98 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
in creosoting, in getting the timber to the market, and in other 
ways. In that way we might have a large forest population; and 
if you want to keep the population on the land, I am sure that 
in Scotland there is no better way in which that can be done than 
by a great extension of the forest area. Whether we are Free 
Traders or not, we have to recognise fairly and squarely what the 
effect of Free Trade has been in this country. One effect of it has 
been to throw a much larger area of land into grass, and it has made 
inferior land comparatively unremunerative. Where land comes 
into grass, labour must be necessarily much less abundant than if 
you put the land under timber. You add very largely by Forestry 
to the number ef people that can live upon the land as compared 
with those who can live upon it under the grazing system. So 
long as grass pays best, land will go under grass. All I contend 
for is, that where grass is not first-rate, it is far better to put 
the land under timber—better for the owner, and certainly far 
better for the labouring population of the country. I think, 
too, by planting more largely it will have a very good effect upon 
farming. I have often noticed that where plantations are 
round a farm, crops are from ten days to a fortnight or three 
weeks earlier than on land in an exposed situation where there 
are no plantations. We have a healthy occupation in Forestry. 
Nobody looking round this room would suppose I was speaking to 
a town population. A country population is certainly a healthy 
population, and it is a danger to the State that the bulk of the 
population should be thrown into a few large towns, leaving the 
country comparatively uninhabited, and with a population which is 
rapidly diminishing. I deplore the thinning of the population in 
the country districts, and if I were asked to give a remedy for it, I 
could not offer one which in my opinion is better, or which can be 
more amply justified, than the extension of the forest area to the waste 
places of Scotland. We must, of course, plant upon a sufliciently 
large scale. It is of no use to plant in small quantities. You 
don’t get the timber what it should be. You cannot grow timber 
upon the same principle as you can have small farms. If you grow 
timber at all, I believe it must be in large quantities, and it is to 
that I look when I speak of getting a return from Forestry. There 
is one matter, in conclusion, which seems to have created a certain 
panic amongst owners of trees, and that is that they would be 
adversely affected by the Death Duty clauses of the Finance Bill 
of last year. As the Bill was first presented to the House, I 
