Arizona republican., 1892-05-18
AusTsALAslAN FORESTS.

The Vandnis of New Zealand are Cut
 ting Down the Gigantic Trees.
 The kauri pine is undisputed sovereign of the Australasian forest. No other tree can approach it in grandeur of pro portion or in impressiveness when, as one of a clan, it holds as its own stretches of country hundreds of nils in extent. Perhaps the sight which the kauri grove presents to the eye is unequaled in the whole realm of nature. As the traveller gazes around him in the recesses of the forest he is impressed even against his will. To walk between those mighty pillars, smooth and dark as ebony, uni form in age and size, and buried in perennial twilight and silence that the widest storm only disturbs by the merest ripple of sound, awakens feel ing of awe.
 Mile upon mile they stretch into dis tance, ill a majestic procession that fol- lows every irregularity of the land, like some colossal temple dedicated to night or melancholy, the somber aisles full of an awful monotony and q solemn still ness. Like the Egyptian Sphinx, they ignore the lapse of time, preserving the same majestic calm and unvarying ex- precision before the cataclysms which have altered the whole aspects of the globe, and before the social upheavals which have swept away civilizations as if they had never been,
 The youth of the oldest kauri groves is shrouded in the mists of the past. But that they are very ancient is beyond doubt They were mere saplings when the Pharaohs adorned the land of Egypt with imperishable memorials of their power, and were still slight and grace ful when Solomon filled the east with the fame of his glory; they stood in all the pride of maturity when Hannibal crossed the Alps, and Rome entered on her victorious career, They have seen the splendid dawn of all the great em- pircs of the world, and seen them set in gloom, when the canker of decay had sapped their very foundations
 But the kauri has now fallen upon evil days; its closing years are full of danger. It has survived to see the forms of life, long dead in the great masses of land, fade away before the vigorous fauna and fora of another order of things. At no distant date it also, like the na- tives, the birds, the grasses, will have passed into the measureless oblivion from whence it came. In the presence of this venerable giant pine of Maori land, the grandest representative of primitive age, the colonial, creature of yesterday, feels like pigmy as he gazes on the solemn files on every side. AS though ashamed of his own littleness and painful newness, he is possessed only with the passion of destruction.
 The weirdness inseparable from the very nature of kauri forest is intensi- fed by the total absence of animal life. The contented droning of insects, the hum of the bee, the glad singing of birds, so distinctive of the mixed bush, are never heard beneath the umbrageous canopy which excludes the radiant south ern sun. The kauri reigns supreme in its own domain. Nor is there the en- chanting diversity of ordinary bush the palms and the tree ferns, the shrubs and the prodigal wealth of beautiful parasites whose bewildering variety is unrivaled even in the torrid zone.
 With the exception of a living carpet of delicate maidenhair, which attains a height of from five to six feet, and of ropes of creeper ferns which swing from tree to tree like fairies in the castle of giant, the forest is altogether bare of undergrowth. In the woods of recent growth, however, vegetation is more luxuriant. The long tendrils of the clematis and rata connect trunk with trunk in garlands of white and scarlet bloom, and at their base dourishes an infinite variety of ferns, while here and there graceful tree fern rears its silvery lined crown.
 It is curious sight to English eyes to see group of young kauris standing dark, tall and erect against the pale blue and gold of the sky and the lighter greens of tho background of the forest. Like all the species, the dome is out of all proportion to the height. But their doom has been spoken. The ax of the lumberman and the whirr of the saw mill resound in the land and the earth quivers with the shock of falling pa triarchs. With the recklessness of the spendthrift the New Zealander is spend ing his heritage, and before another fifty years have passed away this noble tree will be as extinct as the moa.- I.pn1p,, (tlnha