68 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



gave it as his opinion that if afforestation was left entirely to the 

 municipalities, " practically nothing will be done except in the 

 case of large municipalities who at present own land which is 

 not profitable" {Report, p. 44). On the other hand, the Com- 

 missioner of Woods and Forests, Mr E. Stafford Howard, C.B., 

 thought that municipalities should be encouraged to take action 

 in the matter. The remaining speakers were in many cases 

 representatives of municipalities already engaged in afforestation 

 schemes, and we have to consider the detailed suggestions which 

 they put forward as to the amount of Government assistance 

 which they desired. 



Mr Margerison suggested that the Local Government Board 

 should assist by an extension of the Leeds experiment, "by 

 making annual grants on labour account to meet the expenditure 

 of municipalities on the other costs of afforestation" (p. 19). 

 Similar suggestions, that the Government should make grants, 

 or that the special outlay in connection with the engagement of 

 the unemployed in afforestation work should be defrayed by 

 Government, were made by several speakers. Others, notably 

 Mr Lees of Birmingham, spoke more in detail as to the diffi- 

 culties which municipalities experience in regard to the question 

 of the account to which the sums expended on afforestation 

 should be charged. Mr Lees said: ** We have had calculations 

 given as to the amount that may be anticipated after so many 

 years — thirty or forty years, — but clearly no prudent accountant 

 would venture to charge the interest and the sinking fund on 

 the sums invested to any account but revenue account ; and so, 

 although the yield may come eventually, the effect upon our 

 revenues for the time being, and during the period of growth, is 

 an absolutely dead charge, and it is those who will come after 

 us, if the crops turn out to be as successful as has been 

 prognosticated, who will get not only the net profit, but the 

 whole of the gross yield, because everything that has been spent 

 in the meanwhile in the way of interest and maintenance charges 

 must, under any prudent system of book-keeping, be debited 

 straight away to revenue, and paid for out and out. One dare 

 not suggest — it would be altogether too imprudent — that there 

 should be any method of capitalising these charges, but in the 

 absence of such method it seems to me inevitable that the 

 prospect of providing for the future is entirely discounted by 

 the necessity of heavy charges in the present. If afforestation 

 is to be carried out to any large extent, that is an aspect of the 



