178 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



23. Commercial Forestry in the Highlands. 



By Alex. M'Pherson. 



During recent years it can scarcely be said that timber has 

 been grown as a financial venture, and indeed this question 

 seldom crossed the mind of a planter who owned his estate, 

 as more frequently his idea was to utilise, by planting, any 

 unsightly land or what was useless for the plough, and (this 

 paper refers chiefly to Highland conditions) to cover rough, 

 rocky land in the vicinity of his mansion-house. These woods 

 when they grew up made splendid game preserves, without 

 which the pheasants could not be placed in cover; and, with 

 the exception of the actual planting of the trees, which was 

 purely the work of the forester, the gamekeeper frequently 

 had the predominant voice in the management of the woods. 

 On some estates 'the gamekeeper and the forester worked 

 together on fairly amicable terms and with good results. 

 Notwithstanding this fact, however, there were produced in 

 Britain some very fine forests, which proved of untold value 

 to the nation during the Great War. 



The passing of the Death Duties Act hit Highland proprietors 

 very hard, even to the extent of restricting planting operations, 

 or the re-planting of those areas which by law of entail they 

 were entitled to re-plant. I venture to say that this Act has 

 done more harm to the Highlands than the framers of the Bill 

 foresaw, as it resulted in the wholesale turning away of the 

 people who found a living on those estates. These duties 

 should, in my opinion, only be imposed on Highland pro- 

 prietors at long intervals of years and at a much decreased 

 rate. 



I may therefore affirm that death duties, assisted by other 

 forms of taxation on forest land, practically strangled Highland 

 forestry, which is a national calamity because nowhere are there 

 such fine facilities for planting as in the Highlands. 



In practice it has been found that large blocks of timber give 

 better financial returns than small woods or mere belts, such as 

 it has been the usual custom to plant in times past. It is pro- 

 portionately cheaper to fence the larger woods, and as larger 

 woods give rise to better silvicultural conditions they yield 

 larger volumes of cubic contents per unit area. It is also of 

 the utmost importance to plant the right class of trees in the 



