1917] on Scientific Forestry for the Unite:! Kingdom 71 



100 feet lii,£rli, with tall cylindrical boles 10 feet in circumference. 

 A tree of the same species at Mnrthly in Perthshire was measured 

 independently in the autumn of iDlG^by Dr. Henry of Dublin and 

 Mr. Jackson of Kew, and proved to be 126 feet high and 1?4 feet in 

 girth. Another at Stanage Park in Wales, growing 800 feet above 

 the sea, is reported by Mr. Ptodgers to be now 124 feet high and 

 12 feet in girth. Yet this is a tree which many foresters still 

 hesitate to plant because frost often checks it in youth. Its power 

 of recovery from such attacks should reassure the most timid. If 

 the leading shoot is destroyed it promptly turns up a side branch to 

 form a new leader. 



These excursions in the woods have left us little time in which to 

 discuss the reasons why a policy of afforestation has become a 

 national necessity. Argument is almost superfluous after the Prime 

 Minister's statement in the House on February 23, 10] 7. He told 

 us plainly that timber absorbs more shipping than any other import ; 

 that the situation is in consequence very grave ; that in the effort to 

 reduce imports the problem of timber must be attacked before any 

 other. The fact is that dependence on imported timber has in this 

 war been like a millstone round our necks. In some cases, as the 

 late Prime Minister pointed out in a speech to the miners, we have 

 only been able to obtain it from neutral countries on condition of 

 sending coal in exchange. Beggars cannot be choosers, or such a 

 condition in time of war would ne^er have been tolerated. You will 

 notice how the German Chancellor in booming the submarine blockade 

 invariably couples timber with foodstuffs. He has every reason to 

 do so. In increased prices, freights and insurance, and cargoes 

 sunk, Ave have already wasted in the last three years between thirty 

 and forty millions of money on imported timber. The timely 

 expenditure of a fourth of that sum, beginning seventy years ago, 

 would have established in this country all the woods necessary for 

 our security. The French forests are suffering, and must suffer, 

 because we have failed to take the precautions long ago taken by 

 every other country. Only thus can the wants of our Army be 

 supplied. Again, all through the war the Welsh coal-mines have 

 been indebted for their pitwood to the foresight of our Allies in 

 afforesting the waste lands of the Landes near Bordeaux. 



Have we, you will ask, made full use of the timber growing in 

 this country ? That question cannot be answered till the end of 

 the war. So little was it considered at the beginning that we had 

 been at war more than a year before steps were taken by the Govern- 

 ment to encourage the use of home-grown timber. By that time 

 half the skilled woodmen had gone to the Army. Their places have 

 to some extent been taken by regiments of Canadian lumbermen, 

 which are working in this country for the Government. We have 

 much to learn from them, especially in the matter of transport. With 

 more labour the output from the home woods might have been much 



