216 traxsactioxs of royal scottish akboricultural society. 



Effects of a Shortage in the Timber Supply ox the 

 United Kingdom. 



It is all very well to say that we can pay for the timber we 

 need, but that will not meet the case. When the supplies from 

 outside fall off, the rise in prices may become prohibitive, and the 

 effects of an insufficiency of material would be disastrous. Of the 

 10,000,000 tons a year imported lately into this country, 8,700,000 

 tons were coniferous timbers, which form the very staff of life of 

 our building trade and mining operations. A deficiency of supply 

 in this material would be a real calamity for the population of 

 these islands. Let us not deceive ourselves by imagining that in 

 such an emergency iron and steel can be substituted for timber. 

 That this is a fallacy has been proved by past experience. While 

 the population of the United Kingdom has increased by about 

 20 per cent, during the last twenty years, the imports of timber 

 have increased during the same period by about 45 per cent., in 

 other words, every inhabitant uses now considerably more timber 

 than twenty years ago. At the same time, nobody can say that 

 extraordinary efforts have not been made of late years to substitute 

 iron and steel for timber. As a matter of fact, the latter is 

 an absolute necessity to civilised peoples. Engineers have not 

 even succeeded in superseding the wooden railway sleepers by 

 steel sleepers. Mr Hawkshaw, in his presidential address to the 

 Institute of Civil Engineers the other day, dwelt particularly on 

 this subject, saying : " Engineers could not do without timber, 

 nor, indeed, without much timber. For the last thirty years they 

 had heard it said in that room that steel would shortly be adopted 

 in place of wood for sleepers ; but although we could make our 

 own steel, but had to import our timber sleepers?, this has not 

 come to pass," etc. The same experience has been gained in 

 France and in the United States of America, the home of the 

 great iron and steel trusts. As to the effect of a shortage of the 

 timber supply on the mining industry, it would be too terrible to 

 contemplate, as it would practically bring mining to a standstill, 

 and throw hundreds of thousands of workmen out of employment, 

 and the same may be said of the building trade. 



The Present State of Affairs in this Country. 



The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland has an area 

 of 78,000,000 acres (in round figures), of which about 3,000,000 



