Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/254

 generally the case. Well, I, too, have been a pioneer, and have had my fair share of clearing to do. The method of my procedure, which was not different from the general custom there, was to cut down all useless undergrowth and small timber first. I next selected such trees as I intended to retain as permanent shelter. Of course, this would depend largely on the uses to which it was intended to put the land. My own experience and my reading have taught me that, whether you are clearing for pastoral or agricultural purposes, it is wise always to retain a few trees to the acre. In clumps to be preferred. Sometimes I would leave a pretty wide belt, and wherever the soil was light and poor, I would invariably retain the primal forest on such spots, until I could put in plantations of more useful trees.

Thus you provide for shelter, a most important desideratum, either for flocks or crops. You also cause less disturbance of atmospheric and climatic conditions; and there are other advantages, not to speak of the beauty, which accrue from this plan, but which, as this is not a treatise on land management, cannot be given here.

You next proceed to fell the forest trees. I used invariably to lop judiciously, burn what could not be used; but if bark was of any use, it was saved. If charcoal could be made from the loppings it was made, and the logs, barked and stripped of branches, were next cut into convenient lengths, and stacked until such time as I could sell them or saw them up. In Germany