176 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTTJRAL SOCIETY. 



principle might be extended, so that advances could be made to 

 landowners for having working plans drawn up for their woods 

 and for carrying out such plans, approved, if necessary, by the 

 Board of Agriculture. There are obvious objections to, and 

 practical difficulties in the way of, the State giving such loans 

 direct; but, at anyrate, amendments with some such desirable 

 object in view might be made to the Lands Improvement, the 

 Settled Estates, and the Board of Agriculture Acts. Forestry 

 is in a similar manner assisted with conspicuously successful 

 results in Northern Germany and Denmark ; and here again 

 Britain may well learn from foreign methods and their good 

 results. 



Then, in the second place, the rating of woodlands seems un- 

 generous to landowners. In England, timber crops are very 

 often assessed on what is in practice really an assumed value as 

 agricultural or pastoral land, while in Scotland their yearly 

 value is fixed as the rent at which they might in their natural 

 state be reasonably expected to let from year to year as pasture 

 or grazing lands. Reduction of this rating on timber crops 

 would hardly be felt by the Treasury ; and this might perhaps 

 be one means of encouraging the formation of conifer plantations 

 on poor soil. In view of the benefits obtainable, the rating 

 might with advantage be entirely removed from woodlands 

 formed or managed in accordance with working plans approved 

 by the Board of Agriculture. This rating was only imposed 

 when the import duty was taken off foreign timber ; and thus, 

 instead of being fostered and encouraged, the home growth of 

 timber was handicapped as it had not previously been. In this 

 matter, however, landowners are themselves partly to blame for 

 neglecting their own interests. They must realise, better than 

 any others can, the existing disadvantages connected with grow- 

 ing timber for profit in Britain ; and they are certainly in the 

 best position to bring the matter before Parliament in some 

 practical form. Government are not likely to remedy existing 

 drawbacks unless reforms are pressed upon their attention. 



A third cause is the result of a legal decision in 1894, by 

 which it was held that railway companies are not liable for 

 damage by fire caused by sparks from their engines, although 

 the owners of traction engines are liable for similar damage. 

 This is a very serious danger in conifer tracts. 



The fourth, and, in many cases, the chief cause of the apathy 



