194 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the want, it may be asked, and with reason. What are tlie 

 prospects of foresters receiving remunerative employment, after 

 they have fully qualified themselves for their profession ] This 

 is a question which I have looked into with care, examining it 

 in vai'ious asjjects, and I trust that my hearers will not con- 

 sider that I take an over sanguine view, Avhen I say that it 

 appears probable there will be no hick of employment for duly 

 qualified men, and that the remuneration will be at least equal 

 to that received by any other profession, in qualifying for 

 which the same amount of time and money has been exjiended. 

 The owners of large estates are eveiy day becoming more alive to 

 the fact that their woods and waste lands must be managed with 

 the best skill and intelligence that it is possible to command, so 

 as to make them a jiermanent source of income, instead of the 

 almost worthless burden which, they have often proved to be in 

 the past. 



The area of the United Kingdom is computed to be, in 

 round numbers, 121,000 square miles, or about 77 millions 

 of acres. Of this area one-half, or thereabout, is held by 

 those whom Bateman, in his treatise on the Modern Domesday 

 Book, styles "the Great Landowners of Great Britain and 

 Ireland." These Owners of large Estates, to the number of about 

 2G00, hold from 3000 acres each, up to the enormous area of 

 1,358,546 acres owned by the Duke of Sutherland, the greatest 

 landowner in the United Kingdom. Generally speaking, it is 

 upon these vast estates that the large tracts of waste and treeless 

 land is found. The owners of smaller areas cannot aftbrd to allow 

 land to remain waste and unprofitable, and as a rule the propor- 

 tion of waste or land of small value to arable and woodland is 

 much less on small than on large properties. 



Hei-e, then, is scope enough for the employment of at least 

 one well-trained forester on each of these large estates, and to 

 clothe the bare and profitless wastes on some of them with healthy 

 and remunerative forests would furnish work for several skilled 

 foresters. From the Parliamentary returns in the Modern Domes- 

 day Book, already referred to, it appears there are about 12 

 millions of acres in the United Kingdom, nearly all included in 

 these large estates, the annual value of which does not exceed an 

 average of Is. 3d. per acre. Allow a deduction of one-third for 

 high altitudes and land unsuitable for the growth of forest trees, 

 there still remains 8 millions of acres of land which mijrht be 



