ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, JANUARY 23, 1895. 97 
Then, gentlemen, even if the State was not to undertake the 
management of forests itself, it might, at any rate, be able to 
advance money under some Lands Improvement Scheme to private 
owners. Money might be advanced on plantations for the first 
thirty years on the bare rate of interest; and if it were paid up 
during the following thirty or forty years, I think in that way 
great encouragement would be given to private owners to form 
plantations. These plantations would have to be under inspection, 
but I think there need be no difficulty about that. I should like 
to see the State not only planting land itself, but advancing money 
to help private owners to plant; because I am sure we are so far 
back in Forestry, and the difficulties of finding capital for improve- 
ments by land-owners is so great, that nothing but some such 
encouragement on the part of the State will enable Forestry to be 
extended as it ought to be. 
It is, of course, in the Highlands that the extension of the forest 
area can be most easily made. I regret, for my part, that there 
was not a plain and specific reference made to the Deer Forests 
Commission to inquire into what land was suited for Forestry. 
It is a matter on which there are two opinions—whether the 
Highlands are benefited socially and economically by the extension 
of the small farm system. I tell you frankly my own opinion 
is, that socially it would be an advantage, but economically I 
do not expect any very great advantage from it. But I think 
you may justify most strongly a great extension of the area under 
timber; and I think it would have been most interesting if this 
Commission, after its journeyings in the Highlands, especially if 
it had had one or two practical foresters upon it, had been able 
to give an opinion as to what area in the Highlands was really fit 
for the growth of trees. That is a thing which has yet to be done, 
and I hope this Society and others interested in timber-growing 
will try to help to secure the constitution of a Committee or 
Commission for inquiry into what area of country now under 
grazings, or lying waste, might be profitably devoted to the growth 
of timber. The labour given by plantations is necessarily very 
much larger than the labour given by grazings or shootings. 
If you allow one family to a hundred acres of plantation, that 
would not be an excessive allowance; and besides the men who 
are actually employed in the plantations, there would be a great 
number of other people employed in auxiliary industries—in wood 
manufacture, in joiner work, in carving, in the nurseries, in planting, 
