2 2 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



4. The Inverliever State Forest. 



By R. C. MuNRO Ferguson, M.P. 



The Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society has every reason 

 to be gratified with the acquisition of Inverliever. We have 

 put pressure upon successive Governments for a long while past 

 in order to obtain two definite objects of supreme importance, — 



(i) Provision for the training of foresters ; 



(2) Acceptance by the State of liability for the afforestation 

 of suitable lands. 

 Our requirements for the training of foresters were detailed 

 by Mr Hanbury's Departmental Committee, whose very moderate 

 recommendations remain neglected. Yet it is facilities for 

 instruction and for experimental work, as laid down by that 

 Committee, that are our chief requirement. All this has yet 

 to be obtained, and we cannot insist on it too strongly, in view 

 of the fact that the Secretary for Scotland has, unfortunately 

 and unaccountably, refused to extend to Scotland a most useful 

 inquiry, which is now being conducted into technical rural 

 training in England — a decision which prevents this essential 

 but neglected branch of our educational system from being 

 submitted to independent and competent investigators. 



The evidence and report published by the Forestry Committee 

 of 1902 laid much stress upon the immense scope that exists 

 for State afforestation, especially in Scotland. And it is 

 satisfactory to note that, in spite of the general apathy of 

 Ministers and their officials, our Society's action is receiving 

 support both from the Office of Woods and Forests, whose 

 administration, thanks to Mr Stafford Howard, is now more 

 enlightened, and from the Labour Party in search of work for the 

 unemployed, as well as from a considerable mass of independent 

 public opinion. It is interesting to observe that those who 

 believe in land nationalisation as a general principle, and those 

 who do not, have alike discovered that for this one object, if 

 for no other, they can heartily co-operate. The policy of 

 State afforestation has behind it the most opposite schools of 

 politicians, thinkers, and practical men; and it is this happy 

 union of opinion, in favour of a sound and inevitable policy, 

 that has at length induced the Government to make a start with 

 one of the items of our programme, namely, the State afforesta- 



