6o TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



This would connote the formation of a Government Forest 

 Deparcment, extended pari passte with the extension of Govern- 

 ment woodlands, and this should be a service recruited in the 

 same way as all the great forest services of the world. 



We may cite the case of Belgium, a country most progressive 

 in all ways, as according with the views as to expropriation 

 given above. The Belgian Government put to its Forest 

 Council the question — " What shall be done to prevent abusive 

 treatment of private forests?" The Council strongly opposed 

 interference with the rights of private property. All restrictive 

 measures would discourage initiative, which ought, on the 

 contrary, to be encouraged. Such measures would be most 

 vexatious, and would entail onerous duties of surveillance by the 

 State. But it might be possible to induce some proprietors to 

 voluntarily submit their woods to Government control, although 

 it is unlikely that many would do this, since it would be some- 

 thing of a sacrifice. "To bring it about," says the reporter of 

 the Council, "it would be necessary to assure certain compensa- 

 tion to such proprietors, as exemption from taxes, etc." 

 Accordingly the Council reports, t'/iJer a/ia, as follows: — "The 

 Superior Forest Council is of opinion that the law cannot restrict 

 the right of property of forest proprietors. It recommends that 

 the State should extend the national forest estate. It considers 

 that the extension of private forests should be encouraged by 

 the diffusion of forest instruction and practical manuals, by the 

 formation of experimental areas under Government direction, by 

 advice given gratis to proprietors, and by the distribution at cost 

 price of plants and seeds." 



Mexico has now joined the States that have taken up the idea 

 of forestry. An engineer named Quevedo is the originator 

 of this movement, and a young French forester has been 

 appointed to the work. One of the things which brought the 

 question up is a somewhat new one in this connection. It was 

 found that as the environs of Mexico city are very bare, dust was 

 very troublesome. Naturally, woods around the town would 

 mitigate the nuisance, and their formation has been begun. 



A local improvement of the kind can undoubtedly be effected, 

 and no doubt the heat in the immediate neighbourhood can also 

 be mitigated. But M. Roger Ducamp, the head of the Forest 

 Department in Indo-China, who has personally seen and 

 described several places on the globe where the results of 



