166 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH AUBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



for all ordinary purposes of building and manufacture will not 

 last more than a very limited number of years. The American 

 supply of spruce for pulp-wood will fall far below present require- 

 ments in five or six years, and within ten years, assuming the 

 present rate of manufacture to remain unchanged, will be 

 entirely exhausted. This being the case, the United States must 

 evidently, within a very short period, look to outside supplies for 

 the raw material upon which many of her most important 

 industries are based. When it is considered to how many of 

 these a full supply of timber is an essential condition of existence, 

 it will be seen that there is little exaggeration in the statements 

 commonly made by the far-sighted Canadian lumber-man, that 

 the position hitherto held by cotton in the markets of the world 

 is as nothing compared with that which timber is destined within 

 a few years to occupy. The extraordinary development of the 

 single manufacture of wood-pulp, which only a few years ago was 

 practically unknown, and is now used not only for making paper, 

 but for clothing and an immense diversity of other articles, is a 

 sufficient indication of the practically limitless extension of the 

 already widely varied uses of timber. ' Cotton,' it is said 

 on the other side of the Atlantic, ' was once called king ; but 

 King Cotton is a lesser potentate than King Timber must soon 

 become.' " 



When one considers these circumstances, it seems impossible 

 to arrive at any other conclusion than that the days of cheap 

 timber in Britain are now almost at an end, and that the next 

 few years must see a rise in price ; and this enhancement will be 

 permanent and progressive. The demands for timber exceed, in 

 the rapidity of their expansion, the power of substitutes to 

 replace them, because new industries develop, requiring wood as 

 their raw material. The greatest example of this is, perhaps, the 

 wood-pulp business in its various branches. So far as home-grown 

 timber is concerned, Britain would be quite unable to supply 

 the existing requirements of the building and other constructive 

 trades, if by any chance the command of the seas was interrupted 

 for a short space of time. Even if the three million acres of wood- 

 lands in the British Isles were trebled in extent, were in a fully- 

 stocked condition, and were being managed on purely economic 

 principles, they would only just supply our existing requirements 

 in timber for constructive purposes ; while other three million 

 acres might perhaps also be required to provide for normal 



