74 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



is beginning to look to its forests to in some sort make up for 

 the loss of its salt and opium revenues. We, on the other hand, 

 pay ;,^3o,ooo,ooo (which to-morrow will be forty, and the day 

 after fifty, millions) to outsiders — in many cases to potential 

 enemies, who will use our money to build ironclads wherewith 

 to threaten us. Not only do we pay all this for timber or 

 timber products, but in doing so we leave in foreign countries 

 the money spent in forest work and many forest industries, 

 instead of keeping it within our own shores, and, incidentally, 

 establishing colonies of wood-working people out in the country. 

 It is said, " Yes, but the Governments who make their forests 

 pay have found their forests ready-established and already in 

 bearing ; and where, we should like to know, are we to find the 

 money to buy up land and grow our forests?" Well, there 

 must be a beginning some time, and at least the Government 

 could let itself off taxes. The shooting rents, too, would be a 

 direct source of revenue. If the unemployed were put on the 

 work, with a patient, but rigorous, thinning out of the un- 

 employables, the labour would be found, for a certain pro- 

 portion of this class is no doubt deserving. This, we know, is 

 an aspect of the matter which appeals to Government, quite 

 apart from any question of finance. If only they would put a 

 tax on foreign wood, and with the proceeds form a fund for 

 buying up waste lands and planting and working them, the 

 money difficulty would disappear ; but this is politics, and I 

 suppose we must not enter on that here. 



There is a good deal that readers could skip in the Revite des 

 Eaux et Forets. As we are only concerned with the forest part, 

 we could leave out the articles on fisheries, although these are 

 not without importance. All the part directly concerned with 

 the personnel of the French Forest Department will only interest 

 those who have friends in that keen and enthusiastic service. 

 There is much about forest law cases, which is perhaps rather 

 boring, — moreover, we have no special forest law. Once indeed 

 we had one, and of the severest, but it seems to have become 

 merged in the common law. Were a really large Government 

 forest domain to be formed a Forest Code might become a 

 desideratum, and it might advantageously contain a section (as 

 in the Indian Forest Code) allowing private owners to place 

 their woodlands under its provisions. Finally, a glance at the 

 Budget discussions, reported in the Revue, will generally suffice. 



