THE HOME TIMBER TRADE OUTLOOK. I 43 



quality are equal to the best foreign importations. During 

 the boom in the seventies, indeed, when foreign wood rose high 

 enough to make it worth while, large quantities of these great 

 trees were shipped at Nairn to the English ports, and used for 

 construction purposes, as the best red wood. I have been 

 credibly informed that the late Provost Mann of Nairn offered 

 ^13,000 in cash for some 6000 of these trees to the late Mr 

 Ranald M'Donald, factor for the Cluny estates, near Nairn. 

 Then, if you turn to Inverness-shire, the critic excepts the natural 

 grown forests of Rothiemurchus and Abernethy, only skeletons 

 now, however ; and he may well do so, for in the latter part of 

 the eighteenth century these were the sources of regular ship- 

 ments to the Thames for building purposes. In Perthshire, and 

 some southern counties, the exceptions are too many for our 

 foreign wood friends. In Dumfriesshire, for instance, on one estate 

 alone, 10,000 firs, averaging about fifty cubic feet, were blown 

 down during the great gales in the eighties, besides vastly more 

 smaller trees ; and, curiously, it would not have paid then, 

 or scarcely ever during the latter half of the nineteenth century, 

 to convert those fine trees into construction sizes, owing to the 

 cheapness of foreign deals and battens, even although the archi- 

 tects had been unprejudiced enough to pass them. How does 

 the critic of Scots fir, as grown now, account for all these 

 exceptions — his Ballochbuies, etc., etc. ? The fact is, that if we 

 could imagine Scotland as it might have been now if aff'orestation 

 had been ordained 150 years ago, there would be no critics 

 to argue with, for all around the hillsides of every county we 

 would have fine timber of every description, varying in size 

 and quality, according to soil and climate, and in age, from the 

 veteran plantation of 150 years to the seedlings newly trans- 

 planted from the great national or local nurseries. 



The sawmills to manufacture the wood a hundred years 

 hence, after a great afforestation scheme, will not be at the ports 

 of shipment, as they are in merely exporting countries. They 

 will, naturally, be right in the growing woods, with light railways 

 connecting with the ordinary lines. It will not be necessary 

 then merely to half manufacture the product into square or hewn 

 logs, and deals or battens, as the foreign shipper must do at 

 present, leaving it to the mills at our ports to finish all the 

 processes. The fully manufactured article will issue from the 

 mills near the woods on the hillsides as joists, battens and 



