THE STATE IN RELATION TO FORESTRY. I37 



On reference to the details of the Report, it will be seen that 

 the proposed area includes something like 2,000,000 acres of 

 tillage land. To convert these into forest means a reduction 

 of labour, as well as of the food supply of the country. Such a 

 procedure I have never suggested, nor shall I support it now. 

 All my proposals referred to surplus, and not to cultivated 

 land. 



The Commissioners propose to work so large an area as 

 3,000,000 acres under a rotation of forty years for the pro- 

 duction of some 3,000,000 tons of pit and pulp wood. I fear that 

 I, for one, cannot approve of this. The proposal enables the 

 Commissioners to show that, probably, the Treasury will at 

 the end of forty years be relieved of paying some ^3,000,000 

 by way of interest on the borrowed capital ; but, on the other 

 hand, we should in all probability overstock the market with 

 material of the class of timber produced under so short a 

 rotation. The remaining 6,000,000 acres would produce at least 

 another 2,000,000 tons of such timber, making 5,000,000 tons 

 in all. We receive now, and are likely always to receive some 

 600,000 tons from the west coast of France, being the produce 

 of the thinnings made in the extensive maritime-pine forests 

 of the Landes, to which the imports from the Baltic must be 

 added. In my opinion, the financial forecast should have 

 been based on the assumption that the bulk of the area will 

 be worked under a rotation long enough to produce large timber, 

 and counting on the necessary pit and pulp wood being 

 provided by the thinnings. Moreover, such a short rotation 

 as forty years is possible only on land of some substance, 

 the proportion of which is small in the case of the land here 

 under consideration. 



Although the Commissioners appreciated my evidence on the 

 great importance of combining field with forest work, they 

 overlooked the fact that for this very reason afforestation by 

 private proprietors should as much as possible be encouraged. 

 The ideal solution of the problem is, not the creation of large 

 extents of forests in one place, which would lead to a separation 

 of field from forest work, but the establishment of fair-sized 

 blocks scattered over the country. As long as each block is 

 large enough to justify the employment of a man in charge, 

 economic management is possible just as well as, if not better 

 than, on large continuous areas. The labourers who work 



VOL. XXII. PART II. K 



