38 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



issue of bulletins and leaflets on subjects of interest to private 

 planters. 



Good progress has been made with flying surveys of un- 

 cultivated land on the lines so successfully inaugurated by this 

 Society in 191 1. During the year, 260,000 acres in England 

 and Wales, and 385,000 acres in Scotland were surveyed. The 

 total area now reported on is about 2,000,000 acres. The 

 information thus obtained is proving of great value to the 

 Commission in regulating their forest policy. 



It has repeatedly been shown that the putting of forest 

 land to its best economic use, under trees, will not appreciably 

 diminish the food production of the country, since such lands 

 contribute but a small percentage of the total. The Report 

 states that if the whole 1,770,000 acres, as projected in the 

 Acland Report, were to be afforested, the reduction in the 

 meat-yield in Great Britain and Ireland would only be 07 per 

 cent, or (including imports) 0-4 per cent, of the current con- 

 sumption, while the full reduction would only take effect sixty 

 or eighty years hence. Further, the reduction in the grazing 

 area during the first decade will be trifling, because the grazing 

 land set free for sheep in deer forests (after the planting ground 

 has been taken for afforestation) will, to a great extent, make 

 good the area taken from sheep farms. With an intelligent 

 policy of land settlement many acres of derelict arable land on 

 areas suitable for afforestation can be brought into cultivation, 

 and even a few acres of such land under potatoes will make 

 good, in point of bulk at least, the food produced by many 

 hundred acres under hill pasture.^ 



When the Forestry Bill was drafted, the financial recommenda- 

 tions were based on information available in 1916, but since 

 then the cost of materials and labour have increased so that 

 the Forestry Commission have no light task in carrying out 

 practically the full programme on something more like pre- 

 war figures than present-day costs, but owing to the untiring 

 work of the Assistant Commissioners, and in no small degree 

 to the patriotism of individual landowners, some of the best 

 planting land in the kingdom has been acquired at rates well 

 below the original estimates. The drain on the forestry fund 



' The food supply of the country is at present diminishing more rapidly 

 under the spread of bracken than would ever be the case if the whole 

 afforestation programme were carried out. 



