AFFORESTATION. 1 67 



are fixed limits beyond which it is dangerous for even a Covern- 

 ment department to expand. If afforestation is to be really 

 effectual as a check to rural depopulation, it must be on a scale 

 so extensive that any factor tending to reduce expenditure, or 

 broaden responsibility, must be viewed with favour. 



Under the purchase clause every sale by the Government 

 sets free money for new forestry schemes, and the risk to the 

 State is pro tanto diminished, while at the same time the central 

 idea " more woods at less cost " is kept in view by the servitude 

 binding the landlord to keep under forest all lands on which 

 public money has been expended. 



If the objections to State-aided forestry are considerable the 

 advantages gained are not small. 



In the first place, by co-operation much land will be afforested 

 which could not be planted with economic success if the State 

 were acting alone. In the interference with the two great 

 values— agricultural and sporting — and the substitution of a 

 new enterprise, forestry, there must of necessity arise a gradual 

 but far-reaching rearrangement of landholders, boundaries, 

 interests, and a re-adjustment of equipment (farm buildings, 

 lodges, etc.), and a temporary dislocation of trade requirements. 

 It is very obvious that such a work of re-organisation can be 

 best done by those who are conversant with estate manage- 

 ment, rather than by a central body primarily selected for 

 quite other work. Compensation in kind for land taken, 

 re-grouping of farms, and of lands perhaps outside the scheduled 

 area, temporary grazing rights, can all be arranged with less 

 friction and at less cost by private individuals than by the State. 



Again the "surplus land " question can be more easily tackled 

 by the landowner. It seems hardly realised that if the State 

 alone secured three million plantable acres in the High- 

 lands, the lairds of the North would be administering a few 

 thousand acres of arable land on the Coast, while the Forestrv 

 Board would be saddled with a total area to be reckoned in 

 millions of acres, including the unletable blocks of hinterland 

 of most if not all the deer forests in Scotland. 



But there are other arguments equally weighty. Under the 

 co-operative scheme no purchase money would be paid out for 

 land. Taking the Erosion Commission's figures as correct, this 

 would at once double the area that any given sum supplied by 

 Treasury would afforest. Again, there would be a great saving 



