AFFORESTATION. 1 75 



have experienced, there must be a properly constituted State 

 authority. This should be either a branch of the Board of 

 Agriculture, or better still, a separate Department under the 

 Treasury. It should take over such provision for training as 

 now exists under the Board of Agriculture, the Woods and 

 Forests Department, or the Education Departments, and 

 develop it into a complete system. The Board or Departmient 

 should set up two, or perhaps three. Forest Schools. It should 

 acquire several large well-timbered areas to serve as Demon- 

 stration Forests, where, as well as in Forest Gardens and in 

 combination with private scientifically-conducted woods, experi- 

 ments of all kinds would be carried on. These would embrace 

 nursery work, methods of planting, mixing varieties, thinning, 

 under-planting, transport, and marketing. In these schools and 

 forests, foresters of all grades would get technical training. There 

 also working-plans would be drafted and some of them applied. 

 Staffs would be selected and organised, as experience was gained, 

 for the larger operations to follow. The expert and the working 

 forester would rub shoulders together, as they set about bringing 

 100,000 acres or more of Demonstration Forest into full bearing 

 and proper rotation. Eight or ten years must elapse before this 

 side of the Board's work is sufficiently advanced to enable it to 

 advise Parliament as to a general scheme, or to carry out a 

 scheme without loss or failure. Parliament can then take its final 

 decision in comparative confidence, and leave the enlightened 

 Forest Board to lay down and carry out the work of National 

 Afforestation. Meanwhile the Board of Forestry will have 

 trained skilled wood managers for woods privately owned and 

 worked. It will have set up a standard of silviculture to 

 which all will endeavour to conform, and which would render 

 co-operation between the State and the individual less hazardous 

 than it would be to-day. Broadly stated, it should be able to 

 rely on private enterprise to cope with the improvement of the 

 4 million acres of existing woodland, and even a larger area, with 

 State co-operation. There might be in Scotland, perhaps, i^ 

 million acres under private or communal ownership (municipal 

 catchment areas should be afforested), leaving possibly three 

 millions to be nationalised at probably much the same cost as 

 Inverliever, say ^2 an acre. ^5 an acre should cover purchase 

 and stocking. This expenditure of ^5 should make a return 

 eventually of at least ^50. Indeed, under Larch, land worth 30s. 



