will quickly disappear. In a very few years the kauri and the totara will be exhausted, and the rimu and the kahikatea, the black-birch, and the matai will not last for ever. At the present moment, owing to the rising price of timber, trees that a few years ago would have been considered inaccessible are being brought to market, while bushes that would have been looked upon as worthless in the past are now being worked for anything that will cut up into a plank or a piece of scantling. All this tends to the more rapid denundation of the country, followed by the climatic and topographical changes already described; and, as in America, in the Scandinavian Peninsula, and elsewhere, as the pulp industry follows the sawmill, once the larger timber has become exhausted, so doubtless it will be before long in New Zealand, and then the deforestation, with all its disastrous consequences, will become more rapid and complete.

It is satisfactory to notice that there is a dawning improvement in public opinion on this matter. Several well-timed articles have lately appeared in the newspapers of the Dominion, amongst which was a most thoughtful and logical exposition of the subject in a series of papers by Mr. J. P. Grossman in the New Zealand Graphic, since reprinted under the title of “The Evils of Deforestation.” The Government also seems to be waking up to a sense of the importance of conserving some of the remnant of the forest before it is too late. And quite recently the Under-Secretary for Lands, Mr. W. C. Kensington, in reply to a criticism of the policy of the Department in withholding from settlement certain lands on the Wanganui watershed, very wisely pointed out that, unless the forest in that locality were rigidly protected, the famous “New Zealand Rhine,” not only as a beautyspot but as a navigable river, would soon be a thing of the past. While all this is very satisfactory, it must be remembered, as I pointed out in a former paper, that reservation must be more than reservation on the map. To be of any practical use reservation must be made with a barbed-wire fence, as, if cattle and pigs are allowed to enter, the fire will follow sooner or later, and the end will begin. The folly of neglecting this simple expedient has been amply exemplified in the Taranaki Mountain reserve, the Waitakerei Ranges, and in the Waipoua Kauri Forest, where much of the bush has been destroyed.

But while we have a right to demand from the Government such a protection of the public interest as is involved in the conservation of such portions of the existing forest as may be consistent with the interests of settlement, as well as in the reafforestation of the open land when such a measure may be practical and desirable, a great deal of good might be effected by private enterprise. In the neighbourhood of Melbourne it has been noticed that the hot winds and dust-storms, that are such a disagreeable feature of the Victorian climate, have lost much of their fierceness since the suburbs have been planted; while in the Waikato all old settlers are agreed that since the plantations of Pinus insignis, poplars, &c., which are so conspicuous in that district, have grown up the frosts have of late years not been nearly so severe as they were.

If legislation is to be invoked in this matter it might be well to consider the advisability of making it compulsory, in certain areas, for every landowner to plant and keep under timber a certain percentage of his holding. Such a measure would not only be of incalculable benefit to the country at large, but would be of very material advantage to the settler himself, as experiment has already proved that there is no more paying crop than a plantation of timber-trees.