1909] on Afforestation. 633 



of square miles of timber, leaving behind them nothing but black 

 fingers pointing to the sky, and beneath, a bed of ashes. 



In our own country we have been spared these fires which are so 

 rapidly destroying the tree-life of great areas of the world, but other 

 causes have been at work to lessen our home supply of timber, the 

 chief of them being its gradual but sure destruction for the various 

 purposes of human industry, and especially of shipbuilding. Thus, 

 in Nelson's day, and long before and after it, the wooden walls of 

 Old England were built almost entirely of English oak, and it must 

 have taken a great many oaks to make a single three-decker. More- 

 over, these oaks were not re-planted, at any rate to a great extent. 

 That is the trouble both here and in other lands. Man is very ready 

 to cut down trees, but he tl links a long while before he sets others to 

 take their place. 



Tlie long-sighted and business-like Germans, also the French and 

 some other peoples are, it is true, exceptions to this rule, since so far 

 back as a couple of centuries ago they, or some of them, began to 

 re-afforest systematically, with the result that their descendants now 

 possess magnificent stretches of woodland. But large as these are, 

 they are totally insufficient to meet the demands of Europe, especially 

 since it has become common to manufacture paper from wood- 

 pulp. 



The result of our prodigal consumption of timber, unaccompanied 

 by any systematic re-afforestation, is to place us in the unenviable 

 position of possessing the smallest percentage of woodlands of any 

 country in Europe. 



The area of woodland in the United Kingdom is only three 

 million acres or 4 per cent, of the total area, Germany has thirty- 

 four million acres or 25 per cent, of her total area, France twenty- 

 two million acres or 17 per cent., whereas Sweden heads the list 

 with fifty million acres or 51 per cent, of her total area [slide shown]. 

 One word more about the character of such woods as remain to us 

 before I pass on to the wider aspect of our subject. 



The shipbuilders of a hundred years ago and before that period 

 needed bent boughs to form the " knees " of their vessels. These 

 " knees " are produced by the branching limbs of the oak, and can 

 only occur where trees grow sparsely and have plenty of elbow room 

 and air-space about them ; therefore they thinned their oak woods 

 with no sparing hand. Now such bent timber is no longer needed, 

 but the tradition remains, and oak is still grown, where at all, in the 

 same fashion. For this spaciousness there is another reason. We 

 are a sporting people, and pheasants will not thrive in a dense wood ; 

 what they like are isolated trees joined up with coppice or under- 

 growth. This bad example has spread, moreover, to the cultivation 

 of other species besides the oak. Thus in the photograph which I 

 now show to you [slide shown], you see an English beech wood with 

 the trees <i:rowing rough and crookedly, and in these [slides shown] 



2 T 2 



