PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 



by the accumulations of successive seasons' growth. Again, the 

 cost per cubic foot of fencing, -working and controlling is less in 

 fully stocked woods than in woods carrying a thin crop. Then, in 

 regard to the fellings which the proprietor of the day is entitled 

 to make. If his woods ai'e fully stocked, he is evidently justified 

 in taking, year by year, the amount of wood annually produced 

 on his estate, a process which will leave the growing or producing 

 stock undiminished. Indeed, he ought to take this amount, in 

 order to nurse the market and avoid accumulations of growing 

 stock, which are often inconvenient and unprofitable. But if he 

 is without a plan, he is ignorant of the amount annually pro- 

 duced, and consecpiently of the number of trees it represents, or 

 the area it entitles him to clear ; and this ignorance may lead 

 either to crops of trees standing long after they have ceased to 

 occupy the ground profitably, or to the detriment of the property 

 by over-cutting. Then again, as regards the markets, the regular 

 out-turn of a certain fixed quantity of produce of a well-known 

 class is sure to attract buyers, and thus to improve prices ; while, 

 at the same time, it encourages the establishment of wood indus- 

 tries in the neighbourhood, and thus secures the profitable dis- 

 posal of inferior classes of wood for which there would otherwise 

 be no local demand, and which it would not pay to export to 

 distant markets. A regular out-turn, under a settled plan, further 

 renders it possible to reduce the cost of transporting the timber 

 to convenient sale-depots by the use of mechanical appliances, 

 which could not be adopted for work conducted here and there in 

 haphazard fashion, a method which, it may be observed, involves 

 the maximum of cost ; and a recognised plan of operations enables 

 all work to be laid out, and sales to be arranged, in advance. All 

 these things tend to increase receipts, to reduce outgoings, and 

 thus to enhance the profit derivable from the business. 



About 800 acres of pine and fir woods at Raith have recently 

 been brought under the operation of a plan such as that above 

 indicated; the object of management being the conversion of the 

 produce into pit-wood, for which a practically unlimited demand 

 exists in connection with the local coal-mines. A detailed 

 examination of these woods has disclosed an almost complete 

 break of twenty years in the work of planting; and this has 

 indicated their classification into the "older" and the "younger" 

 woods. The main feature of the scheme consists in the distri- 

 bution of the fellings of the woods of the older clas3 over 



