IX. The required Official Estimates.—A School of Forestry to be established.

A mode of transaction in the matter of New Zealand State forests, through which financial returns and a good page 20 forest management can be combined, has been indicated; it might be adopted as a rule for the treatment of most of the State Forests, and only applied to a certain number of blocks to begin with.

State Forests, and especially natural forests of great extent, require to be treated on a large scale; that is to say, with such means as Governments or Companies alone can afford.

Should the Colonial Government decide to move in view of any transaction of importance respecting the State Forests, it may be submitted that some preliminary measures would have to be taken.

The Colonial Government has not yet a staff of foresters at hand to go through those forest operations; but surely scientific and trained foresters are not an absolute necessity in such a case. There is here a Survey Department, most remarkable for its good organization and efficiency, in which department men of high scientific and administrative qualifications are to be found, and to whom the direction of those operations can be entrusted. Therefore all those preliminary operations could be made by the Survey Department—they do not exceed the competency of its officers.

Vendor and buyer, lessor and lessee, all require sufficient official information, and no transaction of importance can be entertained without it.

Another measure of great urgency here is the practical organization of a Forest Department. Such an undertaking requires, time, and the first steps to be taken towards it should be the establishment of a School of Forestry, which, in the course of two years, could issue a staff of foresters sufficient to begin with. There are in the colony scientific men to whom the direction of the school and likewise special scientific tuition may be intrusted, and they should be assisted by two Professors of Technical Forestry, to be obtained from the French or German Forest Departments, those officers to be of a superior grade in their own country. Here, besides their lectures at the school, they could act as advisers at the head-quarters of the department; and moreover the verification of some of the survey officers' estimates should be made by them, to the effect that they may be parties to the official report and page 22 estimates to be made by the Committee, ad hoc. Their names and qualifications would add to the importance of that document, in case it might be used as a basis on which the promoters of a Company in Europe should be able to build.

The question of extent, as to the total area of blocks of forest to be leased, should not be decided at present. Let the Committee of Forest Estimates proceed with its work, and it would remain for the promoters of a Company in Europe to judge what can be done in the case as to the extent of forest to be leased.

There is no reason why some of the estimated areas should not be leased to colonial enterprise, but the general conditions of all leases should be homogenous, only prices and royalties varying according to localities, species, etc.

Such measures would have the effect of enhancing the value of the growing timber all over the colony. Private property would benefit by them in a high proportion, and so likewise would the treasury, in the way of laud taxes being made proportional to the value of the property.

The price of timber at market should not be affected by such events. Operations on a large scale can afford moderate prices, and competition would keep down exaggeration in the case. The increase of population, the diminution of produce, and the outlets abroad, will be at a future and distant period the cause of advanced prices for timber.