ON THE CREATION OF LEASEHOLD TIMBER FARMS. 419 



the only course open is to afford reasonable opportunity and 

 facility to the mercantile or industrial community to take the 

 matter up. This can only be done by the medium of a lease of the 

 land, with permission to the lessee to cultivate it for the production 

 of timber. The proposition is no doubt surrounded with many 

 difficulties and obstacles, but none of these are so great that they 

 cannot with a little consideration be overcome. The first difficulty 

 to face would be the securing of tenants possessed of sufficient 

 capital necessary to plant and stock a farm of any extent, but 

 with reasonable inducements in the shape of rent, etc., ofiered, 

 the probability is, that the men engaging in this new avocation 

 would be wood mei-chants, or consumers, men of capital who would 

 take this up as a necessary branch of their business. It would 

 require only a few years' growth of the trees to convert the growing 

 pi'oduce into a mercantile security for the purpose of obtaining 

 financial advances in the same way as is done in shipping and 

 other commercial affairs. The difficulty of paying rent on the 

 land while yielding no return might easily be got over by deferx-ing 

 payment thereof for the first fifteen or twenty years. These 

 years' I'ent to be apportioned over, say, the succeeding ten years, 

 when the farmer's income would be an annual and continuous one ; 

 while the security to the landlord would be amply provided in the 

 growing crop. The minimum terra of lease would require to be 

 thirty years, and by way of giving security of tenure over that 

 period, or any period to which the original lease might extend, 

 compensation for growing crop would have to be paid on the 

 decision of competent valuators. A lease engaged in, would 

 naturally contain conditions, and make provision, for the mainte- 

 nance of a continuous crop of trees, even after the fii'st and 

 subsequent plantings had matured and been realised. 



The great hindrance to the manufacture of timber produc- 

 tions in this country is the smallness of individual woodlands. 

 The waterways traversing the country are not utilised as in 

 some other countries, whereby timber is conveyed long distances 

 at a nominal expense to sawmills specially consti-ucted for dealing 

 with rough timber. The consequence is, that the expense of 

 railway carriage of rough trees to a central sawmill places our 

 merchants beyond the pale of competition with our foreign 

 neighbours ; and the individual woodlands are of such a limited 

 extent, that the construction on the ground of costly sawmills, 

 which are necessary in our days of modern improvements, to 



