AFFORESTATION IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. I 43 



the Glasgow Distress Committee resolved that it should not be 

 represented at any interview with the Secretary for Scotland 

 regarding a national scheme of afforestation. 



On the average a 6o-year old wood should yield about 

 100 tons weight of timber per acre; and the felling, logging, 

 transport, conversion, and distribution of woodland produce 

 will, of course, add directly and largely to the total amount 

 of wages that would then be payable to labourers and 

 workmen in this country, in place of being sent to foreign 

 countries, as is at present the case. Indeed, there is hardly 

 any branch of industry which would not benefit largely by 

 our having extensive woodlands, and this obvious advantage 

 is surely great enough to commend rational proposals for 

 timber-planting to our national business instincts. 



The Royal Commission's vast scheme of afforestation is 

 supported by financial calculations showing that timber- 

 planting will prove a very profitable investment for the nation 

 eighty years hence. These actuarial calculations have no 

 practical value, for they deal with conditions and timber-crops 

 which do not exist. They are little better than the usual 

 prospectuses issued by vendors of concessions when floating 

 speculative companies. If such calculations based upon 

 vague data always came true there would never be insolvent 

 joint-stock companies or bankrupt tradesmen, for reasonable 

 business men only embark on ventures that give fair promise 

 of being profitable ; and the nation will be unwise to risk an 

 investment of either one or two millions every year for the 

 next sixty years merely upon the hope of having very profitable 

 money returns from eighty years hence onwards. It is 

 indisputable that timber-planting is desirable to the utmost 

 extent possible ; but a great national scheme of afforestation 

 should rest upon a broader and surer economic basis than 

 subtle calculations (based mainly upon German data as to 

 yield) that may easily be partially upset by heavy gales like 

 those which wrecked the Tay Bridge, at Christmas 1879, blew 

 down millions of trees in Perthshire in November 1893, and 

 did a vast amount of damage to weodlands in Ireland, in 

 February 1903 — to say nothing of epidemic fungous diseases, 

 such as the larch canker, to the development and spread of 

 which our comparatively mild, humid, and equable climate is 

 even more favourable than it undoubtedly is also to the growth 



