l62 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH AKBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



abandoned as to reduce the value of a 70-years' rotation to less 

 than ;£igs odd per acre. 



Now this is charming, but is it practical? Can we reasonably 

 expect that a scheme, equalling in magnitude the operations 

 of the centuries-old German forest department, can be started a/^ 

 ovo without Board, experience, or foresters, and avoid failures 

 on an equally comprehensive scale? Can it be argued from 

 what we know of municipal trading that this, the most difficult 

 of all communal undertakings, can be carried on without certain 

 waste, even if the cruder forms of leakage are prevented ? 

 Again, before Parliamentary powers are obtained, before plans 

 and surveys have been made, before the training colleges have 

 not only been built but also begun to produce foresters, how 

 many years must elapse? Our one afforestation experience is 

 no happy augury. It has taken ten years' agitation to purchase 

 the Government's ewe lamb — Inverliever. It is a significant 

 fact that after two years' occupation not a tree has been planted, 

 and the only overt departmental act has been the removal of the 

 one crofter inhabitant, and the giving of notice to sheep farmers 

 that their leases are to be terminated. To build up an industry 

 requires brain, application, thought ; to destroy one, a little wind 

 in Parliament and the stroke of the permanent official pen 

 suffice. 



While the difficulties in the way of a State Afforestation 

 scheme are enormous, let it at once be admitted, that there is 

 much the .State can do, and do better than the individual 

 entrepreneur. As a broad generalisation, all that appertains 

 to pure forestry — if I may use the term — readily falls into the 

 province of a State department ; and equally certainly all that 

 may be classed as local forestry (estates, surplus land, etc.) is 

 better left to the enterprise of the individual — aided by the State 

 if occasion demands. In order to obtain the all-important 

 advantages of continuity of management over woodland areas, 

 and so far as possible benefit the State, probably all practical 

 men would agree that the procedure must be on the following 

 lines, viz. : — 



(i) The formation of a Central Forestry Board, without 

 which no forest scheme, or even a plan for the making 

 of a forest scheme, is possible. 



(2) I'he acquisition of experimental and demonstration 

 areas — not like the poverty-stricken Inverliever, where 



