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as water races. Nevertheless, on occasion the council heard detailed reports on the condition and requirements of up to nineteen planted areas or of 187,000 trees and 185 acres of gum seed put in during three years. By 1902, over 3000 acres of reserves had been devoted to trees.^[1]

Before 1890, these areas were planted in a wide range of trees—four different pines, Douglas firs, various cypresses, oaks, birches, wattles and gums. After that date the emphasis turned from shelter belts, which farmers were providing for themselves, towards growing milling timber. A single variety of one of the three most profitable trees—pinus radiata, oregon pine, larch—henceforward made up the body of the plantation with a ‘wind mantle’ of macrocarpa or Lawsoniana for protection.

In 1881 the council made a grant to the Ashburton Domain Board for the purpose of establishing a nursery from which it could draw a supply of trees. It is unlikely that it obtained many from this source either for its own purposes or for distribution on request to such bodies as school committees or cemetery boards. For the most part, trees were obtained from local nurserymen and probably much of the preparation, planting and fencing of large numbers of trees—for example 35,000 and 42,000 trees in 1891 and 1896—was done by them under contract.^[2]

Trees suffered more than races from natural handicaps and accidents. The floods of May 1883, said to be the worst since those of 1868, carried away the greater part of the boulder weir at Pudding Hill intake; but they caused no damage to the 600 miles of race. On the other hand, about this time half of the gums and a large proportion of the wattles on the reserves died because of frost or flood. Four plantation fires were reported in one day in 1901. In the years before 1903 however, very little damage was done by carelessness when burning off tussock or ‘boiling billies’ for tea. Nor were passing trains often held responsible as happened later.

There can be no doubt that the water supply in the races made the establishment of plantations easier but, once established, the long lines of growing trees proved about as advantageous. They protected stock and crops and homesteads, provided firewood, and in general made the countryside a better and pleasanter place to live in. There should have been more of them.

The less a body has to do, the worse it often performs its duty.