FINEST VIEW IN NEW ZEALAND.
Sir,-Left alone for hundreds of thousands of years, Nature produced in New Zealand a beauty than which there: is probably nothing finer in the world. Nature knew what she was doing and the type of vegetation she evolved is eminently suited to the soil, climate, etc., of its habitat. In the old world the acclimatization of exotics took place slowly and »piecemeal over the centuries in countries with a sparse population who had only primitive tools and Nature was able to assimilate them owing to their gradual invasion, but in New Zealand within a little over a century modern man with modern tools and the modern wotship of mammon has stripped off roughly 90 per cent of the forest cover and what replacements he has planted have been almost entirely exotics. Only in a few isolated instances here and there throughout the country have a few devoted patriots replanted small patches of native bush. Almost, but we trust not quite, too late the urgent need for the replanting of native, Nature’s own trees is entering the conscience of -the country and ‘this need should be pressed home with ever
increasing force to the minds of those who have any part of the soil in their hands to make or mar. Native trees replanted where Nature planted them are safe, but who knows, or will know for a long time to come, whether ‘the ultimate effects of exotics in an alien soil will be good or otherwise. No one suggests that there are not many exotics which Gannot ‘ equal in beauty our native trees, but why was it necessary in your issue of June 18th under the above heading to give as the competitors for the title of the Finest View
in. New Zealand two views, one of Lake Taupo and, on the cover, one ‘of Lake Wakatipu, in both of which the trees are exotics! What would an Australian, looking at one finest view and seeing gums, or an Englishman looking at the other finest view and seeing willows, think? What would you think of any other country showing as its finest view one in which only totara or kowhai appeared? Would not the anwer be "They must be hard up for beautiful trees-the rest of their country must
be pretty drab."
R. H.
CARTER
Secretary, Forest and Bird Protection Society of N.Z. (Inc.)
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 474, 23 July 1948, Page 5
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399FINEST VIEW IN NEW ZEALAND. New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 474, 23 July 1948, Page 5
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