Arizona silver belt., 1892-06-04
susrRkLAslAN FoREsra
Tho Vandats of New Zealand Are Cut.
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 ting Down the Gigantic Trees.
 The kauri pine is undisputed sovereign of tho Australasian forest. No other treo can approach it in grandeur of pro portion or In impressiveness when, as one of clan. it holds as its own stretches of country hundreds of mills in extent. l Perhaps the sight which the liauri 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 8 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 in 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 a 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 aud 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- pirc5 of the world, and seen them set in gloom, when the c8nker of decay had sapped their very foundations.
 But the kauri has now fallen upon evil days; it's closing years arc 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 tho na- tivcs, tho 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 a primitive age, the colonial, a 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 iHSeparable from the very nature of a kauri forest is intensi- fed by the total absence of animal life The contented drouing of insects, the hum of the beo, the glad singing of birds so distinctive of the mixed bush, are never heard beneath the umbrageous canopy which excludes the taaiantsouth- ern sun. The kauri reigns supreme in it's own domain. Nor is there the en- chanting diversity of ordinary bush the palms and the tree ferus, the shrubs | and the prodigal wealth of beautiful parasites whose bcwildering variety is unriyaled even in the torrid zone.
 With the exception of a living carpet ] of delicate maidenhair, which attains height of from tiyo Co six feet, and of 1 ropes Of creoper 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 ana rata connect trunk with | trunk in garlands of white and scarlet bloom, and at their base iiourishes an . infinite variety of ferns, while here and | there a graceful tree fern rears it's silvery ] lined crown.
 lt Is a curiOus sight to English eyes to | see Q group of young kauris standing dark, tall and erect against the pale blue and gold of the sky and the lighter greens of the background Of the forest. i Like all the species, the dome is out Of all proportion 10 the height. But their doom has been spoken. The a1 of the lumberman and the whirr of the saw mill rcsound in the land and the earth quiyers with the shock of failing 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.- London Globe.