DISCUSSION ON FORESTRY ADMINISTRATION AND EDUCATION. 3 



"The second part of paragraph 2 says: — 'The Meeting 

 desires to impress on Lord Curzon and Mr Barnes the paramount 

 necessity of freeing the local administration in Scotland from 

 the subservience to agricultural administration under which it 

 has hitherto laboured.' I know there are a considerable number 

 of people who think that forestry should be subordinated to 

 agriculture, and that it should be placed in Scotland under the 

 Scottish Board of Agriculture. It has been under the 

 Scottish Board of Agriculture for the last seven years, and in 

 these seven years the Board has done nothing. The Develop- 

 ment Commissioners have been in existence since 1909, and 

 with the exception of some very small things nothing has 

 been done by the Government. Inverliever is of course out of 

 account. Inverliever is not administered by the Scottish Board 

 at all. It is administered by the Department of Woods and 

 Forests, an English Board, and I rather think Inverliever was 

 in existence before the Scottish Board of Agriculture. I think 

 most people who are conversant with forestry will agree that it 

 would be very much better, very much more to the advantage 

 of forestry, if forestry was carried on altogether apart from 

 agriculture. We do not want, as some people seem to assume, 

 to interfere with agriculture in any way, and I am sure that 

 those agriculturists who have imagined that we wanted to 

 interfere with agriculture are entirely mistaken. Some of the 

 agricultural bodies apparently have taken up the attitude that 

 we wanted to do them some harm, and to plant land which 

 should be under agricultural crops. A deputation from one of 

 the agricultural bodies actually asked the Secretary for Scotland 

 that the Board of Agriculture should have power to prohibit 

 afforesting agricultural land. I do not think any one in his 

 senses wants to afforest good agricultural land. There is a 

 great deal of good land in places where it cannot be utilised for 

 growing farm crops, and a great deal of good timber, hardwood 

 timber especially, could be grown on that land, but that of 

 course would not interfere with agriculture. The main object. 

 I think, is to get the waste land put under timber, land which 

 is not good enough for agriculture and that would be excellent 

 land for growing trees. I do not see that we would, in advocat- 

 ing afforestation of that land, interfere in the least with the 

 farming industry. In fact, I rather think it would be of great 

 assistance to the farmers. At any rate, from what one sees in 



