Forestry and Farming.

Progress, Volume XVI, Issue 3, 1 November 1920, Page 65

Forestry and Farming.

Important Development

Forestry and farming are so near akin that the two should always be associated and the proposal to establish a school of forestry in connection with one of the university colleges should go hand in hand with the establishment of an agricultural college. To combine the two as a college of agriculture and forestry would have many advantages, and it is sincerely to be hoped that the organisers of the campaign now opening in Auckland for the establishment of an agricultural college will widen the scope of their enterprise to include a school of forestry. Professor A. P. W- Thomas recently stated that the New Zealand University Senate had agriculture and forestry, but these subjects are too great and important to be served by a few lecturers attached to a university college; they are worthy of having schools erected entirely for their service. We pointed out in a previous issue that we were certain that if an organised appeal were made to the people of the Auckland province for funds to establish an agricultural college, sufficient money would soon be forthcoming. Sir John Logan Campbell left a considerable sum of money to accumulate for the purposes of agricultural education. The [Government would assuredly subsidise this and any other moneys subscribed by the general public, and it is certain that there are in the Northern province many patriotic individuals and great business institutions that would devote land and money for such a splendid cause. We have already suggested that an agricultural college should have its school of dairying and that the representatives of the greatest industry in the province should endow chairs and

scholarships and research laboratories, not oply in the interests of education, but for their own pecuniary benefit. The same should apply to other branches of agriculture, and to other agricultural industries, and should equally apply to forestry. Ir must be impressed upon the people and the Government of this country that we have reached a critical stage in the history of our timber resources. We have wasted and destroyed the greater part of our native forests; we have come within measurable distance of the end of our timber supplies, but, fortunately for us, it is by no means too late to make up in some degree for our reckless extravagance in the past, but this can only be done by careful organisation and by the expenditure; of vast sums of money.

It has taken us fifty years to wantonly ravage our inherited forests; it will take us another fifty years to provide an adequate supply of useful trees. New Zealand was exceedingly lucky in finding, just when he was needed, a man like Sir David Hutchins to rouse us to the need of action by his remarkable reports and to point out the road to reform and reconstruction. This ; country was fortunate, too, in securing the services of Captain Ellis to take up the actual work of forestry and afforestation. Both men are enthusiasts in their profession; both men have what so many enthusiasts practical and scientific knowledge. Apparently there are two great fields of enterprise in developing our natural timber re-sources-—the saving, - improvement and extension of our existing forests, and the planting of exotic and native trees. Undoubtedly, the former is the most important. In most of our forest country, even where the native trees have been cut out, there are crops to supplement our grasses. It seems ; highly probable that in the past we have cut down and destroyed too much of our hill-top forests, and had we possessed thirty or forty years ago the knowledge, that we possess now, we should have conserved much of these forests, which" would be at trie present time most valuable national assets. There can be no doubt that certain classes of land will yield much greater returns under trees than under any other class of farming, and this fact will have to be carefully considered when opening up such districts as the Urewera to settlement. It must also be considered when developing the great area of pumice soils in the centre of the North Island.: There is no doubt that the greater portion ■' of the arable pumice country can be made to yield more to the State under moderately intensive farming than under timber trees, but it is probable that. nearly all the broken pumice country and a fair amount of naturally coarse or shingly soil could be more profitably utilised for tree growing. . If, however, the programme of work suggested by the present Forestry Department is carried out by the Government, our farmers will have no occasion to fear the encroachment of plantations on the essential arable country and the general public can rest on the assurance that the new industry of tree-farming will be an immense “Auckland Weekly.”