For many years a few of us have been urging that some attention should be given by the foresters of the Dominion to the regeneration and cultivation of the New Zealand native forests. For the most part this advice has fallen on deaf ears, although it has been shown repeatedly by scientific men such as the late Sir David Hutchins and Thomas Cheeseman that most kinds of indigenous trees respond quickly to the protection necessary to give them a start in the world. Even the kauri grows more rapidly here than the oak does in Europe. Some day, let us hope, there will be a reconstruction of present afforestation methods in the direction of planting native timbers largely, instead of relying wholly on exotics, as at present. In the meantime, there is a wonderful object lesson for our tree-planters, the young kauri nursery on the Waitangi endowment block, at the Bay of Islands, which the country owes to the great generosity of Lord and Lady Bledisloe. Ten pounds in weight of kauri seeds taken from the Waipoua forest and set on a piece of land near the hill called Mt. Bledisloe germinated rapidly, and within ten days thirty thousand seedlings had appeared above the ground. The little kauris are to be planted out over an area of 2,400 acres on the Waitangi block.

This will be glad news to Lord Bledisloe, at whose request the experiment was made. He never wearied when here of advocating the merits of New Zealand timbers and of greatly increasing the area of native woodlands. The effort at Waitangi is the first result of his long fight for the cultivation of the indigenous bush. It certainly goes to disprove the arguments of those who thought it useless to attempt planting the kauri and other native trees. Wasteful sawmilling methods, too, will have to be stopped. At present millions of young trees and seedlings are destroyed in felling and milling methods. They can be made the nurseries of future forests if they are preserved.

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