lO TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



"Had these steps been taken when we urged them upon 

 the Government all would be ready for a beginning now. It 

 is clear from the speeches of Mr Lloyd George, when as 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer he supplied the Development 

 Commissioners with funds for forestry, that he intended all 

 these steps to be taken. I wonder whether he knows how 

 completely his plan has miscarried. 



"The Forest Authority must be something very different from 

 the Development Commission, which has directed the destinies 

 of forestry for the last nine years. I have no wish to attack 

 the Commissioners. I dare say they are doing their best. But 

 the system is grotesque and must be exposed. The Com- 

 missioners, having themselves no acquaintance with forestry 

 under British conditions, could only have succeeded if they 

 had followed the advice of the Departments appointed to take 

 charge of the subject, and societies like this. This they have 

 not seen fit to do. We judge them by what they have done 

 and what they have left undone. They decided on a policy of 

 education. It might well be called a policy of pedantry. The 

 United Kingdom, with three million acres of wood, can now 

 boast six centres for the higher teaching of forestry. France 

 with eight times as much finds a single centre sufficient. They 

 rejected the scheme submitted to them for the purchase of a 

 Demonstration Area in the principal woodland area in Scotland 

 on the ground that it was not sufficiently central. The whole 

 purchase price of this estate could have been recovered from 

 sales of timber during the last three years without materially 

 destroying its educational value. The correspondence on this 

 subject has been printed. It is time you pressed for its 

 publication. The French are more practical. They placed 

 their teaching centre at Nancy — though it is on their eastern 

 frontier — to be in touch with their principal forests. In this 

 country it seems to have been forgotten that in forestry, science 

 scarcely exists apart from practice. So we are still without a 

 Demonstration Area in Scotland. 



" In England the Crown forests have for some fifteen years 

 been under skilled management and are, with their records, 

 available for study. Let us give our pedants credit for having 

 built a school in the Forest of Dean. Scottish students will 

 have to be content with that school, and they might do worse. 

 This forest and the neighbouring Tintern Woods are full of 



