AFFORESTATION. 1 69 



Though there may be difference of opinion as to method, the 

 general line of action is clear: — (i) The Forestry Board and 

 an official survey. (2) Experimental areas. (3) Afforestation, 

 whether State-aided or not, set about tentatively and in care- 

 fully selected areas. So may success silence the critics, and 

 experience, gradually but systematically gained, pave the way 

 for enterprise on a larger and ever-increasing scale. 



21. Afforestation.^ 



By R. C. MuNRO Ferguson, M.P. 



It will become me, and suit my audience also, perhaps, if we 

 discuss British Silviculture in its practical aspects. We succeed 

 best in this country by grappling with actual facts, rather than 

 by foreshadowing ideal possibilities, or constructing highly 

 detailed technical schemes. It is perhaps the very defect of 

 this quality which has blighted British silviculture, for a crop 

 which takes 80 to 200 years to mature, necessitates a long look 

 into the future, and a good deal more planning than a field of 

 wurzel. I am, unhappily, no trained expert, but having 

 associated with experts and foresters through that part of my 

 life which I have been able to give to forestry, my private 

 conviction is that to secure success the expert and the practical 

 forester must work together. Progress is slow whilst they revolve 

 in different spheres, and a certain aloofness between the man 

 with the pen and the man with the tool is the origin of weakness 

 in more than one industrial sphere, for when skilled pen or 

 tongue fancies itself superior to skilled hand and eye, the feel- 

 ing is cordially reciprocated, and progress is nil. Everything 

 is so easy on paper, — Trees grow ; the unemployed plant ; 

 towns are depleted of surplus population ; profits pour in ; the 

 rural population increases m numbers and accumulates wealth. 

 A couple of hours steady writing does the thing. But the 

 practical man scoffs and recalls the last drawing of that great wit, 

 artist, and thinker, Caran d'Ache, in which a " French Volunteer " 

 in a wonderful get up informs a Pomeranian Grenadier " Que 



^ An address delivered at the National Liberal Club, in London, on 22nd 

 April 1909, 



VOL. XXII. TART II. M 



