Page:A primer of forestry, with illustrations of the principal forest trees of Western Australia.djvu/25

19 CHAPTER IV.

THE VALUE OF FORESTS.

Direct Value.—Go back as far as you like in the history of the world and you will find that the forests have always played a very important part in the national welfare of every country. The forests yield a number of products which, before the dawn of civilisation, were indispensable to the tribes that inhabited them. The negro in the tropical jungle of Africa, prehistoric man in the oak and beech forests of the old world, the aboriginal in the eucalypt forests of Australia, all lived on the products of the forests and on the game that they sheltered. As man became civilised and began to outgrow his environment and to find a difficulty in supplying himself with the necessities of life, he was gradually forced to supplement the natural products with food, raiment, etc., grown under cultivation. He no longer relied on barks of trees and skins of wild animals, but he set to work to domesticate animals which yielded him meat and skins and wool; he grew cereals for his bread, and flax and cotton for weaving into cloth to cover his body.

The growth of civilisation, while causing a decrease in the use of some wild raw products, also resulted in an increase in the use of other products, the chief one being timber. As civilisation developed, the use of timber increased until a scarcity of this essential commodity was felt in every land. The higher the civilisation, the greater the industrial development, the greater the use of wood. One of the most important uses to which wood has been put from the earliest of times is fuel, and to-day, except in localities where coal is cheap, we see wood fuel used. In Western Australia firewood still forms a very large part of the output of our forests. Perth, for instance, consumes no less than 150,000 tons of firewood a year, Greenbushes requires 15,120 tons a year for its tin mining industry, but the largest amount of all is used by the mines of the Eastern Goldfields, which require between 500,000 and 600,000 tons a year for their boilers. In 1913-14 Western Australia produced about 450,000 tons of sawn wood. It will be seen then that the gold mines actually used more wood than was sawn in all the mills in the South-West. It must, of course, be said that the value of the sawn wood is much greater than the value of the firewood. Fuel at the Kalgoorlie mines is worth 15s. a ton, while a ton of sawn wood aboard a ship in Bunbury is worth to-day at least £8. The importance of firewood supply both to the householder and the factory or mine is often overlooked. Timber is the main product and the humble firewood takes a second place, but without it there are many industries that could not exist in Western Australia to-day. From a forestry standpoint the importance of firewood is very great, as will be shown when we come to deal with the cultural operations necessary to improve the jarrah and karri forests. Suffice it to say here that it is only when the forester has a fuel market to absorb the abundance of overmature trees, which are inevitably in the majority in a wild forest, and the crowns and branches, that he can hope to convert those wild forests into cultivated or normal forests.

Timber.—"From the cradle to the coffin we are surrounded by wood," or, as Evelyn wrote in 1664:—