme of action for the period 1925-35 as submitted in the

Graph showing Cost of establishing One Acre of State Forest Plantations for the Years 1921-26.

last annual report met with a splendid reception, and was in principle approved. Among other objectives, it advised the formation of a provincially distributed State forest plantation estate of 300,000 acres, and according to plan, under this minimum programme, 15,964 acres were formed in the Auckland, Canterbury, Otago, and Westland Provinces, being more by 4,844 a'cres than that of the previous year. The total State plantation acreage now stands at 78,953 acres. The plan of allocating to each province its appropriate acreage of State timber farms was in part carried out by establishing a new planting-centre near the City of Auckland ; the acquisition of 55,012 acres" (subject to survey) in the Kaingaroa district, and 8,608 acres in the Balmoral district of the Canterbury Province ; while acquisition negotiations were begun with regard to planting-centres in the Wellington, Marlborough Sounds, Nelson, Canterbury, and Southland regions.