154 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



economic veneer which, in our opinion, is mistaken. We 

 hasten to add that for the work of the Association we have the 

 utmost admiration ; their task, however, is not economic 

 afforestation, but to make the Black Country less unsightly and 

 more fit for human habitation, and we are grieved at the apathy 

 with which their efforts are in general regarded by the class 

 that has benefited most by the desolation which industry has 

 created. 



We may pass briefly over the section dealing with the war 

 period, although we have noticed some statements which appear 

 to us extravagant. It is not, for example, a fact that " with 

 the submarine campaign and the increasing demands made on 

 tonnage [timber] imports gradually dwindled, until they became 

 practically negligible." Nor is it true that " the Russian 

 supplies ceased with the closure of the Baltic, and those from 

 France with the calling of the woodcutters to the colours." 



Part III., the largest, of Mr Stebbing's book deals with 

 " The Future," and is doubtless the ?-aison d'etre of the work. 

 Here the author discusses the problem mainly as one of 

 economics. We gather that he favours the economic doctrine 

 of protection. He believes that this country is totally 

 dependent on abroad for timber, and that " this dependence 

 . . . has meant, and will mean for some years to come, that 

 considerable sums of money annually leave this country for the 

 purchase of timber, and, worse still, manufactured timber — 

 sums of money which might have gone into the pockets of our 

 own people." And he proceeds to generalise his argument : 



" All the nations have become alive to the fact that the road 

 to wealth and the surest way to successful development in the 

 social progress and the amelioration of the conditions of life of 

 their peoples, is by the conversion and manufacture of their raw 

 products, before export, within the country itself. By this means 

 plenty of assured employment is provided for their own people, 

 the money expended on the conversion and manufacture goes 

 into the pockets of their own people, and is put there by the 

 foreigner who has to purchase these imports. This applies to 

 timber imports as much as to anything else." 



It has never occurred, we presume, to Mr Stebbing that there 

 is any mutual advantage in foreign trade at all : that if nations 

 did not import they would not export : that Great Britain is a big 

 exporter of " raw products," in particular, coal, and that if she 



