102 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
us, there would be no difficulty in constructing a true balance-sheet, 
and of definitely ascertaining what revenue the land has been 
yielding when utilised for sylviculture ; but if such a balance-sheet 
is available for a wooded area of any considerable size in this 
country, I must confess to having been unfortunate enough not 
to have come across it. 
Now, gentlemen, I will ask you if the advocacy of extended 
sylviculture in this country would not have much more weight 
than it has, and rest upon a surer basis, if we could at any time 
refer inquirers to a complete set of forest accounts dealing with a 
specific case, and, better still, if we could exhibit the forest from 
which these accounts were derived. And if it be admitted that 
the existence of such accounts and of such a forest would be 
desirable to-day, you may depend upon it that they ‘will be not less 
desirable fifty years hence; and it is also just as certain that they 
will not be forthcoming at that time, or any other, unless someone 
sets about forming the wood whose balance-sheet it is so desirable 
to obtain. 
But however desirable it may be for the country to possess 
a small forest about which every item of income and expenditure is 
accurately known, I hardly think I would have come forward to 
advocate its formation had its potential usefulness been limited to 
its accounts, But it is self-evident that a small forest, formed and 
managed upon strictly scientific, practical, and economic principles, 
with the production of timber of the highest quality as the first 
object of its existence, would, in many ways, exercise a beneficial 
influence upon the Forestry of the whole country. It would be 
managed by a committee of practical men, perfectly untrammelled 
by any considerations of game or esthetics, and it would thus be a 
standing model of all that is best in modern sylviculture. It might 
be the practical training-ground for young foresters who had passed 
through such a course of scientific training as is offered by the 
Edinburgh classes. Its usefulness in this respect, in fact, can 
hardly be over-estimated, and yet it is so self-evident that I need 
not stop to emphasise it. If it were established on joint-stock 
principles, as it should be, it would afford every forester in the 
country, and everyone interested in forestry, the opportunity of 
becoming a partner in the concern, and thus of feeling that, in 
accordance with his means, he had as much at stake in British 
forestry as the owner of 10,000 acres. If it is ever insinuated that 
