PERIODICAL LITERATURE 499 



A concrete plan for cooperation between the State and private 

 owners in this reforestation is brought forward, with a view of expe- 

 diting progress, by Captain Gammel. It involves tax release for the 

 forested land until an income tax can be levied, the planting to be done 

 by the owner with money loaned to him by the government at 3^ per 

 cent, repayable by annual installments after forty years, with com- 

 pound interest until paid, the government having a lien on the forest 

 property, but only on that. An option to pay off the government loan 

 at any time is also provided. With $20 allowance per acre for plant- 

 ing cost on a 1,000-acre proposition, in forty years, the cost will have 

 accumulated to around $54:,000, when thinnings will take care of the 

 interest rate and administration cost. 



In case of trouble, the government may have to take the property 

 over and then pay for the land its original rent value, which might be 

 $20,000. A financial calculation, with an eighty-year rotation, returns 

 being $500 per acre, leaves a balance credit of around $68,000 to the 

 owner. In case of failure of the crop, it is suggested that, if it occurs 

 within, say, ten years, the government expert under whose advice the 

 plantation was made was at fault, and hence the government must 

 make good. If the failure, a partial one, occurs later, the two parties 

 are to divide the loss. 



The war conditions are also responsible for recognition of the fact 

 that mine props can be supplied by domestic woods, which can be grown 

 in fifteen to eighteen years. The author recommends four species for 

 the purpose — the Black poplar, Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, and Japanese 

 larch, which latter, in a ten-year plantation, made 4 to 8-inch diameters 

 at 5.5 feet from the ground. "Unless the demand for props can be met 

 by a constant supply, the consumers will be driven back to the oversea 

 trade, with the result that the excellent market which has now been 

 established for home-grown pitwood will speedily revert to the pre- 

 war standard of unremunerative inanition." 



From a financial statement of the expenditures from the Develop- 

 ment Fund and Forestry, it appears that in the six years of its exist- 

 ence loans and grants to the amount of $1,200,000 were made, of 

 which, for reforestation schemes, $550,000 ; for land purchases, 

 $125,000 ; for demonstration area in the Forest of Dean, $85,000, and 

 for educational purposes, support of forestry associations, research 

 and experiments, $430,000. 



In this connection we must refer to a very humorous, but at the 



