156 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



20. Afforestation. 



By Lord Lovat. 



During the course of the 1908 Session, in one of the 

 Houses of Parliament, that ever-green topic, the horse supply 

 of the United Kingdom in its relation to war mobilisation, 

 was debated at some length. As is usual on such occasions, 

 the front benches, the Board of Agriculture authority, numerous 

 undersecretaries, and others, who — by their own account at 

 all events — had given the subject their special attention, 

 poured forth a medley of knowledge of a highly technical 

 and sufficiently convincing order. The possibilities of lime- 

 stone soil and of line breeding, the theories of Mendel and 

 Weismann, Telegony — the connection between Garage and 

 " Harras " — and other arguments less or more to the point were 

 put forward, some with adroitness, all at considerable length. 

 The debate had reached its height and both sides had proved 

 their point to their own, if not to their opponents' satisfaction, 

 when a douche of cold water was poured from the back 

 benches and it became evident even to the more heated of 

 the disputants that, through the incorrect reading of a Noia 

 bene in a Board of Agriculture return, the main statement 

 on which the whole argument turned was founded on an 

 initial error roughly estimated at two million horses ! 



The would-be student of State afforestation starts his inquiry 

 from a not less uneasy base. 



The same welter of semi-digested information, the same 

 eagerness in the presentation of theory, the same light- 

 heartedness in the production of schemes, the same absence 

 of " home-grown " statistics and bed rock facts, make confusion 

 worse confounded in either case. 



There is, however, one important difference in the two 

 inquiries, viz., that while the investigator of the horse supply 

 problem finds the Board of Agriculture with its correspondents 

 in the country and its machinery at a central office, capable 

 of providing the necessary data, were it so minded, the 

 arboriculturist in search of information has no such organised 

 body to which to turn. 



It would seem a suggestion too self-evident to be seriously 

 put forward— if the successive findings of Forestry Commissions 



