176 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



may, with the underplanting, yield a crop worth ^^ 150 an acre. A 

 forester is required for every 100 acres (instead of a shepherd or 

 gamekeeper for every 1,000 or 2,000), not to speak of the 

 eventual attendant industries under private management which 

 should employ two or three times as many skilled hands. No 

 British accounts can be produced to prove this, because until 

 recently no books have been kept — and such accounts as we 

 have mostly show a loss ; but this at any rate is quite a fair 

 anticipation, from home and foreign data, to justify the action 

 proposed. Hardwood plantations are more costly to stock, and 

 all parts of a forest are not equally remunerative ; we should 

 begin with the cheaper, more easily stocked soils over large 

 acreages, which afford the surest prospect of financial and 

 social success. The Survey would estimate the area best suited 

 to private initiative, and experience would show how far the 

 State and the individual could actively co-operate, what area the 

 State itself must deal with, and what are its probable liabilities 

 and prospects in so doing ; how far common rights in England 

 and Wales should yield to afforestation, and how far out-runs to 

 farms can be curtailed without disaster to agriculture, and without 

 unduly rousing agricultural opposition. In Ireland public opinion 

 cannot be counted on to favour afforestation, even when under 

 the popular auspices of County Councils, whose plants, I under- 

 stand, have been removed by an unsympathetic public. Else- 

 where grave obstacles must be met and dealt with. 



Forest plans will be prepared to lay out the lands and arrange 

 for an annual average yield, so as to insure steady income and 

 employment either on a clean-cutting compartment system, or on 

 the selection system, i.e., felling ripe trees in forests stocked with 

 those of all ages. These plans would show the order in which 

 land should be acquired, the areas to be stocked annually, and 

 how. The work of survey and preparation of plans must take 

 years. In the Highlands, where great areas can be most easily 

 acquired with fewest complications in transfer, there will be two 

 main difficulties— the effect of afforesting winter grazings (plus 

 the future utilisation of what remains) ; and the bearing of these 

 operations on the incidence of local taxation. Admit that — great 

 as is the revenue derived from sport, and beneficial as is usually 

 its expenditure — society would be on a sounder footing had the 

 Highlands never drawn a shooting rent, since reliance on sporting 

 values has discouraged solid industrial enterprise, yet the hard 



