634 Hon. Ivor Churchill Guest [May 21, 



a beech wood near Hanover with the trees growing clean and 

 straightly, as they should do, if they are to be used for commercial 

 purposes. Yet a further consideration comes in. Here we practise 

 Arboriculture not Sylviculture. We think of the beauty of the 

 individual tree in our parks or game-preserves, not of the value and 

 utility of a crop of such trees. 



Now with your permission I will pass on to some of the practical 

 aspects of Afforestation as ascertained and determined by the unani- 

 mous Report of the Royal Commission. That Report, I may state, 

 has, like every other Report, been exposed to criticism at the hands 

 of sundry experts, but for my own part, whatever those critics may 

 think— and, I may observe, that many of tlieir comments seem to be 

 mutually destructive — I do not consider that it has sustained much 

 damage from this ordeal. 



Tiie Royal Commission has found on the evidence submitted to 

 it that Afforestation in the United Kingdom is both practicable and 

 desirable ; but, perhaps you will ask, if this is so, how is it that it 

 has been neglected in the past ? I have already stated that the 

 traditions of shipbuilding, the interests of game, and the preference 

 for arboriculture, in a word, the absence of scientific methods of 

 sylviculture, are, in the main, responsible for this neglect. But to 

 this a further cause must be added. That cause is the complete 

 reliance on private enterprise in forestry. I am an individualist, 

 and from an individualistic standpoint I assert that there would be 

 more justification in leaving the postal or telegraph service (as in 

 America) to private enterprise, than Afforestation. The fact is that 

 sylviculture is an enterprise which rarely appeals to the private land- 

 owner or capitalist. The prolonged time for which capital must be 

 locked up before any return can be expected, the loss of rent and 

 burden of rates over the whole period, and the absence of security 

 for continuous care and management, act as deterrents. None of 

 these objections apply to the State, whose corporate life and resources 

 lend themselves in an especial degree to an undertaking of this 

 character. If the State plants, it will certainly reap, which the 

 individual owner can rarely hope to do. "With the exception of lands 

 administered by the office of w^oods and forests — and these have 

 always been regarded as public recreation grounds and treated accord- 

 ingly — and I think no one who knows the beauties of the New 

 Forest for instance, would care to reverse this treatment — the State 

 has no suitable land for Afforestation, and has deliberately abstained 

 until quite recently from taking any part in the pursuit of an object 

 of national utility. This is all the more regrettable when we hear 

 from competent judges in the timber trade of the superiority of 

 British timber, and when we are asked to observe examples of suc- 

 cessful plantations yielding good returns [slide shown], and when we 

 are assured that the soil and climate of these Islands are especially 

 favourable to the production of commercial timber, and are led to 



