666 EDITORIAL NOTES. [Mar. 



that are clamouring for work in all parts of the country. We are 

 passing through a period of extreme distress to a very large number 

 of our able-bodied poor. Yet there is abundance of capital locked 

 up waiting opportunity for profitable and secure investment. The 

 reclaiming and planting of these waste lands would be both profit- 

 able and secure. It is said that the return for such outlay would 

 be small and long deferred. That it would be some time deferred 

 is obvious enough, but the length of time would largely depend on 

 the management, while its value would be influenced by that 

 consideration also, but it cannot be proven by any authentic data 

 that where the management has been good it would be small or 

 inconsiderable. Those who base their conclusions on this point on 

 the present state of the timber market err in taking a view of things 

 unwarranted by any experience. The timber market will not 

 always remain in its present depressed state, the demand must 

 eventually increase, and the supply, we are well assured, will 

 decrease at no very distant date. We consider it not only a matter 

 of personal interest, but a public duty incumbent on all owners of 

 unreclaimed land throughout the country, to engage at once in the 

 work of draining and trenching where necessary, and planting 

 every acre that is not available for the higher purposes of agricul- 

 ture. Were this done, there would be no need to answer the cry 

 of the distressed labourer with a dole of charity, which, while it can 

 only temporarily relieve his necessities, leaves him greatly poorer 

 in his own self-respect ; and the resources of the land would at the 

 same time be developed with advantage to all concerned. 



It would certainly be fitting if the Government led the way with 

 •a good example in this matter; but it cannot be said that they do 

 so. Under the department of " Woods and Forests," they have the 

 administration of extensive tracts of land that would bear consider- 

 able improvement with advantage to the exchequer and to the 

 sanitary condition of certain districts in which they lie. Take, for 

 example, the large possessions of the Government lying between 

 Windsor Park and Aldershot. By far the larger portion of it may 

 be described as unreclaimed or waste land, which, if judiciously 

 treated and planted, would make some of the finest woodland in the 

 country. Much of it, like that immediately around Aldershot 

 camp and other low-lying parts in the district, v>^ould require drain- 

 ing before anything could be expected to grow upon it. But this, 

 we should think, might have occurred to the autlrorities of the 

 department as a much - needed sanitary improvement long ago. 

 Here in one district alone, in the hands of the Government, and 

 within easy access of London, is a field for labour sufficient to meet 

 the immediate requirements of the whole of the able-bodied uneni- 



