138 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY, 



"I have been for fourteen months in France in connection 

 with the exploitation of French forests for the production of 

 timber for the armies. My appointment by the War Office was 

 as liaison officer with both the French military and forestry 

 authorities, and I had singular opportunities of seeing something 

 of the great part played by forestry in French national life. My 

 duties took me to the splendid virgin forests of silver fir and 

 spruce in the Jusa, to the great State and privately-owned oak 

 and beech forests of Normandy and the middle of France, and 

 — perhaps more interesting than any other forest area — to the 

 Departments of Landes, Gironde and Basses Pyrenees in the 

 south-west corner of France. During the last 100 years this 

 country has been converted from a barren waste of utterly 

 unprofitable land to a huge forest of over two millions of acres, 

 all under crops of maritime pine of varying ages. Had it not 

 been for the foresight of the French authorities, and perhaps of 

 Napoleon III. in particular, the armies and railways to-day in 

 France and our Admiralty collieries in South Wales would 

 have been in much direr need of timber than they actually are. 



"This south-western area of France, which is now so 

 enormously productive of useful timber, supports in its villages 

 and small towns a thriving population, said to be more prosperous 

 than any in France ; they owe that prosperity entirely to the 

 products of the forest. Certainly resin plays no inconsiderable 

 part in this increment of wealth, but in spite of the distance from 

 coal-fields, great sums of money pour into the country annually 

 from the tens of thousands of tons of pit-wood shipped away, and 

 the hundreds of thousands of sleepers produced by the excellent 

 moveable band saw-mills scattered up and down the length and 

 breadth of the three departments. You cannot go through that 

 country without picturing to yourself what a lonely wilderness of 

 heath and peaty marshland it would have been had its general 

 afforestation not been taken in hand. There is no brighter 

 prospect that afforestation in Scotland has to offer than the 

 thought that in years to come we, or at any rate our children, 

 may see a great rural population springing up among our 

 valleys in prosperous and sheltered small-holdings, with ample 

 occupation for their families and work for their horses; the 

 hillsides around them clothed with thriving young timber up 

 to tree-growing limits of altitude. 



** The deer will have to recede to above the tree-belt, but we 



