IlS TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



very satisfactory to see how closely the chief recommendations 

 of the Committee correspond with those at which we had arrived 

 quite independently. For instance, we held that 2,000,000 acres 

 should be the minimum area which the Government should aim 

 at afforesting, and the Committee have arrived at very nearly 

 the same figure. What they actually propose is 1,770,000 acres. 

 We suggested that the period within which the work ought to 

 be completed should be eighty years. The Committee have 

 adopted precisely the same figure, only they suggest that the 

 greater part of the work should be done in the first forty 

 years, so that this country might be prepared all the sooner 

 to face another such crisis as we are going through at the 

 present time. We thought that as landowners should be able 

 to plant very much more cheaply than the State could do, that 

 it would be an economy on the part of the State to seek their 

 co-operation, and we therefore suggested that they should offer 

 grants to enable landowners to plant much more largely than 

 they would otherwise do, and also to compensate them in 

 some measure for sinking large sums for which most of them 

 would receive no return in their lifetime. This also appears 

 among the Committee's recommendations. Again, the Com- 

 mittee agreed with us as to the importance of providing small- 

 holdings in the immediate neighbourhood of the areas that 

 were afforested, which, of course, is a policy that would be of 

 great mutual advantage to both industries. And finally, the 

 Committee are just as emphatic as we were as to the necessity 

 for creating a new forest authority, and that it should be a 

 Central Authority for the United Kingdom with executive 

 branches in England, Scotland, and Ireland. I think all this 

 is very satisfactory, not only because it would carry out our 

 own views in the matter, but because it shows that all those 

 who have studied the question have arrived at the same 

 conclusion, and that if once the policy of afforestation is 

 sanctioned, there should be little difference of opinion as to 

 the best methods for carrying it out. I do not propose to say 

 anything more as to the recommendations of the Committee 

 because they are going to be dealt with by other speakers, 

 and I wish to confine my remarks to two or three points of 

 special interest arising out of the report. 



" In the first place, the Committee have based their recom- 

 mendation of national afforestation upon the ground of national 



