DISCUSSION ON REPORT OF FORESTRY SUB-COilMITTEE. 121 



it would be worth to the farmer. The Committee assure us that 

 2,000,000 acres of that class of land could be devoted to wood 

 without diminishing the production of meat in the country by 

 as much as i per cent. — the exact amount is y^ths of i per cent. 

 — and even that trivial loss would only be gradual. It would 

 only be reached in eighty years, so that it may be looked 

 upon as quite imperceptible ; and against that very trifling loss 

 in meat production what has forestry to set in the balance? 

 In the first place, we hope it will produce annually 100,000,000 

 cubic feet of well-grown timber, and in the next place it will 

 provide healthy employment for ten times the number of persons 

 employed on the same area at the present time. Either of those 

 results would be a great boon : together they would constitute 

 an enormous advantage to the country. Indeed, after studying 

 this report of the Reconstruction Committee, I feel more 

 convinced than ever that there is no development of our 

 natural resources which could equal in value the result which 

 may be obtained by the scientific development of forestry. 

 " I will conclude by moving the following resolution : — 



'That this Meeting of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural 

 Society welcomes the publication of the Report of the 

 Forestry Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Com- 

 mittee, and urges the Government to adopt the scheme 

 of afforestation recommended in the Report, and to 

 bring it into operation without delay.'" 



Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, Bart, who spoke on the recom- 

 mendations in the report, said : — " The recommendations 

 appear on pages 4 and 5 of the report. The first four are 

 mainly statements of fact. They are very nicely put indeed, 

 but if anybody thinks them over, I think they form about the 

 most damning indictment you could find of the policy adopted 

 by every Government in Great Britain since the days of Queen 

 Anne. They simply mean that no Government has done any- 

 thing to this very necessary subject. We may pass from these 

 four to the next three which are really those which outline the 

 schemes supported by the Committee. After that they devote 

 two paragraphs to the authorities they propose and then they 

 go to the cost. 



" Now one point about this report is that you have got 

 a Committee composed of fourteen members who all sign it. 



