Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/223

 upon the introduction of new timber trees. Certain drawbacks exist with regard to the timber of some of the more rapidly growing hard-wood trees which have prevented their taking a high place in the scale of values in mechanical engineering.

One of the most useful soft-wooded trees in the world is the kauri. It is restricted in its range to a comparatively small area in the North Island of New Zealand. It is now being cut down with a recklessness which is as prodigal and shameful as that which has marked our own treatment of forests here. It should be said, however, that this destruction is under protest; in spite of which it would seem to be a question of only a few years when the great kauri groves of New Zealand will be a thing of the past. Our energetic Forest Department has on its hands problems just like this which perplexes one of the new lands of the South. The task in both cases is double: to preserve the old treasures and to bring in new.

The energy shown by Baron von Mueller, the renowned Government Botanist of Victoria, and by various forest departments in encouraging the cultivation of timber trees will assuredly meet with success; one can hardly hope that this success will appear fully demonstrated in the lifetime of those now living, but I can not think that many years will pass before the promoters of such enterprises may take fresh courage.

In a modest structure in the city of Sydney, New South Wales, Mr. Maiden has brought together, under great difficulties, a large collection of the useful products of the vegetable kingdom as represented in Australia. It is impossible to look at the collection of woods in that museum, or at the similar and more showy one in Kew, without believing that the field of forest culture must receive rich material from the southern hemisphere.

Before leaving this part of our subject it may be well to take some illustrations in passing, to show how important is the influence exerted upon the utilization of vegetable products by causes which may at first strike one as being rather remote.

1. Photography makes use of the effect of light on chromatized gelatin to produce under a negative the basis of relief plates for engraving. The degree of excellence reached in modifications of this simple device has distinctly threatened the very existence of wood-engraving, and hence follows a diminished degree of interest in box-wood and its substitutes.

2. Iron, and in its turn steel, is used in ship-building, and this renders of greatly diminished interest all questions which concern the choice of the different oaks and similar woods.

3. But, on the other hand, there is increased activity in certain