a canoe, would select the most suitable tree with care, and expend infinite toil in carving it for its required use. If they wanted to build a whare, the trees were as carefully selected, and as judiciously used. There was no wanton disfigurement of the grand gallery of illustration which the Great Architect had painted in such resplendent beauty and such magnificent variety on the fair face of hill and dale. But at last comes civilized man; the last greatest crowning effort of the "selection" of the ages; the "fittest" inhabitant of this sublunary sphere. And what do we behold? Already the reckless devastation has been so great, that ruin impends over more than one deforested district. There are places where firewood actually costs as much as bread; and still we boast of our civilization, and hug ourselves in the intoxication of our self-worship, and "thank God that we are not as this poor Maori." Let him that readeth, reflect.
Why, even in sleepy Tasmania, where the forests are much more dense than New Zealand, the remarkable Huon Pine, once so plentiful all over the West Coast, is all but exterminated; and a legislative enactment has recently been passed, so I am informed, forbidding farther cutting of Huon Pine for a period of fifty years. I cannot refrain from italics. Is not this a caustic commentary on what some of my readers may have been pooh-poohing at, and regarding me in their hearts as a garrulous "gowk," for presuming to speak as I have done.
