FORESTRY. 9 
been directed into this subject—the first a Select Committee of 
the House of Commons which sat 1885-6-7, the second a Depart- 
mental Committee which reported in 1902. No action was taken 
on the report of the first; of the result of the second we have 
more hopes, because we have now, what we had not in 1885-7, 
a Government Department—the Board of Agriculture and 
Fisheries-—to which has been committed the duty of promoting 
instruction in forestry. Among the many points upon which both 
these committees were in thorough agreement were these facts :— 
Ist, that “the world is rapidly approaching a shortage, if not an 
actual dearth, in its supply of coniferous timber, which consti- 
tutes between 80 and 90 per cent. of the total British timber 
imports ; 2nd, that there is a vast area, estimated in millions of 
acres, capable of growing timber of the finest quality ; 3rd, that 
the climate of the British Isles is favourable to economic forestry 
conducted on a proper scale (not in grudging patches, clumps, 
and strips); and 4th, that it requires only the exercise of timely 
forethought and a moderate annual expenditure to anticipate the 
time when scarcity of foreign timber shall have greatly enhanced 
the price, and to replace with British-grown timber much of those 
enormous imports upon which we depend at present. 
A SCHEME OF STATE FORESTRY. 
These four points having been emphatically affirmed by the 
two committees, I need say nothing more upon them to-night ; but 
there is a fifth point on which I venture to go a little further than 
the Departmental Committee. “We do not feel justified,’’ says 
the report, “in urging the Government to embark forthwith upon 
any general scheme of State forests under present circumstances.’ 
Well, I have the temerity which the committee lacked to urge 
strongly the wisdom of embarking upon a scheme of State 
forestry, and if I am blamed for that temerity, I make the same 
excuse for my scheme as served a certain young person who had 
_ added an unforeseen unit to the population—“ Please, sire, it’s 
only a very little one!’’ TI only ask for the investment—the 
investment, mind, not the gift—of £10,000 a year for the 
purchase and planting of suitable land. 
No branch of agriculture, not even wheat growing, has 
suffered such a slump in the last twenty-five years as hill sheep 
farming. There are hundred of thousands of acres in Scotland, 
