INTRODUCTION TO COURSE OF FORESTRY LECTURES. 179 
important of those countries are falling off; and it may be safely 
predicted that these supplies will, in course of time, considerably 
décrease, and that the price of imported timber will rise in a 
corresponding degree. We may, of course, eventually be able to 
bring to market the produce of even the most inaccessible forests 
of the Dark Continent to supply our ever-increasing needs ; but it 
must be said that our future supplies are by no means secured, 
and that the time has arrived at which it has become our duty to 
take stock of the situation, and to consider what can advan- 
tageously be done to increase the timber production of our islands, 
so that we may be in a better position than we now are to meet, 
as far as possible, any interruption in the steady current of our 
importations which might occur owing to a partial failure of our 
foreign sources of supply, to the outbreak of war, or otherwise. 
Dr Schlich estimates that we might be able to grow at home 
£13,000,000 worth out of the £23,000,000 worth of forest 
produce we import annually; and the forests created with this 
main object would give employment to a very large number 
of labourers, and would at the same time serve to protect 
agricultural crops from the effects of injurious winds, and to 
afford shelter to cattle and useful species of birds. 
The desired increase in the amount of home-grown timber might 
be obtained by taking measures—Virstly, to obtain from our 
existing woodlands the maximum quantity of the best kind of 
produce that the soil is capable of yielding; and secondly, to 
increase the wooded area by planting and sowing up such 
portions of our waste lands as cannot be more profitably utilised. 
It must be confessed that to accomplish either of these things is 
not an easy matter in many parts of the kingdom, because, while 
some existing woods are maintained principally on account of 
their picturesque beauty, a much larger number are kept up as 
game preserves, and their proprietors have no wish that they 
should be treated with a view to obtain from them their maximum 
yield of wood. Again, vast areas of ground in Scotland are 
kept under heather as grouse moors and so-called deer ‘ forests” 
(which have hardly a tree upon them), and these are greatly 
valued for the sport which, in their present condition, they afford, 
so that their owners do not desire to convert them into forests of 
trees. But in spite of these disadvantages, the area of woodland 
now available for systematic treatment is very considerable ; and 
it might certainly be largely increased with great advantage to 
VOL. XIII. PART II. N 
