DISCUSSION ON REPORT OF FORESTRY SUB-COMMITTEE. I 25 



glance at the work which will fall to it. First, it will have to 

 face the whole question of timber supplies in relation to imports, 

 to the world's decreasing reserves, and to the resources of the 

 British Empire. Next, in the matter of education, order will 

 have to replace the present chaos. This country, with 3,000,000 

 acres of wood, has no less than six schools for the higher teach- 

 ing of forestry. France, with seven times the area, finds one 

 school enough. Scotland, as we all know, has no school at all 

 for the training of practical forestry, though it has been asking 

 for such a school for thirty years. 



" Then there is the question of the survey, which must be 

 uniform throughout the country, and the question of the 

 allocation of funds and of afforestation schemes between the 

 three kingdoms, which must be kept free from political bias, 

 and made with a single eye to production. Once more, to take 

 a last example, the work of research must be co-ordinated for 

 the whole country if it is to give the best results. The 

 Committee saw clearly that the practical work would have to 

 be separately organised for each of the three kingdoms. It 

 suggested as the ideal scheme three branches under the direct 

 control of the Central Authority. This may be a council of 

 perfection. We have to face the fact that the Board of Agri- 

 culture is now responsible for forestry, and personally I am 

 disposed to hope that the development of their forestry branches 

 may supply the desired machinery. I am much confirmed in 

 that hope by the frank and welcome admission of the Secretary 

 for Scotland, repeated by Dr Greig to-day, that the Forestry 

 Department requires to be strengthened on the side of forestry, 

 and is to be so strengthened. 



"There is a great deal to be said for linking up forestry with 

 agriculture, especially during the creative stage, but two condi- 

 tions are essential — first, that the present disastrous division 

 of responsibility should be avoided, that certain persons should 

 be definitely responsible for certain branches of the work ; and 

 secondly, that forestry should no longer occupy an inferior 

 position as the Cinderella of the agricultural departments, or 

 be allowed to wither as it does under the very fatal neglect — 

 perhaps neglect is too mild a word — of those whose time is 

 more fully engrossed in the important subject of agriculture. 

 Freed from these disabilities, and with its staff sufficiently 

 strengthened to deal with a great national undertaking, I see 



