46 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



lengths unless a promise is given that these will be required. 

 I do not think it can be expected that they should keep large 

 stocks of timber without knowing how they are going to dispose 

 of them. 



"With regard to seasoning, there is probably a great deal 

 to be learned in this country. We have not been in the habit 

 of keeping timber for any length of time, and there are probably 

 ways and means of seasoning it which we have yet to learn. 

 I know from my own experience that before foreign timber was 

 imported into this country the home-grown timber used in 

 building lasted for a long time. There are many buildings 

 where home timber was used a hundred years ago, in which it is 

 perfectly sound and good to-day. There is no reason why the 

 timber which is grown now or in the future should not be equally 

 good. In those days there was no importation, and thus home- 

 grown timber had to be used." 



Colonel John D. Sutherland said : — " You reminded me, Sir 

 John, in your address, of an interview that you said you had, 

 I think in 191 2, with the railway companies in Scotland. I 

 remember the appeal you then made along with the other 

 members of the special deputation to the railway companies, 

 and I also remember that the result of your appeal was not very 

 satisfactory, for the railway companies still continued to buy 

 as much imported timber as ever. As a result of that meeting, 

 we formed a small Inter-Departmental Committee in 1913. It 

 was quite a private investigation, and we met in London, and 

 just up to the time war broke out we had accumulated much 

 useful information about the utility of home-grown timber. But 

 the war came. I remember well in August 1914 the Board of 

 Agriculture, which is accused of doing many things it ought not 

 to have done and leaving undone what it might have done, 

 convened a meeting — I think it was on 27th August of that 

 year. The meeting consisted of mine-owners and some timber 

 merchants and landowners. I had the honour of presiding at 

 that meeting, and I asked the representative of the mine-owners 

 to be good enough to let me know what he thought of the 

 position in regard to timber, particularly mining timber, which 

 we felt would become more and more necessary as the war 

 went on. The representative of the coalmasters at once made 

 the following two statements. He said, ' It is impossible, 

 gentlemen, to get enough pit-wood for our mines in Scotland 



