AFFORESTATION IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. I 55 



owners, factors, foresters, and labourers will all have to be 

 educated up to the point of seeing how pernicious on stiff or 

 peaty soil is the now long-practised, irrational system of notch- 

 planting, unsuitable for any except a very light soil, though it 

 is certainly the cheapest method of planting, " Profitable crops 

 have been raised thus in the past, and why not now ? " they 

 ask ; or else unfavourable criticism of this method is met with 

 a cold and rather contemptuous silence. It will take years to 

 educate the local labour up to this point, and it is hardly con- 

 ceivable that casual labour will meanwhile be obtainable either 

 in sufficient quantity or with the necessary skill for this particular 

 kind of out-door work. 



Sometimes, also, the objection has been raised that extensive 

 planting would increase the rainfall, impair the climate, and 

 affect the national character. Such fears are unfounded. It 

 is not on local and interior conditions that our damp insular 

 climate is mainly dependent, and by which it is regulated, 

 because the chief factors are the Great Atlantic Gulf Stream to 

 which our mild, equable climate is due, and the moist Atlantic 

 winds coming from the south-west, which prevail throughout 

 the greater part of the year. Large woodland tracts would 

 hardly, if at all, increase the rainfall perceptibly, though their 

 influence would certainly tend to increase the relative humidity 

 of the atmosphere in the vicinity of the forests ; but any draw- 

 back which might possibly thus arise (and this it would be 

 difficult to estimate beforehand) would certainly be far out- 

 weighed by the additional shelter they would provide for 

 grazing stock, and by the water-storing capacity of the wood- 

 lands and the immunity against inundations that this tends to 

 provide. The heaviest annual rainfall in the British Isles is in 

 Cumberland (Styhead Pass), but is the character of Cumberland 

 men therefore impaired on that account ? Or has that in the 

 slightest degree dulled their natural shrewdness or their business 

 instincts and capacity ? 



In conclusion, it has often been asserted that extensive 

 planting would interfere greatly with sport. If the bare Scottish 

 deer forests were covered with woods the character of the sport 

 would certainly be changed ; but it is far more likely that the 

 sport would be improved than deteriorated thereby. Any 

 closer consideration of this particular point, however, would 

 only unnecessarily extend this already long paper. 



