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Eucalypts for Wood Production by W.E. Hillis and A.G. Brown & Keys to the Families and Genera of Queensland Flowering Plants (Magnoliophyta) by H.T. Clifford and Gwen Ludlow

by
June 1979, no. 11

Eucalypts for Wood Production is a highly professional reference work produced by a team of Australian forest scientists most of whom work in state, government forestry services, CSIRO or the Department of Forestry at ANU. It consists of a series of reviews of scientific literature bringing together all that is presently known of the growth habits of eucalypts from the point of view of their management as hardwood crop plants. The editors’ purpose is to draw attention to the potential of eucalypts and thereby to point the way to a national strategy for hardwood production. For those in the industry, its appearance is timely. Both softwood and woodchip production are under attack on several fronts, perhaps the most important of which concern the chemical and physical deterioration of soils associated with the harvesting of tree crops. Improvements in techniques for the profitable management of native hardwood forests may overcome some of these problems, and perhaps alleviate some of the pressure for increasing the acreage (hectareage?) of cleared land at the expense of our prime native forests.

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A person with competence and enthusiasm ‘in the field’ for this or that subject of natural history has ready opportunity to get with it in unusual haunts. Birds seem to be an obsession with such opportunity – the competent enthusiast has an instinctive reaction to give attention, and some write books about it.

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The deer scene in New Zealand has changed considerably since I used to see the stags, self-segregated after the May belling, in herds of sometimes more than a hundred in the tussocky valleys behind the Lindis Pass. In a book on the hunting of what is curiously called ‘big game’ ex-professional deer culler Philip Holden reports that the biggest congregation he has seen numbered fifteen. While his mélange of loosely linked reminiscences conveys impressions of the wild terrain, the elusive quarry, the excitements of hunting and the fascination of the kill, it also indicates a growing disillusionment with the process of turning beauty into dead meat.

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