Abstract
I HAVE been greatly astonished by the perusal of a paragraph on New Zealand timber trees, which appears on p. 14 of the current volume of NATURE (NO. 105, Nov. 2, 1871). Almost all that is said, either directly or inferentially in that paragraph is so grossly inaccurate that I cannot understand how such statements found their way into a periodical like yours. In the first place, the Rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum), the Matai (Podocarpus spicata), and the Totara (P. totara), are spoken of as if peculiar to the North Island, whilst the truth is that they are common to all parts of New Zealand. These trees are never “cut down wholesale” for firewood, except perhaps now and then when bush land is being cleared so far from other settlements that transport of the timber to any market is a physical impossibility. The woods enumerated are, Kauri (Dammaris australis), and the white pine (Podocarpus dacrydioides), the principal building timbers of the colony. The Rimu is not “valuable for furniture and all ornamental work,” although some choice sections of it look well when carefully polished. Totara and Kauri look better when polished, but their brittleness spoils their usefulness for ordinary furniture work. When I deny that these timbers are “valuable” for cabinet work, I mean that they have not, and never will have, the value which attaches to mahogany, rosewood, walnut, and similar woods. That the Rimu, Matai, and Totara “are none of them Coniferæ,” is news to botanists on this side the world. All these trees are to be found in horticultural collections in England and Scotland, and it is to be regretted that the writer of this paragraph did not acquaint himself with them before he undertook to instruct others as to their botanical characteristics. But the most amazing of all the statements in this paragraph is that about the Rata (Metrosideros lucida). This appears to have been quoted from somewhere. I should very much like to know who is responsible for such a monstrous fiction. I can only conceive that its author has confused the Akakura (Metrosideros scandens) with the Rata in his memory—he could never have confused the objects themselves when before his eyes. The whole story of the manner of growth of the Rata is utterly without foundation.
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W. New Zealand Trees. Nature 5, 422 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/005422a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005422a0
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