40 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



else. He tried very hard to get supplies of sleepers in this 

 country. Prices went from 3s. 6d. to 4s. 6d. and so on, some- 

 times higher. He was unable to get supplies because there was 

 no organisation which could promise him supplies, and he gave 

 the thing up as hopeless. He was quite prepared to give the 

 then ruling price for home-grown sleepers. 



" If you could form amongst you any organisation to place 

 contracts and carry them through, there is no question that the 

 whole difficulty of using home-grown timber would be solved 

 once for all. 



" In other countries, France and Germany for instance, a very 

 large proportion of the timber is now imported, and the only 

 difference is that they start from the basis of their own timber, 

 and the imported timber comes in to supplement it. In our 

 case we have to invert the process." 



Mr Donald Munro (North of Scotland Home Timber 

 Merchants' Association) said : — " I think the reason why home 

 timber has not been used and properly graded in the past is 

 because we had really no guarantee that it would be used. As 

 Sir John pointed out, it was a gamble. During the war we 

 have all had experience of what home timber has done, and, 

 as Sir John pointed out, if it was properly graded in the future, 

 it should be used for the various housing schemes before the 

 country at present. I think that what might be done in the 

 home timber trade is that the merchants should manufacture 

 their timber into various sizes of scantlings, that it be stamped 

 with their name, sent into a central yard where an expert could 

 be employed to grade it, a standard rate being fixed for it, and 

 sold from that central yard to the building trade. 



" In connection with the question of sleepers, I may say that 

 we had a meeting to-day, and we have practically an offer — a 

 suggested offer — from the Railway Executive for a contract for 

 all the sleeper production for the next two years. We had a 

 conference in London ten days ago with Sir James Ball, who 

 has now been appointed Chairman of the Timber Purchasing 

 Committee, and they, I understand, are prepared to buy all the 

 home sleepers for the next two years at a price — not quite the 

 price paid for foreign sleepers — but a satisfactory price." 



Mr J. R. Watson (Builder and Contractor, Edinburgh) 

 said: — "I am not interested very much in the hardwoods, and 

 therefore confine my remarks to the softwoods, and, as a 



