236 JOURNAI. OF FORESTRY 



it is a serious question whether the Nation either by public or private 

 agencies should engage in heavy expenditures to put land into forests 

 unless there is prospective grounds for believing that the present value 

 of the expected return will yield a reasonable margin of profit over 

 the necessary expenditure. In fact, the confession in the paper that 

 foresters are "very inadequately prepared to answer questions relating 

 to possible yields of well-stocked stands of different species under 

 management on dift'erent qualities of site or physical types of land" 

 would seem to be ground for caution in undertaking a program of un- 

 duly rapid expansion of forest area by afforestation. 



In conclusion I would say that the paper is a suggestive and interest- 

 ing one and that I do not offer the present criticism by way of objecting 

 seriously to the idea that a systematic policy is not desirable and that 

 it should be based on a reasonably scientific process of land classifica- 

 tion, but merely because I believe that some of the points in the paper 

 reflect an extreme point of view which should be given more careful 

 consideration in their economic aspects before being publicly advocated. 



