I 2 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



occupiers upon the soil by fixity of tenure and fair rents. 

 By purchase alone can the State acquire a really free hand 

 and responsible control, and avoid that worst of all tenures, 

 divided ownership. Successful silviculture is no mere matter 

 of finding capital, nor of paper conditions. Capital cannot 

 be advanced for silviculture by a stroke of the pen in a country 

 where unparalleled ignorance of the subject is the rule. The 

 interests of the State and of silviculture alike demand that 

 action should be taken, not on these lines, but on those of 

 the Report of the 1902 Committee, to which you, Mr Editor, 

 were one of the signatories. It may be that the Government 

 will prefer the attractions of this able scheme, which appeals 

 to many of their predilections, as illustrated by the Scottish 

 Land Bill. It sets aside the advice of responsible advisers 

 entrusted to prepare a scheme. It terminates responsible 

 ownership. It advances loans without provision for responsible 

 management — relying upon the classic phrase that the " self- 

 interest" of occupier or owner will sufficiently safeguard the 

 Treasury or any other interest. It is this curious assumption that 

 land industry, as distinct from any other, needs no responsible 

 control, that a divided responsibility is a positive advantage, 

 and a legal interpretation an unfailing instrument — which 

 vitiates the whole official present day land policy in Scotland. 



The choice before the country, on the one side, is that some 

 body such as the Crofters Commission or the Congested Districts 

 Board, under Dover House, should administer, amongst other 

 doles, loans for afforestation to anyone who cares to apply ; 

 and upon the other, a competent Board of Forestry, with a 

 regular training and research system, and a system of working- 

 plans, which eventually would utilise as national forests a 

 quarter of Scotland which is presently non-productive. 



It may be that in the future, when scientific afforestation is 

 established in our midst, a stimulus to fresh enterprise by a 

 system of loans might well form part of a great State scheme 

 for afforesting our waste places, but the central feature of 

 that scheme must be State forests with their complement of 

 demonstration areas, training schools, and experimental plots. 

 Let us therefore concentrate on the essential, and work out 

 subsequent developments when the time comes, and when we 

 have attained our preliminary object. 



R. MuNRO Ferguson. 



