LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY TO ACQUIRE A TIMBER ESTATE. 101 
or more years hence. This reason in itself is sufficient to prevent 
any very large proportion of an estate being placed under wood by 
a single owner, for a surfeit at the end of half a century would be 
a very poor recompense for fifty years of starvation rations. But 
there is another, and quite as potent a factor at work in deterring 
landlords and the State from turning a larger proportion of pastoral 
land into forest, and it is this, that even with all that has been 
written before them, prospective tree-planters are still in great 
uncertainty as to what the true profits of Forestry really are. Nor 
is this uncertainty surprising, when we consider how divided opinion 
is in the matter. One man says that in no way can land be so 
profitably utilised as by planting it ; while another maintains that, 
when all the charges are met, the profits from his woods approach 
uncomfortably near the vanishing point. And the reason for this 
diversity of opinion is a very simple one, namely, that there are few 
things so scarce in this country as authentic and reliable accounts 
dealing with any specified forest or woodland during a lengthened 
period. Of course, a mere statement of outgoings and incomings 
connected with the land under wood upon most estates would not 
serve the purpose, for where plantations are in small patches or 
narrow shelter-belts, or where they are managed largely for appear- 
ance or for game, it is a matter of very small moment to the cause 
' of Forestry whether such woods furnish any nett revenue or not. 
Nor does a bare statement of the amount realised by the sale of the 
timber when a block of wocdland is finally felled afford a satisfactory 
basis for calculating the profits of sylviculture, for it is quite con- 
ceivable that an acre of forest may in two distinct cases sell for 
£100, which in one case may mean a handsome rental for the 
rotation, and, in the other, may mean a dead loss. 
Toestimatethe profits of Forestry correctly, we must bein possession 
of the following data. We must know the approximate pastoral or 
agricultural value of the land which has been planted, and capitalise 
such annual value at compound interest during the whole period of 
the rotation. We must also know how much was expended in 
fencing, draining, and planting the land, and also capitalise this 
initial expenditure at compound interest on till the period of the 
final felling. We must be in possession of a statement of the 
annual expenses incurred for taxes and management, and of the 
periods when thinnings were made, with the price which these 
intermediate returns realised. With all these facts and figures before 
