8 TRANSACXJONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



insurance amounted in these years to some forty millions more 

 than we need have paid for home-grown timber. This money 

 might as well have been thrown into the sea. A railway 

 company, of which I am a director, was paying 14s. for 

 imported sleepers, while home-grown sleepers quite as good 

 were being despatched to the army in France at 3s. 6d. After 

 all, forty millions is a considerable sum. A tithe of that sum, 

 wisely laid out even thirty years ago, would have saved most 

 of this loss and proved a good investment into the bargain. 



" How far these arguments will be strengthened by the 

 experience of the coming months, we do not know. We can 

 only pray that they may not be strengthened by disaster. They 

 already suffice to convince any thoughtful person that the forest 

 policy of this country can no longer be left to chance. I am 

 not only thinking of war, or of those trade boycotts which 

 will assuredly take the place of war if the statesmen of to-day 

 succeed, where the whole world has hitherto failed, in eliminating 

 force from the settlement of international disputes. I am think- 

 ing scarcely less of times of peace. Coniferous timber, which 

 composes nine-tenths of our imports, is the anxiety. It is not 

 many years since the virgin forests of the United States were 

 considered inexhaustible. To-day they are insufficient for the 

 strain of war, and the President is looking to Brazil for help. 

 Already before the war the Americans had absorbed the supplies 

 which Canada used to send to us. Should Russia, on which we 

 have latterly been mainly dependent, now enter on a period of 

 development, she will soon, like the United States, herself absorb 

 the whole produce of her forests. The price of timber has for 

 years been steadily rising, and the time is coming when countries 

 which have no timber of their own will fare very badly. People 

 who talk glibly about the housing question forget how near the 

 heart of that question this matter lies. A dip into the literature 

 of the United States would show them that it was the forest 

 which solved for the builders of that country the problem of 

 comfort and cheapness. 



" While the needs of peace will make themselves gradually felt 

 and increasing prices will tend to provide the required supplies, 

 it is otherwise with international disputes, and it is against the 

 sudden shock of these that the statesman will have specially 

 to prepare. Whether they take the form of war or of trade 

 boycotts, it is certain that the defensive strength of this country 



