8 FORESTRY. 
Forestry. By Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart., M.P. 
I come before you to-night rather in the spirit of a converted 
criminal than in the hope of telling you anything you don’t know 
already. I hope that my presence here may be taken as evidence 
of the awakening conscience of landowners to the opportunities 
we have missed, to the valuable source of income which we have 
squandered, and to the urgency for a reform in our system of 
forestry. I was brought up with an intense and sedulous love 
of trees. Some of my earliest recollections are connected with 
the instruction given me by my father in what were, at that time, 
the approved principles of wood management, and I continued to 
act on those principles after I succeeded to the estate 27 years 
ago. The result has been that, although I possess a considerable 
extent of ground under trees, there is hardly any of it more than 
15 years old which I should not be ashamed to show to one who 
understood the three principles of forestry as distinct from arbori- 
culture. 
I have said thus much as preliminary, in order that too much 
may not be expected from me in the way of instruction. When 
Lord Mahon asked the Duke of Wellington whether his experi- 
ence in his first campaign—that disastrous one in the Netherlands 
under the Duke of York—had been of any service to him, he 
replied—* Why, I learnt what I ought Not to do, and that is 
always something.’’ Wellington, happily for his country, learnt 
his lesson while the best part of his life still lay before him. 
I have learnt mine at a period when Horace’s lines have a 
peculiarly mournful significance: 
With all the trees that thou hast tended 
Thy brief concern is almost ended, 
Except the cypress—THAT may wave 
Its tribute o’er thy narrow grave. 
WHAT THE STATE Micut Do. 
Well, now, I have tackled a subject rather unwieldy to be dealt 
with in an hour’s discourse, and I will try and confine myself to 
a few of the most salient points. I will divide it into two 
branches—first, what I conceive the State might do with prudence 
and profit to develop the national resources ; second, what private 
owners might do to develop the resources of their estates. 
Since I entered Parliament 25 years ago two enquiries have 
