establishing a national industry of forestry. 13 



2. Our Correspondent's Reply. 

 To the Hon. Editor of the R.S.A.S. Transactions. 



Sir, — You have courteously invited me to reply to Mr Munro 

 Ferguson's comments on the paper which I contributed to the 

 July number of the Transactions. I have always followed Mr 

 Ferguson's views on forestry with the greatest interest, and it is 

 perhaps largely due to this that I think you will find the ideas 

 expressed in my paper are in the main in accord with the 

 opinions he holds and now repeats : — 



(i) That private management tinder existing conditions is a 

 failure, the exceptions being sufficient merely to prove 

 the rule ; 



(2) That training and education are essential if effective 



progress is to be made ; and 



(3) That, to use Mr Ferguson's own words, " the State is the 



only investor who can both put in the money and 

 take it out again, and provide that continuous good 

 management without which there cannot be sound 

 financial results." 

 Mr Ferguson goes on to say that "to grasp the real problem, 

 it must be remembered that to develop the latent resources of 

 the soil of Scotland, 5 million acres should be afforested." 

 The difference, if difference there be between us, is on the 

 question of how this process can best be carried out. Mr 

 Ferguson thinks that it must be done by buying out the private 

 owners, while I, taking perhaps a more lenient view of pro- 

 prietors as a class, would like to work with them and encourage, 

 while controlling, their individual efforts. 



To meet one of my objections to a purchase scheme, Mr 

 Ferguson suggests that the Government might resell the portions 

 of estates it bought that were not suitable for planting — farms, 

 mansions, etc. This would be a serious speculation in land for 

 the State to venture upon, and I fear the results would only 

 give fuller proof that the State as a merchant has always to buy 

 dear and sell cheap. Certainly it would greatly reduce the 

 money that might be made available by Parliament for actual 

 planting. Still, at times tracts of land may be for sale, 

 consisting almost entirely of land suitable to plant, unencumbered 

 with buildings and clear of game value. Even Inverliever is not 

 perfect in this respect. Some such tracts of bare land, if 



