FORESTRY IN BRITAIN. 59 
States.” But the most striking evidence is that furnished by the 
chief of the United States department of forestry, in his official 
report for the year 1892, in which he says: ‘‘ While there are still 
enormous quantities of virgin timber standing, the supply is not 
inexhaustible. Even were we to assume on every acre a stand of 
10,000 feet B.M. of saw timber—a most extravagant average—we 
would, with our present consumption, have hardly one hundred 
years of supply in sight, the time it takes to grow a tree to a 
satisfactory log size. Certain kinds of supplies are beginning to 
give out, Even the white pine resources, which a few years ago 
seemed so great that to attempt an accurate estimate of them was 
deemed too difficult an undertaking, have, since then, become 
reduced to such small proportions that the end of the whole supply 
in both Canada and the United States is now plainly in view.” 
It must be owned that there are those who do not regard the 
suggestion of forest exhaustion as a serious one. They argue that 
the prophecy is no new one, and yet we are none the worse off than 
we have been; that, failing supply from one source, it has always 
been possible to tap another, and so it will probably continue ; 
and then the period when exhaustion is likely to take place is so 
far off, there is ample time for the growth of new forests to replace 
those being cut. No doubt there is time. But this is just the 
kernel of the whole forestry question. With proper conservancy 
of forest areas, the application of scientific principles to the 
recuperation of areas recklessly denuded, and the affurestation of 
barren and waste lands, timber sufficient to meet a greater demand 
than is now made could be produced. This is the aim of scientific 
forestry, and it is to secure this that those who have given attention 
to the subject are working, conceiving it to be a duty of this 
generation to hand down to its successors a heritage no less 
valuable than that which it received. 
With an acreage of wooded land amounting to only 4 per cent, 
of their total area, Great Britain and Ireland possess a smaller 
proportion so covered than any other European country. Den- 
mark comes near with only about 5 per cent., in France the 
percentage rises to 15, in Norway and Germany to 25, in Austria- 
Hungary to 30, whilst in Sweden the amount is over 40 per cent. 
The United States is estimated to have about 25 per cent. These 
figures do not, however, give a fair basis of comparison of the 
amount of timber area in Great Britain with other countries, 
inasmuch as in the Continental lands the bulk of the woodlands is 
